001Sarah. All the regular meeting board of education for Monday, June 9th. We're going to begin with the pledge. And after the pledge, if I could ask you to remain standing for a moment of silence for Jill Conlin, he passed away on May 26. Jill was an employee of the district from 1992 to 2017. Served as the principal secretary at the high school for 13 years. Please keep her family of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisibley and justice for all. [Music] some housekeeping before we move in. Please take note of the emergency exits on the side and behind you. No smoking anywhere on school property. And if you're planning to address the board, please sign in on the sheet on the table front here and this meeting is being streamed on
002my district YouTube page. We are going to go into the agenda and we'll begin with correspondence. We received an email from Michael Gonzalez and the K2 music faculty. Valley Central School District has been recognized as one of the nation's best communities for music education by the NAM Foundation. BC is being recognized for our work in providing our students with opportunities and access to a quality music education. This national recognition is a community award and reflects not only musical success but the support we get from your administrative teams and colleagues. It is also a reflection on the investment of our families and the greater VC community. We are very excited and proud to be sharing this news with you. Let's give them a round of applause. [Applause] accommodations. So, as you know, June is a very,
003very busy month. And some honorable mentions. We had the JOTC awards on May 14th. BC spring concert May 14th. Berea spring concert May 15th, Montgomery spring concert May 16th, fifth grade all district concert on May 20th. JRTC military ball May 21st, English Honor Society chord ceremony was on May 27th. Social Studies Honor Society induction was May 28th. National Junior Honor Society induction was May 29th. Festival of the Arts was May 30th. Math Honor Society court ceremony was June 1st. PTA Council end of the year social was June 2nd. Middle school night of specials was on June 3rd. High school senior dinner was June 3rd. Athletic awards night was June 4th. Business honor society induction ceremony was June 5th. And ALC senior brunch was June 6th. and the science honor society award ceremony was on June
0046 as well. We also I just want to give a special congratulation to our girls lacrosse team. They really uh worked hard and their heart and dedication showed as they were very successful this year. Let's give them a round of applause. [Applause] And if you get a chance, read the article about them in the Mid Hudson News. I also want to take this time and and opportunity to thank our student representatives. Every board meeting, we have two to three student representatives. And this year, they extended themselves and actually did an additional project. So, they have had times where they've had to come before board meetings to meet with the board chair and myself and the vice president of the board and and really work out things and and plan ahead. And so they have been
005a part um to lift student voices not only in high school this year but also at all levels. And so I want to give them a a special thanks to Jennifer Gay, Harmony Gutierrez, Ro Peterman for their contributions this year. We wish them much success as they pursue their college congre congratulations. [Applause] So this at this time I'd like to um present a special award to Miss Messing who is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the New York State School Board Association. This award is presented for her participation in leadership development opportunities totaling 500 points. Congratulations to Sarah. Come on out. [Applause] [Music] So, I also want to say um a special thank you to to Sarah who is retiring for her years of service on the board of education and her dedication
006to the students of Valley Central School District. Sarah began her board service in July 2016. She served as the vice president in 2017 to 2018 and 2018 2019 president in 2019 and 2020 and vice president in 2020 to 2021 and 21 to 22 and 22 to 23. So Sarah total of nine years. Um Sarah, um I just on behalf of Valley Central, the students, the families, the community, we want to give you a special token of our appreciation. [Applause] Congratulations. But before we go on, I just want to remind everyone that board members are volunteers. And since the day that I met Sarah, um Sarah has truly given um her heart and soul to Valley Central School District. anything you need, she's there. Anytime you need her, she's there. And her first thought is about
007the students at Valley Central. So, thank you. All right, so we're going to go round rob and round the table so everybody can have some well wishes for Sarah. Fran, we'll start with you. Thank you. I want to first say for myself personally, I want to thank you for all that you've given to contribute to the growth and improvements in our district and for keeping, you know, students first and foremost. You stepped in after I left the last time and I felt, you know, confident and, you know, you you proved me right. So, thank you so much and I wish you a lot of luck doing what you're doing with the rest of your time. Um I want to read to you in acknowledgement of something that was presented at the Axa school board meeting.
008So um Sarah was the representative for Valley Central and also you served on the committee the executive committee there and so Robin White um Sarah was unable to attend that meeting because she was taking care of parent duties. Um, and so this is from Robin White, who's the first vice president. Over the past nine years, Sarah Messing served the students of her district with compassion and professionalism. She brought a powerful presence during our advocacy work and helped advance our legislative priorities. As an active participant in Oxba and NISPA activities, Sarah consistently displayed the intellectual curiosity required for this role. Always seeking the information needed to make the best decisions. As a member of the Oxbow Executive Board, she brought valuable insight and experience to our discussions. As a trustee and as a person, Sarah led
009with kindness and empathy, and both her district and Oxa are better for it. I know I speak for the entirety of our organization when I say that Sarah will be greatly missed missed and I wish her nothing but the very best in the future. And there's a certificate. There's another certificate. No, there Diana will get it, too. Um, so I want to thank Sarah for being my campaign manager the first time I ran for the school board. um and for taking me under her wing um in teaching me basically everything I needed to know about being a board member, bringing me to the Oxa meetings, taking me up to lobby day. Um you will be greatly missed and um you you know part of your tenure was through the COVID years and so um thank
010you for your your guidance and your um I mean everything that you you did during those years. We're going to miss you. [Applause] I have a few things to say. She has a few things to say. Just a few. Just a few things to say. Weird. Sarah, you were the first to welcome me as a newly elected board member. You took the time to orient me on the proper procedures and operations of the board. You patiently and expertly answered my questions, and I spent my first year observing and learning from you. When our district and our board found ourselves on rocky and turbulent waters, you were the calm in the chaos. Your thoughtful comments and questions quieted the noise surrounding us. And your wisdom led us to making led us to the focus on all
011that is important so that we could come to the best and most fair decisions for our students and for our district. Thank you for all your service during your nine-year tenure. just to name a few. All the committee meetings you've attended, your presence at numerous student events, sometimes at the expense of your own family, your service as an Oxbow representative, as an officer on the board, and your years as vice president and president, and your especially your advocacy in Albany, annually lobbying our our representatives for better opportunities for our students. Your absence leaves enormous shoes to fill and your presence will be greatly missed. And don't be surprised next time that we have an executive session cookie meeting, you might receive a text from me to receive a little cookie delivery. Sarah, you've been the
012backbone of this board and the blue and white most definitely runs in your blood. It was an honor and a privilege to serve with you on this board and I will miss you. Good luck in all your next endeavors. Don't be a stranger. God bless and God speed. That's a That's a tough act to follow there, Katie. Go. I don't have to. She's got other stuff. You want to read it again? Oh, that's right. I have this for you, too. What's that? This was um presented to you at the OS meeting. All right. Ready for homework? So, like most of the other board members have already said, Sarah was the one welcoming, saying, "Yes, run for the board. Yes, do this." Um, you were definitely there um encouraging and I appreciated that. Make me take
013the leap. Um, and to also echo what other board members have said, you know, in meetings and discussions, you know, sometimes you get a little crazy and excited and you're always the one who's calm and say, "What about this guys? What about this guys?" You definitely put the students of the district first and um, I really appreciate all of our talks and all of your advice and guidance. And thank you, [Applause] Lass. A few times already, I've told Sarah that I was both happy for her and mad at her. And this will be the first time really for all of us that we'll be serving on a board without her. So, I would describe our time uh as part bad soap opera, part comedy show, part horror movie combined together, shot in 3D, but it
014was fun, meaningful, and full of lessons. We've had experienced quite a few plot twist and quite a cast of characters. So Sarah leaving is a big loss not only for our board but for the entire community and the students and the county. As Fran mentioned, I think I'll miss her the most because we weathered a lot together. And through the years Sarah's been a trusted colleague, friend, and confidant. She's smart, logical, and grounded. A great voice of reason, attuned to what really matters in our community. We're going to miss you, but don't go too far because even though we don't pay your salary anymore, we started a list of committees that you can be on. So, thank you very much. So, we're going to jump Oh, sorry. I was going to say my thank you
015to everybody at the end, but I will um do it now. So, thank you to you all and everyone that I've gotten to work with for the past nine years. You start this having very little idea what you are in for. But seriously, this has given me such a deep appreciation and respect for the work of public educators and respect for the and and how complicated public education is. I've learned so much about the district as a whole and it has definitely made me proud to have grown up here and still be a part of this district. There are a lot of special things that go on at Valley Central. So, thank you and I will miss you all. [Applause] She'll be signed up for public comment next week. Um, okay. So, uh, we're going
016to just take we're going to take, uh, one one chance to the agenda. We're going to move up the student report in front of the presentation. So, I'm going to turn it over to our student representatives and ask you guys to give your report and then we'll let you go. I probably have homework to do. Thank you so much. So, we're going to go ahead and start with our middle school activities first, which on June 5th, we had the eighth grade field trip to Lake Compounds Amusement Park and the Valley Central Middle School night of specials. And then the upcoming events we have for the eighth grade is the moving up ceremony on June 26. Moving to the elementary school activities, we have the um on June 5th, we had the East Coldenham student recognition
017night. On June 5th, we also Oh, sorry, June 6th, we had the Berea Elementary School me and my guy event. And then upcoming events, we have the Montgomery Elementary Father Day's breakfast on June 12th, the Berea Elementary Flags Day ceremony on June 13th, and we have the Walden Elementary School fifth grade social. Now, moving on to our sports, I would like to go ahead and personally congratulate our girls lacrosse team. when they were going ahead, a few of their teammates were going ahead and talking to me about how excited they were able to go ahead and be first ever to go ahead and compete on the state level, which they were all so proud of themselves. I'm very proud of them as well. They really did deserve it and they had such a wonderful season.
018And just them going ahead and talking about competing with Ithaca High School over at Bingington, they were really excited to go ahead and compete for one last time. And then also talking about our outdoor track and field, we had two state qualifiers, Dana Scott and Pablo Alio. Dana Scott for our triple jump and um Pablo Alio for our 800 meter. So good luck to them on June 13th and 14th. And then I would like to go ahead and talk about the athletic awards night on June 4th. Personally, I was there and it was such a privilege to go ahead and see all of the wonderful ath senior athletes that were able to go ahead and be awarded for all their dedication and hard work in their the sport they love. So, I would go ahead
019and give that to them and then moving on work will go ahead and talk about the high school activities. Okay, for high school activities and extracurriculars, we had court ceremonies and inductions for the English, social studies, math, business, and science honor societies. On May 30th, we had the Festival of the Arts, which displayed student work from all art classes with a ceremony run by the National Art Honor Society. Scholarships were given to Ava Golden, Iota Rajapaka, Ga Gavin Jenkee, and Samantha Kaiser with local art awards given to many more. Um, June 3rd, we had the senior dinner where senior superlatives were given out. Uh, June 5th, the spring pops concert and music awards ceremony was held. And today we had moving up ceremony where the yearbook dedication and senior barbecue took place. Upcoming we have
020senior awards on June 11th, NCAA signing celebration June 12th, studio band concert June 12th, the art honor society color run on the 14th, and finally senior graduation on the 28th. And that's all. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're welcome to stay if you'd like, but it's going to be a long meeting, so you're welcome to leave as well. Thank you very much. You guys did a great job this year. Okay, next we're going to move on to presentations. So, we are in for a treat tonight. We have all of our school leaders here to present their school improvement plans. um they will have only about up to 10 minutes to present um and so I just want to share that they actually took a year-long process in implementing their three
021objectives. Each one of them will share their objectives that are aligned to the strategic plan one in each priority. I think what's important to note is the the the work and the progress and also the process in which they engage their staff in order to make the changes that they wanted to make. So, I'd like to thank them right now for all of their hard work and their staff as well as they had a clear focus um and actually monitored that focus throughout the year. And this time we're going to start with Walden. So, Mr. Heinman, please join us. [Applause] [Music] I'll just bend down a little bit. Good evening, President Bond, members of the board of education, Superintendent Avia, colleagues, and community members. Thank you for the opportunity to share our progress at Walden
022Elementary School. I'm proud to represent the dedicated team of educators, staff, students, and family who have played a critical role in helping us move closer to the goal set forth in our school improvement plan. Our theme this year has been building momentum to success. And that's what we did. So tonight, I'll share how that momentum is taking shape across the three key priorities. student achievement and engagement, community belonging and VC pride, and clear and transparent communication. In priority one, our goal focused on improving student achievement and reading comprehension for our youngest learners in grades K through three. Our objective was to increase comprehension by 5% as measured by the NWEA ELA assessment. To do this, we implemented literature study, also called book clubs, to our little ones. A strategy that empowers students to engage in
023peer-led discussions, ask questions independently, and deepen comprehension. Here's a cute little video. I can write when I read, I get to talk about it with my friends. What was especially powerful was our fishbowl model. Older students modeled these discussions for our younger ones, fostering both mentorship and engagement across grade levels. Teachers received support through coaching cycles with our literacy consultant and myself. And I got to tell you, it really was a pleasure getting back into the classroom and being with the kids as much as I was able to. Although we didn't achieve 5% improvement, we did see 2% increase in reading comprehension as measured by the NWA. We've seen gains not just in data, but in the quality of student conversations, collaboration, and ownership of learning. This is a great start as we continue our
024efforts to increase student agency in reading. For priority two, we focused on fostering a sense of belonging and pride at Walden Elementary School. Last year, we met our behavioral goal of 25%. So, this year, we raised the bar and and went for another 25% specifically in our peer-to-peer uh relationships. We introduced a new system to track and celebrate positive behavior more meaningfully through Viking Bucks, the PBIS school store, and monthly PBIS assemblies. I'm really proud of this next slide. Our Viking Bucks usage by students at our PBIS school store increased by 50,000, showing that students are motivated and engaged with our program. That's a lot of Viking bucks. Our discipline data tells the story. Peer-to-peer incidents decreased by 16% this year. Fifth grade was both our biggest challenge and opportunity this spring. When spring fever
025hit, we adapted, revising the PBIS system based on student feedback to offer more meaningful rewards and responsibilities. Our team facilitated a fifth grade meeting to review expectations and introduce a student parent behavior contract for all of these students to review with their families and to be reminded of our PBIS expectations. We also met met with our fifth grade student council leaders to modify PBIS options for fifth graders to increase their engagement with our PBIS program. For fifth grade, these targeted changes created better buyin. This process is more than numbers. It reflects a community culture where students feel seen, valued, and celebrated. Next year, we'll build on this structure to make our PBIS system even more responsive. Making sure I'm on the right slide still. So, for priority three, clear and transparent communication. Our goal was
026to strengthen how we communicate with our Walden families. At the start of the year, only 44% of families were receiving our text alerts through school messenger. We took a multi-step approach starting in the beginning of the year with surveys during parent teacher conferences, updates to school tool, and thankfully, thank you district for switching to parent square. this district initiative. It really was a tremendous uh a tremendous success not only at Walden, but I know in the other buildings. So, um that was really a great idea and Parent Square, it's so much easier to use and you can put pretty pictures and all this cool stuff and our parents really enjoy it. So, as of May and after the switch to Parent Square, 96% of our parents are now receiving our communications. That's a 118% increase
027in successful Hume homeschool connections. This is more than just a statistic. It means that every family can stay informed about their child's school experience in real time, whether it's an event, an emergency update, or a celebration. As we reflect on this year's progress, I really need to emphasize that none of this would have been possible without without a collaborative commitment. From our staff using best practices to students leading with pride to families staying informed and engaged, we are all pushing in the same direction at Walden. At Walden, we are the West community and that spirit is alive in everything we do. Thank you for your time this evening and continued support. I am the very proud principal of Walden Elementary School and I rely on the tremendous efforts of everyone in our school community to
028promote student growth and success. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Nice job, Greg. Tough act to follow. Um Matthew Canino, Prince McGomery Elementary School. I'm happy to be here tonight and share our year at a glimpse. Um how we've done with our three priorities and we get started. So, as Greg stated, working on elevating student success and engagement. We set the lofty goal to start the school year. As Joe Bon shared in our first presentation in October, 65% of students will be proficient on the NWE assessment. There's lots of ways that we gauge our students success. We chose NWA as a standard measure. Um, and I'd like to highlight a 7% that calls for a 7% point increase as we look forward to this year's data. um various strategies that we've used throughout the
029year. Focus on the curriculum, collaboration and planning. Um pro work with teachers on providing differentiated instruction and and um student engagement, which is something that we spent a lot of time on and I'm very proud that you will see in our in our progress. We focused heavily on the consultants and their work with teachers on um bimonthly meetings um meeting with every grade level team and focusing on um what we have new going on and the standards that we're teaching. Um we looked at high level twos and lowle threes to create progress in those students. And you will see that we've had good success in elevating those level twos. Um during TA data team meetings, teachers worked on strategies to focus on interventions that we used during intervention block um to focus on specific student
030needs. And then we spent a lot of time unpacking engagement strategies and working with teachers on implementing those strategies within the classroom. Um, how do I get to these? Here's some pictures of students engaging in work together, collaborating. So, as I said, I wanted to focus on the 7% increase. Um, we did not meet that lofty goal, but we made a 3% increase in student proficiency. And the one thing that I would really like to highlight is that out of those level twos that we were focusing on to elevate their success, 41 students that were a level two met proficiency in this year's NWA assessment um this spring. So, um some things to look for throughout moving forward. Um, next year we're going to focus on implementing the CKLA uh curriculum, remain focused on those
031high level twos. And one thing that we recognized is that we need to heighten our focus on the lowlevel threes because there were some slides um in low-level threes that caused us not to have as much growth as we planned on. As far as community belonging and VC pride, we focused predominantly on the climate and culture survey that was given to staff and students last school year. Um some things that came out of that was that we were looking to show 80% success in teacher targeted quest um create creating environment of welcomeness. So, some things that we've done this year to create a climate of acceptance and share people's staff's voices. Um, Mrs. Werner and I and the consultants tried to get in classrooms more and just have conversations with teachers, be present, talk to
032them about what's going on. Um, let them know that we know what's going on and we want to work with them to make improvements. We design activities regularly to build collegiality. This is a hundth day. The staff dressed up as they were 100 years old as well as the students. Just bringing fun to the every day that t go takes place at Montgomery Elementary. We have regular staff lunches and breakfast to build collegiality amongst staff. Um we had an amazing founder celebration this year recognizing Tracy Chashetta in her 20 some odd years of hard work. Um all the kids sing songs recognize the staff members just celebrating their hard work over the years. So some of the some of the climate and culture survey results coming out of this spring um looking at how positive
033the tone of the school leaders are stepped in for the culture of the school. Um how important is teacher satisfaction to the school leaders? How kind are your school leaders toward you? I am very kind person. I should know that 95%. Um, how respectful are your school leaders toward you? Again, high results. And I would say coming into being a principal, my goal, especially in elementary school, has always been to create a love of learning and just that the kids want to be there and teachers want to be there and that's where you need to start to get success. So that's always where I come from. I am in the hallways hugging children, supporting them on an everyday basis and that's because I just want them to be want to be in school and that's
034how they will put themselves in an opportunity to be successful. The last one, last priority is clear and transparent communication. So we put some new systems in place this year to um share communication in a timely manner. are the goal was for 100% of staff to receive the communication, but more so is for them to have an opportunity to respond and identify and give input. So, we we added we do a daily bulletin. We added a piece to the daily bulletin where they can add questions or make comments related to what's going on every single day. Um, as Greg said, Parent Square has been a wonderful tool to share information with staff and parents. And as always, we have regularly scheduled meetings with Paris and staff. I just want to say that um in ending
035my in ending my presentation tonight, I'm very proud of the staff um in their ability to make some changes. There's a lot of changes going on right now and um in the way we're teaching, the way we're looking at data, the way we're working with students and I commend them on their resilience and dedication to teaching and um I look forward to continue that work in in striving to make gains. Here are some of the climate culture survey data related to um communication. You can see the growth there as well. That's it. Thank you for your time. [Applause] I hope I'm next. I'm just jumping in. I won't have to bend down for this, Greg. So, thank you. In fact, it was a little too tall for me. Good evening. Thank you for giving us
036the time to review our uh SIP objectives for the year as everyone else tonight. I'll be talking about the same three priorities with a little bit of a twist. Uh our team worked very hard this year as is the common thread that I think you'll hear from everyone tonight. Uh but I am very proud of the work that we've all done and uh on behalf of them, I want to thank uh Superintendent Avala for giving us the sip and the the pinpoint of direction for the school year. It's been very very much needed and a good step. So, but I only have 10 minutes. Uh, so for our student success and engagement priority one, uh, our goal was to increase achievement for students close to proficiency on the ELA for NWA. In doing that, we
037identified 67 students who are within 10 points of level three or proficiency on the New York State assessments. According to NWA, our strategies for this objective were to align our engagement with our students needs to differentiate during MTSS and to goals set with our students throughout the year and just prior to the NWA. The goal setting, I would say, is probably the most uh recognizable change in the building. I've had a number of teachers come to me and say that students have approached them after the assessments and said they didn't think they did as well as they could have and asked if they could retake the assessment. And a number of those students show up uh growth again on the second assessment. So, the fact that the students are internalizing the uh results and want
038to do better tells me that we've struck a chord with them. In addition, uh throughout our work with engagement, someone in the building brought up the the text the book uh building thinking classrooms and we began a book club where a group of us we're actually meeting tomorrow as the capstone for the program at least for this year. Started reading the book together and looking at ways to improve our student engagement and our teaching strategies to make teaching more interesting for our students. Um and here you can see on the top there are a couple of pictures of the students utilizing the strategies and we utilized it in the faculty meetings as well so that we had a chance to see it in action before we uh showed it to the students. So our results
039um actions like student goal setting uh and classroom visits we completed those uh the engagement we had an engagement fair where we shared uh different strategies that we utilized in each classroom. Um, our I lost my spot here. I'm sorry. Our results, we had 24% of our targeted students reach proficiency in the spring. Uh, in the winter, however, 51% of those students reach proficiency. So, that sliding scale towards the end of the year is where we need to focus next year to see what we need to adapt. The uh the big takeaway for me though is if you look at the graph on the left here, that red line is zero growth. the majority of our students made growth throughout the course of the year and that uh all the way to the right is
04035 points. So anywhere from 0 to 35 points is where the major I'm sorry 5 to 35 points is where the majority of our students landed for the NWA ELA assessment. 81% of our students grew by five points or more this year for VC pride. uh belonging and pride. We set a goal of 100% of our staff working collaboratively and showing 80% satisfaction on the culture and climate survey. The strategies that we identified uh were celebrations, communication, and shared agency. For example, we had Monday morning meetings at 8:45 where we would all gather in the lobby and talk about the upcoming events. that quickly turned into the celebration of who's getting married, who's having a baby, whose kid is doing something great in college or in school. Uh we had potluck lunches during our conference
041days and uh that has it started off as something that was a lot of planning on my end and the teachers have taken it over and I'm happy to say that I just show up and barbecue now. So, it's great. Uh, we had so much fun with it and we got tired of borrowing the high school's barbecue that we did a collection and we've recently purchased a brand new Blackstone. I've been asking my kids for one for Father's Day for years, but a $10 donation got me one at school. Uh, our one school, one book was another great way to build some some belonging in the building. We all read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this year. The students, the teachers, and the parents read it. It was a chapter a night and then we'd
042have discussions and activities in the building the next day. Uh we had our steam night centered around Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. If you don't think you could ever eat enough chocolate, show up to a steam night like that and you'll never want to see it again. So our results for that uh 99% of our staff feel that they are respected and supported. Sorry Matt, I think I beat you. 94 to 99% had positive ratings on key culture indicators. Our Monday morning meetings, like I said, have now become a cultural cornerstone in our building. Uh if I don't make the announcement five minutes before, I have people knocking on to my door saying, "Aren't we meeting?" It's it's a very nice thing to have happen. And we have school events such as our first real
043holiday party in years. We have an end of year celebration coming up at the end of this this month. um and a lot of uh fun activities going on throughout the course of the year uh that have all helped to reinforce a sense of belonging. For clear and transparent communication, we set a goal of 80% agreement on the uh culture and climate survey with 90% of our faculty participating. Uh some of the things that we did for communication uh we talked about this last time is I would hide little clues uh riddles in our uh faculty bulletin and the staff would read it and throughout the course of the day it would be fun to watch on the cameras as the staff would be roaming around the hallways looking for what this riddle was uh
044indicating and then someone would find a Dunkin Donuts card or a scratch off behind a picture or under something in the hallway. Uh so our survey results 92% of our staff completed the survey and I'm still debating that with our consultant because there were many people who did the general link and not the specific link. So I think it's more than 92% although he's we're going back and forth all day today. 94 plus% in agreement that communication has improved and teachers have noted improvements in clarity and responsiveness from the office and from each other. We keep talking about communication not being just the dissemination of information but the sharing of ideas not only with the administration but with the building itself. Our staff newsletters, meeting agendas and shared values that we created have created transparency.
045Uh we have an ongoing effort to embed communication within our building including parent square again it's fantastic uh the monthly newsletter for our teachers and our our paras. So we have a newsletter that goes out just to our staff so that they can see what's coming up for the month ahead and then a daily bulletin is reminders and then we throw in the Monday morning meetings to have a little bit of fun. So, we are very proud of the momentum that we've taken this year, although we haven't hit all of our goals. We showed some very good growth and that growth mindset is something that makes me proud and I hope everyone in my building proud. I will take a moment and say, Mr. Bond, feel free to quote. You told me I wouldn't hit
046that 60%. You were right. I was hoping to tell you I I made it. Uh, each priority that we have is tied to student success, staff wellness, and community engagement. And I want to thank again central office and the board for their continued support and all that we do. It has been a very fun year and I hope to make it even better next year. So thank you very much. Hi, good evening. I'm Carara Rap and I have the joy of serving as principal of Berea Elementary School and we're excited to share what our team has been doing at Berea. So our priority one um was a goal to provide 24% of students who scored a high level two on the MAPS testing NWA with targeted prescriptive intervention during the MTSS block. um because we
047looked at the data which said that the students who were the lower level twos or level ones many of them were receiving tier 2 and tier three interventions like AIS they were getting support. So we really wanted to look at those highle twos and give them prescriptive intervention to push them over the top to that level of proficiency. So once we identified our students um we collaboratively developed some prescriptive instructional engagement strategies um to deliver during the MTSS block. The artifact on the right here um is a tracker that was developed by our consultants um and it really focused on the instructional area in need of support for each individual student. And during the MTSS block, the teacher would deliver prescriptive targeted intervention on say foundational skills or vocabulary acquisition and use. The philosophy being
048if you give students what they need, they will grow. So our goal of 100% of those highle twos was not met. That was a lofty goal. However, out of our 112 students, we ended up with 109. A couple had moved, a couple were absent. 27% of those students did reach a proficient level. Um, that's the green area on the pie chart. Um, the orange is students who did not reach proficiency but did show significant growth. Um, and then the red is students who did not demonstrate growth. Um but of those who did not reach a level of proficiency, 80% of them demonstrated um an average growth score of 11 points. And 84% of the priority students, the high level twos, demonstrated an average growth of 13 points, which was significant growth. For our priority two,
049we wanted to focus on students um showing early evidence of being at risk in the areas of attendance, academics, and behavior since early intervention is critical. And so is the impact of a connection with even one trusted adult in the school setting. So here we have our goal, which was really a three-part goal. Um, we wanted to implement a stto student mentoring program where staff members would meet with their student mentee a minimum of two times a month for lunch. Um, and we set a three-part goal to increase attendance, um, increase academic performance and decrease the number of behavioral referrals after the implementation of the program. So, we looked at our bas our baseline data um and Dillinger um created a um a tracker which was linked to our student information system to track all
050of those things, behavior referrals, attendance data, etc. Um and our staff mentors attended training with New York State mentoring and they began meeting with their mentees um having lunch, playing board games, um talking about common interests and um we tracked that on a Google form so we could see how often they were meeting, what kinds of activities they were doing. And as a result, 42% of our mentees had fewer absences after the start of the program. 79% of our mentees had the same or fewer discipline referrals after the start of the program. Um, our mentors and our mentees were surveyed through a Google form. 100% of the mentors would like to see the program continue next year. And 100% of the respondents, the students felt the program made their school experience more positive. Um perhaps
051um the the thing that we're most proud of was the climate and culture survey. The percentage of students who feel they have access to at least one trusted adult. Um in the fall it was 91%. We really saw that go up. Winter and spring um an increase of 5%. That 14% is for a different slide. So parts of the goal were met and some were in fact exceeded. um the academic goal was not met. Mentes grew approximately 3.7% on their maps as compared to 7% of their non-ment mentees. I would offer the reason that um during meetings we there wasn't a heavy focus on academics. It was really just creating that authentic connection. for priority three, our transparent communication goal. Um, we looked at the spring 24 survey as well as a survey I had
052put out for my entry plan when I came to visit in June of last year and communication um definitely was a focus. Um, so I really wanted to build a systems approach for collaboration. The objective was to increase how effectively school leaders communicate information by 25%. So, some of the things that we put in place were collaborative agendas. Um, on the right, the artifact is an example. It's an excerpt from one of our team leader meetings. Um, the agenda is a live doc. It's collaborative team members, admin, if they want to raise issues, you can add it. um comment on it and we just really wanted to elevate all voices. So it really wasn't this dissemination of information during the team leader meetings. It was really a collaborative problem-solving approach. Um we also initiated monthly
053meetings with PAR professionals to provide support and training that wasn't done previously and we also meet with um PAR unit representation monthly um which also wasn't done previously previously. We have a daily bulletin on a live dock so that our staff can have information in real time. So the effectiveness of the newly implemented communication strategies on this side. This is from the winter climate and culture survey. The collaborative agendas 79% of staff felt they were effective or highly effective. the live doc daily bulletin with the real-time information, 68% felt it was effective or highly effective and the monthly power meeting, 77% felt they were effective or highly effective. Um, how effectively do school school leaders communicate important information? Um, the spring 24 survey, it had staff it um staff and teachers were pulled separately. So,
054it was about 46% um as opposed to the spring which is 60% about 14 um% improvement but still a goal that I really want to focus on. Um I want to thank you so much for your time and thank the team at Berea for giving it their Berea best always. Thank you. [Applause] It's me. All right. Sorry, we weren't sure of the order necessarily. We were arguing about that today as well. So, good evening everybody and thanks for having us, of course. Um, building momentum for success with my faculty. actually did charades with them recently and I was going to try to make everybody in here do it but people told me I should probably stay away and get through our presentations which I'm happy to share. It was a really good time and it
055kept everybody moving and collaborating with each other. So it was a good time. So actually you'll see a lot of similarities with myself and Berea believe it or not in our choices and what we needed to focus on this year. So for student improvement, uh we were really focusing on NWA uh trying to get 50% of our students um that were high priority students from a level two to level three. We chose these kids because they were about five points in the fall away from being proficient. So they we identified them as um the 112 students. So we continued this process looking at instructional strategies. Um, what I really loved about this goal besides really diving into NWA and and giving it a better purpose for students at the middle level, like they understood what
056was going on. We had teachers do um uh different uh like feedback. The students did their own reflection cards and really looked at their scores, understanding the the importance of it and and that it mattered in their growth of their learning, which we found was a great increase. So that alone helped us in just the administration of the exam or the the MAPS uh assessment. However, it also allowed for a lot more collaboration amongst the staff. For example, our our non-English and math areas realized pretty quickly that we really need to focus on vocabulary, for example, in our content areas because students were lacking in that area. So therefore, it was great for them to put together strategies um to help with that for our priority students. So much like some of the others tonight,
057we did not reach our goal of 50% of our students um reaching a level three. However, we did make 31%. So we had 34 students that did meet proficiency. But just like with everybody else, it's really important to understand the difference between growth, right, and proficiency. Two words we've heard a lot here tonight, right? So if we look at growth, it's like the trajectory. It's kind of like the path they're taking to get there. whereas um proficiency is like the destination. So even though we maybe didn't reach proficiency, we had a great deal of growth just like the others did. We had a 75% of our priority students that were at risk show growth which is pretty amazing which means there's positive learning taking place, right? And that's just been seen with everybody's efforts for
058sure across the board. But as you can see 72 stu student students either uh stayed or the same or grew. 26 students grew at 0 to four uh points. 32 students 5 to 10 points. 10 students 11 to 14 and four students greater than 15 points. Uh so again each each administration that that goal score rises. So that's why you see that increase there. But again I think that is a great achievement and we always want to just see growth in our students. We all know students develop at different levels as well. So, uh for some of them they had great gains, for others they had small ones, but still they definitely made some changes. This next one is community sense of belonging. So, one of the things that um we started last year in
059our SIP was really creating an attendance team and attendance processes to focus on our atrisisk students. Um and what I mean by at risk is those students that have chronic absenteeism. Right? If they're not there, they can't learn. they're not connected to adults, all those important things that go along with education. So, we began to focus on student relationships or relationships with students for all of our atrisisk students. Um, one of the most powerful things we did as an example is in the beginning of the school year, and I might have shared this already, but it's worth sharing again. We identified every atrisisk kid that was in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And we put their names on large index cards. And we asked the staff to walk around the faculty room or the the
060big cafeteria and look around at the names and write down your name next to each child that you knew more than just their name, that you knew something about them, right? That connectedness. And then we looked at the kids that had no adults names next to it. And those kids became our priorities for this school year along with us still continuing with our attendance uh systems that we developed in terms of having case managers. We have an attendance team. Um we always communicate with parents how to get in touch with us about students attendance and also we started these nudge letters which basically is just a really a general visual of our kids that are on the cusp of becoming chronic. And this was actually a great motivator. We gave out a lot of homework,
061I mean, uh, ice cream passes because these students really took it seriously when they saw, oh boy, I've missed that many days. I got to, you know, I kind of got to make an effort. So, we did see that help us in our efforts to get more students to attend school. Um, as you can see also, we've been working hard to get the Office of Mental Health to have an outside counselor because we found a lot of our students that are at risk with attendance, especially are dealing with lots of things outside of school that are bigger than what we can only help with them in our walls. So, that's been a great addition to our team as well. And um, for us, we definitely have seen a success um, in our efforts. Uh, 50%
062of our atrisisk students had fewer absences this year than last year, which is fantastic. Um and you can see that our average students the second half of the year also increase which we also find to be awesome. Even with their their ability within their academics, we saw 10% of them um hit proficiency. So I think that again speaks to the more they're there, the more they're learning. Um additionally, I think one of the best celebrations is typically historically at the middle school. We have students our average chronic absenteeism is actually one of the highest in the district. Usually, typically it's it's between us and the high school. And um this year, I'm happy to report that as a middle school, we have stayed below the district average for chronic absenteeism. And um I think that's
063a huge uh feat for a middle level. Um so I'm proud of the work that everyone's done. We've even come up with some great strategies for next year. For example, one team took their atrisisk kids and they gave each one of them a case manager so that if you know Fran is an atrisisk student and she's absent, I'm reaching out to her, right? So maybe out of my whole team, I might have five kids on my case load besides the attendance team that we do for the entire building. So that's really been a great strategy that we've um that we will implement next year across all teams. So I'm very excited about the work we've been doing there. And finally, the last uh the last area was uh clear and transparent communication. So, I love
064this one. I do. Here's the thing. There's a myth, right, especially at the middle level, that if a parent contacts uh their child's teacher, that there's going to be like a retaliation against their child. Like, so parents are always hesitant to reach out with a concern. So, we wanted to try to debunk that myth and that that idea that goes around. And we started off by trying to focus on positive teacher and parent communication. And we did that by doing two to three purposeful con parent contacts every week for any students that you had. Occasionally it would be done by a team, but we really wanted to make sure that each individual teacher started to make those connections with parents to make it easier so that when we did have to maybe have a difficult
065conversation, we already knew each other. We already touched base. We already connected. Um, so I did a parent guardian survey at the beginning of the year and then I also did one midyear as well. Um, I will say if those of you who are familiar with surveys, a lot of times we don't get a great response, but for both of them we had about 200 parents respond, which is a pretty great number. Um, I think I kept it simple. There were like five questions for the first survey only. Um, very short and sweet. It was the only thing I sent out um, through our communication tools and I think that really made a difference um, in just getting their feedback. Our first survey was what do you want to hear about your child from us?
066Like what is it that you need as a parent? Do you want to know about their social emotional well-being? Do you want to know about their academic progress? Do you know how do you want to know how they're getting along with others? And so we took that information to utilize that for our communication with parents. Um and as you can see here, I I met with every single team and what we did is we talked about the pros and cons of the work that we did. And we also made everyone accountable. Like if you contacted a parent, we had a dish a buildingwide uh spreadsheet, you had to place it in there. This way we knew students that were not being connected. This way you made sure that those were a priority. And um they
067made parent teacher conferences go smoother. The teachers said more parents responded than they expected and going to extracurricular events to communicate with parents was helpful. A lot of the parents a lot of the teachers reported. I'm excited about that 5,568 because because we kept track of everything and we accounted for it. We made over 5,000 positive parent contacts this year at Valley Central Middle School. And um you know, although it is a best practice, you get lost in really working on the struggling students that are in your classroom. And I'm really proud of the efforts that the staff made, even though they might have bucked me on the accountability piece, but we made it through. Um but as you can see, most of the parents in the blue really appreciated the positive outreach. it was
068positive for them but it was also very positive for their child as well. Um and we wanted to celebrate that. Um and then you could see with our culture and climate survey much like everybody else uh parents are reporting respectful relationships between teachers and students. Students are reporting that uh positive um are the attitudes of all the staff. Right? So we see some nice numbers here in terms of creating that positive environment and making everyone feel communicated with and and also a part of. So very proud of the work that we've been doing here. So thank you. [Applause] ALC is next. Thank you. She went over, didn't she? What she got? That was close, James. She tried to brag that she was going to be the fastest one, but I don't know about that. Good
069evening. Thank you again for having us here to talk about our successes. Um at ALC we are constantly striving to um provide personalized learning for each of our students and ensure each of them is growing and succeeding. In order to do that we had really focused on three goals. We took our data, we analyzed it, we used our data to support our children holistically and we really wanted to improve our student voice. One key measure that we used was the NWA for the middle school. Um looking at that we realized that when we were analyzing our data um our annual goal so my goal was from um the fall to spring what we realized is yes I wanted those 10 points right for each of those kids when we looked at the halfway through let
070let me back up a little bit. So halfway through um we had um realized that we only were two students shy of hitting those 10 points halfway through. So I was like, "Oh yes, we're we're there." Um now that we're looking, we're each um we're at an average of six and a half%. And I'm like, "Wait a minute." Like what what happened? Right? So what we realized as we dug a little deeper is that our cohort change changes. So it fluctuates. So in the middle of the year we we were we were there and some of some of the kids went back some we had new students. So it kind of fluctuated. So that's really because when I saw six and a half I was like wait a minute. But really it really was we
071really made a good success there. Um, so our faculty used one-on-one meetings um to review progress individually with each of our students and they use some of the the strategies that you see listed in their classrooms to really make that happen. We learned we really leaned into what um what makes us different and what makes us different is our ability to personalize our students learning. This year we really laid the foundation for our students. Um 85% of our students filled out a a template of those student um um slide decks that we had spoke about earlier. With our high school students, we place a strong emphasis on building confidence and accountability. We want our students to not only succeed academically, but to take ownership of their learning and to have that voice. one of our
072biggest steps towards implementing student led conferences. And I'll be honest, that was a much larger undertaking than I initially imagined. Um, but the student slide decks really helped and we really used that to reflect on the students learning. So, the students were able to um let us know what was working for them, what wasn't working for them, and how they actually felt about their learning. So, our faculty really use that to our advantage. it was very valuable to them. We did have one student pilot a studentled conference. So that was a learning experience as well. So what that one student was able to um go through with the whole thing. So they prepared, the teacher prepared and the family was really this is some feedback that you see. Um and the most valuable thing was
073the partnership between both the student, the family and the faculty. For our second priority, um we are looking to build confidence um in difficult conversations and trust not only for our students but our faculty and staff. How we did that? We used project adventure as our tool. That was our driving tool to get kids to start interacting with each other, getting comfortable, and building trust. A lot of our students are not the typical student of you know they they have a little bit of trouble. So the physical activity with them really helped to get them up and moving and talking and focusing and using their voice and goal setting and and really working on that communication piece. Here you'll see pictures of um two different activities, both staff and students. for the ones on each
074end. That was an activity that the students were making um tinfoil boats and they had to determine how many um pennies would make it sink. So that was a an activity that they did. And then this ones in the middle was a Lego activity, communication, working on communication backtoback. You had to use your words to figure out and how to build and they had to see if the words matched what they were building and if they came out correctly. So that was some fun that we had. The results of that we looked at um we each student did a exit ticket every time. So we saw a shift uh 25% reported an increase in the ability to communicate ideas. 20% was also um an increase in willingness to take the leadership role. So our students
075um you know gained confidence and and trust in one another. The skills these skills will serve them far beyond the classroom academics. Project adventure is at times physical and group activities that is a powerful way to include trust building risktaking for both our students and our staff. When speaking to staff, we really wanted to have them um build confidence in a more um challenging conversations. So 80% of our staff reported that they um felt that increase in their confidence for transparency and communication. Um we really wanted to meet with two twice per quarter for every um student. Although we didn't get to twice per quarter, we were able to get one one time per quarter. Um, so we have done over 147 parent meetings, over 34 informal meetings, and we successfully met one time per
076quarter. So next year, our focus will definitely be on those positive interactions with our families to continue to establish parent relationships and to establish preferred communication for all of our students and families, whether that's email, phone, however they prefer. We want to make sure parents feel heard, stay informed, and are a true part of the educational journey. Just want to take a moment to just say that we really dialed into individual growth um in every sense whether it was academic, personal, and emotional. We know that the path is not always linear and the data doesn't always tell the full story. But when we listen to our students, adjust our approaches, and stay committed to helping them grow into their best selves, that's when the real impact happens. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening, President Bond, members
077of the board, Superintendent Avula, members of the assistant superintendent, staff, and our community and colleagues. Uh, well done. Thank you so much for an excellent job this uh this evening. I'm the proud principal of Valley Central High School, Russell Burns, and I'm going to report on um our priorities uh this year and our progress on it. Um as you can see from our priority number one, uh we started off with a goal of a 15% um increase in completion rate for 9th and 10th graders. What studies show is that uh our nth and tth grade is really where we need to focus in on on supporting and providing strategies, individualized strategies and support uh so that our students can be become successful. If they're more successful at the ninth and tth grade level, they'll most
078likely become more successful at the junior and and senior level and graduate on time. And uh and we did that through professional development for our teachers. Um tying engagement strategies to foster academic success and creating a system to monitor student progress. We created a system with the district data uh person to monitor. We identified a group of 90 um at risk students or target students that were already behind in English and math. And we worked with those teachers once again to provide um individualized structured support for those students and we supported them through monitor um quarterly progress. We monitor each quarter. We attended department level meetings and we met with department chairs in order to discuss how to best support um those students individually. We identify the elements of engagement and really just defined as
079a building what would specifically to a high school classroom what those engagement what does engagement look like and we took time even as department chairs to then go into each our each one of our classrooms and discuss and and show what does engagement look like and it really helped us to get on the same page regarding um what we're looking for and what we would like to see in each one of our high school classrooms. And of course regular attendance monitoring as mentioned uh prior attendance is key component to student success and supporting our students in that way. We're directly affecting their their um academics. So our projected uh results here and uh nth and tth grade this is our complete ninth and tth grade with one failure at EA math. Um unfortunately our data
080doesn't support really what we're what our goal is. Um but what we're seeing is that we're anticipated to level off of where we were last year. Um our we're still within that fourth quarter and we still have final exams and regions. So a good portion um 20% maybe even 30 of our grades are still yet to be um uh calculated into the overall. But what we anticipate is modest gains. But we definitely need further support in level one tiered interventions. And this is an area that we're going to continue to work on with your teachers, discuss and have um support from outside consultants to help our our teachers embed that within the course curriculum. What we have done is create a system to track our students and to identify those students that really need that
081um targeted support and we're able to u use that tracking system from year to year. And we're we have explored student support strategies at the high school level and define what works and what doesn't work at the high school. And our staff is um exploring that together. And our goal for next year is really to focus on cooperative learning strategies that would look um similarly across uh grade level and be very specific for the high school specifically to foster collaboration and instructional engagement. So these are the conversations that we've already started to have at the high school and our department chairs, our teachers on on board with that and we're gaining a common language in order to set ourselves up for success in that. Our second priority of course was community belonging and BC pride
082and we did many activities this year to support this. Our goal was a 20% increase in stronger uh more meaningful relationships between adults and students and we've definitely seen um gains in this area. We would like to we wanted to create opportunities for adult student relationship building and develop opportunities for community building and celebrations and we try to do this um several times um each quarter both in at smallcale and largecale opportunities. So several things that we've done this year and this is just a few out of the many is we've developed a seal culture and climate committee social emotional support and in which students and staff were able to this is uh geared from the ground up as far as how to recognize student achievement and and and their uh behavior and good work.
083We had quarterly meetings dedicated to community building events, schoolwide events. So, a couple things we did this year was a winter fest which brought the whole school together and had u activities studentled. Um, today of course as you know was moving up day and it's really studentled and student generated. And then of course um even we rolled out decorating parking spot day although it rained and washed all away all the chalk but uh that was a fun activity last week and that we've rolled out for the first time. Once again, all student led and student driven. And that's what we've been trying to do in in giving our students raising their voice within the school. And of course, partner with our PTSA. They often do activities with us uh for our students throughout the school
084year. And they're a big part an important part of our school community. And we implemented an outdoor lunch for students. And you wouldn't think that this is a big deal, but um high schools across the county have been saying our high schoolers need to get outside. they need to get sunshine and it's important. So we have implemented that and have gotten really great results um from from our students. So you can see here the ser survey results in the fall uh 45% of students responded they they feel often or somewhat feel lonely at school. In the spring survey um 29% of students responded that they feel agree that they feel lonely at school. this was a drop in 16% in student loneliness which um obviously we we want to address that and we want to
085see much greater gains there. However, we know that we are as a nation in in the middle of a mental health crisis and our students need need more and more and we're going to keep on um leaning in on um finding uh targeted ways to address our students um mental health needs. A big part of that is socialization and getting them to um interact with each other and with us. Um so we did see a drop in that but obviously um we are going to continue to work on that. Takeaways we've implemented and adopt a senior program this year in which we especially those seniors that are in jeopardy. We've had a staff member tied to each senior and they check on them regularly. They they they ask them how they're doing and even help
086them with homework if needed. they they work as a gobetween between between um classes and home and hoping to get them across that finish line. So, that's an exciting program we started this year. Um student recognition, you saw before with the the tickets, uh more and more of our students are being recognized and this is a PBIS initiative uh that our teachers um have implemented and students are are getting into it and we're having students uh recognized much more often. Uh we had a community building concert. Uh we've been doing learning walks with um with our department chairs and then we are finding that just kids in general are feeling more welcome and settled in school which is a great takeaway. And of course our clear and transparent communication. That's priority number three. And what
087we wanted was um an increase in parent engagement and awareness increased by 40%. Uh pretty advantageous I would say which was pointed out in the fall. And um what you can see here is measured by the district culture and climate survey. And that's such an important tool for for us and measuring how we're doing. Um we are finding that um uh that it it can help us and can be a useful tool especially when we're leaning in on some of those numbers. And our strategies of course is um we're attempting to engage families in comm communication, develop different modalities of communication and that has been been a big tool for us this year especially with parent square and then tailor parent messages provide communication. So we've done um multiple things this year including monitoring parent
088participation in school events. We've been keeping track of how many um how many and what and we've had a lot of people come through our doors over um just for parent teacher conferences. We have we have literally have over 2,000 parent teacher conferences between between uh parents and teachers. We have over a thousand people coming in for open house. The numbers are just staggering how much our teachers are in um uh in communicating with parents. Um one big thing is individualized school messaging. We've sent over 120 parent messages this year tailored specifically to individual groups within our community. and we're getting good feedback in general. We've run parent coffee talks and parent workshops. One of those is through the uh alcohol and drug abuse council um by we have Natalie Gado who's a representative in
089our building middle school, high school and actually districtwide um and that's a that's one of the conferences that they've uh that's one of the workshops that she did what parents need to know current drug trends and uh we continue to offer that. So what we see here, you can see some of this parent teacher conferences. Um you can see, you know, over 3,000 meetings this year, parent teacher conferences virtually and in person, just staggering numbers. Um you can see the survey results a little bit um a phenomenon. We're looking at the fall and the spring just those numbers a little bit different, but we're exploring why that may be. It might be because of how um how it's reported um between feeling extremely or somewhat positive and the second feeling very strongly or strongly that
090school leaders communicate. So we're just looking at some of those reasons why um those numbers look the way they do. But what the general takeaways are from communication uh that we're getting from parent u parent uh focus groups etc. and is that parents are happy with the level of communication. uh they like the Thursday um memo that that we send out and parent square has been a positive a real positive improvement that we're all reporting. Um newsletters are terrific and then the increased opportunities through focus groups and parent meetings have been uh have been beneficial. So overall we're we're pleased obviously um a lot of work to do and we're excited to do that and uh continue to develop our plans for the future. So thank you very much. [Applause] All right. Thank you very
091much. A lot of good progress there. And uh for the goals that weren't met, that's just more opportunity, right? Um good. I I don't know if anybody has any comments. I I specifically like the the positive contact. I thought that was great. And uh connecting with the at risk uh kids. I know we've been to a couple conferences and there's a few schools that have like a buddy program where every not every kid but they're hooked up with a staff member whether it be a food service or facilities or whatever and the results in just those kids having that contact is is very positive. So I think that's a great thing. So okay, anybody else want to say anything? Okay, good enough. All right, we're going to move on to the proposed consent agenda. Can
092I get a motion to approve? Katie and Diana. All in favor? Opposed? 70. Thank you. Next, we'll move on to reports. We'll begin with our superintendent of schools. So, in May May 14th, I had the opportunity to participate and watch the EC spring concert and I was singing along and just to watch and hear their lovely voices after the growth that when they started in the fall. on May 20th, the budget vote and election there as an opportunity to greet many of our community members and say hello. And I want to thank all that participated in voting that day. Fifth grade all district concert um was on May 20th and that is the time when all of our fifth graders come together to perform together. It is actually amazing that they have not practiced several
093times. So when they are on that stage, they have only had I think about an hour, hour and a half, not much time at all. And yet they come and they the synergy that's there and they're on the high school stage. They feel really grown up and it's really an opportunity for them to come together as one team, one district for the very first time. Um so they were excited to be at the high school performing and they did a great job and they're looking forward to going to middle school. when when the um teacher said this is your last time as fifth graders, they went and so they're really excited to go to my school. Um had the opportunity to honor two of our students at the outstanding student lunch and it's an opportunity
094for all of the superintendent and other district administrators across Orange County to come together to honor our students. There were five 35 different districts there represented. Festival of the Arts was at the high school and the artwork that that was displayed, you can tell there was great care and skill that was developed in our students and wanted to take home all of the artwork that was there was totally outstanding. On June 2nd at the PTA council, the end of the year social was an opportunity to just stop and talk and meet each other. Um, get to know each other and and see some new faces. had a really good turnout and I really do encourage anyone who has not had the opportunity to participate on a PTA or PTO to join and those of you
095who who do, please continue your wonderful and dedicated work. High school senior dinner, our seniors are excited and can't wait to graduate. They had an opportunity to to eat dinner and just share and have fun. And um there's always joy and laughter and some tears at the video they get to watch. And so they get to see themselves all the way from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade. And you can hear them going, "Oh, I remember that." And a and so it's a really nice opportunity. And I thank all the parents for sharing those photos because it makes it really special. And today was the yearbook dedication um barbecue. Got to the tail end of it, but also had the opportunity to talk to many students who said the hot dogs and the hamburgers
096were delicious. Thank you. Okay. All right. Next, we'll move on to the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. Yes, thank you so much. Um, again, I know our principles have left for the evening, but I want to congratulate them on all their work for this school year. I know they've been hard at work with the staff members, and of course, they could not do the work that they do without their staff and faculty. So, also a kudos to all of those that have supported the school buildings as well and our students. Um, with that said, we are excited to move forward with our Amplify CK literacy program that we have newly adopted. Our K5 teachers were able to attend a kickoff training on June 2nd to learn about the program before this school year ends
097and our next school year begins. We've also partnered with Branching Minds for our MTSS committee and have been working diligently on drafting our MTSS handbook. I'm very excited that we have two more sessions uh scheduled and and I'm just excited to be able to present our work to the board in the near future. Um I also attended the New York State numeracy briefs as uh from NICED. They have now released in addition to our literacy briefs our math lit our math briefs as well. I was able to attend with theu with superintendent Abula a stu the outsting student lunch the outstanding student lunchon as well as today's barbecue. Our professional learning committee met as their last session to continue planning into next school year and our DEI committee also rounded out this school year as
098we discussed the role and responsibilities for building equity teams and next steps for the committee as again rounding out this year and moving into next year. So, lots of finishing strong and planning ahead. That's all I have for tonight. Thank you. Next, the assistant superintendent for human resources. Good evening, everyone. Tonight, we have celebrated the retirement of 30 the retirements of 31 employees in our district as well as 18 staff members who have reached working 25 years in our district. I would like to commend all of them for their longevity and service to our district. For the retirees, I wish them luck in their future endeavors. We also recognize the importance of our 20 employees who have been awarded tenure. Congratulations to them on this important accomplishment and we look forward to your continued dedication
099to our students. On this agenda, we have hired two new teachers to our district as well as appointed several of our staff to our summer school and ESY programs. We are looking forward to a productive summer for our students and thank those staff who have applied to work during this time. had the pleasure of attending East Coldenham Student Awards last week and I would like to commend the staff for a wonderfully run program and of course congratulate all of the students who received their welldeserved awards. That's it for me. All right, thank you. Uh next we'll get an update on the family and community engagement meeting. I can update that. Um, so our last family and community engagement meeting was at the middle of May and that revolves around the budget. Brad, Mr. Brad Conlin
100was with us as well and he discussed our buzzer presentation which has passed and so we're very excited about that as well. Thank you. All right. Next is diversity, equity, inclusion committee covered that anyone can Oh, it was canceled. Oh, it was not. It was um in I think last week. That's okay. In regards to DEI, as I said before, we were able to discuss next next steps for our building equity teams and continuing the work the discussion that we had from our last meeting, which really really revolved around those roles and responsibilities, who's going to be on the team and such. Thank you. You're welcome. Oxa delegates meeting. Uh I went um with Fran and Diana. It was a it was a great meeting. Uh all you know all the Orange County school boards
101got together, schoolboard members. Uh what was great about this time is they had uh student reps talk about their experience um as reps and the projects they've done. And it was really interesting. What's going to be different is uh Karen from OXPA wants to get all the student reps together next year and just to kind of you know brainstorm ideas and how to get us unified. Thought that was a great idea. All right. Thank you. All right. Next, uh community participation. Angela, we'll start with you. Uh sure. So on uh June 2nd, I attended the VC council here in district office um as an end of the year party. It was great to have all everybody together. Iette was there. So, thank you for stopping by. They always like seeing you there. Uh on the
1024th, I attended the Oxa dinner. Um oh, on the 7th, on Saturday, I traveled to Bingmpington uh for the girls regional lacrosse. They made it really far this year. We should be really proud of them. And I also want to thank the village of Montgomery Police and the troopers. They actually had a um police escort which was really nice. and Orange County Bagels provided breakfast to the team. So, I thought that was a nice touch to Unfortunately, they lost to Ithaca, but it was a very good game. And let's see, I just came back from the lacrosse banquet as well, so it's been a lacrosse uh marathon right now. Yeah, for Okay. Yes. Um I also attended the family and community engagement meeting. Uh it was interesting to be in the audience listening to some
103of the community members um ask questions about the budget in the preparation and uh uh it's always good to get community participation in exploring you know our budget priorities. I also attended um I'm just looking at my notes the fifth grade all district festival. Um uh it was incredible to watch these fifth graders and the talent that they were already possessing to know that they're going to be on the stage on the same stage in high school um continuing to do such great you know uh show their skills. Um I attended several uh social emotional learning committee meetings. Um we're getting close I think to a curriculum um which is exciting. There's another meeting this week and I attended the Oxbow annual meeting uh as well and um just to echo um Angela's comments, it
104was actually great to listen to the students and also to hear the process of what districts are doing and how they're engaging their students to become reps. Um and the students did such a great job in answering a lot of questions. They did a very short presentation each and then they just, you know, took a whole bunch of questions from the um from the participants there and they did a great job. Some of them have just started having, you know, student reps, so we're certainly ahead of the game on that. Um I attended on May 28th the science research symposium. Uh this is um really a gem that I think Valley Central has um in preparing students who get you know a lot of college credits um who present their research um as juniors um
105they do poster presentations as seniors. They actually do presentations um on the stage to present their research and they do it in such a professional manner that these kids these students you know will you can see how they're going to excel you know when they get to college and you know usually um or at least you know for several years they've had alumni come back to do to be the keynote and that's incredible too to sort of see them come back and presenting the research that they're involved in um at the co at the college level or as as professionals. So, that was exciting. Let's see. Did I get everything? Uh, yeah, I think that was it. Um, I attended the um athletic awards banquet. Um, it was great to see all of our our
106athletes um being recognized for their efforts. Um, I also attended the math honor society um, induction and chord ceremony. Um, I attended the festival of the arts. Um, I agree with superintendent Avula about the wonderful artwork being displayed at the um, my favorite is always the um, the illumination room or the um, I don't even know what they call them. The boxes with the shadow boxes. Thank you very much. That's my favorite part. Um I also attended the um for our city I'm sorry the uh the golf boys and girls we um combined um annual banquet award dinner um at Honorill and I also attended um the sectional uh golf tournament up at Apple Greens um for the girls there. We actually had two girls compete this year in sectional. So that was excellent. Sir,
107um I've attended many of the honor society inductions and chord ceremonies, uh concert, some of the sectional sports games, awards ceremonies. Uh busy time of year and it's nice to see all of our students being celebrated. Um, I also attended the math honor society induction and court ceremony, um, the Oxa dinner along with Fran and Angela, and several committee um, meetings such as the K5 curriculum and instruction committee, the grading committee, MTSS meeting, and the professional learning committee. I'm on all your committees. Um, this meeting wasn't on our list of meetings, but there was a safety meeting May 20th. Um, I think one of the biggest things that or most important things that was talked about is there's been an increase in bus incidents. And so by the fall, we should have videos on all
108the buses that are tracking the cars that are trying to pass them. Um, so that was my biggest takeaway. And I was able to attend the NAR induction and the VC Festival of Arts and the Shadow Boxes were also my favorite. Um, but just it I mean and I'm not an artistic person, so I'm easily impressed, but it was some of the stuff they did is amazing. Just very impressive. Thank you. I was running the board while you guys were out gallivanting. All right, we're going to move on to public comment. Uh, we have one speaker this evening. Uh, Jane, I'm going to ask you to read for us. No problem. Uh, we're about to begin the public comment portion of our meeting. We have public comment because it's important for us to hear concerns
109and issues from our community members. Please note that the board is here to listen and public comment is not designed to be a discussion. If needed, the board or designated staff member will research your concerns and get back to you accordingly. Uh we ask that speakers um address their comments to the board directly. Um, and we um ask that you do not uh mention any uh school personnel or an individual student by name or implication. Um, we do take these concerns seriously and on these matters, we ask that you review our policies and go through the appropriate administrative channels. Each speaker will have four minutes to speak. Thank you. Our speaker is Thomas Nazin. I have uh Good evening. Uh, my name is Thomas Lazon. I'm a freshman varsity swimmer, JV lacrosse player, and a
110JRTC member at Valley Central High School. I'm here to talk about something critical to the future of our athletic programs, the condition of our football and lacrosse fields. Right now, our field is not only outdated, but also dangerous. It's uneven, poorly trained, and often unsafe for practices and games. We've seen firsthand how these issues increase our athletic our athletes risk for serious injuries. For example, my friend recently torn it. Uh he broke his fibula on the field due to the uneven ground uh which canceled out his entire season. Um installing a new turf field would be a game changer. Turf fields offer safer, more consistent surfaces, dramatically reduce cancellations for of home games, and can be used year round by multiple sports. Plus, turf fields cost less to maintain over time and can be and
111can bring in outside events, tournaments, and even additional funding and revenue to our district. But I'm not only here for me and my current teammates. I'm I'm also here for the next generation of players like my brother and his teammates who will be playing lacrosse and football at the high school in the next few years. This investment would protect our athletes, strengthen our program, and bring pride to our entire community. It's time we provide our our players and our town with the facility they deserve. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Next, uh we're going to move on to old business. We're going to start with the future of Walden Elementary. So, I really just want to give a brief uh recap and update. We've had Walden on the agenda
112uh for the last six months probably at least. Um but I'm doing a brief recap because it's going to not be on the agenda in every meeting. So, I just want to tell you where we're at. At the May 12th meeting, the the board voted to move ahead with the construction of a new school for 540 students at a new location. With that direction set, plans will be developed and submitted to the New York State Department of Education for review and approval. If approved, the project will then be brought back to the community for a vote. Any unforeseen issues will be addressed and provide updates as needed. But in the meantime, uh I wouldn't expect to see this on the agenda or get any updates probably for 10 to 12 months. It's a it's a
113pretty lengthy process. So, uh once it goes through all that, we'll have updates and and again, we'll uh give it to the public for a vote. Okay. All right. Uh next, we have adoption of resolution 2025, capital project bond financing. Katie's going to read the bond. because I'm read Oh, just the top paragraph. Okay, I'll read it. You can read policy. Okay. So, I'm gonna I'm gonna read it and then uh I'm going to do a motion second and then Ellen's going to do roll call. So, this is a resolution authorizing improvements to the school district building and facilities by the Valley Central School District, Orange and Olter counties, New York, at a total estimated maximum cost not to exceed 11.1 million and authorizing the issuance of 6,140,000 serial bonds to pay the cost thereof.
114Can I get a motion to approve? Sarah second. Jane. Jane. Okay. Ellen will do a roll call. Angela, yes. James, yes. Diana, yes. Yes. Yes. Sarah, yes. And Joseph, yes. All right. Thank you. All right. Now, we're going to move on to new business. And so, I want to ask the board here, um, we have 24 items. Okay. Number 24, the policy we have to do separately. What I would like to do with your permission is to lump all the other ones together unless there's any one or more that you want to vote on separately. Jane, no. Okay. All right. Does anybody have any concern with doing them all together? I can read all 23 if you want. Um, you're okay? Yes, everybody's okay. No. Okay. So then under new business, I'm going to take
115a motion for the approval and adoption of items 1 through 23 under new business. Katie second Fran. Discussion. All in favor? Opposed? 70. Thank you. All right. Now we're going to do the readings. H I have them here. Okay. Um first one is related to the student members of the board policy 2245. You're not going to read that whole thing. Uh I'm going to read at least the first paragraph. The board of education believes that it's important to include student voices in deliberations. Pursuant to law, the board will designate at least one exoffici uh student member to the board for the purpose of providing regular and direct communication between the board and student body. This is um our student members that we currently have on the board. They're actually uh rolling this out across the
116state. So, this policy is is that. So, uh that's that. All right. Travel lasers. And these are all on the website. These are all on the website uh for everybody to review. Policy 4311.4 care of school property by students is being removed. 531 oh sorry what I said oh 5311.4 for sorry. Uh next is oh boy uh 5695 students and personal electronic devices. Um again I'm not reading this whole thing. It is four pages long. This is basically the policy as you know Governor Hokll put forth uh rulings that phones and electronic devices will not be allowed in schools. This policy is to acknowledge um that ruling by the governor. Next is 8113 extreme heat condition days. Again, this was another uh from the education law. The board of ed adopts this policy to address
117the health and safety of students employees on extreme heat condition days. Uh they're defined by law as when occupiable educational support services are 82 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. So this is the policy to address that. And last one is uh which is related to nepotism and uh to extend possible law in accordance with requirements of any empical collective bargaining agreement. No person shall be appointed to or promoted into a position in the district in which the person will be appointed and promoted would have authority, be responsible for auditing and be placed in a situation with a conflict of interest. Again, that's um available on our site for for review. So, uh that's that. Okay. Any questions on those? Okay. So that brings us to the end of our regular meeting. We are going to go
118into executive session to discuss personnel. Um after we're done with executive session, we will close executive session and we will adjourn this meeting. We will not be making any additional decisions after we come out of executive session. So, I'm going to take a motion to go into executive session at 8:37 to discuss personnel. Katie Katie second. Diana. Diana. All in favor? Opposed? 70. Thank you very much. Have a good night.