001tuesday june 7th this meeting of the ontario central school district board of education is called to order may i have a first to enter executive session to discuss the tenure of a specific employee and the employment of a particular person first trustee bishop second trustee sherry roll call doesn't that go first any other questions all those in favor aye all right that's unanimous we will be back at 7 pm [Music] so i may have a first to exit executive session uh trustee story uh trustee sherry second all those in favor aye that's unanimous um we have a tobacco policy in place there's no smoking within 100 feet of any school building please rise for the pledge amanda could you take roll call please trustee salem present trustee sherry trusty story here trustee dejesus trustee bishop
002present no comment um um senate principal gabe bona will welcome the board hello principal bono hello trustee salem um i believe this is your last board meeting in um no in bennett elementary so uh i just wanted to say thank you for your years of service even as a pta president it was a pleasure working with you and partnering with you at that level um thank you thank you trustee salem you're welcome the pleasure's all mine thank you very much um good evening everybody uh welcome to bennett uh as you know uh this is a very energetic building and uh i'm a very proud principal almost to a fault um i want to start off by recognizing um deb de pril who is our district clerk i believe that's her official title um she's our
003treasurer thank you i'm sorry um talking on top of my head uh edited a list of mistakes that i make anyway um deb because of deb we she was able to take a donation that we just recently received and created a little extra legwork on her part to get it on the agenda for this evening so that those funds could help our teachers get more books and teachers in students hands over the summer time uh for the bennett book boogie this the teachers just placed the order or actually they have it in in the shopping cart they're going to push purchase after this board meeting so thank you very much in advance for supporting that and a special thanks to mr prill um i would like to acknowledge the fourth grade um and their fourth
004their colonial fair the colonial trade fair celebrations they had this past week um on top of balancing assessments for children including nwea and the science assessments and field trips uh the fourth this is a very very busy time for the fourth grade and want to acknowledge them for their efforts also we're going to be having an outdoor graduation ceremony that on june 22nd over by the field and the student government and the sixth grade teachers have been working very hard on planning for that event we don't have a rain date because there's so many other graduation ceremonies happening at that time so mother nature will cooperate just letting you know that mother nature is going to cooperate with us um without any further ado because we do have a long presentation uh i'm going to
005share with you a lot of the excitement of what bennett has to offer and let the students do the talking from here on out in my welcome are your kids ready yeah okay so whoever's going to do the talking has to come to the podium there she is i'm sorry um hello i'm joan mayon allison this is deb hateman we're the co-advisors of student council um i'm so happy that we have this opportunity we met with you zoom several months ago but it's so nice to be here in person so i can publicly thank mr bono and principal sella and deb and the kids because they've just been wonderful and i don't want to give anything away i'm going to let them do the talking so my student council hi i'm erastis as a group
006we face lots of setbacks and challenges we are proud of how we persevered and created a student council community that is committed to being positive role models for our peers hi i'm rowan i was humbled to be voted in as an executive to the bennett student council i've enjoyed representing my peers and helping to promote a positive environment that includes fun and helped make bennett a better place and i'm honored to make the school environment a fun and more enjoy enjoyable experience hi i'm emma lambro a lot of people wanted to be a part of student council some of us didn't get voted into office but that did not diminish our enthusiasm we continue to be to volunteer and are actively participating in all the student council does hey i'm emily and student council worked
007with the bennett pbis team to plan events that were both fun and promoted school spirit hi my name is henry and as we student council members we were honored that senator michelle hinchey asked us to help in this fun activity that meant so much to local seniors hi my name is martin berman um sorry and in loving memory of pearson reynolds a distinguished representative on the student council team we've um sorry we created a fundraiser which sold baseball caps and beanies with encouraging messages i'm jessna and in years past non-events have yielded really good results so this year our don't get your hands dirty non-event kicked off our courtyard project we invited the bennett families to donate toward our cause because every donation whatever the amount went a long way toward helping us realize our
008goal this school year hi i'm kalki gary van luven was a beloved bennett custodian who died in 2007 at that time the courtyard was dedicated to him with hopes of seeing it become a more usable um place i'm scarlett miss mion allison had a vision that never seemed to happen with the passing of pearson the desire to honor him renewed interest in the courtyard she mentioned her idea to ms slater a week later snowboards appeared hi i'm lily goodman miss meown then mentioned her idea to mrs lamonda days later she showed up with a blueprint in plan as you can see in our presentation and on the bulletin board it's happening and we're excited to see it happen hi i'm sophia and i just wanted to let you know to please stop by and see
009our dedication bench and our bulletin board display there are so many people to thank including principals bono and stella miss slater miss lamonda mr and mrs jarrod artist in residence donna perezy retired reading teacher veronica cahill the folks at belair mountain and potter brothers they donated the snowboards for the bench carl allison who created the snowboard benches community members who donated time and money teachers and staff members the list is endless that is our presentation we're really hoping that you have an opportunity if not because it's raining to walk out in the courtyard tonight we do have a bulletin board display out in the hallway opposite the gymnasium doors so the bench is out there that has a back there's two benches in the courtyard that do not have backs there's more to come that's
010phase one and we're not nearly done with it so phase two is to follow we want to continue with the pea gravel along the courtyard all the way to the west end or east end rather and add more chairs more benches we want it to be an environment that truly promotes an educational outdoor experience for students so thank you for giving my kids the opportunity to talk thank you thank you so much thanks principal bono thank you young student leaders you guys are very powerful and we appreciate your hard work that concludes my welcome do you have any questions for me no thank you for your hard work thank you students students thank you very much thank you very much you were amazing i just wanted to take one second to thank mr uh miss
011mayon's husband who built that bench for us i think he did a beautiful job and i think it's a wonderful recognition of pearson please thank him for us fantastic um the board of education hereby approves the minutes of may 16 2022 may 17 2022 may 19th and may 27th um may have a first trustee bishop second trustee story are there any questions or comments all those in favor aye that's unanimous uh and now karen hadley will discuss her role on a as teacher on special assignment working to support the integration of social studies literacy and other district initiatives hello miss hadley hello that's better all right i want to first of all thank the board very much for giving me the opportunity to share with you some of the exciting happenings from this past year
012with my work as a teacher on special assignment i also want to welcome back victoria mclaren who is responsible for creating this position for me two years ago before kovid a little bit delayed but here we are flying with it so i am so privileged to have this very incredible opportunity to work as a tosa in the elementary social studies program i'm an instructional coach and i'm working with the district to support our elementary social studies implementation in phoenicia and woodstock this year extending hopefully as plans go into bennett next year this position is non-threatening and supportive it's non-evaluative my goal is to help teachers become the best version of themselves for their own well-being and in the service of our students so social studies is the one elementary discipline that does not get tested
013ela is tested math is tested science is tested and so teachers feel an incredible obligation to teach to those subjects first and foremost social studies is often perceived as sort of the the peas on the academic dinner plate it's the first thing that gets cut when there's a snow day or when there is a book fair or when there is you name it any number of interruptions that happen in the course of a school year so we realized that the way to make this happen was through academic integration that teachers didn't want yet another hoop to have to jump through me being the social studies coach we had to find a way to tie it in with other academic goals and i'll talk more about that this is the new york state resource toolkit it
014shows six inquiries per grade level it actually goes all the way up through 12th grade the inquiries are based on scaffolded questioning supported by primary source documents and lead the children to some sort of a debate or argument based on a compelling question and ultimately the goal is to have them internalize to feel the conflict of the argument and to want to do something about it to take some sort of social action and apply what they've learned through these inquiries in a meaningful way to their community and in their own lives so what we're trying to do is integrate so in addition to social studies and as part of the inquiries we are also looking to hit some of the new york state new civic readiness initiative goals civic knowledge civic skills and actions civic
015mindsets civic experiences it's actually perfect timing because this is being piloted across new york state in high schools just this year so this is a new new york state education goal to have kids get involved in participating in our democracy so one of the ways that we did that this year was through an inquiry that we launched in second grade on u.s symbols we explored the flag we explored um you know we looked at at the white house and at the twin towers and various different symbols of the united states and students decided that they really wanted to focus on the american bald eagle not only because it is on the school sign at phoenicia but also because it is now our school mascot and there is a statue that you may or may not
016know was taken off of grand central station in the early 1900s the original building had 12 of these enormous cement sculptures statues that were up at the top there was a fire they had to take them down and so one of them is now mounted at the intersection of route 28 and main street phoenicia it's that eagle right there so the kids see it every single day and they really felt compelled to do something with the eagle and what we arrived at was our sad school sign sad only because it was chipping and faded and you know the paint was worn and the kids thought that the sign didn't reflect the pride of the bald eagle or the pride that they had in their school so they wanted to restore it so together with the
017art teacher the kids used tooth brushes and cleaned the lichen off the sign that was growing in the letters and then they carefully repainted it and really took ownership not only of restoring the sign but also of participating in sharing with the community the pride that they felt in belonging to this wonderful school and to the united states by extension by working as participants in our civic democracy they presented the sign on a beautiful spring day public speaking i am so privileged to follow these sixth graders who were my fifth graders last year they've learned that to speak in front of people is it's one of our english language arts skills and here we are giving children in second and third grade an opportunity to share their feelings their thoughts in public in front of
018all of their peers using a microphone civic action and there is the restored sign they did also want to write some of the american values around the outside of the sign this was an addition that aligned with the inquiry that we had been using but also with their honest feelings about how this civic project made them feel hope determination community courage freedom and respect another civic action project that we launched this year across both elementary schools in the district was a plastic film recycling challenge that was hosted by the trex company they produce composite decking and composite outdoor furniture and schools all across the country competed to collect and recycle plastic film each week the kids brought in their stash from home and we also recycled everything that was plastic film here in the school
019district and added up the totals they weighed them they did the math we took them to hannaford in west hurley which was our participating drop-off center community businesses the emerson five below the woodstock public library as well as house which isn't pictured here but house hardware was huge and helping to gather plastic film for us all dropped off at our school on a weekly basis over the course of six months uh and by earth day it started on uh recycling day which is november 15th and ended on earth day six months later we collected two tons of plastic film kind of an amazing staggering number and for all of those efforts the kids won two benches one for phoenicia and one for woodstock you can see the film that i made sort of journeying this
020process it's on both the phoenicia website and the woodstock website under school news i invite you to check it out so part of my job is to unpack the inquiries with the teachers um starting in second grade and in third grade there are three inquiries that we focused on in each grade level three of the six we looked at the calendars together the teachers and i and we decided which inquiries were going to work best in which months we did that also in third grade we realized that you know in order to be successful we had to go kind of slow and steady we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew so we tackled half of the new york state inquiries for this year and completed them and part of the process
021was professional development for those teachers many of whom had never seen an inquiry before inquiry is a new approach to instruction for many of them so we looked at the anatomy of an inquiry we talked about primary source research and i think most importantly we shared resources and ideas across the two ends of the district phoenicia and woodstock that often don't have an opportunity to talk to each other to to compare how they approach teaching different topics different lessons and we were able to become more aligned and more in step with each other and um and and share what we have and what we're passionate about one of the other things that evolved in our professional development was an interest that the teachers had in looking at heroes and holidays across the 10 months of
022the academic calendar it's sort of the low-hanging fruit that when a holiday comes up the kids are geared up to celebrate it and teachers want to teach into that so the question was how can we teach heroes and holidays more deliberately and maybe using the inquiry method using more primary sources using richer supporting literature which holidays do we want to teach more deliberately what texts and materials do we currently use what viewpoints are left out how can we present these heroes and holidays from multiple points of view and what additional texts and primary sources do we need to procure so we looked back at the curriculum calendar and we plugged in those 10 months of heroes and holidays and we chose a few in second grade that we wanted to develop we focused on 9
02311 hit the year running september 11th we looked at decolonizing thanksgiving looking at thanksgiving from the wampanoag native american perspective we did a martin luther king inquiry we did um a june we're going to do a juneteenth inquiry that's coming up next week and then in third grade we did similar inquiries developed and differentiated for the older grade group but we also focused on equity equality discrimination and racism which are vocabulary terms that appear in the third grade standards the concepts and the vocabulary were relatively new to third graders and we wanted to become comfortable with using the vocabulary and understanding the concepts in practice so one of the things that we did was tie our new inquiries in with sel with social emotional learning and our partnership with morningside marika who is amazing as
024our professional developer for the elementary schools from morningside and i worked very closely with her on that inquiry in particular to make sure that we were including a more equitable and and more brave conversations on race in our inquiry development that teachers felt that they could handle that's that's another big piece of it is teacher comfort and teachers are in different places with talking about race they have different backgrounds and different personal experiences so it got tricky at times and it wasn't always a comfortable inquiry to unpack so marika really helped us with that we also have been working with um dr javon hunter who is from suny buffalo he led us through 10 sessions of professional development stephanie and other members of the ontario committee were on that pd learning opportunity along with teachers
025from saugerties and i think highland it was and a couple of boces and over the course of those ten lessons dr hunter really unpacked the new culturally responsive sustaining education framework that is published by new york state education we completed a jedi project his words jedi stands for justice equity diversity and inclusion and we focused on one of the four goals of the crs which is creating a more welcoming and affirming environment and the way we did that was through literature we looked at the literature that we have to support our social studies units the literature that we have to support the heroes and holidays inquiries and we realized that many of the texts that we were using were singular perspective were dated and were not representative of the diverse cultures of our students so
026we started to build new libraries with the generous support of stephanie's budget we bought lots and lots of books these books are all recommended by the children's book council and they are now across the 10 months they're organized and they are available for teachers it's a lending library for teachers at phoenician woodstock and we plan to expand it to bennett next year so these books support all of the ten themes one or more of the ten themes in social studies culture time continuity and change people places and environments individual development and identity individuals groups and institutions power authority and governance production distribution and consumption science technology and society global connections and of course civic ideals and practices these titles are age appropriate they are historically accurate they feature characters that can serve as role models
027for our students they represent a diversity of groups and cultures they celebrate multicultural authors and illustrators they're sensitive to a broad range of cultural experiences they have a true sense of story the kids love these books they are highly engaging they're very readable and they have a strong positive visual impact with illustrations that complement the text these books also serve as mirrors so that children can see themselves represented many of the books that we have had traditionally on our libraries either feature animals for young children or white kids the new books that we have feature children from many different backgrounds different languages different abilities different disabilities different skin colors and we're able to talk about that and we're able to share these broad ranges of experiences from children across the world and across the american
028culture with the children who are represented in these stories themselves in the books children can also learn as windows they can either be mirrors of themselves they can be windows through to another world that children can experience differently from their own world and they can be sliding glass doors they can be an invitation i always think of narnia when i think of this expression windows mirrors and sliding glass doors it's like a portal you can enter a new world through wonderful literature and this this concept was coined by uh dr rudin sims bishop it's used widely now when referring to how literature can help to kindle empathy for children and to create vicarious experiences for them so i've created book lists by the month which are embedded in a google classroom for second grade teachers
029and for third grade teachers this is an example of the indigenous people book list for the month of november teachers can preview the titles on this first page and then each title on this page has its own individual page so teachers can read the synopsis of the book before coming down to the book room to actually put their hands on it and dig into it and to help determine what they would like to include as read-alouds or as you know children's book selections in their classroom for some period of time here's another example this was a favorite because it had a recipe in the back and for about a week um the faculty rooms in both schools smelled like fry bread delicious here's an example of the face page on the google classroom libraries link
030this would be for the month of may when we were featuring asian american literature there are also read-alouds that i've created for some of the books that teachers particularly were drawn to reading guides that have primary sources and video links and authors discussing the process behind the creation of the books and this has become a favorite teachers are really loving these read aloud suggestions so a lot of these titles can also fit in with or even replace some of the literature that goes along with our teachers college reading and writing units not that the literature that tc is giving us is it all bad it's wonderful literature but because we're looking at integration this is a way that we can hit some of the social studies content while we're also doing our tc reading and
031writing workshops teachers have also with their school budgets now asked me to put together a list of recommendations for expanding their classroom libraries updating their classroom libraries so i've gone back in and created book suggestions that represent diversity equity and inclusion for the first grade classroom library second and third grade classroom library and we've tried to vertically align the inquiries the heroes and holidays and the teachers college reading and writing units so that they can fit together across the school year again looking for ways that we can integrate it's not doing more it's doing better and here it is for third grade also i've also created a this day in history google page every day there is a either a primary source document or um some photographs or a video or something that teachers can
032share in like a two minute quick hit it's a good for good for like transition time or a little bit of downtime to just fit that history in there somewhere so once again the key to this is integration we're working on the social studies framework we're trying to get the english language arts literacy standards integrated as much as possible a lot of it lends itself quite naturally to social emotional learning and the culturally responsive sustaining framework and of course the civic readiness initiative with civic action getting the kids involved in projects so year one this is what we have accomplished we've adapted and modeled three out of the six toolkit inquiries for third grade and for second grade we've created eight original inquiries based on teacher requests around the heroes and holidays for second grade
033and third grade all children at woodstock in phoenicia have participated in some civic action project sometimes two or three different projects we've begun building the social studies diversity equity and inclusion teacher libraries at both of the schools we've modeled diversity equity and inclusion read alouds as inquiries using primary sources and i have facilitated monthly professional development across the school year for teachers in grade two and three this summer i've proposed a book study on people's curriculum for the earth i'd like to really focus on climate change and integrate science with social studies again the vertical integration and collaborate ideally k through 6 to have a spiraling curriculum using the inquiry design model and primary sources and civic action and argument to teach children about the climate crisis and if all goes well we will continue
034to adapt the remaining inquiries for second and third grade next year it's really a two-year process to roll out the toolkit inquiries at each grade level we'll continue to do the professional development the teachers are telling me that they're really enjoying being able to talk with each other and pick my brains and vice versa we're going to start building the social studies diversity equity inclusion library at bennett we will expand greatly the dei read alouds those have been a big hit the inquiries the toolkit inquiries are typically between three and six lessons the read aloud inquiries are one lesson it's just it's less of a commitment for teachers so it's been working really great and hopefully we can win a trex bench for bennett which i think might fit really nicely out in that beautiful
035courtyard that the sixth graders are building in memory of pearson reynolds thank you so much for your time wow miss hadley thank you for that incredible uh comprehensive and uh you just bring such great energy and expertise to this and thank you um assistant superintendent laffin for empowering um ms hadley to do this and to superintendent mclaren for helping envision this that was amazing first of all i never thought i'd hear the word decolonize at a board meeting i'm going to drop the mic and leave i would if there were one more of us so we could still have a quorum but um questions or comments superintendent mclaren i just wanted to say thank you to miss hadley for such a wonderful presentation and although she gave me credit for thinking of this position i
036kind of have to step back and give her credit because she came to us just with a real desire to explore her passion for social studies and to provide other resources for the district and and this is how it manifested and she's just done an incredible job with it so i'm thrilled thank you trustee bishop sorry yours i just wanted to uh thank you uh so much karen for your enthusiasm and your pat and your passion it's just it's contagious i mean you couldn't see me because i'm wearing a mask but i was smiling the whole time i knew you were going to be amazing in this role thank you so much trusty sherry i had the pleasure of uh miss hadley teaching my son and uh i know what a phenomenal educator that you
037are and i'm just so gratified to see the work that you've done it's really amazing and uh truly appreciated anybody else i just have i i want to also say you also taught my daughter and you used a phrase that i will never forget you referred to the dirt of learning and the dirt of learning getting your hands dirty in in in the material and i i guess i just want to ask as sort of our sort of our uh how we as a culture uh have sort of treated debate and argument and what has happened to that over the last few years how you feel about sort of i first of all i want to encourage i think it's fantastic that you're encouraging that in the classroom and i just wanted to know if
038you had anything to say about that in terms of sort of how you feel that fits into our sort of broader cultural shift towards these sort of binary arguments that's a loaded question um and i've already spent a lot of time yeah um yeah learning is messy um i think debate comes so naturally to children you know from the time they learn how to talk they want to know why they can't have chocolate before dinner and i'm thinking of my own son and and their powers of persuasion to convince their mother why they should be able to have chocolate before dinner and i think there was one time i actually caved because his argument was so spot on it was so good and so compelling that he needed to know that his voice was so
039powerful and his thinking was so powerful he was two i think i think you know as children go through public education as it exists now for all of the wonderful things that it is it's it doesn't honor children's agency enough it doesn't provide opportunities for very young children to participate as citizens at their young age we sort of think about children as citizens in training you know well one day you'll be able to vote one day you'll be able to um you know present your point of view to people who are going to listen to you that's the way it's cast oftentimes but i think that children as young as you know preschool kindergarten can decide for themselves what they want to do to affect their environment to create a better community for themselves and
040the more we offer those opportunities to kids to make decisions for themselves guided decisions about how they want to change their world and how they want to participate in those changes i think the more open we're going to become as a society to being able to hear each other if children learn at a young age to consider different points of view and to hear respectfully other points of view without being you know nasty or or bipartisan if you want to get into the politics of it then um you know we're creating a more a more um responsible democracy you know ben frank who was it franklin yeah benjamin franklin said when somebody asked him what kind of a government is it you're creating sir he said well it's a republic if you can keep it
041which means that we have to be able to debate we have to be able to disagree and if we can continue to do that without destroying each other then the country will be a better place and we have to teach our children how to do that at a very young age wow that is a very powerful and fearless answer thank you for that are there any other questions thank you so much continued success okay let me make sure i'm at the right place uh yes um i would like to open the hearing for on the 2022-23 district safety plan the public are invited to speak as our board members anybody superintendent mclaren um while i did not have the pleasure of participating in the revision of this plan uh i know that assistant superintendent laffin
042did there were not a lot of changes to the plan there were a couple different programs and initiatives that were added that have been undertaken this year including a program on responsible social media and the anonymous reporting system that was put in place there was also a section added on page nine talking about the district's filtering application that is on student owned or student school owned student use devices that searches for some high-risk topics that can then identify areas where students could maybe need some help and then i know that we still need to update the use of surveillance cameras board policy now that we have cameras that have been expanded throughout the district and if there are any other specific questions we'd be happy to try and answer them or if there's anything else
043that assistant superintendent laffin would like to add the only other thing comes from the public health emergency plan at the end just a note that the board of regents is going to be updating their requirements for the discussion of how we use our provisions for remote instruction so that's supposed to come at the july 20th meeting for the board of regents so there's proposed language there that will require us to be more specific in this plan about the use of remote instruction so the idea is once that occurs and is voted on that we'll need to revisit that to to meet that requirement but otherwise well done anybody else uh yes trustee sherry not a well a question um i believe that we're going to have officer sharon come and be open for questions is
044that correct so officer sharon was unable to come tonight but i have invited sheriff figueroa to come with officer sharon and talk about the sro program and i was having some fairly consistent communication with the sheriff but i think he got a little busy but deputy sharon has committed that he will try and reiterate the next meeting in june to see if the sheriff can make it great yes and say your name into the mic sure uh lindsay shan so i just have some some i guess technical questions um i noticed on the team that there were not any parents listed but in the in the identification of the school team parent organizations are are included but not limited to so i just wanted to know what steps were taken to get any parent organization
045involved and what will happen in the future to get ptas or ptos involved in that so you can speak to the original construction of the plan and then perhaps uh assistant superintendent laffen if you want to and a trustee story go ahead there is a parent currently on there i am i'm the board representative and also the parents um thing the this plan is set by s.e.d is sed tells us who's got to be on these plans and what people can be so we have to listen to what sed tells us i understand that um your it says specifically uh representatives of the school board students staff members administrators parent organizations school safety personnel and other school personnel so i'm specifically referring to parent organizations yes so specifically what was there any specific outreach to
046the the ptas at the three elementary schools specifically regarding this i'm not sure if our previous interim superintendent mary stephanie i know she was in deep conversation with them regularly about this but as far as the specifics of the plan i'm not sure really what that conversation was there weren't participatory members when we met regarding the specific plan pta members when you met regarding the plan right there there weren't particular to these meetings okay does that answer that part of the question um another question i had was regarding um making this plan available to the public 30 days prior to its original adoption i just want to know what steps were taken to post the plan and how was the public told i'm i'm pretty um i'm pretty active on what looking at what's going
047on in naughty or and i just i don't recall seeing this i'm not saying it didn't get posted to the public but i don't recall seeing this other than when i looked at the agenda do you know when it went on board docs i can give you the exact date but i believe it went on on thursday prior to the board meeting it was on the website before that correct yep it was um posted up on the website as well okay so we just have to is it possible to just make a shout point next year 30 days in advance just to let people know i don't really think people like people don't look at the agenda so without without knowing this is going on that's probably why there's not a lot of people here
048i would say that is possible and then when we discuss our communications survey you'll see that we're going to try to figure out how people get information that's i mean why i'm why i'm asking this is specifically because of excommunications i got a question wait a second yeah we're only this is a hearing we're now we're starting the 30-day period today right now oh today yes this this is the hearing we don't so okay i misunderstood that so now i understand we can still send it out though i appreciate that suggestion um sorry i have a lot of notes oh uh in under training and drills and exercises one of the sentences there is the efficiency of these drills is assessed annually to by building administrators sro and staff i just wanted to know if
049there's a way for the community to know how we're doing uh well how that's communicated to the community i don't know i mean are we efficient in our drills our fire drills our lock down drills so i don't know the best vehicle to communicate the outcomes of the drills after each drill there's a debrief at each building and deputy sharon is consistently involved in the drills and the debrief and making suggestions and when he can he invites other local law enforcement representatives to participate as well we can talk about how to share the efficiency but we do have to be very mindful of not sharing the details as you know oh i totally understand board service so i'm not really got that i'm not sure where i'm not sure how much we can communicate without
050leaving people feeling like they want more information that they then can't have i mean i as a as somebody who's been on this board and a member of the community i totally understand what you're saying i would be completely happy with we're doing great or are we past or we're totally efficient um sorry i have to find oh um under early detection of potential violent behaviors i'm just curious um there's not a lot there it just mostly talks about people being notified but i just wanted to know what if if there's a pen in place for after that a lot of what we hear in the in the news when there's active shooters is these individuals had a past of you know violent behaviors or or emotional disturbances but nothing has ever talked about what
051steps were taken or not taken and how it can be approved improved so is there a plan in place after a student or individual is deemed by staff members to require attention is there a plan after the fact i think i can speak a little bit to that or i can at least introduce you know this is sort of at the root of our our efforts uh you know with adding support uh social work support and our aster partnerships and i think that uh you know we we haven't uh discussed uh any specific events uh but you're absolutely right that a lot of times uh uh early detection is the best way to prevent um and making sure that every student is respected and is the best way to prevent some of the worst things
052that can happen uh safety wise and and i think to a certain extent that's part of what you heard in in karen hadley's plan right you know so i think that that is at least that's how i would view the answer to that particular question and and we do give regular updates to that that's usually in the superintendent's update or in presentations throughout the year about those particular efforts i don't know if you want to add anything to that i would just add that there's multiple prongs of prevention that have to be balanced with ferpa laws and student privacy and all of the regulations that that support the individual student as well so it's a balance of prevention and protection and privacy i would say but i would agree completely the work that we're doing
053to increase student mental health support the sel work looking at our the new york state crs document and thinking about how we can best implement that in a deeper multiple prong approach and that work is always evolving before we move on to any your next question i just also wanted to add along those lines a question of my own uh the anonymous reporting system has it have you found it broadly useful i mean has it been used uh it has been used um it has been to my knowledge there hasn't been any information brought forward in that format that wasn't already known from another format but again it is another opportunity for someone to share information and the more opportunities and avenues the better and i i presume it takes time for for a community
054to understand that that is a tool that's there to be used and so perhaps more reminders or as part of our orientation because i don't think it was here at the beginning of this year right it sort of came mid-year um and then under situational responses under um hazard categories under civil disturbances i'm just curious why active shooter is not on there in in under type after reading through the physical assault section it doesn't really apply to active shooting situations and i just feel like every school should have a response for that and it doesn't seem like in this plan we have one of those i for this why do i think it does it's not required from scd that's because a lot of what is these appendixes are what is from sed what we're
055required to do that's they are but i would almost say you could apply the intruder alert which is a civil disturbance as well as the hostage taking physical assault or threat um my only concern with that is this the third one down says confront intruder an authorized visitor and ask him for identification well depending on who think an active shooter is well you're right respond to that although i do think people do try and confront active shooters um and i understand that these are you know this is what scd requires but this is something i feel like we need to go above and beyond for and then i was just wondering if um under rage arrangements for obtaining emergency assistance for local government why mobile mental health is not included there is mobile mental health
056that's the county the county provided it's not referenced anywhere else i didn't see it um i could i could be mistaken to circle back though to the active shooter there are building level safety plans i figured that's where i probably and then just out of sheer curiosity what is a an example of um a time that the superintendent or her or her designee will contact the appropriate local government or agencies for advice or assistance during emergency situation it was just i just found that odd exactly we had that happen this year with a water situation in phoenicia so like public health yeah all right thank you thank you lindsay anybody else trustee sherry oh i'm sorry i'm sorry um this is more so out of curiosity and i'm not totally sure if it's applicable but
057this safety team is it possible to have a student on that and like or is that not super applicable i don't know what the uh state ed sets the floor and the ceiling on who is on that right it's not like they do on on this team they tell us who goes on it not it's not like at a minimum this is this is who's on it so i'm i'm assuming there is not a student no and i can't and i don't remember from my time being on here if we've ever had a student on this so i so i don't think it is a student's available allowed to be on it per sed but i'll tell you what i will make a note because there must be a reason there isn't a student and
058we will we will ask because yeah i i guess that is the that is the reason is that the safety plan is for your safety predominantly um trustee sherry you know i i think that noelle's point is and it's an important one and while there probably is not an ability for a student to sit on this particular platform i would love to see us brainstorming with students in an appropriate way about their safety and about what they think is most important in terms of the buildings and in terms of their own safety and and i think that having healthy conversations around this is really important in a really sensitive sensible way um and i would love to have noelle and the other student government members kind of brainstorm about what that might look like because
059i think that debriefing for students is is a really important part of what's been going on in our country superintendent mclaren well in addition to that this is open for comment for 30 days so students are certainly welcome to review it and provide comments and feedback um their voices as you rightly pointed out are just as important as everyone else so um that would be great noel what do you think would be the best way of getting the safety plan out to students we have an association student government meeting which i was going to cover later on on monday after school which i can bring this packet to and definitely bring this up and kind of talk about it i mean i know that speaking from my experience like i didn't know that this was
060happening and i didn't know this was a thing so i think definitely also maybe bringing this up in our social studies classes and bringing that like up as a thing to talk about i think would have been better maybe it would be better great so the process from here so i think we can encompass a couple of these suggestions first of all we can put out a shot point directing people to uh the yeah review and and and we can sort of collect comment however you know just make a clear way to collect comment as a representative you can represent back to the student government um that this is happening and we have 30 days before the board will approve it um and so it is open for 30 days of comment any other questions
061or comments all right then i will close this hearing and we will see what people have to say over the next 30 days superintendent mclaren district news and welcome back to anti-aura thank you so much i am thrilled to be here i have been trying to get to each of the buildings to do a quick walk-through just to start the week i have been to several buildings but i still need to get to phoenicia and the middle school i did have the opportunity when i was walking through bennett to go through the courtyard and it is really incredibly beautiful and peaceful and an incredible space that i think is going to continue to grow and be just a really um just a really treasured place within this building as mr bono had mentioned there were
062two donations that we need to ask the board to add to the agenda tonight both from the same family one is in support of the courtyard and one is in support of the book boogie so i'm hopeful that that's okay i have also been able to set up time to meet with a number of our cabinet members and our principals this week i have i don't know if the trustees had a chance to get through all of their emails recently but i did extend an invitation to meet with each trustee and i've also set up times to meet with our newly elected trustees so i'm really looking forward to getting to know them i was incredibly fortunate that as i drove in yesterday in the morning i realized that kindergarten screening was starting so that's
063always a really exciting process that happens within our district we currently have 65 incoming kindergartners who are either fully registered or whose registration is in process many of them were able to attend the screening this week and it's just really always a wonderful way for us to get to know these young learners and prepare for them to join us in the fall as everyone knows the end of the year has an incredible number of events happening i am so glad that we are going to be able to celebrate together this year i think everybody is really really excited to be enjoying these milestones with our students and celebrating all of their achievements i was going to try and put together a list to read to you but i i can't imagine that it would be
064comprehensive enough so i'm sure that people are getting communications from principals and the athletic director and their ptas so please come to everything you possibly can because it's really just such a wonderful time of year and i'm very much looking forward to graduation as well on a more solid note covid you may have noticed there was no shout point today because we had no new cases so my understanding is that the protocol this year is that if there are no new cases the shout point is not sent out but just so you know the website is updated and the data did change today because we actually went from five to four active cases within the district so that's heading in the right direction and just lastly everyone should look forward to attending our next board
065meeting because it is going to be full of joy we will be celebrating those staff members who are being awarded tenure along with celebrating those staff members who are leaving us to enjoy their retirement so i always see it as kind of the two bookends of the career here in ontario and it's always just a really lovely evening and that's all i have because i've only had 48 hours let's get busy um any questions for the superintendent all right thank you very much um board district news yes trustee story on friday i was able to attend the colonial trade fair here and it it was it was great to be back here in person and to see the kids do their thing it was just it was amazing it was a great to be back
066in person and see them all so i want to thank everybody that put that together anybody else trustee bishop try and keep your mic together this time i i just wanted to say that um i was able to attend the fourth grade concert um which was a bennett concert but it was at the high school in the auditorium it was so great um the music teachers and the um the the orchestra and band instructors are just so amazing and the kids did a great job and then uh also trustee salem and i attended the ulster school board association um oh my gosh what's it called the friends of education uh celebration where we honored uh a former board member rob kernet and it was a really lovely evening great thank you anybody else trustee sherry
067i'd like us to give an update um to the community about where we're at with board elections so i can start that by saying that all the necessary paperwork has gone to council and we are waiting for them to authorize the recount which we had to approve but it was really just a formality so we expect to hear from them sometime in the next five to six weeks i believe to authorize the recount that is the commissioner the commissioner yeah thank you amanda is there anything else that you would add to that not at this time as soon as i have an update i will inform everyone and then just to reiterate that process we will do a recount and we will see who has formerly won the election since leon is is not able
068to serve if the seat belongs to him then the board of education is responsible for filling that seat and if um miss taylor has won that seat then the seat will go directly to her great thank you and then with regard to trustee osmond's vacated seat we have received three applications or letters of intent and we have begun interviews and we will after we've interviewed the candidates we will appoint someone to fill that seat any other questions or comments great student representative noel crandall you have waited a long time but you've heard some cool stuff tonight yeah thank you for both of those presentations um so recently in student government we have begun our elections for the 2022-2023 school year this process begins with collecting signatures from classmates and then our voting takes place on
069infinite campus on friday with our newly elected officials we will have our last student government association meeting after school on monday of this year in which i will bring up the safety plan throughout the high school senior summit to bel air was a huge success more seniors attended than ever and special thanks to bellar mountain walt grabowski the phoenicia diner and ulster county probation for their anti-drunk driving presentation the national honor society induction ceremony is tomorrow evening the varsity athletic awards ceremony is this thursday evening and as finals approach us the rise of testing anxiety is prevalent however many students are taking full advantage of regent's prep classes yearbooks are in and they look excellent those should be distributed very soon and as the year comes to a close the talon is expected to be
070releasing their last issue of the year this week which you can find in local restaurants and local businesses as well as i think on our website as well as our literary magazine is producing their last mag and our ontario newsroom is producing their last broadcast and that's all i have thank you great thank you so much you guys have been doing such an incredible job this year we really appreciate that i'm glad your elections are at the end of the year that seems to make sense um anybody have any other questions for for noelle fantastic if you need to go study for your finals please i do not think there was any all right um public uh and students may comment on any agenda or non-agenda item please limit comments to three minutes during public
071be heard civility is always expected speakers of public be heard understand that the board of ed cannot engage in discussion or answer questions during public be heard the board of education and superintendent especially cannot be party to discussions of individual student or personnel matters in open session if you wish to discuss those kind of matters you can bring them to the superintendents attention rick wolfe hello my name is rick wolf welcome back to victoria and congratulations to the people that are going off the board kevin and i guess a couple people aren't here my um my issue here is about the election which emily just spoke about um it almost looks like why do i want to come out and vote because bennett's seat was left open um you're gonna look to appoint a person
072you put that on hold then you had um five people running for the seat one person backed out and then during that process lori osman announced that her resignation would be effective the day after the election i guess i can say her name because it's right here in the agenda to be the day after the election and then i hear that leon doesn't want the seat didn't realize what was involved in being on the board this was a former student member of the board and didn't realize what was going on so i have people asking me well what's going on with the election what's the sense of voting if the board is going to look to appoint you know who might be their favorites in the election so immediately after the election you already put
073now an ad for somebody to apply for the open seat which lori osman knew well in advance that she was going to be leaving the board and then announces that it would be the day after the election so it just just seems a little funny when you're trying to to me it looks like you're trying to manipulate the board seats so thanks mr wolf uh let's see discussion and possible action uh the board of education approves the moa between the ontario non-teachers employee association and the ontario central school district regarding extending the contract for a period of three years from july 1 2022 to june 30th 2025 and shall remain unchanged except for the accompanying changes may i have a first trustee bishop second trustee story any questions or comments all those in favor aye
074that's unanimous and uh now we're going to review the communications survey which has been um in the making for a couple months now and so the idea is to sort of make us better communicators both ends listening and sending sending and receiving and really the trustee bishop and i worked on this and we we sort of found some some good surveys from other districts and we kind of tailored it to uh to our district and i think the first thing as i sort of mentioned to to um to lindsay during the hearing is that one of the things we have to do is we have to figure out how people are getting their information so that's really one of the biggest goals of this so may i just go through a question by question and
075we can if there's a discussion on any of them and then and then what i'd like to do is there is one thing that i know needs to be revised because uh superintendent mclaren uh mentioned something that we we uh failed to to add to it um but then what i'd like to do is i'd like to propose that if we sort of agree on this sort of broadly speaking that we have amanda immediately get it out to um our incoming board members and the uh the pta uh uh executives just because they have been sort of involved in this a little bit and not not for them to answer the questions on the survey but for them to um for them to uh uh maybe give some input as to what questions might be
076on the survey or the quality of the survey so first we ask uh what building or buildings people have uh students in the second question asks whether they have internet access at home the third question asks whether they have internet access on their smartphone now this one i almost want to say maybe put sometimes because people don't always have data you know not everybody's on an unlimited plan so if they go over their data they may not have internet access on their phone you know what that's fair enough ordinarily i would say we don't need that but if they if the answer to number two is no that they don't have internet access at home and they're only internet access is on their phone then sometimes becomes a meaningful answer does that seem seem fair
077then we ask uh non-grading or classroom specific information from the district where do you get it and and how often so we have there's this is the format of a lot of these questions so we use email postal mailings you know email snail mail the infamous infinite campus app uh shout point social media district website notes sent home board of education meetings and the omission here is that we don't have the antiora app and that's my omission because i sort of think of the ontario and the infinite campus as the same thing and they're not nearly it's just that you can use one to access the other does that seem reasonable add the onto our app superintendent mclaren i'm wondering if if it's worthwhile and it may not be but to delineate board of education
078meetings um you know do do people look at the agenda read the minutes or watch the video or watch the live stream is it worth getting to that you know we could do that or but that would that might like burden this already big question but maybe what we can maybe ask a question yes separate question with regard to information from the board of education right how do you do you view the agenda do you look at board docs do you watch the meetings online or do you attend the meetings so we'll add that question the next question when receiving um why yeah why this question i i thought this says receiving general information and this is supposed to say uh i don't think this question is necessary i think this is the this is
079a redundant question right yeah i thought i took it off when i redid this but okay it's it's the same we talked about removing it i think we just forgot to that's redundant so then we then we come to receiving grading or classroom specific information from a teacher or the district and we're asking what's the most effective way to ensure that the information reaches me email snail mail infinite campus onto our app we'll add their district website notes sent home i think that's fairly straightforward i don't know that the anterior app would apply to classroom specific except that you can like you can get to the infinite campus app from the onto our app but the onto our app itself doesn't contain yeah i mean i i don't know how much classrooms like if i
080wanted to see what has happened like if you wanted to see information about the tosa you you wouldn't get that so we can take that off yeah i don't think the anterior app would apply to that one uh okay so no on to your app there then when it comes to events same question again how do we how do you want to be informed or how are you how is it easiest to inform you about you know sporting events uh you know concerts etc etc same same list um any questions there then uh i would prefer to receive items such as monthly newsletters lunch menus flyers etc in the following format electronically paper copies or smartphone app yes will you put a check to all that apply yes uh would we want to because we
081i guess we want to know what they prefer and some parents would want both okay check all um uh then the next question has to do with frequency i want to receive information from our teachers schools and or district office and then for teachers weekly monthly or quarterly school the building level weekly monthly or quarterly and the district central administration weekly monthly or quarterly um what about adding when necessary ah okay you know because from district offices we may need something daily from them you know so when necessary great so we'll add a fourth column excellent um and then we want to find out uh you know we have talked um almost too much about sort of the need to sort of get our website uh dealt with um so the next question is i
082visit the ontario website for information relating to school activities events and academic academic information and then it's just daily weekly you know daily once or more a week about once a week it goes to frequency we want to find out if people are using the website do we want to take the occasion to ask them a general question about whether or not they find the website to be wieldy or you know usable i think we all understand that it it's not usable and it's ineffective i know i i guess i would just like to if there's a way to drill down on that a little bit more because we are obviously going to need a new website but i'd like it to be an effective one i think i think there is a way to
083ask that at the end of this i was gonna maybe say suggest adding one or two things at the end and maybe just an open-ended question yeah that would be great i mean and i also have um i'd like to add something about about access to infinite campus because over the last eight years i've had a lot of trouble personally using infinite campus for three children and i wanna i i wonder if i'm the only one you know i think that there are probably a number of other parents who are not using infinite campus because it's quite complicated in some ways um and i just would kind of like to to measure that a little bit and see if parents understand who to reach out to if they are unable to use infinite campus because
084i don't even know um and i think that's really important because it's an excellent tool for those who use it and i cannot use it let's see go ahead i know when we first got infinite campus what they we they did the school did was have parent workshops so to you actually had to go to a workshop to get access to infinite campus so it i don't love that i mean i don't like anything that where you have to go but it was it was brand new and trying to teach the whole district parents but maybe there's a way that we could upload something to the unwieldy website where parents could go in and get a tutorial on their own time frame and at their own you know leisure so that so that they can
085understand it because obviously since then we've had many parents come through the district um and i have to imagine that some of them are like me and not incredibly tech savvy and not able to use it but if we could get a tutorial maybe from the company put it on the website in a really accessible place and let parents especially parents who are new to the district know how to use it my kids have tried to teach me and i still don't get it uh yes trustee bishop yeah i just wanted to say that i i think um question number 12 addresses the website it and it may need some rewording but it does address the website uh number 12 is uh 11 is the infinite campus question and i'm wondering because really uh trustee
086sherry what you just did was kind of answered the survey right uh and and so i think that in terms of like addressing how we educate people about infinite campus that'll be part of the survey result but we still need to get to the way we the way we word 12 about the website we could almost duplicate that for infinite campus and the onto your app sorry go ahead would you think of swapping 11 and 12 so that you're asking um you know how often do you visit the website and then what do you feel about the website and then you could do how often do you visit infinite campus and then how do you feel about it great yes uh so we go 10 11 is website and how often you know or you
087know how often you use it and then information about it and you know i want to try and keep it a manageable length really we should be doing the website infinite campus and the app um i was going to suggest taking out question 13 so maybe we could slide the app in there only because i i i'm curious what people prefer but frankly we need to be putting social media out onto all social media outlets so i'm not sure if it matters because i would i think it's super important that there are different age demographics that use each of these profiles and the kids use twitter a lot they use instagram they don't use facebook but we all use facebook so you know i i don't i don't know that it matters i just think
088the information has to get out there and on every platform in every way and and we should be using twitter because most of the kids here are using twitter i'd like to keep this question though because i do think we data is data and you're you are right different age groups you know parents of elementary students tend to use you know it'll just give us data uh you know i think what we're trying to find out is where not you know like what does you know the broad sweeping data of the public say but what are how are people currently receiving information and is it of any use to them i think one thing that i've personally noticed is that we we i think we do a pretty good job of facebook i don't think
089that we get a lot of traffic on our facebook in the way that we should be and i think some of that is about promotion and i think so that is just about learning how to use social media which is about what time you post where you post where you share that information the district should probably be posting information to community pages etc and and i do think that that's a further discussion um but i also think that that we're not probably using our instagram in the way that we could be i think we're doing a much better job of getting pictures and information out there about our students and what we're doing in the building but i'm not sure we're using it to disseminate information other than kind of promotional information which is awesome
090our athletic department uses instagram yeah they do a great job and our and our new booster club is also doing a great job i mean i think that there's that there's a real need for instagram but understanding your audience helps to dictate you know how you share information on social media and that's something that i think that we could all use a good primer on trustee salem yes can i just i just wanted to say you know maybe um on like question five we could add social media as an option for an answer oh it's there oh wait yeah it's there it is all right i'm sorry i was looking at six and i realized that was the wrong one so yes maybe it could be a two-part question so that we're getting that information
091there that we're looking for those data points so it'll say social media and then underneath that perhaps it could say say specify yes specify which one click you know click here for facebook move that other question to which question is it the one thing i will say about that is because at the end of our discussion here we should decide whether this is uh whether we want to engage panorama or somebody else because that comes what you're what i want to not have encumber this so much so that you know where there's like three trees on every question i mean we want people to answer it that part i do i do know like we want to keep it under you know under a few minutes to answer it and get all the information and
092then uh uh when you mention the website and sort of you know even even deeper dive than sort of uh you know question 12. uh i thought we have this sort of open-ended question anterior schools wants to ensure that we effectively communicate with all parents guardians please tell us what has worked what has not and share any ideas that you think could help us improve like i think it is useful and i think it is super easy and we always hear what doesn't work um i'm wondering if it would be good to split that into two questions like give us an example of something that has worked give us an example of something that hasn't worked i mean i i don't know i'll let that up to you guys but to me it's just like
093i you know i could sort of to your point about social media i could sit here and say nothing works you know at a certain point in seven years somebody has told me everything doesn't work um you know so it would be interesting to see what does work for people specifically and anecdotally my thought process actually right now is when are we going to put this out to the public to do because right now parents are fried we're kids are fried we're at the end of the school year i don't think we'd get the response that we want from parents right now i would say that this is something that the community is asking us for you know like they're they're really asking for better communication they're really asking for us to um improve what
094they consider to be transparency you know and the the only pathway there is to get the information so that we can start before september getting this done in the way that the community wants to see it done in it i think it's important i don't disagree with you i'm fried with my kids for sure but i would definitely answer this survey um and i and i was just going to mention to amanda we've done surveys before where the link is not correct when it goes out and i think when we do that we lose people immediately so i really want to make sure that when this link goes out that it's been checked and double checked because if i open a survey or anything else and it doesn't work i'm not going back to it
095so let's just make sure that that is something that is triple checked before it goes out if you don't mind thank you and valerie i don't disagree but i i but more importantly i think this is on people's minds and people are talking about it right now they will answer there are also you know some events left at the end of the year here where we can actually be where we have people congregating uh you know commencement you know there are places where people are going to be around so i know it's it's been a project to get it done amidst everything else but i would say let's go for it i think that if we can get it to people to see you know what their input is on it then i think the
096big decision is who implements the survey i would also encourage my colleagues to share this kind of information on your own social media it's something that that sometimes you know each of us does and i think it depends on where you're at and how you're how you're moving forward on that particular day but i think that each of us has a social media presence that is local and would be really would really benefit from us sharing the information um whenever we've got it i so you know when this comes out i'd like to see i'd like all of us to share it if you're comfortable doing that i i will be doing that so um may i suggest that we schedule a communications committee meeting for uh not the 14th um perhaps monday the 13th
097in the evening and people what's that yeah i i was going to say they can be anyone can attend them um it will be virtual maybe we can use the forum format or we could do i i can't personally be there on the 14th tuesday the 14th we could do it where we normally have our covid forum and i'm perfectly comfortable not being there um so should we do that should we just have our sort of communication forum that we've hopefully we had hoped to have it sooner but uh you know things get busy does that seem reasonable yeah i can do that cindy are you available as well and the only thing i would say about that is like let's get it out twice if we're going to have a communication forum we need
098to make sure we're communicating that to the community um so i'd want to get that shout point out you know soon and then again on tuesday to make sure that people know that we're doing it so should we just commit to that tuesday six to seven where we normally have our covid forum we will have a communications forum to gather input to the survey not responses to the survey but input to the survey sure sounds good at what point will we have a draft survey that we can share with everybody so they can read it before that um it would be good borrow at high noon okay it would just it would be good if we send out the shout point and you can say you know we're going to talk about this here it
099is yeah so i would like to be able to commit to revising it tonight but i will if you and i can work a little bit tomorrow uh at like 11 30 in the morning or something sure uh on phone yeah okay sure we'll just go through and make sure that we got everything and then i'll send you the you can it has to be printed i this is i use surveymonkey but we don't really have an account i mean it's a free account so but you can print it and put it you know posted somewhere for that meeting anything else on that no okay the board of education hereby approves of the revised corrective action plan as attached may i have a first trustee story second trustee bishop are there questions or comments all
100those in favor aye the board of education approves the following members of the district safety team victoria mclaren effective 6 6 22 may have a first trustee story second trustee sherry all those in favor aye the board of education approves the intermunicipal agreement with kingston city school district for girls swimming and authorizes the superintendent to sign such an agreement may i have a first trustee bishop and second trustee sherry other questions or comments all those in favor aye the superintendent recommends acceptance of two donations totaling four thousand dollars cash from matt and jenny jarrod two thousand dollars to the support to support the creation of a positive outdoor learning space in the courtyard at the bennett elementary school two thousand dollars to support the book boogie at the bennett elementary school and recommends increasing the
101budget line a2110.431-03 supplemental by four thousand dollars may i have a first trustee bishop second trustee sherry uh our gratitude for these generous donations all those in favor that's unanimous the superintendent recommends acceptance of donations totaling two thousand seven hundred ninety three dollars and seventy five cents cash from various donors as scholarship awards for the graduating class uh 150 dollars from gene douglas one thousand dollars from kathleen and joshua morton strauss five hundred dollars bonnie simon one hundred dollars from justin dernison 150 dollars from phyllis and thomas rosado 31.25 from scott richards 31.25 from don gottlieb 500 from the boys phil market 300 from martin krakauer md 31 and 25 cents from nicole summer may i have a first trustee story second trustee sherry again our gratitude um all those in favor that's unanimous the
102board of education hereby approves the overnight trip for jasmine ryder to attend the niss track and field championships in syracuse new york on june 10th and 11th and pay all necessary fees may have a first trustee sherry second trustee bishop good luck jasmine um all those in favor that's unanimous the board of education hereby abolishes uh one full-time high school mathematics teacher and creates a .6 high school mathematics teacher may i have a first trustee bishop second trustee story are there any questions or comments here all those in favor that's unanimous uh the board of education he hereby creates the fo are hereby create the following positions one full-time special education teacher k-6 and one full-time temporary middle school principal until the current middle school principal retires may i have a first trustee bishop second
103trustee story questions or comments all those in favor that's unanimous um icr is the board of education here by approves uh item 12.02 may i have a first trustee bishop second trustee sherry any questions or comments all those in favor that's unanimous the board of education hereby approves consent agenda items 1302-1306 may have a first trustee bishop second trustee story questions or comments uh schedules i've reviewed the schedule you and it appears to be in order it's the long one all those in favor aye that's unanimous um old business uh i i do want to make it very clear and i'm not responding uh i i spoke to trustee sherry about this and we said we would review in old business we must follow the law with regard to our election this has taken a
104lot of consultation with our lawyers and and we are doing what we are absolutely required to do there is no sort of uh yes we we when a when a when a board seat is vacated there are three ways the board can fill a vacant seat we can appoint we can hold a special election which we generally choose not to do because of the expense or we can leave it vacant unfortunately all two of those have come up and and the situation with our current election has been extremely uh complicated um and that is that i don't i don't know what else to say about the election and we've i've heard a lot of stuff personally about it and and and there it is the same narrative and i have the same answer there is
105really only one very specific path that we are allowed to take with regard to this very unusual election and there are no there is there is no uh discretion involved in it whatsoever um trustee sherry this feels a little bit uncomfortable for me but i'm i'm going to to do it i i have known leon savage since he was a fairly young man attending school here and i just uh leon did explain to the board and to the district clerk why he was not accepting the position if he wanted um and it had nothing to do with his misunderstanding of of what it meant to be on the board it had everything to do with the college that he's attending and he was very clear about it and i i don't i think he would
106be perfectly fine with the board sharing that information but without his permission i'm not going to do that but i do i really want to clear up that there was any male intent on his part because i think that's unfair um he was surprised by what he learned from his school he thought he had permission to go ahead and do this and he did not in the way that he understood it so he had every intention from everything that he expressed to the board of taking that seat if he wanted and he is a young man um his family's been in this area for a really long time and he was an outstanding member of our school community so i just i just want to make it clear that you know everything that leon expressed
107us was that he was planning to take the seat absolutely and had something changed in his life circumstances and again with regard to legalities there was some question uh anyone can run for a seat uh and you do not one of the requirements there are certain requirements you are not required to be able to you know fulfill a six-year term if you're running for a six-year seat in new york state um and without any specific thing about uh leon again it is unfortunate and complicated i would just say i would encourage everyone to look at it this way someday we are going to have a young person sitting up here on this board and i'd say that day will be a great day it didn't happen this time uh i say that uh if if
108there is anything that makes it worth the uh complications at least we had a young person step up as we sort of sit up here and put our fists in there about civics and civic engagement at least we had one step up and i hope that happens again is there anything else any other old business is there any new business yes um i've been thinking about this seeing that we're going to have four brand new board members starting next year starting in june july what we do is uh we do like our training or board training we start our public meetings say half hour hour later but we go into a retreat session for all the board members and we do this type of education of the board 101 and team building and things like
109that i think it's something i've been thinking about this for a while to see because this is something that we all need some guidance and some training especially when having four brand new people not know what it is so it doesn't so everybody knows the same information and whether we do it at every single meeting or we do it at every other meeting but something that we do at meetings so we know that this information will be able and available to everybody we do also have dr bill christensen coming in to do retreats with us so those will be regularly scheduled and he will cover a lot of information about board duty and and how you know kind of uh interpersonal relationships and community building in those so don't just don't forget no i i
110understand fully but he's not going to be there a lot of the times it's for this and this is more for us and it would have to be in order for all of us to do it we'd have to do it in a retreat setting because this isn't an exact session information but there is stuff that we have to would be discussing you know it's like how to read a schedule you you know that is something that's very technical and something that every all board members need to know so i was going to ask cindy if she could do a training for the new board but see this is but this is something like that's just an example of something that we need to do for everybody to understand what abort what the board can
111and can't do and all that stuff i i like the idea val i really like that idea um i think we'd have to look at our schedule and you know figure out how we can do it in terms of time and not make it complicated for the community to remember if we're doing it every other board meeting you know does that mean the board meeting time is going to change because i don't think that's a good idea but i do think it it's it would be a good opportunity to cover important information that new members need to know and also an opportunity for us to um you know build our own community i think it's a great idea i also i you know you all can once dr bill's don't look at me like that
112once dr bill's uh once dr bill's schedule is uh is sort of situated um you know with the uh the frequency of the coaching perhaps there can be regular sort of retreat you know selected topics retreats schedule you um also just so you know i we we're trying to because part of dr bill's consultancy is building projects uh and so he is this summer heats up he's been a little bit busier than he was uh uh before but we are i i did reach out to him to ask if he could just meet with us and the sort of incumbent uh trustees to give us a little board do's and don'ts in a retreat or not incumbent i'm sorry incoming yeah the incoming uh trustees to sort of like go over some you know he
113said he has this like a rap that he has like board do's and don'ts and i i think i think a well-trained board is going to be an excellent thing and uh yeah we will have four new members and one mentor two points of new business um one wondering superintendent mclaren or superintendent laffen if we could get an update on the anonymous reporting app so kind of like an official update where i'd like to understand how many people have used it how it's been disseminated to the students and what the plan is for september for dissemination as well um and you know a feeling for whether or not we think it's an effective tool and if the students think it's an effective tool which is probably more important than what we think and then my
114next question was about summer lunch programming and wondering uh what we have in place i know the last couple of summers we've had uh you know specific funding that helped provide food for students um i'm particularly concerned because the libraries which in our community have provided summer lunch or summer food programming in all of our towns are not doing that this summer and i am concerned about it you know i i have some ability to pick up some new families but but not a lot so if the school has some ability in there i'd like to talk about it do you know why they're not doing it is it because federal funding is being cut well um i will say that woodstock did not have a lot of success in um in program usage there
115just weren't people who were accessing it in the way that it needed to so they had some problems with food storage et cetera they have a new um library director so i'm hoping that she's going to take another look at it and see if there's a way that we can partner our two kind of agencies together to see if we can help with that and shandagan i think is just feeling as if you know they've done as much as they can i don't want to speak for the librarian there but but that's kind of the impression that i've gotten it they have a huge territory to cover and they were delivering their food because many of their residents don't have walking access to the library so they actually had volunteers delivering all of their meals
116and i think it was really complicated for them last summer and their main volunteer who did that is is no longer with them so i i think it's comple it's a complicated thing to take on um and the district did it really well and um i don't imagine that we can do it anywhere close to what we did during covid but if there's a way for you know us to kind of work together on that i would love to to be involved in any way i can any other requests for information or new business no but i re i'm going to motion that we enter to executive session to discuss the employment of a particular employee great second trustee bishop all those in favor is unanimous you