001good evening welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting for december 13 2021 can have a motion to go into executive session for the matters pertaining to collective bargaining under the taylor law for the ads in the yct units as well as to receive advice from the school attorney she'll move second all those in favor opposed thank you can i have a motion to go back into public session all those in favor aye opposed good evening welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting for december 13 2021. we please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence for our armed forces and those in our community who have lost loved ones especially the mother of maureen gallery the grandmother of tara geyser the grandmother of
002angela luongo and the mother of theresa carey i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um i just want to let everybody know anthony d'alessandro is um joining us by facetime tonight he is unable to make the meeting i want to remind everybody that new york state requires masks to be worn at all times and it must cover your nose and your mouth thank you um we're going to go to our first public comment which is a gender related items if that was anybody signed up no okay so we'll move on to the superintendent's report ron okay good evening good evening thank you so there are a few items that i'd like
003to discuss this evening and provide our board and our community with an update on the first is a overview of the year that was we're in our final board meeting of the calendar year 2021 and it's been a most extraordinary year as i think back to january and february and [Music] each subsequent month there have been some unique challenges but they have not been unique to the pandemic there have been so many other aspects of the organization that we have had to address and this evening i'd like to deliver a presentation to the board a very brief presentation to the board that can just provide you an update from each of our department heads we have our department heads here and i thank you all for being here i really appreciate your presence tonight and
004your presentation this evening in advance so yvette if i can ask for you to pull up the presentation it's brief if members of my administrative team speak quickly it's because they know that we want to keep the presentation brief so that the meeting can continue along i i just want to start by sharing some very quick and broad stroke reflections on the year that was and all that we experienced it has been quite the challenge we began this year with a calendar year with just keeping our schools open as i look back 12 months ago the conversation was more focused on how do we keep our students in school because first and foremost we want our kids in school and we want to keep our students safe and we want our staff safe and we
005want to return to normal as quickly as possible as i sit here 12 months later we've made some great strides we're not there yet but we've made some great strides and i don't think it's necessarily a yorktown specific situation i think it's more global than it is uh isolated to yorktown yvette we'll go to the next slide i'd like to just begin by sharing with our board who will be presenting this evening this is the order that we'll be presenting in this evening each member of our leadership team will come up to the podium they'll address the board provide an update they'll introduce the person who will follow them so i know my team knows who's following their presentation and they'll introduce them and we'll again be as respectful of time as humanly possible you
006bet if i can ask you to go to the next slide please we begin everything with our vision statement this has been the vision statement of our school district i want to say since about 2017 although we've been living this vision for many years prior to 2017 so we strive to cultivate empathy first and foremost we strive to nurture creativity innovation and i won't go through the rest of the vision statement it's it's right here posted and and of course this presentation will be posted to our website i believe tomorrow we'll have this up is my hope so we'll have the content posted for you to review we go to the next slide we very quickly became the home of esteem and i've had some people reach out and say well you spelt a steam
007wrong on the sign out front and it was intentional we're the home of esteem an empathy-based approach to steam education and i could never be more proud of the work that we have done in esteem it's been recognized across the country our work has been recognized on the international stage it's been recognized locally and everywhere in between and we're proud of all the good things that we've been able to do now i these are just one of many small measures or reflections of the good work happening what i'm most inspired by is going into a classroom and seeing children work together and think together and solve problems creatively and are really engaged in learning and most importantly that joy of learning is there now we'll begin a department by department uh brief update it's two
008slides per department it's this introductory slide and one other slide and it talks about the year that was and things we're looking forward to in 2022 calendar year 2022 now i understand that that straddles two school years for us the second semester of this school year and the opening months of next school year ms forsberg is not able to join us this evening our director of technology so mrs o'shea will be delivering the technology portion of the presentation as well as the curriculum portion of the presentation so at this time i'd like to invite our athletic director mr barrett to the podium to present to the board and to our community just wanna make sure this is on okay perfect good evening to the board of education dr hatter miss o'shea and mr cole and
009our school community tonight i want to share some insight into the past year and take a look at the upcoming school year for those of you who don't know my background i was an elementary school teacher so i would start with a little bit of a story and i happen to be a movie buff so i just recently was watching apollo 13 and obviously we know the story where they're in stress and they're not going to be coming home where people think they're not going to be coming home but at one point one guy says this is going to be the worst disaster in nasa's history and the other gentleman who's in touch in charge i should say quickly turned and said no i think this might be our finest moment and i think that
010over the last year we've seen our school district the leadership rise to the occasion under some really really difficult situations and i just want to talk about some of those things so we clearly had some challenging situations and but we had some wonderful people step up first and foremost i just want to give you an example of that idea so dennis for boyce and his crew we ran six track meets in the middle of winter with snow on the ground because dennis thought it was and his crew thought it was important that kids have that opportunity the conversation was as quickly as dennis do you think we could do this yes we'll make it happen so i was i can't say that i was more proud of that moment to be at yorktown because of
011the quick response and the quick work that these guys done did i should say the past year in the midst of the pandemic we saw 48 teams commit to playing sports and when i say commit to playing sports that means it took a whole effort from our whole group from you guys saying okay to some of the things that were in place to our superintendent saying that we can do that and of course our athletes saying yeah we can make that happen so we had four seasons fall one winter fall two and spring as you know there were various protocols that had to be developed for athletes to and coaches and spectators including in those were the mass that we're currently wearing um social distancing um and spectator limits which were not fun for anyone
012right we want parents to be able to see their kids play as well additionally we developed protocols for student athletes who came down with covid in an effort to make sure they returned to place safely considering the amount of unknowns that were at the time that school that that didn't happen magically our school nurse kim cortezi was instrumental in that happening our athletic trainer justin giuliano was instrumental and of course our medical director dr casaro all were important factors in making sure that those protocols were developed so that kids could play safely and god forbid anything happened returned to play safely with all that going on in the world we saw our students students take ownership in the protocols in an effort to salvage any assemblage of a season i am so proud to say
013that we had our teams participate in the vast majority of the games that were allowed with very few instances really throughout the entire year i applaud them for their efforts and being able to create so many memories because that's what this was about creating memories they went on to accomplish many outstanding individual and team accomplishments including and beg sorry for reading this but the list is lengthy we had three all-league honorable mention winners 57 all league winners two all county for all section auburn mentioned winners 21 all section athletes three all-americans in addition we had a player of the year in their league three low hud first team all-stars and second team all-stars one golden dozen honorable mention winner one comeback player of the year a pitcher of the year winner a twelfth man of
014the year a diamond nine winner one section one leadership award winner two con ed award winners and not and an ni triple a winner um at the section state and regional level which is they divide the section the sta this the country i should say into eight sections so they won their section which was amazing because you're going against eight other states and we were awarded the new york state scholar athletes school of excellence for at least the fifth year in a row i'm trying to figure out how many years we've had that in a row but certainly on the five years the past five years we have we also saw success on the fields as a group with eight league championships and one regional championship a nice addition move away to that now the
015nice addition is our gym obviously you guys know about it but our community is just starting to know about it as they start to come back to events in the gym so we've obviously had volleyball in the fall season basketball now in wrestling um most recently we just had a wrestling tournament this weekend and the compliments were um you know amazing we have become a little bit of the envy of many of the school districts in section one um once they step into our gym so i just want to go over what what that entailed quickly um was a remodeling of the gym floor new padding on the walls new bleachers new heating and air conditioning systems new led lighting new baskets which were long overdue right i'm so happy for those and of course
016our new scoreboards the game experience i'm going to tell you is second to none if you've come to a basketball game or you come to a wrestling match the video board is up music is playing in a great sound system and the kids are just excited to be there it's a complete opposite effect of last year when we actually had no no fans in the stands so it's uh welcome um by all in addition we saw an increase in our bleacher capacity um at charlie murphy field and of course the nice concrete pad for our um our concession stand looking ahead to 2022 so there's a lot to look forward to right um things are starting to get a little bit better in terms of allowing spectators to be at games we're still wearing our
017masks but um again we are playing which is great um we're playing more games than we played last year um we're having more people attend events than than we certainly did have last year so we'll but we'll continue to monitor as we always do um the environment and hope to make the best out of whatever the situation comes as as it comes i should say um we are currently working through the logistics of our scoreboard grant that we were finally awarded after many years um for those of you who don't know we have um a video board in our gym this would be a grander scale video board um the the cool thing now is we're trying to figure out how we can draw our students in to help with content content is the what
018drives those boards so if there's no content the boards are really like any other board but if we're able to bring in our students have them work on these videos and and uh messages and all the type of things that they're more inclined to be able to do than i am um certainly um it should be fun experience as it has been so far just on a limited basis in the limited time that we've had our current board um last but not least i'm looking forward to the renovations that'll happen in our middle school gym um dennis again was awesome in making sure that construction here went well i'm looking forward to working with him and see what the new middle school gym will look like i want to thank you all um for taking
019the time to listen and i wish you all the happiest and healthiest holiday season okay sorry i didn't know if there was another portion of this but uh at this point i'd like to introduce lisa o'shea we'll talk about curriculum thank you mr barrett i'm happy to have this opportunity to share with the board some updates from the curriculum office when i look back on this year 2021 there's many things that the district is proud of and i just want to highlight a few in the summer of 2021 we provided a comprehensive k-12 summer remedial program for our students this was in addition to the traditional extended school year program that the pps office handles and mr rosen will speak about what we did this year is we had k-5 students in person for three-week
020period with the focus on ela and math skills with embedded special ed related service and enl support for students as needed in the middle school level we had in-person esl supports over the summer we had virtual reading and content area supports for middle school students and at the high school we provided over 110 credit recovery courses for our students with embedded content area teacher support our entire goal was to help our students achieve the learning standards and to provide this in a very comprehensive way this past summer in we're also in the middle of a k5 writing pilot now with the help of miss chesser our some of our k5 teachers are engaged in a writing pilot that started at the end of last school year we're looking at exploring potential primary resources for writing
021instruction at the k5 level to date we've done two pilots of two different programs and we're currently meeting to decide where we move forward from here um in addition uh with miss froat's help at the math in i'm sorry with miss froat's help at the middle school our math teachers in grades six and seven are implementing the into math program for the first time this year the result of that would mean that we have a comprehensive case seven uh primary resource for mathematics instruction that is vertically aligned we're very excited about that we are just starting now at k-12 after school support program that will run from now through the spring for students again to help all students achieve the level of mastery on the standards that we would hope we can do during this
022year we had to hire additional teachers additional staff due to enrollment and to changing student need i wanted to point that out because several of those positions that we hired are currently covered under some of the grant money that was provided through the federal government whether it be the arp grant or the um esr grant so those positions that are in existence right now are covered by that money however we expect these positions to be needed in the future and the grant money won't sustain that so as we continue to budget and look at our budget moving forward we need to be mindful of some of those positions that are currently funded outside of the district budget as we look forward to 2022 the work doesn't stop it continues and we're looking to plan a
023comprehensive summer program again for next summer in yorktown high school our high school administrators and the teachers have developed two courses that will begin implementation next year in the math department one is data science and the other is civil engineering and architecture by adding the civil engineering and architecture course that gives us a three-year sequence in engineering that we started four years ago to build so it's really exciting for us we continue to monitor enrollment and the impact on staffing and then impact on the budget that might follow as well the new york state department of education has published new standards for computer science and digital fluency with the expected latest implementation date to start in 2023 in september so we're already beginning that work and mr miller is unpacking that information looking at our
024current practices and he is working towards curricular alignment what does that look like potential resources we may need an embedded professional development so those are just some areas that we are working towards as we continue to move the district in all aspects of curriculum and instruction i'm going to ask at this point mr verboise is going to speak about the facilities department [Music] thank you miss o'shea the 2020-21 school year presented some unique challenges for our facilities department as we navigated the ever-changing guidelines of the cdc and local health departments in providing for the care and well-being of our students teachers staff during this covet pandemic from the very beginning of the pandemic our district has and continues to be extremely proactive in reducing the spread of this virus maintaining central inducted hvac hvac systems
025and optimum efficiencies to deliver the cleanest possible outside air to all classrooms and offices is paramount and air filtration is crucial the industry identifies merv or minimum efficiency reporting values in determining the quality of an air filter the rating is based on how successful a filter is at trapping airborne contaminants the higher the merv rating the more successful the filter is at catching particles the district uses mirv 13 filters replacing the conventional merv 8 filters allowing upwards to 80 percent more capture of dust pollen bacterium viruses from entering our school buildings a timely replacements of such filters is constantly monitored the use of polycarbonate barriers and in most instances our o m department's fabrication and installation of such panels in main offices cafeterias offices and classrooms prove beneficial as we return to it in person
026learning for the start of the 20 20 21 school year another defense in eliminating the spread of infectious diseases and germs in our school buildings is through effective and thorough cleaning and disinfecting and while there is no substitute for the daily cleaning our custodial membership maintains each and every school day and evening the district's investment in our clorox 360 electrostatic sprayers demonstrates our commitment to effectively sanitize our schools for all students teachers and staff and i thank dr hatter and our board of education for the continued support and funding of these equipment purchases in all our school buildings as our athletic director mr barrett mentioned earlier our high school gymnasium underwent renovations this past summer that included new lighting bleachers wall and ceiling panels two new rooftop hvac units outfitted with merv 14 filters additionally
027site drainage and concrete walks were installed along with new sections of bleachers at our charlie murphy field our steering committee along with our district architects and construction manager identified projects at all our school buildings that will be submitted to state education department as part of the district's five-year building condition survey rbcs such projects are prioritized by this committee and will be completed in current or future o m budgets or via capital improvement funding resources this past summer also saw the construction of a new ball field at crompon elementary complete with perimeter field drainage ball field clay and a chain link fence backstop many thanks to the crompon pta for the financial support with this project and last but certainly not least is the continued work and dedication of our facilities team the creation of two
028maintenance four persons positions in recent years have provided for better oversight and efficiencies in our grounds and building staffs mr michael grundig and mr diego orozzo bring many years of experience to their respective positions and are passionate and caring supervisors who aren't afraid to jump in and lend assistance when needed and miss lisa scanipico our administrative assistant is the glue that keeps our department functioning her professionalism and can do approach to everything and anything that arises is both refreshing and appreciated by all who have dealings with o m i look forward to many more years of collaborative work with my colleagues looking ahead to 2022 will continue to be proactive in our approach to disinfect and clean our schools we will continue with the daily uses of clorox 360 electrostatic sprayers and continue cleaning efforts
029in all common touch points in our school buildings our summer 2022 capitol reserve projects are on this evening's agenda for award as we look to get a jump start on equipment submittals with the anticipation of continued shipping delays due to covid this summer's work will see renovations at our high school cafeteria and kitchen servery with new lighting ceilings and package heating and air conditioning system our middle school gymnasium will receive new lighting and wall pads floor restoration and rooftop heating and air conditioning units our three elementary schools will have their respective gym and cafeteria heating and ventilating units outfitted with refrigerant components for cooling and crompon will see some aesthetically pleasing wall treatments and flooring work performed in its cafetorium led site lighting enhancements which improved successful on the high school middle school campus will
030be targeted for elementary school parking lots and driveways additionally replacement of exterior lighting at all building entries and exits will ensure better and safer coverages with the district's new security cameras and lastly continued training and mentoring of all 43 members of our custodial staff to ensure that our buildings and grounds are clean safe and environmental pleasing and worthy of the yorktown brand is our goals for 2022. thank you i'd like to introduce dr sheila mcginnis to speak on behalf of human resources [Applause] thank you mr verboise thank you dr hatter and the board for allowing me to update you on the human resources functions okay uh 2001 was uh probably highlighted by our recruitment efforts in 2021 we had 75 staff members leave the district as a result we hired 132 new staff members these
031included not only new teachers but also aids assistance and leave replacements in addition to 24 substitutes which were needed to cover absences as a result result of the pandemic in hr we also had some turnover two of the three positions in hr turned over in the last year and a half so um it was very difficult with the short staff at hr to to have the additional recruitment but we now are fully staffed and i think we have a wonderful team attendance became an issue because of the pandemic the state and federal government issued many regulations which then required us to implement changes the hr department implemented a process to ensure that we had the proper documentation when we issued the paid administrative leave so that we weren't giving away time we digitized many documents
032specifically our contracts we're finding that in the last couple of years we're getting more and more requests for documentation in the past it required us to go into the file cabinets and search for them many times having to go to building b and look through boxes and boxes so we started a process of digitizing the most common requested documents and we will continue that into the future we resumed hr outreach as a result of the pandemic some of the things that we did in hr we could not do because of social distancing so this year we did resume the hr visits we visit the each building at least once a month to have open hr hours where staff can just come and ask questions without having to make an appointment we also increase our visits
033in the past i would go to the staff when they had issues and wanted meetings rather than having them come to us so 2021 was a very busy year we're looking forward to 2022. recruitment again will be the major issue last year we had 33 staff retirements i've offered some some webinars for staff interested in retiring and this year we've had over 60 people attend those webinar webinars so i expect more retirements this year than we had last year as mrs o'shea mentioned and i'm sure mr rosen will mention students are coming in with more needs and requiring more staffing supports so that will also increase the recruitment efforts next year we continue to digitize the employment documentation we are setting up our digitized personnel records to hopefully eliminate most of the paper copies so
034that it's easier access and safer storage in the past i did a hr newsletter three times a year just updating staff on important things they need to know reminders of things they might have forgotten that will again resume in january and training the new staff our two personnel assistants have been in their positions for less than two years one less than two weeks so there's going to be a lot of training we did a little reorganization and the responsibilities have shifted this hopefully will help in the cross training so that both are up to speed in case there is an absence or of staff calls whoever answers the phone can answer the question it was very difficult losing to two staff they had been here one over 20 years one over ten years so there
035was a lot of brain drain and which scared me a lot but fortunately we have a great new team and with the the ability to have new eyes looking at the functions we are looking to increase our methods of efficiency and have some more reorganization of the tasks in the future and those are just short highlights of hr we do a lot more but these seem like the the focus for this past year i'd like to now introduce mr mike rosen who will talk about pps [Applause] thank you everybody um thank you mr carbone mr magnani board trustees dr hatter mrs o'shea mr cole for providing us this opportunity tonight um i always like to start with some of the we have a lot of great things going on in the school district but i
036always like to start with some of the things that um just bring a smile to all of our faces and that's what we do in the summer in the summer we run an extended school year program as mrs o'shea said the program has continued to grow and i always speak to even over in 2021 what we did in summer of 2020 i spoke to it at a previous board meeting still amazes me is how the school district came together getting busing transportation running a program when no one else most other school districts were not in person that year this past year we ran six classes in the extended school year we also have run virtual programs we've run in-person other programs to again support the needs of the students to make up any missing work
037that they would have had during the school year so they can benefit from the level of instruction we also in 2020 was the last time we had our pioneer our special olympics team um the league started up again this school year for 21-22 we had our first game on november 17th playing up at carmel and last week on the 8th of december we hosted our first home game against lakeland and we worked very closely with mr barrett using the new gym for all of our home games the students here in the high school turn out to support our athletes and it was quite the atmosphere and i hope that i'll make sure you guys get the schedule to come to games as we move along some of the information i'm going to share i just
038want you to realize that the pps department works with and requires the support of many mainly miss caroline almeida the assistant director kelly rudick supervisor of special education our administrative assistants the school psychologist the principals and all the special education teachers without them we don't get through all this information but what we are seeing is a significant increase in our cse cpsc 504 referrals meetings and placement and i just want to share some of the data with you this past summer the pps department participated and ran 145 meetings those were initial cse meetings re-evaluation meetings um transfer meetings 504 meetings cpsc meetings so that's in a two-month time period where 145 meetings were were held we have typically average about six or seven cse referrals k to 12 um every week that are coming through
039the district and coming through the pps department we've welcomed 55 new registrants who have moved to the yorktown central school district from january 2021 to nov at the end of november we've had 55 so it's about an average of five new students moving in who are coming to us with individual education programs and requiring service just to give an idea of numbers we're typically around 550 total classified students in october we were already over 600 and we're approximately about 627 total classified students as of today so you're talking approximately 70 more students um than in probably the last number of years we're also responsible for students who go to private and parochial schools so we do have one main parochial school in town which is seeing a big increase because some of the other appropriate
040schools in the area have closed so we are also responsible for the cse meetings for those students the annual reviews and also arranging for and providing the services at those schools as far as staffing in the 21-22 school year as i said we've added a supervisor of special education we added special education teachers we added one school nurse we added a one speech and language therapist and we've had to subsidize with some contractors for additional speech and language we added an occupational therapy assistant we added another social worker here at the high school to support social emotional needs of the students we also have an added temporary school psychologist who's helping us with more students equals more reevaluations so she's completing about 40 to 45 reevaluations for us she's also helping at mohan sick and
041crom pond with a lot of behavior plans and functional behavioral assessments that we would have normally had to send out to other places um so that's 21 and looking ahead to 22 um you know in past years i would come to the board meetings and present you know my two-year vision and i would have an idea of what we're talking about that's with all the added students that's getting harder and harder to do um i really don't know what to expect i do know that we will continue to see growth in cpsc csc and the 504 504 referrals is going to continue to increase we do see even more need for staff in the area of special education teachers related service providers behaviorists those will be needed for the 22-23 school year the other piece
042is space we have worked really well with the principals mr for boys if there's a spot to create a classroom over the last few years we've put up walls we have been so creative with finding space we added a supervisor up in my office we needed an office we put up a wall we created space um if you've been here long enough we've created kitchens still nicer than my kitchen at home i i still talk about that um we've created probably four or five bathrooms so that students don't have to leave to use the bathroom if they have some significant needs in that area looking forward if we continue if we have the growth that we're continuing to see we are concerned about what space will look like as we move forward and that's pretty
043much it for the pps department i'd like to introduce mrs o'shea who will discuss technology i'm back again so i do know that ms forsberg was very disappointed to not be able to be here today and i will say that she is exceptional at her job at continuing to keep our district running and all aspects of technology and her team is really top-notch and and i don't know where we would have been over the last two years without her leadership in the technology department so i have some notes that i'd like to share in regard to the technology update over the last year the district has installed an all new wireless infrastructure there's a new state-of-the-art computer uh securities cameras are inside and outside all of our buildings there's new phone software that's been installed
044and we are awaiting the installation of the new physical phones across the districts when we did go into a hybrid and first the remote model we needed additional chromebooks to create a one-to-one environment k-12 although software and monitoring for cyber security have been in place due to the malware attack in october of 2020 and after an in-depth series of cyber testing additional software and hardware were purchased to keep the network even more secure when we moved to 100 online uh format and also when we moved to the hybrid model additional professional development needs uh were necessary and consultants were brought in for specific types of teaching whether it was hybrid or remote we also had specific training due to various software that we brought in whether it was seesaw or pure hair deck thank you
045those required some specific training for our teachers we have an increased instructional software when we went to our hybrid and remote models we brought in some additional software to work in that format what we've noticed over time is that the benefits of that software is still necessary in a fully in-person model so some of that instructional technology will continue as we move forward looking ahead in 2020 in the technology department ms forsberg and her team are looking to expand to the one-to-one chromebook initiative from 6th to 12th grade students to 3rd through 12th grade students we will need additional chromebooks to replace older chromebooks and the additional grades and right now our chromebooks are on a three to four year turnover cycle she's working towards the full implementation of sharp touch boards that began in
046the summer of 2019 at that point they were replacing our smart boards with sharp interactive boards that needs to continue right now we have about 15 to 30 that they're doing each year and as they are dying or no longer working effectively we're moving towards getting all of our classrooms back with interactive sharp boards cyber security and and software monitoring those additional needs have increased our wireless budget as well as the network budget moving forward so there'll also be funds needed to have additional training and testing in the cyber security systems ms forsberg is looking for um sharing with the board that they'll be additional tech not additional technician will be needed to support the increased technology use in the district the help desk tickets have increased increased over 100 percent and this comes from
047just overall increased technology use it it also comes from relying on technology for the camera systems the phone systems hvac printing new hardware new software transportation additionally ms forsberg started a family help desk in march of 2020 and that continues to be something that family and students are using even though we're back in person so that needs to be monitoring monitored we have senior engineers who are sometimes pulled to work on larger projects and are not available to the teachers and the students readily and during the day another big initiative that mrs forsberg and the tech department will be working on is to update the required technology plan for the state education department that is due in june and it will take us from 2022 through the 2024-25 school year so those are the things
048that are happening in technology and now mr cole is going to sum all of this up for us thank you mrs o'shea and everybody who made presentations here tonight so uh uh the business office through the year 2021 has managed the day-to-day operations with regard to finance to accommodate everything you're listening to tonight many of the coveted related issues that we had to deal with that you heard about here in the early part of 21 were not budgeted we were able to manage those things uh on a very tight budget in a very short leash frankly but we were able to do that in the early part of 21 incorporate that into the budget that we're operating in the current year we thank the very talented staff in the business office led by alicia sigvarts
049and for their efforts in that regard we continue to oversee the school lunch program in transportation transportation led by patty sauber was instrumental in navigating the waters with a new transportation provider last year and into the current year and the school lunch program led by the uh by aramark that is our provider were just wonderful throughout the covert related period of the early parts of 2021 where normal operations were scarce to say the least because of restrictions and new protocols and so forth we continued to monitor our security posture within the school district mrs o'shea talked about security cameras that have been deployed uh throughout the school district mrs forsberg has been leading that charge we also continue to entertain uh certain new technologies and capabilities uh not the least of which was something that
050dr hatter and i investigated just last week that you may hear a little bit more about that we're very excited about as a tool to help us in emergency response looking ahead to 2022 everything you've heard tonight it translates into dollars and cents at some point uh additional staffing or the anticipation of completing certain projects and and being able to do certain things into the future we are well into the budget process for the 22 23 school year we anticipate working very closely again with the financial advisory committee of the board of education and then through the presentations which will begin in january but we are on a timeline we've hit all our marks to this point along that way and everything that we discussed here this evening has already been discussed individually with each
051one of the directors and managers you heard from this evening so we have we're going to try to quantify everything and include it in this document that will be put before you in a very precise presentation starting very quickly so the the next slide i believe is the timeline of the budget process which dr hatter will go through for you it's pretty consistent with years past and we are well underway into the month of december dr hatter thank you thank you tom to thank you lisa to all of our directors this evening for presenting this is our budget development timeline and it is an aggressive timeline it's hard to imagine that once you get to november you're already planning for the upcoming school year you're only two months or three months into the current school
052year and you're already departments and meeting with different groups and building principles to determine what the needs are for the upcoming school year having not even gone through the winter and spring but it is a lengthy and thorough process that we have to be able to develop with great precision so it begins early my first presentation to the board will be after we return from the holiday recess and we'll have a series of budget presentations and all the presentations are going to be posted to our website and they'll all certainly be available in video format as well in terms of next steps and moving forward there's a lot that i can say about next steps and moving forward um we want to move back closer to normal each day what i'll tell you is in
053three days we've received three different memos from the department of health december 8th 9th and 10th three different memos that we've received so now which one contradicts the one prior to it or which one do you look at and you say well wait a minute i've got questions they're trending in the right direction which is a direction that creates an environment for faculty and staff to return closer to a more normal environment which is what we all want um and and when i say more i'd like to get us back to full normal pre-pandemic the way things looked it would be so much more um it's just what would be great for our entire organization children and staff alike so we move closer um our team is meeting tomorrow a different team not the team
054here i have another group of our school nurses and mr rosen will be meeting to discuss the three memos in three days and trying to just make sense of what the december 8th memo says compare it to the december 9th memo and then review it in context of the december 10th memo and then work through where it all resides but there are some things that we're doing that shouldn't change so the merv 13 filtration it's not something that you really see that should stay in there's no reason to do away with that that that's something that when the wires are for and we're the better for and then second is to continue to improve as great as our department heads are and they're great and their departments are great our school principles are terrific and
055everything happening um [Music] in in so many areas of our organization is terrific but we need to do better we always need to do better and that's something that we recognize and one of the things that mr cole didn't share is in addition to all of the other responsibilities at four o'clock in the morning when i'm in the parking lot on a day we're anticipating snow that's who i'm on the phone with and we're talking about what we see and the reports we're hearing comparing notes and making decisions as to whether it'll be a snow day snow delay or regular opening and quite often at 4 4 15 i'm driving past mr verboy's in the parking lot and we're there that happened this week now our community we don't broadcast the potential for a snow
056day but i forget what it was last week i think it was last week it can't be this week it's monday but last week there was a potential for snow and then there was precipitation in the day and then there was forecast for temperatures dropping overnight and re-freezing those types of things had dentists here in the parking lot at 4 15 4 20 whatever time it was making sure that we could address those spots for a normal opening and a more seamless and a most seamless opening and and part of the great part of my job is i get i've got to know as much as i can about every different aspect and every different department and every different initiative and effort that's happening here and trying to engage and push the thinking so that
057ultimately our students are best served so i appreciate the expertise added here i i appreciate all of the information that you've shared really good information and important information and this is where the presentations are derived from in terms of the budget presentations and that takes me to my final point which is we're planning for 22 23 and i looking forward and tom's office is already crunching numbers looking at different parameters to to consider as we develop the budget and develop each individual budget presentation for your consideration and and hopefully your adoption with obviously whatever amendments we need to make to move forward but that's our update for for this year that's what i wanted to share with you i have some additional items but that concludes this portion of the presentation if there are any
058questions we're happy to take um them you very much that was very helpful um lisa did you have any questions no questions just thank you to all of you for all the work that you do carol i'm good thank you freshman no i have no questions i just want to say um it's been a difficult year the last 18 months and i'm so impressed to see how much incremental progress we've made like we hear about it on a daily weekly basis but to see it all summed up like this i think was terrific so thank you mike thank you i do actually have a question um and this goes to the increase in pps um so is it we have increased this year because there are new students but are are also we're also seeing
059increase in our current students needs and how much of that can we attribute to covid um do we expect that to move forward to next year because i know covet has been extremely difficult on our students and i just don't know if there's a correlation that we're having to deal with i think a little bit of all of it i think covet has led a lot of families to move north and leave their communities so i think we're seeing a lot of students move in i do think that we do have some young students who are just getting back into school so sometimes those referrals are coming and remember six or seven a month doesn't mean that everyone ends up classified we might they might need additional services because they miss kindergarten in first grade
060a lot of it being remote so we're working through all of that um i i think it's going to continue because we're seeing more in the mental health piece at the older levels so that's why we added a social worker here at the high school i was in a meeting this morning we shared last year with the number of students who um you know were hospitalized and that's a concern so part of all the numbers and the needs in the high school would be how we can keep the students from going into hospitals how we can keep them from going out of districts so we're seeing more of that some of the budget impact is also students moving in who are already out of districts so some of that 55 were students were already placed
061out but we are seeing more needs so while the number is high the needs of those students is greater and it continues to be greater more students with level three autism are coming in our numbers are preschool students so we're seeing that from the little ones i think they're moving into the community when they're young i think everyone here we have a great reputation and they come here and we provide great services to them and i think you put everything that you said leads to an increase across the board normally though you have been very good at predicting because you follow these students from preschool you've been very good at predicting what's coming in so to have such a large increase i i just did was it all new kids moving in or was it
062other kids who had effects of covet and other being home for 18 months that caused issues that we needed referrals for yes yeah okay um it is i think that um all right we're seeing it from every which way all right i guess the answer is is there anything we can be doing proactively to help students who have been affected negatively by covet and other things uh you know when i talk to mrs harold shea all the time and we're having you'll see on the board agenda people approve to support students after school we're working with the high school to do some other social emotional pieces we did that last summer we not only had the esy program we had the in-person program but we also had a psychologist and a social worker who kept
063in contact with students who they were concerned about normally students walk out in june and we don't keep in touch with them until they come back in september everyone was very concerned about that so we had clinical team that kept in contact had meetings throughout the summer with students and i think that has all helped thank you and i didn't mean to to single you out but you guys do a phenomenal job and you have our neediest students so we just want to make sure that we can help in any way that we can to make sure our students needs are met so thank you absolutely thank you oh pete did you have any questions i'm sorry no i didn't look down that way i'm sorry i'll move you down on this side now okay
064um ron you want to finish yeah so uh just again thank you to our team dr mcginnis spoke about hr and spoke very briefly but we have about 600 employees with about a dozen different collective bargaining agreements that that we have to navigate and know really well and adhere to um and all of our directors and i see miss alameda miss rudik in the audience and i thank them for joining us this evening as well um in terms of just some other items that i wanted to share uh i provided a covet update to our community last week on tuesday there were some key points that i shared uh that video has been posted i believe it's been posted to our website it was supposed to be posted i believe the following day so by
065wednesday it should have been off if not wednesday then certainly thursday and it was a very brief presentation that spoke to some of what we're seeing we're seeing an uptick in numbers here fortunately what we're hearing and this is all anecdotal i i'm not that kind of doctor so i wouldn't be able to tell you this from a medical standpoint but what i'm hearing anecdotally are the cases are very mild students seem to be doing okay with the illness however one positive student can quarantine 5 10 or 15 other students so we are working with the county on a test to stay program they have given an okay however their memo that was the december 9th memo created more questions for me than it did answers so that's something that we're working through with them
066we're and we're going to pick up some tests from them later this week i don't know what day we're going but we're going later this week so more information to come on that the um presentation should be published to our website in terms of um our cultural awareness and equity task force we continue to have the in-person meetings with members of our community and that will continue into i don't know if we have any next week but certainly after the um holiday break we'll continue with the meetings at this point we've had about 25 people register to meet in person so we look forward to meeting with anyone who has registered we're going to close the registration after the new year so i would say january 3rd i believe is the date that i've put
067out to close the registration to have the in-person meeting so if anybody is interested in having the in-person meeting or putting your feedback online through the digital survey that will close january 3rd i encourage you to between now and then if you're interested in sharing your perspective you're welcome to do that or scheduling an in-person meeting um two two more items there have been some concerns about library books in our high school library so i just want to share a little bit about that there is a board policy that speaks to the process to review concerns it's policy 1420 and the subsequent regulation thus far every book that has been brought to our attention is going to undergo the review process that's prescribed by board policy in most instances if not in all instances at
068least that i'm aware of there's one copy of the book in the library so if the committee is going to review it they need the book to review so those books would not be on the shelf during the pendency of the review as the team reviews the content and educational value of of the books so more information will come from that but i wanted to provide you an update as to where we are we are adhering to the board policy as we're required to and more information to come in terms of just one final item before i close the two final items we've returned to in-person events so that's a terrific thing we've had concerts in here we had about three or four concerts in this facility last week we've had athletic events that are
069so widely attended and i'm just so happy that we're back to that and having our students and and families in the stands and having our families able to enjoy watching their children play live it was very meaningful and very emotional to be able to see we continue that this week we have some additional performances our chorus is scheduled to perform this week both middle school and high school in person and that's terrific we have some great athletic contests that are coming up some outdoors when we do some track events and then some indoors in our gymnasium and we're looking forward to continuing that it's just great to feel that energy last week it was a proud night we had a concert in here hacked house it was terrific and then we had a baseball basketball
070game against lakeland in the gymnasium again another packed house and the energy on our campus is absolutely terrific and something that i think we all are happy to welcome back um i included this in my newsletter but i thought that i would share it again because it's so special to hear at our one of our football games we call it the pink night the pink game we don't take a gate admission rather it's donations that are made and the donations were made to a great organization a great local organization and that's support connection which provides breast cancer and ovarian cancer support and our football team and cheerleading team donated those funds at gate collection through the husker club to the organization it was three thousand three hundred and thirty four dollars that they raised in
071gate receipts for this organization i'm proud of them for doing that and and they're to be commended for that and then finally this is our last meeting before we head into the recess we still have eight school days left and and i'm looking forward to every one of the eight days that we have left but i really do wish our families just time together i'm together with each other as a family to enjoy just a pause and and time together to celebrate the holidays to celebrate the new year reflect on 2021 but also embrace all the promise that 2022 will bring so to the members of the board i wish you all the very best and i wish you uh the happiest of holidays and uh to my team i'm so grateful for you i
072appreciate you it's uh it's my pleasure to work with each of you and and to support your work in each of your respective areas and departments so i thank you all and to our building principals and administrators teacher staff custodians nurses and office staff i truly do appreciate all the work that everyone does and i look forward to 2022 being better than 2021 was and 2023 being better than 2022 was and keeping on with that cycle so i thank you i appreciate the opportunity to present to the board and community thank you thank you very much anybody have i have a question dr hatter you mentioned 25 in-person meetings in response to the dei um how much how many submissions how are the submissions going the online submission i'm sorry yes we have uh just
073over 60 online submissions that have been submitted to this point um i want to say it's about 65 but but don't quote me i know we're over 60 but under 70. so we're somewhere in that area as of uh this morning when i checked thank you anybody else thank you very much we're going to move on to board reports uh we're going to start with policy cheryl sure um we last met as a group on november 30th we reviewed eight policies we have one on the agenda for tonight to adopt we have five on the agenda tonight as a first read some updates we made and some recommendations the board will be reviewing and we'll be meeting again next week on december 20. rush me on it sure so things are going well uh we
074plan to meet um in the new year and uh we should have more of an update after that meeting thank you mike fiscal advisor fiscal advisory has a meeting scheduled with the administration i believe it's january 7th in the morning to review preliminary budget information thank you and as far as steering goes we're actually meeting tomorrow we have um tonight we'll be awarding bids for the summer of 2022 work which is mr verbois spoke about is um air conditioning in a lot of the elementary schools large spaces um middle school gym and high school cafeteria uh we're also going to be working on um the bcs the building conditions survey which has to go up to the state uh fairly soon so we have been working through that for many months and i think we're
075going to come to some sort of a conclusion hopefully in the next couple of weeks uh so that's the end of those reports i'm gonna move on to some action items um i have a motion to approve the november 22nd board meeting minutes so move second all those in favor and i opposed um a motion to approve the treasurer's report for october 2021. so moved them all those in favor all right i opposed a motion to approve the claims audit report for november 2021 so move second all those in favor all right i opposed emotion approved the extra classroom reports for uh november 2021 some okay all those in favor aye opposed policies emotion to approve the first read and adoption of the following policy it's 1721 student teaching and internships okay any many many
076questions all those in favor of the opposed we have first reads the board will conduct a first reading of the following policies and regulations we have 0320 the evaluation of the superintendent 4750 promotion and retention of students 4770 graduation requirements 6410 authorized signatures 6700 the purchasing regulation did anybody have any questions or concerns on any of them no okay personnel my resolutions uh a motion to approve the personal resolutions a through d as listed on the um agenda second all those in favor all right i opposed um upon recommendation of the superintendent a motion at the following be approved under certified personnel we have extra duty uh we have correction in addition to the substitute list we have coaches and co-curricular a correction of the coach an unpaid leave of absence and resignation and the
077classified personnel we have an appointment and a resignation so moved second all those in favor all right i opposed other appointments emotional men the dasa coordinator appointment at the made at the july 12 2021 annual organizational meeting by changing the yorktown high school dasa coordinator for the 21 22 school year from chris miller to justine roberto giorgio and christine roberta de giorgio to christine zirconi mccombs and panu bergese john all those in favor aye opposed business office bid awards so whereas the board of education in accordance with article 5a of the general municipal law has invited seal bids for the furnishing of material and labor necessary for the summer 2022 district-wide improvement projects which bids were open publicly on november 30th 2021 and whereas the lowest bidder on the mechanical hvac contract snl plumbing and
078heating of white planes has requested to withdraw their bid without penalty and whereas the lower bidder on the electrical contract rlj electrical corp of peaks has requested to withdraw their bid without penalty and be resolved that the board of education hereby determines based on the analysis of the bids and recommendations of ksq and acci following bidders are the lowest responsible bidders for the portions of the projects identified herein we have grace contracting with j m heating helio electric all those in favor aye opposed tax cert whereas the board of education has previously established a tax cert reserve fund for the payment of tax refunds pursuant to orders and judgments in the taxiway proceedings known as a tax certiary reserve fund be resolved that the board hereby apportions appropriates and makes transfers from the tax cert
079reserve fund to the general fund in the amount of twelve thousand seven hundred fifty eight dollars and twenty cents for the payment of the twenty one twenty two tax refunds all those in favor highly opposed can have a motion to approve the following tax cert resolution by order of the supreme court of the state of new york held in and for the county of westchester on the fifth day of november 2021 a school tax refund and the amount of 12 758 dollars and 20 cents is due to yorktown printing corporation and or the yorktown penny saver for the tax year of 2017. all those in favor all right highly opposed can i have a motion to approve the cooperative transportation agreement with yorktown brewster summers and north salem school districts for the 21 22 school
080year there is no increase to the budget so second all those in favor okay could have a motion to approve the insurance settlement with employee number 2964 in the amount of one thousand dollars all those in favor all right i opposed curriculum um a motion to approve the following yorktown congress of teachers professional improvement proposals that are listed below okay all those in favor aye highly opposed special ed emotional range the following placements as of december 13 2021. all those in favor aye opposed a motion to approve the committee members of the cse and the cpsc for the 21 20 school year as stated below csc committee on special education member the name of jessica byrne she's a parent member and carmella solansky she's also a parent member cp bines i'm sorry mines and camilla
081silinsky as parent members and also on the cpsc jessica bynes and carmella solansky as parent member representatives all those in favor all right opposed a motion approved the contract for the 21 22 school year between beacon city school district the new york town central school district for tuition of one student from beacon city school district to the yorktown central school district from july 5th 2021 to july june 25th 2022 at a pro rated cost of 82 475 dollars and 40 cents so mood okay all those in favor proposed yes grants and donations a motion to accept with gratitude the following gifts grants and donations at brookside schools seventeen hundred and thirty six dollars from the brookside pta for a field trip to the westmoreland sanctuary at yorktown high school twenty four hundred dollars and fifty
082cents new york town high school ptsa to fund mental health awareness workshops for yorktown high school students twenty four hundred and fifty dollars from the ycsd education foundation inc to fund mental health awareness workshops for yorktown high school students 500 from alliance for safe kids to fund mental health awareness workshops for yhs students the athletic department two thousand five hundred seventy eight dollars and thirty one cents from the husker club for ice time practices and games the yorktown high school hockey team and at the carol for the carol jacobson fund a hundred dollars from jeffrey and diane barber to fund programs and materials for third grade carol's garden at the k-3 schools so moved all those in favor all right i oppose thank you all very much we're up to board comments pete i'll start
083with you no just ron thank you for that presentation and for for everyone who did it it was very informative there's so many great things going on in the district so it's nice that the community can hear about it and see it also so thank you freshman now i just wanted to wish everyone happy holidays i wanted to say thank you to our directors for coming out tonight and thank you dr hatter for putting this presentation together i think as we close out 2021 and are here at our last meeting of the year it was a nice reflection of all the wonderful things that have happened and how far we've come in the the year of of this pandemic so it was really nice to look back and it made me feel good at where
084we're at right now like pete said there's so many wonderful things going on right now so thank you thank you to everyone for coming out and thank you to our our entire administrative team and staff and i wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season and a wonderful 2022. lisa so i'll join cheryl in all of those comments it really is fabulous thank you i know it's not easy especially now so i it really is very much appreciated also join dr hatter and his comments for everyone to just spend some time with their families you know we're all going through a lot right now and to spend some time with your family just enjoying each other is really really special i certainly can't add to that excellent well said thank you though to everyone who
085came out this evening and presented it's certainly very helpful and informative for not only us but for the community and i wish everyone a wonderful holiday season spend it with your family and your friends and we'll see you in the new year i echo what everybody said i also um one again thank the directors and all of our staff um 21 school year was very difficult the whole 21 year with the pandemic and everybody went so far above and beyond what we could have expected every time something was asked of anybody superintendent on down to anybody in the district they just said what can i do how can i do it and what is best for kids and i feel so blessed to be part of a district that thinks about kids first and i
086thank all of you for all of your hard work and everything you've done for us so thank you ron lisa tom anything so we're going to go on to public comment we just have one jules m [Applause] do i need to remind i don't think i need to remind you of our rules right no no i didn't it would be nice if you guys provided a podium for your stakeholders as you do for the staff though you know because i have a couple books here so in the future that would be nice okay so i'm here tonight i'm unscripted so i'm just going to kind of speak off the cuff i'm a lifelong resident so i went to yorktown school districts amazing district i had friends of every ethnicity i never saw systemic racism in
087yorktown my kids go here they do not see systemic racism do kids bullied absolutely i have white children and my child was called a white privileged boy so i guess maybe systemic racism goes both ways in respect to that my job is to make sure yorktown stays a wonderful school district that it it is i have been defending that i don't think there's any sort of indoctrination going on in our school district i do not believe dei is here i have read the entire crs framework which i do not support a lot of it i find it to be divisive and race-based we are trying we went generations to get away from that and i don't know who's pushing this agenda but we're going backwards um there's a there's a community group here i'm a
088lifelong resident they are pushing an agenda into our school district most of them are transients they they moved here transfers i should say they moved here they did not grow up here i grew up here i can speak from the heart from the school district it is not race it is not a racist school district by any means in respect to that i'm keeping my eyes open for what i see going on in the country and as you spoke about these books i'm very concerned so as i've been defending it i have people going you see you see it is here it is here so there were two books my son brought home one i'm not sure if i'm going to get to that but this one called genderqueer i'm very concerned about and i
089want to know who vetted this book to think this was appropriate and educational for children just a couple of parts that i'm going to read here out of this book and i want to just so the board knows this i got a new strap-on harness today i can't wait to put it on you and will fit my favorite dildo perfectly you're going to look so hot i can't wait to have your in my mouth i'm going to give you a of your life then i want you inside me the way she talks about orgasms makes me wonder if i've ever had one i guess i should get one of these and try it speaking of a dildo and a picture of a dildo i remember leaning on my bedroom doorway imagining how good this vibrator
090was going to make me feel i got off by pressing the front of my jean front of my jeans with the unopened box in my hand it really never occurred to me to put something in your vagina not even a finger it really didn't so you've never tasted yourself what no ew ha ha of course you should try it as he looks at his finger with vagina slime on it nope can't do it i refuse i have an extremely low sex drive compared to pretty much all of my friends as a teen i got bored of masturbation you have five seconds the last one is for years my standard method of masturbation was stuffing a sock into the front of my pants and manipulating the bulge thank you thank you thank you that was the
091only uh person so i am going to ask for a motion to adjourn all those in favor opposed thank you all good night have a happy holiday we appreciate