001[Music] All right. Good evening everyone. Please uh turn your phones to vibrate. Um and welcome to our reorganization meeting. Miss Melendez. Hello everyone. Good evening. Welcome to the reorganization meeting. Today is July 1st, 2025. Please stand for the pledge. I pray. I pray to the flag of the United States of America and for which it stands. underestimate you hit me in the head. That's right. Okay. Oh, we have we have Mr. Stephanelli on standby. Okay. First order of business uh to give the oath of office to the superintendent of schools, Dr. Joseph Rick. I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New York and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of Superintendent Schools of the White Plains City School District, White
002Plains, New York, according to the best of my ability. Thank you. Uh next, may I have a motion to elect uh Miss Melinda as a uh temporary chairperson of this meeting? May I have a motion? So moved. Second. All in favor? I. Miss Melendez. Thank you. Next. Oath of office administrative to our new board members, Charlie Norris. Charlie Norris and Dr. Charl Grady. Can we read together? Yes. Okay. You start. I doly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New York. and I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education of the city school district of the city of White Plains, New York, according to the best of my ability. Next is the election of the president
003of the board. Can I have a motion? So moved. Nope. I hereby move that Rosemary Eller will continue on and be the president of the board of education and again serve this community in her wonderful fashion. Second, all in all in favor? I I thank you. Now the oath uh to the board president. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, right there. That's the Oh, that's it. So, sorry. I do so solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office of President of the Board of Education of the City School District of the city of White Plains, New York, according to the best of my ability. [Applause] Okay, get this back. Thank you. Here you
004go. Thank you. Um, okay. Next, I have a resolution establishing the meetings of the board of education. Um, and this is a resolution that our meetings will now begin um the second Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. May I have a motion? Did somebody move? Yep. Oh, second. Any questions? All in favor? I. Thank you. So, next we will move um this is a consent portion of our agenda. We have um appointments in um section 3 A through R. We have authorizations sections 4 A through D. We have approvals section 5A through 5D. We have designations 6A through 6Q and we have adoptions 7 A through 7 C. We have information anformational section um 8A through 8 C. Our certifications um 9A and our last is an in institutional reminder on our time capsule.
005May I have a motion on all of these sections section 3 through 10? So moved. Second. Any questions? All in favor? I I this will close our reorganization meeting. May I have a motion to adjurnn? Second. All in favor? I Mr. Stephanelli said that you were going to be efficient. Oh yes. Um I'm sorry. Uh we do and I wrote that down. Uh Michelle Michelle, please. Um, we'd like to administer the your oath of office as our district clerk. Thank you. I swear that I will support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New York and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of school district clerk of the city school district of the city of White Plains, New York, according to the best of my
006ability. Thank you. Thank you. And just to add um and just to add uh thank you for organizing everything for our our groundbreaking and thank you for all you do. We uh we all appreciate you. Thank you. Next we are going to move I can't even believe it July 1st 2025 to our regular board of education meeting. Um we have said the pledge. Um go right into the mission statement. The mission of the White Plains Public Schools is to educate and inspire all students while nurturing their dreams so they learn continually, think critically, pursue their aspirations, and contribute to a diverse and dynamic world. Thank you, Madam President. Um, if I Good evening, everybody. If I could draw your attention to item 1 C. Uh, and if you would join me in a moment of
007silent reflection in the memory of Norma Raldi, secretary at White Plains High School and Ridgeway Elementary School from 1974 until she retired in 2003, and Martin Marx, teacher at both Highlands Middle School and White Plains High School from 1966 until he retired in 1997. Thank you. Next, we're going to move into the U public hearing um on the code of conduct conduct. That was a file attachment to the agenda for review. You want to say Yeah. Thank you very much, Madam President. I I would like to offer thanks and appreciation to uh Mrs. Debbie Algarten as well as the code of conduct stakeholder committee uh who reviewed uh the code and we do this annually and make sure that it is kept up to date and make sure that there is student as well as
008parent guardian faculty staff member and administrative voice in in the review and and any changes put forward. Um also uh next year we'll we are going to uh bring the uh the code to the policy committee to have policy committee weigh in as well. So, um, thank you very much for the opportunity and, uh, certainly there if there are any questions, um, during the hearing portion, happy to answer. I think we're good. That'll close the public hearing and the code of conduct. Next, next we're going to turn into a superintendent report. Thank you again and and first and of course, uh, congratulations to Dr. Brady and Mr. Nars. um and also President Eller and Vice President Letia. Uh and thanks to all of the board members uh for really the the full-time job um that
009you that you you've taken on in in volunteer service and um it's it's uh continues to be for all of us a pleasure um to work for and with you all. Um I also would like to thank everybody who made this evening's groundbreaking um such a a nice event and yeah it is true we were uh pressed a little bit by the impending weather um but that helped keep us efficient as well. Um so again thank you and thanks to our our our colleagues uh who attended from outside of the school district as well including Dr. Kohl's, Dr. Lions, Mr. um from Southern Westchester Boseies uh and of course Mayor Roach and and council members um for for all of their support as well as our professional staff members um for for setting everything up
010and getting us to where we are today. It's very exciting. Um I do need to uh draw attention to a mistake that I made uh during the 25 years of service recognition ceremony back at the beginning of June. Seems like a long time ago, right? um at the beginning of June where I inadvertently um didn't read the name of one of our colleagues. Um I did I was able to celebrate with her and and our colleagues at Roshambo immediately after. But I did want to publicly recognize and thank um our our colleague Sandra Serrano, 25 years of service. Um outstanding and and again thanks also for her grace and and my mistake and and forgiving me for for that mistake. Um so congratulations to Srano. Uh also this evening we while we do have a
011presentation which we're going to hear um in a moment in terms of our capital projects update um uh we invited and want to recognize and thank Yes sir. It's going to be you uh Mr. Fred Camililli. And uh Fred, could you join me over over here? And Fred has worked with and and and served the school district for a number of years and has been instrumental in keeping the trains running on time. uh a as well as keeping all of us updated and informed on the progress of of all the various projects taking place all throughout the school district. And you know, there's tons of of work always happening um making sure that our facilities are kept as pristine and beautiful as possible so that our children and our colleagues have extraordinary environments within which
012to work and learn. Um, Fred, I will never forget your Saturday morning updates, which would take about 45 minutes to read. Um, because they were so comprehensive. So, no, then don't be sorry. Um, and and at the crack of dawn. Yes. And and also being on scene when any type of e situation might occur. would not be uncommon to find Fred in a trench um you know at a water mane break um or even flying a drone over a site um so that we would be able to see the progress made on projects as well as um any any type of considerations that we need. So thank you for all that service and we have a token that we would like to offer you and uh Fred Camililli thank you for your years of service
013to the district and the community WP proud July 1st 2025. Thank you very much. I miss you guys. You're lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. No matter how long. So, congratulations again. Thank you, Mr. Now, we we uh we welcome to the podium for a capital project update. excited about this. Dr. Kotage, she's always excited, too. Okay. So, uh it's great for a brand new year and a great start to the fact that we're starting with our new innovation wing and that construction's beginning. I have with us tonight um our professionals who have been working with us throughout this whole time since 2018 when we started to do the master plan. Uh so H2M our architects and Triton Construction our construction management and they're going to provide us an update and where
014we stand. So I'll turn it over to them. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Um just want to say thank you to everyone. It really was a great uh you know experience out there. Groundbreaking on a project that I know everybody in this room has been working on very hard uh for the past uh few years. Um, just to be consistent with what we've been doing with you all for the past uh, you know, couple years, we have a format here to kind of follow. Uh, I'm going to have Chris Pearson from Triton and uh, Joseph Serrano from H2M to kind of give us a a highlevel update on all the projects. We'll start off with the HVAC um, and filtration uh, projects. We'll get into uh, projects that are still in design. U, only one
015of those left, but there's still still a project in design. Uh, we'll get into the construction projects, projects bid, recently bid, uh, construction projects. the ones that are actually currently going and the ones that we're wrapping up. Uh so with that, I'm going to ask uh Chris to come on over here and uh give us an update on the HVAC projects. Uh with HVAC projects, we've had the five original projects and the two uh that were awarded later. Okay. So the five originals, the high school, uh Highlands, East View, Church, and GW. Um, last we spoke, we were still having communication issues with the software and the Dacon equipment that has been radically resolved throughout those original five pending on nuanced issue at Highlands. Okay. Uh, it's not and it's not a software issue. It's
016a it's a mechanical issue that has to be addressed and will be addressed, but the the overriding software issue we've been fighting with has been uh u radically resolved. Um, and then as Dr. Dr. Ricker had mentioned that the groundbreaking HVC is underway at Ridge View and Mamarin. Uh both look to be done this summer. We need Khan Edison to come through with the transformer uh by the middle of August though. So they they they remain um someone for us to chase. Okay. To make Marin happen. Ridgeway won't be an issue. Um Ridgeway and Mamarin will also be done this summer. The Marin might have an issue with Kes Knisson needs to deliver the transformer by the middle of August, which they have told us what would happen. We just have to make sure that
017it does. All right. I was going to say, can we be um sorry, can we be um um respectfully persistent? Yes. Yes. And we will tell you uh it uh we will definitely be respectfully persistent. We we may even act act uh Dr. Anne Picario Tish to be persistent with the right peer as well. Uh so all all all that will help. Um and then in terms of I'll I'll take the elementarymentaries and you do the Okay. So with the elementary schools all summer work, right? Um that's happening. It's it's essentially renovations to the serving line, the library renals, some flooring finishes, corridor walls, and that's happening at uh Church Street, GW, Mamarin, and Ridgeway. All those contracts were awarded earlier uh late winter, early spring, all the contractors are on board. And uh at
018as the end of school has begun, disconnects have started, minor demolition has started, and uh so off to a good start with all the renovation jobs at the elementary schools. Good evening everyone. Uh so as Chris mentioned, we've got the renovations on the way at the four elementary schools. Uh construction officially, the physical construction officially started the beginning of this week. Um of course, we've got the innovation wing at the high school. We just had the wonderful groundbreaking ceremony and uh it's glad to see that there's several others excited as I am to see this project uh come out of the ground. So, we're looking forward to that. Um we're also happy to say the project came in under budget. I know we alongside with Triton are are looking at the overall bond budget, but
019it's always positive when uh when our larger projects come in uh on target. Um the construction for the elementary schools is going to carry on throughout this summer. The goal is for those to be substantially complete by August and ready for uh ready for opening in the beginning of the new school year. We'll talk about some projects that are currently either being bid or we just received bids on. So we have the Roshambo renovations at Roshimbo and Turtle Alternative High School. These include window replacements, classroom alterations, and HVAC equipment upgrades at Roambo. We just opened those bids on the 25th. Uh happy to say again that the presumptive low biders at this point are under budget. We certainly have some some vetting and scoping to do which Triton and Humm will be quarterbacking in the
020coming weeks but again happy to state that so far that looks to be under budget. We aim to get that project started uh later this year in a phased approach and that will carry on through 2025 and into 2026. We also have uh two smaller infrastructure projects. an electric service and switch gear upgrade at Education House uh to replace the outdated switchgeear equipment there. Happy to say that we received SED approval on that project as well as bathroom renovations at Marin Elementary. We will be working with Triton over the coming weeks to work out a bid schedule and plan to have those projects out to bid to solicit pricing um this summer with a goal of targeting construction for summer of 2026. One last project out of the bond is still in design and we've
021talked about this for a while in the past, but it's the phase 2 interior alterations at the high school. We wanted to ensure that from a budgetary standpoint, we were in good standing now that we have the larger projects of the high school innovation wing and Ro Shambo uh bids in. We're going to continue with the design uh or I should say complete the design of the phase 2 interior alterations, get that submitted to SED so that too can be targeted for summer 2026 construction. That will conclude our presentation for the evening and we'd be happy to take any questions if you have. Um not not a question but but just thank you. Uh you know there's there's always a lot uh there's always a lot to under undertake. there's a lot of considerations, there's
022a lot of work. Um, and everybody is moving in the same direction, which is really fantastic. So, um, thank you for for all of that work. Thank you for all of those efforts. Um, also, you know, as as we're thinking about the the projects that are still underway and coming online. Um, you know, I know that you all work very very hard to make sure um that projects come in on time and to the extent possible even under budget. That's that's really fantastic and we're all very very excited to see these projects and I know especially after this um last week where it was last week of school and also the hottest week um that that our our community members at Ridgeway and MAS are looking um very much forward uh to and and even
023even at the third on the third floor of Highlands very much forward to having that HVAC in the future and that's exciting um because as we saw you know during those hot stretches And there going to be more of them or always are. Um now White Plains will be in a position where our children are not uncomfortable and our faculty and staff members and our colleagues in the classroom are not uncomfortable and they're able to utilize learning spaces. And so huge again thank you to the board of education present and past um for having the foresight to utilize those funds that would not reoccur um to to to be able to bring our schools to a a 21st century learning environment in terms of climate control. Um that's that's really great and I really appreciate
024that. Thank you. [Applause] Okay. That's right. Um, so I have Thank you. I do have the privilege of this is this is an easy um uh win for the district of of introducing uh parent square as our new communications platform. Um so uh I and I think I owe some thanks to the board who uh are maybe some of the impetus for us uh exploring these options. Um we did um I I do want to thank K12 alerts, our current platform. They have been a good and reliable platform for us over the years. Um we have not had a lot of problems with them. We've gotten communications out to our families and our students, our staff as needed, but I think it's important to realize that there are some shortcomings to that platform. Um, it
025has not been easy to use. It is not secure. Uh, and um, it doesn't address a lot of the communication needs that we have. we it addresses the mass communications and getting things out to to families and staff, but it doesn't address internal communications at all. It does not address um day-to-day operational stuff and um it does not do translations um which is a huge piece of what we need to do. So um with that in mind, we we had several candidates that we were reviewing. Um we looked at Infinite Campuses Messenger um as a platform. when we looked at Class Dojo, we looked at Zoom, um even some Microsoft Teams features, uh but it was really clear early on in the review process that parent square was easily the most complete solution that there
026is. Uh really I don't think that they have any real competition in this space. They are just the best platform. Um it is just going to turn out to be a much better value for the district. um because not only is it going to replace K12 alerts uh but it has the potential to replace some other products that we use like Remind class dojo s'more even a lot of features out of docusine um so we can potentially reduce our usage of those platforms and just consolidate into one area that we all um can uh can uh work on at the same time. Um, so some of the features of Parent Square, it has a much more modern interface than what we've been using in K12 alerts. Um, I've found it to be very simple, clean,
027easy to use, um, easy to navigate. Um, it includes apps um, that can be used by both uh, parents and staff and by students. Um, but it's important to note that you don't need those apps. They help make the process easier, but it functions just fine without the apps. It'll go to text messages. It'll go to emails. Um you you get social media like posts on it. Um that um if anybody's have any experience with Facebook or Instagram or anything else, um it's going to look like a familiar interface to to to to our users. Um so uh some of the they they kind of categorize the the communications into three different uh areas. One is the posts which is that social media- like interface and we can we can quickly um use templates to
028publish out posts to um ev everybody and you can really carefully target your audience about who is going to get that post. It's not uh it's very easy to do that. Um they have uh the alerting feature which is really what we're looking for initially to replace that K12 alerts functionality. Um and uh so there's there's some smart alert features that they have and urgent alerts is which is what K12 alerts does. Um and then there's uh um messaging uh feature where it's really onetoone communication where a a an administrator or a teacher can communicate directly with um a parent or a student um to you know just just to just to have that real instant interaction. Um and in that onetoone communication you get automatic translation. So I type my message in English it
029pops out in the user's home language. Um and uh it um it has uh it covers all the five languages that we use in our district right now. But if we have new languages come, it'll cover those too. Up to 200 uh languages, something like that right now. Um so uh without more talking, I will just do a quick demonstration here. Let's see. get up here. Okay. So, the first thing you'll notice is I'm just clicking a shortcut on my desktop here. And you'll see that it just logs in. Um, single sign on is an excellent feature of this. This is this is a modern um authentication mechanism which is secure. It uses the credentials I've I've used to sign into the computer. Um, I can't tell you how much time we spend wrangling trying
030to just log in to K12 alerts. Um, this just does it in a secure way by default. Um, so you see uh just kind of uh what I had talked about here, posts, messages, alerts, and notices. Uh, very simple platform to use. Uh, one of the things you'll notice we have 100% contactable. So, um, I I can't take credit for that. Thanks to our family information center for getting all of the information from all of our uh families. Uh so we have up-to-date uh uh uh phone numbers, email addresses uh for students and staff and uh and parents. Um so uh so just just to show you how easy it really is, I'm going to go to the post section here. Um that's a test post I did earlier, but I could just hit this
031new post button. And then it's just going to ask you who I want it to go to. And we've got a few pre-built built groups in here right now. Um, and I've made one for the board of ed. And then you can add more people into. I've made one for the cabinet. Um, I can just type a quick subject in here. Um, E meeting 71205. I type my test message in here. Um, I can choose. Uh, okay, that's fine. I can choose. I've built some templates out here, um, which are pretty easy to make. So, I'm going to just pick one of these templates here. I can type in a quick message here. Hello boardation. Um, type in a title. I can finish this one up. So, we see where who it's going to go
032to. Quick subject. I can hit post now. Post now. And that message will go out to all of you. You should start getting that real quick. Um, on your email addresses, the board of education, I didn't have your cell phones, so it's not going to come to your cell phones, but it will come to your district emails. Um, and if you happen to have the um if you happen to have the app, the parent square app, it'll come to you real real real fast, even faster. Um, that so that's uh one function. And when you do a post like that, um, not only is it here on the parent square site and in their app, um, so you can parents can refer back to that. It's not doesn't not going to get lost in their
033email. They can easily refer back to the posts that exist already. Um, whoever sent that post can edit it. Whoops, I made a mistake on that post. Let's just make a quick change. Um, you can enable a comment section to get replies on those posts just like a social media type interface. So, oh, comment get get comments from your parents. If you don't want comments, you don't have to have them. Um, so that's uh that's the um the the the post feature. Um, another feature that we will probably be making uh huge use of early on is this alerts and notices section. Um, and we can send out alerts. So, alerts are still um a one to many type of communication, but it's really for more um the the it's it's for more a one-way
034type of communication where it's we're just sending you a message. We're not expecting you to reply. There's not a lot of formatting features. U it's just designed to get out information quickly. Um so I can do a new smart alert here. Um you can choose who you want to send it to. So I can choose uh um I made a group of third grade teachers. So it's going to be all third grade teachers in the district. Um clearly I don't want to send that to parents. So I'm just going to uncheck the parents box there. But if I wanted to send it to parents, staff and parents, it's easy enough to do that. It will just grab whatever parents are associated with those third grade teachers automatically. You don't have to think about it. Uh
035it just does that. Um and then you can type in a quick message down here. Um and you'll notice we get a short message which is for texting. We get a long message which goes through email. And I can just copy through my short message here. Um I'm don't I don't want to actually send this to our third grade teachers right now because this is this is live this is live data. So, I'm going to send it to our board of ed and our cabinet members again. Um, we don't want to send to parents. We won't won't do that right now. I've got my test going out and I can check that. Uh, yeah. So, we we are staff for the purposes of this. We're staff. This staff that we have associated with these groups.
036Yeah. Yeah. So uh and then um if you want we can send an audio message and that audio message uh has the ability again to be translated. It uses texttospech functionality and it sounds good. It sounds realistic. It's not like a robot calling you. It sounds like a human being calling you. And if you use the texttospech feature it will call you in your home language. Um if your home language is Spanish, great. It calls you in Spanish. Um, oh yeah, question. Am I expecting I'm expecting to see it, but I don't see it in your district email. It didn't didn't show up. No. Okay. Maybe I said I might have set up the group wrong. Um, so we'll I'll I'll check on that. Um, it um or actually, you know what it might be?
037I think that I uh did not use the feature. So, um, we'll talk a little bit a about alert fatigue here. And I think what I did is I sent it as a regular post instead of an immediate post. Um, so what it does by default is it digests the posts and sends them all in a group at a later time. So, um, I think that might be what's what's happening right now. Um, so if you do want to, you can you can override that and say, "No, I want this post to go out immediately." But that's kind of really more what the function of the alert is. the alert is to send it. I'm I'm going to send something to you right now. So, um we can go ahead and I do have the
038board members I mean the cabinet members uh cell phone numbers in here. So, um I'm I'm going to turn off the audio message so it doesn't start calling everybody's cell phones right now. But, um if we uh do this Oops. Next, I got to type these in again. We're going to send an email. We are gonna send a text message. We have our title. Um, I'm going to hit next here. It's going to tell you how many people this message is going to get sent to. Really useful feature if you're the one sending this message and you're just not sure. It's going to tell you exactly how many people that's going to go to, who it's going to. I can schedule that alert if I want to. If I know that I'm gonna be alerting
039people at 4 am, that's the time. No. Um, but I can I or I can just hit this notify button and it sends it out to to everybody right now. And so you uh cabinet members, you should be getting those those text those texts. Yep. Um, and then the board members, you should be getting that via email. Um, so there there is an app for the phone. Um, it is not required in any way. Uh, you can use the web interface on your phone and it still looks really good. It won't bug you to download the app, but on the login screen there's a QR code. You can scan it and it'll take you right to the spot to download the app. Um, so lots of lots of cool things here. We have um in
040addition to this we you see we've got some um some statistics on what happened on on those messages. Um we can get um you know overall you send out a mass message to all you know uh 10,000 parents we have we can learn how many of them were actually uh successfully reached. Um we can go through campaigns to say hey those people that did weren't reached we can we can reach out we can learn who they were and reach out to them in another way. Uh so two people who didn't click on it yet. Yeah. All right. So, yes. And you can see the status here. They clicked on it. It was delivered, got emailed, lots of stuff. And you and you can do a message library um where you you do automated messages um
041you know, hey, just a reminder, you know, exam upcoming, something like that. The principal can send these out. Um, and then there's another kind of alert. The last kind of alert that we'll talk about is the urgent alert. This is the one that Dr. Ricka is going to be using at at 5:00 a.m. when the snow is coming down. Um, so and that they have designed it they have designed it to be as easy and quick as possible. Um, so literally what you see on the screen here right now in this little dialogue window is all you have to do. Um, I can create a new message. I just say snow day. Obviously, you'd want it to be a little bit longer than that. And all I have to do then is press send. And
042it is going to go out to every communication mechanism to all people in the district. Yeah. Text, email, uh, phone call, whatever they've got registered. So, you don't have an excuse. Translate. Yep. Yeah. That's goes out to everyone. You don't have an excuse that you didn't get any. Yeah. Let me see that you opened it. Yeah. Really great. Really great. Good stuff. I think this will make a lot of people's lives a lot easier uh in this room and all the all the building administrations too. Uh and I'm hoping um some future directions. Turn this off. um that uh we can extend this out pretty soon in the uh 202526 school year out uh begin expanding this out to classroom use. Um so I think um what's going to happen is I'm going to invite
043um all of our teachers to join this uh uh platform at some time during the summer. And really there's nothing that they have to do. Uh they just kind of log in and look at the platform. But um I think people are going to realize that it's so easy to use that we will see automatic adoption without even having to invite or train people. Um but we do have uh professional development hours still that we have purchased with uh parent square. We've had some trainers already doing some sessions. They've been great uh really helpful. Um but I think um yeah so we will do some additional training sessions with the teachers uh uh to get them comfortable with the platform. They have an amazing library of self-guided training, too. Um, so anything that you can
044think of that you want to do in the communication world, they have an article on how to do it. It's really easy to navigate and find what you need to do. Um, it's all right there at the top of the screen. There's just a help link. You can click on that. Tells you how to do everything. Um, so, uh, so we do want to get into the classroom. Um, I want to um I want to uh uh establish some kind of internal communications protocol on how and what h how we should be using this platform. Um so I do have a few concerns about the platform. I am or I should say I was my daughter just graduated but I was a parent um in uh the Brewster School District and the platform is so
045easy to use that they overuse the heck out of it. Um and I fully confess I missed some important things because every single day I would get barged with a zillion things. So, um I think we have to establish some protocols about what can get communicated so we're not uh doing that communications fatigue with our families. Um and uh I one of my um I um also want to look at moving some of our uh workflows that we do with forms and docuign, Microsoft forms, Google forms, whatever we do. There is a forms feature built into parent square. Um it is easily reportable and trackable um auditable. It's got signatures built into it. So I think it can um alleviate a lot of what we do that is a headache right now in docysine. Um
046but um yeah, so I'm really looking forward to what we what we have uh uh coming in the future. Um lots of lots of great stuff happening. So all right, thank you all. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Miller. Um, and and again, also thanks, Mrs. Buck, uh, and and, uh, other parents and guardians, too, who reached out and and who offered, um, some feedback related to our communication system. I think, um, this is going to be great. And you also, you know, you figured out a way to to find efficiency that will be helpful because with these automatic translations, um, there won't need there won't need to be that that moment in time where we have to translate a message. Um, so this is that's really great. Thanks, Noah. Yeah,
047thank you. That that's good for you. No, I have more. Sorry. Okay. Um I I also I I would like to just thank all of all of our colleagues, the faculty and staff members for a really phenomenal uh school year. So much happens over the course of an academic year. Um and I I can tell you that and I know the board knows this. Um but really great things for children and um a ton of support um for for our families as well. And really credit to all of our teachers, um, support staff members, administrators, FNO, transportation, food services, health services, you name it. There is a a team member there who is ready and willing to help our kids and their families. So, I'm just huge thanks to them and I hope they're in
048resting and relaxing and getting ready to enjoy Independence Day weekend. Um, I also need to to once again offer congratulations to the class of 2025. Um, yeah, it was it it was it was a great graduation and and I do want to share um uh White Plains High School graduation rate right now preliminary graduation rate is 96%. Ro Shambo preliminary graduation rate 84%. all-inclusive White Plains High School Roshambo campus and out of district um placement 94% graduation. That number is going to go up in August um when we have our our our summer school graduation as well. So again, kudos, congratulations, huge credit. And Mr. Martinez identified what I thought were some really important facts that that you know is that bears repeating. Six National Technical Honor Society members in our graduating class, 33 National
049Art Honor Society members, 95 National Honor Society members, 21 career and technical endorsement seal recipients, 63 New York State Seal of Biiteracy recipients, 138 New York State Seal of Civic Readiness recipients, 33 students graduating with honors distinction, 114 students graduating with the highest honors distinction, eight students entering military service, 143 senior athletes, seven of which played sports for all 12 seasons. 112 scholar athletes, athletes who who competed at section and state championship levels, 19 senior athletes who have committed to playing at the collegiate level. Hundreds of Tigers who have taken the stage to share their passion for music and theater. Thousands of hours, literally thousands of hours of community service by this class and thanks to uh Amy Guyer who always over oversees that work. Um, and this class received over $314,000 in local scholarships
050from our generous and supportive community. So much to be proud of. Congratulations to the class of 2025 and thank you to everybody who helped to make all of that happen, especially the board of education. Um, we shared with you the class of 2025 profile of accepted colleges and universities. Um, folks ask about this also. publish this so people can but but every every school that that pretty much you could think of um is is represented on this list and um again just very very impressive. So proud of of of our graduates um and look forward to them continuing to do great things and in the same respects moving up ceremony was fantastic. What a warm and and and and fun event for our Tigers who are going to be moving up into the high school
051as well as all the graduations and commence or graduations and move up ceremonies at the elementary levels. Um and just just so much to be proud of and and uh senior with the kids. Well, the senior the senior grad walk um which you know folks have already told me we have to do this now every year where our our graduating seniors go back to their elementary schools and are cheered on um by by the students at the elementary school. Just such a just an amazing experience um for everybody involved and and big thanks again to everybody who helped make that happen including the White Plains Parent Teacher Association. Um just a a lot really to to be proud of and thankful for. Um also want to share with the board as you know our exeicio
052student board of education members for the 2025 2026 academic year um will be a froza Hussein again and and cherish choice. So really happy to have them back um outstanding contributors. Uh also want to thank the White Plains Youth Bureau. They are working tirelessly to get ready for the 2025 2026 academic year for their wraparound services as well as the other programming. Um working really really hard to to have strong and and we continue to to grow that that program continues to grow. Um, so thanks to everybody at the youth bureau, summer school, all all the work and and everything that's taken place over. So summer's short. Uh, you know, it's it's it's right, it's seven weeks. Um, and and so we've got a lot to do in a in a limited amount of time.
053Also on this agenda, thanks to all the stakeholders who weighed in and the policy committee, we have our first reading for the the internet enabled device policy of course next year or now um the bell-to-bell ban, New York State uh cell phone law goes into effect. Um and we had a great amount of contributing folks to that policy and that'll be in place uh for September first reading this evening. We're already um going to be meeting with colleagues as early as next Thursday for planning sessions um because it is happy new year. We are back. You were gone for a weekend and now you're back. It's the 2025 2026 academic year. Um Independence Day celebration of course is here at White Hopefully the weather holds here at White Plains High School tomorrow evening at 6:30,
05410:30. It's going to be great and we're always happy to to to welcome everybody from uh from the community for that celebration. Um and again thanks uh thanks to everybody for all of the hard work. Um on this evening's agenda as well uh we have uh the the resignation for the purpose of retirement um for one of one of our colleagues at the cabinet level. uh Miss Debbie Algarten. And Debbie has served uh the the school district for the last 10 years um in in the role of assistant superintendent for uh pupil services and special education and also a number of other uh roles as well that fall underneath that that purview. And I want to be among the first to to wish Mrs. Algarden all of the very very best for happiness, health and
055everything that she wants to do um during during her her retirement. Um that retirement will take effect uh the 11th of August 2025. Um, and you know, I really can't say enough about Debbie's devotion to our children and our families, all of the the hard work that has gone into um bringing our students the best possible experiences um that we can in all of our classrooms, access to the general education curriculum with all the services and supports that we can muster for free appropriate public education. Debbie has been a champion for children her her entire career. And I I I personally feel very fortunate um that she chose to spend um this portion of her career here in the White Plains City School District in service of our children um and their families. So, uh,
056wishing Debbie and all of the very best and of course, uh, uh, hopefully a a relaxing a relaxing time because she certainly very welld deserves and earns it. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, next, um, any public participation? Okay. So, we can just move um, uh, past that. Next, we're on to our summary, our summary of action items. We have summary action items four through 8. May I have a motion? So, move second. Oh, I'm back. Um, item number 4A. Uh, and you know, in connection with what we just talked about in terms of the generosity of our our community for local scholarships, again, you just enormous hearts in in our community. Um, recommended approval for the following donations. $30,000 scholarship fund for the Raphael Panteneelli scholarship from John and Sonia Panteneelli to be
057given out in 2025 for six students at $5,000 per student. Wow. $5,000 donation from a Marin Avenue school from the nature club from the city of White Plains Department of Finance. Thank you so much for that. Uh the following donations were made for the Darthy Anne Peters Memorial Scholarship, $2,145 and $100 from Mrs. Andrea Robinson and $185 from Miss Carol Lashley and $100 from Restless Development LLC. We also have a $100 donation for the Philip Barnett Memorial Scholarship Fund from Jack Sierra and a violin with a case, a bow, and shoulder rest donated to the White Plains High School Music Department from the Morano family. Thank you all so much for your generous donation. Thank you. Thank you. Um, thank you for that. Um, are there any questions? All in favor? I I next we're
058going to move on to individual action items. Before we get there, may I have a motion for an agenda to the agenda for individual action items? Item that will be nine I for that to be added. Questions? All in favor? I I our first individual action item is the recommended approval of the memorandum of agreement with the administrators and supervisors association of the White Plains City School District which will be effective July 1st, 2025. May I have a motion? So moved. Second. Any questions? All in favor? I. Next, we'll have the recommended approval of the resignation for the purpose of retirement of Deborah Olgarten, assistant superintendent for special education and pupil services. Um, effective close of business, August 11, 2025. May I have a motion? So moved. Second. So, I just um want to echo
059some of what Dr. Rick said. Um, I've been on the special ed committee for a long time and um, I want to thank Debbie Argarten for her vision of inclusion and equity and bringing kids back into the school district because they are all our kids. And I just want to tell a little story. A couple of years ago, we were at Church Street School. We had visited an ICT class, integrated co-eing class. And afterwards, we had a debrief and a couple of the GenEd students, not the special needs students, came in and they talked about their experience, what it was like having special needs kids in the classroom. And one of them said, "Well, what we've learned is they're just like anybody else. They just need a little bit of support." And that was Debbie's
060vision. And I want to thank her for what she brought to the district. And we will continue to move that work forward and uh and remember her as we do that. Any other any questions? All in favor? I I. Next, we will move on to the recommended approval of the amendment to the inventory of positions in the area of uh languages other than English/world language and business courses. May I have a motion? So move. Second. Did you want to comment at all on that? No. Easy by hiring a business teacher full time. You'll have that opportunity to to grow as awesome. Thank you. For the folks at home, um we we're extending the incubator program and so this will give us that opportunity to be able to offer that more. Thank you very much, Dr.
061H. budget neutral, right? Since because we're moving from some of the internal language internal. Yeah. Thank you, SH. Thank you. All in favor? I. Next, we have um we have cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. The recommended the uh first reading of the cell phone um policy and it's been distributed. I know you said Dr. Ra, you um had comments already. So, this is our first reading and we're still welcoming comments. So, and and for you know, Madam President, just in case anybody looks at the first reading, um there is very little that we can we can you know, because it is state law. Um, so you know what we can do is we can make sure that our consistency and implementation and also an understanding that it's going to take a little bit of time um
062to acclimatize and and we're ready to support our students um as we make that move as well. Sorry, President. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Next we have the recommended approval of the increase in the rate of pay for substitute clerical districtwide. Um, and that will be effective July 1st um to 22 hours per hour. $22 per hour. May I have a motion? So move. Second. Any questions? All in favor? I I. Next we have the recommended approval of the request for an extension as per the CSEA contract on the paid on the paid period of absence for two employees 32.86 and number 877. um to extend that period u beyond 30 days due to an accident in the line of duty. May I have a motion? So move second. Any questions? All in
063favor? I um next we have um the amendment to the policy for non-represented employees. um that the board of education approved the amendment to the policy for non representative employees and that will be effective July 1st as per our backup. Are there any questions on that? Any questions? All in favor? I I Next we have the recommended authorization of the board president to execute employment agreements and amendments to employment agreements. May I have a motion? So moved. Second. Any questions? All in favor? I I And the attachments are as noted. Um did you I just need to ask and Sorry. Next, um we are going to move into uh well, oh yes, I'm in trouble. Next we have uh the last individual action item which is the approval of the appointment of Miss Michelle Shonfeld
064um uh for special projects districtwide for the 2025 2026 school year. Um may I have a motion? Second. Any questions? All in favor? I I that was Michelle. Yeah. You're confused. No, this is it. That's it. Okay. No, we voted to add it. We voted to add it. We did add it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No vote. Just the just just the approval to add it. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Are we all good? Yeah. We're good. Okay. We're good. Okay. So, next we'll go into board discussion. I don't I don't um know if anyone has any reports, but um I do think that we all enjoyed um the graduations that we attended. Um I was able to stop by in a couple of schools just to say hello and thank you on behalf of
065the board. Um, we went to the the the middle school moving up which was wonderful as you said and the the pinnacle the high school which really makes me feel like don't go um but it's just a testimony that we you know this is this is hard work but this is rewarding work um that we do and I think we're all very fortunate to do something that we love. Um and that that high school graduation said a lot about the decisions that we make. um how we work together and how we work for all kids. Are there any other committee reports? This will be the first one of the few times we don't have Yeah. policy worked on the cell phone device uh policy. Can I just mention a couple of things? We didn't do
066board announcements, but I actually wanted to just mention a few things that um PTA council, I want to thank them. um and all our PTAs. They had their last uh meeting in June and the board of ed actually presented the co-presidents with certificates of appreciation for the work that they do on behalf of our schools and our children and and the district. And also um and I don't know how to say this. MX Inc. edu is that I know it's the middle school version. So do you say MX? I wasn't sure. MX. Okay. So they did their business fair um at Highlands and it was it was really incredible. Um all the different groups that that presented um and the students were so polite I have to say. Also number that like were shaking hands
067with you know the people who came over to see their their displays and um it really is a great leadin to our high school program as well. So I I I really enjoyed that. And then just the last thing and this was mentioned but being on the Southern Westchester Bosey's board as well I did attend their career services um CTE graduation and there were White Plains High School students uh that Mr. Martinez mentioned who received the National Technical Honor Society um you know honor. So that was really great. And there were also scholarship recipients all from White Plains High School. So that was really very nice. Anything else? Can I just say one thing? I'm so sorry. I just I I just really want to thank everybody again for a lovely evening uh and groundbreaking
068and especially for the community members who came out um the representatives from Southern Westchester Boseies, the elected officials um and everybody who was part of that process. There's a lot of years coming and to be able to get to this place now where we're going to be able to in earnest um begin to build uh and again, you know, to be able to expand the offerings to our students, bring programming that is going to enhance their ability to engage in career um at their at their pace. um you know depending upon if it's right out of high school or if it's going to be after college and university uh it just gives more and more flexibility and then to be able to do it in a way that doesn't increase the costs to the taxpayer
069I think is is really extraordinary. bringing partnerships together, leveraging regional resources, and maybe even being able to bring opportunities to students from other surrounding school districts, um, who would like to participate in programming here on our campus. There are just a lot of opportunities, um, and and everybody deserves thanks, and most importantly, of course, the board of education. So, thank you everybody. Thank you. [Applause] So before we um adjourn, just wanted to say, you know, John Shepard, John S. and and and John M, and I see you back there, Matt. Um taking care of all of our um audio visual stuff. Um just want to say thanks and here's to another new new year. I guess we could say happy new year. So here we go. Happy new year. Happy new year. So thank you.
070Thank you for all you do. And with that, may I have a motion to adjourn our first meeting of the new school year? All in any questions? All in favor? I. Thank you everyone. Have a great summer. [Applause] [Music]