Board of Education Meeting 10/12/2021

001is required to be done by all individuals uh please take one of the exits which is no smoking on premises and there is a signing sheet if you'd like to address the board i'd also like to welcome vinnie reagan so we start with the pledges um yes we have an invitation from ballet central high school senior class faculty team which is wednesday next wednesday october october 19th at 2 p.m in the high school courtyard invitations for the board members were included in your blue folder so um that's been an event they've been running i think since the school district they're almost since it's the deception it's a real nice chance to help with the seniors and faculty and the very uh very casual and the food and decorations are always worth it so if you

002can make it that's uh that's really a nice event um this reminder that the orange county school board's delegates meeting is wednesday november 3rd at 7 pm accommodations okay the new york school board recognition week october 18th through october 22nd in school board recognition week this is the 30th year this event has been celebrated this week is designated to commend school board members for their dedicated service to the children of new york state so i want to thank everyone for your service it's a hard job a lot of different things you guys are so dedicated we appreciate your support and your hard work we have a very small token of appreciation for our board members certainly thank you thank you and you doesn't seem like enough but we really do appreciate your hard work and

003your time tested for the good organization that's it next on the agenda we have a cheesy presentations so anything this is uh great we've been doing this for many years where we would come before the board and all the principals have an opportunity to tell you about some of their accomplishments and some of their goals moving forward it was i believe understand well here about six years ago five years ago and we started our five-year plan and at that time we created a mission statement which you which you can read up there but basically the mission of valley central is to develop responsible productive members of society and make sure that they are in a safe and innovative environment where they're motivated to think creatively and they're taught to communicate effectively and achieve excellence in

004partnership with not only our community but also a knowledgeable and dedicated staff so that is the mission of the valley central school district and our aspiration in our five-year plan was to be ranked in the top five of the school districts in orange county on all key educational measures so i think when moving forward we need to determine what we feel those key educational members sorry measures are because they're not always academic sometimes they're extracurriculars or they are what we're doing with social emotional so i think moving forward we need to really plan on what those are our goals for our district are to increase the achievement to attract and retain a knowledgeable dedicated staff to serve as the cornerstone of our community and to make sure that our facility facilities are in great shape

005to support those three goals so john came in 2016 john bell he worked with board members and teachers and staff members to develop the plan we rolled it out and right now this is the last year of our plan now unfortunately covet kind of came in and reads havoc so all of our baseline data that we determined five years ago and then we were supposed to look at that data year by year really basically in uh we lost that baseline data state testing wasn't um given regents were not given um our benchmarks now are absolutely not where they would have been but right now we're trying to develop the baseline so that we can develop efficiency levels on realistic proficiency levels so with that we have the valley central high school and i think that

006the best place is probably somewhere over there so that the public can see it on camera well terrific uh thank you so much for having us i'm russell burns michael conklin and i just want to welcome you all here tonight and thank you for having us to talk about this many successes as a district we should be very proud with all that we've accomplished this year one of the biggest things is uh ironically just keeping our doors open from last year to this year being the biggest school and i believe the biggest districts that has had the most in-person school days out of any school in orange county and we should be very proud of that because even just day to day keeping our doors open was kind of quite an accomplishment because it took

007a lot of details and a lot of research and everyone being on board so everyone from our nurses of course to our teaching staff especially our paraprofessionals we relied upon our support staff more than ever to keep our buildings open so as we look at our successes this past year bringing our number of students in the building every single day is quite an accomplishment so we should all uh we should all pat ourselves on the back for that um this year we're very pleased to begin our vchs institutes and really what this is we have so many wonderful electives as a school we have nearly over 90 electives as building and we want to tie our students to college and career readiness and beyond and our electives are really the key to to hooking our

008students we have a lot of our students do we have a wide variety of electives but we want our students to engage them we want these to be engaging we're excited to offer our new technology program in high school this year we were able to roll out our institutes and and what that means is the students will have basically a guide map when they begin going with high school 8th grade to 9th grade a pathway of what programs they can take that will guide them through different programs such as business or if they would like to go into uh leadership and their education um fine arts there are many different pathways they can take so uh what this is this will lead to some sort of uh recognition at graduation we were also very successful

009this year in having homecoming we were one of the first if not the first to have it um in the county and a lot of buildings uh mr conqueror myself met with the districts this week talking about how they were going to be rolling our homecoming we felt very confident having uh had a plan implemented that plan and successfully implemented it so some of these things which are in a normal year which would be normal uh was a tremendous task and we're all very proud of that so we're thankful for for everyone's help we also had a powderpuff game that was my first time my first experience with powder puff it was quite a memorable experience i have to say uh pep rally and anything that we've done a nice conversation with the teacher today

010uh science teacher miss cleveland she was just saying how much the students just enjoy coming to school interacting with one another and going about a normal routine any other year uh you would think okay yes the drudgery or it's just the norm but our students are enjoying the norm right now because it's anything but and they're thankful for even some of the simplest things that we've been able to have so uh the homecoming football game and uh we were also to successfully um do a 9th grade field trip to ring homestead last week nearly 250 kids out of our 390 ninth graders went and uh we had a tremendous time they're doing uh some uh rope swings and climbing walls and and uh it was a tremendous success the kids had such a great time

011our faculty and we just pulled it together and it was good weather uh so our ninth graders really had a terrific time too and that's all around social emotional learning because being being around each other uh interacting um doing doing things like encouraging one another across a high wire those are all terrific skills and there's terrific skills you can apply to life so we're introducing those activities and uh working that plan um every day of the year so we're thankful for a good start of the school year thank you all right thank you good evening everybody a little off topic here i want to thank the board of ed for being understanding with the student representatives this year um myself and dr burns met with a bunch of students five and they were all very

012qualified and this you know many being here tonight it's just an example of the students we have coming into our building so thank you for giving all them an opportunity we really think it's kind of a new approach but we did sit down with all of them and they really have some good goals so i'm very happy to see you here tonight many of the other students so our goals and strategies where are we headed right so our big focus is going to be social emotional learning the kids that are coming into our doors every day those 1400 of them about they're different right they've been through the same thing we went through the last year and a half or whatever it is so we need to make a strong focus on social emotional learning

013that's going to start with our yale ruler initiative okay so we're going to do some things with that our last conference day had a big focus on what students are in our building and what can we do for them and how can we support them and tying in the rule initiative that we're doing cultural responsiveness we're still continuing that okay we want all students to feel welcome all right we want an engaging and welcoming learning environment and that's we're going to strive for every single day we're also teaching them about character building activities uh we're doing that through field trips okay we're doing class assemblies and we're also even tomorrow we get speaker coming um who's going to deliver a positive message to our students um he'll be in the gymnasium and then we'll be

014streaming and also live to the classrooms as well so we're looking forward to that and there's more guest speakers coming we're just looking for new ideas and delivering that positive message to our students we're also going to take the promethean boards which i have to say our teachers have really run with this um i know we're getting more training down the road but they're really finding that these are very user i mean it's like having a cloud screen tv in your classroom so um they're using it to the best of their ability and they're looking forward to learning more and the students are interacting with them as well um and then of course we're just going to keep expanding all of our instructional programs i know yesterday we were talking about um an email i

015saw one mistake there we're doing things around the county we're gonna collaborate with schools around the county and we're gonna you know how can we bring these programs to our students you know because we want them to come to our building and have what they need to be successful whether that's college you know military in the workforce whatever it may be so uh that's where we're heading and we're really looking forward to it and thank you for having us and next we have um good evening thank you for having us here tonight um it's always really exciting to come in and talk about all of our successes and to reflect on where we need to go in the future so really we'll have the opportunity to do that um over the middle school we've had

016some really big successes despite the last year and a half a struggle um it's great to be able to look back and say you know we had all that controversy and all that turmoil but we did do some really great things too one of our successes to celebrate is that we updated all of our chromebooks for our staff and our students so every student in the middle school has a touch screen um chromebook laptop or a tablet combination with a screen slip over um those are really great especially for our math program um when they're using cammy a lot like our programs that we use in middle school and those touch screens really help the kids to manipulate their map so that's a great success for us um also to celebrate the fact that we

017have all some educational materials and mastering new technologies uh you know covid was not all that bad in a lot of ways for education it really sort of forced us to come out of our comfort zones a little bit and to really explore some new ideas and new technologies that have been able to stick around now that we're back in person we um instituted at the end of last year some new 8th grade celebrations including our drive through celebration which was really widely accepted um i think the parents and students and the staff too had a great time as the kids drove through um in front of middle school back in june and waved to their teachers and got all of their goodies it was really a great time for everybody who attended over the

018summer we instituted our first sel summer camp for grades six through eight we had students come in for one of two sessions of an sel camp where they got you a lot of hands-on experience it was brought it was written curriculum was written by our staff and then executed by staff from public middle school but also the elementary schools and they came in for we did a lot of hands-on activities uh reflection um just trying to boost their spirit up we really we tried to be selective in the students who really sort of needed that extra boost maybe students were a little reluctant to come into the building um some school anxious students attended the camp and it was really interesting to see them come in and sort of come out of their shell a

019little bit in advance of the new school year we are really excited that we're able to bring back our clubs and activities this year um it really felt like something was missing last year in middle school without having those in-person activities it's really important that all that students are having that academic component but also that extracurricular component um things like the cops concert around music department are really important things where the students are really learning skills outside of the traditional classroom so we're really excited to have those back headlines mr barnes says just having everybody back in the morning five days a week there's an energy in the building that's been missing from the last year or so and we're really glad to see those those faces we know they're smiling behind those maps when

020they come in every day as far as our strategies and goals for the upcoming year like the high school we're also really focused on those seo goals for this year we know the students are coming in struggling they really are having a hard time settling back into the school team many of them have been off the team for over a year so just trying to get them back in their doors get them comfortable understanding what they need to do while they're in the building and that really falls along with that social emotional learning that's so important every day we're doing that with both pain class programs and also after school programs we're working to institute a homework club where students can stay after they'll be mentored by national junior honor society students by faculty members

021um and we're also looking for some partnerships from mount st grant college it was a program that the middle school ran several years ago we're trying to bring some of those components back again to give the students some opportunity maybe students that just need a little extra time at the building after school to be able to offer that opportunity for being flexible with guidelines and changes that's a huge struggle every day something changes every day something else is new are improved or different and just trying to stay flexible and being able to go with the flow is really a struggle um in these times we're trying to maintain consistency but also trying to be flexible that's hard for adults it's super hard for students we're also working real hard on we all roller training implementations

022we also spent some time on the half day last week um starting to get our staff acquainted with emotions and why it's so important to understand where our emotions come from and the impact that emotions have on our well-being on our work our play we spent about an hour and a half about 45 minutes of session with the three sessions um talking about those topics and we're going to be exploring that more throughout the year on our hot day and our superintendent conference day in november and then finally um something that i'm very proud of we changed the middle school master schedule this year we met with a consultant thank you to the board for that back in the winter time in the spring and we've redeveloped our schedule for this year where instead of

023um having our electives scattered throughout the day we tried to streamline them by equity level and the advantage to that is that students are interacting with students at their own grade level but also gives the teachers time to be able to work together in teams to plan to communicate to collaborate and we're very proud of that one of our challenges is just to work through some growing things that we're experiencing this year and then move forward with that in the coming years so we're very very excited about those changes and the opportunities that they're giving us so thank you to the board for all of your support throughout this last year or so it's been challenging but at the same time it's been a great experience for both the staff and the students thank you

024so much so some of our successes and celebrations um i wanted to go back to what this is gonna be saying regarding how the struggle in the past year and a half and i thought it would be important to let you know that the five um students that we had that were seniors that last year four students graduated two went to suny orange one entered the world workforce and one um for the gallery for attending orange the one student though i'm happy to report that did not graduate in working in collaboration with the high school is re-enrolled back in the district and will be graduating in january he's done a good path graduation um another success of ours was because of our program we really needed to be in five days a week so i

025really thank you all for that support and we had a very nice balance of in-person learning learners our teachers and paraprofessionals did a wonderful job live streaming we had we were in five days and we were able to keep students involved who were remote learners and in-person learners we actually had 10 full-time remote learners through students last year 90 of them were present online for more than 80 of the time and we had two that had 100 attendance for the entire year um moving forward we're still doing a lot of improvements over at alc to make it more of a friendly environment we're happy that we were able to have our aoc barbecue again this year so we're looking at doing some more landscaping outside maybe doing um creating our own outdoor classroom and the

026facts we're looking at that is something that um thank you for the support from mr calmly mr schmidt moving forward we've also begun providing social emotional learning lessons through the ruler program to all of our students in our middle school and high school program so that's already been implemented and it's started to take place we will be working with the staff at the november 2nd conference day just to kind of give a little more training in that area we're also moving forward in the social equity committee um and we were able to this year electives are are very important and it's sometimes difficult for us to provide a vast school of electives just because we're not at the high school and we only have one content area teacher but we were able to provide career

027financial management this year to all our high school students that are able to take that course and expand it to our eighth graders so they'll be able to start the high school with basical credit next year so thank you next is john fellainando from berea he cannot be here with us tonight i'm hoping that this works it's not going to the one thing you're going to notice about the elementaries that the board has been asking for years is that for them to all be consistent and you're going to see from their presentations that they are all working on very common quotes so mr salado good office evening and guests my apologies for not being in attendance tonight in person maria elementary school has recognized a number of successes and celebrations since the establishment of the

028district strategic plan in 2017. with capital planning our literacy and math consultants were able to embed professional development during the school day with minimal loss of construction in 2019 our sidewalks were replaced with new concrete designed to allow accessibility for the physically disabled along with the concrete redesign our entire parking lot bus lanes and playground were resurfaced new crossworks were created for safe crossing of the parking lot to the building also in the summer of 2019 an eagle scout matt walker created an outdoor classroom that is at the back of maria's property just beyond the swings students of all grades have enjoyed utilizing this space maria is happy to be part of a common vision for ela and mana this was established in concert with the district in the 2018-2019 school year the steam program

029for fourth grade students started several years ago as an after-school program now with the help of mr leo and the other computer teachers we are happy to offer steam class to all our students during the school days this year we created a before school academic intervention services program this program is for students who are struggling with the mastery of skills necessary to achieve grade level success this program started on october 4th we will monitor the success of the program as we move forward during the summer of 2021 we were happy to have a some school program for students who did not achieve great club success this is the first time summer school has been opened in many years through the hard work of the lead teachers and the teachers of the programs students completed their

030coursework and moved on to the next grade finally maria has itself eight self-contained special education classes that often integrated cooking simple dishes into their curriculum miss wright had the idea of extending a countertop in one of our small classrooms to allow for these projects to our surprise and delight mr schmidt and mr confident gave us an entire kitchen for the stove dishwasher microwave and refrigerator mr schmidt told us that he and mr conklin wanted to do it right to help the students have great learning experiences to them we are most grateful as for our goals and strategies for the coming school year we will continue with social emotional learning through the yale ruling program our social equity committee will be working with mr carlos and dr leblanc to create awareness of social equity among students

031and staff the rise program targets second grade students who need specialized help in reading this is a pilot program this year finally maria is the only elementary building piloting tang man in all braids the techniques teaches the learning to teach men are already proving most useful would come as the year progresses with these new methods thank you for your kind attention and have a pleasant evening good evening uh like the serrator said a lot of what you do tonight will be repeated so i'll try not to repeat too much uh we at east coastline had the luxury of adding a school garden patio to our existing school guardian through our existing school garden seriously through an eagle scout project from jonathan jergens that has proven to be very successful for us to internally go outside

032enjoy some sunshine sit near the garden without having to worry about sitting in the garden and do some reading and some writing drawing we also have our steam classes k5 just like mr solomon mentioned and again i don't want to repeat everything but we are one-to-one school with chromebooks as well and that is probably one of the only benefits that we saw through the last year and a half we are now in a position we are a one-to-one school with technology uh i don't want to give you the wrong impression though in our classrooms teachers are not relying solely on those chromebooks they are a resource for them we are still doing education the way we always did before is it just a tool in the classroom they are very beneficial and thankfully i know

033we don't want to think about it but if we have to go that route we are ready for it we have many improvements in the building over the last year thanks to mr schmidt and mr conklin we had some dangerous situations in the front of our building near our bus routes students would walk from the parent parking lot towards the front door and the sidewalk there was very narrow giving them a very narrow area to walk without having to worry about plus next to them when i mentioned this to mr comic when mr schmidt they came over took a look at it yes absolutely they put us a nice pad into the grass and there is a much safer situation there uh we've also uh replaced our front steps which were cracking and provide a

034very dangerous situation for us again mr kaplan mr schmidt came over took a look at it and gave us very nice steps we think for those for next year for this year we are hoping to and met with another eagle scout who's looking to put a pavilion over our existing patio near garden which would give us more opportunity to get students out of learning nick zika hopefully he'll have that underway in the near future we'll break ground on that so i know he's working very hard to raise the funds it's a huge undertaking and i wish them all the best hope we get that going soon we are reinvesting in ruler equity and plcs and the way i describe this to my teachers is don't look at these as three different things plc's encompass ruler

035and equity these are ways to help students if we can connect to a student through their social emotional or their identification as a person then we help them to learn and their scores go up so this just like an iep or 504 is a way of addressing a need for a student if our curriculum isn't reaching the students we should be identifying that through the plc and implementing strategies from our special education background our regular education background as well as equity and ruler strategies we uh a couple of years ago saw a spike in bus referrals and mrs ranker our student assistance council and i took a look at that and tried to find a way to address that issue we spoke with mr heidemann who has a pbis program in this building and we

036came up with the bus of the month program rewarding students who do the right thing and in the year that we did that just before the year before we had to close we saw a sharp decline in our bus referrals uh as we came back to the building this year we're starting to see those numbers increase again so we have started uh on the first of october was our first day of bus of the month we had the drivers in uh mrs marshawn came over with the bus company and we discussed the bus to month program and we are underway again hoping to see a sharp deep a decrease in those referrals again we are continuing to expand all opportunities in the garden uh students really enjoy getting out there they do measurements they do

037drawings they do readings it's a fantastic thing um actually and we are very excited about expanding our extracurricular opportunities tonight i believe our last meeting there were two new charters that came to the ec echoes and the boomwhacker clubs um echoes the ec echoes is a chorus and if you haven't seen moonwalkers come on over and check these things out they are tubes cut to different lengths they hit them on the floor they make different sounds they're fantastic the kids love them and they make some pretty good music with them we also have a crazy eight program which is a math program before and after school when we first started this we had a good reception for the students as of tonight we have 70 students it keeps growing on us we actually have a

038waitlist for students to get into this program we're building up just about 370 students training into the ke5 crazy age program it's a fun and engaging program where students use manipulatives to solve math problems they work together collaboratively and then there's a day where they have fun wrapping each other in toilet paper and counting squares it's a lot of fun the kids have a great time included in that is the before program that work before school program that all the buildings are doing monday wednesday and friday and we also have the rise programs you have many programs in place and many more that we're hoping to get started in the next couple of years to give students more of an opportunity after school as well as their educational day during school today like i said

039i think you hear a lot of the repeats from the next gentleman but thank you very much for all your support and to the central office for everything they've again i'll done to just quickly through the things that we're all working on together because we do meet regularly to try to stay on the same page um i think one thing we really need to celebrate though is obviously last year was a tremendously difficult year for everybody but the teachers really they basically learned how to teach from scratch all over again so i think that's a huge celebration that they did it successfully um and we need to celebrate the kids efforts too obviously there's some pitfalls and struggles along the way but as a whole i think the students and the staff really stepped up

040and did everything they could to make it as successful as possible so i think that's a huge celebration from class queer being a village school we try to have strong ties to the community so there's lots of things that we do within the village of montgomery and um the opportunities were not tremendous last year but we tried to do whatever we could we do planting in the village so all those flowerpots that you see in the village typically the students plant them with the teachers but last year the teachers planted them um so there wasn't a lot of intermingling of the students we had a strong tie with our pta although we were not able to do all the tremendous things that we typically do um they still were able to have fundraisers the pta

041was very involved still they purchased lanyards for the teachers um shirts for the students um in an effort to be able to you know feel like a family and a community as a i put this next one on there the racial social equity committee obviously it's a celebration that our building was able to start doing this but i was thinking more because i'm on the district committee i think as a district i think this is a huge celebration because um we spent a full year putting this program together and meeting and establishing a framework to move forward to expand our inclusion of all racial and social members of our community so i mean i think that is a huge celebration for the district that will hold not just the long-term interest and again summer school

042program was a huge celebration we were able to bring quite a few kids in to spend some time in the classroom over the summer have fun continue the learning and you know avoid that summer slide that people are so aware of um and we're having a pretty good turnout right now in the enforceable ais program we have probably anywhere from six to ten students um in every grade level and probably about close to 20 in first grade because they have limited access to school as a kindergartner we wanted to get as many first graders in as possible so in terms of goals and strategies for this year like the rest of the government have talked about social emotional learning yeah ruler we just spent some time in our half day pd talking about how to

043transition this into the classroom and really get engaged on students emotions on a daily basis so we can better communicate with them we're going to continue to do racial social equity work when robin mcmillan was still teaching here we kind of started this process at montgomery purchasing read-alouds where kids can see themselves in books we've continued that process throughout the past three years so we have a pretty large um library of books with all kinds of diverse characters so i think we're doing really pretty well in that area big thing for me is mtss our tier one interventions because we have a number of students who were limited educational opportunities just from lack of access to being in school last year so we have kids with deficits so just tier one interventions are essentially um

044how are we differentiating to meet the needs of all our kids and we just had a training of jim wright and he said basically our before school ais program was like a huge step in the right direction and trying to meet the kids that would not typically be struggling but might have some gaps because of last year's different construction um and again the rise program we're implementing in montgomery elementary as well and one thing i think is very important for the kids this year is reinstating the special extracurricular programs like odyssey online drama steam program we're also doing crazy math and montgomery you know concerts family methods all those things that really draw families to school and kids to school you know obviously we're going to do them in a different way you know we'll

045have a halloween dance outside on blacktop this year instead of having it in the gymnasium but we're going to try to get those things that excite kids so thank you [Music] but just like the other schools we have great attendance at summer school we even saw a lot of improved benchmark levels um the pbis data that we had seen up until covered ahead she showed us a very steady decline in um our discipline referrals but also my assistant principal who brought a lot of consistency to that position in regards to discipline um but pbis was making it a place where kids really wanted to learn positive rewards this year we are bringing it back into the start with recess and lunch and next month um on the buses as well as damn swing the pto

046donated a gaga ball pit i don't know if you've ever seen it or used it but man it's fun uh the kids try and get me in there but i have a bad back but they have a blast we also have a beautiful stage backdrop so that's a wonderful thing ais program is off to a great start last year we had a lot of we didn't have too many quarantines involved so our teachers our staff all did a great job with our safety protocol again with the same program and all of that and as i said we survived by working together that was that was huge um this year so a couple of our goals and strategies so we have to assess and support approximately 50 new students entering from out of district that does

047not include our kindergarten students those are one through five students out of district that we've never had before so that's that's presenting a challenge in that we're coming up with strategies in order to help assist these students get proper assessment data and make sure that we differentiate differentiate instruction appropriately for all of those new students as well um using a great half day last week our teachers are now integrating in their classrooms so we made that transition from talking about it and doing it and it's a great start and all of our teachers have bought into that i do a great job with that um the the rise program our social equity committee is doing great and we're looking forward to providing more professional development besides just our building team we're talking with zoe just

048dr leblanc and the central office so that we can really help inform all of our staff to deal with these complicated topics um in 2026 which is not too long you know goes fast it is the 100th anniversary of walden elementary school so that is very exciting we have some work to do to get prepared for that but we're really looking forward to that and finally i didn't put it on the slide but in waldman we have such a great relationship with the mayor of walden the village hall everyone down from the village manager director of parks and recreation our police department has just been phenomenal in keeping our building safe and assisting us whenever we need it so um the village of walton's a special place and we're all happy to be there well

049i just want to say thank you for coming it was great and um i'm gonna invite all tournaments every week but in case you don't you know the board and the community really do appreciate all your work and your teams and for the last year and a half so uh if you haven't heard it enough please share that feedback all right uh next is the proposed consent agenda and i have a motion to approve it i am discussion next we will move to our student representative who's been really very go by media that's just a nickname a little bit about me is i go to boces from law enforcement security academy i am the italian commander of my school's jrotc program and i'm a volunteer fireman at my memory fire department so the topic that

050i will be discussing is the jrotc and community service within the school districts i have four points but uh also as well as goals excuse me and i would really love to focus on medical training for all of the students at either high school elementary school middle schools wherever that may be i know there is a mandatory class in gym where you can learn how to use aed and do cpr but i don't feel like there's enough opportunities for students maybe like me who didn't have opportunities to join the fire department to join the ems emt and things along those lines because i really feel that not only that this can benefit them in their future but in everyday life maybe they'll be at shop right or walmart and they can just help someone out

051as well as a community fair maybe kind of like a college fair but for the community we'll have tents we should be outside of course we'll have tents of different volunteer opportunities for students uh this may be our local nursing homes food district distribution and our aarp um all different types and different fundings and then our better citizenship visits this will be the jury to see officers the volunteer club officers and even the montgomery fire department can participate and we can visit the middle school elementary schools in even high school classes and we can motivate the young students to find better citizens even to show them how to get involved even at a young age because many kids may not understand that at 16 years old you can become a fireman at 17 years old

052they can become an interior fire that goes into the building excuse me so i just want to um go to different classrooms and show the students that they can help out whenever they can different students who have different maybe technical sciences fiscal abilities or even like history there's so many different opportunities that students may not understand that they have in this district and then we can open their eyes to them the last thing i have is a jr2c fest where a day where bc students gather as teams to compete for prizes with different physical fitness tests town of montgomery history or world in history and technical computer sciences each grade level will have different competitions that anyone can be part of local businesses and services can sponsor certain aspects and even be involved with coaching

053these teams or being in the audience the audience will consist of the whole district including family friends teachers and local business vendors and it's just a way to get the communities together and have fun i don't know about you guys but i love doing physical fitness tests and competitions and see if you can win or not and i just feel like this is a great opportunity to have fun and even even to gather around and have an opportunity like this even after such a hard year that we have and i believe that is all that i have thank you very much for this opportunity all right next we'll do the superintendent report okay um want to mention something uh uh george was mentioned about alc and um it's so nice to see that uh those

054kids graduate that's beauty not just that but that is certainly that um value added i also want to mention we had our first after year hiatus we had our first second cup of coffee in september at uh alc i know people are busy and i don't expect that you can make it but if you get a chance the next one's in october we had such a nice about half hour we had two parents show up just to tell us how much they love the program and how it's benefited their students and stuff it was really a nice morning we usually have people show up once a while you have somebody that asks a question about something that's and you direct them and stuff like that it was a great morning and uh the kids we

055had a lot of provisions small schools so we're able to share some of that with the kids and and the uh teachers and support uh staff and that so it was a nice day i just wanted to mention that thank you for your hospitality georgia um i was up at the um council superintendent's well summit and just a couple quick things one thing i'll tell i won't mention to the board uh chuck diedrich started it off uh he's the president of superintendent entire superintendent for 20 years and the first thing he talked about was really our business officials and he went to tell everyone that his business official was back at the office because if you have a good news is official they often take the time when everybody's out doing their thing so they

056can't get interrupted he gets things done and uh he said if you have a good business official hold on to my grim up because there's not a lot out there and that was also segued with transportation so i just want to just thank god and the public you know thank brad um he's done a true terrific job with uh the budget part certainly and uh it's been a full-time job with the transportation and we're not perfect in transportation but when you hear the stories and the week before i went to um albany or saratoga i was at my uh first superintendent's meeting that had been that was in uh in person and it was about a two hour meeting and most of it was about transportation the problems and the challenges of my transportation so

057brad thank you for your good work and continue doing that um the other thing i just want to piggyback mary i mentioned i went to one of um one of the breakout sessions was the school district superintendent for 15 years that was the title of that toxicity athens which is i think one exit above uh soybeans and he talked about different things in the new uh superintendency but the one thing he mentioned in mary and the future tonight was about a five-year plan about looking at aspirations not just academically and uh i asked marianne if she would take some time we would review some of the things that they're doing up there and see how beneficial maybe and invite uh either have a streaming meeting with them to get some ideas with our high school

058principles and things so that's something that we will certainly benefit in a place that we didn't use as a resource but we're very interested in expanding what we want to do for kids and milestones as far as social emotions unless you have support at the top we appreciate it thank you thank you all right that's conservator instruction so i don't have a lot um but what i did want to say is when i was going through the slides today and then listening to all of you today and i mean it sincerely like this is like a really stellar administrative team um but even more so than that like we are a very united district because if you look like i think it's the first time i've really so clearly seen it from kindergarten all the

059way up to 12th grade is that our initiatives are very common we're all on the same path whether it be ruler social emotional or whether it be adding opportunities for children or whether it be racial and social equity work our committees that we're working on every single administrator in this building is really working towards common goals for kids and when there's consistency and there's unity that is that actually it's excellent for our kids and for our parents so i do want to thank you i think that is outstanding that in the midst of covered and that we were foreign to pull up from the summer school program and four school programs racial equity committees social emotional programs and you know you didn't even mention that you're going to be adding a computer assisted design course

060in the springtime and i know that the middle school had added numerous electives to engaging electives for those kids so in the midst of all that and saturday the fact that you guys were able to like add opportunities for kids is just it makes me very proud because our sole goal is always to improve the lives of the kids and the families that we serve and you guys absolutely do an amazing job with that so it's you know it's good uh i think good things are happening in the land of the vikings and then the last thing i have for the board is just that right now we are currently planning on november 2nd conference day we just finished our half day so again all of those things that our administrators have talked about today

061to you are things that we're going to be centering our tv on in november 2nd we should have our schedules firmed up two days before um we are waiting for boces to come out with their plan um to see if there's anything we would like to add to that but as if yeah it's not done so as soon as we have that we will get everything together and we'll have that ready thank you as well i'd just like to thank the administrators here i thought your presentations were awesome and uh it's like we say all the time i mean i think we're a no-nonsense district your presentations echo that it's here's the things we're doing here's the things we plan on doing and it's just right down to it so i appreciate that i appreciate

062all your hard work um and just to talk about high school our homecoming events that we had the week of september 27 through october 2nd went well we had our pep rally and our powder puff game on wednesday followed by the varsity football game on friday night we had the homecoming dance on saturday night our high school administration did a in a very creative move of the homecoming dance outside and it proved to be a very popular decision amongst the students and staff we've heard a lot of wonderful things about how that went so thank you for everybody that was involved in that thank you for all your hard work we have several administrators nine in fact to attend a diversity recruiting training webinar sponsored by netnet on on tuesday october 19th as well as

063tuesday november 2nd and in order to comply with the new york state covent testing mandate we are working with affinity we continue to work with kennedy and plan on testing and plan to begin testing soon when we begin testing all of our employees will be notified whether with our testing to begin procedures that must follow any employee provides proof of vaccination will be exempt from festivals and also with that i also like to thank our district nurse coordinator connie griffin as well as our rns and our lpns our school nurse our school nurses who play a major role in our logistics testing and all of our nurses have done an incredible job with the challenges this endemic has thrown at him so we're very fortunate to have georgia who oversees the nurses connie and their

064team so thank you so much thank you there's this official report all right thank you mr president so i'm actually going to yield some of my time to uh mr stoddard so mr stoddard's here tonight to talk to the board uh mr stoddard is with the hudson valley labor trades and he's also what uh ross motherfucker's here with us um as you guys know we have a lot of work absolutely coming up we have about 14 million worth of work that was approved by the voters at the uh budget vote in may so while uh both of the work is site work in front of the high school middle school complex we also do have the construction of a new restaurant facility along with ventilation improvements in the pool ada work in the uh high

065school auditorium and uh they're here tonight to talk about some apprenticeship opportunities um that may be beneficial to the district and thank you mr compton uh thank you ladies and gentlemen of the board is it all right if i hand these out or absolutely yeah and um we're here tonight just to request that the school board considered the the use of apprentice language for your next capital prize i brought also associates with me i brought matt ross from the carpenters along with jessica from the carpenters and jeff back from the laborers and they're they're got programs and i think the board will be very interested in the programs that we have to order or we have to offer the students your students and the young men and women from from the air so real quick

066i'm not i'm not going to take up too much of your time because i really want you to hear the programs at build and trace offers the graduating students not only here but in the general area and what just so you understand apprentice language is language that was put together it's a program put together by the state of new york and is governed by department of labor and what an apprentices and let's say for the trades i'll use my trades as an example as the iron workers um it's a earn while you learn program they go to work during the day and they go to school during the night it's just like yours too it goes from june or from june to or september to june and they go two nights a week and they're

067at a reduced rate as an apprentice so what that means is when they start out there and i have a four-year program so they start at a first-year rate at 50 a prevailing rate which would be a cost savings to the school district of course then they go to 60 their second year 80 and then they graduate tonight uh into journeyman or mechanic status and that is full rate with benefits now what does that do for these young men and women this is what we're all we're trying to partnership with you guys is giving some of our students an alternative to college we get that we want them all to go to college too we're not speaking against college but there is going to be some of your students that are going to choose a

068different path and we're giving them a path and by going through the trade schools that we have in the programs that these people are going to about to explain to you it makes them it gives you your community a skilled trained local workforce and for without me going any further i'd just like to introduce to the board matt ross from the carpenters hi thank you for taking the time to let us come here and speak about this um what my partner over here matt was talking about with the apprenticeship language what that what we're asking for in that partnership with the apprenticeship language is an opportunity for us to secure work for our apprentices and you with this language with your school with your big dog specs would be looking to use contractors that promote

069education that promote training from within so our language like what we have in orange county has a has to be a new york state approved apprenticeship program and it has to have a graduation rate of or higher in order to qualify to bid a job so what's that you know we're asking an education foundation to work with the trades to help us educate our members and when we educate our members who are they are apprentices they're basically our high school graduates because we're a local entity so we you know you can't join our locals unless you live in the area so you're already a local so what's what's that mean that means that our young people coming out of high school now i've taken some time to look at valley central as a school and

070your demographics and i have to say i'm really impressed with where you stand in the state as a school especially on your diversity level i believe you're almost 30 diverse as a school you have um let's see here what i'm sorry i was putting this paperwork together in the car and looking at it with my glasses and i'm an old person and i can't do that anymore um but what i've noticed with the school is where we can align and work together is with your career and technical situation with your school looking at from the new york state school of education data sheet looking at your career and technical education and your career in development or development occupational studies is by these standards are non-existent so what the carpenters have come up with and what

071the other trades are looking to get on board with is a high school program all right where we come in and introduce a program to your school but the advantage of our program now is for your students it's going to give them one step up i can't call it a direct entry because you still have to come in and interview them we have to go through the department of labor but our program is already approved by the department of labor so we give high school students credit towards our application our interview process and that carries over to the other trades too so by taking this program it also opens them up to the other trades that we have now i've looked at your demographics as far as your students all right and your college readiness

072all right and what i've seen is for all your students this is broken down by race and ethnicity um for you know what they're calling white 64 of your student makeup seven out of ten of them are prepared for college you're hispanic which is 21 of your students 4 out of 10 are ready for college here and if you look at your other numbers with your ratio of students that are going to four-year schools which i believe is somewhere in the range of 65 i have it in here but i'm trying to run this off memory because of time and some odd percent are ready for two-year schools or going all said and done that adds up to about of your classes all right so that leaves that aren't college ready or aren't going to

073college where is that 20 percent government and what our issue is is why aren't they coming to the trades as an alternative now one of the things we've always seen is a disconnect between skilled labor and education because sometimes it's looked at as that's the stop of education so we're trying to bridge that gap with the carpenters right now and right now we're involved with orange county community college and assuming sullivan college to get our apprenticeship program accredited for college credit so we can set up a two-year degree which would be in conjunction with a high school program but our biggest problem is with these high school programs we need the support of the schools and that's where the apprenticeship language plays into effect on here now as far as apprenticeship language for the quality

074of people that you're going to get to bid their jobs who do you want the bigger jobs do you want companies coming in here using local labor using our you know students our graduates or do you want companies coming in here that don't promote education they want to keep their employees where they are and don't want to train them to the next level so that's the relationship we're asking for with you when it comes to apprenticeship so it's more of a you know to me it's an ethics thing you know we're asking the education foundation to help us secure education for us so we can continue our trades i don't think it's a big lift uh cost factor-wise it's a savings because if you bring in a company that doesn't have a new york state

075approved apprenticeship program they have to pay everyone on that job the full rate of attorney regardless of their skill level so when you have apprenticeship language on your big specs you're bringing in the best battle because you're going to allow trades to come in that have apprenticeship programs where new york state says for you can go to 1-1 ratio on your first two after that it's one to four so for every fifth person you're saving and on the jobs that you just spoke about here with the magnitude of the dollar amount you're talking for all trades anywhere from 50 to 100 guys to be on this job or members so now take what's 20 percent of that there's your cost savings right off the bat i mean i'm the carpenter all right i'm not you

076know what i mean but it's simple where the cost savings in and then the benefit that you have i mean what what better would it be for you to walk in to work and see one of your former students in a career a career that at the end of the day what we're here for is retirement i know kids don't look at that but that's what we look at what we offer at the end of your career is a retirement with dignity you know that's what we offer and we also during that we provide because the average income here in this area i believe is around eighty three thousand dollars which is like twenty thousand dollars above national uh average right but if you also look at your area here you have a high density

077of union employees you know when i say union across the board you know that involves everybody but for us we do demographics all the time depending on where we are to see how many members we have that live in an area so for the construction trades we have in this area alone almost 200 total after 29. well between public and private there's probably three thousand oh yeah way over you know my numbers are being so that you can't argue with them you know i can make them higher but those numbers there are still oppressive for this area you know i i graduated in the 80s and i know people from valley central and that that era like the decay brothers and jeff lewis daryno banks was a big football player here at wrestling he's a

078union leader right now she's one of your own you know but he came through the same way i did we didn't know about this back then about the apprenticeship program so we were lost when we walked out the door with our diploma that's what we had it was a diploma so what we're looking for is that 26 that always seems to be missing that's going out the door you know to come to us that way i look at schools as a natural resource because of what you do you build the students but if you can't provide those students out there they graduate with an environment where they can grow and live in the community where they have to move out you lose that as an asset and becomes a liability right you see what i'm

079saying so if we can't provide good paying jobs here and 80 dollars is the average here we can argue all day that the average credit for a union trades person is eighty thousand dollars that's across the board we can show you that all day top earners and you know you go to like the top 30 percent there's six figures you know and then with the way the trades work we promote some land so you're only limited to reach your maximum potential in the trades your only limitation is yourself we offer everything to promote you we're living proof of it you know all of us here you know 20 years training working doing concrete you know but you take the steps you follow the direction sky's the limit uh the careers if the trades as a

080career is not a second choice in a lot of situations that's how it gets looked it can be a first choice for the right candidates they say that you know by fifth or sixth grade you can start determining what career kids are going to be orientated to so we can imply implement a program in your high school where we can direct them to the trades we can eliminate a decade of them out there working minimum wage jobs or jobs period not careers you know once you enter the trades it's a career it's not a job anymore you know we're we're the a game where the you know the major leagues when it comes to construction once you get to our level so a partnership with us is to me on this level for apprenticeship language

081shouldn't be a big issue as far as where it goes with your bids because we can show you over and over again just by the fact that the apprenticeship language alone is going to show a cost savings because now you're only dealing with contractors that have the ability to use the apprenticeship program and as a school help us train our people you know by providing us with an access to put them to work this time i'd like to introduce jessica block she is in a program with us just to give you a little quick background called sisters of the brotherhood because we recognize assets when we see them the membership that we've had drawn now with our females is huge the growing need for them is huge and not just because we need women they

082bring a different game to it you know i used to say and this is just me talking if you want to learn how to do something watch that guy all right he'll show you the easiest way but if you want to learn how to do something productive in the right way what's a team team of our girls doing because they're competing and they're not competing they're working with us you know it's not they can do it it's it's unbelievable the training and the support that we have for this it's a real option for women you know and when i say that the reason i say is there's a equality there it's a hundred percent quality and i can stand up here as a carpenter and as a trade person say that we're one of the

083only organizations that can stand there and say same pay same work across the board you know and that's huge that's huge in this day so with that jessica hi hi my name resident is i just want to speak about my personal experience uh actually going through the apprenticeship here down the road um i am from new england new york at the moment i am a uni carpenter from global 279 hudson valley i think my personal experience would really help others um to understand the vulnerabilities of our system and how we can help young people coming out of school particularly young women be proactive and prepared and deciding the course of their lives their futures i'm from columbia county new york it's a little upstate i graduated from ichabod crane i'm from a working class family

084both of my parents were high school dropouts they got their geds but um you know my parents they were ill-equipped to advise me and my sister as to what we were going to do after we got out of high school um you know we kind of ran out of the house 17 years of age it was broken family circumstances it was tough um we both enrolled in college right off the bat that was what we you know assumed we were to do we both took out a lot of debt in order to do it i'm sure a lot of people are familiar with the story um so it was a six figure you know student loan figure i'm still paying to this day and it is what it is but um i i worked really

085hard the experience of a working person essentially living in poverty to obtain a degree it's hard it's an insurmountable mounting and i work a lot of low-wage jobs maintain my living arrangements i lived in a lot of undesirable areas very dangerous parts of albany at one point you know just to kind of get ahead um i think i say these things not to make anybody uncomfortable i just think that these are the real life experiences of probably many people living here in this county i'm sure there's many many people who understand the struggles you know i know in middletown right here in orange county an estimated 15 of people live below the poverty line very importantly that's higher than the national average and females across all age groups take up the majority of that statistic

086even over here in montgomery where poverty is substantially lower than the national average women overwhelmingly fulfill that demographic according to the uh census um so in 2014 i graduated from suny albany in 2010 a lot of folks are still kind of recovering from their session i was really burned out from working low wage jobs women are really always funneled into these service service economy jobs the median annual salary of less than 25 000 a year and even though i had a degree i was not an exception to that so i started reading about the prevailing rate of union construction workers the amount of money that these folks can make and now yeah i sent out i called the hudson valley union brother and department of training center and they were very encouraging i took the

087test i went through their interview process and i started my apprenticeship so in 2014 i was sworn in and i became a union sister um at that point we may have had like five women or so in my local i had a mentor sue schultz she was from new jersey she worked to work for over 30 years as a carpenter she reached out to me and asked me if i wanted to chair my sisters in the brotherhood committee which is a subcommittee and that program reinforces you know recruitment retention uh sisterhood uh having you know somebody you can call on if there's someone you can talk to you know we facilitate conferences we facilitate uh just uh you know information you know we have many meetings we meet with one another um and you know

088anytime my union at this point offers me an opportunity i always i guess it i guess it because what i have found is in the trades and the unions when you yes an opportunity it always turns out to be reciprocating and rewarding it's always an exceptional opportunity so you know since joining you know at one point it was hard but since then i've been to las vegas their training center three times for our leadership and apprenticeship programs i've been to minneapolis and chicago for the international women's buildings conferences participated in many professional development leadership trainings at umass amherst afl-cio conferences in new jersey canvas a canvas for all the union works political candidates and i went to the women's march in 2017 and i marched alongside my union brothers and sisters in washington dc for

089my work you know i've built concrete forms for west point's barracks i contributed the interior work at orange regional hassle which is now our net health barrier parapet on the new group being able most recently and after all this i'm now a delegate for my union uh so at this point in 2021 we have 23 women in my local so at this point we've jumped and bounced and 150 statewide not including new york city we hold this pre-apprenticeship program for women who are inexperienced on an ongoing basis we have one starting actually in november and we have the career connections program so in closing when i when i started when i finished high school in 2004 i didn't really have a clue that all pain construction jobs were an option for me i thought men

090could only get these jobs as far as with guidance my high school offered there was a total blind spot because construction work was never brought up once and uh i also thought having a bachelor's degree was some sort of silver bullet to having this fabulous well-paid job and benefits and i really want young people to know that there's there are other options you know i can only imagine if you figure out the rising cost of living living it's been further exacerbated by this pin dive it's very difficult around here to pay the bills it's tough area um and there's a lot of hiring new york city residents now designating this county as their primary residence it's a lot of competition according to the national the status of women data if employed women in newark were

091paid the same as comparable men their poverty rate would be reduced by more than half poverty among employees would drop by nearly half see unions seek out to directly rectify these disparities you know young people are dealing with this product with crushing socioeconomic challenges that we really can't overlook so my question to you now is how can we partner together and help are are people prepared to address these challenges and what yeses can we need to help these people have like exceptional opportunities in their lives thank you thanks very much and then last we have uh jeff tech from the laborers and we all the trades have these kind of programs for the students as they graduate i'm a graduate from nfa you are business and marketing we're all from the area but we graduated

092and it gave us a career i went to college it wasn't for me so i chose different different avenues every high school has that same hurdle and these are some of just some of the programs that are put out there for these students when they graduate and they're not sure which where they're going of course we advocate college but there are there is going to be a percentage that's not going to go i'm sorry go ahead oh you keep talking go for it um i'm not going to keep you guys too too i know you've been here long enough but um like they said i've been in labor for uh eight years i have one of those degrees actually i have two college degrees and i ended up in the trades as well um i

093just got hired earlier this year to be part of a program uh from senator schufes who got a grant to create this program and he gave me the honor of being the director of it's called building beyond hudson valley it's an outreach and training program which provides access to high quality careers in the uni construction industry to qualified individuals in low-income communities we strive to give opportunities to minorities and females in hudson valley through partnerships with the hudson valley building trades commission workforce development obviously senator schufes we are able to create a program for these individuals the trainees receive enriching job readiness classes gain knowledge about the press learn the skills needed to be successful in the apprenticeships that they're going to be in and the career itself um the program is designed to create

094new and lasting relationships contacts and support systems as you can see we're all part of different trades but we work together and it just works well in hudson valley you can't say that for many parts of the rest of new york but hudson valley and trades work well together um building beyond hudson valley has been granted also a direct entry unlike the other programs that we've talked about tonight building beyond is a direct entry so when you finish the eight-week program hour program you get to choose out of the 13 affiliated uh trades in the program i could name them all but get along with the rest of this but uh it is a direct entry from the state new york or new york state department of labor apprenticeship council and it's an eight week

095program 180 160 hour program where you get hands-on training in person union hall trips they were part of my uh classes uh trips when we went in um certifications osha training um cpr first aid uh a bunch of machinery as well boom lists scissor lift certification so you don't just come out of the program a knowledge you have some work related skill sets going into the training and it's free and it's great well yeah that's the biggest one it's free to the participants in the class the grant covers everything that the students will need in this program um it's right out of the local 17 training center right maneuver so right down the street and um and every apprentice class that's in the trades there is no force it's like he said in the beginning

096it's just why you learn you go to school at night you go to work in the daytime i'd like to thank everybody here for giving us that time giving us a couple minutes these are just some of the programs i just wanted you guys to hear we're looking for we need people to partnership with again we've taken in we take in a certain amount of apprentices every year but if there was more local jobs for local kids we could take in even more and we care about the community because we are the community as you can see and we're trying to find ways for your students our children and other members of the community to live where they work and work where they live and with partnerships with school boards like yourself we can expand

097our programs so thank you very much for your time i'm sorry that if we took too much of it i know you guys had a long night today thank you very much for anybody also on the back is a q reader so if you know anybody that wants to become a trades member all they have to do is scan and it brings them right to our website so anybody who would like a card i just have a comment yes do you i'm an educator um in another district yes and i do know that there is a chunk of kids that maybe they didn't go to see tech they couldn't get into career tech maybe they had or maybe they just woke up a little bit late and they don't have a program around here so

098there's one that's to be qualified because they have to live on campus um so there's no orange oh you both have something like an electrical is an hvac at night but again there's no true program for these kids to go into that um for the trades so i commend you for your for your outrage and i would like nothing more to set up a dialogue if you want to on things that we can do with just the valley central school district to put something together that it's almost school specific that we can help your students that aren't going to college maybe have a chance of getting into the trades and again work where they live and live with english what does it work best for us in the past with something like this there's a

099nighttime meeting inviting parents and we'll guarantee more trades we'll bring the big guns you know carpenters iron workers laborers electricians plumbers type thing we'll bring big guns and do a informational meeting on what we offer what we have because i see when i contact the parents you can't talk about retirement to kids and insurance but you can talk to them about parents and another thing that i wanted to say about our program and our accreditation what we're doing with the carpenters is that two year degree we as a union have already said that we will pick up the tab on anyone that graduates with that two-year degree all right and we're looking for accreditation of like 20 credits which is something we already have with alfred university and wentworth college where they get college credits

100for our apprenticeship program so basically your freshman year is done and then everything else is at a reduced rate and we're in the process with dave and erica and dr young at um where we're putting the classes together now and the same thing and suny sullivan with jay and more up there they're on board with it and we also have bipartisan support on the political level with both senators scoop us in march and i could just it'd be easier to tell you which assemblymen aren't humble to be honest at that point so you know there's a lot more to partnering with us down the road thank you ladies and gentlemen thank you thank you so uh one last thing before i uh i did receive a call from a representative um from eastside solar regarding

101a solar project on type lane in the town of walk hill uh regarding a pilot agreement that they had reached with the town of walk hill and uh all he needed from me was the signature for the school to be part of that thank you very much but the school board has acted out of pilots for uh um solar farms and um he wasn't too happy to hear that answer but i scared him back to the time well killed and said good luck with that that's all i have thank you yes um our meeting was october 6th uh it was a virtual meeting mary alice and lauren samino gave a presentation about a lot of their programs mainly about the teen intervene program which is an early intervention program for actress kids um information i

102believe was emailed to all of you about that it did speak about forming a possible committee to help rewrite substance abuse policies for any districts that were interested and having some board of ed members from various schools to help shape some of those policies to make them less punitive and more restorative uh they also spoke during the meeting uh karen meyer said if you had any legislative platform ideas for the capital conference that's coming up in the new year that oxford's starting to plan for their appointments with the legislators the next meeting is november 3rd and they have some attorneys presenting on how to handle fostered social media and misinformation and dealing with the current tick tock trends and ocs is um wanted to make districts aware that they're going to be planning on a

103capital project to address many areas of concern on their building condition survey for building conditions yes survey and they are going to be establishing facilities committee if people are interested in that um the next meeting john williams from middletown uh is on the nispa diversity equity and inclusion committee and we did set out a bunch of information via email to all the board members from um um yes so um i just like like to commend the middle school on um i know lunch has been an issue i i'm on your side eight hours a day so and lunch is just an issue everywhere and i just want to come in the middle school for really trying to navigate these waters of uncertainty and middle schoolers um i just want to say thank you for doing

104that and also the electives i'm getting great feedback from the electives um in specific the e-sports um as an old person as my daughter calls me esports is really um the new direction um i've been doing a report on how um their air traffic controllers are actually um recruiting students who are to do esports in college just because they're their eye movements you know there's a huge air air air traffic control shortage and how the esports field is really contributing them that's how they're recruiting kids so i find that we're you know we're ahead of the game in that in that field and then just the high school too um kudos to the administration the only complaint i got it it was too short so personal problems it wasn't too short but i just want

105to say uh thank you for pulling that together it could not have been easy yeah i went to a girls jv soccer game and i was they were good i was impressed i played soccer in high school and i was like look at them really well that was enjoyable and also um i heard a lot of really great feedback about homecoming from students from professional to senior they all loved homecoming for a great time we're pleasantly surprised so just great job um i've been able to attend many sporting events um and many homecoming week events it's just really nice and that's why i attended three football games and the best was probably the counterpuff game that was the hardest time i had ever been and boy that was exciting i had to tell you that

106was really good next on the agenda is public participation so we will jump into old business first is the approval of the high school and middle school health curricula motion to approve angela second sarah on favor next on your new business uh can i get a motion for the exceptions of your child audit report first [Music] uh acceptance of response to management letter ordering corporate fiscal year engineering 2020 next is the approval substitute rate of pay increase and then motion to improve sierra second dianna all in favor all right closed zero next is the include for high school computer engine design course motion to approve sarah second angela all in favor next is the approval of the montgomery elementary school fitness physical fitness recreation social media social promotional learning intramurals program i get a motion

107to accept i said it seriously sarah second all in favor i just wanted to say something about that um my son's involved in that and they those kids they love it and the amount of kids that are signed up to participate it's it's a real great thing all right next is the approval of agreements with upk services between valley central school district and learning together with sydney's montgomery nursery most precious bloods full-time children's center you school district and ziggy's gymnastics academy can i get a motion to approve sarah second and unfair next is the first reading of the home school students revised policy i am going to read it quickly because it's the first reading next time i'm just for the reference but today all right uh halloween school students policy one seven four one

108requirements the board of education shall ensure that children instruct at home are taught by a combat instructor and receive an education substantially equivalent to that offered in the district school cameron's guardians who wish to educate the children at home must submit to the district an individual home instructional plan outlining the educational goals of course materials to be used each year for children for the child's learning process the district may accept a deny and i have parents guardians of the select quarter reports which provide the district with the necessary information to make determinations of substantial equivalency and accountancy on an ongoing basis uh guardians may appeal the board to the board for determination by the superintendent or of schools or basically being that i is not in compliance with the regulation of the commissioner of education

109parents guardians should have the right to appeal the violent determination of the board to commission your education within 30 days of receiving such determination special education a student with an eye head who is the president of the school district and has a disability or suspected of having a disability is eligible to receive services from the school district according to the law regulation admission policy 4321 parent guardian must request special education services in writing to the board by june 1st unless a child is first identified and losing to the district after june 1st and that gives the body unless you trust the services within 30 days of being identified or moving into the district special education services will be provided on an equitable basis compared to the programs and services provided to other students with disabilities

110attending specific district there's no requirement that the special education services be provided in the student home it's one of the determining locations where the special education services will be available for home school home school students which could include the site of the home school the district shall conduct a census and register students with disabilities who reside in the district in accordance with educational law and commissions participation in extracurricular activities students instructed at home by their parents are not entitled to participate in extra scholastic sports commissioners regulations mandate that only students enrolled in the public school are allowed to participate which is classic sports the district does not promote homes for students to participate in any entrepreneurial sports extracurricular activities or other schools funds for district activities except as provided by a community organization organizations in

111district policy 1500 public use of school facilities okay that's that next on the agenda is the nisba resolution discussion i'm going to hand it over to angela uh yes i have done several trainings on this on the resolution we're going to be voting on monday the 18th at four o'clock from what i understand it's about a four to five hour process it's done virtually and i'm sure that all of you have gone through eighteen proposals there were several not um that won't that won't be recommended um so are there any of the 18 that anyone has would like to contest would not like to vote okay i will report back on after the after the meeting on monday so that was our last january okay all right so before we return i i do just

112want to take a moment and thank our technology i'm sorry i don't know your name thank you colin appreciate your support being here i know you're here last meeting too and uh appreciate you guys youtubing and being here and helping us out so thank you for that um okay so with that i'm gonna adjourn [Music] thank you very much that's right