Board of Education Meeting - 08/25/2025

001anywhere on school property. If you're planning to address the board, please sign in on the sheet provided. And the meeting is being streamed on our YouTube page. And we will begin with correspondence, please. It says Wednesday the >> second. >> I know. Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. I have no commendations. >> All right. Next, we will move on to the proposed consent agenda. Can I get a motion to approve? >> Fran second. >> Jane. Any discussion? All in favor? >> Opposed? 70. Thank you. We'll move into reports and we'll begin with the superintendent, please. So, um over the last couple of weeks, I have been visiting schools as we are doing several different construction projects that we have. Um and we are coming along and we'll be ready to open up school. um and had

002the opportunity to walk today with board members um at EC as well as um Berea and then I know that Mr. Conklin went with some of the board members to Walden. So we are in the process of getting um all of our ducks in a row to welcome our students and staff back and are very happy to do so. >> Oh and ALC, thank you. We also went to ALC early this morning. That's where we went first. So, I'm good. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Next is the assistant superintendent for business. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. So, first of all, it was a pleasure showing you um the capital project work that's been going on today. We got to ALC East Coldenham. We visited Walden and we saw Berea uh here this evening.

003Next is um the remaining the remaining tours I believe are on Wednesday. So, if you can join us, please do. Um and then just I'm going to be quick tonight. Just wanted to let everybody know we are aware of an upcoming road closure on 17K. Again, we just lived one. Uh this one will be in the area of Winding Hills Golf Course. We don't have an exact time. Uh DOT has only said fall at this point, but it will have an impact on busing for us. So, we're working on contingency plans as well, but it is another covert replacement project. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thanks for the good news, Brad. All right. Next, we'll move on to the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. >> Okay. Uh, good evening. I am going to present

004today on MTSS and a club report. >> Do I need a mic up there? Should I take these? You want to take this one? >> Oh, thanks. I didn't see it. There's a lot of things in my hand right now. Okay. Good evening again. Thank you um for joining us tonight. So tonight we're going to go over our MTSS as part of today's agenda is an adoption of our new MTSS plan. So only found it fitting to also just unpack that a little bit with you guys. Um so in regards to MTSS, MTSS is excuse me defined as our multi-tered system of supports. It's a comprehensive continuum of evidence-based systematic practices to support a rapid response to students needs with regular observation to facilitate data databased instructional decisions making this the supports for all learners.

005So with that said, um it is a collaborative process, it's evidence-based, it's continuous progress monitoring, it's differentiation, it's interventions, it's all of those things, but really it's about wraparound services which are different than what we may have known as RTI. So our response to interventions, RTI, we're really specific and honed in on academics. And MTSS really looks at the social emotional piece of things, the behavioral as well as academics and attendance. To be clear, it is not new, right? So although we are revamping and updating our plan, it is not a new term. It has been around for a number of years and many districts have updated their plans since then. So this is our image for our MTSS. Specifically again MTSS being that umbrella of wraparound services. It it speaks to the whole child,

006our academics, our behavioral, social emotional attendance and of course our family engagement. It speaks to again the professional learning, the curriculum design, the collaboration, the data pieces. It is prevention, it is enrichment, and it is also intervention. So going back a little bit when we've spoken a lot about in education RTI that response to intervention again MTSS does not exclude RTI um in our current plan. What you you would see is that RTI was kind of taken out of it um and wasn't really highlighted. However, it should be embedded into your MTSS plan. It shouldn't disclude it, but it should include it and also have additional pieces. So again, that fully addressing um and behavioral and health needs, the emphasis on strong differentiated core instruction. So one of the things that we spoke about with

007administrators just last week was core instruction is not the fi the core classes. So it's not your ELA, your social studies, science, and and social ELA, social math, and I was a math teacher. Go figure. Um but specifically the core instruction that that delivery of instruction that's happening in class with your whole with your whole class um and whole group. It involves important stakeholders for the success of students. So it's not just about the teacher that's in front of them. It's about the non-instructional staff. It's about administration. It's about parent engagement. Again, it includes district-wide and schoolwide systemic change and again incorporates things like your PBIS or anCL program that will help those behaviors as well. So, some similarities as just some background knowledge. Again, similarities that um that both MTSS and RTI are multi

008multi-tered system of approach. So, again, those tier one, two, and three. So when you start talking about when you hear me say it's a tiered system, it's a tiered system really. Tier one is your core instruction. Tier two you think about your and I'll show you an image later your small group. And then your tier three is more either intensive um frequency or more of your one-toone services and in even more intense services. It is again data driven and frequent progress monitoring. The differences again is that MTSS is an umbrella that RTI falls under. It is not something that is outside or separate. Um it seeks to enact systemic change. It also emphasizes high quality differentiated instruction. So again, what we were discussing with administrators just last week and what we'll be continuing to emphasize

009this school year is that differentiation is important and it should be happen happening every day because it's best practice. You're not differentiating because that student needs special is special education. You're not differentiating because the student needs a 504, but that you're differentiating because the student and all of us learn differently and we should be meeting those needs at the core level. It also offers a scope of services. So again, it's not just about academics, but it's about those social emotional supports. It's about counseling. It's about access to different levels. and not just because you're remedial, but also how do we access you to your advanced placement, your honors courses, your AP courses, your dual enrollment and such. So again, just another image, right? You have your whole child with all overlapping as we know that

010the services that focus on the whole child cannot just be one one and done um and that it is for all students. It is instructionally relevant. Valid and reliable assessments are needed to be proactive as well as reactive supports. Response protocols are used to make are used to make support decisions for students on a continuum. So who gets what when is really important because it's not that they live in a specific tier or that they continue with one type of intervention but rather that they are getting this intervention for a specific period of time and then once they have reached that goal they can go back to your differentiated quality instruction. And again as we know as part of our strategic plan educators are also diverse learners. And so as we are approaching our own

011students with diver with differentiated instruction, it's important to to follow along with priority one that speaks to differentiated targeted professional learning so that we are modeling that for our educators as well. So our approach to MTSS again is very cyclic. It is very fluid. Um it needs to be continuously monitored. And so as you're looking at this, it's progress monitoring. It's screening. It's defining and implementing, analyzing, and then it continues to go on. Here's that image I was talking to you about regarding our tiered interventions. So, at tier one, about when give or take at any school building, about 80% of your students will live in tier one. About 15% give or take will will at some point need tier 2 interventions. So those are more of your smaller targeted group interventions such as AIS.

012If you're thinking about social emotional, you'll sometimes you'll see that as small group lunch sessions or group sessions that meet for maybe six weeks and that and then they end because they've met their goal. And then at tier three, which is should be your smallest amount of students because those are your most intense and you shouldn't live in tier three, right? And that's part of the work that we're doing in our district is making sure that this is tier three is not special education. Tier three is not some somewhere that you live from kindergarten through fifth grade or kindergarten through 12th grade, but rather that you can visit there. It doesn't it's not a label, but you may at that moment you really may just need some intensive services or more frequent services and supports

013and then you can move back down to maybe small group or whole group instruction. So again, it's with your tier one, you're looking at your whole group, whole class, datadriven, differentiated instruction. So I'll quiz you guys later if I sp speak about core instruction. It's datadriven, differentiated instruction. That is your most effective pedagogy. We will make sure that that's also being implemented and and message to our staff. They already do this, right? But now we want to highlight it and we also want to replicate that. In tier two we're we're asking well tier 2 says that whole it's whole class instruction but again also small group targeted instruction. To be clear a lot of the time we'll hear things like well tier 2 is an AIS provider or you need to be part of AIS

014in order to get tier 2 instruction. No, tier 2 instruction should be happening also in your class and that's at a K through 12 level. Yes, it can be difficult or it can we can see challenges at the secondary because it's 45 minutes or 43 minutes. However, it should be happening where you're purposefully looking at student data and targeting them within small groups so that they are you're meeting their needs as well. And there tier three is your whole can happen at in the whole class, right? Additional additional targeted instruction also your intensive support. A student should only move to tier two when they've demonstrated a need beyond differentiated core instruction. They should move to tier three when they've demonstrated a need that small group is not working. And you may have to increase that

015frequency of when you're meeting with them or providing the intervention or whether or not they need to be in a smaller group. So, usually anywhere from one to three students. They wanted to bring you through the process of updating our MTSS plan. So our process started in fall of 2023 when I first arrived and what we not what I looked at when I was looking at the many plans of our district was this doesn't seem as fully developed as it can be and there were some misunderstandings of what the tiers were throughout the district. one based on my own observations but also based on the listen and learns that superintendent Abdula was doing the previous year. So I had a small group of admin and teachers attend both a a micro credential through Boseis that

016really specifically focus focused on MTSS and its process and how to build a new plan. In March of that same of that same school year, we formed our first NTSS committee. And at that committee is when we started to really talk about what are the practices in our district, what are the things that we have in place and what are some of the gaps that are needed and really start to look at a needs analysis. We continued that work in fall of this school year. And through that, we started to build in the pieces for the MTSS plan. It was in spring of 2025, so about March, that I that I asked for the board to approve a partnership with Branching Minds. And I thank you for that because Branching Minds was able we were

017able to partner with them, which is a resource through MTSS. And they were able to come and really facilitate all of the things that we were doing together and put them in a plan. Um, and what we were noticing was that there was still training that even had that had to happen even at the committee level in order to develop the the tools, the definitions, um, all of the piece the moving pieces throughout the district into the plan as well. And then over the summer, we review and finalize that plan, which is the first iteration of the new MTSS plan that we have for up for adoption this evening. With that said, I do want to reiterate that this year is year one of implementation and unpacking that plan. And so we know that as

018a committee, we are continuing the work to refine the pieces of that plan. And as we live it, to gather the experiences and data so that we can continue to make sure that that plan truly represents BC and the students that we have here in our district. So again, um I do want to Our last plan that was adopted specifically spoke about the MTSS process and the universal screening and such, but as you go through it, and I'm not going to take too much of it. It has a heavy emphasis at the elementary level with some of the um early assessment schedule, early literacy assessment schedule that we have in place. But again, all elementary, it's still K through five and middle school and high school are the last page. And as we know, MTSS

019doesn't end at the elementary level. It continues on through secondary. And if anything, I would say that it's probably even more needed at the secondary level as well. And so our new plan takes those wraparound services and speaks about what it should be like as a continuum, kindergarten through 12th grade. And so you do have the the plan this evening. And so you um if you have any questions regarding that, I am open to that to your questions as well. So our MTSS plan the features are now include a vision and mission aligned to the the the district strategic plan. It has MTSS guiding principles, multi-tered instruction. So the explanations of those of those tiers as well as an intervention guide, an assessment framework, a support cycle plan, an improvement psycho plan, infrastructure and communication

020and as well as a glossery and additional resources and templates that that our staff would be able to access at any given time. And that is the end of my presentation. Any questions for MTSS? Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. I'm now going to move into extracurricular club. >> I'm not done. >> So, I'm I don't I don't usually talk so much. I mean, I think I talk enough, but usually I'm short and sweet. All right. So, extracurricular clubs, we um the board has received an audit of extracurricular clubs. Last year, we actually started our audit, and I'll get to that on a different slide. We started our audit by really looking at, okay, what types of clubs do we have here at at VC? Um, and we came up with two definitions,

021right? So we all know extracurricular clubs for the open-ended um to all students clubs the before after school clubs that are facilitated by an adviser who boards who are is board approved and these are open to all students who are interested in a diverse range of activities K12. Then as we were doing our audit last year, we started to see well there are some clubs on that we list as extracurricular clubs and fall under the same criteria and needs um for according to our handbook that are more criteria based. So those clubs include honor societies, they include um audition based, so for instance your jazz club or your choirs, things along those lines. They also included some of our coordinators, right? So, audition clubs, um, I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything.

022Yep. Honor societies, and then we also have some positions under clubs, although they don't submit a summary report, that are for coordinators, and those positions do not directly facilitate activities with students. So, with that said, our clubs also submit a annual summary report at the end of each year in order to be in order to receive their stipen. They answer a number of questions on whether or not they what their goals were for the club. Did they meet those goals? How many students signed up for the club as well as how many students on average participated in that club. What we learned last year and the breakdown of that is that there are a total in through this year there are a total of 85 clubs. 20 at the elementary school, 19 at the middle

023school, 30 at the high school, two at ALC, and two districtwide. So, the two district-wide clubs are our steam clubs. Um, and those go to every single elementary building. So, it's not just one building. So, that's why they're listed as districtwide. Our criteria based clubs, right, are the 11 honor societies and 11 audition based. So addition based again I want to say that drama for instance um is a club because it's considered as extracurricular and then or jazz or choir and things along those lines. Yes, >> Mr. Viter or addition >> in addition to >> Yep. And this year we had two charters, right? Let's make sure I did that math correctly. No. 85 are separate than the 22 um criteria based. So we have a just about over a hundred. So again I want

024to bring you through that process. Last year we conducted a review of the number of clubs and the types of clubs we offer at Valley Central. We examined club procedures and expectations. So those procedures and expectations, they actually lived in different parts throughout our district and one building was doing it this way and then some of it was board approved and some of it wasn't and some of it was like a list of things. And so what we did was we put that into an extracurricular handbook. We went over that handbook with VCTA as well as administration made went through some iterations and then what before after the adviserss were board approved that is then reviewed with each adviser by their building principal in order to go through what are the expectations, how many meetings

025do you need, how many students do you need, so on and so forth. Each year building managers like I said review that club handbook. Clubs are expected to submit an annual report along with attendance records. What we have done this year is this year was the first year we were transitioning into electronic attendance reports. Uh what we were getting before was a copy of of the attendance reports, students signing in and then you had to count how many students were there and then on the date and it was just scanned in. And so we transitioned this year and saying please use electronic attendance and then next year you must use the electronic attendance report. It's as simple as they and I I should have linked it there but I can also send it to you.

026It is as simple as the student names. No matter if they attended one time or two times they their names get listed and it's a checkbox on the date of the attendance and that's all it is. We don't it is not currently in school tool. The reason that it is not in school tool is because when you have an open-ended club, it's you need to be able to register students into school tool in in order to then have them actively participate. That becomes quite burdensome and also may not be as accurate. We can move to that. I'll talk to the director the our new director of data when we have a new one as well as our our new director of tech as well so that we can implement a system if possible through school

027tool that will also help with aggregating the data and reporting it out to the board. This summer clubs were flagged for having fewer than 10 students andor fewer than 10 meetings. So if I received a report when at the end and you had a few and you had fewer than 10 meetings, I emailed some some adviserss and I said, I'm I see that you have less than 10 meetings. Can you please tell me if there were any additional activities and or events that your club participated in as per the the code the handbook. many of them were able to respond back to me very quickly and say yes oh I'm so sorry we I didn't take attendance on these days but in addition to my seven meetings I also had this event and these events

028and and participate in this afterchool event and so on and so forth and so we were able to then work alongside um those events as well in addition to that I am reviewing I am reviewing past two years of attendance so the reason that I'm reviewing the past two years of attendance is so that we can be able to see h is this a pattern of low attendance for this specific club. If it is a pattern of low attendance, they need they will receive a letter that says that your club has had low attendance for a certain amount of time and our and our um handbook does ask that they have at least 10 members in their club as well as a minimum of 10 meetings. And so if they are not meeting that threshold,

029they are getting a warning letter um in order to say this is a pattern that we've noticed or we we now have this documented. Please increase recruitment or you face being being closed and it's not that we want to close any any clubs. However, we do have to we have to really begin to monitor what is the need of the district so that we can also be fiscally responsible while meeting the needs of our students. So, just some data as well for you guys. Um, I have six clubs that had less than 10 meetings this year that are being followed up with. An average of clubs that had less than 10 students. There were 34 total. Nine of those had an average of nine students in the in their reporting. And Nine of the 34

030were either yearbook, SGAA, which is student government, or class council. And so those clubs may not lend themselves to 10 students, but I do need to find out a little bit more information. And then two of those clubs were they we were in their first year. They were charters last year. And so now we have to find out well you were a charter last year. The idea of being a charter is to increase your attendance. It is to gain recruitment and and gain interest in your in your charter so that you can continue as a club. You're in your first year as a club and you have less than 10 students. Please explain why. Um there were of the clubs with less than 10 students, six of them had zero to five students. So of

031those six, two of them were yearbook. So again having to look into what's happening is that a yearbook at the elementary level why are there why is there an average of less than five students coming to your club and then the average again the average of 6 to9 um was the four excuse me 40 no sorry I'm so sorry it was 40 total less than 10 and 34 of 6 to9 of a average students participating and that average was simply taken in on as you saw in your report the every meeting how many students attended and then a simple average of how many students attended per meeting. Any questions? >> I want a lot of clubs but I don't want to be. >> Okay. >> So what what's the recruitment process at each level? Is

032it up to the advisor to recruit? Do we what do we do as a district? Do we on the first day of school talk about all the like how do we go about that to get kids engaged? >> So one is at orientation they do hand out the types of clubs especially at the secondary level. So middle school orientation as well as high school orientation they hand out the list of clubs and they you and at open house they tend to have the tables where all the clubs are so that students who are interested could sign up or at least express their interest. That's one part that's already embedded into a district-wide logistics. Um, and then at the individual buildings they have at the middle school there's the night of specials which specifically speaks about

033special area classes and electives. However, um the clubs have an opportunity to also be part of that so that they can pro promote and recruit. The adviserss should be promoting and recruiting and students should be doing the same. Especially at the secondary level, students are that are participating in the club really should take the charge because you have a you should have a president, you should have a treasurer, you should have a that are leading those meetings and although the adviser is there, the adviser should not be taking the bulk of that work. Um, but should be meeting with the group to say what are some of the ideas for recruitment um moving forward. The elementary level, it's a little harder. However, you'd be surprised that elementary kiddos are up and at it, making sure

034that announcements are made, um, making sure that they're going into classrooms, speaking to the adviser. I'm I went into I was at Walden the end of the year, I think, actually, I think it was mid year, and I and their student government was knocking at their advisor door. I don't know what time of day it was. They had to be at lunch or something along those lines, but they had a list of agenda items that she had to address. and how they were going to recruit. Um, so it it's at multi levels. >> Yes. >> If if the group requires a minimum of 10, does that mean that there has to be 10 in attendance at a meeting or just 10 involved in the club? >> So, right now, the way it's written, it it's

03510 involved in the club. However, it should still also be that it's an average of 10 because if you're if you're looking at you won't always have a perfect and 10 is a minimum like that's the bare minimum, right? You because you won't always have perfect attendance and that's why I gave you the the list of like how many that had average of nine. Um because if you don't always have perfect attendance, then you're going to go below that 10 threshold. And so technically, do you really have 10 that are actively members? >> And who determines I mean, I know I know that there was a committee that came together to determine the criteria. It just I'm just wondering if there are some groups or clubs that may require less people to actually do the

036work of the of the group. >> Um, you know, like there's there's membership and then there's sort of like executive committees, right? And so the membership I'm, you know, I'm just wondering about how that's set. >> I think that's what So one of the things that um I was looking at and why I did the breakdown was in regards to those who have less than 10, right? It's important to note that a lot of what came up a lot was yearbook, which tends to be a smaller core group as part of it. Yes, there are people that participate, but that's a the group that's actually supporting the yearbook and development of the yearbook tends to be a little smaller. Could it be larger? It could, especially at the secondary level. Um, but that's what I've

037noticed from the data so far. Also, our SGA, one of the things that we that has come up is that we have student government, which oversees everything, but then we have freshman class council, sophomore class council, junior, right? Senior and those are much smaller. And so it's about understanding the why and the purpose of those when you h and does that feed into SGA or is it duplicating work or is it sectioning out things that maybe don't need to be separated? I don't have the answer to that at this moment. Um, but it's important for us to continue to unpack it together and understand the why because really what we're looking at is the handbook itself was not anything new per se. So that's been around for a long those practices have been around before

038me um long before me. And so it's about how are we enforcing those practices and how are we holding ourselves accountable to those practices as well. I have a question. >> 10 average students in a club. >> Yeah. >> One meeting you could have 15. Next meeting you could have five. As long as you average 10. >> Yeah. >> 10 meetings. Why? Why 10 meetings? >> Um once a So what we say is a minimum once a month. Now granted it so there's 10 months in the school year as you know but you may not there are clubs that don't meet 10 months so we have we have a ski club for instance that'll the bulk of their meetings are during the winter um and so they meet more than once a month but we're

039trying to be fair we're saying the minimum the bare minimum is that you should meet at least once a month with your club. >> Now is it like all clubs are not equal? >> No they're not >> right. Um, there are clubs that have overnight trips. There are clubs that involve proms. And then there are many, many more hours involved in those clubs in terms of supervising students compared to a club that meets a half an hour 10 times a year. >> Like, is there any leeway or anything given to those clubs if they have nine meetings, but they're, you know, chaperoning kids for 48 hours straight. So, interesting enough is that the clubs that that do those more intensive events actually meet more. >> I wouldn't be surprised if they I'm just trying I'm

040just trying to think if it's an hour thing or if it's you have to meet every month thing. >> It's a it's a minimal requirement that is put in place to hold to hold criteria to a club. The clubs that are doing that that are much more involved. I mean I have clubs that met 27 times, right? Um I have but then but then there are clubs so when you have a club you have clubs that meet 27 times but then you have clubs that are meeting less than 10, right? So six clubs met less than 10 times that that's a conversation. That's a did you receive your full stipen? Did if you didn't meet less than time 10 times and you didn't have additional events that you didn't report, are you being prrated? Um

041so those are decisions that that are being made. I will say too that in regards to even um average attendance what what I was looking at as self-reported. So I myself and my department manually looked at average attendance. It's it takes your your large document took time. I'm happy to always give you the data. Um, but the self-reporting, I had eight that were large large discrepancies of what was self-reported in a summary report compared to what this what the average was. And when you look at that compared to what other clubs are doing, there are questions that need to be asked. >> No, I guess what I'm trying to say is if you have a club that meets six times what they meet four hours at a time, >> right? versus a club that meets

04210 times and meets a half hour at a time, >> there's an inequity there, right? >> Um, so when that when that report comes through, so for instance, if if >> and I can't even think of an example of how that would happen, but I'm just trying to play it out. >> We have So there's an adventure club, right? And I don't like to call out specific clubs, but I'm going to use this for an example. There's an adventure club that meets and what they they go on hikes and things along those lines and they they're doing something not just post session but on the weekend and things along those lines. >> They did not have less than 10 meetings. Go figure. However, if they did, it's a question first. >> Hi, can you explain

043this a little? I've noticed that this is coming in at at less than 10. Can you explain this a little bit more? And I it's just a quick response. Okay. And it and it's moving on. It is when there's no response. It is when there's minimal time with students is and it that's far and few between. So I don't want to make it seem like that's what's happening here. Um that is when additional conversations have to happen and that where we meet where we have to where we do have to have a criteria to reference. Um one other point that I had was >> I lost it but I'm sure I remember I question though. Okay. Go ahead. >> No it was one more. Um clubs also are and contractually they fall into different categories.

044>> So VCTA contract has clubs categorized in a way that if they know for instance that a club is meeting a significant amount of time or the time that it takes in they have a different category which then leads to a different stipen. >> That makes sense. >> Um the only other question I have is I know some clubs are very large. Yes, they are. >> And space in a lot of buildings is very limited in terms of when you can schedule that space >> to meet. Snow day happens on your club day. How you know there there could be scheduling issues in terms of making that ninth or 10th meeting, right? >> Which is so correct. Which is why I always ask were there additional events andor activities that weren't a meeting per se?

045So for instance, we have honor societies that are very large, especially at the secondary level, at the high school level specifically. Those I have one that I'm thinking about that did meet less than 10 times, but so I read reached out to that those club advisors. It was co-advisor um co-advisors and I said, "Hi, I've noticed that you have less less than 10 meetings. Are there any additional activities? Can you please list them for me as I do not see them in your summary report? They said they listed them quickly said okay okay and pushed that through. Um there however on the flip side there was a club that had a snow day this year. I reached out and I said I've noticed that you have it marked down that you were not that you

046didn't you missed your first scheduled meeting because of a snow day. It is the expectation as listed in the handbook to try to to do your best to reschedule or to at least speak to what other event did you have because there is a minimum of 10. Again, with it having a minimum threshold, it's really important to at least have the conversation um and hold our advisors to a level of expectation for our students because it's so important. Our adviserss are are modeling for our students. So if something is happening that is not in in compliance or is not aligned to a handbook or an expectation for the district then what is what are you doing for our students at that point and so I do think it very it's very important to have that

047conversation first but sometimes it's a difficult one sometimes you have to make a hard decision but it's always for what's good for our students and what we're giving back to them versus saying okay well it's okay don't worry about it'll you'll do better next No, we have we're going to we have to address this. If this is a pattern, this can no longer be a pattern. And then we may have to discuss other options. >> So the the 10 is really just like a threshold baseline for a deeper dive because all clubs are different. Your ski club isn't meeting in June. >> Correct. >> Right. It's not like lesson 10, you're done. It's less than 10. We need to gather information to make sure that it's still a good club. >> Correct. especially as we

048um kind of tighten tightened the ropes a little bit as the as the expectations were a little all over the place for a while and I don't want to say that they weren't being followed up with because I can't speak to that. However, we are looking at that to be a little bit just just to say okay we're looking at this making sure that you are following through with the expectations and that you're in alignment with what we've put forth. Okay, this Oh, sorry. >> I had a question about the criteria. >> Oh, thank you, Katie. So, if a club is not meeting the criteria of 10 meetings or whatever, let's say a club has been in in existence for a while, then all of a sudden the attendance or the meetings start to fall

049down. So, what would you say would be the approximate amount of time that a club could survive? Like, how much time would you give them to turn it around? Is it one year, two years, or is it right away? So, I guess what I'm asking is if a club is in jeopardy, when does the time come where you say, "Okay, that's it." How many will they get a chance to turn it around? >> Yes. >> Like, how how long? A year, two years? >> I would say a year. >> Um, I don't want to >> I don't want to say a year and then I give someone and then it's two years. However, I think the year is the checkpoint. you've been notified that your club has had low attendance. And by low, I have

050a club right now that has had low attendance under five students for two years. >> Right. So that's a that's a very different conversation. You've had low attendance for over for over two for two years or more. And so what have you then that conversation is what have you done? because I now now we need to make a decision if I need if you even should continue for another year or that you you have you have six students in in your club. So for instance, our charters, you have less than 10, you have six students in in um that are attending or that actively participate, you're in your first year, you have another year to increase recruitment at mid year at of increasing recruitment. So instead of waiting until June to say did you do

051it right, it would be either quarterly or midmark and say where are you with recruitment and how are you doing so that it's not a surprise at the end. >> Thank you. Yeah. Uh this is more of a comment. Obviously the the child the student who's well connected whether it be via clubs or sports they they they're more successful right so I think a suggestion I know that worked just professionally on my end was I know you said at um at open house but at orientation having all the like the clubs especially on a secondary level you know have the presidents recruiting there be we want to get those students right when they're coming in so they feel that connection to school. Um so a suggestion would be at orientation maybe having a whole room

052just for clubs like club tables. Um we found that to be successful at at my job. Just something to bring up. And also for yearbook especially in the secondary level if you don't know in ninth and tth grade I believe it's a teaching section but we're considering it a club >> even though it's a teaching section. >> Yes. >> Okay. That's >> we are looking into that as well. >> Okay. >> Yep. It is current yearbook at the high school is currently ninth period, >> right? So student has to apply and it's considered a club, but they may not get in. So which might be why it's so small or it doesn't fit in their schedule. I mean, I'm not really sure. But >> so that specifically we are looking more into because it's a

053practice that has been in place for a very long time and and so part of it is yes change, but it's change with intention, >> right? and understanding the why before you make the change. So that's where that's where we're at with with yearbook specifically. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So do people sign up for a club just in the beginning of the year or can they join it at any point during the year? >> Based on the information that I've had from clubs, they were they have been able to join in throughout, especially if it's an open-ended club. >> Okay. And then how are clubs um how how are members notified of the next meeting? I mean are they all are all the sessions planned out at the beginning of the year or did

054the you know did they just say okay there's a club meeting tomorrow you have to show up. >> So I think it happens different at different levels. Um for the most part our teachers are are extremely busy and need schedules themselves for daycare and things along those lines. My thought is that um they are scheduled. However, I don't want to misspeak on that either because I don't think that it is as um uniform in that way. And so I would say that it's at the the advisor's discretion. >> Okay. And then as far as noticing, are they announced on the announcements? Are they in um like a classroom? I mean, is there consistency on how students are informed of when clubs are meeting? >> I'm just You don't have to answer. >> So, I don't

055understand the I guess I'm not understand. >> So, there's however many 50 clubs in the high school. Does each one announce on the announcements in the morning that we're having a meeting today or or >> I do not think so, but we do have two teachers here. Um in our in our audience and I I do not think that they're announced every day that there are clubs meeting that day specifically. >> So, how would a student know middle of the year? Oh, I wanted to maybe check out the Interact Club, how would they know that there was a meeting in which they could attend? >> So, in regards to a club that >> I mean, so is there a calendar? >> Honestly, that's a good question. I can follow Google calendar that a student can

056go and say, "Oh, here's there's a club this Thursday. I can go because I have I'm free." >> Where? >> I have not seen a Google calendar. However, what I will do is I will follow up with the buildings to ask specifically what their messaging um is for practices so I can report back to you guys >> because I because I guess my point is if if a student misses out signing up at the beginning of the year and then there's no other way for them to find out when the meetings are, how would they be able to join? fair question which is why I think my best next step is to follow up with the building the buildings just so that if there's not something also make the suggestion that we've had that we've

057had a presentation this is some of the feedback feedback that we're receiving and so please consider this moving forward >> so I just want to reiterate that um after I had my first opportunity to have listening learns and that clubs were one of the things that came up was a question a lot of questions about clubs and consistency. So in the vein of making sure that we are trying to get consistent, we had to do an audit right to the best of our ability. So so the so that audit is what um Miss Moa is talking about and the first was how many clubs do we have? What kind of clubs do we have? Um this year was focusing the next level on what is does the attendance look like? How does that happen? Right?

058Um there was a revision on the handbook that had been here prior to most of everyone in central office and right you know is this handbook relevant or where do we make some changes? So in conversations with people there oh sorry there was absolutely no handbook there was just a practice that was you know um and people referred to this is the way that we do things and so then there was actually something put in writing and conversation. So now we have more questions, right? And we'll continue to have questions and we'll go to the next step of looking at those questions and see. But I do believe that advisors tell students uh what days they're meeting as far as whether they're announced or not. I believe some are, some are not. And so we

059do have to still work on getting consistent around that piece of notification and also when and how um students know about clubs and what other opportunities they have to join. I just had one more thing I wanted to ask. Um, so I noticed this was on the audit that you did a couple years ago, I think now. So, the information may be outdated from the one that I'm looking at, but in one elementary school, there's a club um that has >> I don't know, 24 kids, but then there's the same club >> multiple times in other schools where it seems like they're limiting the participation to 13 students. So, I'm just >> Crazy Eights. >> That would be the one. >> Yes, that would be it. Um usually when it has 24 students in it

060for crazy eights there's usually co-advisors actually and they split it so they still end up doing that. Um so >> so there are certain clubs where there's a cut off it seems. >> Yes because there's materials within that within that club and they have specific activities and um also with crazy eights kids love crazy by the way we have many sections of crazy eights. So the elementary schools have been working together on what is that what is that cap and then how are they assigning advisors as well. >> Thank you. >> Sorry I have to add to that. So I wouldn't want to cap those clubs, right? So how do we know if there's 13 and there's 17 kids? Like are we keeping track of that too? >> Yes. They keep track of waiting lists

061and such and they have it on rotation. >> Those clubs actually tend to meet more than 10 times a year. Quez comes with a particular program that has >> I know but I I don't think I want waiting list. I I think like >> so they they but they usually go on rotation and so >> if you don't I mean I can speak to them again just to speak to specifically what else they would need. I So for me, right, I'm not looking to eliminate clubs unless they're not being used. And it kills me to know that there's some not being used yet we're turning kids away because we don't have room for them. That's absurd. >> So I don't I wouldn't say that we're turning kids away for crazy eightsides. A lot of the

062time the the building principles will actually open another section. >> Okay. So e for instance EC I think at the end of last year or the beginning of this year don't quote me on that on the timing of it EC recognized that there were more students that were interested and not enough that there wasn't enough space or advisor so he then opens another section of crazy eights it didn't have to go through a charter because it was already a club but so that students were not turned away especially at the elementary level we do not like to turn students away so much so even for instance the steam Steam the steam um club is well attended um and we have two adviserss for the steam club because they they will they'll say oh we 25

063students because they're doing different robotics and they're doing different activities and such. They will take more. They have never turned anyone away for it. >> Any other questions on clubs? >> Thank you. >> Okay. I have one more thing. No, I'm just joking. Uh, thank you so much, guys. >> All right. Next, we're going to move on to the assistant superintendent for human resources. When updating our hiring protocols, we did so with the mind frame of one team, one district. All of our employees that are hired should fit what is expected of a VC staff member with consistency for employee expectations across our seven buildings. We aim to ensure that every employee who comes to work for our school district is the most talented person from our applicant pool and that they hold a firm

064belief that all students should have access to obtain an excellent education. We also attempt to recruit from a diverse candidate pool by using various methods to advertise. OLAS is a website run by Putnham Northwest Boseies which is the most popular website for candidates and school districts to connect. Additional sites include our own district website, Indeed, Handshake, and local college and university job boards. The district also reaches out to its local community advertising positions using Parent Square. This past March, the district held its first job fair recruitment event and saw almost 200 people attend. That job fair produced several leads that led to many formal interviews with those who attended and some were eventually hired. The process for applying begins with a job posting that is published by the district using the platforms I mentioned earlier.

065Administrators in charge of the various departments or schools screen through numerous resumes and cover letters in order to determine who is invited for a level one interview. All positions in our district have a tiered system of interviews where they may be where there may be up to four levels. Once candidates are selected as finalists, a background check, which includes three reference checks, are conducted for each candidate before proceeding in the process to recommend their hire to the board of education. Non-competitive employees and competitive employee status are determined by the local civil service agency, which in our case is Orange County. Non-competitive employees do not have to take an exam for their positions and are open to the general public. They include our paraprofessionals, food service workers, and some custodians. Departments and schools will conduct interviews

066with these potential candidates at level one and recommend people for hire where they would move to a level two interview with me where we would also set the person's salary should the interview go well. Should all go well, a recommendation is made is then made to the board of education. Teachers and competitive employees follow a three- tiered interview process. Competitive employees include typists, secretaries, head custodians, administrative assistants, and other such positions. Typically, candidates for these positions will be screened at level one with brief virtual interviews. Candidates who are successful at this level are invited for committee interviews to continue for the next step in the process. For teachers who are successful there, they may move on to demonstration lessons. They move on to demonstration lessons at the school or lesson studies. Successful level two candidates

067have their references checked by the departments that are hiring them before having their name sent to me. My office then conducts additional background checks as well as certification checks to ensure each candidate is qualified for the position. They then conduct level three interviews with me and if successful have their salaries negotiated which in turn will lead to a recommendation to the board of education. For administrators, a similar process occurs as described above. For teachers, level one interviews take place to allow for a brief introduction to a candidate. Level two committee interviews are held here at central office and include district representation from one or more of the superintendent. Successful level two candidates move to a level three interview with the administrative team of central office. A candidate who moves on from level three then goes

068on to a one-on-one level four meeting with the superintendent. Once finalists have been determined, reference checks are performed by my office, which are then followed by the salary negotiation for the chosen candidate, which then leads to the board of education recommendation. Some additional information. All of our interview questions are standardized for the candidates. There are specific questions that are asked for candidates depending on positions. Administrators have questions that are created for each opening and are rated on criteria by the committee members. Every candidate receives the same questions. Teachers have questions that are primarily based on teaching and learning using Charlotte Danielson's four professional domains of a teacher and answers are rated using a rubric. Committees are formed at each level by representing different positions across the school or district that are relevant to the position.

069For example, a school principal position will include teachers from various departments or grades in the school, a secretary, a custodian, a pair of professional, union leaders, and district administrators. Currently, our background checks involve having candidates check their fingerprint status with New York State. New people to the profession must get their fingerprints checked and cleared by New York State prior to any formal job offer. The district also checks certification status with either the state or county to ensure candidates are eligible for their positions. Finally, professional reference checks involve speaking with candidates supervisors or co-workers. As far as timelines for recommendations to the board, our board of education usually meets twice per month. Hiring recommendations from departments need to be into the HR office approximately 10 days before the next scheduled board meeting. Agenda review meetings then

070take place 6 days before the next meeting and agendas are then finalized 3 to 4 days before the board meeting. So there is a precise timing that we regularly try and stick to in this process. Before closing, I'd just like to thank my staff who helps keep us organized and keep me on my toes. Marlene Marano, Lorie Schmidt, Kimberly Jones, and FA Goldstein. So thank you to them and thank you to all of you. Uh if you have any questions, >> I have a question. So the the interview questions for the different level committees, they have different questions, but they're so like committee one might ask 10 questions. Committee two is asking a different 10 or the same 10. >> So depending on the position committee, like usually the level one interview, especially for teachers

071or administrators, it's it's just a few questions, could be three or four to just get to know the candidate and get a feel for them. And then the more in-depth questions happen at level two. >> I have a question. Uh you mentioned I think when they get to level two that's when you verify if their eligibility or qualification or you mentioned something >> that's level usually level three. So what'll happen and if we're speaking about teachers so uh buildings will conduct their interviews. They'll they'll send me names uh either one or two names depending on the number of candidates for a position. Then what we do is we cross-ch checkck against the teach system in New York State to make sure that they have the appropriate certification for the position and we also have to

072check their fingerprint status. >> So for teachers or for anyone else that is applying, how often do are people not actually qualified or don't meet the criteria after they've gone through the interview process? it it's pretty rare, >> but there are occasions where someone is in school and they're about to get their certification. >> Um that that does happen and then we have a conversation with the person that says, "Look, you know, you you were uh successful candidate, but we cannot formally offer you the job offer until that certification issues." Uh there's also sometimes people are waiting for a test result to come in and depending again on the position and the amount of candidates and the quality of the candidates. Sometimes we might say okay we'll wait it out >> and sometimes we won't.

073>> Okay. >> I just want to also add that certification is for teachers but we also have to follow the rules of civil service for certain positions as well. And so there are particular lists for certain positions in civil service. And so we have to, you know, double check whether or not they're on the list. And there's, you know, different rules around that as well. >> And those are for competitive employees, >> right? But wouldn't that take place during the screening process? I guess what I'm thinking is when you when I have a candidate in front of me, that candidate has already been qualified, pre-qualified, so that I'm actually interviewing to see if that person, you know, actually is the right fit and also how they score in terms of their ability to do the

074job. But but the pre-screening is done to make sure that they're actually >> for civil service, that's the case. But if a candidate is applying for a teaching position and they put for example pending on their application, right, you might still, you know, uh an administrator might still interview them. Um if they have pending if all the other information is still is is there or they may have a test date that's coming up. So there might be those are the cases where Mr. Tolantino will double check to see if the certification is is completed and it's there. Yeah, I I follow what you're saying. I think you probably go either way, right? You could check the background and fingerprints on 10 people and only two pass through, but at least you interviewed them. >> But

075then the opposite, you could interview get all the way down and find out that they can't meet the criteria, >> right? But if there's a pending on an application, then it could be verifying what does that mean? How long are we pending for? because that person could come in have possibly two >> potential interview levels at that point and then wind up being not eligible >> and and principles will typically ask that uh when there on rare occasions sometimes you have someone that puts that they're certificate that they are certified and then when we run their name they said they're certified and then we run their names and oh well I'm almost there I'm I'm missing an exam and then we have to have a difficult conversation I've got a couple questions. Um, I guess

076hiring a staff, especially administrative staff, is probably the most important thing I think that you can do. Um, they have to be the right people. They have to have the right uh uh education. They have to be the right people for the right fit. Um, I've been in education a long time and what I've found is for any student, the most important building is the one that they're in, right? Nothing else really matters. No other building really matters. Same with the parent. The most important building to a parent is the one that their kid is in. The most important building for a staff member is the one that they're in, right? But the most important building for a district is the high school, right? That's where everything ends. That's where everything culminates. Um, and honestly,

077I mean, if the other buildings do all the things that they're supposed to do, it makes the job easier for the high school. If they don't do the things they're supposed to do, then the high school still has to get the kids across the line, right? And I know we are hiring or looking to hire a principal, which is why one of the reasons I asked for us to kind of go over this and I think it's important that um all of the things that you mentioned are followed through. I know you're going to follow all of the legal aspects of everything. You're going to follow state law. You're going to follow uh federal law in terms of all the hiring. I guess what I'm what I really want to know is what are the

078what are you looking for, right? What are you looking for in when you're hiring somebody like outside of you know what degree they have? >> Does that make sense? You know what I'm getting at like what do we look for? Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's for any I mean anybody. >> So we want a definitely a high qualified person. So someone that is highly qualified. We want someone that is in alignment with the our vision and our mission and our priorities. We want someone that we feel is a good fit. And that has a lot of different things for a lot of different buildings, right? And so when we go through >> every building is different, right? Every building is like its own ship, right? Right. And the principal is like the captain of that

079ship and this ship may not know exactly what's going on in that ship and that's okay as long as the captain's running a good ship. Right? >> So that is why when we get to level two there's a committee that provides feedback on how they feel about the candidates. So they they we talk about that. We talk about not only do we have a matrix and that they are scored. So we talk about the data that comes back from the matrix. You talk about evidence-based answers and so that we are not having bias also so that it's you know there's certain things and when you mention federal law there are certain things that we have to make sure that we follow so that we don't have a bias and that there's no discrimination that's going

080on. So we follow that as as well so that we have consistency in our process and then we also talk about fit. So, we take many of those um pieces together and they go through multiple levels because the more you speak to an individual, the more you talk to them, the more you ask them questions and do role plays and scenarios, the more you learn about the individual and and their mindset and to see if they're a good fit and so that the committee makes a recommendation and then if it's an administrator goes to the central office and then ultimately I make the final decision. So the committee makes a I don't know top three, top two, top one. >> No, the committee. So after the Are you talking just about administrators? >> Just in

081general like I believe you said there was a committee that would meet and kind of talk and give the questions >> whether it's at the school level or an administrator after level one is done. The level one is sort of like a meet and greet. Uh getting to know is somewhat more like a screening. They screen resumes. Who's that with? It depends which level you're talking about. So I'll which level are we talking about? Teachers. >> I'll let you go wherever you want to go with that. I don't think >> so. At the teacher level, it's usually the principal and the assistant principles. It could be an assistant principal that's in charge of it if it's for a teacher. Um and so it might be a small group that the principal puts in charge of

082looking at the resumes and bringing in and having a quick uh screening anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. That's what Mr. Tolantino said about three questions. And so they might see 12 to 15 candidates and then they narrow it down to six to eight that the committee would then interview. Okay. So then the committee interviews that six to eight candidates. Um we've interviewed in some cases even 12 candidates on two different days. So it depends how many candidates we interview. And then after that that's at the at the school level. Then then the re then the recommendation of two to three candidates comes to Mr. Toatino in regard to a teacher. Okay. Do um are there any times when like the committee might rank the the candidates in order? Here's you know here one two

083three and where you might go a different direction >> then I might go to a different direction >> or whoever makes the decision on who you're going to hire. >> So the yes there's a lot of things there's other factors that come into place besides the ranking. Remember the committees are giving feedback, but we also have to check references and do background checks. So sometimes there's things that come into play which makes us make a different decision. >> That makes sense. Do does anybody ever get back to the people that spend time on the committee to let them know why or why not who they thought they were selecting or suggesting? >> So we do get back to the committee but there's limited sometimes information that we can share but we do Mr. Tolantino does

084email not only the candidates find out that they're not moving on to another level, but also the committee knows where we are in regard to what the next steps are. >> Is there any like um I don't know like simple Google search on any candidates about you before you're going to hire them looking. We've all been in education a long time. Not every district is forthcoming about staff when they may leave the district. I mean, >> so we follow our procedure and guidelines where we go to references and check the references that they give us. >> Well, they're going to give you references that are good references, right? >> They give us references and there's questions that we ask that help us figure out the decision we have to make. >> We don't we don't

085check. just do a quick Google check just to see >> if there's if there's publicly available information that comes to our attention it comes to our attention but um >> you don't go actively looking for it >> there's a we would have to revise some policies for that is what what I've been advised >> if we're we have we have to be we have to let people know upfront that we may do a social media check for example a social media check on you >> something like that >> so if if but that would have to be written into policy. From what I understand, >> that's not in current policy. >> No, thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Uh next is the NISBO leadership in education event and uh we'll just go around

086for those who attended if you want to comment on the event. Jane, we'll start with you. >> Um I attended um some really good um presentations and and some really bad ones. I'm gonna be honest. Um I'm going to focus on the really good ones and I'm going to focus on the one that I went to the very last day um because I think I was the only one remaining at that point. So um the speaker um talked about um different things that she had done in her district um to um sort of which aligned with our community belonging um practices. So the one idea that she did um was every year the um high school uh teachers pick 10 students um not the top 10 students but 10 students from the um from the

087district who then get invited to this dinner. um and they invite um a teacher from each level of their education that they that inspired them. And so that the student then at the dinner shares with the audience how that teacher inspired them. And so it it goes both ways. It's it's the it gives the teachers, you know, um the pride of knowing that they had an effect on that child's life and um you know, and the parents also here and and um you know, so I just thought that was a wonderful idea. Um the other thing I mean she had a bunch of different ideas. Um but the other the other one that I wanted to bring up was um community partnerships. um having a really strong alumni foundation um which I'm not sure that

088we really have here um and I think would be really good at keeping the VC community and pride going forward after kids graduate and so we could also keep track of where our graduates end up in the world. Uh, I thought the conference was informative. Um, as you know, I spoke up to the graduation requirements with the deputy superintendent. Um, it was about a room of 100 and I just feel like we have a lot of work to do in the next couple years regarding the state is passing all these requirements. However, it's very vague. Um, one of the things too is like I'm wondering how we're going to implement like the financial literacy mandate that's going to happen. We have a great business department. So, that'll be great to see how we roll that

089out to the future classes. Um, but yeah, these graduation requirements are in all the seals. They'll be interested in how we're going to implement it because they do require insuranceances. There's so many levels that all these unfounded mandates, but these regions exams aren't going away. Um, and it's going to be almost easier to get to pass the regent exams and to get all the seals or all the internships um that they that they're saying are, you know, going to be collateral to it. So, I thought it was an interesting um conference. >> Um, I also the Thank you, Katie. Forgot about that. I also attended portrait of a graduate with Angela and it was pretty daunting some of the things that they were saying that it's going to be a major mountain to climb in

090order to achieve a lot lot of unfund unfunded mandates involved in it and it's concerning. Um another one of the conferences that I attended was empowering critical thinking through media literacy and it was very interesting. We evaluated a lot of different kinds of media to determine whether or not it was a true a truth or something that was completely fabricated. And it wasn't such a matter of the activity of that you got the right answer. It was all about the discussion and the things that you had to think about in order to evaluate each of these pictures that we were looking at. Um, so it really makes students think about how they are using media and what they look at and believe to be true and the reasons why or the reasons why they would

091reject something that they see on social media as well. >> that even the presenters didn't Was it this one >> didn't know that it was >> Oh, no. Wasn't I was Yeah, there was one that was completely that the presenters didn't even they didn't even know what was real and you were in that one too, right? >> Um so, you know, deciphering fake news and >> Right. >> Yeah, it was interesting. [Music] >> Me first. >> Um yeah, so there was a lot of interesting topics that they presented. Um there was quite a bit of talk about the cell phone bans and talking to different people in different districts about how their district is doing it or has done or plans to do it. Um there was the media literacy, you know, just talking about

092how even though we may not have the resources necessarily to teach our students media literacy, we still need to do it. Um Portrait Overgraduate was interesting. It's actually a five-year plan and there was some talk about, you know, how we can integrate all that into our district or every district there, but how we can integrate that. Um, and then there's a lot of budget talk, which was of course my favorite one. Um, talking about how federal uncertainty could affect state aid, not for this coming school year 2526, but for 2627, and that we need to be very conservative. So Brad, um, and then one really nice one was about student reps and how we can lift their voices and engage them. And they actually had a couple of student reps from some school districts there

093talking about their experience and which was, you know, we've had student reps and we like them and all, but it was uh it was fun because I don't feel like our student reps get to speak all that much. I mean, they do, but they don't. Um, so it was interesting to hear from student reps from other districts and have them talk about how they felt about things and different views and whatnot. So yeah, it was a good conference. So, um I attended several of the same conference sessions that the board members attended and I would say that it's an opportunity not only for us to talk about the sessions and be able to learn together um but also to meet other people from other districts and get different ideas as well. And I think the

094two big pieces that I would take away is the portrait of the graduate and the new work that we have to do to be prepared for 2027 which is around the corner. Um as well as watching making sure that as the changes are happening that we are fiscally responsible and making sure that we keep an eye on our budget um so that we continue to do right by children and make sure that we um are in the right place. >> All right. I don't want to be that guy, but it was good. Our student reps were not doing bad. I went out to those board meetings across those districts and went back four meetings on each one. And what they presented might be futuristic because it's not happening now. I'll say that. And the last

095presentation, I thought this was interesting, disturbing, but interesting. The last presentation, I reached out to the board of ed president to ask her a question. And the email went directly to the superintendent and it came back saying your emails went to superintendent and somebody and I thought like wow like imagine like the first time you're reaching out to the board of ed and it goes to I was really surprised by that and I guess my question was okay because you did pass it on but I thought that was that was pretty weird >> to to do that. So anyway, but it was good. It was good. Okay. All right. Moving on. Next, we're going to go to climate and culture. And we have somebody online could not be present today. Yeah. Good evening. >> Good

096evening. Okay. Good evening everyone. There was a request um from the board to go over our climate and culture survey um information. And so tonight I am joined with Nick Stellantano who is from Dillinger Rad Research. and and um Nick if you can go to the next slide. So Dylan Gerard has been working with us for the last two years. Um it is an organization that works with youth centered organizations to leverage data and tools that currently we use to help students and youth succeed. They really focus on conceptualizing the data support for all partners to ensure that solutions are sustainable, equitable, and that they meet the needs of all stakeholders. Right now, the partnership has been working with our principles to develop school improvement plans. They conduct data analysis for us at this district

097and and school leadership level. And they also support data teams at the building levels to customize data tools and facilitation. and they revised and developed district policies, not policies, procedures really and practices around discipline. They were leading the work that we did with our discipline committee for the last uh two years as well. So our agenda, next slide, is really to go over the survey and then look through historical surveys as well, our current approach, the actual data from this last school year, talk about family survey takeaways, student takeaways, um, as well as staff takeaways, and then the plan moving forward. So that slide, I'm sure, is a little small, so I'm going to try to to just lift it up. So first of first and foremost we don't have to give a climate and

098culture survey. There are schools that are mandated by the state and those schools are CSI schools, TSI schools or ATSI schools. They are mandated that they have to give a climate and culture survey. We continue to give a climate and culture survey because we value the feedback and the perceptions of our community on all levels and that is for students, staff and parents as well. So I just wanted to make sure that we know that we have a highquality school climate data that we really want to show and and help understand. It helps us make data decisions. For example, we used some of the climate and culture data to make a decision about our strategic plan and our priority two is focus on some of that data for a sense of belonging and also communication.

099So we need to understand school specific needs um inform school and district improvement plans and also support the development of our comprehension education plans. So just want to go into some of the survey requirements the schools I already said that we don't have to take it but we do. Um we really also really find it important to get feedback on schoolwide systems the climate in each of our schools. Um there are questions that are related to co curriculum and instruction and social emotional development as well. And there is no particular list of a vendor that we have to use from the state level. Sometimes the state says you have to use this particular vendor to to do things but we do not. And so that'll come up later because you'll make a connection when we

100talk about another area of that. So let's go to historical context. And so prior to me coming to the district, the district had used panorama which is fairly common um that gives a uh a climate and culture survey. They have a bank of questions. Um I believe the survey was about over 80 questions that was given um that was given to prior um and only one year and I do not know how many years it was given. and it was given I know that it was given 21 22 and 23 24 uh but I'm not sure if it was given prior to that I don't have that historical data but what I do know is that there was only one administration to parents and so that there was a point where parents were given that

101survey um and it was only one decided to continually to give get parent information um because again we value parent feedback and so we now go in and Nick you can join jump in anytime you like because we're partners in this so feel free to to join in. Um so the panorama culture and climate survey had these particular categories. It went into ed engagement, school climate, school safety, sense of belonging, teacher student relationships, cultural awareness, um diversity and inclusion, barriers to engagement and family support. Um and there were four surveys from fall 2022 to spring 2024 in engagement and sense of belonging. Um so in that time period what was scored the lowest was sense of belonging that was scored the lowest in in in that area of climate and culture survey. So I'm going

102to stop for a minute though because I know Nick is going to talk soon and I'd like him to introduce himself and give you a little bit about his background. Thank you very much and uh good evening everybody. My name uh superintendent mentioned was Stalano. I'm the managing director of Dillinger Research and Applied Data. Uh super excited to be participating this meeting tonight. I do sincerely apologize for not being there in person. And today in Connecticut is usually the first day of school for all uh students. And so both from a child perspective and a board of education from myself perspective, I was unable to uh kind of travel to New York in person. So, my apologies on that. >> As the superintendent mentioned, and I think this was sort of a really good uh

103staging point, the four surveys that have been conducted from the fall of 2022 through the spring of 2024 uh did indicate that engagement, sense of belonging scored the lowest uh with students, indicating they areas in need of most improvement. So, as uh we were sort of leading into that was one of the main drivers for how the overall district strategic plan from 2024 to 2029 was developed. Right? As we think about uh priority 2 and priority 3 explicitly, it really is trying to encompass uh or really embrace around the idea of trying to improve community uh belonging and then uh that clear and transparent uh communication and engagement uh with uh both I would say family, students and uh staff as well. in terms of the uh school year 2425. So this past year uh

104basically the districts had a choice in which to continue the partnership with Panorama or to sort of go on off on its own. Dillinger did uh provide an opportunity to support them in a very simplistic way for uh providing both the technical and analytical support uh to administer their own surveys. So, we worked closely with the district leadership team to basically identify a couple different areas that uh they wanted to survey utilizing a lot of the panorama questions themselves. Panorama does provide all the questions uh open to the public and you can use them uh to to your heart's content. You can adjust them whatever the case may be. And so, as we were thinking critically about the 2425 school year, the idea of tuming feedback was a main driver. Feedback can obviously be got

105uh can be collected in many different ways. The survey was going to be the main driver thinking from the fall, winter, and springtime. But then we also were thinking about it especially in the context of the school improvement plans. thinking about focus groups, one-on- ones, and really trying to help uh a lot of both the school leadership and the district leadership think about what are those sort of moments and opportunities to engage with students, parents, and staff and get their feedback uh on a regular basis. The general structure of the survey that we had created for this past year did or was in line with what previous surveys had been. We adjusted the categories slightly to uh really focus on uh educating students, school culture, school leadership. Um a combination of staff to leadership, students

106to leadership and family to leadership relationships along with asking specific questions about the strategic plan, essentially people's understandings of it as well as the school improvement plans and then those similar relationships to the district leadership as well. Our sort of going in bid the 24-25 was to really focus on establishing a baseline of data that we could use moving forward and to really focus and hone around measuring that sense of belonging and engagement. Like we had indicated before that was a priority and so that was something that we really sort of uh tried to think critically about as we were um thinking about the design of the surveys and how we could possibly use them. Uh we did administer fall, winter, and spring uh over the entire year because different people could take it at

107different times. Uh we had 676 staff members take it, 20 2,961 individual students uh take it and then over 300 families. The families are uh not specific because we they were anonymous. So between the fall and springtime uh it was it's impossible to determine, you know, specifically which parent actually took the survey. So, it's hard to say if the same parents took different or not. Um, as we sort of identified, we had about 40 questions for each type of survey. And the way we were thinking about it was the fall and the spring, we were going to have the same questions so that we could measure growth across the entire year. The winter survey would have similar question, but would be really tailored for the principles themselves to be able to identify and create questions

108that they themselves could use. one around school improvement, but two more specifically around uh managing change within their building. And so we use that as an opportunity to help them allow or give them an opportunity to be able to survey a wide uh broad audience in which to address uh various concerns that they had at the building level. >> Nick, if I could just also add at that time um the that winter survey was also um 10 questions. So there were approximately five questions that were based district-wide and then the buildings had their own five particular questions of things that after they looked at their data from the fall administration, they wanted to dive deeper in so that they could see how were they progressing from the fall. >> So did they >> did the

109f did the elementary schools all have the same five questions or each school had their individual >> each school had their individual questions. >> Okay. Thank you. Great question. >> I'm good, Nick. >> So, in terms of just in the context of thinking about both surveys, it's just important to note, right, the categories between Panorama and the culture and climate or in terms of the the valley temporal survey from this past year are similar. Uh, but they do differ in specific questions that were asked. So, generally speaking, when we're thinking about average comparison of sense of belonging, the questions are generally the same. uh but they do get at uh specific um uh concerns or questions that were developed both this year and in previous years. It's also important to note that the panorama question

110uh was designed as a fivepoint liy like it scale. So a like it scale is when you basically have it on a scale of one to five one being either you know a low measure or high measure depending on how you set it and then five being the opposite usually along a continuum. Um, in this case, the positive sentiment score or the, you know, average percent positive, uh, reflected on the reports were usually the top two choices. So, the Valley Central, uh, designed survey that we did this past year, we only made it a four-point liker scale and we again chose to use the top two choices as the positive sentiment. So, a couple reasons why we kind of wanted to go in this direction. What we found was there was a huge variation amongst

111questions, but there was usually a tendency for a lot of individuals to sort of go towards the center point of the five point liker scale. So generally speaking, when you're designing a set of surveys, you want it to be actionable and you want it to be informative based on what you're trying to to gather. So when we thought about developing a four-point Lyker scale, we really were trying to put that uh those questions in a position where individuals did have to sort of really think hard about how they wanted to answer that question and then ultimately provide a direction in which we could then take the data and respond to it. Um in in both instances uh usually the design was from a fivepoint likely scale. You had a overall design of uh strongly agree

112to less agree all the way down to the almost last one and then the last uh selection point or number one if you will was disagree. So usually in most instances the four were some continuum of liking it and then the last one was an adamant does not like. We did follow that same exact path in the four point likely scale where the top three options were uh somewhat variation of you know strongly agree agree slightly agree and then do not agree at all. So both questions designs were in the same vein of really trying to capture again that continuum with the last option being adequately disagree. Um, in both instances, you can kind of see we gave an example from an engagement and school climate perspective. Depending on the types of questions we asked

113and what we thought was important, we kind of got a little bit more towards the macro level uh from our perspective versus the panorama survey which was a little bit more focused on uh individual classrooms. So jumping into just the takeaways um I do want to sort of emphasize if you think about in the context of each survey across parents survey parents students and staff at 40 questions we administered it at least two times a year if not if you include the winter survey to include then previous years you are talking about hundreds of dimensions that you could sort of analyze the data. What we have here is a uh me and my team were able to sort of analyze the data and try to tease out what we thought was the highest or really

114most significant takeaways for the district to act on. Um it is important to note that we did engage with the principles every time we provided the survey. They themselves had access to their some of the data that they then could take back to engage with their stakeholders at the school level. And that was part of what we were trying to really build up on is this idea of um providing sort of significant takeaways as well as then having time for uh folks or stakeholders at the school level to be able to react and help inform what are actionable next steps. So what you're having here is a 15-minute survey in which I tried to tease out the highest or the the most impactful takeaways. Um I know for the board we did provide you the

115summitive um result of the survey at the district level. uh I am in the process of putting together individual school uh takeaways that I'll also be able to provide to you soon. >> I'll say it another way. So what Nick is saying I told him he had about 15 to 20 minutes for the presentation and he said he could spend two to three hours just going over all the data. So he sort of you know put it in a package as as best as he could and and just lifting the highlights that we thought were really important. Um and of course there'll be time for questions as well. >> Second. So, in terms of the family survey takeaway, um again, generally speaking, we saw that there, and this probably is not a big surprise, there's

116a usually significant variation, um from the fall to the spring, uh results. And when we start to look at it from the context of elementary school, um generally speaking, overall, you you saw that elementary school received higher positive sentiment than your middle school and high school. Um so it's safe to say as time goes on and children move up through the ranks uh family sentiment or positive sentiment does start to decrease. Um in all instances uh positive sentiment decreased from fall to spring across all grade levels. This was something that we were uh diving into and we did see that this was actually present and relevant in the Panorama surveys as well. So, one of the uh areas that we've been engaging with the district around is thinking about how do we sustain success throughout

117the year um and how do we continue to build momentum. Uh we'll go over a couple different charts that show that in the winter time there are some growths that we can sort of hang our hat on. But generally speaking, when you reach that springtime at the very end, you do see kind of a tip off or or drop off. What we'll talk about this at the end of the the presentation, but one of the things that we are concerned with is thinking about timing of the surveys as well. uh especially for students when it comes to layering on the survey when it comes to either end of year testing or other sort of significant scheduled events that we want to be sort of cognizant of. Um in general when we think about the families

118and their understanding of some of the various questions the strategic plan had the weakest positive sentiment and that was really just understanding are you aware of the strategic plan and uh do you understand how what your part is in that. So in general in the fall 2024 70% uh was that sort of positive sentiment and that was the lowest score out of uh the group. So in terms of positive sentiment around school culture we wanted to highlight this. So what what you have here on the left hand side and the right hand side are the same chart but the lefthand chart is grades three through five and the righth hand chart is grades 6 through 12. And what we did was take the categories uh I'll just remind you educating all students, school culture, school

119leadership, family leadership, relationships and strategic plan and try to show you how uh the overall positive sentiment changed from the fall which is your top line to the spring which is your bottom line. So in all instances again you can see that there was a drop from uh fall to spring. Uh but we wanted to highlight the fact that the largest drop that we saw from fall to spring was that school culture. Um and that was the same as well for 6 through 12. And so in the springtime we did provide an open-ended question around school culture and just tried to get a sense of what do you like or what are you seeing that you want to see continue in your schools and what are your some of your concerns. And generally speaking, what

120we found was um and hope slide is around the bullying and the overall school culture of uh discipline behavior. And I think there's a concern from a set of parents who did responsibly within the question that there has to be a look at both cell phones and the behavior and how those behaviors are being uh handled by the administration. Um, as we indicated before from the family perspective, we did ask an open-ended question in regards to, you know, what are your thoughts about the school? What do you want to see continue? What are your concerns? The biggest areas for action were bullying in school climate, instruction and academics, communication, transparency, facilities and athletics, and special education, student services. Um, so bullying, school climate, like I said before, it's really that sort of understanding how uh

121behavior behavioral instances are being um handled. And I would say the communication and transparency. Being able to communicate I think clearly and transparently with parents has was a concern both from a discipline perspective but more broadly just from a school um schedule and a school activity standpoint. There were a couple mentions that families had said that they learn more from their uh schools their students uh than from the schools themselves. Um that was uh one of the areas that with the introduction of uh parents square we have been trying to keep a tabs on how uh parents are reacting to um communication and so with the smallest sample that we had at the end of the year parents where does seem to be a positive addition to communication piece >> instruction and academics was a

122broad sort of focus on though there were positive uh I would say shout outs to different teachers across the spectrum uh there was also sort a request to have more rigor uh and less busy work when it came to homework. And then facilities and athletics, again, a more desire to invest in facilities and uniforms and special education and student services was really around uh again that more transparent communication and more access to uh individual students IEPs and 504s when it came to their own child's uh academic uh trajectory or academic profile. And Nick, there were about how many parents who answered open-ended questions? >> Yeah, that's a a great question. Thank you. Um, right here. >> In terms of the family survey, we did have, like I said, approximately 300 uh families fill out the

123survey in the springtime, of which about 125 provided open-ended comments. So, part of the challenge when it comes to sort of uh going through and aggregating open-ended comments is you do have to code each response. In many instances, a response could hit up on a couple different topics. And sometimes you have, I think, a a a theme that is developing across different uh students or rather different responses. Um but then as the the number of responses dwindle, you have to sort of weigh that to uh what the individual is saying to how uh either relevant or how um how representative it is to the rest of the uh population. So in this case, right, there's about 3,000 to 4,000 families of which um about 5% took the survey and then even a smaller amount did

124provide open-ended comments. So the bullying in school climate along with academic uh instruction and academics did have the highest uh sort of average themes with about 20 individuals uh providing comments to those two topics specifically student survey takeaways. Um as we didn't get before the engagement and sense of belonging uh was sort of a focus. So there was some good news and bad news when it came to a lot of the work that was done this past year. um overall engagement and sense of belonging saw a significant increase at the elementary I'm sorry at the middle school and high school level. So what we're seeing here again is the student percentage positive sentiment for survey categories for the spring of 2023 in comparison to the spring 2025. So here is like what you saw before

125you have the categories engagement, school climate, school safety. We wanted to sort of bring your attention to the sense of belonging and engagement. The top line is your spring 2023 scores and then or positive sentiment and then spring 2025 is your current uh sentiment. So for middle school and high school again comparing 2023 to 2025 you actually saw the largest increase in both engagement and sense of belonging to the elementary school you actually saw about a 5 percentage point decrease. um still high um in elementary school you are talking upwards of seven uh 70ish or so percent dropping down to anywhere close to 65% or and as good sense of belonging 65 to 60%. So you saw a significantly higher sense of belonging and uh engagement at the high at the elementary school level already.

126That was one of the reasons why we kind of highlighted the middle school and the high school because um in you know if you look at the 2023 score they were significantly lower than elementary school. Um we saw an increase but they're still significantly lower than elementary school. And so that is still a focus um as we move forward into this coming year. In concert with sense of belonging and in concert with engagement, there were a couple questions that we highlighted uh that actually became a big focus as we move through the year. One of them was the sense of feeling lonely. Um, and this came out during the fall survey. Um, a lot of principles really sort of saw it, latched on to it, and we really tried to focus on it through the

127winter survey and the uh, spring survey as well. So, what you have here, the question was, do you feel lonely at school? Um, what you're seeing here is slightly often or not at all. So, in terms of the reverse of thinking about this, this is the positive sentiment, right? The positive sentiment is you are not feeling lonely, but you are actually feeling like you're a part of a group where you have friends. So in this case, you can see your fall survey 56% 52% and 54% at elementary school, middle school, and high school was fairly low. Right? To to sort of interpret this, only 56% of students said they slightly often or not at all feel lonely. That means flipping that, 44% of students said, "Yeah, I kind of feel lonely." That is, you know,

128like where I'm at now. That could be because it's the beginning of school, like it's just started, right? There's that sort of transitional piece. But a lot of principles took that to heart and started to think about how they can better support their students. In the winter, we asked the same question and that sort of spiked in regards to how good kids are feeling when it came to loneliness. So again, 77% is 77% of kids generally don't feel lonely. Or on the reverse side, only 33% said, "Yeah, I kind of feel lonely." Um and that's again 76% 74% and then as we get to that end of the year we saw a slight drop off 71 64 and 70%. And excuse me this was I think a step in the positive direction but it was

129definitely a focus of a lot of the school and district leadership when it came to thinking about how they can better support their uh students. Um, one of the really key areas, and this is going to be a trend that I did want to flag, your eighth graders reported the highest occurrence of feeling in one. Um, eighth graders are going to be a a topic on the next two slides, but generally speaking, what we see here is, you know, extremely often and somewhat often, right? This is where we don't necessarily want kids to be because that's where they're feeling very lonely. And so here when you get to eighth grade, you know, they had significant in the fall time frame of feel significant levels of feeling lowly upwards of almost 50%. Um it dropped to

130about 27, so about a quarter, but then it ticks back up again to almost 50%. So a lot of things are, you know, interestingly happening at the eighth grade transitional level. Um, one of the key areas that I was uh really happy with was in the springtime, one of the principles uh had really advocated in the winter time to try to think critically about how we could help students who are feeling lonely or who potentially don't have um somebody to go to. We ended up designing a set of questions for the springtime so that if uh a student answered um yes, you're feeling extremely lonely or somewhat often feeling lonely. Um that uh we would then ask a subsequent question, do you want an adult to reach out to you? And if they said yes,

131we said then could you please put us give us your name and we'll happily have somebody uh come and reach out. And we were able to connect uh three students who did positively request to have an adult reach out to them uh with the school leadership to go and do reach out to those kids at the end of the year. >> But they did not >> is something that we will be considering this year. >> They didn't have to ask answer the question. So it wasn't a question that they needed to answer to move on. It was by choice and it clearly indicated you do not have to answer this and this is by choice. But they we wanted to we wanted to do something about identifying who the children who felt lonely and wanted

132to address that. So we came together and said how are we going to do that and and we posed that question to our students on the survey so that we can address that. >> Two other questions uh that came uh to the forefront was in the same vein right one of them was around do you have access to at least one trusted adult uh within the school. Um most elementary students reported the feeling as though they did have access uh to at least one trusted adult. Um and that was a little bit more so than the middle school and the high school. Um so here uh again you're this is measuring positive sense based off of the fall winter score. So in the fall elementary you can you basically see fall was 80% 95% and

133back out to 85% across the entire year. Middle school and high school did have lower scores. I would say not tremendously lower scores, but again in comparison to elementary school, you did see that lower um uh lower drop off uh for that access to that trusted adults. Um the same thing for June feel safe at school. Uh we did only ask this for the fall and springtime, but again we saw that uh the scores are not as high as I would imagine we would like it. And then you also saw that there was a drop off uh from fall to spring. I did want to flag and this is sort of the big takeaway. Eighth graders and 10th graders had the highest rates of not feeling like they had an adult. That was 40% and

13432% respectively. Eighth and 10th graders also had the lowest rate of feeling like they were safe. And so um I think that sort of reflects again thinking about what we and how we can use the survey to be more actionable going into this year when we think about eth grade, right? there's an additional set of supports and sort of considerations the district needs to take when thinking about those two grade levels in the context of feeling lonely uh feeling safe and having trusted adult and >> we do know that eighth graders are going through a transition and this is at the end right before their transition and often very worried about going to the high school. Um so when we begin to think about this is going to go to the end but when we

135get begin to think about we have to get more information about why 8th and 10th um and to see if that's a continued trend um this coming year as well. So just before we move on, so >> Sure. >> I'm I'm glad those kids >> asked for outreach, right? It's pretty high number. So we did the outreach and so are we following them into nth grade with the outreach. >> So the 500 kids may be in any it's a different grade levels. So that is not just >> I thought they were eighth graders. >> No, but that's the highest num. No, the eighth grade numbers. Let's go back. Let's go back to the why the eighth grade was highlighted. >> No, no, right there. the 500 out of 1912. I thought that was eighth graders.

136>> No, it's not just eighth graders. >> Oh, >> not just eth It's across It's across grade levels. We ask all students K through 12, whoever said that. >> Say that again. >> Miss Mohiko wants to say something. um in regards to was Joe was your question in regards to tracking of those students that report. So these just to be clear that this is an an this is a anonymous survey. Um and so in order to remain to in intact with that, right, in the sense that we're not you using that data or there's no identifiable information that we can then go and look and and nitpick and so on and so forth. um being able to track that is is not as clear as it as one would think. Um in the second round

137we did we after much conversation and deliberation we did say if you would like to share your name and give them the option to do so and also that the administration would encourage that if if you want want to that you can so that there can be a support. So >> right 500 did say that. So what we can do coming forward if we we're we're going ahead but because we haven't um finalized the administration for this coming year but we could do is ask the same question and see which children if they still decide to choose to share that they're still lonely right um but meanwhile they were um engaged with either school counselor uh a sack or a a behaviorist someone in the building reached out whether it could be a teacher even

138um whoever knows the child best just to say to check in if they gave their name to say that they were lonely. >> I I have a question with that. So that works great if they're ninth graders. They have the same counselor ruling into 10th grade. That person knows that the student self-reported. They're going to follow up or at least be on the radar. Um same thing I would assume in elementary school. The staff knows the student. But I think what Joe was getting at the transitions from fifth grade into the sixth grade, a different building to from middle school into high school, different building, like is there a handoff to that next counselor or to the next staff so that somebody can kind of keep that student on the radar? >> So there are

139transition meetings and I can't say specifically that they talked about about each one of those particular students. I can say that my expectation is that they did that when you're speaking about children and moving up that you're talking to children in need. And these children who identified that they were lonely or children that are in need and that there should have been some um uh articulation. I can verify it because I don't want to say yes without verifying that information. But it is my expectation that they continue to do that so that a child doesn't get lost. >> So that's not a normal practice. There is a normal practice that they have articulation and that they they share information. So they do meet with the moving upgrade. They the counselors meet and they do have

140artic I call them articulation meetings. Um but they do meet to talk about students um whether they're academically in trouble whether they have some personal things at home whatever they can share to look at um to say watch out for this particular student because they have needs. If you're asking me specifically whether they talking about whether this child said on the survey that they are lonely, that's what I don't know. I do know that they have the ongoing articulation meetings to share that. >> So I can I can sort of talk to the idea that part of beyond just the culture and climate uh in terms of supporting the different schools. I did work closely with the middle school to help identify essentially create early warming indicators for the fifth grade class that really aggreate

141aggregated data across a wide range of different uh pieces uh to help set the table for those conversations with uh the counselors to have that handoff. So um that is I can sort of say just from my own experience it's a topic of conversation of focus for sure as we sort of rounded out the year. >> Bob, does that answer your question? Yes. >> All right. Thank you. And so, finally, the staff uh survey takeaways. Um, generally speaking, uh, we kept we kept this kind of simple and really focused on the spring 2024 to the spring 2025. Um, more for access to sort of historical data. But here again on the left hand side, you can see this categories of educating all students, school climate, school leadership, and district leadership. and wanted to sort of

142indicate that there has been a I would say positive growth in three out of those four categories as you can see and reflected in the far right hand column of uh the 2% 18% and 28% growth. Uh the area that was of focus uh to the district was that sort of drop in the relationship uh and the sort of feedback from the staff to and in regards to the district leadership and that was the focus uh again at that spring survey where we had open-ended question with staff members around um their sort of what they were hoping to see continue um in terms of the school and sort of feedback around uh the district leadership. So there was a question I wanted to vary individually to you though which was do you feel the district

143leadership team provide opportunities for your voice to be heard. Um again across the elementary school, middle school and high school you see this average between 48 and 56%. Um and so it's really hovering around that 50 you know 50% positive sentiment. And so the open-ended question that we had asked was what would you like to see continue in your building or district school next year? And there was a couple different uh areas that I just wanted to tease out that sort of provided I think a really good template and some input from the staff themselves. Um leadership and support. Uh I think a lot of the principles uh reflected on this at the end of the year when we're talking and uh same thing uh at the district right more visibility, support and uh uh

144being present from the administration uh that actively builds trust. And it's this trust piece that is sort of that key piece around understanding why different initiatives are happening and making sure that their voice or at least making sure that they feel that their voice is being heard and acknowledged when it comes to sort of implementing some of these uh challenging initiatives. Uh discipline and accountability. This was a common trend you know both from the staff and families around this idea of making sure that there are clear firm and consistently enforced discipline policies. I mean, as superintendent sort of mentioned, that has been a big focus over this past year of really refining and cleaning up a lot of the behavioral policies. I would also say there was definitely a uh a smattering of uh comments

145around the cell phones, right? And thinking about how cell phones are not exactly helping uh the educational experience within the school communication. Uh as you all know the school improvement plans all incorporated some level of communication to the staff and that is a big thing when it comes to thinking about clear more timely and more consistent uh communication uh support morale and culture. Um just this this idea of making sure that uh individual staff member are feeling valued especially for their experience and their knowledge. Um and I think there has been a desire to um want to sort of experience that camaraderie and that sort of togetherness and and sort of family type feel uh that uh Valley Central is has been known for. Uh focus and follow through. Um as with everything when we're

146thinking about the uh the new strategic plan and the new initiatives, I think some people are um wanting focus like right, we don't want to switch year over year over year. we want to continually um double down on some of the initiatives that we're doing to make sure that we're getting it right. And then special education resources um in terms of thinking about the support that students are receiving, how they're receiving it, and then what does that look like in the general general ed setting. So, you know, a wide range of input, but I think really aligned uh to some common themes that do sort of I think resonate on the family side as well. Um, superintendent, can I pass this off to you in terms of thinking about next year's? >> Absolutely. >> Can

147I can I ask a question? >> Sure. Um, before we move to the next um segment, going back to the staff survey takeaways, I understand that you are maybe able to provide more data sets. is is have you broken it down in terms of school for the um staff positive sentiment by category? You know, is it something that um I think it might be valuable to see where that sits in terms of elementary school, middle school, high school um and likely for you individual schools to see where that sits. So I I will say that each of the individual schools have their data and that we did give them their data. So so especially for them to share with their staff as well also to make sure that they are looking at their data to

148incorporate it in their school improvement plan. But I think Nick can also ask answer the other half of that question. >> Yes. And so uh I will be providing you know with almost exactly the same uh file that I provided you earlier but instead of the district uh essentially being labeled on top you'll have a drop down you'll be able to select any school that you wish and it will basically update to reflect all of the student uh submit data to to reflect across fall winter and spring across three different survey types. Okay. >> Will be he didn't get to do it yet, but he will. >> I'm just trying to will be publicly available um to to have that kind of interactivity. I just have to nail down to make sure that um the

149underlying raw survey data is secure. Um and so you just have to give me another 24 hours and I will be able to provide you with that file. >> So we will have access the board will have access to the raw data by school. >> Correct. Yes. uh the raw summited uh data question uh I cannot I cannot give you the raw uh survey results by question rather by response >> right so he's not giving you each each individual who gave it but he would give you the total percent sort of like what you have now by school >> yeah so you'll be able to look at each individual question by school to understand how people responded across the four options >> when you say raw data if a if there are um 276 students

150the people who took it. The raw data actually means you see 276 items for every single answer. So he's not that's what that's what Nick talks about when he talks about raw data. So I just wanted to clarify that. >> I guess what I would like to see y >> is something as simple as here's question one. Here are the four choices. Here's how many people picked that whatever choice. >> Something that simple. Yeah, >> correct correct me if I'm wrong. That's what I gave you to the district like at the district response. You just want that the school response, right? >> Correct. >> Right. That's the point. I can get that too. >> Could we also get the open-ended questions results or answers by school? >> I cannot. >> But what I can do

151uh I have talked uh with the superintendent about this. Um let me >> why can't why can't we >> the reason why there is identifying information sometimes people actually put names they put situations they put different different items in there that would be identifiable and we have to make sure we promised it would be unanimous I mean anonymous sorry anonymous and so that's why we provided trends for you and him giving you a summative of basically what the questions have you know have given as far as an answer. So when he talked about the bullying, when he talked about the cell phone, when he went back to that slide, he's giving you a sumitative of a trend of what has happened as opposed to giving identifiable information. So if he would take out some information

152that would change the integrity of the data uh to alter it, we can't do that either because that's that's not what you do with data. Um so that is why he can't but he can give you summitative information >> but that also requires >> and so he's going to share something with you. >> Hold on one second. >> What what I can do is uh we started to basically aggregate from the coded responses um how they fell into the various areas improvement. So I gave you how many individual responses actually indicate something about bullying and then I'm giving you a summitative sort of like quick snapshot of um what that uh what those responses sort of entails. So, I will be able to give you like a summited sum up, if you will, of the

153opening questions. I just can't give you an individual open-ended questions. And I'll give you that for both the family and the staff. >> My just concern is we're getting someone else's interpretation of whatever is being said versus us being able to interpret it ourselves. >> Yes, that is just how it works. Um, at the end of the day, when it comes to anonymous uh surveys, uh it is best practice to not release open-ended questions. And so on some level, you do have to trust me that I'm giving you an unadulterated view of what these summited responses were. Um, part of it is a challenge too because at the end of the day, how much weight do you put on to two people saying, you know, very sort of I would say highly charged things and

154so it is a balancing act for sure when it comes to sort of making sure that you're weighing uh correctly. But in this case, I provide you the framework. I can get a sense of how many individuals talked about one particular topic and then I provided you a summary of that topic. So I I do feel like that is a good um sort of sense of what folks were really thinking about and talking about and uh you can really react to well. >> Okay, Nick, you can go back to this the last slide. And so as we move forward um and we align we're going to align the survey as we did last year to priority two priority three um looking at school culture sense of belonging and staff engagement and trust and really looking

155at what do we need what information do we need to dive in deeper for example you just heard results about district leadership there are 16 district leaders but if you look at their offices you have over 33 people in those offices so is It is it a particular department is it you know what is happening as we dive into exactly what is the concerns or the questions and why can't we get to a higher place in regard to trust or whatever the underlying issue is because we're saying it's trust but don't really know yet right and so now that we have data when we look at how can we go deeper to try to understand what the real issue is um we will either we'll have cater our questions for that as well as have

156opportunities to actually give staff an opportunity to talk about it and going to faculty meetings and saying is there something else we can do? Sometimes that people won't talk at faculty meetings. So we're doing multiple things. We'll offer a focus group. We will also offer the faculty meeting and we will offer the survey to give three different opportunities of three different types of ways to try to get to the bottom of it because we can't make assumptions of what it is and we have to really figure it out in order to really address it, right? And so we will also be looking at other um aspects of the survey. So this year when we looked at when we administered our poor children, right? when you think about they had state testing in April, they had

157NWA May and then they they were then given the culture and climate survey, another thing I have to do, right? And so and also for staff as well at the end of the year when there is so much going on and you're closing the year and um you know high school teachers are focusing on getting children to pass the regions and you know etc. When is the best time to make sure that it's not it's not something oh this is one more thing to do but that this is an important part getting this feedback and perception and trying to understand what's happening at the school is really important and we don't want it to seem like another thing we have to do but really want people to embrace it. Um the other piece is that

158we don't have a lot of our parents taking I know over 300 families but and it did go we did increase the number of parents who took it from the fall to the spring but having the opportunity to do it at open house possibly and also going back during the time of uh concerts maybe that's the better time so that we can get more more input um at that time because we have many parents at those events to try to elicit that information. We know parents are very busy um and maybe that is a better time. So we're looking at different ways to try to elicit more feedback in better ways and also addressing the fact that it seems you know in the beginning of the year there is a huge focus and excitement and

159enthusiasm and we're all gungho and somehow we we fizzle out a little bit and that's that's partly because you know by mid year there's a lot going on as well. I mean, Valley Central is a very um involved district in a lot of different ways. And so, how can we stay true to the course of making sure that we keep as that high level that we start with that we have it in the middle and that we also end with a high level as well, Joe? So I somewhat like you know the multiple surveys but to your point right the wind's blowing this way it's springing the flowers are blooming every right but more importantly as you get the results you're creating action plans and then how do you know that your action plan actually

160had an impact as opposed to the flowers just blooming. Right. So are your action plans off of every single survey or what are they off of fall and then you measure it again the f like how how is that being >> so that is why we did the January one and the schools had their own questions to measure exactly what's happening right so in in the fall there was a baseline there's baseline data right and then the then and you also can't address everything right there are 40 questions on there we can't address every single item and so principle chose the highest le leverage of what they were going to address. Everyone addressed the loneliness because we were alarmed by that number. So, everyone addressed that one. But there are other things that when you

161looked at the individual school data that principles decided to do to look at. So, they they asked those individual questions to take a deeper dive to say got to make sure we address these particular things. And we chose five things because you're thinking about from January to June. It's not a lot of time also. So, we have to be realistic. And so they chose those five things to to to go in deeper and then they measure it in June because they have the data they have the data from the June as well. And so whether they reached it or not and or how h or how well they did or if there were other indicators then as they planned for the school improvement plans they use that data to say now this year what are

162we going to focus on based on that data. Do we need to continue with those particular things or did we see something else at the end of the year? we did a really great job and though we can always do better, we feel we should focus on this because we didn't do well in this area. So that is really how we use the data. Um we have strong data from from the staff and the students because they they take they we they're captive audiences to take the surveys as opposed to our families who um choose to and >> I think the action plans have to be quick so it's relevant. Right. panorama. I think it was like you took it and six months later you're doing action plans and people don't even feel that way

163any longer, right? So, >> I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is maybe like like in the fall you do it and then you create your action plan off of that every fall because you can't you can't have how many times a year you going to create different action plans and and try to do it, right? >> I don't know. I'm just throwing up. So, so to to just to help so sense of belonging is a huge topic, right? So, they have to work they're working on sense of belonging, but then they narrow down based on the data. So, for example, if if something comes up in regard to let's say curriculum and instruction and the students say, well, I'm absolutely bored, right? Let's say that that that was um an indicator. Then they're

164focusing on why are children bored and is that in particular grade levels? is that in uh just in fifth grade for example and what do I need to look at and then that would be possibly their focus for the year January that chuck touching base to see how well are we doing from the fall to January because we've already put something in place and now I'm checking to see is it working does that help >> it does I'm just thinking back to the sips too right because maybe those SIPs should be more geared to those those results too right I So priority 2 is geared to these results. >> Yeah. >> NWA last year was the priority one and this year will be I ready that will focus on priority one. There are some components

165to the communication piece also that comes from the climate and culture survey because we ask parents and we ask staff member how well are they informed. So there are questions that also um relate to priority three as well >> on the survey. Sips were a little fluffy last year. I like fluffy. >> We're getting there. Rome wasn't invented in one day. Any other questions? >> It's not a question more than a comment. Uh I noticed that in the the survey analysis 2425 that was in the link at the end of the presentation there are several categories um is it called but where somewhat received a very high score as opposed to extremely >> and um so I'm just curious as to how that will be approached in terms of trying to get those somewhats to

166extremely. >> So how it's going to be approached depending on what it is but there is an expectation that we want to move from somewhat to extreme right. However, if they are they also have to prioritize. So if there are other areas that are much lower than somewhat um we will probably go there first. So that depends building by building. Um but yes we're not done at somewhat. >> Right. Well, I I I like that it's a four-point scale as as opposed to a fivepoint scale, but I do think that people may tend to do somewhat instead of slightly, you know. Um, keeping it positive. >> Okay. >> Um, I guess I'm going to disagree with Fran just in the >> mic. I Yeah. >> Okay. Sorry. That's okay. >> Just in terms of the

167fourpoint versus fivepoint scale. Um, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a poll uh junkie. I like looking at the questions. I like looking at the raw data. I like looking at seeing >> what somebody's interpreting something to be as versus what maybe what the questions being asked. I like seeing how the question is asked because that can influence the answers. Um, I think Nick said that most choices tend to gravitate towards the middle, right? In a fivepoint scale that gravitates towards the neutral, >> right? >> In a four-point scale, in a four-point scale, I believe that's also true, which means it gravitates more towards the middle positive, right? When you have three choices that are positive and only one that's negative, it's not a it skews everything positive, right? It it's just the way

168it works. So I would suggest that we move back towards a fivepoint scale so we get a little bit more statistical um truism to what what we're really asking because if something gravitates towards the middle somebody's like I'm kind of neutral on it but I can only choose positive or not at all then maybe I choose the somewhat versus you know what I mean like it starts to it starts to skew everything towards the the upper end which is I don't think what we want and it's not a real indication of I don't think what people are feeling >> right exactly make it balanced >> right if it's four make it balanced >> Katie what did you say I'm sorry I didn't hear you >> Nick do you want to answer that >> yeah it's

169a it's a great point and I think I don't say either way is the right answer I think there are pros and cons I'll be I'll talk about this but Yeah, I could be swayed either way, right? In terms of I think let's go with the fivepoint language scale for a second, right? The bottom one is the adimate like yeah it nope don't like it you know and so that that is a very apparent thing and then you have four choices of varying levels of agreement which in my mind the more choices you have like I don't know how you know like what's the difference between somewhat to slightly agree and it creates I think a little bit more confusion the way I approach it and I obviously a little bit more logically or number

170minded right I'm on a one to four so in my mind I'm instinctively putting it on a scale like you could put any words whatsoever on a bunch of four and I'm just going to look at one, two, three, four. And that was actually an interesting takeaway that we had from the fall to the spring. We ended up adjusting the options so that instead of somewhat being the we'll go if one's on the bottom, two, three, four, somewhat started off at three in the fall time frame and then was actually down to two in the um uh in the spring time frame. And what we found from our analysis was is the individuals who selected somewhat uh on the fall were not really likely to follow some right. It was more about anchoring themselves on

171a number along the continuum. So yeah, like I I hear you. I can't disagree with you too much, but I also think that the more like scale is also good. I mean, I think at the end of the day, here here's what I would really sort of emphasize. Since we've since we established the baseline, the baseline now becomes the comparison point, right? And so, really, it depends on the question that you're trying to answer. Do we really care about um you know, if we went from a 72 positive uh or if you're at a do you really care if you're at a 72 positive sentiment score or the fact that you changed from a 68 to a 72 or down from 75 to a 72, right? So in some ways it's really just an emphasis

172around how how do you what's the trend line? How do you compare? Um so I hear you loud and clear. I can't disagree too much but then also I think the four language scale is also valid valid as well. So I did some research in preparation for this and yeah it's really just pick your poison. If you don't want to have people lean in on the middle portion you don't do a five point scale. You make them choose uh the three or the two to really sort of put their foot in the ground. And that was a conversation I had with the superintendent was how do we create more not engagement but more of a commitment or a you know like a stake in the ground in terms of what they're thinking about and how

173they want to respond. Uh and especially with the staff I think giving them an understanding where they lie is really important because I know some of the principles really did have some really meaningful engagement with their staff afterwards. And I think it's helpful because if they're all in the middle then they don't have to choose one way or another. if they're adamantly saying, "No, it's not good enough or it's okay." To your point, then how do we move them from there? So, >> I also want to um point out that students take this survey and giving students because you want to compare that have the same numbers, right? You can't have adults have one to five and have students have one to four, right? So, you want to have the same measurement. And so when

174you think about giving a third grader five different choices versus four different choices, even four, but you know, we're not gonna not we're not gonna give three, but so that's another aspect that we have to look at. So looking at how it's wording, sure, we could look at that as well. Um, but just wanting that we ended up at four because it made sense thinking about our students first. >> Well, four by itself is not the issue. It's three positive choices versus one negative choice. >> Yes. So we will look at I heard you. So we will look at that and see if we would make any changes. But we also want to have we have a baseline now. This was the first time that we used this particular survey. So then we have to

175think about how that would change if we want to look at data from one year to the other. So we'll we'll reflect on on your on your comment and your suggestion. >> I don't necessarily believe that somewhat is positive though. That's >> Wait, Nick, hold on one second. Say that again, Frank. I don't I don't necessarily believe that somewhat is positive. I think it's I don't either. >> I think that's not where the bar should be. You know, that getting everybody to somewhat. I want I want us to see getting everybody to extremely is, you know, in in the spectrum of extremely. So, I don't Yeah. >> Yeah. And I would So, part of part of what I was looking at too on this and here's a great example, right? uh do you think your

176school requirement hurt the help of another parents and did you vote against school and again I just randomly picked these two out because there's a huge flip-flop of who selected essentially the third option versus the second option and then the second option versus the third option. So in my mind even on a four-point record scale right there is a definitive uh choice being made by these students and I would say this is a great example of just like they get it they understand the difference and if it's meaningful to them they will indicate very explicitly what's the difference um and so I just I do indicate that as an example of like I think the nuance between the second and the third choice which is where that critical sort of juncture comes in I think

177is appreciated by most staff me or by most stakeholders taking the survey and they do provide I think a disparate type of um take away that you can get basically. >> Any other questions? >> No. >> All right. Thank you everyone. Thank you Nick. >> Thank you everyone very much. >> Thank you. >> All right. Next we're going to move on to capital project update. these guys can get back to work. >> Got a lot of work to do. Want to get them out of here. >> Just so >> so I I will just say that >> the the general public does not understand the hours that the board puts in. And you talked about the leadership conference that you went to. um your your highly paid volunteer positions. And just for the record, I

178would like to note that the board did begin uh select board members that were able to attend this morning a building tour 14 hours ago. And here we are at 9:00. Um going back for an update on capital projects. So, um the time that you volunteered for, uh the students and staff of this district is well appreciated. Um >> well said, Brad. >> Good. You're welcome. On that note, I'm gonna turn it over to Bill and Tom to give you an update on on where we're at. You got some hands-on experience today. One thing I did forget to note uh under my report was a thank you to um Pine Bush School District. Pine Bush is has always been a good neighbor for us. They helped us out in the spring. Um allowed us to

179use their tennis courts as as we got a jump start on our on our uh tennis courts. Um, also they helped us out last week when uh the New York State Public High School Athletic Association moved up the start date of sports um for us. So they helped us out with the pool and they're continuing to help us out this week as we need just a few more days to get our heating system up and running. So I just publicly publicly wanted to thank not only the board but also our our friends up at Pine Bush. So thank you, Bill. I'll turn it over to you. >> Thank you. Good evening everybody. Um, so we're here for our our monthly board of education meeting and I'll jump right into it. Uh, we're going to talk

180tonight about the 23, the 24, and the 25 capital projects. Um, on the 23 capital project phase one, uh, was approved in 2024. Um, this is, uh, anticipated construction of tennis courts and track. Uh, we know that the tennis courts are completed. We'll talk about the track. Um, I'll go back to that. So, this is all the 23 projects. So, we'll start off at East Coldenham. So, this morning, um, some of you got to see the East Coldenham building, uh, firsthand. Uh, and just a reminder, too, these pictures were taken about a week ago, so we can prepare this these slides. So, I can tell you some look a little better, some are right there. But, uh, you could see the main lobby here, uh, the new storefronts and, uh, secure vestibles that we're building.

181uh at Berea. Uh you could see on the lefthand side uh the start of construction. We just started sheetrocking and on the right hand side this is uh uh a little after demo. Uh a lot of the mechanical work that you see there and the ceiling is all brand new uh insulated and everything before we could start hanging the ceiling. Middle school uh was mainly just the uh the main vestibule there. Um this is on the left hand side under construction. On the right hand side a little little more put together. high school phase one. Lot going on there. Um the boiler room for one. The on the lefth hand side, this is a snapshot of last week of the boiler room actually put back together. Uh I'm going to do a a slideshow for

182you guys on what it looked like before empty and brand new. And on the right hand side is the secure vestibule as well into the the main entrance. Uh the tennis courts on the left are completed. Uh the track on the right hand side. Uh we did have a small um hiccup with a couple little bit of machining machinery breaking down when we started milling the the asphalt there. It had to get fixed. Uh they had to bring a Caterpillar rep out and actually fix this machine and it sat there for a couple days. But on the right there, you can see that the color is down on the track. Has a 14-day waiting period. And then they can go out there and it takes a little while to snap out all the lines, get

183all the lines straight. They actually do it with a string line and then they can start painting them. Once it's painted, we can actually use it within 24 hours. So, phase two of the capital project of of 2023, the science classrooms. Um, this was a major undertaking. Again, I've got some great pictures of what it looks like when we tore down the walls, and it was just one long room. Um, and when we see it uh this Wednesday, uh, it really come a long way. So, these pictures really don't do it justice. Right now, we've got floors down. Uh, the cabinets, the countertops, sinks are going in. Um, all the gas turrets, fixtures, the ceilings are whited out. Um, it it's looking really great. Montgomery Elementary School. um on the left hand side. So, a

184lot of the first floor, I would say about 45% of the first floor ceilings, lighting, um everything was removed and replaced in kind. And on the right hand side there, uh which now has the ceiling, it's whited out, it's actually finished, is all the new duck work, um that we installed in that area. uh East Coldenham on the lefth hand side. Uh we did every classroom we were we added new ceilings, replaced all the old lighting uh with new lighting, energy efficient, really cool stuff. And on the right hand side, you can see uh some went up this morning, some not. Uh the new air handler system that was installed above the above the gym there or above the sorry, the stage. Uh phase three of the 23 capital project. uh that we're actually preparing

185uh on top of the much heavy se summer load we have. We're talking about um going out to bid, preparing our documents. We're, you know, coordinating with all all the uh internal um organizations here in the district and we're looking forward to um publicly bidding this in the fall winter of 2025. The 24 capital project, this is the Montgomery Elementary School roof, the pool filter, pool heater, skylights, and the districtwide door replacement. As you can see here, um the act all of the slate is actually complete today. Um we're waiting on the gutters. Everything's copper. It's going to look really cool. Um all that stuff arrives on on this Wednesday, Wednesday morning. Um so it's coming along really well. Middle school. Uh this is the pool. So on the left hand side, um is one

186of the pool heaters. There are now two. You used to have one. Um and on the right hand side is the pool filter. So that pool filter is currently running. Um we're working with the utility companies uh to get the gas back on in the boiler room at the high school. Um they are scheduled to come out here. Um there are two means of heating this pool. One is on the left uh the pool heater and then the other one is through the boiler through a heat exchanger. So uh we actually meeting with the with the installers uh for from from for the rest of the equipment on this Wednesday. I'll have more information when we're going to have the heaters uh ready to go then after that meeting. Uh 25 cabinet project. Um this

187is more in the future. Uh we're still working through this. This is the window lintils at Maybrook Montgomery gym floor at Montgomery. Air conditioning at middle school cafeteria. Uh the water holding tanks. The classroom floor replacements at East Colden Ham. And that's pretty much up for the update. Any questions? >> Uh, just one question. The work that's going on now, I know you'll have it done by Friday, but my question is, who's putting everything back? So, like we went through Bura Gym. Is that our facility team that's putting everything back? Do we have temps coming in to help move all this stuff? Like, who's who's putting everything back? >> What are you doing on Saturday? >> I'm cutting your lawn. No way. >> No chance. Uh yeah, that that will fall on us. Um I

188know we have some help coming in from uh the contractors as far as cleaning goes, final cleaning, but as far as putting everything back, it's going to be all hands on deck. We'll pull um staff from other buildings if we have to. I've volunteered my time if if I can help in any way, just move furniture and stuff, but it's it's going to be a heavy lift putting everything back together. For sure. >> If I may add one last thing, too. Thank you for that's a really good question. I want to thank everybody uh the school district, the staff, the head custodians, the custodians, everybody's been absolutely amazing through this whole process. Um they've been everybody's been jumping in helping and very positive about this. Um to put it in comparison on on what we're

189doing here this summer over a month and a half to two months is imagine building a hundred homes in seven different locations in less than two months. That's the undertaking that's that's happening here this summer. And I just been so pleased with everybody like backing us 100% and uh really understanding what we're going through. So I appreciate that very much. Makes our job a little easier. >> All right. Any questions? No. All right. Thank you. >> I don't have a question. I have a comment. Go ahead. >> I also want to say that I think it's incredible the amount of progress that's been made over the last I don't know maybe eight 10 years, you know, and it is incredible. But I also recognize that it's challenging, you know, for everyone that's involved in doing

190it. It's challenging for faculty and staff that are, you know, waiting and in the wings and, you know, having to deal with some changes or, you know, temporary changes that might, you know, um, you know, improve a little bit over time. So, I think it's a testimony to this district that we're, you know, really moving forward the way that we intended and wanted to do so many years ago. And it is a challenge to have to manage through this time. But I think once I think people need to take a look at some of the buildings um to really appreciate really what has what has happened. And I hope that people do take that time to do that, you know, outside um or at least go into the schools, you know, where your children are

191attending. >> Well said. Thank you, Fran. Okay, we're going to move on to commun community participation. Uh, we'll start down here, Bob. >> Okay, Fran. >> Just when I saw Berea today and I was very impressed >> and also very concerned and if I'm around Saturday, I'll try to come out. >> If Jane, >> I I just was able to attend the the building um visits today. >> Uh, yes, I also attended the East Golden Bura today. Diana >> um attended the building visits attended the vid the building visits today. >> same here. All right. Uh public comment. Nothing. Okay. All right. We're going to move on to old business. And I'm going to ask for a motion for the approval of the high school and middle school curricula. >> Katie. Second. >> Angela. Any

192discussion? All in favor? opposed 70. Okay. >> Thank you. >> Under under new business, I just want to make note we have uh item number three which is code of conduct plan language and then we have number five adoption of policies. We are going to move item five up in front of item three. Okay. So I'll do that when I get there. Uh we're going to start with the adoption of the 2526 district goals. Can I get a motion to adopt >> Fran? Second. >> J. Jane. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. 70. Thank you. Motion for the approval of the 2526 district safety plan. >> Katie. Second. >> Diana. Discussion. Forgot the discussion on this time. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. 70. Thank you. Okay. So, now we're going to do

193the adoption of policies 5695 and 8332. We are going to do each one individually and I'm going to um ask that we wave the second reading so that we can implement these because they are timesensitive. So, uh, hold on. Let me find my 86. Where did my 866 go? Sorry. Too many things open. Sorry. Sorry. Hold on. >> Huh? I don't know. Maybe. Okay. Uh, so let me get a motion to adopt policy 8332. >> Jane, >> Angela. Any discussion? All in favor? >> Opposed? 70. Okay. Now I'm going to take a motion to adopt policy 5695. >> Katie second. >> Jane. Discussion. >> I have some questions. >> So sorry to have to go through this again. Um, the governor's cell phone policy states that a backpack is not an appropriate place to store

194cell phones. Um, I'm going to read, I know I read it before, but I'm going to read it just for the record, uh, something directly from the governor's policy on cell phones. It says the law's intent is to restrict student access to covered devices for non-permitted reasons. Student backpacks are not an accept acceptable storage option. Policies should be made clear that continuous student possession of devices either on their person or in their backpacks is not adequate to prohibit student use as defined by law. It also then further goes on to say that lockers where lock students have free access to their lockers is also not an appropriate place. So I'm going to make a motion that we strike backpacks and lockers from that policy. >> Okay. So you can do that. So uh does anybody

195second that motion? Okay, then we will move forward with uh the approval on policy 5695. So all in favor >> opposed >> post. Okay. All right. 61. So five 5695 six to one. Okay. Now I'm going to go >> what? four. >> Yeah, I'm going to go into the multi-ter system. So, can I get a motion for the approval of the 2526 multi-tered system of support? >> Fran second. >> Katie, all in favor? >> Opposed? Okay. 70. Okay. Now, we're going to go to the adoption of the 2526 code of conduct and plain language summary. Before we do that, I'm going to ask Navila to give us an update because we did find something uh based on a question that came up earlier in the public meeting. So, I'm going to ask her to uh

196explain that please. So during the public meeting, there was a question regarding um in regarding to teachers having to um write a referral by by the end of the period. And I went to look further to find out that um the updated recommendations are now there. Um the updated recommendations that were that you may have received were not the updated recommendations. So because I was wondering the question um so >> so so what >> so yeah and so what was in our original packet didn't didn't have uh a sentence related to what you were asking. So if you go into board docs right now and look you'll see that it's highlighted and so that directly goes back to your question. Um, and that's why when you asked your question, her answer was specific to that,

197but we we didn't know at the time because we didn't have the latest version. So, if you go down to page 18, well, actually 15 on the document, but 18 in the uh attachment. >> This is the >> uh no code of conduct. Sorry. Sorry. >> Right. The other one. Sorry. It's page 15 18 in the PDF, but page 15 in the in the conduct. >> Yeah, >> so you're talking about the highlight. >> Yeah. So remember Bob's question was how are they going to do that in the middle class? And so that's what this is what is that quoted but >> it's numbered page 15. So basically what I bet told us, we just didn't have it at the time. >> So I was a little confused. >> It just the most recent one

198wasn't posted at the time. >> It was >> okay. >> So well because what happened was after you asked it and she answered, it didn't make sense because Right. So okay. >> So I was Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up because I was like I'm that's not what was already there. Yeah. And I'm glad that change was made because I didn't think it was um the amount of teachers that have to stop instruction to be able to, >> you know, create >> Yeah. >> create that report. >> Yeah. Okay. So, now that the most recent is out there, I'm going to ask for an adoption of the 2526 code of conduct and plain language summary. Motion to adopt. >> Jane second. >> Fran. Discussion. All in favor? I >> opposed 70. Thank you. All

199right. Now, I'm going back in order to number six and I'm going to ask for the approval of the 2526 agreement with Rick one risk operation center. Motion to approve. >> Jane second. >> Angela. Discussion. All in favor? >> Opposed? 70. Thank you. Uh, next is the approval of agreement with green chimneys. Motion to approve. >> Jane second. >> Katie. Discussion. All in favor? >> Opposed? 70. Thank you. Motion for the approval of 2526 UPK program agreements. Mot Diana. Second. >> Bob. Discussion. All in favor? >> Opposed? 70. Thank you. Next, the approval of the intermission agreement with the village of Walden for SRO services. Motion to approve. >> Angela. Second. >> Katie. Discussion. >> All in favor? >> Oppos? 70. All right. Uh, next is just make notice of this is to make notice

200of review, right? We're not approving. It's just available. >> Right. Okay. So, this is going to be on our September 8th agenda for approval, right? >> But it's already on schedules. >> Yes, it's already on schedules >> on my kids. That's how I noticed it. >> Um the the courses themselves are already on schedules, but it's only the sec there's only two days of school. So, the curriculum itself is what's being approved on Monday. >> Correct. So, it's only the first two days of school. So, the curriculum itself, but the the course sequencing, which was B um which I believe was board approved last at our last meeting where we re renamed courses and things along those lines that was already board approved and so that is on schedules and curriculum for those classes which

201have been updated uh will be approved on the 8th. >> So, they don't have to do any work on Thursday. >> No work on Thursday. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not that. No, not at all. It's late. So, >> okay. >> All right, that brings us to the end of our agenda. So, I just want to make one note. Um, in our retreat, we talked about being able to add items uh to the agenda. So, there's actually two policies related to that. So, I'm talking with the attorney about how we need to modify those policies and then we'll circle circle back around on that. So, just wanted to call out it's not forgotten. Um, okay. So, uh, Colin, thank you for being with us and streaming tonight. And I will take a motion

202to adjourn at 9:20. >> Second, >> Fran Katie. Discussion. All in favor? I >> 70. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Diana. Made it.