001Good evening. This is uh the meeting for the Yorktown Central School District Board of Education for December 1st, 2025. May I have a motion to go into executive session to discuss the employment history of particular pedagogical and non-pedagical employees and matters made confidential under FURPA? >> So move. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Good evening. May I have a motion to return back to the public session? So move All those in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Good evening and welcome to the Yorktown Central School District Board of Education meeting for December 1st, 2025. Could we please stand for the pledge of allegiance, which will be followed by a moment of silence for our armed forces and those in the YCSD community that have lost loved ones, especially the
002father of Shan Kennedy, the father of Karen Peeler, the grandmother of Christina Mcomes Christian Cristion, and the grandmother of Julia Jane Tomkins. And we have the pledge of allegiance by um our mohensic students Nola Giani and Hope Pedro. >> I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic from which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So, Dr. Hatter, I'll turn it over to you. >> All right. So, first of all, families, students, faculty, staff, I'm sorry we were a few minutes late coming out of executive session. And there was some obviously some pressing business that we had to finish our discussion on. So I apologize. I know it's Monday night. It's cold outside. The kids are looking forward to a snow
003day. Not going to happen. Um so everyone's kind of looking forward to tomorrow. So I apologize that we were a few minutes late. Maybe a little snow tomorrow. Not too much, I hope. Um but I would like to invite Mrs. Barry to give a presentation or to open the presentation. The audience is in for a really special treat with this presentation for the board. You'll recall at our last meeting you accepted a donation for a plaque for the story walk, but I don't want to give away too much of the presentation. Mrs. Barry, I'll turn it over to you. >> Thank you very much, Dr. Hatter. Good evening, everyone. It is my pleasure and honor on behalf of our K3 students, faculty, and staff to welcome you to our good news presentation. The students are
004so excited to share their learning with you and introduce something very special for our entire K3 community. Thank you parents for being here this evening and for your continued support and involvement. Thank you for sharing your amazing children with us each day. A heartfelt thank you to Mrs. stable, Mrs. Fromer and staff for being here this evening and all their efforts to bring the good news to you. Also, a sincere thank you to Mrs. Roer, our librarian media specialists for her creativity and initiative and to our school community, especially our PTA, Mrs. Ammerling and Dr. Hatter for their continued support. I now welcome Mrs. Dable. Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Hatter, members of the board of education, Mrs. Emerling, Mrs. Sanalippo, parents, families, staff, and students. It is my absolute pleasure to be here this
005evening with some of our K3 students, their teachers and staff to present the Mohansic good news to you. We decided to highlight how stories come to life. You see, stories have been bringing people together for thousands of years. Long ago, they were told around campfires. Then came the printing press for stories to be written and shared. Today, technology has transformed storytelling once again. And tonight, our students are going to be sharing how stories come to life in ways that our ancestors could never imagine. >> Hi, my name is Noah Gian and I am Hope Pedro >> and we are in Mrs. Day's kindergarten class. We love reading books together. We read books from lots of authors. Some books give real information and some come from the rider's imagination. >> When we hear stories, we share
006our favorite parts. Reading makes our classroom come alive. Hi, my name is Jack Williams and I am Anastasia >> and we are >> in Ms. Bowman's kindergarten class. >> In our class, we read stories written by an author named Peter H. Reynolds. His books teaches about kindness, creativity, and believing ourselves. Some books we read are is Sky Color and the Dot. We sing songs and even make things just using one dot. >> Hi, my name is Maya Greenberg and I am in Mrs. Hind's first grade class. We learned that Peter grew up in a family full of storytellers and adventurers. His childhood was spent camping, creating mini movies with his twin brother Paul and filling sketchbooks with doodles and imaginary worlds. Becoming an author and illustrator was a way for him to share his love
007for using his imagination to tell stories. Hi, my name is Andrew Antonetti and I am in Mr. Ball's first grade class. Did you know that a writer writes so a reader can read it and a reader reads what a writer writes. It is all connected. In fourth grade we talk about books. In fiction, we know that books have stories, elements, like characters and a setting. The illustrations help bring a book to life. Peter had one goal in all his books, and that was to inspire others to make a mark, a dot, a story, a smile. something that matters. Hi, my name is Adriana Fella. I in Miss Stable and Mr. McCartney's second day class. Peter H. Reynolds made something special called a creative trilogy. He thought it would be fun to call a create trilogy.
008Did you hear two words in that word creative and trilogy? That means he made three stories that show how being creative using your imagination and ideas can make amazing things happen. A trilogy is when someone makes three stories that all go together like three best friends that tell one big story. And creative means using your imagination and to make something new or special. Hi, my name is Anthony Zano and I am in Mrs. Dable and Mrs. McCartney's second grade class. In second grade, we used an app called Quiver. It's an app where you color a dot and a wow. It turns into a 3D thing. on the screen. You can see it. Move and play with it like it's real. Quiver helps kids be creative and help fun while learning. >> Hi, my name is
009Georgia Carbone and I am at Mrs. Bermud's third grade class. We also used an app called Chatterpics. With ChatterPix, you can take a dot or any picture and make it talk. You draw a little line where the mouse should be and then the app makes it move like it's really talking. You can record your own voice and the dot repeats what you say. It's like the dot comes alive right on the screen. We used it to practice speaking and storytelling and it was so much fun. I can do karate very well because I practice all day every day. I can do taekwondo very good because I practice every day. Here we go. >> Hi, my name is James Halen and I'm in Mrs. Bman's third grade class. >> In the last week of November, we
010got ready to walk, read, and dream. We revealed a special thing at Mohansid called a story walk. A story walk is while you read while you walk. The pages of the book are put up along a path outside like on signs or posts. You start at the beginning, read the first page, then walk to the next page to keep reading just like an adventure. It's a fun way to read, move, and explore all at the same time. And we have a special place to do just that at Mohansic. Can you guess our first book, The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds? So, when you're on our campus, stop by and take a walk and enjoy our first book and let your imagination take you anywhere. feed, dream, and create because every story is a new adventure
011waiting for you. >> Thank you to all our friends that presented here tonight. You all did an incredible job. Can we give them a round of applause because they were so none of this great work would be possible without the support of our board of education, Dr. Hatter, Mrs. Emerling and our PTA, our parents, our staff, and especially our teachers that are here tonight. I'd like to recognize all of them by just asking you to stand so we can give you a round of applause, too, for being here. Thank you. On behalf of our Mohansac family, we want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to share our work with you tonight. And we hope that you have the opportunity to come take a look and and a walk through our story walk when
012you're on our campus. Thank you. So, Mohanc students, thank you so much for that presentation. This is absolutely fascinating. I had the opportunity to see the story walk. I'm not sure if any of the board members want to comment on what we saw tonight. >> Moans students, you're incredible. I loved hearing about for your love for reading and having fun while doing it. Chatter Pig sounds really amazing. Um I wish it was available when I was younger and you know I would I would maybe read more. Um you're incredible and uh thank you families for coming out tonight. It's it's a school night and the week just started. So thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you boys and girls. That was uh very exciting and enjoyable. Um it's always the fun part of our night and
013it's what puts a smile on my face and it's why I keep coming back uh year after year. And it's obvious that um the stories that you uh read and learned from really helped you guys because your reading is unbelievable and not only reading but standing in front of a group of people and reading uh was excellent. So, congratulations to all of you for that. Uh, I did have a question. I don't know if Dr. Hatter can answer it or or one of the teachers, but can you make the connection for me between the stories we just heard and story walk? Like what what is the connection there? >> I think Mrs. Roer is probably best equipped to give some information about the story walk, but yes, there is a connection. >> Good evening. Good
014evening, everyone. I'm Christine Roer. I am the librarian at Mohanzik. Uh the story walk is a great idea. You can see it was created uh by Anne Ferguson, developed in collaboration with Kellogg Harvard Library in uh Vermont. And basically, if you look around in other areas, people have done different takes on uh what it should look like. Ours is amazing, better than I ever could have hoped. Um, from the generosity of the Mohanza community, uh, we were able to raise enough money to, uh, have it look as it does. Uh, the whole idea is really just to get stories that appeal to your heart. Um, PTA generously purchased quite a number of books for us that we have in stock ready to go. Um, and my hope is that it will be uh, come kind
015of a seasonal opportunity for change. um and that the stories, you know, will just make you smile, give you some exercise, um and have fun while you're reading. So, I I hope you enjoy it. I hope you can take the time to come over and take a walk, read at the same time. Thanks. Yeah, I would just like to say it was really great to see everybody get up and speak. It's very nerve-wracking to get up in front of a crowd. So, you guys did a fantastic job and also learning how to read and have having technology make it more fun. I think it was fantastic and also see some familiar faces. So, everyone did such a great job. Thank you. I just wanted to echo too what an outstanding public speaking job each one
016of the students did. It's um when I look at how our students grow um from year to year, from elementary through high school, and this is where it all starts. You should all be so proud of yourselves. Parents, you have wonderful children and teachers. Thank you so much for what you do. >> So, I just wanted to echo a lot of what was said. I know so many of the students who are sitting here just through day-to-day seeing them at Mohansik and families. If I would have told you that your child would be standing in front of a room of adults reading or publicly speaking confidently, so articulately so comfortable in front of the microphone. I think you just said, "Wait a minute. I I I don't know really. Will that be the case?" And
017here they are. So impressive. I like to see the articulation as the younger students went first and then we went up to our seniors at Mohansik. So it was great to see that articulation. So students such a great job in so many different ways. Faculty and staff, thank you. Thank you so much. You you guys are so amazing. And I hope you know that, but if not, I'd like to say it publicly. You're also amazing. And families, thank you for giving us such amazing students to work with for the portion of the day that that we have them. We cherish, we we treasure that time. We take our jobs very seriously and we appreciate the partnership that we have with the families in the community and and certainly with the school. So, thank you. That
018that's and to be out here on a Monday night. It's so early in the week. You have so many responsibilities and bedtimes and lunches to prep and snacks to make and all the other things that go with being a parent of a Mohansic student or or a child, a school-aged child. So, thank you so much for being here, for making the time to be here. Students, one last thing about that snow day. All right. There are rumors that if you don't put anything down the toilet, don't don't flush anything down the toilet. But they say that if you wear your pajamas inside out, it might help. Or if you put a a wooden spoon, I think, under the pillow, or all the other myths that are out there. But the truth is, I'll know at
019about 5:00 in the morning, and so will you what what's going to happen. So, I don't know tonight. All right, but you guys did such a great job. All right, congratulations. We will take just a brief five minute recess that'll allow you to get on with your evening. If you choose to stay for the rest of the meeting, you're welcome to. We have Hunter giving a presentation. I'll be giving my report as well, but if you choose to depart, have a great evening. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. All right, we will go to public comment number one. Do we have anyone in that? >> All right, so then Hunter, I'll turn it over to you. >> All right, good evening. I hope everyone enjoyed a relaxing Thanksgiving holiday. The winter athletic season
020began last week at Yorktown High School. We have a wide variety of sports offered this winter, and many of our teams will kick off their season this week with competitions. Concert season is upon us. Throughout the month of December, our schools are live with the sound of music. Yorktown High School will feature a concert each Tuesday, beginning with the YHS choir winter concert tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. at the high school. On Wednesday morning, our second graders at Brooks Elementary School will hold their winter concert. For more information on the many concerts taking place this month in our schools, I encourage you to check out the website. Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, Brookside and Moansic each held their balloons parade with different floats designed and created by students. The designs were very impressive, and we
021appreciate the hard work of the students and their dedicated teachers who facilitated their visions in making these floats. As we close out the fall athletic season, I want to recognize the teams and athletes who achieved great success this fall. The girls and boys volleyball teams were both section champions. The girls volleyball team went on to win the regional championship and were state semi-finalists. The boys volleyball team went on to be regional finalists. Our league champions were the boys volleyball, girls tennis, and girls soccer. Now, special congratulations to athletes who received all section, all conference, and all state awards. For football, Tyler Galante, Roco Lori, Michael Dederio, and Tyler Keragatti. For boys soccer, Gavin Mooney, and Hananiel Flores. Girls soccer, Leia Bryant, Amanda Linden, and Olivia Delgato. For field hockey, Lily Diaz, Ava Ryan, Riley Griev,
022Megan Durante, Cla Sullivan, and Audriana Toriieri. For girls volleyball, Mia Rearen, Emma McCoy, Nataly Leon, and Kaylee Alexander. And for boys volleyball, Justin Sack, Jack Brunner, and Franklin Ringle. Thank you. >> Thank you, Hunter. Um, Dr. Hatter, we'll go to you for your update. >> Okay. So, there are bunch of things to provide the community with an update on. I hope everybody had certainly an enjoyable Thanksgiving. As we return to school, we return to the potential for inclement weather tomorrow. We'll be monitoring the forecast overnight and making a determination early in the morning. So, I have eight updates that I'd like to offer, but there's also an additional on an on an agenda item that I'd like to also shine light on. We are amending our professional development day for the spring for this school
023year's calendar from March 19th to March 20th. So, I just wanted to clarify that. We'll certainly send that out in our monthly newsletter that's set to go out uh I believe tomorrow. In terms of the 19th of March, that will now be a regular school day as opposed to a superintendent conference day. March 20th will now be a superintendent conference day as opposed to a regular school day. We'll certainly highlight that in the upcoming newsletter. So, with regard to the updates that are prepared for you this evening, the musical the show must and it will go on will be the I'll be recommending to the board this evening that we appoint Mr. Jeremy Newberger as the director of this year's play. We're excited to welcome him to our district. Auditions will take place in December.
024So, we have a very aggressive timeline and we'll have more details with regard to the show dates, the show that we'll be putting on. All of that will come out in the next week or so. our high school concerts. I wanted to make sure that we had this slide on tape for our community. So many great things are happening. All members of our community are welcome to attend. The show dates are there as noted. All are going to be held in the Yorktown High School auditorium. Just for clarification, but please note the difference in start times between the middle school and high school. With regard to construction, I'm trying to give an update on the construction project at each of our board of education meetings. So, at Brookside Mohansic, you see the site work continues.
025The foundations have been poured. We're waiting for the steel to arrive and then to be be assembled at the high school. A lot of the drainage work is underway. So, much of the site preparation for the lower turf field, that's the baseball field, hockey field, that's already underway. So the the project is moving according to our time frame and within the budget that was specified. As an update for our community, January 20th, 2026 marks when Desha's law goes into place for all New York State public schools. There have to be specific written cardiac emergency response plans for districts. We're ahead of the curve in in so many regards and there's just greater clarification of AED locations, protocols, the staff who are trained. The plans have to be sight specific. So each venue that hosts whe
026irrespective of whether it's an athletic event, a performing art event or or otherwise has to have a specific cardiac emergency response plan in place that includes locations of AEDs. So, in order for us to have our compliance met on this, our safety plans have to be updated to reflect Desha's law. That has to be done by January 20th. The board meeting prior to January 20th is January 12th. So, we'll be holding a hearing or I'll be asking for the board to hold a hearing on that date and adoption of our revised emergency response plan. The plan must be posted to our website at least 30 days. I believe it went up to our website today. So, it's available for members of our community to view. Elementary lunch. I just want to speak to the elementary
027lunch. There have been a couple of inquiries with regard to the time spent for lunch and recess at our K5 level specifically. I do want to note that yes, it's 40 minutes for that period, but there is passing time of 3 to four minutes on either side of that lunch period. So, it's 46 to even 50 minutes actually of lunch and passing time. So, I would certainly like to see more lunch, but there are some realities that our school district faces that many school districts within New York State face. So, minimum hours of instruction at the K5, actually at the K6 level, it's 900 hours of instruction are required over the course of 180 days that the state recognizes. lunch, recess, passing time, other non-instructional times are not recognized within that 900 hour count. So,
028as we add time to lunch, we now become dangerously close to not meeting that minimum threshold that we're required to meet. And that also has state aid implications. In addition, if we increase time at lunch, the time's got to come from somewhere. In an elementary school day, the time is generally spent, not exclusively, but generally spent on English language arts, mathematics, and special areas. Special areas are a requirement as part of commissioner's regulations. So the only true place to find that time is by taking away English language arts or math instruction. And moving from just arbitrarily 40 minutes to 60 minutes is what I chose. That equates to approximately 12 full days of instruction. So we would lose an additional 12 full days of instruction to add time to a lunch period. and that th
029that time would essentially come from math and ELA instruction. So yes, extending lunch is terrific. I I don't think anyone would object to that, but I think on the other hand, we have to look at what we're trading off to increase lunchtime and the tradeoff seems pretty high and pretty significant. Also, there are collective bargaining agreements in place and that's just a tertiary consideration, but certainly the minimum number of hours instructionally that we have to meet as well as where do we take the time from is a consideration that we certainly have to be mindful of. We had a senior citizen breakfast on November 21st. What a great group. We invited seniors in. And it's something that we do a couple times a year and we talk about just what's happening in the schools and
030the senior citizens have breakfast. I give them an update on on what's happening in our district. They ask questions that are on their minds and we just have a great time talking about our district and the great work happening here. We're having another breakfast in April. It's at their request. It's it's an April. I I told them I would have the breakfast whenever they wanted and they suggested to avoid the winter months and let's have breakfast again in April. So, we'll invite our senior citizens back into the district in April. If you know someone who lives in our community who is a senior citizen who would just like to talk about teaching and learning in Yorktown, some of the great programs, please share that email address, e pirtown.org. That's my assistant Erica Paris. she accepts
031the reservations and we'd love to have an even bigger group at our April breakfast. Our superintendent student council has been hard at work already this school year. We're essentially just finishing November and the priorities that they've outlined are even more ambitious than what they achieved last school year. Last school year, you'll recall, and Hunter was on the superintendent student council and played an integral role in getting the sea lot paved and some other really important changes made. This year, the superintendent student council at the high school level has set four priorities. And I love each of these four. And they didn't want to reduce the number of priorities. They want to try to get all of these done. They've actually asked to double our meeting frequency times from once a month to twice a month
032so that we can achieve these goals. So, they'd like to work on adding some additional mental health supports in the district. They are really interested in an outdoor seating, dining area, study area. The terminology that we've used in our meetings is they'd like a place that's a little bit more formal than the cafeteria, but less formal than the library. and that space in our building really doesn't exist right now. And so we're going to work to try to make that happen. They're really excited about creating this AI financial literacy lab within our school district that almost mimics uh a Wall Street trading floor. So that's something that they're really excited to explore. And our board may recall and certainly our community may recall that we started these eye grants for our faculty and staff a
033couple years ago. And that program has been incredibly successful in engaging faculty, hearing faculty voice on ways that we can enhance our work here, whether it's teaching and learning or otherwise. And their thought was to start a student grant program where students can bring their ideas forward to improve our school district. They would submit an application. The council would review the applications and make determinations as to whether to fund the project or not. So, it really goes to this board's mission of elevating student voice and really hearing what our students have to say. And so, they came up with four great ideas and they did not want to let any one of those four ideas go. And when you look at that really impressive list of ideas, it's hard to blame them for not wanting
034to let any one of these go. Hunter alluded to this and this was such a great event in both schools. On the left, it's Brookside. They're balloons over Brookside. On the right, it's Mohansic. Balloons Over Mohansik. It's inspired by the Balloons Over Broadway book, a Thanksgiving inspired book that um Brookside certainly has been doing for many years and Mohansick certainly in in recent years has taken on. And what a great event as students bring characters from books that they enjoy to life and essentially parade around the building with their floats. So just a wonderful, wonderful way to close out the week going into Thanksgiving. That is the report that I wanted to provide to you. I'm happy to accept any questions if you have them. >> Thank you, Dr. Hatter. So, we will move to
035board reports. I'll take the first two and then um pass it over to Mike for the next two. Uh so, the AI committee, we have a meeting coming up. It looks like it's going to be next week and um Dr. Hatter will be um sending out the calendar invite so it's on um everyone's calendar. Um and then audit committee no updates at this time. >> Thanks Rashi. Uh facilities projects uh Dr. Hatter is been providing updates at our meetings on the progress that uh the construction teams are making. uh we continue to meet every other week uh as the facilities projects committee where we are simultaneously uh planning the next projects and monitoring the progress of the ones that are already started. So it's quite challenging. There's a lot that goes on. Uh there's a
036lot of moving parts, but uh uh I think the most important message is that we continue to uh stay on pace on t on um time and under budget. So um that's really what it's all about. If we can continue to do that uh as we move forward, we'll be very very happy at the end. Uh fiscal advisory, nothing new to uh report there. Uh our next meeting will be uh in the middle of the well beginning of the budget season. Uh we're looking at the week of January 12th for our next meeting, which would put us um just after the first round of uh budget meetings that the administration is holding. So once they've done that, we'll be able to meet and discuss um where we're at. >> Thank you, Mike. Uh policy committee.
037Uh Cheryl is unable to attend tonight, but we do have four policies um on the agenda for a second read and adoption. So we are going to move to that. Um motion to approve a second reading and adoption. 4327 home instruction 7100 facilities planning 7365 construction safety 8110 school building health and safety. >> So moved. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I. Any opposed? Then we're going to go to consent agenda. This is a format we started at the last meeting uh to make our meetings more efficient. So result that the Yorktown Central School District approved the consent agenda which include agenda items 10 to 14. 10 board matters item 10.01 to 10.02. 11 Personnel matters item 11.01. 12. Business matters item 12.01 to 12.03. 3 13 pupil personnel matters items 13.01 to
03813.02 or two 14 gifts, grants and donations item 1401. >> So moved. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> So we are going to jump to number 15 which is board comments and we'll start with Peter. >> Sure. Um just again our good news that's Mike said it earlier. That's why we come. That's really now. Um but again Jacqueline, your first board meeting. I hope it's everything you dreamed of. And welcome >> and so much more. Thank you very much. No, it was great. It was wonderful to see the kids again. I saw Brookside last last week and the last time and I I love seeing the faces because you know some familiar in the district and the community. So, it's always nice to see that. >> Thank you.
039>> Yeah, I agree. Couple of >> Sorry. Couple of other items. Um, I'm liking the consent agenda. Kind of moves things along a little quicker, which is always important. Uh, and to that end, I am also, uh, giving a shout out to Hunter. I appreciate your reports. Uh, they're not only informative, they give us a good view from your level um, and the student level and, uh, you put a lot of thought into them and I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Well, Dr. Had I want to say um when we first started the superintendent the student council, we didn't know exactly how it would go and what we would expect. Um but we thought it was a good idea and I think it's proven to be a great idea. Uh so thank you for making
040that happen. Um they're amazing. I mean all four of them are amazing. The third one in particular sparked my interest. Uh so I can't wait to uh discuss more on that. But uh it's really a great concept and I think student I grants are fantastic. So um and it's great when they come to the board meetings and they present uh what their ideas um have been um have taken effect. Um all right so we're going to go to public comment number two. All right. So no one signed up for that. Uh so may I have a motion to adjurnn? >> So move. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Okay. Have a great night. Thank you.