Board of Education Meeting August 19, 2021

001united states of america considering voice [Music] indivisible with liberty and justice okay [Music] just got a couple things to go through first [Music] all right [Music] so uh here we are at the end ready to start school year in a couple weeks and you know we're still facing many of the same risks that we were facing last year at this time you know in that regard and again you know to start the new school year our first goal is to certainly bring back all students uh into in-person learning for this school year so um parents receive a message from the school tomorrow as well we are expecting all kids to be here you know in person uh for the year and we also know that the spread that the delta variant uh you know has

002complicated this a little bit and we thought we were looking good here in may and june and now we have the delta variant and all you have to do is look what's going on to our friends in the south and what's happening since they opened up schools the last couple weeks we've seen tens of thousands of students and staff now quarantine or in isolation uh down south in a lot of those schools for them so we know you know the opening of school should be a time of positive emotions and positive nervousness for our kids and everybody coming back to school for the new year but we know that this pandemic and all that this just added another layer of anxiety etc on that throughout last year and going from this year to cdc i

003would recommend a layered approach to mitigation us strategies for our school and many of those guidelines are the same as last year that we had last year so not really a lot has changed in the sense of what we think we should be doing for the upcoming school year and i think we were pretty successful with that we had very limited uh stays off if you will because of quarantine you know as in the school community and school district as a whole the city we had is here in person every day unlike most of our neighbors or some type of hybrid model where kids were in and out and such in that regard some of those mitigation stand uh strategies uh included wearing face masks last year um trying to keep you know six feet

004or three feet away from everybody covering our mouths and such we coughed and sneezed it's everything our mothers taught us when we were younger staying home when we were sick not sending our kids to school when they weren't feeling good my nurses did say anecdotally there's a lot less flu and some of those winter sicknesses that kids get because of what we're doing our custodial staff and teachers did a great job of disinfecting cleaning there's classrooms and learning spaces throughout the year throughout the day each year uh to begin to reduce the transmission and again we implemented all those strategies last year with much success so throughout last year and going into this year you know throughout this pandemic we followed the guidance from our state global and federal authorities that's their job you know

005provide that guidance and we continue to look for updates we continue to meet uh collaboratively with our colleagues across our region in county to working together with county department health etc to figure out what's going to be the best way to open a couple weeks for that and so even though the new york state department of health is and so today has not issued any guidance we're still having come up with our own plan we have 700 other school districts in new york state for that and we we are using the cdc guidance academy pediatricians guidance because they're the experts they're the md's um for that they're recommending that's right right that's their guidance it's the highest standard of care that we have access to at this point right so i think it's important to

006continue to file that guidance because god is here today safely for the most part uh data and science etc uh to make those decisions and also always remain flexible because we don't know it's gonna happen two weeks from now three weeks enough uh when school gets so our plans are adapted it's flexible you know we will be ready um we have to go remote let's say for instance for some reason we will be prepared to do that as a school district as we go forward we also i think uh want to strongly encourage everybody to be vaccinated our kids who are allowed to be vaccinated who are old enough to be vaccinated we want to encourage that because that has been shown with a lot of data to be most effective to reduce any negative

007impacts from the different variants of the code so we certainly encourage all of our our staff and students who are eligible to be vaccinated for that and so again you know this is going to be a school community effort to keep us open uh in the fall for the things we just mentioned for that and so it's incumbent on all of us you know to do our part and i think how we respond not only individually but also collectively uh we'll determine whether we're open every day or we find ourselves sending kids and stay at home for um so just want to kind of do that as an overview and so we've met this district-wide safety team has met on a couple of occasions to take all that guidance that we've received you've come up

008with an opening plan uh for the upcoming school year uh for that again this is the draft at this point and we're still working out some some more minutiae questions in it all right but generally speeding um sit down for a second one second [Music] all right so uh our plan is being presented tonight uh we'll just start with mass that's what people are interested in right so i have other pieces of this besides math so that's one of these this is the whole thing here all right right now we are recommending that all students wear masks because they're on a school bus right you know because that's actually all public transportation perspective or requirement of mask anyways that's school bus we expect all of our students to wear masks on school buses if they

009do that and we're just going to expect all staff and students to wear masks in our schools and corridors in all common areas then once they're in their classrooms once they are they're six feet apart they can take their mask off at that point uh you know once everybody's settled in that regard so very similar to what we were doing last year uh in the grand scheme of things so uh we want everybody to be wearing everybody vaccinated or unvaccinated wear their mask in our corridors in common areas when they're in the classrooms they can then once the teachers everywhere settle how they can remove their masks if they're six feet apart in that regard if they're three feet apart there's closer right there will be a plan in place to kind of alternate around

010of the classroom in that regard visitors will be required to wear masks in our schools once school starts with kids in the building in that regard for outside activities mass are optional so whether it's outside recess outside is that athletic contest is better for athletes especially optional [Music] we'll continue to provide our layered approach to disinfecting and cleaning on a daily basis we'll continue to enforce distancing in the halls as best we can in other spaces and in that regard and to avoid that clusters of kids all in one place our kids will be able to eat the cafeteria like they did last year in all four buildings et cetera so those those things actually change from last year in that regard and choir can perform as long as they keep six feet apart practice

011and stuff like that from 12 feet last year and same with physical education so six foot distance um do their thing lockers will be available in one secondary level uh sports i'll begin monday and for outside sports they can participate uh in outside sports they do not need to wear masks for outside sports at this time we are well as of today they can do that and uh for volleyball it's an indoor high-risk sport participants will have to learn that spectators will also have to wear matches our buildings we're going to ask the spectators spread them spread out by households from their insider bleachers for outside activities and interspace and sports the participants right now do not have to wear masks we will be uh starting a testing screening testing program with our athletes uh

012that this coming week this following week and we'll be looking to um test right rotate to uh all of our athletes test it on a regular basis each week to not serve that situation the same with the school competing so we're looking to implement random testing of all our student answers about ten percent [Music] again we're going to ask that you know parents keep your kids home if they have any symptoms contact our school nurses so they can help you through the process you know make sure those who are vaccinated will not have to quarantine according to the cdc diets those who are not vaccinated without the quarantine again we'll just follow the guidance that's pretty much universal anybody does and come in contact or forbid that comes down and talk about our facilities already

013disinfect our areas a couple times a day as well and we keep our spaces very clean these systems so uh remote construction is still an unknown yet we're still kind of trying to work that out again we expect all kids to be here in september for that but we do know there might be some medically frail braille children cannot be here for the situation so we're going to work with our teachers to come up with a supportive plan learning plan for those kids who cannot be here for that reason so again there's a lot more layers underneath that whole process mentioned buses everybody uh can be wearing masks on the buses that'll also be going out tomorrow so we're gonna ask parents to let us know whether they're gonna ride a bus or not if

014their kids ride a bus so mr lucha can plan the routes [Music] no no no no no no this is a serious question because they're all serious no no he said i have to when you when you come up he just has to give us a report and i understand that he said he said i need to notify the transportation officer to save it for the public importance which is two topics all right thank you very much okay thank you so that's an overview of the plan again there's still some details to work out uh we are waiting on you know just working it out amongst you know we're trying to be consistent across our area so it's easy for people who work maybe they work in you know uh cask skills you know the

015kids go here so there's those types of things so we're working some of the things out as much as we can be consistent among the school districts obviously our plan uh in that regard so this is where we are today uh with our clan uh other things will change the next couple weeks uh and things like that and you'll have to wait and see until that's actually done or not and that can certainly then cause us to have to go back and let's do our plans randy is the is the testing of athletes is that a requirement from section two no section two in the new york state called the of expression is not providence has come out and said they're not going to provide any guidance for mandates if you will uh interscholastic athletics

016you know the county of the state deal right the question they have is the lieutenant governor is out saying that once she becomes governor she's going to mandate her mask in schools we have any other details of her comments related to that what does she mean by that [Music] is there any information i think nothing obviously nothing specific but right [Music] i [Music] what would be the legal ramifications if this board opposed the new york state mandate right that she put out so if if there's a government the laws created or you know in that regard it's called a so if the governor creates an executive order or there's a doh law the legislation passes let's say a mask law you know navigate uh the board which says no we're not going to do it

017in that regard or we're going to be blacks on it then each member of the board is liable okay because each of you has taken an oath of office to uphold the constitutional laws of the state of new york allows the united states to bring it again number one willful violation of the law uh because removed from office it also sets up the board and the district to be liable for any lawsuits uh that may occur and our insurance carrier it just kind of pretty much made it known to ignore the executive order of law in this regard that they would not indemnify us do not cover our losses [Music] all the way through were we still doing like temperature checks and parents doing the screening for their kids we are back good questions we're

018not going to do temperature checks at the door um the screen is still to be determined our nurses have a meeting tomorrow with the nurses in the county and that's has original question about speaking athletes so that's not a section two that's a ca thing athletes correct and what is the thinking behind that to monitor our kids to make sure they're safe especially especially when inner school begins so again we're still having conversations on that group of school districts because we want to be consistent on that there's a conversation we just do much faster students and coaches so that's probably where we may end up with the same students [Music] right he said right now i said backstage since dr hassan met with the committee today can you elaborate on what his thoughts are on

019our protocols and what kind of uh what he's seeing [Music] and hospitalization rates he was part of the conversation he shouldn't be in agreement with our plan didn't have any objections did he get any oversight into you know what the area is experiencing currently and what's going on in the capital district with optimization rates and all that he didn't speak that was really a topic of conversation at least i know talking with um green county health columbia county and rensselaer all the doh commissioners are are nervous about what they're seeing because they're seeing more teenagers you know getting it virus and do we know i guess for a future meeting i'd like to know what kind of symptoms we're having and that type of thing going forward [Music] okay [Music] so this is still a

020fluid policy it's not it's still the yeah okay so we have a report on students in leading school early so this was asked at the previous meeting just to kind of get out there into a a lot of our interventions the board has information [Music] hello um so i was i was supported a couple of questions specifically um you know i think that that i the one question was kind of about early indicators you know did did we know these students were at risk before they um dropped out or didn't return to school and just so you understand our process with grade level and department plp time part of what our grade levels and our departments talk about you know it's not just curriculum it's not just you know it's not just assessment scores and

021that stuff they they help us identify the students who are at risk so every year you know we start the year looking at you know attendance data from the years previous we look at you know how many credits are kids you know moving up into being a junior senior are they behind we identify our students that we think are the most at risk right in the first couple of weeks of school some of them we already know are at risk of ultimately not graduating and so um you know so yes in answers to the question we did we did know um [Music] i can stand back there [Music] um so our plp we have every day we are lucky enough to have grade level or department level plps those are teachers by grade level or

022group by grade level and they do talk about um you know curriculum and events and those sorts of things but one of the other things that they are tasked with is to help us identify students that we believe are at risk for not making adequate progress throughout the year and ultimately are at risk for not graduating we spend a lot of time talking about you know talking about those students looking at data attendance grades credit accrual how much credit have they earned in their time and we we identify the students that we believe are the most at risk we put teacher plans or grade level plans in place to help students and if those plans don't work those students also get referred to we've changed the name of the committee multiple times i think we're

023just calling it the improvement team at this point where we get some different folks in the room to help plan um some interventions and some extra supports for those students to help them be successful you know sometimes it's day-to-day success that's what we're shooting for but success throughout the year so we do have a pretty robust identification process and we're always happy when students that at the beginning of the year or mid-year that we identify as at-risk you know we put things in place and they they walk across the stage in in uh june um the other question really was about what else might we need um one of the things we're we're working on is developing our own in-house alternative learning program and alp program in part because you know ms castle and i

024work together really closely the counselors we've we've kind of created our own you know we use the resources that we have we use the the folks in the building that we have and we've kind of for a lot of our students for those students that that didn't make it on this report for those students that graduated it is because we we created our own alternative learning program um so i invited deb kingman who works with us um works with some of our students and and really partners with us and she can kind of speak to our successes absolutely i'm deborah kingman i'm a senior probation officer at greene county probation i've been doing this for 35 years and i've been blessed with dealing with strictly juveniles i deal with persons in need of supervision i

025also deal with juvenile delinquents and what i love is that every kid that comes to my department or that's referred that may go from the school to our department or goes from law enforcement to our department because they may have committed a crime what i love is especially working with kuksaki athens working with dr mercer katie castle the teachers the communication is awesome and when there's communication what i love is that there were five kids that walked across the stage this year and i was so excited to see that they actually walked off with a high school diploma but i'm going to tell you it didn't it wasn't easy i know because they are at risk they're challenging um but they're all great kids and we just can't lose hope we have to keep encouraging

026them we've got to keep giving them alternatives like you say because not every kid is going to sit in that public school setting and do well without appropriate services wrapped around them so i embrace alp if you're going to do it in-house because there are many quest star programs that we have to ship kids out of the school district which i know it costs taxpayers a lot of money so i love when schools implement in-house alp programs because i know greenville has that access program i i love that schools want to take care of their kids so they're successful but i'm going to tell you working with ca i'm really i look forward to it and i like the creativity i just again communication is the number one i think tool between the parent the

027child my department and the school administrators and i just want to say i think you guys have a very good school district and like i said i had five kids that i've had involvement with three of which this year walked across that stage that i never thought would have but i did not give up when i had them and obviously your school district didn't because they were across that stage so keep going i just want to say school teachers your administrators board of elect you know education think of in-house programming for these children because we can't give up on them we really can't thank you what resources do you need to make that program effective that you currently don't have i'll be i will be asking for a social worker like a part-time social worker

028to help support you know these students um that's a different function than a school counselor and even a different function maybe than our you know greene county mental health sometimes these kids need help being hooked up with um insurance you know how do they get their own insurance how do they get working papers how do they get um food stamps you know if they're they're 17 or 18 or you know 19 and they're not living at home so that social work piece would be really great but that social worker can also help on you know help them building some of those self management skills and that stuff so having somebody who would at least part of the time being dedicated to that program would be wonderful would this program be a separate learning space or

029it would be a combination of spaces within the school i i see a combination of spaces within the school you know kind of a home-based room and then figuring out you know basically a creative mix of you know in-person core classes use of credit recover apex or online program and then you know what what uh electives make sense and can we you know can we help get some of these kids into maybe our cte program um so that they leave with some credentials you know where can we put where can we kind of steer them so that they'll leave with job skills and and cdos you know so also internships i mean we've been talking a lot about internships and potential work based learning here at school so that they can get those hours which

030allows them to take it they don't have to do all the regents to get out of one of them if they get that cdos credential so that's kind of what we're looking at the last question for me is i know we've talked several years about this mentoring program that's being worked on is that something that you see uh being implemented in an alternative learning program yeah i think so i mean i think it'll depend on the students i think it'll depend on who who wants to be mentor and who you know who who a student has a connection with um but yeah i think so thank you very much any other question so what age can you keep following until they're 21 until the the end of the school year in which they've turned 21.

031so all of the students you know you don't have the names but we will follow up with those students and and encourage them to come back um you know that we don't give we don't give up and and we have had you know we certainly have had fifth year and sixth year graduates so we don't give up oh yeah how young do you start as soon as they walk in my door soon as they walk in the door thank you [Music] so we're going to utilize some of the federal funds that we received to kick start this program once you know they're going to have a plan to play best with that so we do have the funding to get this rolling for the next couple of years and then we'll work to embed it

032as part of our just general fund you know where that sweet spot is so to speak it may be before ninth grade seventh grade uh administrative as well as give you administrative hiring update and things like that uh that should be at your table as well just like that um so we have three administrative positions uh that we will be hiring for this fall the first is our administrator for business and finance because he's retiring at the end of november december all right so you can see that that timeline should start kicking in uh for this i'll say this september as far as when you're getting to go there so [Music] again that's just going to give you an overview there we hope you have a candidate on board by early november so they spent

033several weeks you know kind of a transition we have a middle school principal as well permanent physicians school principal so that process uh basically the same process a week later uh as we go through and then our house principal for student support uh which that kind of precision is going to support the middle school high school same thing about a week later we got free parallel kind of search timelines we have going here we're going to be going pretty soon uh pretty much like one week apart as far as where your role is here as far as the board uh we're going to ask two board members they're going to be two steps i'll screen the applicants uh then send a group of applicants to the first round of interviews so that'll be uh a

034task force playing on the position uh parents students like the principal physicians parents students uh employees i'm going to ask the two board members sit on that first step as well all right and then the second round that the committees will then come and recommend a few to go to the final round which will be the entire board myself in the meantime on tonight's agenda uh you have an interim substitute uh principal middle school principal that's going to be employing tonight so that person will come in uh start monday all right and they will fill in uh you know in that role until we have permanent people in place as well i'm sorry back our goal is to have our our principles uh in place by mid-november we're going to put out for the principal

035positions once teachers get back and put out what are you looking for you know so that will help uh guide the committee's work when they come up with questions so they say they're looking for somebody who's six foot five you know you know those types of things so um so that'll help guide your committee's work when you create your questions and stuff [Music] would you like to ask your question yeah i'm assuming that my name is ian i'm assuming that we're going to we're going to roll with this proven thing until the end so that being said um you know you're talking about masking up on school buses and that sort of thing i know that we plan to reconfiguration for the school district sometime in the future not necessarily this year but down the

036road does it make sense to put more kids on more buses for more masks and more time on the buses and keeping everybody in close quarters when we can keep the districts the way they are right now have we looked at other districts caravan catskills other districts that have done this pre-day thing and have resulted in shutting down the school and then three years later now their other schools overcrowded again pushing masks causing more quarantine issues going back to a hybrid learning exercise between half the school being remote and after school being a person are these things that we've looked at outside of our district where are these things that we're just hey we got a couple hundred thousand coming in for this let's go ahead and roll with it again i'm not saying that's

037where we're going but anyway but listen if you don't have to raise my school taxes because federal governments will give out a couple hundred thousand dollars by all means go ahead and make that money but if we're going to shut down the school and now spend 400 000 next year because we need to hire six times as many buses to get the kid from athens to kosaki and the kids from hanafur that are going to pre-k all the way to athens does that make sense if you want to do the pre-k fine do it what is kosaki more centralized than athens is is another question that i have why did athens all of a sudden get put on the chocolate chocolate is that has there been a discussion about that no we're not talking about

038closing it i'm not i'm not saying you are right off the rip but what i am saying is that this seems to be the trend across the county across the state is that they have two schools in two separate areas they three district let's make this one for three and this one everything else and then all of a sudden well we don't have the pre-k we don't have the kindergartners we don't have the third grade so you know what it's easier to sell this school and put everybody over here now five years later you got too many people over here and you don't have this building anymore yeah again so there's no plans to sell this school or to expose and i think another whole variable to consider correct but the whole reconfiguration piece we're

039still gathering information we're still trying to figure it out you know so it's not you're right it's not and we're asking those questions we're asking you to ask us those questions i i have and that was the first thing that happened but they they got rid of the school they needed more money because they needed more buses so they got rid of this school they used that biggest business covert hit they went oh [Music] there's other things that we've flown into that that's why i was like you're talking about you know i i just the reconfiguration's been on the radar you know one day it's it's this year one day it's next year that sort of thing depending on what article you look at and that's why i asked you you got to tell me

040when my kid's going to be in school i got a third grader is he going to be in kentucky because then i need to let the bus drivers know you know i got i got two kids instead of one right and then like i said we're still looking for information we're still asking questions and we want to have a group that of parents and community people that come and talk to us just about that stuff just to share those concerns i think with with your current government mass mandate which in my opinion right out the window even going into reconfiguration is a horrible idea because eventually you're going to be looking for the space and you're not going to have it and let it go right now so you got a couple extra teachers over

041here you got a few less students over there move the teachers around don't move have you been coming to any of the forums like we've held a few forums where you can have these my job doesn't allow me to do this different times but i'm just saying like it's a better job trying to like throw everything out at once but it it does all interrelate i mean you're gonna go from from you know testing your athletes i understand that that's kind of up in the air right now it makes no sense to me to have a hundred people in this room with masks on and then say but as soon as you walk out that door you're okay you you can go play out on the playground without your mask on and be three [Music]

042your student needs to be mass on the bench but now your kid's playing basketball he's not mad okay but i have to do those so everybody has an opportunity but we want to try to stick to like a three to four five minutes so people have a chance but i do appreciate it we [Music] not [Music] you do the great thing okay i am [Music] [Applause] being knowing that my kids would be together in the same building ultimately i went to germantown uh with my younger brother just very nervous um obviously i walk my brother's classroom every day it made the history energy much easier um i also have a unique perspective in that i was on the kg 12 buses that germantown ran and i can tell you from my perspective that wasn't so

043great literally first day came home and told my mother the new c word that i had learned i fled forward three years later and i'm being subpoenaed as a witness in a sexual harassment case that was happening every day uh as i said i've gone through really great lengths to position myself really close to the school my kids are both gonna go through so i could take them to that school every day every morning and drop them off the same way i dropped out with my brother i understand that my needs and my balance may not necessarily line up with what's beneficial for the district at large but i didn't want to make sure it was known that there are some books like their their perspective is opposition to this for our own angel reasons

044as it may be but uh there are some of us out there of course would you like to wait there no that's okay um so i've been to every forum for the bravery grouping i've been to except for the one in athens which ever showed up um but i'm not for this there's a lot of people who are not for this for multiple reasons some things that i haven't heard anything about in these forums is the finance end of everything where's money coming from how are we dealing with that the amount we spend per student right now compared to what we are getting in the grant would not add up to 3k students we have to find money from someone so where's that line also i bought my house at the street so i can

045watch my kids to school once again a lot of people do that i can't do that my kids are going to be separated for years my little one high anxiety was excited to be with her sister it's not gonna happen if this goes through so that's very disheartening also in the meetings it's all bullet point positives no negatives no teachers telling us why they don't agree with it i would like to see that because there's older teachers who don't agree with it also from a professional point of view that parents wouldn't really think of some of these reasons so i i think that should be brought up also i think that even if the teachers don't want to do it like show up for that do it anonymously in talking to other parents or different

046citizens of the town people have made comments that teachers are afraid of backlash from the administration those are from people i've spoken to not to say that that is true on all cases but some teachers could do that anonymously why not but as a as a town member i would like to know both sides not just one um everybody's here for the masks everybody's here for covid i think the regrouping situation right now and talking about it is getting way overshadowed i don't think everybody can make a informed decision if there's so much outside that's affecting this so people are more concerned for good reason on medical health and that of children in school i think this is something that should be tabled for a while and gone over whether it be one two or

047further because i think it's just not there's not enough information and i know we're in the information gathering stage but once again every form that i went to was positive bullet points this is good this is good it felt like i was going to like it was an infomercial why everything's good and how it's going to work for you so i just think every we should take a step back from this and deal with covent deal with the import the mascot being changed deal with some more heavier issues right now and look at this cathy jackson [Music] uh the main topic i'd like to address tonight is the plans as plans for pre-k um while i'm supportive of offering options for four-year-old children i don't feel we've heard enough details about the plans and much

048of that involves the school budget how all the aspects of pre-k probably will be funded uh but first i'm going to just address to another um i'm part of randy's birthday school group i was invited by randy at one of the meetings randy pushed the idea of offering parent training um he thought it would be a useful federal code grant uh if i'm not mistaken i could be wrong on that one but it was some grant i have connections with many non-profits uh in the area and learned that cornell cooperative extension offers a very similar program um i already learned that they've had it for go running for 20 years including a contract with css i passed that information along to randy at our next meeting and he met with the coordinator at cce so

049imagine my surprise when i got this that said birth to school parents can take education but what happened we already had this why would you use grant funds for something like that um which by the way i'm really bothered by it's on shiny keeper the program that you pushed the expensive to start you went through the whole thing of what it would take to hire this company from missouri they come in and educate of the parent teachers and that's the biggest part of the cost but cc already has that um they have it on their website as well uh the parent education and it's pretty similar the one that's on the website for the school is actually the one from missouri it's not just ours and as you said they already have a contract with

050dss to provide this [Music] we have to ask ourselves was this the best use of grant funds was there anything else that could have helped our ca community more um many people may have noticed at least at the last board meeting when you walk into the middle school that there are signs that say there's free food available for children over the summer um i don't know if you realized it but you have to come to kosaki to get that you can't pick those up in athens so any parent in athens who is having problems feeding their children they have to spend seven miles each way to go back and forth every day to go get their children food that seems like that would have been a much better use of that money than it was

051to do something that's already exists and no accommodations i did call i called the guidance counselor office and said hey how do we get it because i'm part of the library so i wanted to make sure we advertised it in athens you know how kids could go get this and she said i checked and there is no accommodation for getting kids in athens food um what does that say about what you think about families in athens and this bothers me about the whole grouping part she said i feel like athens is again being singled out as being a small community and we don't have to give them as many grades and when your kids get finished there they're going to spend most of their career here in folks and i don't think they really that

052the administration has their pulse on our community of what's really needed um it's really nice to offer something if it's not already available but by far this is already available okay and it shows with the regrouping plans but let's get back to my main topic of pre-k i've done some research on the full day pre-k grants and the state requirements did you know that the average cost to educate a student at ca is 19 8686 which is spelled out in the ca information that goes to the state um almost twenty thousand dollars let's make it really simple numbers right twenty thousand dollars um the grant is for seven thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars a year depending on the qualification for the teachers and also how many days of the year you're actually doing it

053so if you start in january you're only going to get half to start with um it's prorated where's the rest of that money coming from i haven't seen anything about that and i went through the budget with a fine-tuned poem there's nothing in there about that so how can it start up this year one of the requirements is that the district collaborated with an eligible agency and i printed it out i printed it out but anyway it says they must collaborate with an eligible agency um they must collaborate with an eligible agency and allow 10 of the grant funds to go to that agency because they want them to actually work in collaboration with a non-profit organization or an eligible group doesn't have to be non-profit eligible group within the community have you heard anything

054about that who are we collaborating with you know over the prepay um and i just feel like as a board and i'm a board member on the library i want to know these things from my board and what's going on in my library i would think that you would too right um the school playgrounds are for elementary age children as are many of the facilities and again i'm from athens if you go to the playground on franklin or right here in the ball fields everybody knows it uh there's two different playgrounds one for under five years old one for older than five years old you cannot have preschoolers on a playground that is at eja right now or probably cae as well i'm not as familiar with the secret um so you have to have

055a new playground there's probably other changes that have to be made to the tokens capital improvements there's nothing in that brand that pays for any of that and i saw nothing again in the budget that pays for any of that so in conclusion the plan for implementing pre-k feels like a shoot from the hip without any details for you and for us to be able to hear as well if i missed hearing the details at award meeting i apologize i'm fully aware the board controls the allocation of funding to randy and his administration please enlighten all of us on the details of the pre-k plan it sounded very exciting but did we really hear what the money was going to cover no grant ever covers 100 that's a dream and so that's what made me

056go a little bit stuff up and so as i noted at the beginning uh this administration's track record for understanding responding to the needs of our community including those who are hungry is questionable being fiscally responsible is a substantial requirement of the job i've also i reviewed the 2021-2282 budget comparing it to the actuals from a couple of years before that the results are quite disturbing there's a lot in there where the same number is used like i remember one of them being sixty four hundred dollars and yet in the actuals for the past couple of years it was less than five hundred so there was big amounts of change um i'd be happy to return at some point or chat with any of you personally on some of those analyses that i did it's

057what i do for the library too we go through it and make sure that what you actually ended up with spending was that close to your budget and if it wasn't how are you grabbing that money and saving us money the next year just taking the budget and saying oh increase it by two percent and we're good the state likes us that's not the right answer the right answer is to do the best for the people here being the most fiscally responsible thank you very much we are going to talk a little bit later about the pre-k so if you're able [Music] when i first joined the board i fortunately was bringing that summer breakfast and lunch program here it was actually a department of agriculture program through federal government but we had to qualify

058and so we had to uh a lot of it is based on their regulations and how the federal government tells you how to spend money so we had to qualify so they had we had to do a census one summer the first summer and i think it was 51 percent had to qualify for free to reduce lunch with kids on the campus that one summer so we have a lot of kids that come here and also from other districts and they could count do summer school so we made that we were able to do that so we applied and got that for the uh for the summer for the breakfast and lunch i was really pleased that we were able to do that because there wasn't there aren't a lot of sites and really anybody

059you know somebody from utah can come to our site as long as they're under 18 and have free free food so we paired that with our summer recreation programs and grandchildren [Music] made that uniform for all the kids and it's such a nice thing because then kids you know the freedom lunches is good that you know no kids should be hungry but you don't want to have kids feel like they have to here's my you know ticket or you know something so this is not income-based anybody [Music] so during covid we managed to get deals from fukusaki to athens we did a study here years ago never updated the studies to include afton and just wrote athens up no i'm just talking to the edges of this one did somebody that was elected say hey

060you know what maybe we can do this with the summer program we get it all through coaching it's still still a wish and i thought we might be able to do it this year but anyway i just want to address those things with you i appreciate your uh [Music] so um i'm not really here to take one position over another um i want to first of all thank members of the board who are willing to challenge certain policies top administrators i know there's many here this evening to talk about or to get answers regarding guidance for mass mandates or to speak their piece regarding that potential guidance and i understand that some of those things like mandates will come from authorities that are higher than the district's governing body and that said at this time

061and at the time of the organization of all these community members there's been no definitive guidance or mandates that are set in place only a suggestion or what is recommended tonight i stand in support of these people as a parent as a community member and a member of the press i told this board back on march 18th that the time was coming for accountability and i think the time has come this community demands transparency from the governing body and of its top administrators we want this district to do a better job in listening to what we're saying we want this district to understand that we hold the highest authority over our children and their personal well-being we have entrusted you with our children and in some regards we believe you're failing but don't take that

062statement as me saying that our children aren't being educated because i believe that they are and don't take the statement as me criticizing the way that you handled the covet crisis this past year but do take my statement as a declaration that the time has come to change course and to pay attention those that you continue to ask them you want our support in many ways and equally we want to feel supported by you we want to know whether we're talking about mascots or masks that you're listening to us we want to know that when you're talking about where and how our children will be educated and how they will get to school that you're listening to us we want to know that those who work within these walls that give of themselves to educate

063our children are doing so without fear of retribution for what they stand for and when they stand with us we want to know that those who educate our children are doing so with integrity without political religious or other bias we want to trust that our children are safe within these walls not just physically but mentally and emotionally we want to know that our children won't lose their personal identity behind the mask or that their health won't be a cause of concern because of it we are not doctors we are not scientists and neither are the politicians and neither are any one of you we are free people and we should have the free will to decide what is best for our children as we carefully have done so since the time they were conceived being

064told to trust the science when the variables of that science that we're being asked to trust continue to fail seems like ground for re-examination of that science we need to know that if we move forward with grade groupings that we aren't killing a community as we try to save salaries academic equity doesn't seem like a bad thing to me but in turn in hurting an entire community like the town of athens does it also bothers me that people like mrs leonard here who have given up her time for many years teaching our children pre-k will be without a job if this goes forward we need to look at this issue from all sides and take a little stock in the people that we ask to support this district especially when that community is paying the

065most in school taxes per capita which is almost a quarter of ca's budget or at least it has been within the last five years but in conclusion i want to say that i love our schools i love our communities and i would hope that this governing body would take all of our words tonight into strong consideration because the rumbling it's not the blue thunder you think we want to hear it's not a cyclone and it's not the sound of some mythical raven hawk it's the sound of a community that's demanding better [Music] making a decision on the mask you're gonna go back to the mass you're 10 minutes on you're not staying through okay but i want to want to just make it well known that you may want to consider the damage this is

066really doing to the children first off the flu is more dangerous to children but we never thought of masking less cancer kids dying from the virus that's flu 480 people 80 children died and 18 to 19. flew here less than that died last year with the virus okay next is the psychological damage going to them trying to make them think that everyone and everyone around them is toxic or they're going to get sick and die think of how the germs and the carbon dioxide that's not getting out from the mass is actually and they keep breathing is damaging their lungs and damaging your immune system in conjunction with the sweat dirt everything else and constantly finger blast their face also not bringing being able to see facial expressions when someone is talking this is especially

067important in developing children little kids and children with disabilities i stopped for one second i was in a bank six months ago had to go in there i don't wear a mask not go to wear masks but i had to do what i had to do there was a little kid in here who was seven eight months her mother was older and his mother was holding her kid looking around like a scary crap pulling the mask down and smiled the kid kidding lit up like there was no tomorrow put it back up it was like looking like why didn't you show me your face again okay so we're damaging these kids um and and by by making them wear a mask okay because someone else feels good because you wear a mask to that person's

068safe okay is it's just called childhoods it's really going to come down it's childhoods okay and anyone who keeps pushing that notion is pushing child lose if they want to wear a mask anybody wants to wear a mask i'm not saying don't you want to wear pink underwear or paint [Music] you don't have to wear a mask i don't care what a mandate says it's not a law and it's still what we're we're americans i thought this was america free country if those wanted to wear masks go right ahead those remember this is a public area this is this community is what makes this building and everything standing so like that gentleman said i hope you're going to look at what it is you know before you make a decision melissa saber um dear board

069of educational districts in the school district i am not one that complains about the school district i don't know the school district i respect all of you on the board it can be a thankless job and i get that but there are a lot of major issues going on in the school district and i felt compelled to write this letter as they just keep grinding off and piling up the first issue i'm having a hard time following is the mascot issue i would love the mascot to stay the indian i was an indian but i know the board had voted it down but here is where i'm confused and honestly feel a little lied to i thought and heard from board meetings that there would be a committee of parents staff students and community members

070to help create a new mascot i don't see that happening at all all i see is surveys going out in the middle of summer where our students are not involved most of our students don't even have the devices because they're elementary students and the devices are provided by the district which they're taking away during the summer they can't even vote why is that going on why is there a huge rush to change the mascot why can't we take time to create it and have our students invested in it no student input that just bothers me how do you expect everyone to feel pride in a new mascot if they're not involved in creating it like i said i was very obsessed with the indians being removed but it felt a bit better knowing that my

071sons would be involved in creating a new mascot yet again our students don't matter in that decision-making process we have a lot of creative students they could come up with a new design for a mascot for us we're not taking that into consideration we're having them vote during the summer they're not in school they don't have the devices the new pre-k program is an issue a lot of people are going back and forth on i truly believe our district needs a pre-k program and i love that ca is using the grant money to possibly put one in i know for a fact that eja has a room for the pre-k classroom in most greene county schools and most albany county schools the pre-k programs are on a lottery system you never have enough classrooms to

072accommodate the whole grade level putting pre-k in shouldn't disrupt space at eja especially because i know the company advanced therapy rents a classroom at eja now and i believe the district is looking to use that room and they will no longer be on vja my question is has ca looked into partnering with the local pre-k program so that so many of our kids have gone to and that are excellent programs i know a couple of districts that are doing this so they can build a community and know that the community is involved in this and they're not making local business owners upset that have provided pre-k for our students for a long time this is something that could be done and you can provide more space for the classrooms another issue is the reconfiguration of

073the elementary schools i was one of the parents four to five years ago that sat at a board meeting with the president at the time and i thought this and he said this is not going to happen it's a dead issue i heard it i was there now here i am fighting it again i have talked to ej teachers kasaki elementary teachers and middle schools on this issue and i encountered more teachers against this than foreign most have written letters about it but they weren't even seen and others are afraid to say anything because they don't want the retaliation against them that doesn't seem like a great work environment to me it seems like a toxic one i keep hearing it will be better for the teachers all the teachers or just a handful of

074teachers plus covet introduced to us a wonderful technology program to communicate better with zooming google needs so ca is a technology school and this can be used to have wonderful communication between grade levels and buildings teachers could meet daily and be miles away from each other and have great amount of work done this to me isn't a good reason to reconfigure that i hear all students will be together from the start does that really affect our students i went to ca i went to athens elementary my husband went to ca he went to quixote elementary a lot of you sitting on this board went to ca either cja or kosaki we met together whether we were in seventh grade or fifth grade some of my best friends to this day were kuksaki elementary students my

075son is going to be a sixth grader he met some of his best friends when he entered into that fifth grade i hear fifth grade can be moved back down to the elementary school how can this happen i don't think there's enough room i could be mistaken but i'm trying to do the math in my head with sections of classes and students and classrooms plus has anybody on the board done a report on how our population has grown in the past year and a half due to copenhagen we all have seen it houses are being brought up left and right all around us vegan houses that were vegan for 10 years would not have people in them you don't think this is going to affect our population growth and our school growth in the next

07610 years doing the man doing the research another issue with the reconfiguration i have heard that kosaki elementary will be third through fifth grade and beyond the middle and high school schedule we all know buses will be concerned with elementary middle and high school all being on the same buses but i keep hearing tenth period will be used for clubs extra activities and academic support i thought 10th period was just for academic support and not for activities so it it third through fifth graders responsibility to ask the teachers to split the time for their academic support if they need help in math and to be able to go to like a chess club it's their responsibility to ask the teacher you are asking third through fifth graders developmentally they are the elementary level they can't

077remember to bring their books to class but you're asking them to take on the responsibility to try to figure out their time so they can get the academic support they need and they can go to the club that they want to go to think about it to me that seems extremely unfair because a student that struggles sometimes only comes and gives the effort in school to do the extra clubs and activities then you're asking parents that have age gaps in their elementary students to have two different schools two different bus routes two different start times two different end times that is insane to me as a parent that has those age drafts in my children especially for the elementary level because they can't get on the bus by themselves they can't walk home by themselves

078and they can't be left by themselves so you have to make sure as a parent that you're getting the two different buses two different schools two different times so what about the communities on the reconfiguration these this affects the community's support and activities our libraries for one athens libraries does a lot of after-school help and activities for the eja if you have it be a pre-k through second building those kids are not old enough to walk down sliders so what happens to those programs then the kuksaki library they also do a lot of school activities and homework help you don't think they're going to be indeed it is annotated with kids third through fifth graders they're gonna be overflowing i've been in that library after school it's overflowing around and then you have our fire

079companies you have our senior centers you have our guardian clubs and you have our ptos have any of them been considered in this have any of representatives been a part of the reconfiguration talks because it affects not just the schools it affects the whole communities athens and public the reconfiguration has a lot of questions in our answer and what is the real reason behind it many of us in the community and sitting on the board have received their education at either eja or kosaki elementary the way that it is right now and we turned out just fine so why complicate a school district and create a lot of issues when this is not broke this is not growth pga is doing a fantastic job ce is doing a fantastic job that middle school is doing

080a fantastic job it is not broke our elementary schools the way they are are fine especially we're dealing with a pandemic in conclusions these are all major issues that to me seemed like they didn't have to be brought up or could have been prevented we are still dealing with a pandemic and our schools are really dealing with this every day your students parents staff and community are tired and we're stressed out so for all of this to be poured on to us seems very inconsiderate and irresponsible as a district we should be focusing on getting our schools back dealing with attendance issues and more most importantly the mental health of your students your staff your parents and your community i have not heard once about dealing with the mental health of our students in support

081of them coming back in full time some of these students have not been in school for a year and a half i seriously hope you consider everybody's comments and questions here tonight we are here because we care we are shouting from the rooftops that these are problems that we want to be seen dealt with so i hope you consider all of this thank you for your time so we want to be sure that when we have that grade reconfiguration program that anybody can come just you know fill us with all these ideas and concerns you're able to come or send us [Music] and i believe there's a voting period for mascots in september for the kids mr mastin williams just stay right here [Music] we've been talking about the mass policy um quite a bit

082and unfortunately i think we're all being held hostage by the future governor at this point he said all everybody beyond new york city all those districts could make up their own minds and i've heard that on radio and on television news three four five dozen times but the new governor's coming she can't rely on the cdc because they've changed their minds every other day and fauci should have been fired months ago it would be nice you guys everybody's here are hard working people and we really need to follow the science if you don't watch fox news or newsmax or listen to the tv the radio talk show guys during the day you are not getting the actual science bureaucratic science people that aren't uh like fouchy have poisoned everything you need to listen to dr

083atlas from the from the hoover institute um dr markey from johns hopkins who's been right on track all the way as has and adopters become politicians like baptism he just likes being online you know why can't people figure that out he should have been fired a year ago he's worthless he's just out there for himself and how can you change your mind every other week every other month you know it's just crazy so i think we need to really follow the science and not listen to these bureaucrats but listen to good doctors listen to the cleveland clinic listen to johns hopkins you know you're going to find real science there and partly why i am definitely foreign is that all the credible science says that pre-k and k-12 are in an almost infinitesimal chance of

084getting coca-19 they do not carry it to adults i.e teachers or staff and they've been there's so much screwing around with the numbers they're they the older people who had co-morbidities no they're automatically coded deaths well they've done that with children too and it's wrong we've been screwed by the federal government the state government not so much local government because i have to deal with crap for the federal state government secondly there is research that has been done by the cleveland clinic by germany sweden um almost all the european countries it shows that children mask many hours on it any day or the entire day well as this gentleman said and other people said it is of actual science a real real science people did this work that their co2 level will be elevated and

085that that is an unhealthy situation and also when they breathe the same breath over and over again that is bringing non-coping 19 germs giving them again another possibility of having some more health problems thirdly there is an abundance of data as this gentleman said and other people have said that the mental and developmental problems and pressure on pre-k k-12 and into college and university people our children particularly are suffering because they don't see other people's faces they have to know they have to see everybody's face they suffer from that they don't see the smiles they don't see the other facial things the fun things that we did as kids and had our own little groups and fun little things that we did and little signs we had to each other still miss all of that

086their these studies around the world and said these children are suffering and suicide is going up it's at least 20 higher in um in uh uh actually the high school level teenage level but it's higher in a lot of areas parents children grandparents um teachers there's a higher police it's the highest police suicide rate now that has ever been masking and not supporting the police which is all involved in the politicized um science or unquote and people like that that don't give a damn it says 444 thousand dollar paycheck the highest paid person in the entire federal government why i don't know he's just hung around water secondly um i i guess i'm jumping the gun a little bit here but this is a crucial thing and tied in with the masks in government control

087and bad science i want the board to as soon as they can ban critical race theory unanimously or as close as you can critical race theory is nothing it's useless there is no place in any educational curriculum or anywhere else in our entire culture and government for critical race theory it is only the far leftists radicals that are pushing this because they are if you haven't noticed it destroying our country we're lucky we live i thank god every day i live in greece county because it's normal basically well there's one advice but uh i'd rather have this kind of normal than what's out there in most of new york state and most of the rest of the country the southern border that's even more but this critical race theory it is horrible stuff it's nothing

088it's it's just indoctrination there there is no place for it it is marxist communist indoctrination whose sole goal is to destroy our american democratic republic and our wonderful loving giving philanthropic over 250-year [Music] traditions there's nothing in it when you hear crt you better wake up and you better get people together and you get better kills fast because it is no good it is perverting the education it is perverting the police department they're trying they're perverting the military with it now it's going into businesses it's just ridiculous it's tearing apart what makes america america and i also like to say and they hinged really big that we're a racist country we are probably the least racist country in the entire world we have been the melting pot of the whole world and we have kept

089ourselves together so you mark my words not just this mass crap but this critical race theory is is going to be our undoing it we don't get it and stomp on it first buffalo schools adopted it very early on the 16-19 project that is total horse crap there's not even an historian apartment they they say everything began with the first slaves that wasn't even when the first lady was here first lady was a white man who was a slave the eastern shore of maryland to a black man or pick your variety but i i just we please this mass thing we have to solve it's it's hurting our kids it's hurting our whole society but don't let the crt crap in don't be lulled into this crap uh anybody who ever wants to talk about

090it or be directed to resources it's killing this country it is it is in the congress it's ruined the democrat side of the congress it's all filled with that so i thank you very much so just as you talk maybe a little faster just so everybody can have a chance it was really hard but my name is jessica milier i am a former graduate of ca a mother of two and an employee with the district for five years i've been on the fence about speaking as it is absolutely professional suicide as i've witnessed of others as well as you board members who have done so last year i witnessed these coveted protocols firsthand an effect they had on the children some did not complain as it was not in their nature despite the toll it

091took on them mentally or physically while others were very verbal about their dislike of mass inability to breathe and anxiety they endured from them eyewitness students easily become fatigued red-faced and feel ill often i've seen the insides of these masks which look like a petri disk these disgusting masks would be chewed on dropped on the floor or ground and strapped back on their faces which cannot be healthy another issue i had i have is mass hinder the ability to read social cues and see expressions which are very important developmentally i also never realized how important reading lips was some children are soft-spoken or hard to understand and repeatedly asking them to repeat themselves is frustrating to the student and deters them from participating i also noticed it was just as hard for students to understand

092what i or other teachers were saying at times what about the trauma children do they not deserve an education in an environment they are comfortable in an environment they are harped on to cover their mouth which may trigger trauma we do not know all the trauma children these mandates protocols are absolute child abuse as mandated reporters it is our job to protect the children in our care not cause harm and abuse i love my job but i love and care for the students more and if speaking up puts a target on my back so be it there is plenty of research negating the big farm of politician pocket-lined science the ones pushing these protocols are making money the ones against them have nothing to gain or lose we need to prioritize the students and not

093the politicians the ones lining their pockets off our children's backs with complete disregard of what is best for them maps are a gateway to forced vaccination everyone should have the ability to decide what is best for them and what they feel comfortable with wash hands stay home and sick yes mask no sick kids home is what kept us open not the mask i understand the district is stuck between a rock and a hard place with government funding dangled over their heads and liability but we the parents also have that ability if we pull our children out you lose your federal funding for each child pulled out we as parents want you to protect and stick up for our kids we will only have your back if you have ours whether you back us or not

094you will be held liable legally by the parents it's our children's turn to participate in an education at their comfort level those scared can remote or homeschool if they have an issue with bare faces so before i start i just wanted to address jamie and bart on the sport and the testing that happened so the day before basketball started we got an email saying that it was going to be mandatory that our athletes were going to be tested the next day before the sport started which was that next evening was when um practices were supposed to start so i called i spoke to mr nocarado and mr squire and stated that michelle will not be testing that because that i wanted an appointment with them in order to make sure that i was there so

095i brought her in she was tested i was the next the whole day i spent trying to figure out if this was something that was actually mandatory it's not mandatory i was very upset that i was forced to have my daughter tested before she could play basketball but never put her through that fellowship so with that said i'm sure you've read my letter to mr squire dated august 5th i won't reiterate everything in that letter but i will share some of it with the community at the end but first let's review some of the data from the cdc our most trusted advisor that data i am referencing is available in the folder of providing as well as the cdc website children have a 99.997 corbid 19 survival rate they have a higher risk of dying

096from the float and the 2017-2018 flu season which is november to march 643 children under 18 died in 2018-2019 flu season 477 children died in the 2019-2020 flu season 434 children died comparatively 423 children have reportedly died of golden 19 as of august 11 21. that is less child deaths from golden 19 than each of the last three flu seasons and in line with a virus we have never asked for nor did we even know the statistics of or care as you look at more data the 423 reported deaths in children component 19 is over a period of 20 months since january 2020 not over a four-month period winter flu season as shown in the fluence data this means the risk of death for children from proven 19 versus flu per season is even lower

097than the numbers show also flu death reporting is aged 0-17 copen 19 deaths reports all the way through 18. to those of us not paying attention which was definitely myself for a long time the cdc's reporting into inconsistency inconsistencies use the kova 19 death number to be higher also stated if a child passes corbyn 19 to an adult under 17 the adult survivor rate is 99.85 when you look at these numbers the real numbers the real stacks the real percentages and then look at the restrictions being placed on our children it is obvious that new york state and our schools we entrust our children to now seem committed to hurting our children in the name of this so-called safety to continue to dehumanize our children is disgusting do we really want our children to believe

098that masking is normal and that being disconnected and kept away from each other is okay do we want them to go around thinking they are going to die if they don't wear a mask shame on anyone putting that here into a child it is okay it isn't okay and they have suffered enough many of these children have are mentally and physically done with masks it not only hinders their breathing it causes extreme anxiety fear instability and deters communication to force them to wear them is not safe that goes for sports too it's sick of me to watch these kids running around on the courts inside and outside trying to breathe in a mass watching the poor little our poor little elementary kids on their outside walk with mask on that was child abuse period seeing

099adults literally chased down at an outdoor sporting event sitting 20 feet from everyone told to wear a mask mysterious we also had teachers that insisted on teaching that instead of teaching spent their day being mass police one statement was that all day long my teacher just yelled about mass sounds like that creates a great learning environment for these kids that have already are already so far behind then we had a teacher saying that her unborn child was in danger if they didn't keep their mask up totally inappropriate i'm asking you all to unmask our kids and make it optional we as parents should be making this decision based on the best interest of our children not you or not anyone else in this school anyone who feels unsafe you can wear a mask and protect

100yourself don't force healthy children to become ill believe in the science you know the same science we're supposed to be teaching our children and not the politics do the right thing for the physical and mental health of our kids as mentioned in my letter to the board my priority and my primary focus as a mother is to protect my children and advocate on behalf of them because no one else will and that's what i plan to do with that said i do not consent to riley and sawyer being the school year or ever again they will not be wearing masks for their own mental health well-being and safety they will not be tested as i refused last year and they will not be screened any longer they have doctors who can screen them if they

101become ill arby's reserve the right for both to receive an in-person education as remote learning is the fact of segregation and discrimination i have raised both riley and swore to always obey authority so it was not an easy conversation to have with them i have also raised them to stand up for themselves and have instilled in them what our civil rights and liberties are but most importantly that our constitution is not an ever-changing document in closing i hope you as a board has sought out advice on the legacy of these recommendations to help you make an informed decision if you intend to force either of my kids to wear a mask or suffer punishment or suspension if they don't comply i intend to hold each and every one of you accountable my small little town

102will fight this at the very end we as parents now need to stand up and fight and close in this folder is a notarized letter with official and personal notice of liability there is a copy for each of you as well as each building administrator and nurse this letter has been circulated across new york state and over 800 have been delivered to multiple school district districts across the state it isn't just going to go away i intend more to follow from our community if you attempt to force mass wearing you will need to provide a formal written statement to scott and i and the law you are following to enforce it thank you yes here and i said this the last time the nine of us are really here for the same place as you

103are all our children either went to school or here now or our grandchildren are here there's there's no other agenda there's not [Music] when you walk in this building it says be braver than you think you are end up here right that's what you say is [Music] uh before i read my statement are there any other copies of the agenda because when i turned it off this afternoon it's not the same currently the one is the same but if you change anything after you post it you're required to write it as an amendment but if you change it after it's been posted and i have a copy of the one that was on this afternoon you must write the changes as amendments clearly highlight it that was not done i want to believe i can

104trust the board of ed and the administration to do what is best for the students in our community i cannot imagine why anyone would take on such a thankless time-consuming and unpaid position if they did not feel called to make the kasaki athens school district a better place for our children and community there are however four areas of concern that make me wonder if you have earned my trust first the situation with the middle school principal i realized that since august 2nd the august 2nd meeting both interim and permanent positions have been posted hiring tonight the interim was not part of the afternoon agenda i would like to have known that so i could have googled him what she said okay retired someone who lasted two days because after being hired it was found out

105that he was being sued for harassment from his previous so it's important the board of ed accepted the previous principal's retirement on march 30th 2021 at a special board of ed meeting at the august 2nd meeting i was reassured that the board of ed had been discussing it between then and now i went back to all the board of ed meeting minutes that had been posted on the website since march 30th the next mention of the situation was on june 17th those minutes stated that the discussion was a follow-up to the discussion at the previous meeting i looked at the april 15 april 20th and may 20th minutes and could not find anything in them regarding the middle school principal so either it was left out of the minutes or the discussion was not held

106in a public forum neither of those situations is acceptable i also don't understand what you needed to discuss we were losing a middle school principal he needed to be replaced that's it and why did it take three minutes to even bring it up again three months to even bring it up again there is no discussion at the june 22nd meeting there was a discussion at the july 22nd meeting the discussion was tabled by the board of ed president because of legal issues needing to be discussed no final decision was made until the loss of the dean of students athletic director i might have that title the only reason i can even fathom for this delay is that the district wanted to see if we could manage without a middle school principal was having a high

107school principal cover seven to twelve and the sake elementary principle covered k to six an experiment if things were managed successfully would you have cut the position of middle school principal do the high school and cs quixote elementary principles not have enough to do already second the school mascot i don't want to offend anybody here but i can accept the need to change the mascot i went to siena college when i was at siena we were the indians now are the saints for the saint bernard mascot looking back i realized that having a half naked white man running around at basketball games dressed in a stereotypical indian attire complete with headdress may not have been the most respectful so it was changed what i don't like is that nominations were accepted and then voting on

108the nominations was conducted completely over the summer summer is the time when people are least on the lookout for important things like this nominations should have commenced in september with clearly stated goals and unacceptable nominations clearly defined on the survey the first round of voting should have been conducted in october now we are stuck with the current list the board of educate i assume the top vote getters from this round of nominations to narrow down the choices and we have lost an opportunity to seriously consider our options and involve as many people in the community as possible plus you still have the continued problem of actually reaching everyone in the community only people with children in the school or people who work for this school hear about some of these things third the realignment this

109is probably the most sensitive subject at the last forum i attended and i attended all three one of the administrators stated that discussions for realignment started about a year ago pre-coping i asked her to qualify that because there was a significant gap between march 2020 when covet started and august 2020 a year from now she thought about it and then stated that the discussion had been brought up be covered and tabled for later she also stated that the discussion had resumed at the may or june 2020 meeting why was it tabled why did the board of ed believe that may june 2020 in the midst of covet chaos was a good time to revisit this proposal i cannot go back to the 2019-2020 board of board of ed minutes to confirm any of this read

110the discussion or determine the answers to my question because they're not posted on the website i am still not convinced the teachers really want this did the leaders coming come knocking on the door of the superintendent out of the blue was it brought up at a cafe meeting which is led by the superintendent and possibly prompted by him do team leaders truly represent their team did they even consult their team members or were they truly only speaking for themselves who chooses the team leaders the superintendent and assistant superintendent or any of them non-tenured as a teacher i would be influenced by teacher support i am not fully convinced the vast majority was for this alignment as was already brought up are they untenured are they afraid of retribution and finally what is truly best for

111the well-being of our students i have been both a middle school and high school teacher believe me the middle school needs a solid permanent principle that is the age that is most difficult for students this was also brought up in the forums the mascot is a very emotional topic a former superintendent of mine mentioned at a meeting that he thought they should change the mascot and he made the mistake of doing it while the softball team was present to be recognized for just winning the state championship there was crying there was moaning two ladies were extremely upset they had just lost their father from cancer they were like i was my father was a clipper i'm gonna be a clipper my kids are gonna be clippers they were devastated school realignment is a huge topic

112not publicized enough and timing is questionable i have been told numerous times especially at the forums that the well-being of our students is the top priority really everyone acknowledged that this coming year will be difficult for students students will be trying to get back to normal they will basically be going through ptsd i know when i first went to a mall and there was a lot of people there i very nearly had a panic attack if someone in her 50s was that traumatized imagine how the kids feel don't think the kids are thinking about these three things ask them even if their parents are not discussing these things with them they will be getting the vibes of stress and anxiety after 9 11 my daughter had two imagining friends move in with less their parents

113were killed in the attack she was four she didn't watch the news or read the newspapers although we had the news on she would not have even noticed or understood except she picked up on our behavior and knew that something was terribly wrong maybe these three things need to be discussed maybe we need to make decisions if we are truly truly interested in the well-being of our students we should not have procrastinated so much on the middle school principal position and we should table discussions and decisions on the other two until they're widely publicized things return to normal and everyone has had time to adjust hey um i just wanted to come forward and talk a little bit about what our um time here in school was like when we had to shut down um

114it was scary it was lonely um we went from a building of 300 students um to just a handful of staff while children and teachers were home learning remotely um it was not fun it was very nervous to say the least and that went on from march to june and then the summer came and people were getting out a little bit more um because things were getting a little bit better and then fall came and we were in our protocols and masking and temperature taking right outside that door that was my duty um every day the kids were so happy to be back at school they missed us as we miss them um i've been in education now here at kosaki factory school district for 21 years and in all my time i've never ever

115ever experienced a year in the school teaching supporting teaching because i'm an assistant um the way i did this year mrs miller had me doing things that i just didn't even think i could do um i helped with some rti math that was my my position all year with kindergarten first graders and course basis i had to learn the remote thing i had to learn how to get on that google meet and do it and i probably still have that point maybe those students want to say hello um so it was tough uh but we did it and we did it because we had to we didn't want this virus to get our kids or to get us or to shut down again and so we all came to school with the whole fact maybe

116this isn't going to happen again because it was horrible and it wasn't just here it was nationwide it was global it was it was the whole world um and now as we climbed out of it someone there's still ramifications of coding because if you look at our local businesses and you'll notice the task isn't open this day hey why isn't griffin's open on sunday all these little things and it's not just here because we just got back from cape cod and it was there too things are still closed businesses are suffering you know families are suffering people have died and to me i feel like the masking and the protocols we had in place saved a lot of more shutdown um and it might have saved some of us yes children weren't the ones that

117this went after it went after adults but we didn't know much about this virus then and we're learning more and more every day now there's a new virus that is on our horizon it's here delta i mean our numbers here are very long we don't have that i just finished my summer ride program here in the school and um we followed school protocols because we were using the school building um children came in with when they were inside and when they were indoor stations they masked however when they got to their seats stay on this we had a couple of kids complain but majority of them took it very well as they did the school year yes the masters got dirty but i always went out and bought more or went to the nurse and

118got a clean mask for any child that needed it um it was um you know as we come out of this and now there's this delta virus that's upon us i think we need to be careful and i think we need to look at protocols again and maybe we can come up with something that is okay for everyone concerned for everyone's beliefs for all families i'm hoping that we can um and excuse me can i talk can i just say it i mean thoughts are being put together very well and i understand these are your kids i have children that have gone to the school district i have a grandfather you know i get it i do but the other thing i know is this virus i don't know it and i don't know what

119it will do and i don't want to take the chance with my granddaughter or with any child that i've worked so hard for 21 years to work with in the school and educate yes the smiles but toward the end of the year we were able to let them take the masks off outside and so yes we saw those smiles as far as my unit goes yeah we were afraid to come to school we hated this every day um but we did it we did it because it kept the safe they kept the kids safe and when there was an outbreak in a class and i went down that hall up there on quarantine thank god it didn't go further than the case that was in the class that happened i saw that happened all year

120i don't know how it worked in middle school or high school but every time we got a cold big report from mr nagarato it was like ah where is it now it was nerve-wracking but the masking the protocols the hand sanitizing it kept things at bay um and and i i went through something else this year my mom is 91 and she's in a nursing home she was in it she's in a nursing home up in the region house and she did get clothing and it was really horrible it was a four week almost a month and a half that she was in the cold war and now this delta virus again is revisiting to region house and in the last three weeks there are five cases there and it's people bringing it in it's

121the step because those poor patients aren't going anywhere so we mask and i mess and my family matters we mask for my mom we mask for my granddaughter we mask for um your children i don't think you're a child without a mask i won't because i respect children and i respect your child and um i would never want to be the reason a child gets sick ever that's my thoughts on it i you have quite a job ahead of you um i appreciate all the work you do in good times and bad and these are certainly struggling and challenging times for the board and for our community i just wish we'd come together because we are a community of people that used to get be able to come together and not have this animosity i

122don't have animosity in my heart for anyone that has a different opinion of me um i have friends that don't agree with me and i don't agree with them but we're still friends because we learn to get along and i think when it comes to kids and that's our job and that's our business and that's our family we just learn as adults to just get along thank you good evening and thank you for allowing me it's the chance to post my concern yet again this is the third meeting and where i spoke so i feel that at this point i'd probably offer to treat you all to dinner or something i typically just prefer to sit in the back or remotely or just listen to remain abreast of the ongoing district however our school has

123been challenged with addressing some extremely important situations and i feel like even more important to share my thoughts and concerns as a parent and a community member some of these topics need to be addressed immediately middle school principles over 19 safety safety protocols some topics like question the timing of mascot regrouping one would think that in the middle of a global pandemic one already faced with multiple controversial issues needing to be addressed our school districts especially would be looking for ways to pull the community together not forcing topics that are referred to each other and will indefinitely inevitably divide us tonight i'd like to discuss the masking of our children the board is faced with an extremely challenging situation one that regardless of the decision that you will make not everyone will be satisfied with

124that said i'd like to share a situation i was faced with last school year at ca we received the reopening plans this year which included death separation health screenings mass grace mass breaks etc i felt confident that my children were safe returning to school i made the decision to send all three of my kids back with the information i was provided very soon after school started i realized that one thing that was not in that was not universal in the district was mass in fact two of my kids were coming home reporting they were receiving very few mass breaks if any at all i drafted a few emails but my kids begged me not to send them because they didn't want me to be the embarrassing mom and they didn't want to be singled out

125for creating problems i was also confident there were some kinks to be worked out in the beginning so i let it go i would ask my kids periodically how mass breaks were going i started noticing a trend of it's fine and they would quickly move on to other topics i suppose not too often not too far off from the average conversation with your average teenager so again let it go fast forward to the june board meeting that took place in middle school cafeteria if you remember correctly board members and attendees were complaining about how cold the room was in fact many stated they were having trouble keeping focus and concentrating because the room was so cold now let's change the climate a bit while i don't know the exact temperature of an average classroom on

126130 degree day i imagine it's hot and maybe a stretch but i was i i'm sure we could closely compare it's about a brick oven my understanding is that the cafeteria is one of the few rooms in a school where they're in our school of air conditioning i imagine the classroom temperature has close to 100 degrees maybe hotter maybe not as hot i can see it's when i checked it was about 70 degrees outside and people are fanning themselves i've seen people having to take mass breaks it's hot and it's not even as hot as it could be on a normal average day in september july to wherever we are now don't open any windows don't turn any fans on because the state won't allow you and put a mask on and sit there for

127two plus hours and when you try to pull your mask on and take a drink you're yelled at and instructed to put your mask back on and let's hope you didn't forget your bottle of water that day because when you finally are released from that classroom you're not allowed to use water fountains either because the spain won't allow you to do that either we were all grown adults in that room cold how do you think a child feels suffocating in a classroom trying to breathe through a mask that was inevitably drenched with sweat and saliva i think we can all be confident in saying that it's nearly impossible to concentrate or focus on anything in that situation if it's that hard for you to imagine what it's like then let's perhaps hold the next board

128meeting in one of those very same rooms with masks on i also realized it will soon be in the winter months and it won't be nearly as hot outside that being said i'm not sure about anyone else's kids but my kids even in the winter months come home and report that depressions are very warm year-round i'm sure i could reference almost every medical book written but considering when determining safety protocols we often look at the cdc for guidance so i'll reference the cdc's environmental infection control guidelines for this specific situation if you review it you will find over and over again that a warm wet environment is a breeding ground for bacteria i would challenge you to find a single mass in a hot classroom that is not saturated does anyone know what the long-term

129effects of this is on our children i certainly don't know either but i can share an experience of a short-term effect my son suffers from migraines it's in all this medical records including the ones here at ca we've narrowed down one of his triggers to dehydration of course i was unaware that he was being denied a few mass breaks to allow for a drink so when he came home from school vomiting slowly i wasn't i'm sorry let me start over of course i was not aware that he was being denied a few drinks for mass breaks to allow for a break so when he came home from school vomiting slowly this story unraveled by the time i realized his migraine was a result from dehydration it was too late i couldn't cut fluids in him

130because he would just continue to vomit he was also vomiting the medications to help abort the migraine what is this is not atypical for him when he suffers a severe migraine my child had such a migraine he spent the next few days in a dark room with a cold washcloth over his head and severed in severe pain vomiting unable to eat or drink he of course had to be kept home he missed quite a few sporting events family functions he was essentially quarantined didn't have covet all because he was sitting in a hot spiking room for hours day after day being denied the right to take a mass break on numerous occasions to allow a drink of water could he have gone to the nurse's office to get a drink i'm sure he could have

131but my kids aren't the ones that challenge the system so he sat there and everybody was told i share this story with you as because i realize that you'll be establishing and agreeing to these safety protocols and i ask you when you get to the matching section please don't feel comfortable and confident in your decision when you see that our school is kind enough to offer mass brains i can 100 assure you mass pricks are not being allowed in all the classrooms here at ca i urge you to please allow parents to make the best decision for their children i understand not all circumstances are the same creating a one-size-fits-all policy is not appropriate in this situation it is not the school or state to decide what is best for my children i just thought

132that whatever decision you make please consider all situations and do your best to make it the fairest decision for all thank you is so i'm going to just start off by saying that normally i don't do this and i don't really complain but with numerous um challenges that we're facing i felt themselves to do so so um to the uh ca board of education um i am a parent with two children with kentucky up in the school district one is in first grade and one is in seventh grade i have several concerns in regard to the mascot change reconfiguration of the week or middle school principle um as i didn't know until now that that was in the works um so i'll start off by saying that there was no reason to change the mascot

133and that you did not listen to what the community had to say as majority supported keep the mascot as is i watched the video of the meeting and the input by others and i can say i was applauded by what i saw the meeting started early calling on the people who supported the mascot change to speak the one individual who opposed it and questioned this was loudly told at the time his mic was muted when he was trying to speak the meeting ended early without any further input or concerns from the community if you did not sign up to speak even though some people who did sign up to speak were not there in the end you still get when against what the community wanted and change to anyone the next issue i would like

134to speak about is reconfiguration i do not support reconfiguration and neither does the community i do not want my child on the bus for 50 plus minutes with no less monitor on the bus with older children subjected to inappropriate language and bullying not to mention they would be starting the school day earlier as well not only would classroom sizes increase but this would also negatively impact students who need to one-on-one with their teachers and that would be lost with the larger classroom sizes a primary building where class sizes are small are important for our children to learn the foundational skills needed to be successful in the future this should be a community driven decision not just what the board members and superintendent wants we the parents taxpayers community members should have a say in this

135matter i keep hearing how it's the teachers that want this but i only saw a few give their input and what i've heard from their input is it how would be beneficial to them nothing about how we would be beneficial to the students i want to hear from others not just the select view that the superintendent selected the children have been thrown up with this pandemic i do not need added stress with more change the last issue i would like to address is not having a middle school principle i cannot believe that i myself and other numerous parents would have to address this concern the middle school needs a principal period not sharing principles and increasing the workload on others with mr nacorado now on what's the plan well you kind of told us what

136the plan was i didn't know that i already did my letter i was baffled to read in our local newspaper that a board member did not find this issue concerning and that only two parents raised concern over this i find it concerning is that how our elected board members are thinking instead of worrying about establishing a committee about changing our mascot and reconfiguring our school that most were known in favor of look at the letters and petitions signed by the people of the community instead the superintendent board should have established the committee to have a principle in place by fall there was more than enough time and how to safely reopen in the fall with the pandemic coming back targeting children and keeping parents informed their priorities are questionable and i have lost faith in

137the board members and superintendent's ability to do right by the people of the community instead of trying to divide cancel and change everything and censor people you don't agree with we should be working together to do what's best for our children and better our community the superintendent should resign if he's not willing to be transparent with the community and be truthful in his statements the board members need to realize they are elected officials who should be voting on the way the community wants you to vote by giving you their input not the way the superintendent or anyone else wants you to vote i am asking the board to do the right thing by the people we are the ones who elected you and meet the taxpayers community members and parents should be able to vote

138on these important issues that directly impact us and our families i feel like the board members are unwilling or unable to do this then they should resign as well i thank you for your time and i'd like to submit [Music] to quarantine those students hadn't even showed about credibility tests they aren't required to go positive tests so i really don't think that's something that we should put in correlation with what's going on here um i respect all the teachers i respect our community everything that they did last year i'm just very passionate about what's going on right now and i feel the way i can i'm tired and i'm fed up and data that supports the muslin of our children i have however seen study after study that showed just how harmful and unnecessary it

139is for children to be mad as time allows me to take some of these sex first and foremost i would like to state that for the record my children will not attend this school year mass but it's illegal immoral and i will not allow them to be laughed at to determine and hear from them just how harmful the fact that that was what not true is hindering an immune system that god needs them to fight off viruses an immune system that cannot do its job unless it's allowed to when flu season rolls around and masks are off they're going to be far more susceptible to a virus that kills more children than holding the flu delta variant is nothing more than what every virus has done since the beginning of time it mutates to become

140more transmittable while being less severe these cloth nets and this is the biggest thing to me they're they're far too forest to even prevent the 0.06 aerosols of sars covent rna they're useless it literally goes through you can get it through your eyeballs if that's the case which they actually said that in the beginning that one way the government does not own or control our children and the school system is only to educate them not to decide what is best for them medically to any teacher that in your heart show your beautiful unmasked faces full of expression i will say with conviction that you are unfit to educate our needs you should be able to sign an agreement written by parents stating that should any adverse reaction due to prolonged mass wearing you yourselves will

141be held accountable if you cannot do that then i guess you are not truly being transparent and scientific a study by the journal of american medical association measured car carbon carbon dioxide levels in children ages 6 to 17 while wearing masks normal cut normal carbon dioxide is 400 parts per million anything above 2 000 parts per million is unacceptable the reports measured an average of 13 to 13 900 parts per million of carbon dioxide six times higher than the unsafe threshold a study of schools was done that were thirty percent in person the staff showed students in math schools students in math schools had a 21 higher rates than students in schools with nomads that page rate was 23 percent higher than middle school and one more that i didn't write enough on but it

142was also studying in hong kong and singapore where they did study on people who had the flu they matched them inside their home they unmatched them inside a home the people that had the flu inside of the mask home show more severe symptoms than the people from the unmask because they're literally holding and breathing in 24 7. to us and others who could not come tonight but we got maybe 30 different correspondence and please keep that coming uh just just a quick summary so you know like heather ross wrote to us about her concerns about the middle school principal kevin harter wrote us about her concerns about changing the mascot kimberly [Music] the middle school principal plan allison phoenix about the middle school principal planned shayna middle school abby martin about the middle school and

143the ross about the middle school stephanie sitzer about mass against wearing masks in school emily kermans wrote in support of masking in schools casey mccarthy wrote in support of masking in schools abby mark wrote in support of mass wearing in schools michelle mcelroy wrote in support of kids masking in schools carrie taylor wrote in support of the kids masking in schools elizabeth conrad wrote in support of the kids masking in school brad hutton wrote in support of kids continuing to mask in school we have a number of the staff this afternoon uh robin drover had a bunch of questions that we tried to get back to her on a number of different areas there were different ideas kristen we've got your email phenomena melissa in schools [Music] in support of masking in schools kimberly wrote

144again in support of mask requirement at ca and it says masking requirement here but it doesn't show what her position is we've done that numerous times well i'm just trying to summarize because no you're summarizing with this perspective i'm definitely trying not to do that it doesn't say it doesn't say [Music] here and this is this is frustrating because we've all sat here in the heat and listening to everybody we've lost our peace and you continuously continuously view this yes try to curve the the narrative in a direction that's more favorable towards whatever position the top administrators of the schools carry and that's bs and we're not going to call it we're going to hold every single one of you accounts all right every single one of you so you better start being transparent and

145you better start making these things clear and put packets together that are comprehensive for this community to understand [Music] all right gonna move on from the public section we're just gonna move into like committee reports um [Music] rest of our meetings we have committee reports from the budget plan [Music] um thank you we discussed the particular things about the budget that the budget committee would be able to work on as a group working on more details involved in the budget understanding them and bringing that information to the board so again this was our first meeting this committee was just formed tonight and and we'll be following up as we move through the process thank you any questions the rebranding committee has been meeting bi-weekly to discuss the mascot and other items surrounding the rebranding the

146committee is made up of community members staff students and the liaison committee we created a list of criteria for new mascot to help guide us in the search process this list of criteria was located on the nomination form we accepted nominations from the 16th of july to august 7th the committee then met and using that criteria created a first-round vote that was open from august 11 to august 18th which was yesterday the committee is going to meet to look at the data and decide on a final legal ballot this final ballot will go live from september 13th to september 20th there will be drop boxes at the kosaki elementary and eja elementary for community members that do not have access to technology we're getting the word out about the vote with flyers around town the

147robotechs facebook the website it was just put in the newspaper and we're hopeful that 1000 um channels 17 because that's psa will um post that for us as well if someone is not able to get to a drop box or does not have access to online they may request a ballot be mailed to them by calling the shell the board of ed is hoping to have a recommendation the committee is hoping to have a recommendation for a new mascot in october we will then work with the graphics team to come up with a graphic that matches that mascot and to completely rebrand districts this is still a phase-out process which is one of the things that the rebranding committee has been working on and looking into as well um and i know we talked about

148how our company is that does our online stuff is willing to uh do all of that graphics and um behind the scenes work for us for free [Music] been filling out nominations and the students yes and voting because they show their emails have been required so they will show up for really okay so it wasn't just no it has been sent out to everyone it went to their emails a lot of them have them on their devices a lot of the parents have been um letting like their kids sign in like i signed in type in my daughter's female and i had her vote um there were other names but the rebranding committee had gone through and a lot of them didn't meet the criteria that was posted on the nominations um [Music] tara isn't

149it true that the committee posted the criteria at the top of that survey that search for nominations it was clearly listed it was on the website i got that but when you guys were removing it i didn't get any email or any information my brother pays taxes on four properties in this village and he didn't get any information on it [Music] my second request is that it's before the rebranding committee to postpone the election [Music] of the mascot to give students more of a chance to weigh in when they get back to school they would give that some consideration that's exactly what i was going to say because i will tell you that tristan doesn't have access to a ca account because he doesn't have it on his phone so and i i can't access

150my ca email from my computer either so i don't know that all the children that have gotten an email have actually been the email so in the center so just to postpone it so that they have a say in such one of them would be awesome so so do you mean just to clarify so right now we are in the first round of voting and in september all of the students will vote in school on the final uh a final three yeah so yes yeah no but i think that you am i hear when i hear the rebranding committee talks about um waiting till all the students have their devices so we didn't want to do that first week but stopping class um one day and having all of the kids vote i thought you

151said that you logged into your daughter's account and voted for her i did it on with the google form i think i i so there's two rounds so 14 we're narrowing it down now with round one so bart do you mean backing up to round one and waiting until school starts to have all of the students vote on round one yes that clarifies it i think that's something we can discuss on monday at our at our next committee meeting thank you there's a box that you can check that you have to have the district email so we can create a google form specifically for the students for a vote which is what we're doing for the final round there will be one that they will all be able to sign on to their device and

152use their email and it makes it so that they vote once and they all can get on it kind of uh that's the final round i guess i i guess i just don't misunderstood and that's it just i'm not trying to be disrespectful i just thought the kids were going to be having a stay into the actual like brainstorm of potential new mascots so that's already been done so that's they're not gonna have to say on that they're just gonna have to vote on what you guys decided broke it all down we did have kids um so and then and then to address what what you just said the nomination the original nominations students did have the opportunity but i can see how it might be viewed that they didn't all have an equal opportunity

153i i understand what you're saying but we had we we could report on numbers of student submissions we had a lot of nominations from students and that's broken down in our data correct um we'll have to we'll have to talk about that i don't know no i didn't ask if you knew it but we do have that number available to us student nominations yes not for the nominations um so we did it that way so that people could just submit whatever nomination choice that they wanted without having um their email attached to it but for the first round vote we wanted it to be one per person so we attached an email for the first round okay good thank you superintendent updates so at your table there should be a packet that says summer forums

154on future grade movements so this is all the written feedback that we received during the three summer forums combination comments and questions if there were questions uh we tried to answer them those would be the stars [Music] along with the reporting of the august 16th uh forum that's on the website as well homepage website you go down to the spotlight you're going to see something that says bravely you can click on that it'll take you right to the page it's also recognized so it's just just for information for tonight some support kind of moves through it one of the couple suggestions that came out in general [Music] as well was our transportation pressure available for the summer forum he was at all three of them so it's a conversation but um right now we have

155a board of education at cacsd.org so anybody can email that [Music] email and what happens is when somebody emails it it also forwards it to the district clerk so she all gets an email um email for that and she then ends up on your agenda from there so that's all right so we can make it all go to your school district email as well this is one there's an option in there so if somebody sends it all ninety plus michelle support we get email at the same time um one of my concern was like whether we were getting all of them and then today we talked about it last meeting and today i had gotten another email from a community member which i got one at the beginning of august and so i had sent

156an email to clerk asking why the one wasn't on the minutes yet for our agenda and um it was in the scrambler so what was the one i say i think it's practical let's see sarah bocker sent an email to the board of education so then it's going to come into your inboxes and michelle is from tarot and so i think that's what happened like that this person lost whatever reason that [Music] with today i was able to email michelle and say hey you know i've received two emails by the same person at two different times this month and we make sure that they get on the agenda and i all i sent back to the person was thank you for your email we will make sure that the entire board receives these you know

157thank you for writing to us and there i know we talked about having like a generic response go out to people so that they know that we're receiving their emails and we're not ignoring them also stating that where you can't respond to them and say we're gonna do all these things for you that you're emailing um so we want to figure out a way that we can not we don't really want to auto done because that doesn't necessarily mean we've seen it yet right we want for a better way to have a person a human [Music] thank and reply to all so that we all see that acknowledgement [Music] so that would be the board clerk responding back and heading off okay so we'll all get the emails because we all have our individual email

158addresses we can set that up emails addresses next week yeah he's surprised no i just well no we do we do have access he he it was very checked okay it was shared we just need to change our passwords [Music] you know depending on if it's your phone or your laptop i'd be more than happy to help you perfect thank you so we'll keep the board of education that that's to stop people from emailing you individually you know because we'll keep the board of education at cisd we'll set it up so all of you should get it as well at the same time michelle will get at the same time and then michelle when she gets it uh we'll just reply all right we'll see if that works we'll figure it out so you know

159you're gonna reply and then just thank you yeah so we could do a test we could send a test to make sure that it is working i heard you say it should but we can do a test we can do a test to make sure that it works okay [Music] we wrapped up our summer school it was very successful this week we had kinder camp we had 24 kindergartens incoming kindergarten students founded building they got a tour they did some engaging activities was very well received so we really hope to be able to do that again in the future um make that kind of a recurring thing for incoming kindergartners and uh both elementary schools had our jibs resurfaced and all the original mats that were around the walls were removed and replaced so it

160looks fantastic mr martino i'm sorry may i ask that question so how many students attended kinder camp buildings uh 12 12 each and that was that was monday through thursday yes for the morning for a morning session [Music] well karen i got my middle school hat on right now so we we actually just had some tours today for our first graders um that were remote learners last year that are coming back so that was a great opportunity to get those kids in to see our buildings but we do have uh our fifth graders are going to have their middle school tours next week and dr mercer and i have been working with the counselors on scheduling and completing the middle school schedule and um all the assignments and all things middle school handbooks and what's

161up so we'll be ready for opening day when will middle school when will schedules goes out on august 25th the portal will open um that day on the 25th it's available frankly and then the transportation technique will be ready on september i apologize 25th school dad parent porn are already in the system the 25th um will be posted as well as in the mailing questions i didn't know anything about schools that was that was posted that was posted on the website okay um as well as an email blast went out to all the families for a midsummer update that i put out in july okay i don't know if you received that it was in there it's on the website right now so it's the 25th yes it's on the 25th and there's sign up

162or self-guided tours [Music] i've been working with karen on all things middle school and also uh getting the high school all set uh we've got i think all the lighting's done it looks like all the lighting's done somebody will correct me if the lighting's not all done but i think it's all done heaters are in place we're getting ready to we're getting ready to open up so the high school you know pay no attention in the two weeks before it's open it looks it looks worse than it is it'll all be it'll all be ready um yeah so we're just same thing finalizing handbooks our mailing goes out next week portal opens um you know with the high school there's always sometimes people freak out a little bit when they see their schedule the counselors

163are still making some changes to balance classes and account for summer school credits that students earned but our students are pretty pretty flexible and they get it and this year we are adding a a letter from the counselors to kind of explain the schedule because it is a little bit more complicated than it's been in the past because we did it's blocks but we also broke up some blocks um to be shorter so their schedules are like they're probably looking and saying what's a flex class it's a shorter class um but we're we're ready i'm glad we've got two more weeks two and a half more weeks but we're ready thank you school services [Music] of um um [Music] everybody came so um i will make a video in a closet all by myself [Music]

164uh summer school this year um so we were able to have a more robust summer school this year we had 188 students participate so we had students from coming into kindergarten all the way up to high school so we offer um from coming into kindergarten up to eighth grade remedial types classes just to work on some skill development for students who need a little bit more of a boost over the summer we also offered classes for credit we offered credit recovery classes for students who needed that um and it was well attended and and mr martino was our summer school principal so thank you mr martino for doing an awesome job um so summer school went very well any questions on summers my next area for update is the pre-k update so we've been in

165conversation back and forth with the state about the requirements in terms of 120 000 that we were allotted for a pre-k program what we can do with it were the requirements that we needed to do with it so it is a kind of use it or lose it scenario so that was thing one there is i don't know what you've mentioned earlier a ten percent requirement that we have to work with a community-based organization an eligible community based organization for ten percent of it um we get a per pupil amount and it is based on how long the students are in school for so for example if you start a program in january you don't get all 120 this year you would only get half of that which would be the 60 000 for 18

166students for one full classroom um but you would still have access to 120 000 starting next september if we wanted to offer a full year program so it is prorated based on how many days in the course of a year a program is run it needs to be a minimum of five hours um probably there'll be probably something forgetting to say in terms of the requirements it'll probably come back so in terms of the money that the proposals just opened up at the beginning of august so i haven't actually put the proposal in to the state yet i have until the end of the month so we're working out a few details so for the community based organization we've just finished an rfp the lawyers have just taken a look at it so the request

167for proposal needs to go out to all eligible community based organizations we opted to do two different types of rfps rfp number one is if we are going to use our community-based organization allotment to buy a slot in somebody's offsite program uh the second rfp is if we are going to have somebody come on site to provide that service and we would buy slots in an on-site program because it's the way that rfps are worded if it's on our facility it's one type of boarding if it's boss or our campus is a different type of boarding so we need to see kind of how many people are going to apply for the pre-k program because obviously we'll put kids into our program first and then we'll see how many we have for an overflow we

168do have to give that 10 so we'll have to figure that out if we don't have the whole 18. but we opened up potential registrations for the pre-k program say two weeks ago um and we're currently at 12 12 students we haven't really advertised because we're still working on a few details um and part of that is that our fate if we go over the 18 students that can fit in in the cooksock athens on campus program that we're planning to offer with the current staff member um then we do have to do a lottery so what most of the other school districts in researching this do is if they're over the 18 and they have to do a lottery they take the first number of students up to that 10 allotment that they have

169to give to a community-based organization and those students go for free to that community-based organizations program either on campus or or off-site and then um they are offering up spots then just lose it the lottery there's still more kids who didn't get in um the community based organization would provide slots for students but it would be parents would have to pay for those additional slots i guess that our money so that's something that that we can discuss there's also a secondary piece because it couldn't be confusing enough um that they have opened up competitive grants for pre-k so we have the opportunity to apply for the competitive money we probably wouldn't know if we got that or not until the end of october beginning of november um but that would be additional money if we

170wanted to attempt to offer an additional on-site program it would still have the competitive money it would additionally have that 10 that can only be used to be given to a community based organization for instruction so we can't use it to do before after school programming we can't use it for professional development it has to be the community-based organization um providing some type of instruction to our students so with those parameters what we've done now is we've put out the possibility to register so we can start seeing what the interest will be in terms of transportation you're going to need to see who's going to register and where the kids live and if we end up having to do a lottery walk wait the lottery is over figure out exactly where the kids live to

171see if there's a possibility of running a separate bus we also have the option of telling parents that it's a self-transport and we have the option of putting the kids on the bus with the other elementary schools so the transportation hasn't been 100 decided yet we'll kind of take a look at that when we know who are the kids that we're looking at for the program um in terms of where the program's going to be located obviously ej arthur is where we have space we do have a community based organization offering pre-k out of eja right now they would obviously be welcome to apply with the rfp they currently bring their own equipment for the playground so if they were the successful ones they would have um they would have the equipment already there that

172obviously our internal class could use as i said we put out the two different rfps so if we have another organization that comes in let's say the one that's there doesn't get it we choose a different one i don't know how many people will be interested in applying for our faith um they would again have to bring one of the parts that they have to put in the rfp is do they have the materials what does their facility look like things of that nature we are talking about for our own internal classroom the first thing we're looking for is obviously do we have any kindergarten furniture that would be appropriate for our pre-k to look and see if we can use that first but um in the absence of being able to do that looking

173back at that um arts money to see if there is a possibility to use some of that money if there are additional furnishings or things that we feel that we need to have for the program the 10 is that a mandated fix you can't go above you can go above that so you can't go below it you have to give them at least 10 some school districts um opted to just give all the money to a community-based organization and not have the program on site at all um so that is an option i think in conversations with our teachers the feeling was having it in-house as much as possible because we do have the space i think a lot of districts who do that's because they don't have the space to put it but we

174do have the space to have it in-house and have it be one of our our teachers so advanced therapies that that's the name of the preschool that rents space yes at uga they are scheduled to remain in that same space they can remain in the same space you mean they are they scheduled to be right right now they are scheduled to be there they are also able to apply for the rfp yeah um so they could there's a variety of situations so they could be the successful person for the rfp and then they'll stay there with their program and we'll add our program and we'll all be working together they could not be selected for the rfp it could be a different organization and they could still be there and we'd have a different organization

175and us um or they could choose to no longer rent from us if they weren't successful i don't know i'm not saying that that's what's going to happen i just have to when you put out an rfp it has to be open to everybody equally so okay i'm just looking at um the beginning of school being two weeks away so they are absolutely planning on being there we would like them to stay there we would not be asking them yes we would not be asking them to leave i just like to be see all my different options that could fall my way in june they are set up um i have a question up until now it's been told to us that we're getting 120 000 now tonight we're only getting 60 business prorated which

176i understand i personally don't think sixty thousand dollars to throw at 18 students is actually enough to retrograde and retrofit our eja facilities um because right now you're talking about well maybe the kindergarten desks will fit maybe they won't so i just feel like we're just trying to grab up the money but not doing it well so i'm just very concerned and if we can do the sixty thousand dollars to an outside facility this year just so we can get 120 next year and perhaps have more money in our budget to make it right not just done maybe we need to wait and there's also the halftime rti teacher issue right that's just my feelings january's already [Music] i know 2022 so any discussion on baby's uh voice well that is the board i actually

177didn't know that it was 60 000 but i could have missed it but you know but the money issue is different that was brought to our attention tonight and then we brought and i don't know if we ever like well i don't know we can talk personal stuff later right so i guess i'm surprised about the money too huge nice job we're just throwing it at it just to open it to perhaps get 120 next year which yes but we also can budget more in to have it done [Music] for something like this no there are money there's there's some parameters being put on that money um for learning laws and for before and after school programming i think probably making it answer to plan for the opening of a pre-k and i think it's

178something that we've talked about as a district for a very long time and i think there are some definitely some details that still need to be worked out but my concern with creating a program that we are buying slots and then we have to go to the state and amend the way that we're doing it and wait for another approval process so it's not as simple as if you go out doing it one way it is possible to switch but you have to go through other approval process i'm quite honestly i have every intention of putting in for the competitive money to see if we can get additional money um that would be through the statement as well yes but that that is a competitive process we've gone in on that three times before and

179we usually lose out to the city unfortunately but um but it could be possible okay sorry okay it's just us if the finance company wanted to apply to work with you guys would they have to have a full day program or if they have their programs it would have have to be a full day program and it would have to be in order to be eligible you have to be licensed by the state of new york so it would have to be a licensed full day i thought you just had to have any five hours well five hours that's what they consider full day their their full day is five hours to be a full day means from eight until 2 33 but this is actually just like eight to one ready so if they

180come to our district because they're housed in your district [Music] yes three-year-olds in no scenario kids would have to be transported by their parents if they were under the age of four but for the program starting january 31st because you have to before by the 31st of december but going forward yes if they were under the age of four it would have to be parent self transport because otherwise yes [Music] right now because we haven't figured out what we're going to do suggestion is going to be a separate run those will have questions that we'll decide with that [Music] in general do not have monitors on all of them they have monitors babies but but yes um so then my third topic is just to give you an update so we have um we're charged

181for the board to look at what we have for our indigenous people's curriculum what we do to talk about the local history here in kosaki and athens so we compiled what we currently do from kindergarten up to 12th grade it's kind of spotty and sporadic but exists in k through 4 just needs some streamlining and a little bit more clarity to be specific to the area it tends to be more general about native americans as a whole middle school seems to be a gap area as well as high school it gets touched on but not with um you know with any great deaths so we're currently working on we'll we'll spend time through the fall we're going to shore up what we're doing at the elementary level and be a little bit more deliberate in

182how we're approaching uh talking about the topic of indigenous peoples to put in more history of people who live right here um we are also greg hughes so thanking him we'll be spending the fall he was very involved we're talking about 10 years ago there was a push because then i forget what was being built but something was being built around here um looking at leslie but i was not going to comprehend it and there were architect archaeologists excuse me who came and they found all sorts of arrowheads so there was a big research project done and there were a few teachers involved in that and greg was one of them so the middle school you'll see there's a case that has some of these artifacts both native americans and early colonists and he had

183done a lot of research and pulled some things together back then then it was a grant funded thing in the grant money ran out so he didn't take it a lot further um but now he'd love the opportunity to take what he had back then and build a half credit class that we plan to offer in the spring specifically on the local peoples of oxaki and athens delving into who lived here what their life was like prior to the earliest colonists um and then up through um the migration of the indigenous peoples to where they currently are um so he's been working on that we're giving him a lot of free reign for that but he will definitely give us some information and i'll present it to you as to what the class is starting

184to look like as we get further in the fall we're giving him plenty of time to work on that and he has some connections tracy watson connected him with somebody that she knows that can share a lot of information on indigenous peoples in the area so we'll also probably reach out to heather and see what she can give us for that as well and we hope the kids love mr hughes so we hope that it'll be an exciting class offering that the kids will really want to take so would spirit have the research kind of like calling and having before yeah i'll be working on that with greg yeah so greg has had some things and then uh tracy as i said gave us another contact so i'll reach out to that contact and then

185i have heather's contact information so i'll put heather in contact with greg we'll also probably use heather because she has a second grade curriculum that she had talked about so she can help a little bit too when we meet with the teachers to kind of shore up what we're doing at the elementary level the ideas of the nature walk and the wall history well greg actually we were just talking to him today said he very much mentioned working closely with blake robert because he's working on the history wall so actually making part of the work on history while part of the class that he's developing um so i think that that will be part of it and then we're talking about for the nature of the different things that we could also infuse into there

186we can also with that i can actually see us being able to connect with some of the things that elementary do as well so that it's not something that waits all the way to high school we really like to kind of step it up in the different levels and again all the different grade levels touch on something having to do with indigenous peoples but it's it's not deliberate [Music] an effort made to look at different grades and how we teach about indigenous peoples in different grades lower grades yeah yeah should be k-12 oh yeah yeah as i say from kindergarten to fourth fifth grade we will take a look at how to you know introduce the topic here add a little bit more and then just grade out a little bit more in the next

187grade so that there's a basis of knowledge that all the kids get that's what that's what i wonder about like it's just people's curriculum that could be written and we can share you know at this grade level when we do this at this grade level we do this so who might is that your value you [Music] by the uh greg is gonna have to have it ready for the end of january well as much as he can at the end of january whatever yes whatever [Music] just a thought as we progress through these indigenous people uh displaying the culture and artifacts in the school um when you give some consideration to move that display that's currently tucked away in the middle yeah we have that and we also have um ribbon shirts that we were

188given um three years ago now that we've been looking for a place to put it so now we'll we'll have more stuff to put in a decent spot yes anything else consent [Music] a uh [Music] are they still getting background check if they don't work for the building tomorrow so any of them before monday when they would be working with the kids would be background checks so that we would know that they were safe to be working with our [Music] for programmatic for the district-wide safety plan we had so much to talk about masks tonight it's not this okay this is like tornadoes evacuation plans yes the okay thank you and can we just can we just be clear that um number four a the appointment there for interim is interim middle school principal as

189discussed just a little bit okay it's not just a random administrator he's going to be in charge [Music] is um so do we do we have an answer completely to tara's question yes before beginning all right i mean are we are we going to approve them tonight without that i don't think the improvements pending like they're approved okay all one two three [Music] um [Music] any other discussion how many days [Music] so my i guess my question is um just even this past year i don't know if anybody else recognized it or not but there's been a lot of high turnover between teachers and staff just in this past year can you give us a answer as to why that is but all this going on like prompted me i i want to know i

190i just it's not just that it's you it's it's the point of view we can take a look at that and see the numbers and how it compares you know there's going to be turnover but that is it like exceptional and what the reason it is exceptional as a business person i look at that stuff yeah does it cost money yes it does cost a lot of money for training and obviously um you never know if that person is going to be a good fit for the district and how they're going to you know so that you know i feel that that is just over the past couple months so that's why we've asked in the questions so mike for the next meeting media and agenda item would be to discuss uh exit interviews sure

191because i'm just trying to thank everyone to make sure that you get your answer i think i don't think you have to come but i have your name okay so we'll yeah feel free to figure something out yeah yeah we'll figure it out but please come i'll try i'll try if you can i know it's uh we don't usually go this way that's okay okay anything else [Music] the community based situation is when there's so many kids they need to have them go to the community based we just have to give them you have to find the communities organization eligibility requirements and find an agreement between yourself and then [Music] another scenario is a community-based organization comes right off campus and takes space on campus of two um or three or four however many pre-k

192programs the student district has they're having on-site so the kids and the teachers can all work together so that's that's is there closer possibility that an existing free school could be that community place that exists yes requirements yes which just means those board efforts and i believe the school district will be picking up this kid from there or maybe she's doing something that is another option i know that [Music] one more question now that this is done and you just brought something up is our ten percent twelve thousand or six thousand it's two more whatever your allotment is for that year so so it's called this year it will only be six thousand i just want to make sure but i don't want that 60 000 then become 48. okay thank you okay i love

193to hear our parents come and speak to us because honestly my children have graduated but i still deeply love this school so i i love to hear when parents come in and tell us how they truly feel about how well or how poorly we're doing um so thank you please continue to come give us pros and cons thank you yes it was it was very nice to see so many community members here tonight that was very very very nice and hear their input on so many different topics um i think i'm looking forward to monday sports starts it kind of kicks off on officially our new school year and we'll see where this year takes us bringing kids back and yeah two levels i agree with both like i'm very um thankful for all the

194people that are brave enough to come and talk to us because we do listen um and uh i'm hopeful that we can come to some sort of agreement and compromise that we can make as many people as possible happy and keep kids safe and i'm very excited about sports starting because it's sort of normal i think the kids need something normal okay i want to say um i do trust the administration they have to represent everyone in the school all 1300 kids and they have to make decisions that they've elicited in their best interests that being said though i really do appreciate the public input when people actually come and tell us stuff because then that forces us to re-look and re-examine their decisions and make it a compromise or just work something out that

195can be the best for everyone because we do represent 1300 kids you know and that's that's a lot so [Music] great thanks for coming i do like to hear it my daughter was at kinder camp uh this week and absolutely loved it and i'm very excited to start soon thank you guys for offering that raved about the teachers and everybody she met something i want to feed back on maureen i agree with worrying that we love to have us all to come because we have great ideas to hit the board that we should consider moving forward um my second thing i'd like to do is shout out to our custodial staff i think we'll find out being in school among construction that's going on as well as cleaning up our outside grounds with the storm

196that we had for the summer and i know that was a major cleanup so i want to thank them for your dedicated professional job i just want to say that i look forward to the start of school um having all the kids back in here the best that we can and just doing i know my daughter misses seeing friends and seeing her classmates so it'll be great to be back in and just have her in school i want to thank those that worked this summer and made it just a success we had a lot over 200 kids here looking forward to kindergarten and my granddaughter looking forward to first grade so a lot of kids looking forward parents looking forward to a nice beginning and [Music] to work through all these issues and i didn't

197want to thank you guys for hanging out with the last minute you there should be a medal or somebody's gonna put dinner for where it's not gonna fight too late you know i think we do we do want to hear we do want to hear from each other and share your stuff and we'll try to work and figure it out you always know it's from our it's from a good spot for all of us it's funny when you hear about the board members are gonna lose their money maybe some places that's not happening here but the thing so we have our future meetings and board of education meetings as a board retreat for the administration on august 25th at 5 30 in the high school library a regular board of education september 16th at 6

19830 in the high school library and a presentation meeting on october 7th in the high school library now i am needing a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of approving special events and personnel discussions [Music] so thank you everybody