001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] on november 10. so let's first all stand and remember our veterans and a moment of silence please please join me in the pledge to the flag of america to the republic for which it stands nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you again welcome to our november 10th meeting of course we changed it to tonight because tomorrow is veterans day the reading of the evacuation fire evacuation procedure in case of a fire would everyone please follow the exit signs to the outside of the building please stay completely clear of the building to provide space for any fire department vehicles thank you for that i'll ask for a motion to approve this evening's agenda please a motion by christopher second by karen all in favor
002say aye any opposed motion carried thank you item three on our agenda tonight superintendents update dr terranova please thank you mr delucia i've uh four brief updates don't get alarmed i know there's four but um i'll keep them brief first i want to update the community as you probably have heard we've had an increase in positive covid cases in our especially in our elementary buildings as of this afternoon we had 50 positive cases with over 30 at the intermediate building alone this has led to increased quarantining of full classrooms under the direction of the ontario county health department especially at the intermediate building where at this point from my last knowledge we have 11 classrooms that are fully quarantined which is about 20 to 25 of our total classrooms in the intermediate building and that's
003because of the over 30 positive cases this morning or this afternoon i did a zoom meeting with our with the director of ontario county health as well as the assistant director to get more guidance on the situation uh ontario county health has determined that when there is somewhere between three to four positive cases usually three they are then quarantining when i say three to four positive cases three to four positive cases within a class of about 20 kids then they will quarantine the entire classroom especially if they start to see a spread potentially within the building and that's what's occurring at the intermediate building right now and that's why they have 11 classrooms as of this afternoon that are quarantined and unfortunately when they quarantine a classroom of a entire classroom because of multiple cases
004in that classroom we're not allowed to test students out of quarantine in those specific situations because of the cluster of cases that are in that particular classroom also as larger numbers of students have tested positive in the intermediate building it's difficult to keep up with the testing as you know we're trying to test kids out of quarantine which is still occurring but in these situations when we have a large number of cases in one building it's very difficult to test out of it because of the time constraints around testing the capacity of our machines to do that we are going to monitor the situation closely at the intermediate building ontario county health is is keeping the building open um which we're glad for but we know that there is some significant hardship in families especially
005when an entire classroom is quarantined for a period of time classrooms that are virtual that need to go virtual will have live instruction throughout the day at the intermediate building that's been instituted now and overall we're going to work extremely hard to keep up with the testing and try to get as many kids in school even if they were exposed as long as the health department allows it we have to look at according to the health department they want to monitor the cases over the next four to six days and hopefully we're going to see a decrease in those cases at the intermediate building they did say that new vaccines for children five years to 12 are now available and if a family chooses to have their child vaccinated and of course that's a family
006choice not ours the health department will not quarantine their child if exposed to a positive case as long as the child does not have any symptoms and they're fully vaccinated that's something that the health department is going to publicize in the very near future so i wanted to give an update to the community around our situation i appreciate again as always the families dealing with this uh this outbreak so to speak and the ability of families to try to manage it as their kids are home which is incredibly difficult and certainly i appreciate our staff and leadership group in dealing with the situation and being as transparent as possible about it i also want to give a quick update so number two is a strategic planning meeting we had our second meeting on tuesday which
007was yesterday approximately 35 members of the committee where we did some real significant work uh analyzing trends from focus groups surveys and interviews that occurred by the community over the summer we're taking all that information and we're forming categories major categories our facilitator column calls them the big rocks of items that the committee will begin to flesh out and turn into elements of the strategic plan during the third and fourth meeting so if you remember we're planning to have four full day meetings of the strategic planning committee we just finished our second one we hope to have a rough draft of a strategic plan ready for the board of education by january 1st and then that plan will certainly help us tremendously in terms of what we focus on in our district third i i'd
008be remiss if i didn't give a special thanks and i know we're going to do more of a thanks a little bit later in this meeting but personally i want to thank all of our veterans on veteran day veterans day which is tomorrow honor all the vet uh all of our military members who have served in the u.s armed forces thanking them for their service and their incredible dedication to our country and for keeping us safe and lastly we weren't able to do this last month but um thanks to aaron isaacs we have a brief video of appreciation for our board of education last month in october was board of education appreciation week and again we weren't able to do this as part of the celebration last month but we felt it was appropriate with
009all the work that this group does um in guiding our district forward to show this brief video of appreciation so i'll turn it over to aaron who will show the video hello everyone my name is andrew and one of the things i love about going to victor central schools especially victor junior high is the the teachers and the overall community of the buildings i feel like in every building that i've been to there's been a sense of belonging and i feel like it's a really safe environment to grow and develop as a student i also love the way they've organized sports and overall events like i love the homecoming is going to be great i've been going to a lot of football games and it's just been organized really well so yeah thanks much bye
010hi i'm emma thank you to the board of education for everything they do for us something that i really love about victor is how many activities are given to the students especially the seniors to make the year fun and enjoyable thank you i like school because i like learning with my teachers thank you for everything i love victor school so much because of all my friends i have a friend named bertie in my class for four years together lacrosse is my favorite sport and victor is supported by you thank you board of education for everything you do including anything i know i wouldn't be here without you and if i wasn't here i would not be good at reading writing or math thank you hi my name is ellie and i love going to victor
011i think that the school has so many clubs they have all the things that you need to be successful in school i love i also love that they have many different opportunities for you to do as many things as you want such as the clubs going swimming we have our own pool just everything that i think everything is great about victor thank you board of education i like school because i get to learn thank you victor borges board of education we are writing to thank you for your leadership of our school victor central school community because of your leadership and great companionship thanks for helping please do not stop helping thanks for being there for us bye avon gratia hi i'm andrew i just wanted to say thank you to the board of education for
012all the hard work you guys do and making our year as normal as possible thank you why i like school is because those teachers and lots of people not lots of nice people and people that keep us safe hey i'm aiden uh i really love going to victor i like the fact that we have our own freaking pool that's really cool um opportunity the opportunities to participate there's so many things that you can do to participate in this school it's great and it's also just it's basically my home away from home i love this place hi my name is igor and i would like to thank the board of education for allowing students from all ages to have opportunities here in school when it comes to the classes they can take and the opportunities that
013arise from those classes so thank you hi i'm amber thank you so much the board of education for everything you've done for us we know within the last year things have been difficult with going back to school but you guys worked so hard so that we could have the best senior possible so thank you i like to learn with new friends and i like to go to the gym hi i'm tiffany and thank you to the board of education for working so hard and trying to get all the schools back to normal as possible thank you [Music] we participated and certainly aaron for making that video but especially thank you to the board uh just an added little message for everybody from the kids who count the most which is obviously our students so thank
014you that's my superintendent's update hey that was great thank you so much yep question dr chair now i have a quick question sure now that the vaccination is available to younger children and those parents who choose to have their younger student vaccinated what happens when they are but the majority of their class has a covet outbreak and the whole class is quarantined yet you have a single student or several students who have met the mandate of not quarantining yeah it's a great question and it's something that we started to talk about today actually uh i had conversations uh certainly with mr shorts at the intermediate building today and we haven't finalized how we're going to deal with that but that does present a challenge for us if some kids would be quarantined and some kids
015wouldn't in a particular classroom i am hopeful that you know that we again overall i'm hopeful that the cases are going to decrease over the next week to two weeks because of um hopefully some of these quarantines that are being put in place and then we you know i hope that we don't have to deal with that particular situation but it's conversations that we're having now on how to address that because it is something that we have to be ready for thank you great good question thanks okay item four is uh recognitions and i'm honored to recognize our veterans as you know tomorrow we celebrate veterans day a time for us to pay our respects to those who have served our country for one day we stand united in respect for our veterans the veterans
016day holiday started as a day to reflect upon the heroism of those who died in our country's service and was originally called armistice day it fell on november 11th because that is the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended world war one however in 1954 the holiday was changed to veterans day in order to account for all veterans in all wars bcs has many veterans this year our community relations department reached out to all staff asking for them to submit their stories on being a veteran their photos and stories are currently being shared on the district's social media sites while not all of our vcs veterans chose to participate in this recognition i believe that those who did represent all of our veterans in this in their commitment to our country in the
017words of former president harry s truman our debt to the heroic heroic men and valiant woman in the service of our country can never be repaid they have earned our undying gratitude america will never forget their sacrifices please take the next few moments to silently reflect on not only our bcs veterans but all veterans thank you you're missing the screen thank you sidenote today is also the birthday of the united states marine corps 1775. say it louder as also just coincidentally today is the birthday of the united states marine corps from night is from 1775. 264 years dr parks 264 1775 yep november 10th very nice okay next item is public participation do we have a sign up sheet okay thank you let me read this the board of education invites you members of the
018school community to feel comfortable in sharing matters of interest or concerns that you might have with us although the board's work is open to the public this is not a meeting with the public all matters brought to the attention of the board during the public session may be taken under consideration for future response or action if you wish to speak please sign up at the table where you entered the boardroom and that sheet is being brought up right now i'll be happy to recognize those of you who wish to speak when you approach the microphone please identify yourself be before presenting your thoughts individual comments will be limited to three minutes and the total time for this portion of the agenda will be limited to 15 minutes please note issues related to specific school district
019personnel or students must be brought to the attention of the superintendent of schools privately as they are not discussable at this venue thank you for that so the first one looks like uh candy shay is that correct randy brand that's an r is this on okay yeah it's on sorry randy look like a c to me should have looked at you first right i've been called worse myself uh i won't go into stories because i only have three minutes here okay um maureen's gonna hand out uh something that i my wife had a hard time actually even uh transcribing it but it's something that i won't i won't uh talk about specifically other than um you might have seen uh some people might have heard of a book called lawn boy um and there's there's
020two books one and you don't want to get them confused but the one by jonathan evanson is in my opinion it shouldn't be anywhere near our kids and i'm not saying that it's here at the library or through victor central school but i'm bringing it up because my school tax bill shows that the library tax is also included and i went and i did a little research on the library's reservation system and it was available um there were a whole bunch of other ones that also um gender queer a memoir you guys can read it for yourself i really hope you do take the time to do it as much as you can possibly endure before you realize this is not something you should come anywhere near our kids i don't know how much time
021i have left but let me put it to you this way there's a story about a father with a cookie he makes chocolate chip cookies he didn't want his kids to go to see a movie because he thought there was some things in it that it wasn't right for the kids and the kids didn't like it the kids really pushed him so he made some chocolate chip cookies they love chocolate chip cookies well the chocolate chip cookies he put one added ingredient real small amount but he gave them to the kids and said before you eat them i want to let you know i added one small ingredient and they said well what's that some dog poop oh they didn't want to eat it so this is a small thing maybe the library does a
022good job in general but the fact that i could just go on there and find some stuff that shouldn't be there means that they don't have good accountability there or whoever's making those decisions it looks like it's something all around the country because there's videos coming up all over the country that this is happening in school libraries in in public libraries and what i'm asking is that you check it out i'm also asking something pretty extreme i don't know it'll have to come to that but if they can't guarantee that this kind of books don't get to our kids then i'd like you guys to reconsider your relationship with the library and not put them on the tax roll and not include them in my school taxes because i don't want to support it and
023that's it i don't know if i got more minutes or not but that's it have a good day okay thank you for your remarks uh the second person uh gene jones i get that one right just in case i go over i was going to use some of robin's time because she signed up well we're going to limit people to the three minutes that are allocated it's a privilege of the floor three minutes please uh i'm a teacher aide in the primary building for the last 11 years and i'm here to express mine and many of my colleagues disappointment in the csta ratification vote that took place on november 3rd this vote became necessary when the availability of bus drivers was declining as a means to increase the morale of our current drivers and to
024entice new hires our superintendent approached our union president to offer a substantial hourly wage increase to not only our bus drivers but to the entire transportation department as union members we completely understand the predicament the school district was in conserving driver or concerning driver shortages we also understand as a whole the evidence of pressure to increase such wages as a means to address current labor shortages that coincide with the current pandemic what we fail to understand is the obvious lack of willingness to negotiate the wages of the remaining csea members of our union which are custodians bus monitors groundskeepers secretaries cafeteria staff and teacher aides we also fail to understand the lack of transparency throughout the process basically we're forced to accept the initial offer recognizing we have no voice no power no importance and
025are witnessing a decline in morale on a daily basis while bus drivers in the entire transportation department were being offered a 4.25 increase the remaining hard-working members were offered 47 cents in comparison what do these members do teacher aides work with students and assist teachers in the classroom sometimes they're asked to step in and be classroom teachers art music or special ed teachers at a moment's notice cafeteria staff members may be washing dishes managing the ovens as well as serving students all at the same time when down staff members which currently is an issue classrooms and bathrooms are not properly cleaned or sanitized on a regular basis due to lack of custodians this is a daily occurrence and an ongoing health and safety concern for employees and children particularly during covet as we see the
026numbers increase in some of our buildings do you know your employees and who they are as people some live in the victor community some are born and raised here some have children who are currently attending victor schools many are single parents single households some are living paycheck to paycheck some work two jobs some are living in the poverty level which is now at 15 an hour due to inflation your employees have served victor well and showed up every day putting their health at risk during a worldwide pandemic victor should be proud of their employees and supportive they've proven themselves year after year showing up getting the work done and dedicating themselves to this district right now victor has an opportunity there's a labor shortage in all areas across the nation including all schools not just
027victor every department is facing understaffing issues due to retirements and resignations and lack of recruitment wages are stagnant inflation is knocking at the door and employees are being forced to do more with fewer resources under difficult circumstances during a pandemic we need help the district right now can do the right thing with the historic amount of federal funding and stimulus money school districts have received statewide what an opportunity for the school to say we see you you matter to us and we value our employees and want to invest in you and your family for all that they do for the schools the students the district and our community victor would be the gold standard of what it should look like when you value all your employees thank you thank you appreciate your comments okay the
028third person here is robin kinsella please okay thank you we are at item six acceptance of consent items we have item six a through l so if i could please have a motion to accept consent items please a motion by karen ii kristin any comments or questions or about these items please add a comment okay the acceptance of the tech tax collectors report i wanted to give a shout out to nicole ritz who worked really hard on getting us the reports right up until today i also had a question regarding the facilities committee recommendation not sure if i just mr belize could answer okay so i noticed that the committee met in august and we're just getting the report in november was there a delay just due to pricing and so when facilities committee met
029we were looking at high level since then the architect and engineers have met with the vcs principal to look at what they're looking for and modifications they also met with the intermediate library to get uh to kind of sure up those numbers uh we're still in the process of doing that but due to supply chain issues i'm presenting it to you today so that we can get that scoreboard over into corbett field by the start of lacrosse and track season so it was a process of just after the facilities committee approved it getting the fine details of what renovations and how much it was going to cost and what are the updates for the renovation for the vex main office so in if you were right on the other side of the wall from you
030is where the principals and the clerical sit currently they're in small spaces so the idea was through this store there's a storage unit and then there's a conference room from there so we're gonna eat into that area to give them a more workable used uh workspace i think uh our assistant principal in that building is in like a six by six office it's not conducive to hold meetings and to be productive so it was to just give them more space to work well so that construction be during the school year or that a summer that would be over the summer okay thank you yep okay other questions on these items mr felice you want to stay sorry you want to uh stay up there and just uh give a brief update around the 2223 budget
031development calendar which is also part of the consent agenda yeah so today i'm looking for approval on the budget calendar this is a very high level thing so this meeting is just establish the calendar and then starting next meeting we were going to look at goals and what we would like to accomplish for the budget and then in the beginning of it i'm starting towards the end friday next week working with principals about non-personnel items so we're talking about supplies and materials equipment contractual needs of each of individual department and building in the meantime mrs d'angelo is having meetings with the principals and the directors to figure out our staffing needs based off of student needs as well so she's working on that looking at enrollment numbers trends class sizes in the upper grades and
032then from there towards the end like january february we'll start talking about personnel related items and then we'll start incorporating some of the thought partners and hopefully by april we'll have a better idea of the revenue and we can adopt the budget in april i actually had another question um the moa that we had for civil service employees association i noticed that the tax collector was not listed in that group yeah so tax collector is only a part of her she's accounts payable her title's not listed in there but she uh has all the benefits of that contract so any type of salary increase mrs rich will also receive okay mr villas yeah um i just wanted to give a quick update uh on the personnel agenda uh want to congratulate and recognize our two
033appointees for assistant principal that the board met uh this evening thomas cheevers uh is recommended to be the assistant principal of the intermediate building uh replacing the legendary um uh replacing michelle who's uh michelle maloney who's one of our legendary principal assistant principals and have been here for many years and i think is actually going to present tonight and we're going to when she does that i'm going to just say a couple words about her and then jennifer grimes is our recommendation for assistant principal at the high school so both jennifer and thomas are on the personnel agenda i also want to recognize lisa phillips who's done a phenomenal job as our data coordinator who's moving to wayne frigger lakes boces she's going to be a big loss because that's a significant position and she
034has done an incredible job in it so she's going to be challenging to replace but we hope to find a strong replacement in the next month and three retirements i want to recognize deborah hill our school bus driver who's uh retiring effective november 29th lisa hinman our head school bus driver uh lisa and debra have done an incredible job in the transportation office for many years uh and they're going to be a great big loss but lisa is also retiring november 30th and john grassi our informational technology network analyst is uh is retiring as of april 29th so the good news is we get john for a few more months but these are all positions that you don't hear a lot about uh they're positions that don't get recognized but if if these individuals weren't
035phenomenal at their jobs we would be in big trouble so we have a we have a big job ahead to replace them so i just want to recognize those individuals on the personnel agenda great thank you for those comments anyone else see no no more um all in favor say aye aye any opposed abstentions motion carry thank you item seven a is campus news so who's go ahead heidi what you're great yeah i thought we'd start youngest to oldest and i mean children not to offend anyone over there yeah let's not let tim control that we can do it good evening to everyone for those of you that don't know me i'm heidi rob and i'm the principal at the primary school i want to start off tonight just by saying um thank you to
036all of the primary school staff i know many of them aren't here um but this has has been great to have all of our students back this fall but it has come with a variety of challenges and and certainly you heard those at the beginning of the meeting when tim discussed some of the the covid concerns teachers rarely have all of their students in their classroom on a given day and many of our teacher aides are constantly covering someone else's schedule and different things like that because of some of our staff is out and all of our staff is working with students that are coming to school with some pretty significant social emotional and academic needs and we know that everyone has so much on their plate and is stressed all of the time but
037i couldn't be more proud to be a staff member at vps i'm new in the building but i've quickly learned that the vps staff cares so deeply about all of our students they show up day in and day out and work so hard to meet the needs of all of our students and i cannot thank them enough for everything that they're doing every single day i'm so incredibly grateful to be a part of that team at the primary school a few more updates um our students have been enjoying the new playground i thought maybe i had mentioned that last month when i looked back at my notes i didn't bring it up the playground has a little instrument section it has a kind of a bouncy slide and if you ask most of the students
038they'll tell you the best part is the spinny thing so i will not step foot on the spinny thing but it looks pretty cool and it's so great that we had to give a few reminders about social distancing on this spinny thing so you'll have to check out that playground if you haven't done so yet our observations are in full swing in the building which is wonderful because it gets me into the classrooms i've had the chance to see some second graders exploring attributes of rectangles and they're also using very precise vocabulary to um talk about what a rectangle is so saying that you know rows and columns and and it works with an array too our third graders are learning about how text features can help them better understand informational text and in all
039of these classrooms our students are really working hard to understand school routines because that's actually new to us some of our students outside organizations are able to use our buildings this year which has been really exciting in the evening we have so many robotics teams in the building and i know so many of our students love to do that which has been a great addition we also have the ymca before and after school program in our building this year which is nice for some of our families to take advantage of the girl scouts are there one day after school and soon we will be having a chess club there as well after school so some great opportunities for our students lastly i just wanted to share that one of our students some of you may
040have seen this on social media had a father who was away for several months and surprised him he's in the military surprised him i think it was after 13 months i don't know if i have that accurate with a welcome home at school and the son had no clue this was happening and for those of us that were lucky enough to witness that it was just such a beautiful moment and i know that happened at the intermediate school as well and so i would just be remiss if i didn't take this time to say thank you to our veterans thanks thank you so this is michelle maloney our assistant principal at the intermediate school how many years 45 no wait what are we asking i'm sorry i'm sorry how old are you i'm sorry no
04120 20 what how many years experience how many years have i been in education 31 years seven months 31 years counting so michelle is retiring the end of december yes yes and despite me blanking out on her last name for about two seconds earlier i have nothing but great respect for michelle maloney she uh she's okay how many years in victor intermediate 16. 16 years of victor intermediate as the assistant principal which is not the easiest job in the world but one that absolutely is essential and actually builds probably the strongest relationships with families and kids around and that was what michelle has been known for for 16 years and she's a huge loss for us but we know that it's the right move on her part and i just want to thank you on
042behalf of the district for incredible amount of dedication and especially for make being such a positive influence on thousands and thousands of kids you'll never be forgotten so thank you very much thank you a little a little over 16 years ago i was here tonight joining the victor staff and i've seen a lot of changes and a lot of growth but it has been a tremendous opportunity and i thank you all for the support through the years i also wanted to mention so tim started talking about some of the challenges that we've seen this year right now our covid numbers and our quarantines are putting a lot of challenges in front of us but i have to mention that our teachers have just really and our students have rolled with this they are incredible because
043of all of the technology training that we did last year and the acts of the one-to-one devices for students although you know there have been a lot of tears as kids are going home i have to admit they're they are leaving and they're able to the next day get up and connect with their teachers and classroom instruction is rolling though it's virtual they're doing it though they'd rather be in school it really has been somewhat seamless so they've taken a really difficult opportunity and are making the best of it i also had to mention that another significant challenge is our absences and our subs we're running so our average i just checked it earlier we're running um 18 absences a day on average but this week we've had 27 and 23 so the numbers are
044really skewed and covering classes is is impossible it's it's takes up our days and our nights and um it's impacting the kids the most we're doing the best we can but i would say on top of quarantine and kovid that is our other greatest greatest challenge is keeping the classrooms functioning with having you know people to man the classrooms through it all though we're trying to maintain some of our traditions through the years and one of our big celebrations at the intermediate school has always been veterans day i'm sure some of you remember the veterans day assemblies we've had in the auditorium the amazing performances we've had there this year we're doing it a little differently but it's just as special our students interviewed their grandparents and great grandparents that are veterans we've got a
045collection of pictures and as heidi mentioned a very special reunion a family whose dad was away for 14 months i believe it was so jamie condon our social studies coordinator put together a video which we're going to have sent to you after it it's 20 minutes but it's so worth the watch it's just incredible so we really try to keep those things going other events we're heading into conference season this year we're offering it three ways we're doing it through zooms if parents would like it better that way we're doing in person we're also doing phone conferences and i also have been getting into the classroom and noticing some wonderful things i know kevin mentioned last month our win pilot at sixth grade it was great to get in and see the students now they're
046planning their trips to the countries that they have selected and they're talking about how much money they need to bring and they're doing their ratios so they've got their mathematical calculations with how much money they bring for their trip they're buying their plane tickets so it's a really engaging and cultural experience once again guys thanks for everything this is it all right thanks good evening everyone i was kind of hoping michelle was going to do like a mic drop moment or something like she walked away so congratulations it's exciting good for you all right um so a couple things um first off for the junior high school uh for those of you who don't know me i'm brian the principal at the junior high school i want to thank christine williamson for helping connect our
047social studies teachers today uh with two folks who came to us to kind of talk about best practices with social emotional learning and creating culturally accepting uh and responsive classroom environments particularly as we know that our curriculum is moving into the direction over the next couple of weeks but really talking about some potentially sensitive issues um so i had a chance to sit in on that i know brian siesta is going to mention it as well he was able to sit in which is a really high quality program that our teachers really directly benefited from and so i want to kind of thank her for helping bring that resource to us today and now there's a good chance we may look to expand that a little bit into some other departments as teachers are starting
048to you know have questions around the skill set that they want to continue to develop so i also would be remiss if i did not mention that the school musical they spongebob the musical opens next week so tickets are on sale now we are super excited that a few years ago as you know the board was gracious to be able to get us an annual musical we had been every other year for a very long time and we had a little bit of a blip last year for all the obvious reasons so we're really excited to be able to get a live in-person show for our kids there'll be three performances next week and they are through the roof and i know aaron's working hard on that as well that's just going to be a
049great production for us and then the last thing i'm going to talk a little bit about tonight is the enrichment program at the junior high school i know there's a sense that at some point along the way an enrichment opportunities for kids had been sort of eliminated from the junior high so i want to talk a little bit about that that's not the case and talk to you a little bit about the enriching experiences that we are putting together for uh students at the junior high traditionally we offer enrichment opportunities through teachers creating courses in activities that students would take in lieu of a study hall and that's always based around teacher capacity to offer those so in a year where a teacher may be able to say i don't need to have as many
050supervisory assignments study halls cafeteria duties they'll then use that same time to create opportunities for kids who would then sign up they're not graded classes they're really there for an enriching experience any student can access those as long as it fits within the schedule this fall we had to make the decision that we could not do that same approach at the beginning of the year due to the fact that we had so much more supervisory need particularly with moving lunches into classrooms to alleviate congestion in the cafeteria that more than tripled the amount of cafeteria supervision that we needed so what we have been doing is we don't want our students to miss out on opportunities we created along with the ptsa partnered with them to create a lunch and learn series we had our
051first today uh scott reinhart who lives in town former principal at calkins road in pittsford is an adventure self-guided traveler he came in and spent his day with our kids we had about 25 students take advantage of this got him pizza lunches and they learned all about his self-guided trips through peru and through several in honduras and a few other places to kind of instill the idea that you know you can get out and you can actually sort of do these things on your own really interesting stuff other lunch and learn opportunities we have lined up we're working with the rochester engineering society and the stem bridges program to bring someone in to the junior high school to be able to provide a lunch and learn opportunity around careers in stem and in engineering we
052also in the spring i'm sorry also in the fall sorry we've went over in the fall the dietetic intern with alex dipole is going to be coming in and talk about sustainable farming practices and how young people can kind of identify the healthiest food choices available to them so that's going to be another lunch and learn opportunity that we're going to put together before thanksgiving so we'll have at least three in the fall semester as we get into the spring semester i've been talking with brian emelson from the victor hiking uh department and trails and he's gonna come in and do some work with kids around opportunities to get out and explore their own community and a lot of the really exciting things sort of happening in the victor trails group and that's also going
053to be connected to a local mountain bike organization that organizes trips for kids throughout the spring and summer to get kids access to trails that they might not be able to get to without sort of transportation and equipment support and then rochester writers and books is looking to come in the spring as well to do some workshops with kids around the art of creative writing and then also that kind of dovetails with some opportunities that kids might want to engage in that uh community so we're trying to find things for kids who are looking for their tribe so to speak and in the spring we're also going to be running the more traditional enrichment type courses within culinary arts fitness and nutrition histories mysteries and then also we're developing one it used to be called
054board games but it's really kind of a math science we're trying to re-pract repackage the name of it but essentially it's game-based learning within mathematical practices so those will all be things that will be a part of our second semester so i want to share that because i want to make sure that people understood that we're coming out of a two and a half year year and a half of sort of disrupted education and readjusting but we're not missing the opportunities to try to create enriching experiences for any of our kids so um and with that i think uh mr cecilia was up next thank you have a great night thank you hey good evening everyone brian cessel principal victor senior high school uh happy to be here again uh just a few uh updates
055i'm gonna uh kind of um tail off of what brian said about the professional development that we that we were um able to go through today i want to thank kristen williamson uh for pulling that together it was put on by the anti-racist curriculum project where they talked about the new york state culturally responsive framework essentially what's happening is our teachers and our staff are very interested in engaging in conversations uh with students around these topics but before we can do that there's got to be some sort of a baseline training for how do we do that as a staff and the two presenters who came in today keisha james and shane weingand just did a phenomenal job about really doing an interest introspective search about what our comfort level is where we are with
056our own backgrounds and they really kind of did a step-by-step process for us to get comfortable in talking about these topics so we don't feel afraid to approach them with students if we if they come up in conversation in the classroom and i thought it was really really good it really pushed our thinking around social emotional learning as well as diversity equity and inclusion and so i thought it was very worthwhile i was there for just over half of the training but kristin thank you very much for doing that and i also want to thank karen finter because last week karen did professional development for our faculty about childhood trauma coming off of covet especially it was very well received so last year we spent a lot of time focusing in our building on grades
057and making sure that kids were keeping up with their schoolwork this year while we're still focusing on the academic portion we're really shifting over to the social emotional piece for learning as well so i want to thank our two directors for everything they're doing to to support that learning with us last month i also talked about our wellness club and what i'm going to try to do is highlight a different club um every month and this month i want to talk about the ghost hunters club this is a this is one of my favorite parts of my job uh ashton fantuzo who is a junior contacted me this summer and said i want a former ghost hunters club i said that's interesting you know i i remember years ago watching that show unsolved mysteries where
058they'd have stories about ghosts and things that were haunted so i put ashton in touch with some people at school who kind of oversee clubs and activities and on his own ashton sought out a club advisor it's amelia poss who's one of our special ed teachers she is working with ashton ashton made some posters to publicize the first meeting um which was back uh it was last month uh where we had uh uh the very first meeting of the ghost hunters club and i went to the meeting not knowing you know it's a brand new club how many kids are going to show up maybe three or four i think i counted in that first meeting there were 27 kids who showed up um it was fantastic we just had our second meeting on tuesday
059and i'm saying we because i'm part of the club um it's it's an inclusive club where students of all abilities are welcome um and trust me they're showing up it's it's the goal is to provide a safe welcoming environment for all students and at the meetings they build research and social skills by working in teams to investigate local historic landmarks we just talked about valentine the other day that may have been deemed haunted at some point so it's a really really fun club we meet on the first tuesday of i'm sorry the second tuesday of every month and it's open to all high school students who are interested in local history ghost stories or just simply looking to make some new friends and have a few snacks so i know that we invite board members
060to clubs and activities and events and i'm telling you if you have the opportunity to stop in for one of these club meetings you will absolutely love it so i want to thank ashton and amelia for for making this club uh move forward so uh it's a great part of our monthly uh agenda i also do want to mention that a couple weeks ago we had our senior halloween party out here at the east at the ecs parking lot where we had i think 25 to 30 senior parents who came and what the kids did is they dressed up they went around and they called it trunk or treat uh we did this last year where they go to the cars and get a little treat from the parents so i want to thank the
061senior parents and the senior class uh for still engaging in some new activities to make this year as normal as possible for kids i get a lot of questions about you know graduation senior trip we're very very close to finalizing uh the date and location for graduation and also finalizing plans for the senior trip the senior trip's a little bit more tricky because traditionally we've done new york city but you know we're trying to keep up with the regulations that they have for new york city so we want to make sure that we can pull something off that's going to be great for the kids and at a location that we know is going to be safe and inclusive for for students um so i'll give you more information as as as we get it
062so uh thank you uh everybody uh thank you for our st to our staff our board and to our veterans thank you thank you i actually have the ecs update okay yes uh so carrie pender our principal at our early childhood school uh is not able to be here tonight because her son owen who's a senior is currently at the beginning stages of the final sectional match for volleyball where victor is playing against penfield i believe in webster right now so she's not able to be here so she's charged me with the good with the campus news for the early childhood school and i just want to go over a few updates open house they had a great turnout teachers and families are happy to be together again in person celebrating the learning and growth
063of all of the students she wanted to recognize the inquiry program that's up and running for our first grade students this month's inquiry was apple mania students explored the parts of an apple and their functions mrs coniglio is also setting up special learning opportunities for groups of classes to engage in experiences that enrich and extend their classroom learning and those will be reported out later as we go through the next few months certainly fire safety is incredibly important and our ecs children experienced a visit from the fire department to teach our kindergarten and first grade students about fire safety students also enjoyed a firsthand look at a real fire truck and even got to sit in the cab uh and two major you know areas of focus for the ecs one is learning communities staff
064are engaged in learning communities focused on supporting student growth by thinking about two essential questions this year one what do we want our students to learn and be able to do and two how will we know that they have learned it so those are two critical questions that are actually part of our blueprint for exceptional teacher practice across the district and each learning community has chosen to focus a focus area for the year ranging from social emotional learning and the science of reading to targeted interventions and developing student led goals and then the second major focus is school the school community team they had their first meeting developed this year to focus on meeting the social emotional and behavioral needs of all students at the ecs and the school community team worked on focusing on
065working together as a school to teach and acknowledge positive behavior and social skills so that's a quick campus news from the early childhood school and we wish our victor boyce volleyball team well in the sectional finals tonight great thank you you did a nice job with that appreciated all right uh next item is item 7b approve the professional learning plan for 2021 2022. we'll see the presentation first and then i'll ask for a motion checking to see if we're the same height hi i'm kristen williamson director of humanities and professional learning i'm here tonight with karen finter director of math and science for the victor central school district we're excited to be here tonight to provide you some details on our professional learning plan this was developed with our shared decision making team curriculum council
066karen's going to give you the broad overdue overview and then we'll go into a few details regarding this plan good evening everybody so the professional learning plan is actually a document that's mandated by new york state and the intent really is to support educators and ultimately students through aligning professional development matched to data-driven need and so the documents really designed to improve that quality of teaching and learning to make sure that teachers throughout the district have substantial opportunities for professional learning and can remain current in their profession certainly needs are an important consideration and so really using a variety of data to drive the development of professional learning is incorporated into the plan and certainly holding some expectations around professional learning where are those opportunities throughout either the work day or after school during the
067summer during superintendents conference days what are those arenas for professional learning that we can really rely on to grow our practice and then finally in court incorporated into the plan is how this professional learning will be measured what will be the overall impact and effect of this growth so we also work to ensure that the plan aligns with the blueprint for educational excellence and also with our current district goals so we do focus in this plan on academic achievement equity and excellence for all of our students and then the third goal social emotional and physical well-being of our students so as we go through the plan you'll see an alignment to those three goals and then an alignment to the blueprint for educational excellence so that first goal really is focused on curriculum and certainly
068you know for those of us um that are involved in the strategic planning process this certainly is rising as an area of need within the district and um as kristen and i have joined the team recognizing that there is some work to be done not just in format or structure of curriculum but really the process used to develop it and to really build an understanding curriculum and so one of the goals in our professional learning plan is to train teachers and administrators in this development process that truly leads to a depth of understanding with our students and to use that process as early as this coming spring and summer to move forward with any new curriculum writing projects that occur within the district also when we think about our student achievement and expanding our professional
069capacity we want to think about supporting our state teachers in the use of research-based instructional strategies so we're looking at two areas this year um you've heard actually of both of them tonight so we're looking at supporting our teachers and use using learning targets this comes out of the research of john hatty and thinking about how clarity and what we want students to learn and helping teachers build that clarity has a great impact on our students success so this is something we kicked off at the start of the year every teacher pre-k through 12th grade teacher receive training in how to use learning targets why they're important and they will continue that work so we actually have a session next week at the primary school in which we'll continue to refine that but it's a
070shift from what are we doing today to what are we learning today and making that very clear for our students in addition you heard a little bit about the science of reading at the ecs and that's really something we're working on pre-k through sixth grade and really what i mean when i say the science of reading it's the body of research that tells us exactly how children learn to read and spell and when we put that research into the hands of teachers they can make instructional decisions for their students that have great impact they can help choose resources that will influence our children and they can think about a curriculum that's going to have a profound impact on our kids so we've had over 40 teachers and administrators already engage in that learning we have
071another over 30 signed up for december so i really can't say enough about the enthusiasm of victor teachers to improve their practice and administrators as well we have quite a few administrators joining that learning so really goal number two and three in our professional learning plan and we heard tonight as michelle talked a bit about some of the challenges that the intermediate school is facing through the quarantines but the bright spot in it really is the foundation around some of the technology use and training that teachers received last year that carried through this summer and into even this fall in securing not only just how do you leverage the tools but how to use them to maximize instruction and so the first ever technology summit this summer that was led by our fabulous technology director
072angela frante before she went out on maternity leave the workshop sessions the the collaboration with wayne finger lakes boces and the support we receive from casey wagner really providing providing sustained opportunities for teachers to continue that purposeful integration of of technology not just for the tool's sake but to support student learning another initiative that really uh is as a foundational one um and and it's there's a lot of acronyms but mtss is multiple tiered systems of support and what that really means is and you've you've heard it tonight as each of the building principles spoke that it is the academics but it's also the social emotional and with those two components how are we really helping to support the whole child and so in the wayne finger lakes region there is a region-wide initiative around
073really strengthening district and building multi-tier systems of support and so each building has a team that will be attending training through wayne finger lakes boces in addition the a district team has been trained um starting late this summer and into the fall to really help us to think about what are all of the facets of a multi-tier systems of support plan and how we can leverage components of that broader umbrella to support the whole child and so right now we're taking small steps knowing that again some of the work in the strategic plan will help to inform this but really making sure that foundational or baseline training is completed as a part and component of the professional learning plan for the district and so when we think about our students social and emotional development we
074want to ensure that our teachers are well versed in the new york state social and emotional learning benchmarks and so we're looking at a couple of avenues for this um learning we have a comprehensive guidance plan with our school counselors so providing them the support and training they need to get into the classrooms and and provide lessons directly to our students and then we're also looking at unpacking the new york state social and emotional learning benchmarks with our teachers so that they better understand them and are able to not only implement them in their lessons but also in weave them into curriculum where it is appropriate um so i was in a fourth grade classroom so this is already happening in some ways i was in a fourth grade classroom today and i was watching
075the fourth graders navigate group work and watching them manage who was going to take on what role and i even saw some of them holding each other accountable and these are high level skills um you know first in social the social emotional realm so getting that kind of um teaching and learning into our curriculum um for every child will be will be a goal as we unpack those benchmarks with teachers thank you in 2020 the new york state department of education adopted new physical education standards and our amazing pe department under the guidance of dewey weimer quickly started unpacking those standards training our pe teachers on those standards and in my opinion opinion they're a little bit ahead of the implementation timeline they've already started weaving those into their curriculum so we'll continue to offer
076that support to that department learning about their standards creating curriculum they're doing everything from sports skills to health enhancing behaviors really all the way even weaving into some of the social emotional learning components that are part of the benchmarks as well and again as as mandated by the state additional programs that are included in the broad umbrella of the professional learning plan include our mentoring program here in victor what types of professional development in training that's mandated around school violence prevention and intervention and then how are we helping to support our english language learners and their teachers by providing professional development that's uniquely matched to their needs as well and so really the intent of this document is is to showcase what some of the great work is that we're moving towards align to the
077blueprint with our professional learning plan and the goal will be to have additional data and metrics back through our curriculum council to look at the progress that was made this year the impact that this work has had on our on our students and our student achievement and annually will this plan will be updated and brought to the board for consideration so we thank you very much for your time tonight kristen was there anything else to else to add um and so at this point we'll we'll open the floor and and then ask that um you consider this plan for approval tonight okay thank you let's uh begin with any questions anyone might have i just want to acknowledge the fact karen that you're on the strategic planning committee and that's a huge time commitment and
078that's a huge process and there's a lot of information rolling out of that and i appreciate the sensitivity that my my knee-jerk reaction was this is kind of a cart before the you know horse before the cart kind of because that strategic plan drives because it's so data based and so much information that shows where our strengths and our weaknesses are i know that you have confidence that this carries for this year with a little bit of that knowledge even though the plan hasn't been written had that impacted at all a little bit of what the work you've been done doing it that impacted any of your programming or did you feel confident in what you had put together prior to starting the strategic plan so we worked together to put the plan in place
079and we brought it to our curriculum council in october and let it sit with them for a month so that was prior to even some of the strategic plan work happening i think a lot of it stemmed from as kristin and i came into victor and just through conversations with building leaders around some of the needs conversations with our teachers around some of the needs it really is um i think supportive of what we hope will come out of the strategic plan as well it's a it's the first step in that overall bigger direction that the strategic plan will be taking us so some of these for example i'll use the unpacking the the benchmarks that is not a two three year pro right now you're looking at this is really kind of truly an
080annual revisit so these are very self-con i don't want to say self-contained but they work within a school year and then you say okay we need to come back so you would feel accomplished is what i'm saying if you were to put out professional development around that particular topic you would feel accomplished that you could do that within a year is what i'm asking yeah as an intro as an introduction okay so i i think that that is you know in looking at the plan and some of the action steps like i'll use the mtss as an example multi-tiered systems of support is a multi-year process our first step in that direction is to get training happening for building teams so representatives from brian's building going through what is mtss what are the current teams
081that we have in place that might need to problem solve around academic or social emotional needs what are some of the interventions that we have in place kind of doing an assessment of where we are that's the first step and that's the kind of work that's included in the professional learning plan so that as all buildings come on board with that same understanding and knowledge we can take a step together as a unified set of five buildings moving towards that that bigger model and hopefully and confidently in alignment with the strategic plan thank you other questions okay then i'll ask for a motion to approve the professional learning plan for 2021-2022 motion by elizabeth second by chris any other comments before the vote okay all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed extensions motion
082carried thank you ladies thanks karen and kristen item 7c is to approve the following field trip seize club to florida everglades and florida keys from 4922 to 413-22 a motion please to approve this trip by chris second by trisha any comments or questions about this who wants to go i'm going i worry about the everglades i've got a reputation don't get anyone lost yeah excuse me don't lose anyone in the everglades mr siesta's in charge of that that in the ghost club too make sure okay anything else all in favor say aye aye any opposed extensions motion carried thank you item eight is meeting reports um i don't have anything for the monroe county school boards association this month i will be reporting next month on a meeting i went to today i just wasn't
083prepared to do it tonight thank you for covering sure anyone else have uh standing committee reports visual performing our hall of fame met today and just we're setting meeting dates outlining the calendar going over bylaws and then there'll be more meetings and the invitation for nominations will be going out and hopefully those will all come in i think there's a january deadline okay more to come as that rolls on all right thank you for that knowledge before we move away that um two very important individuals in the monroe county school board association will be retiring this year and we want to thank sherry johnson for her time she spent some time with us in our board retreat um this week and she will be retiring at the end of the school year and then oh
084my heaven becky schultz who is does an insurmountable job putting data together for all of the surrounding school districts and being a part of the school board association she'll be retiring at the end of december so we wish two very uh incredibly hardworking people who do a lot for everybody in the in in education i wish them well in their retirement i didn't know we had an opportunity to say so sure great comments thank you for that okay i don't have another sign up sheet so item nine is not needed item 10 upcoming events meetings the next regular i'm sorry i think did you want us to sign up okay let's do it though claire noonan uh retired teacher victor central schools um thank you to the board of ed obviously for all that you
085do but i would be remiss to say that i didn't look at the agenda ahead of time but i am thinking about the renovations that i read about just online in the minutes about expanding the ecs and my office was here for many years and i see this board room and i see you guys here once a month and i know last year was used as a cafeteria but i just think about space and the use of this space and the sometimes i know there are some meetings i know tim would hold his administrative meetings but when i think about the number of times this room sits empty and i think about renovations costing money now as a taxpayer which i fully support schools and the work they're doing obviously i dedicated my whole career
086to it but i just wonder if we can think about other things to do when we look at a space like this that's maybe used five times a month eight times a month i remember when the pre-k was renovated and west was used as pre-k rooms because they were doing the addition and it was great to have the space but just as a and forget the taxpayer piece just as a teacher and an educator and i see this lovely space but i just i know for months you were at the intermediate building and then you were up at the high school and it just feels like when you think about resources and i know working in victor you know lowest per pupil expenditure our budgets are much less than every other area district by 10
08715 million dollars so i am not in any way suggesting that we waste funds i've lived it i know we don't and i see what the teachers spend on their own classrooms so i'm not in insinuating there's any misuse of funds or wasting of funds but as i sit here and i see this big lovely room and i think is this something that you know as a district we can think about using the resources we have and six hundred thousand dollars in a sixty thousand seventy thousand a million dollar budget i know is not a big chunk but i just want people to think that outside of the box thing which is an overused term but i do feel like that might be something to think about before we move ahead and you know an
088office and renovations and cost so i would be remiss you know i'd love to actually go out to coffee with all of you and talk about this privately i don't really like doing this publicly but no one's invited me for coffee so i just want to make sure that things like that i feel like it's part of my community involvement and sort of my job to kind of help someone bring some of those things you know rarely i won't be here often but um i i show up at all your meetings as you know but i want to make sure i bring something like that up because i just feel remiss and not saying something so thank you for your time thank you claire all right then back to 10 next regular board meeting thursday
089december 9th and that is it unless someone else has anything so a motion to adjourn we don't need to enter back in no we covered it yep we're good oh christopher ii hey chris all in favor aye any opposed we've had a meeting thank you you