001I don't think she ever truth. Please, please. So that's what I need. Yeah. just take the Serious. Thank you. emergency. Okay, here we go. Not that first mic is really adjust that. This is a super mic mic number three that's going to be brought down. This is the president link. President link also has to be brought down. Mic number five. Check. Check. One, two. Mic number six. One, two, three. Our student ambassador. Mike. One, two, one, two. Check. Check. Okay. So, student might come up. Hold your mic. Podium 12312 check. Try this now with the adjustment. This is a podium right by the speaker. So, we're going to get a little bit of echo here. One, two, three. One, two. One, two, three. One, two, three. Check. Check. One, two, three. One, two. Check. Check.
002One, two, one, two. like to follow student mic. That sounds better. This is mic six. Mic six. Still ahead to turn that down. Mic five. Mic five. Both of those have to come down. President Mike 4. Super mic. Mic three. Mic one. Mic one. Mic one. Check. Check. Check. One, two. Here we try again. This is podium length. 1 2 3 4 5 6 podium length. Student link. 1 2 1 2 number six. 1 2 3. Number five. 1 2 3 1 m number four mic number four number three check check one two and mic number one 2 3 1 2 3 I think we got it fixed now Praise God. Thank you. Okay, mic check. Do you Yes. Yesterday we went yesterday. There you go. to those. Okay. My daughter made it. Yeah. Thank
003you. So I can turn All right, welcome everybody. We're going to start a couple of Christmas songs real quick to uh these are our fifth grade string players from Pebbot who brought a couple of songs up on the housetop and Jolly old Nicholas to uh us to introduce the first one is Jollio. Nothing. One, two, Heat. Heat. You guys I don't know how this Yep. Oh my god. Heat. Heat. Heat. How are you? I thought you wanted Just be warned that if your chat ears will get picked up on the camera. >> Thank you. started our >> and my mom was like writing notes too. You think? Anyone here? Audrey. Audrey. I don't want to Just like I don't know why. I feel like you like Please know I love you. Oh no. Damn it.
004Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for being with us today. >> We just have a special hear from our wonderful orient of our music director. Would you would you like to say anything? Just a little intro. >> Well, these are our fifth graders uh that are playing for we got two songs. And up on the housetop is a small selection of our bigger orchestra. These kids have been working hard for their holiday assembly. Heat. Heat. Heat. standard Oh my god. Come on. I have $6. We'll go ahead and Good evening, Dr. Graham, board of education, district administrators. Tonight, I have Arlo and Burgio to start with the pledge. to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice
005for all. a couple times. Roll call district superintendent. >> Okay, enough of that. >> Marston, board trustee. To my right is Jonas Pes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and staff development and human resources. Cheryl Cardone, assistant superintendent of people personnel services. um Bob Merkel, our assistant superintendent for school business and finance. And we have our two um student board members um Charlotte Tower and S. We go ahead and get started. Um we'll do approval of our agenda tonight. If I need a motion, please second. All in favor? >> Motion carries 4. Um, also I just wanted to u make a mention that a Rover, Ashley Fer and Joy Mark are excuse me tonight and they are all board trustees. Moving on to the approval of our agenda this evening. Can I get a motion >> and
006a second? >> All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries um four zero onto our student ambassador. Okay, our high school ambassadors Hi, I'm Sienna. So, we actually have a lot going on at the high school right now that's already happening and coming up. To start off, we have our food drive on Thursday. This is student council, interact club, and Becca that are all joining together and will be in the back room of the high school. We'll be packing food for families. We do this every year. It's really nice because I think there's a lot of there are a lot of families on the island that don't have that don't have the resources we need and especially during the holidays and stuff. So, it's really nice to know we're helping people in our home community. Next, we
007have the high school winter concert on on Wednesday with band orchestra and choir. So, that's always like our most popular and my favorite concert to be in out of the whole year. And on tomorrow is our last day for the seniors for our buncake fundraiser. We sold buncakes to help support senior prom, postp prom, all senior events. And everyone sold zero ko. Also, uh, winter sports as well as rehearsals for the annual school musical have begun and everybody is looking forward to the beginning of the season. And next week, starting Wednesday, high school will be having a spirit week leading into winter break and including days like bringing out your inner Scrooge and PJ day to finish before break. Uh, as well, last Friday was the cool school challenge for lunch and Dr. Graham and
008I took the leap into the freezing lake Erie after raising $5,000 as a school for the special women. We're going to take a moment if it's okay uh Sue to ask Brian Albert if you don't mind. Brian, I see you're here in the audience if you wouldn't mind coming to the podium and just share with us a little history of the Polar Punch. Uh Brian actually went under he actually went all the way into Lake Erie uh to uh support the great cause of Special Olympics. There's if you don't mind going but uh Brian I I just want to thank you. I want to thank Hillary Harvey, the teachers at the high school and for many years you and others have been leading this initiative. and you and I were walking uh you know coming
009out of the lake and walking back and you shared with me that uh over the course of time tens of thousands of dollars have been raised by Grand Island High School students and faculty for taking that uh challenge the polar plunge. Can you just give a little color a little background to this uh initiative? Well, uh, Special Olympics brings us that first starter punch. >> Hey, just a second. Mark, can you just check the sound for us? Thank you. >> Got to get closer to the mic. >> Thank you, Mark. >> Unified Sports that was special, but this is really all about creating opportunities for other people. that spoke to us and we thought what if we do the same what if we could raise enough money to another school that would be a nice
010half dozen of us and a couple of us went all the way under a couple of us that was about personal maybe um so couple years approximately it before the pandemic. >> Okay. >> So, that's what we're going to >> Yeah. You even have uh graduates come back to work uh to support this challenge. I know um you might want to shine a spotlight on a person or two. Steer um was a student that first year and he had already turned 18. So, he was allowed to there was no school challenge back then. It was only on Saturdays. So because he was 18 with us and he has come back and ever since he does a phenomenal job throughout the year is here today and they are a big part of community and they know
011how to work local businesses and how to advertise and how to make things fun. And so students should work year round to find different to donations at garage sales and jersey. That's right. I remember that. Yeah. >> And Steve is so proud he's working uh on the new stadium, right? As an engineer. >> He's building the gold stadium. >> That's fantastic. Uh also, you had two uh students who were really big supporters, Hayden and Reese. Want to share a little bit about them? They're not able to make it here today. Um, but even though this year's this year's team was pretty small, I thought it was our best yet because so much of it was >> That's right. >> And that was always one of the goals open to kids to to do what and
012it didn't mean for it to happen this year. It's just that will pass out flyers and go door to door and find different ways to actually approach me and said, "Hey, we have a team this year." I was shocked that my email hadn't gone through >> my communication failed. And so, but we had students that were out there spreading the word. So it really wasn't very much studentled issues. With the board's permission, I we have a little uh video if it's okay. >> Child, if you like that You know, don't worry. There's no This is just a random photo that I grab from the website, but look at these. Uh, like you said, a smaller team, but you raised over $5,000. And they do have a warming tent. If anybody in the audience wants to
013join us, This is perfect. >> Watch how beautiful the sky is so lighting. >> Some people were very brave to take the shirts off. So, as we were walking down, we saw Alice taking pictures. Nice job. There she is. >> Little muddy. I can't believe how much lake I brought home. That obviously there's a lot of safety. You see the yellow jackets in the back. You know, they can't go past them just green jackets. Well, some people go right under the water. That's Mrs. Carpenter and her son. She teaches art in the high school. There's Steve to the right. Look at Look at the joy. Mrs. Carpenter's son. Oh, that's a great picture. Shout out. Very nice. So again, I think about $5,000. >> Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. Let's have a nice round of applause
014for our And the correspondence and Dr. >> Yeah. We just uh we just want to shine a big spotlight on the children at Sibling in the middle school for the incredible work that they did to support the neighbors foundation. They did a fantastic job. They raised over $9,200. And the students had an opportunity as VIP shoppers to go and shop at TOPS and spend that $9,200 and everything they purchase goes right to the neighbors foundation. Uh we're just very uh fortunate that we have amazing uh people here in Grand Island. Uh our entire community, but also some of our teacher leaders. uh Carly Anteneelli and uh her husband Mike also participated. It was a really special event and later on when I do my superintendent report I'll share some uh specific photos. Congratulations to the
015good work that they've done. >> Why don't we clap for them? Let's do it. We did not have any curriculum and instruction. >> So, thank you very much. Uh this evening we have five items uh that are actionable um that's A through E and I'll uh parse them out in just a moment. And we also have our November curriculum update uh as well as a presentation from our high school staff on uh financial literacy. The first four items uh for action is A through D new course two new course proposals. One is the World War II era elective and the advanced drawing and painting elective as well as two textbook adoptions. One is for for uh intermediate Spanish Spanish which follows our two-step program as well as our uh history of the world in six
016classes. That's a common text now we use uh in AP uh history classes. So if I didn't ask for >> so for the book for history that is a summer reading is that what I read that one summer reading summer reading assignment >> summer reading go ahead go ahead >> it's And is there an assignment that goes along with that summary? >> Absolutely. >> After the school year starts. >> Okay. I was just curious and there is no way to have that reading done like on their school issue Chromebooks at all or there's no online Okay. All right. That's it. >> No, I want to separate. So, >> okay. >> I'm asking for an approval for just um A through B or A through D. If you get a motion motion >> and a second.
017>> All in favor? >> Opposed? Motion carried four to zero. So before we ask for approval on the financial literacy resolution, I would ask that Mrs. Pretzy, our high school principal, come up and uh give a presentation on why we need the resolution. >> All right. Good evening, Board of Education Superintendent Dr. Rand Administrators. Thank you for the opportunity to present a proposal that reflects both our district's vision and an opportunity um for an important statewide shift in graduation expectations. Tonight, I am recommending the adoption of a 25 credit financial literacy graduation requirement beginning with the class of 2029, which would be our current ninth graders. This proposal uh positions Grand Island Central Schools to be proactive and prepared for pending NICA graduation mandate. Rather than wait for the state to finalize these regulations, we
018would like to be able to move forward now so our students are ahead of the curve and our families have clarity well in advance of our course planning process that is coming up. All right. Financial literacy is a foundational skill. Students today face increasingly complex financial decisions with everything from budgeting and saving to understanding student loans, credit, banking, investments, and responsible financial planning by making financial literacy graduation requirement in our district. We would be emphasizing to our students and families that we are committed to prepare our students not just academically but also for real world independence and success. This aligns directly with our district's mission, our strategic priorities and career students uh for success beyond basics, our portrait undergraduate competencies, and our long-standing emphasis in the district on career and life readiness. The board's leadership
019in adopting this requirement signal our commitment to ensuring that every student graduates with knowledge and confidence to navigate real world financial responsibilities. We anticipate that beginning in the 2000 or the 2026 2027 school year, high school students will be required to receive financial literacy instruction during high school in the grade beyond um in the high school level before the end of 12th states. Our goal is to proactively align our students course planning process with these pending regulations. This will ensure that all of our students are able to meet the updated VR state graduation requirements within the span of our four-year planning process. In anticipation of this change, we conducted a review of our current course catalog and our curriculum. We identified several courses particularly within our business education CTE and a couple of other select
020electives which would already address these competency issues included in NISA's draft financial literacy standards. We are confident that we have a strong foundation in place and additionally we will be ready to enhance or revise any course or courses if needed to be able to ensure multiple pathways for our students to meet this graduation requirement. Our review indicates that our high school is well positioned to align with NC's direction without needing any major structural changes in our courses other than ensuring that all of our students enroll in one of these already existing courses over the course of their four years in high school. To ensure that each of our students has the required instruction and financial literacy, we're proposing that the board establishes a local financial literacy graduation requirement of half a credit and a course
021that provides explicit instruction and financial literacy concepts in alignment with the New York state learning standards and that can be fulfilled through multiple course options. The required topics will be aligned with the NICE requirements that include instruction and budgeting and money management, credit and debt management, earning income and saving and investments. We are proposing that this requirement begins with the class of 2029 which I assure is the current nth grade class. This timeline would ensure adequate time for students to plan and enroll in school courses. Uh with the rising 10th graders having three remaining years to fit in this requirement, stability in scheduling and staffing, flexibility for families to make informed decisions, a smooth transition to this new requirement for all schools, and clear communications for families and students. This also ensures that students currently
022in grades 10 and 11 arising juniors and seniors would not be impacted by the new requirement. We do however have a plan in place to ensure that we're able to meet the mandate should New York State meet that requires the graduating 1100 counselors. If approved, our school counselors will introduce this graduation plan during this school year's um scheduling process is to ensure with our rising 10th and ninth graders, so current 9th and eighth graders, our counselors would review the approved course options, update each student's academic plan, and ensure that every student pathway meets. We will also update our course plan guide, our counseling materials, parent communications, and our presentation with our rising ninth graders and our transition nth. Adopting this requirement now allows us to prepare our students for essential real life financial decisions, support
023the development of knowledge that will promote long-term financial health for our graduates, promote equity by ensuring that all students who graduate from Grand Island High School receive comprehensive financial literacy instruction, alignment with the evolving NET expectations, strengthen our college, career and life readiness competency, and demonstrate leadership as a committed to proactive planning. Financial literacy is a universal need. By embedding it in our graduation requirements, we can ensure that every grande leaves us with a strong foundation regardless of their postsecary pathway. In conclusion, the proposals will allow our district to be a thoughtful, responsible, and forwardlooking approach to this anticipated change. It's expected that these curricular requirements will be adopted by NISA in March of 2026. By adopting the half credit financial literacy requirement beginning with the upcoming class of 2029, we can ensure a smooth
024transition to serve student choice in which course they would like to take to meet this obligation, provide clarity, and continue to elevate the quality of our educational program while staying ahead of the state's pending expectations. Thank you for your consideration. happy to answer any questions that the board may have. >> I have two questions. First of all, I I love it. Um, and I think there's definitely a need, especially when I sat with my son going on college, right? So, like I I guess my only question is in the event that there is no state mandate, will we go forward with the with the push requirement? I I I would hope that the answer would be yes. Um, I mean, my request would be to to move forward regardless. I think when we're looking at
025our comprehensive program for our students and the value that this would add to ensure that every student graduates prepares for life. This is our ultimate goal. I think that this would make sense regardless of what the state decides. I agree. I mean that would be my hope. I mean obviously no state mandates that come down the pipe happen but in the amen that there's a shift or a change I would really like to see if the board does approve that this evening that whether there's a mandate or not we with choice because I really think there need really So, thank you. >> All right. Can I get a motion for curriculum? >> And a second. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Opposed? Motion carries 4. personal. Does anybody have any questions before I ask
026for a motion on personal? All right. Can I get a motion to approve instructional PI1 through PI6, please? >> And a second. All in favor? >> Opposed? Motion carried 4 Zuction. >> Yep. I think Mr. How and >> Mrs. Zly stand so I can introduce you tonight. I would like to introduce you to Mrs. Jonte who will be joining us as a Spanish teacher at the high school. Miss holds a bachelor's degree in humanities from Indiana University and a master's degree in general in education from university. Miss has 36 years of teaching experience and just recently retired from Williamsville Central School. She shared with us during the interview process that she realized she wasn't actually ready to retire and really miss teaching Spanish every day. During her time at Williamsville, Hassan has taught all levels
027of Spanish, including the new college Spanish program. She served as a mentor teacher, a team leader, and an adviser to Spanish club and press club. Miss Dante's former colleagues all shared what an exceptional teacher she was and that she was held in very high regard at Williamsville. We are so excited to have her join us at Grand Island High School. Welcome, Grand Island. Mr. Willis, could you please stand as well? Tonight, I would also like to reintroduce everyone to Mr. Ryan Willis, who will be joining us at Grand Island High School as a teacher on special assignment to serve as our dean students for the spring semester. Mr. Willlet has been a physical education teacher at Sidway Elementary for over 20 years. He has also been a coach working with our modified football and basketball
028teams as well as JB and varsity baseball teams. This year, he is also the director of our community education program. During the interview process, it was clear that Mr. Willis is passionate about having a positive influence in the lives of students and he is very excited for an opportunity to work with adolescence in this new capacity for strength. We're looking forward to having Brian join our team as the dean of students in January. Welcome Brian. She is a tough act to follow. Uh, Miss Kinsky, you can see that. I would like to introduce you to Julian Krebsinski as our new teaching assistant at Kabine Elementary School. Last month, Mrs. Kinsky was approved as a building based substitute. And during that time, Julianne was quickly establishing herself as a strong team member in our building. But
029her dedication to student growth extends well beyond her time with us. In addition to her classroom experience as a third grade teacher and a preschool head teacher, Julian spent five years of healthy living program instructor at the YMCA. And in that role, she led educational classes for families on nutrition and healthy habits. This unique combination of traditional classroom experience and community health education makes her a wonderful asset to our district's focus on supporting the whole child and our wellness Wednesdays. Mrs. presidency holds a masters from Niagara University where she was recognized as the outstanding as an outstanding graduate student. She holds certifications in both early childhood and childhood education. We're very excited to have Julian join us at Keabine at probationary physicians. Congratulations. Welcome to personal nonstruction. Does anybody have any questions or comments before
030I ask for a motion? All right. Motion to approve. Um none noninstructional personnel one please and a second. >> All in favor? Opposed? Motion carried 4. Moving on to >> Thank you. Uh relatively short agenda for me tonight. Um, first item is uh to accept the donation of some adaptive cooking items from uh Mrs. Michelle Giamra on behalf of several community donors. So, thank you very much to those donors uh and donating that adaptive cooking equipment for our life skills class in the high school. Second item is a handcarved carousel giraffe from his wife. So, thank you very much for that donation to the Sidway Library. Uh item C is budgeted transfers over 15,000 and then item B is information. It is a check warrant. So, I'm looking for um approval of items A through
031C, please. >> I'll make a motion. All >> in favor motion car >> agency needed information >> special education personal All right. Thank you. I have three items tonight. Two for action. Um and one is for information only. I'll start with that one. Um it's district school counseling plan. Um it is reviewed once a year by the PPS team. Um I will highlight some of the additions um that we changed for this year. Um we removed the term guidance um and replaced it with school counseling which is the correct terminology. We obviously updated the administration and faculty names. Um, we changed some responsibilities for roles for the appropriate building level personnel. There was some grammar and punctuation changes. We did update the cyber bullying section and also um, excitingly enough, we did add our um,
032clips. Um, clips is our crisis leadership repair solution. Um, we found it um, very beneficial for us and our threat assessments utilizing it um, on a regular basis. that it's just >> And then my two action items are on my CSC and CPSC program recommendations. Can we get a motion to approve special education personal services A and B, please? >> And a second. >> All in favor? >> Oppos. >> Thank you everybody. Just I want to share with you just a story and pictures from the lab since the last time we were together as a board. Uh I want to thank Mrs. Petari for making the trip to Rochester uh along with our wind ensemble under the direction of John Reed. Uh they were invited and bestowed the honor of performing at this uh really
033prestigious event and that's the NISMA stage. Uh and we did get some recognition for the outstanding performance of our wind ensemble. So, congratulations to everybody involved in the high school with that. Uh, I was shopping at Tops this weekend and I saw uh some of our teachers which their children uh supporting the uh Rotary Initiative, the Early Act Rotary Initiative uh and helping to raise funds for the Salvation Army. So, we thank the Pentagine Early Act teachers for taking that leadership role in our community. You saw some of the pictures from the Polar Plunge. So we do that again and we thank everybody involved. Additionally, as you heard, you know, we had some special recognition for our Sidway students and uh Veronica common middle school students for the amount of money they raised uh in
034support of the neighbors foundation. These were some of the corporate sponsors on this slide here. So we thank all of them for their very generous support and the $9,200 that was raised. uh for uh purchasing food items for the neighbors foundation. So we uh loved that our kids involved. We love that the middle school kids were uh mentoring and uh teaching the uh young sibling kids the value of giving back to the communities. Additionally, I want to shine a spotlight on Mrs. uh Chadwick who uh for many many many years uh provides her students with an authentic classroom experience uh which she refers to as Colonial Days Thanksgiving and uh she just does a marvelous job. Uh Mr. Fitzpatrick and I enjoyed a a wonderful uh lunch and her actually Mr. Robertson gave up this
035classroom space to have this uh feast. the children churned butter and made all of the food items that were uh consumed on that day. So, thank you to Mrs. Chaz. Uh at Sidway, we had a very special Buffalo Bills rally uh which was super exciting. Look at the joyfulness of our Sidway students during that rally. uh everything from dancing to the shout song to uh enjoying a bubble machine and uh just a really great spirit event and then classroom pictures with the DJs and Billy Buffalo. So congratulations to Siding and Mrs. Anderson and everybody who helped put that together. Additionally, just want to remind everybody that we have an SRP recognition day. These are some pictures of our students recognizing our uh very uh important school related professionals at the high school. So we thank
036the student the students for taking that initiative and saying thank you to our site at Youth Road. Uh they honored uh Janine CE an Army veteran of 30 years. Uh this was a beautiful recognition in honor of her service. a lot of patriotic literature shared with her. And just a special note, eighth grader Brenn Rowley has been in two movies uh that were locally uh produced and directed and shot in Buffalo. This is a screenshot from the movie uh Christmas of Giving, which was on the Great American Family Channel. Uh, and uh, she was also in the mo the most recent movie uh, that was shot in Easter uh, that had a Buffalo Bills Christmas theme that was on the Hallmark Channel. So, we're very very proud of R and her passion to the theater
037arts. Uh, also going back to the turkey tribe, you can see that we had a great turnout with our uh, principles of running a race dressed as turkeys. But again, the whole day was designed for students to bring in canned goods and non-p perishable items that would be donated to the neighbors foundation. So, we thank them for all of their hard work. And I believe uh coming up soon, we'll be sorting all of those uh food items and families will be picking them up at our back gym at the high school. And then finally, just a reminder to the community to come out and vote on Wednesday, December 10th from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. at our high school. Uh that votes for the capital project and uh we appreciate people and their interest in
038our school district. Uh we do have a few bus drivers in uh the queue to be approved uh in the coming weeks or months as they finalize their uh training. So, uh, if you know there's somebody in your community, your family that is looking to become a bus driver, our hourly rate is $25 and they're also eligible for healthcare. And that's all I'm hear. Just want to mention our dates to if you would like to put out your date for the golf tournament for this year. I don't know. I forget July 13th. >> July 13th will be the annual golf tournament and our show this year is for June 24th. Um that's all um public comment session for general items not included on this agenda. We did not have anybody sign up. So we will
039move on to the committee of the whole items and information round table and we'll start with you. >> Rogers. >> Uh I just wanted to say that um you know I'm very impressed with all the uh all the work that all the kids and staff have done. You know the holidays. I know there's a I just remembered that I have a bag of socks and gloves and slippers that I was supposed to bring. Dr. And I forgot, but remember that every little bit you can donate and help. It makes a difference. >> Everyone just Wednesday 8 to 8 for the capital project. Please come out and vote. Have a great night. Happy holiday. >> We have a lot of students here uh for participation in government. So, thank you for your interest and uh fulfilling
040this assignment of the 12th graders that are here. If you could just raise your hand if you are 18 years old. All right, we have about four. Excellent. Six. you are eligible to vote on Wednesday. So don't forget about that and we hope that you share your opinion about the capital. Also just want to wish everybody a merry Christmas and happy new year together before we close up our charter mode. Um our winter recess is coming uh December 23rd January 2nd. which I'm sure is important to all of you out there. And our next uh board meeting is January 5th. And I just want to commend all of you soon for attending one of the best meetings yet this year since it was short. Um I wish everybody a happy holidays and I will ask
041for a motion to during the meeting and a second. >> All in favor? I >> um motion carries 40.