001all right good evening everybody welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting for july 12 2021. please note this is just a false start can we have a motion to go into executive session for the matters pertaining to the contractual negotiations and matters specific to the employment history of particular individuals so move second all those in favor sorry good evening and welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting july 12 2021. can you please stand for the pledge of allegiance in a moment of silence the especially the husband of virginia d mourinho and the grandfather grandmother of emily retell pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all
002[Applause] congratulations to jackie carbone re-elected uh trustee and peter versace jackie would you please read the oath i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states in the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the board trustee of the yorktown central school district according to the best of my ability for the three-year term beginning july 1st through june 30th 2024 thank you peter versace will read the oath at a later date and now calling for nominations of the president or the board of ed um what do you say superintendent's oath first i always do that to you every year [Applause] i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states of america the constitution of the state
003of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the superintendent of schools for the yorktown central school district according to the best of my ability thank you sorry peter can you hear me now okay i now call for nominations for the president of the board uh you've got this peter i'd like to nominate jackie carbone as the president thank you peter versace just nominated jackie carbone may i have a second second thank you congratulations jackie oh and uh all those in favor all those in favor thank you congratulations jack thank you okay all right i'm sorry peter would like to say something okay go ahead um peter wants to say something can we hear him like to nominate mike as vice president jackie is going to take over the
004meeting at this point and she'll call for nominations but thank you okay okay does he want to do another nomination i have to do my oath yes okay i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and i will faithfully discharge the duties of the president of the board of education the best of my ability for the 2021-22 school year thank you okay thank you [Applause] i would like to now call for nominations for the vice president of the board of education go ahead peter i'd like to nominate mike mignon for the vice president for the board of veterans peter bosach had nominated mike magnani to be the vice president second all those in favor aye aye opposed mike you were
005nominated please take your office thank you i do solemnly microphone there we go i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of vice president of the board of education for the yorktown central school district according to the best of my ability for the 2021-2022 school year okay thank you i'm just so everybody's aware this is our organization meeting there is a second meeting after this it starts at seven o'clock so i don't want people to think things are different so i am going to um ask for a hang on resolve the on the board of vacation education makes the following appointments for the 21 22 school year vet siegel is
006reappointed district clerk alicia siverskin sivartson is reappointed district treasurer joanna duarte is reappointed district treasurer and steve robbins cpa is reappointed as the claims auditor any treasurer is the second one sorry deputy treasurer so moved second all those in favor aye aye opposed a vet you need to take your oath of office [Applause] i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the district clerk for the board of education for the yorktown central school district according to the best of my ability do i have any other officers in the audience or will they take their oath separately they'll take them at a later date thank you okay
007so we have appointments can i have a resolve that the board of education makes the following appointments for the 21-22 school year and it's a through x so all those in favor aye aye opposed designations resolved that the board of education approves the following designations for the 21-22 school year it's a through g so moved second all those in favor highlight opposed authorizations resolve the board of education approves the following authorizations for the 21 20 school school year it's a through q a move second again all those in favor aye opposed uh a motion to establish may 17 2022 at the french hill school from 7 a.m to 9 00 p.m for the annual school district election and budget vote so move second all those in favor aye aye aye opposed a motion to approve
008the supplemental defense and identity resolution as stated below so all those in favor opposed okay i just want to read something before we adjourn this part of the meeting there are sign up sheets for public comment will be in the high school lobby this district clerk will be bringing them out if you have any questions as to which public comment session to sign up for our district clerk yvette siegel will be there to guide you public comment number one is for gender related items only public comment two is for general comments we will start our business meeting after the public comment sign up time ends at 7 pm so can i have a motion to adjourn no more second all those in favor aye opposed all right go ahead yes thank you um just a
009couple of things i'm gonna call meeting to order a kind of a motion well you know just welcome to yorktown central school district board of education meeting for july 12 2021 this is our business meeting just a couple of issues one if anybody has signs that name names of employees or students in the district we are asking per policy that they not be displayed thank you and in an effort to make sure that we started our meeting on time the board left its executive session without completing its business please note that at the end of this meeting we'll be making a motion to return to executive session to discuss contractual negotiations that will mark the end of our public meeting we will not be returning uh we're going to start public comment mike are you
010going to this is a public comment number one mike can you read agenda related items only thanks jackie no problem just as a reminder all speakers will properly identify themselves there is a three-minute limit to each speaker no district employee or student may be commented upon or identified by name or situation questions asked by the public will be referred to the appropriate staff member for reply and questions requiring further investigation will be referred to the superintendent for consideration and later response i will be keeping the timer so i will give you a heads up at the 30-second mark we ask that you wrap up your comments uh we do not want people going over we have a large crowd and it's going to take a while to get through most of the comments okay okay
011so for our agenda related items only public comment nobody has signed up to speak so we're going to proceed with our business meeting okay so we're going to go right into our superintendent's report good evening everyone it's wonderful to be with you here tonight it's so wonderful to have a turnout at our meeting i'm going to be sharing some information with you regarding some supplemental funds that are coming to the district and the process that we're undertaking to ensure that we maximize those funds to support our students so in terms of the presentation for this evening you better we are we on okay i can't see the screen on this side of the podium i just do want to acknowledge that we decided to move the meeting here because of the capacity that we expected
012would have exceeded the capacity that was available in the middle school cafeteria and we wanted to be respectful to everyone who was attending our meeting so that everyone could participate and attend and hear what was being said here this evening so that was the um the rationale behind our decision this evening to move the meeting to the high school auditorium with regard to this evening's presentation i just want to share that we can go to the next slide the coronavirus response and relief supplemental appropriations act was passed on december 27 2020. uh it was signed into law at that time 81.88 billion dollars was allocated for school funding and the premise behind those monies was to help school districts across the country address the coronavirus problems and the problems that were caused for school districts
013by coronavirus as you know there were many unfunded expenditures that arose throughout the course of the year to keep your children safe in our buildings and to keep our faculty and staff safe there were ventilation upgrades there were barriers there were masks there were hand sanitizers hand washing stations and so many other costs that our district had to account for and those costs were partially budget budgeted but it's really difficult to capture the enormity of the situation without having lived through the situation none of us have ever operated school districts under these types of times so we were working through all of the budgeting aspects with regard to our you bet you can advance to the next slide with regard to the school district's allocation we received just under 2.8 million dollars in what's referred
014to as the esser funds and just under 450 000 in the gear funds government governors emergency executive emergency education relief to fund and there's also another source of funding that we anticipate will be approximately eight hundred thousand dollars uh but we're still awaiting guidance on the way those funds can be expended by school districts requirements on the grant they're they're pretty straightforward but for the most part it's to offset the impact that kovit has had and outside of the obvious impact that covet has had on our schools there have been impacts to staffing we experienced 35 retirements this year that is a tremendous number of retirements for a school district our size and replacing the many talented people we lost presents a challenge for us and that's something that our team and our school principals
015and our administrators are actively addressing and we appreciate their work in addressing uh the staffing circumstances in our district and we've made some good progress we're always looking for teaching assistants and certified teaching assistants so i i while i have a large audience i'll put out a pitch to our audience if you're interested in coming to work for the yorktown central school district we would love to have you we are again always looking for teaching assistant certified teaching assistants to support and our teaching assistants and ctas play such an integral role in the operations of our district and we appreciate them so if anyone is interested in the audience and coming to work for us please do go on to our website there are generally vacancies that are posted there in addition we want to
016support our students academically and their social emotional and mental well-being this pandemic has taken a toll on our children it's taken a toll on all of us for that matter but we're here for our children we're here for our students and we're here to support them and that's the work that uh we'll be doing using these new funds and i'll add a little bit more to that as as we move on in the presentation yvette you can advance to the next slide this just shows how the school district plans to allocate our resources and we're focusing really on three categories of support it's covid facility and safety needs academic support social emotional and mental health support those are the three areas that we're focusing our attention and those have demonstrated to be the greatest need
017and we have certainly the the data to reflect that from this past school year that you can advance to the next slide so with regard to the first aspect these are all of the different covid related expenditures and i highlighted them in my opening but they're here on the slide and for those in the back i apologize if you can't read the slides we'll post this to our website it will be part of the meeting once we post the meeting to our website we'll certainly post this presentation for your review onto our website with regard to the next slide the academic support these are the different areas it's a combination of staff and it's a combination of resources both from an academic intervention service perspective as well as programmatic perspectives also looking at extended day
018and extended school year programs we're so pleased to be offering such a robust summer program to support our students in so many different grades across our district and our students need this and that's ultimately what we're here for in terms of the next slide this is a slide that really um i'm happy we're able to do because our students need this we're going to use these funds in part to fund an additional psychologist in our school district to provide that emotional support and that service clinical support to our students we're going to fund two social worker positions for two years in our district using these grant monies all really really important resources for our children and when i say two years in one year we're hoping that we can work through different funding mechanisms and
019funding sources and work through our budgeting to ensure that those positions can be retained hopefully they are hopefully we're able to continue to support our students in a more individualized way with additional staff on board our clinical team has done an extraordinary job and i just want to give them some recognition all of our staff have done a remarkable job our classroom teachers our building principals are certified teaching assistants the nurses they've all done such a remarkable job but i also want to shout out the clinicians they have really been presented with some challenging circumstances with our students and their families and i commend them for the job that they've done this year and always but certainly for the job this year i thank you and i'm sure that our clinicians thank you and our
020staff thank you that round of applause was very well deserved with regard to supporting student mental health we'd like to build capacity within all of our staff to identify a student in need i was a math teacher a high school math teacher when i was in the classroom and i had students come to me and wanted to confide in me i wasn't sure if i always had the resources and the capacity to meet the child where they were at that time so we're looking at partnerships with some organizations putnam northern westchester hospital and actually westchester medical center health for their support and their training with regard to next steps we can advance the next slide of next steps we have to submit a tentative plan to the state education department outlining what i just shared
021with you this evening we have to affix dollar amounts to them these dollar amounts do add up to what our allocations are we have until october of 23 to expend the funds correct october 23 to expend the funds but we have to submit our plan to the state education department this week we're going to continue collecting feedback we're going to continue looking at our student needs and and trying to better understand how we can meet our student needs and that's that will always be our charge that concludes the presentation that i have this evening on the supplemental funding that our school district has received and that concludes my report at this time thank you we're going to go into board action items can i have a motion to accept the board minutes from the june
02221st 2021 meeting some move all those in favor all right i opposed can i have a motion to approve the amendment of the 2021-2022 board meeting calendar somehow second all those in favor opposed can i have a motion to approve the second reading and adoption of the following policy it is policy 6690 the audit committee somehow second all those in favor highly opposed personnel uh be it resolved upon uh recommendation of the superintendent the following resolutions be approved we have one through thirteen tamu second all those in favor aye highly opposed one recommendation of the superintendent hang on this is um the the following um be approved we have certified personnel appointments part-time appointments and temporary appointments we have an anniversary correction other other compensation which is summer curriculum hours we have summer k-5 remedial
023reading and math program an unpaid leave of absence a resignation for the purpose of retirement and another resignation under uh classified personnel we have temporary positions stipend that are district funded and additions to the substitute list so move okay all those in favor aye opposed the business office can i have a motion to approve the athletic announcers agreement for the 21-22 school year at a rate of 125 dollars per game not to exceed 5 600 for the 21-22 school year so those in favor all right i opposed a motion to approve the music and arts agreement for the 21 22 instrument repairs pending receipt of insurance documents all those in favor all right opposed uh resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent the president of the board of education of the yorktown central school district is
024hereby authorized to execute an agreement with rs abrams and company llp for external auditing services for the year ending june 30th 2022. some move back well those in favor opposed a motion to extend the inter-municipal agreement with the town of yorktown for the 21-22 school year pending receipt of required insurance documents thank them all those in favor aye opposed a motion to approve the agreement with doctors louis casoro and afc urgent care are school physicians for the 21 22 school year pending receipt of insurance documents all those in favor aye opposed a motion to approve the attached amendments to the following vendor agreements these are for french hill so moved second all those in favor aye highly opposed a motion to approve the precision roofing general agreement based on the ed data bid package number
02530 to provide roofing repairs for the 21-22 school year come on hold those in favor highly opposed purchasing cooperatives being resolved that the board of education of the yorktown central school district authorizes the school district's continuing participation in the following purchasing cooperatives for the 21 22 school year by board purchasing cooperative tcpn the cooperative purchasing network included with the national ipa source well formerly njpa ncpa which is the national cooperative purchasing alliance tips usa national ipa and u.s committee communities now combined on the umbrella of omina partners and choice partners purchasing cooperative so all those in favor i opposed emotionally established sixty dollars per hour as the rate of pay for police officers police officer monitors soul movement second all those in favor opposed reserve fund uh whereas the board of education has previously established
026a reserve contribution retirement contribution reserve fund and a new york state teachers retirement sub fund for the payment of retirement contributions pursuant to general municipal law be it resolved that the board hereby appropriates and makes transfers from the employees retirement reserve fund to the general fund in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars and from the new york state teachers retirement sub fund to the general fund in the amount of 500 000 for the payment of the 2122 retirement contributions so all those in favor aye opposed a motion to approve the contract with nevco for the yorktown high school scoreboards and installation at the cost of seventy eight thousand one hundred three dollars and twenty cents pending receipt of required insurance documents second all those in favor aye opposed a motion to approve the budget
027transfers as listed below so all those in favor all i opposed be it resolve that the board president is hereby authorized to execute a retainer agreement with the law firm michelle pearlson may and lambert llp for legal services during the 2122 school year and an annual retainer fee of 85 000. a copy of said agreement shall be incorporated by reference within the minutes of this meeting so move second all those in favor aye aye opposed a motion to approve the following contracts for health and welfare services provided to resident pupils attending non-public schools in other districts for the 2021 school year and this is for the city of new rochelle somewhere second all those in favor aye aye opposed emotion approved the 2122 agreement with gina sorka and jason buklow for videography services a rate
028of forty dollars per hour not to exceed ten thousand dollars for the 21 22 school year pending receipt of required insurance documents so move exactly all those in favor all right i opposed we're up to curriculum and instruction a resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby authorizes the superintendent to execute an agreement with houghton miffenhauer court for the into the math resource for grades six through eight for a three-year print and a three-year digital package and related professional development for the 21 22 school year in the amount of and not to exceed 82 thousand dollars for the yorktown central school district so all those in favor aye opposed resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby authorizes the superintendent to execute an agreement with putnam northern westchester boces
029for the services of michelle stone lln consulting group for balanced literacy consultive assistance in the district of a mutually agreed upon topics for 23 days plus seven hours at a rate of 250 per hour during the 21 school year and and the amount not to exceed forty six thousand two hundred dollars second all those in favor aye aye opposed a motion to approve the csc committee on special education members for the 21-22 school year some of the second all those in favor aye opposed a motion to arrange the following placements as of july 12 2021. so moved second all those in favor aye opposed we have vendor agreements a motion to approve the attached amendments to the following vendor agreements for the twenty one twenty two school year um number three for jackie arno number
030two for hta of new york number two for stacy mason number two for strategic learning and number two for therapeutic horizons all those in favor aye opposed a motion to approve the contract for out-of-district placement at the curious joel union free school district for the 2122 school year for tuition and related services per student as mandated by an iep the tuition rate is set by new york state education department all those in favor aye aye opposed gifts grants and donations a motion to accept with gratitude the following gifts grants and donations 450 and 48 cents in the yorktown septa for the purchase of special education materials at mohansek at brookside 496.86 cents from the yorktown septa for sensory materials for students at the brookside school at the middle school one houlton french horn from al
031and nancy torrenti for students at mildred e strang 479.94 from the yorktown septa for purchase of headsets for the sensory education teachers and at the high school one con alto saxophone from lazaro family for the yorktown high school music department one barclay clarinet from the venenka family for the yorktown musical department and one viola hard case and one cello soft case from nath dr nathan and nancy caswell for the yorktown high school music department so moved second well those in favor i opposed thank you very much for your donations we're going to go on to board comments i will start with cheryl um well i just wanted to say how wonderful it is to be back in person we have not really seen each other as a whole in quite a long time so this
032is great and i also want to comment on the coronavirus relief act that dr hatter was speaking about i think those are welcome monies to help us move forward and move past some of the issues and deficits that we've gone through over the past year or so and i particularly wanted to comment on the three additional clinical staff that we'll be hiring and the training for our staff i think that's uh all welcome those are all welcome resources and will be much needed as we move forward so i think that that's wonderful to hear and as we reunite as a whole come september i think you know probably some some needs are going to arise and it's nice to hear that we'll be provided those additional resources thank you lisa yeah welcome everybody i join
033in cheryl's comments it is so great to see everyone in person um it's not our usual place but the people are the same and it's great to see everybody thank you for uh for guiding us through dr hatter all these rough waters to bring us to this place um in our our new school year which technically begins today it's great to be back and see everyone good evening to all of you here i'm actually thrilled to see that some of the relief money will be used um to benefit our uh students and their social emotional needs and and i'm you know thankful to uh you dr harter lisa tom that we know we have prioritized that all throughout kovid so thank you yeah i'll just echo everyone else's sentiments it is great to be back
034i'm sure i'm not the only one who's glad that the 2021 2020 2021 school year is behind us and looking forward to uh the next year and i would also like to thank uh all of my board members for um i think thank them for re-electing me as a vice president this year thank you i think i echo what mike says you know careful what you wish for but i do echo everybody's sentiments first of all it is absolutely wonderful to be back in person we tried in person a couple times during covet but since we couldn't have the audience with us it wasn't the same thing so it's wonderful to be able to see the community in front of us so this is exciting and i'm hoping that our whole year goes this way
035so it's so exciting i'm just happy to be back and um i echo everybody what everybody said so i'm grateful uh ron tom lisa anything you'd like to say yes um so i just wanted to share some additional comments and as i concur with everything that was said and i appreciate the acknowledgement uh there's a lot that i want to say to you tonight but i want to be respectful to the time that we have because i do want to hear from our community and we're sensitive to our community and and your perspective and what you have to share with us this evening but there's a lot of confusion and misinformation that's being circulated and i'd like to clarify some of that information for you this evening in my letter dated july 2nd i stated
036in no uncertain terms that the yorktown central school district is not teaching critical race theory any suggestion to the contrary is false [Applause] i'm gonna i'm gonna ask can we just yeah i'm gonna ask that you don't do that we're going to remain quiet and civil thank you um the chancellor of the new york state board of regents has noted that critical race theory is not an appropriate theory for k-12 his direct quote lester young's direct quote is the exploration of higher education theories are confined to higher education graduate schools as well as professional schools so there were some concerns that were raised to me about the new york state document that's being circulated this was a document that was released to all school districts across new york state and what i noted in my
037letter remains true our core values what our task force has been working on what our district has been working on not just for a year but for many years our core values are around understanding kindness respect and empathy for all individuals every child every child who walks through the doors of our school should feel respected they should feel the kindness there should be empathy they should feel welcomed and safe in our schools that is our work there are some questions that have landed in my inbox and i just want to go over some of those to just clarify a little bit there were questions as to whether children would be made to feel bad about themselves and who they are as a result of the our work with the state's document that would be contrary
038to our work here we have 3 400 children who go to school here in yorktown we want them to be proud of who they are appreciate who they are respect who they are that's our work here every one of our students no student should be made to feel any lesser we're a school district of character we've earned that because we offer outstanding programs to our students we have work to do we absolutely have work to do i also want to share a second question that has come up via email or phone calls and please know although my comments this evening are going to be brief i'm always up for a phone call i think anyone here who's called my office knows that you'll get a call back and we'll have a conversation and we'll take
039as long of a conversation as you'd like with regard to one of the second with regard to the second clarification will the state document result in this anti-american perspective in our schools that will not be the case we live in a great country we live in the greatest country that will not be the case as a result of the work in our task force i just want to clarify that and then there have been questions that have come to me that will the work in the state's document be an anti-police rhetoric that's not where our focus is that will not be the case here we have a great relationship with law enforcement they do an amazing job of keeping your children safe and our staff safe they're available to take my call any hour of
040the day and unfortunately schools are targets for people who have bad intent and my number one job is to keep your children safe while they're in our care and i rely heavily on my relationship with the police to do that we have police officers who work in our buildings we have police officers who athletic coaches in our athletics program we have a law enforcement club that promotes healthy and respectful relationships with law enforcement so i just wanted to clarify that and then finally there was recently an allegation of an employee in our school district who is sharing their political views with students that one first of all that'll never be acceptable our faculty and staff are aware of this that they're not permitted to project their police thank you that's please we're not doing that
041not necessary outside of our school we have 600 employees in our school district i just want to share that outside of um we have 600 employees approximately outside of our school district our faculty and staff are people they're allowed to freely express their opinions outside of our school district please folks okay excuse me uh we i just want to continue on with my remarks and i promise i'll i'll conclude but i'd just like to do so without interruption please um and i'm going to be very brief i purposely truncated my comments at the superintendent's report to include some here our staff can express their opinions freely outside of our school district they have every right to do that and even our task force has 19 people who have different perspectives and that's terrific that's wonderful
042that there are different perspectives our faculty and staff can absolutely do that outside of our school now once inside of school we don't we're not permitted to project our views upon our students that's something that's not permitted and does it happen yes it has happened in the past however once we're made aware of it we address it so you can bring the concern to the school administrator you can bring your concern um to the appropriate party start with the teacher because there's probably context behind what happened and the teachers are a great start once we're made aware we do address it i i just want to close with unfortunately and disappointingly we've experienced incidents of racism in our schools it's not okay we've experienced discrimination in our schools whether it's ethnicity gender religion that's not
043okay so we certainly acknowledge and appreciate the progress that we've made as a school district and we're pleased by that we're encouraged by that but we also acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do to continue to realize the values that we set forth and our values our understanding kindness respect and empathy madam president i turn it back over to you thank you um we're going to start now with our second public comment uh we're going to read the rules again and then i'm going to read a brief statement um so mike can you read the rules again yes for those who arrived after the first reading of the rules i will read them again all speakers will properly identify themselves a maximum of three minutes is allowed per speaker i will be
044keeping on my phone the three minutes uh when i get to the 30 minute 30 second mark i will uh give you an a warning uh that your time is coming to an end and at the end of the 3 minutes please finish your sentence and let the next person speak speakers may comment on matters of public interest involving school operations and programs but may not criticize or personally name or attack any individual connected with the school district no district employee or student may be commented upon or i've identified by name or situation questions asked by the public will be referred to the appropriate staff member for reply at the end of the public comment period and questions requiring investigations will be referred to the superintendent for consideration and response at a later date okay
045um as part of our annual organization meeting we have re-adopted all of our board policies policy 1230 public participation at board meetings clearly states that we do not allow discussion involving individual district personnel or students and that is positive or negative anyone who speaks in violation of our policy will give up their right to speak speakers are expected to conduct themselves in a civil manner anyone using abusive or inflammatory language using offensive language or in any way causing disruption will give up their right to speak many people tonight have signed up to speak our public comment is 30 minutes long well well each person has the opportunity for to speak for up for three minutes keeping your comments shorter will allow for more people to have an opportunity at the end of the 30 minutes
046the board may decide if they wish to extend public comment the other thing i'm going to ask is that we don't have the clapping and the hollering everybody has it deserves to be heard by everybody so i'm going to ask that we may remain civil in the audience as well as civil when we speak thank you i will start when you come up please state your name and your address we're asking starting with judas stavins if your sign identifies a particular employee or student in the district that cannot be put it does not okay thank you um my name is judith stavins i have a quick procedural question wait i'm sorry the microphone is not working oh no it's not your fault hello there we go there you go okay i just wasn't close enough
047okay i have a procedural question is is personal recording allowed it is okay already my name is judith stavins i live at 2965 hickory street yorktown heights i've lived in yorktown since 1995 my son graduated from this school in 2011. many of the people in this room know me i am proud to serve on the steering committee of race amity of northern westchester and putnam and i represent our group tonight our focus is on education and friendship within the one human family i started kindergarten in long time ago those who know me will find it hard to believe but i was a very shy kid being the only jewish kid december wasn't a fun month for me i was asked to explain kanika yet was also expected to participate when we sang christmas carols i
048felt paralyzed would it be okay to sing was it wrong i ended up feeling like i didn't fit in and i didn't belong in my school what happened to me was uncomfortable but was certainly a mild case of cultural insensitivity yet here i am over 60 years later and i still remember how badly i felt well we have certainly come a long way in that intervening time we are far from being the best we can be it was just about a year ago that the need for dei programming was discussed as students shared their stories at a yorktown board of ed meeting before that meeting i attended three very peaceful local rallies one in somers one in putnam valley and one right here in yorktown all were organized by young people from our community who
049reached out to their communities for understanding they took the brave step of sharing their stories with their neighbors in public with the hopes of bringing awareness to problems that need to be addressed in our schools and in our community race amity of northern westchester and putnam avidly supports diversity equity and inclusion programming known as dei in schools we strongly believe that every child all of them deserves to feel comfortable and safe in school all means all no exceptions in order to achieve this goal teachers and staff require training processes procedures and programming all need to be reviewed we believe in our country and we believe that all of our history needs to be taught even the uncomfortable parts so that we can work together towards achieving the promise of e pluribus unum which we all
050know means out of many one as we make progress towards these goals there has somewhat predictably been pushed back almost all of the criticism is based on fear not fact these fears are stoked by misinformation about what dei programming looks like and what its purpose is courteous discussion and questioning are essential to community life however a line is crossed when a video is posted that rails against dei programming 10 seconds please and against one highly regarded uh employee in particular um cherished member of our community racist tropes were used to fan the flames um if anyone has any doubt this video is exhibit a for how desperately we need dei uh race amity of northern westchester can you please wrap it up continue to work against racism and discrimination we hope that each of you
051will find your own way to join us thank you thank you um now if we're going to if we're going to go to 30 minutes we're or everybody we're going to try there's a lot of people signed up we're going to try to get everybody we're going to maintain your order um and the seventh i'm going to apologize to you because based on the fact that there's so many people recording this i'm going to change the rule and we're not going to ask for people to publicly put out their addresses so i apologize because i made you do that um jacob statuettes compared to last hi my name is jacob stackwitz um can you speak into them hi my name is jacob stackwoods and i am an alumni of mohansek and krompon i change districts
052afterwards um my experiences my personal experiences is that i am someone who's autistic i'm i have asperger's and i've experienced when i was in crompon and mohancek harassment and bullying i've exp i can very much emphasize with these initiatives to help educate people both staff and students alike about a lot of these issues that have been plaguing us internally and internalized for years now um and basically that there is racism in this town like anywhere else in this nation and that is something we need to address and improve uh and as judith mentioned the ee dei initiative was first uh developed thanks to stories of students experiencing bigotry harassment racism prejudice and so forth among staff and students at yorktown and this and not only just in terms of experiences with students and staff but
053also think about like the historical uh learning of like uh united states history i never learned about juneteenth i never learned about the tulsa race massacre these are aspects or even uh or even about mass carcino incarceration which is a huge aspect of today right now is still affecting us all of this i wish was taught in our schools during high school and middle school even in at this age people can do people at this age can very much understand these concepts it's not something that we can get please address your comments to the board not to the audience thank you and overall when it comes to history the biggest fault in history is when people do not get the full experience and learn it in full because that will just doom people to repeat
054those same mistakes time and time again i want to say though looking at this audience seeing how many people coming out to support and defend this initiative because i know a lot of people are here for that reason as well as to defend us close friend for many of us to that it shows that we are trying to improve that we are trying to learn we are trying to better our society our community and that 30 seconds i hope that we can continue this trend for many years in the future thank you thank you i'm gonna i'm i'm gonna ask again let's let's not um karen stakovic thank you can we make sure that microphone goes up higher can i just tilt it like this is that better yep thank you um um my name
055is taryn stakwitz and i'm the mom of that guy so i'm very proud of him um i just wanted to say that um we need everyone came out here to defend our school initiative to add diversity inclusion in our curriculum this is not critical race theory which is a legal framework that's been around in academia for sen decades in certs that racism is systemic and embedded in american institutions that is a academic way of explaining some of the things that are happening in our society what we're trying to do in our school district and i think a lot of people are confused is working on diversity inclusion having all children feel safe but over the past months a term has been co-opted by national people and as a buzzword to say that this is a
056threat an anti-white indoctrination of american schools the call for improvements to our curriculum and hiring practices come from students alumni parents who have been subject to biases and sensitivity and outright racism in our schools the teaching of factual diverse inclusive american history can only prepare promote empathy and enlighten students for the world that we live in it does not teach anti-racist rhetoric and i want to say that i came from a school district very similar to this one in premise new jersey i too was never taught all this stuff that my son spoke about and when i learned it as adult adult being part of ray's ammony of new west house and putnam i was appalled of what i did not know do we really want our seniors coming out of high school going into
057the world in other colleges and into the workforce not knowing things it's one you know we need to have them at least know the things have critical thought and then make their own conclusions but not teaching it is not an answer thank you thank you rachel eckles hi um my name is rachel eckles sorry is this good is this better diego can you make it higher hang on we're going to try and make it work thank you yeah it is thanks okay um hi my name is rachel eckles and i graduated yorktown high school in 2019 yorktown is amazing we are blessed to live here however we become the great community that we are by learning from our past as a jewish individual i've grown up learning that we must learn our history so it
058can never be repeated we as people are too fast to act against what we think is an attack when really it is a reminder of how far we have come and what we still need to accomplish we cannot be content where we are because as great as we are we can always become better as parents do not wish for us all to find peace more diversity do not wish for us all to love each other as our friends and neighbors i want to live in a world of harmony and diversity where we can acknowledge our past shortcomings as a people as well as the hurdles we still face together having privilege does not mean we did something evil to get it it means we have something that others don't get the chance to have it
059can be used for good as i hope i can use my platform right now as a white woman to show that this is not an attack but an opportunity to grow as a town this is not about politics but it's about humanity we are all humans but we cannot ignore history we cannot become so divided that learning about our nation's history and misdoings in the past stops us from loving each other in the present we are better than our nations past james but we cannot be better by attacking a man for something he did not do he has not taught critical race theory he's only said that his life as a black man matters just as much as ours looking at all the people in my town that i love i think any of them
060would agree that his life matters just as much as anyone else's trish sullivan rothberg good evening board i come here tonight as a 16-year resident of the yorktown school district with a senior who just graduated and i want to tell the board of ed dr hatter and the community that i am so grateful to the board of ed to dr hatter for listening to our alumni and community one year ago and creating the dei committee a group dedicated to discussing diversity equity and inclusion measures in our school it's a mission to create a better understanding among students teachers parents administrators and the community around diversity and equity which i support 100 percent and i want to commend dr hatter on his leadership and the board and their commitment to work towards a better understanding of
061diversity and equity you have all done a tremendous job given this pandemic it was not an easy feat so thank you it took bravery and cover and courage and commitment to education for the board of ed to listen and to be open to these conversations a member of the yorktown high school staff made one of the most important speeches i have ever heard in this town after the march last june he spoke about martin luther king's speech and the historic civil rights march on washington in 1964 and he spoke about our responsibility as americans who care about social justice issues and racism and equity in our country it was a positive and it was an important speech as many of you know after the june march several alumni requested a meeting with the board of
062ed which i attended over zoom and i was so proud of our district for listening and responding with compassion and understanding to find new ways that are essential in our ever-changing world these are important values to uphold in our community and for our children to witness what happened at lakeland's board of ed meeting last week was a disgrace and i never want to see that happen here ever i don't know if you saw the video but the level of hostility waged against the lakeland board the superintendent it was vile disgusting misinformed ill-mattered and disturbing because of certain behavior of individuals the police were called i don't support finger-pointing name-calling intimidation of residents of teachers of counselors of board members i don't support vile attacks online be it facebook or instagram and i don't support referring
063to certain staff members as and i quote from a horrific video we're coming for you his name boy 30 seconds this town belongs to not one person this school belongs to not one person but rather it belongs to all of us we are stewards of this district required to make sure all children are given a fair and equal education that's what democracy is i thank you all for giving me time to speak tonight and for all the work you've done to secure an education for our children thank you now i'm going to ask please stop [Applause] it i'm going to ask that we don't respond like that we we will cut the the we will not continue public comment if i can't control order in the room um please can you well before sean kennedy
064speaks can i ask people to silence their phones and if they have flashes i can see them and they're bothering us up here so please don't use them sean kennedy thank you thank you my name is sean kennedy i am a social studies teacher here at yorktown and i've been teaching here for 27 years i'm also the president of the yorktown congress of teachers and i would say i couldn't be more proud of my members that i represent and that i work with and i also couldn't be more ashamed of the video i recently saw attacking a ycsd employee with inaccuracies threats and bullying i'm not sure why exactly we're talking about critical race theory dr hatter has mentioned he's already sent out a letter to the yorktown community stating that we don't teach critical
065race theory here in yorktown he has cited lester young a member of the new york state board of regents who has stated it's not part of the k-12 curriculum and the new york state united teachers our state union has made the same statement numerous times we don't teach critical race theory what educators in yorktown do believe is that our students deserve an equitable shot at success in our schools we want our students to have an education that imparts honesty about who we are integrity and how we treat others encouraged to do what's right to build a better nation and future for our children yorktown staff members are incredible professionals who preach understanding kindness respect and empathy i would ask that all members of our community do the same for the sake of our students we
066must stop playing politics with public education our children deserve nothing less than that thank you thank you catherine greybush i'm good thank you my name is catherine grabosh and i'm a parent of a child in this district and i'm also an educator at a board of education meeting last year yorktown alumni shared their stories about microaggressions racist incidents and more they asked the district and the yorktown community to support them moving forward by making these issues front and center and exploring the curriculum diversity policies and so forth in order to make sure that no other students had to experience what they had a diversity equity and inclusion committee was formed last year which was a step in making sure that we as a district were moving forward towards a more inclusive environment for all students
067however this work has only just begun and is now being challenged thanks to a phrase which i doubt many of the opposition truly understand critical race theory by working towards healing past trauma and ensuring students move forward seeing differences noticing others talents and abilities and yes noticing skin color and cultural differences does not translate to teaching critical race theory to our children what needs to be dismantled is the idea that by talking about race and racism that we are condoning and perpetuating race and racism it is impossible to break down systems and policies that have been inherently racist without examining what those are and how they came to be our children deserve to be told the whole history of the this wonderful country including all of the pieces that many of us as adults never
068learned about that isn't teaching critical race theory that's discussing hard topics and allowing students to critically think about the issues of our country that continues to face today we need our children to understand and empathize in order for them to forge a better path for all of us by hiding behind the shield of colorblindness kindness and character we sidestep the true issues and continue our performative activism as white folks in yorktown we need to be understanding of how our past informs our future and make the necessary changes so that our children don't have to if a black or brown child is old enough to experience racism in whatever way that may happen then our white children are old enough to learn about it as much of the research has shown silence about race reinforces racism
069i want my white child children to understand that their skin offers them privilege and know what actions they can take to help undo the system that upholds that construct i want them to know that it is okay to see color and be curious about others and that i will tell them the truth if we don't see each other as more than just human but as complex and beautiful individuals in our own way we will never be able to build that bridge toward understanding and acceptance those of you who do not want your children to be indoctrinated or taught crt seem to be missing the fact that none of those things are happening or will happen in the classroom our children are taught to be free thinkers and to form their own opinions based on facts
070and relevant information through things like the new york state cultural culturally responsive sustaining education framework we need to be looking through an equity lens at all aspects of the yorktown central school district and the first step is acknowledging and talking about what we usually avoid race and racism these are not the only issues we have but we are probably the hardest to discuss the teachers need our support in being able to unlearn and rebuild curriculum and pedagogy our children need us to come to the table so that we can move forward together rather than continuing to shield them from something that they will inevitably face and need to understand i hope that the administration and the board of ed see the importance in diversity and equity and inclusion work that has been done and all
071of the pieces that still need to be put together this work will not be easy and it will not be quick but every step forward means that we can please finish no your your microphone has been shut off your three minutes are up thank you no i'm sorry we have to respect no i'm sorry we have to respect three minutes thank you [Applause] christina reichardt hi hello my name is christina reichelt and um my kids are just starting their yorktown school district journey but um i'll be very brief this is not so planned but given some of the things that i have seen and heard recently i felt very compelled to show up and voice my support for the diversity equity and inclusion initiatives that the yorktown central school district has implemented thus far and
072far beyond i want my children to learn in an environment that supports all children and represents the spectrum of lived experiences i want them to learn how to ask hard questions and face hard truths i want them to learn facts and science and empathy while they say it starts at home and i will continue to do my part i believe it must be reinforced in the arena of education and critical thinking i could have watched from the sidelines and followed on social media and crowed from my semi-anonymous nest but this is too important for all of our children i have shown up as many of us have and i will continue to show up as many of us will to support dee and i in our schools that's it thank you linda harris good evening
073i'd like to uh thank the board for allowing me to speak um my name is linda harris and i'm so very happy that you are supporting the um the critical and well i'm sorry d-e-i okay so i have your attention um you know it's not really um critical race theory what what everybody is is looking for is multicultural um education that everybody that has come to this country has has loaned and and gave something uh to this country um the uh exclusion of black history you know black history is american history you know they just don't say that you know they try to separate us try to be separated there's so many things that you know black people have given to this country and i just had a few few things uh written down but
074one thing i i would like to say is that you know michael jordan he was a basketball he's a basketball player retired he didn't make it um he did not make the team the first time he he was he was not brought on the team because he wasn't good enough to get on the team it just made him have to practice more so a lot of people think that you're supposed to get a trophy you know every time if you're on a team if you didn't earn a trophy you didn't you didn't get a trophy but you know black people have fought in wars in every war you know over 187 000 in the civil war uh there there were black men black man invented so many different uh things like dr charles drew he
075he invented the blood bank elijah mccoy he invented uh the way to um took oil trains steam or trains you know um while they were running and it cut down on the time that trains took to get to um point a to b uh the first uh african-american man assigned science was benjamin banneker and he was a surveyor and they still use his um journals today his astronomical journals journals for predicting uh sole eclipse and garrett a morgan he invented the gas mask and so many different things that we learn about you know i shouldn't have to learn about um uh katherine johnson uh being the woman that helped john glenn get into space i shouldn't have to learn about that uh in a movie so it's not just about all the things that happen
076to black people it's about also the things that we gave to america that's not being taught you know like thomas a edison everybody knows who he is i know probably 10 seconds now but that's what i wanted to say thank you gene hooper hopper sorry thank you everybody for being here this evening i'd like to yield my time if there is a student in this district who would like to speak if it i may also we're just going in order okay if anybody would like to speak and if i could heal my time thank you um we're going to go to mel tasman tansman good evening i'm mel tansman i've lived in yorktown for over 30 years i have two children of color who grew up here and were educated in new york town i
077come here tonight to address the board and all the good people here in town regardless of political affiliation the idealist in me believes that this is most of our neighbors however i am alarmed by the rise of hate speech and those who wish to poison the minds of our residents with the virulent viruses of racism sexism and homophobia there are those who wish to suppress the free exchange of ideas in our schools they are for some reason fearful of a diversity equity and inclusion model for educating our children while posing as patriots they are organizing against american stated ideals of justice freedom and quality i would like to address the recent attack on one of our own a man of decency and honesty for those who haven't seen the video that was posted included one
078of our yorktown parents accusing this staff member of trying to indoctrinate children with the treasonous idea that black lives matter they call him boy and threaten his life and livelihood my children's experience in school bears out the need for dei training and education in our schools how many of you have had your child come home from school crying and shaking because he was called the n-word and threatened with physical harm not once but at least three times in our schools to add insult to injury we had to listen to administrators and educators reject that it was systemic racism that needed to be eradicated from a school and just brushed it off as simple bullying giving the offenders a slap on the wrist such as a one day school suspension my son still bears the emotional
079scores of such treatment 10 years after graduation and so board members i know you're going to support your staff and i ask all everybody here not to remain silent support the i d e i curriculum track and call out hatred wherever it rears its ugly head our schools our town our state and our nation need this in these dark and critical times thank you thank you i'm going to ask again nicely to please stop and and the chattering in the back i can it's it's very distracting to people so let's please be civil george price i'm george price but my wife is glee price she will speak first and then i will speak i'm a little shorter as you said my name is gili price um thank you for letting us speak so i tried
080not to cry before i came up but the gentleman that spoke before it breaks my heart because early may our daughter was called the n-word on the bus i tried speaking to the school about it um went up the ladder the right way and it was dealt with subpar to say the very least um so much though that another child was called the n-word in the same building just a few weeks later this is not okay um i shouldn't have to walk around worried that my children are going to be treated differently because they are half black half white jewish fully um but sorry but had the um have the heritage from so many different places people need to understand and have the empathy towards each other without speaking about it without talking about it
081we're never going to change our daughter wanted to come tonight we didn't let her come because we literally just came from florida um so i'm not prepared in the speech which i commend so many people for but things have to change i do appreciate that things are starting to that we're taking the right steps forward but it's not enough um i don't believe in critical race theory in that sense do i believe that things are wrong do i believe that we have to teach each other to learn from each other a hundred percent we don't understand what has happened in the past without learning from it without understanding it without asking the impossible hard questions my husband and i have spoken with the task force on the high school side we hope to continue to
082speak to other ones we've spoken to others other schools when we asked our daughter what she wanted to come out of all of this and i 30 seconds sorry when we asked our daughter she said just teach people so that this doesn't happen to the next person so from my side we're i'm begging you to please start teaching this community the truth and the right things thank you [Applause] so my name is george price um as my wife said my daughter was called the n-word for what it meant on the bus and you look at me a lot of people are intimidated by me but my daughter is 10 years old all right we moved here 2003 2004 we've been here almost 20 years i haven't had a problem with yorktown i think nobody won't
083call me then word straight to my face but you never know but educationally school system's great but it needs to be diversified you have 35 teachers retiring hopefully the new ones coming in can be somewhat diversified i would love to see my son and daughter you know have people that they can look up to that look like them all right there are latino asian indian different mixes in this community it's changed all right so we need to change with the times the board has a duty to the community the community has a duty to the board and we should not let people who do not live in this community put up videos calling somebody that looks like me a boy i'm offended by that i'm a grown man he is a grown man now the
084parent that was in that video looked very uncomfortable while this person was talking i don't think that that person knew what they were getting into but there are a lot of people in the audience there are a lot of people in the community that are not going to stand up for this nonsense all right there are a lot of black inventors a lot of black history is not taught in texas they are trying to take slavery out of the textbooks how can you teach american history and not talk about slavery not talk about the fight that every ethnicity has gone through coming to this country from the irish italian african-american i explained to people several times and i'm not a statistic person but a lot of people came here with things and a lot of
085african-americans came here with nothing and built everything that they got in tulsa oklahoma they built it and it was burnt why just because they were doing well we need to do better you guys are leading the way do better dr naholitan dr hatter great superintendents thank you very much thank you thank you michael hickens hi my name is michael hickens i'm a parent of three my wife and i have been yorktown residents for eight years and are parents of an incoming student to the yorktown school district one of the reasons my wife and i moved to yorktown is because of its high performing school system and its support for diversity equity and inclusion we've also been very impressed by the clarity and honesty with which dr hathar communicated with stakeholders and parents over the past
08618 months so thank you very much for that i support the teaching of diversity equity and inclusion i support diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace and it's important to realize for you to realize that all major american companies the majority of our employers do the same most of them have chief diversity equity and inclusion officers we need our children to be given the tools to succeed that means teaching and practicing inclusion children need to be taught about the rights and sensitivities of others irrespective of race creed gender or sexual orientation but this isn't just about what you should do so your job application isn't rejected because of bigoted social media posts or so you don't get fired for inappropriate speech or behavior at work diversity equity and inclusion is about learning about one another
087and allowing our better angels to express themselves our children shouldn't have to inherit the biases and bigotry of earlier generations the founders of our country spoke about the pursuit of happiness of building a more perfect union and of equality we hold these truths to be self-evident that all are created equal our children have a right to learn about and practice diversity equity and inclusion so they can lead happier lives and bring our nation closer to its ideal thank you for your time thank you um we have exceeded our 30 minutes what would the board like to do we've gone through 13 speakers i have 44 listed can we extend our time if it were up to me we would keep going and okay so we'll go for another 15 20 minutes and we'll see where
088we are okay it's fine need a motion dave do i need a motion to extend it can i can i have a motion to extend public comment for 20 minutes almost second hold those in favor hi uh thank you so much for allowing me time to speak i'm a parent of young children in the yorktown central school district i'm absolutely for a dei curriculum to be introduced and implemented or continued diversity equity inclusion our current curriculum tells our nation's story from one perspective it's high time that we all learn about the perspectives that have been left out i also think we need to give our kids some credit they're smart they're curious and they have questions teaching them the factual history of how and when things happen in our past which in turn led to
089the inequities and inequalities that still exist today will help to answer those questions this is not indoctrination this is finally teaching the history that really happened i believe the addition of dei will be beneficial to the progress and the future of our country when we know better we can do better it seems the people fighting against dei want to believe there is only one type of american that is a false and frightening notion digging in their heels to fight to conserve a history revering one type of american in order to secure an imaginary current and future america of only one type of american it's not based in reality black lives matter women's lives matter lgbtq plus lives matter asian lives brown lives indigenous lives matter people with disabilities matter people who speak differently or pray
090differently matter they exist and so they matter our school district is a microcosm of society how can we possibly continue to ignore the existence and the value of these students america's strength comes from its diversity yorktown strength comes from its diversity our differences bring us together only if we are willing to learn about each other respect each other's stories and experiences and celebrate who we are and who we can become together in closing one more point regardless of whether someone has a different opinion on dei the social media madness has to stop bullying in the name of patriotism is disgusting and should not be tolerated thank you for your time elaine griffiths hello i'm elaine griffiths i'm a lifelong resident of yorktown i'm here to read something that my daughter wrote since she couldn't be
091here this evening hello i'm an incoming ninth grader at yorktown high school and i've lived in this town my whole life i'm very glad for this opportunity to be heard by the community in regards to this issue because it is truly something i am passionate about as well as being a civil rights advocate i am active in boy scouts of america in fact the reason why i can't speak in person today is because i'm at scout camp where in addition to earning merit badges and going fishing i will be participating in a flag ceremony every day and spending the week showing the utmost respect for our great country in short i consider myself a patriot and i'd like to speak about patriotism because i believe that patriotism and a critical understanding of our nation's past
092can and should be co-existing ideals some people will have you believe that opposing this step forward in diversity education is an act of patriotism but the truth is there is nothing patriotic about attempting to prevent young members of this community from learning about historically marginalized members of our society sweeping it under the rug will only cause the underlying issues to fester and create tension our nation is far from perfect i'll admit it but the reason why we should love it isn't because it is never done any wrong but because of something that is much more important and admirable that it is built on the ideal that is that it is our job as americans to make it better to strive for a more perfect union and implementing educational guidelines such as the crs framework aren't
093meant to hurt the patriotism of your child they are meant to enrich it to providing a medium through which they can grow as responsible and culturally aware citizens as a student in this district i look forward to hopefully hopefully seeing these changes show up in my classroom over the next few years thank you thank you leslie hochberg i can't build upon that and um i just want to say some mention wait hang up diego's gonna fix the microphone for you sorry and i acknowledge there are wonderful yorktown teachers i'm a 75 graduate and the the esteemed board and supervisor tonight because you were forwarding some important work um during the the horrible last four years when the facebook was was filled with um lots of hatred a former classmate kept asking me do you think
094i'm racist do you think i'm racist and the answer is well yeah the whole entire society in america is based on a racist thing that we need to understand it is systemic and i just want to see this wonderful work be forwarded because there's different levels of of knowledge and the first level is not knowing a pretty low place to be is not knowing you don't know and it's time we start knowing and how i'm going to figure out how to understand each other and and make for a better world and climate change is real and science is real and systemic racism is real let's do something about it be honest and i applaud your efforts let's keep it moving thank you very much thank you valerie eaton let diego fix the microphone thank you
095so much good evening we want to be respectful of all the yorktown residents we are from peacegale and she comes after me so i just want to make this as quickly as possible okay um first thank you to all the administrators and educators of the yorktown city school district for all you have done and all we expect you to do for our youth first let me just say my name is valerie eaton and i am the president of the p skill naacp um and if you don't know what that is feel free to google it um the naacp is an organization established in 1909 the reason it was organized it's the same reason exists today to eliminate inequality the establishment was developed by black and white activists for change mr superintendent it was wonderful absolutely
096wonderful to hear you recognize that there is room for improvement i hope to have further discussions with you as our close neighbors peace skill where our school superintendent reports to us on diversity regularly black and brown children have been indoctrinated by the board of education with the poorly written textbooks that lets our children be blinded from learning about their history as many of everybody just said we are we all want the same thing and that is for our children to grow up proud and empowered to learn more about their rich history let's make sure all children can leave your town and pee skill outside of this area and understand the differences and why we are where we are today thank you thank you are you ariana yes i am okay please just state your name
097thank you hi um good evening everyone my name is arianna o'koth i'm from peak scale i'm a rising sophomore i'm the vice president of both my class and of the youth nyacp of peak scale there's much that i can't say that i don't already concur with and while i'm not of this school district i do want to offer my experience to offer further perspective i am 15 years old and the child of immigrants turned u.s citizen there is the sort of pride that one must have to abandon everything that they know both their families to come to a nation and start afresh my mother gave me an opportunity and that opportunity is not the same to other children there's struggles that i have to go through i have to change my vernacular daily to make
098sure that i am heard i have to make sure that if i'm the only black person in the room i have to be respectful i have to well obviously i have to be respectful but i have to be everything and more than my own counterpart so going this to say mr superintendent you said that this pandemic was tough for students but statistically this pandemic was unproportionally affected black people we saw all of us last june the tremendous the trepidation the unrest how black people were beaten black and blue and the reason why i joined the nycp is because because of my ap world history teacher who taught me that africans we were kings and queens that our history was important that we were vital for america so that's why i ask you all teachers need
099to tell the truth we need to allow teachers to tell the truth this has nothing to do with politics or critical race theories but every day in our classrooms we can insert culturally responsive curriculums we can say well alexander grantham bell may have done this but there was louis vladimer and we may talk about science and how holistic property but there's also islamic people who thought of this first and did it even some may say better and while we may ignore systemic racism it makes black people black children feel like our voices need to be suppressed and that is a dangerous mentality so i ask you all as when you hire your new teachers when you hire your administrators please make them diverse when you attack a black counselor a black teacher whoever he may
100be we see ourselves in them we see that maybe i can be like him maybe i can be empowered too so again i'm very sorry if i'm not articulate i did write stuff but i wanted to speak from my heart just be mindful you can't not see color color is who i am color is what makes people look at me and be intimidated and to make them more comfortable i know i'm probably getting on time 30 seconds 30 seconds um just to make students comfortable we need to see ourselves and our teachers we need to see ourselves that we can be empowered too so i also want to thank the students who are so brave and so articulate and so well spoken your voices matter because we are the future generation we are the ones
101who are going to be sitting in your seats who are going to be making the laws for our children so i thank you um and also i do want to ask in my school district we have a superintendent's youth advisory council oh this is my quick thing um we have a superintendent's youth advisory council so i do ask that you make a council where you superintendent meet with your students and make sure that you're hearing their voices clearly thank you thank you walter masterson okay um my name is walter masterson and i am an american and a patriot i've never read critical race theory like most of my conservative friends but you know i did watch tucker carlson talk about it once you know the best way to end racism is to stop talking about
102it we we never talked about racism in the 1950s and i mean how great were the 1950s i mean we won world war ii we invented airplanes we went to the moon and then we started talking about racism in the 60s and boom the vietnam war can coincidence i think not just because i don't believe in critical race theory does that make me a racist just because i get more angry when someone calls me a racist and i'm completely silent when there's actual racism does that make me a racist a lot of people say yes i get called a racist uh a lot in the comments section of instagram does anyone know how to uh disable comments if for instagram what whatever happened to freedom of speech you know um so you know i'm here
103to say you know we need to end forced indoctrination in our schools and right after we do that we need to right after we end the forced indoctrination we need to uh mandate that everyone stands for the pledge of allegiance every day [Applause] excuse me excuse me please address your comments to the board not not to the audience um yes so you know that's uh i just want to say you know just you know as a conservative just because i don't know anything about critical race theory it doesn't mean i can't talk about critical race theory i mean come on like i don't know like whatever happened to like this freedom of speech thing here it's like you know um yeah it's like you know big tech um government um okay i'm sorry thank you
104thank you your time is up maximilian clark right excuse me just before we start speakers are to address the board not the audience thank you yeah and i i appreciate that i appreciate the comments that we just got i feel like it's been very one-sided here and i also appreciate the comments that we had about how the school district will not teach critical race theory and i appreciate that but i want to go further people have complained about what's in the history books i agree i think that there's too much history in this history but i read in just a textbook that everyone gets for the u.s history exam that john rutledge of south carolina during the signing of the declaration of independence was like you can't have a revolution unless you codify slavery as
105part of america and like how does a student hear that or hear about like how in 1820 the south was going to succeed unless you kept slavery around or 1850 they were going to secede unless you kept slavery around and then something something 1860s and then you know like chinese exclusion act i mean like you know japanese internment camps trail of tears i mean like the stuff that's in the book right now even without an editorializing like teacher to tell us that america is bad how are students supposed to read this stuff and not think that we have a race problem in this country we need to go back to teaching the basics george washington but not the slavery part world war ii but not the japanese internment camps or the fact that the american
106nazi party and the i have a dream speech we should teach mlk but just that part not the part where the fbi ruins his life listen do i want like history curriculum being built by a bunch of phds phds are famously liberal we need equity in our voices if the uninformed conservative voices of this country cannot use hate speech and fear mongering to affect school curriculums then why am i paying 15 a month to trump's reelection campaign so fairness in our viewpoints teach people to love america not hate america by not teaching them about america thank you dorothy um i'm having a hard time with your last name is it weinerman or neinman nirman i'm sorry i think i think that's good can hear me i think so yeah my name is dorothy nierman and
107i'd like to thank all of you for allowing me the opportunity to speak tonight we have three children who were educated in the yorktown schools and we are grateful for the excellent experiences that they had in this district if any of their math science or english teachers had failed to include essential steps over time in labs or geometry theorems or characters in a classic novel i'm sure parents would have immediately addressed the issue with the teacher administration over the years more and more of us have acknowledged that crucial information and facts have been omitted from our history books and lessons and because of this many people have suffered going forward this needs to change our schools need to include all of the facts and events from our country's past and all of the contributions of
108all people in their teaching materials and provide additional education and training for staff it may be uncomfortable at times but it is important that our history be honest and complete unfortunately many people including myself were are unaware of or didn't think about a variety of injustices that many suffered because of skin color ethnicity religion or place of birth black soldiers returning from world war ii not receiving equal benefits from the gi bill poor medical care in certain communities difficulty obtaining mortgages redlining in the real estate world to name just a few of the inequities that affected generations of people of color and different ethnicities or religions there were and still are atrocities of violence shootings in churches and synagogues hate crimes killings of innocent children and teenagers sadly the list is extensive happily there have
109been many improvements and opportunities for our children excuse me in this country since 1965 but there is still a lot of room for improvement for all to feel included and respected no one wants to make anyone feel guilty no one wants to accuse anyone of racism no one wants to go against a parent's teachings or values no one wants to accuse anyone of being too far to the left or too far to the right but hopefully everyone hopefully everyone wants our history books to be accurate with facts and events of the past that include everyone's experiences all can agree that ex respecting each other's experiences and differences improve the life of a community living in a diverse community on a daily basis in schools neighborhoods workplaces and places of worship enables us to realize how
110similar we are all human beings with the same goals for our children the same family joys and concerns worries and struggles thank you thank you um that was 20 minutes uh we've got up to 21 what would you guys like to do let's keep going another 20 minutes yeah let's continue yeah i think we should continue okay uh motion to continue uh public comment for another 20 minutes second all those in favor aye opposed francine de bernardo good evening and thank you for this opportunity to speak my name is frandi bernardo i have been a yorktown resident for over 34 years and both of my children attended york 10 central schools for their education i would like to thank you for supporting diversity equity and inclusion initiatives in our school i believe dei will benefit
111our students in several ways i have worked for technology corporations for over 40 years many of the large multinational corporations began requiring employees to take diversity and inclusion education more than 25 years ago so we're just catching up here corporations invest millions of dollars in this education because it increases employee productivity innovation job satisfaction and retention in other words it's good for their business dei education will help prepare our children for successful careers in any vocation or field they desire so in other words it's good for them to get jobs second dei will provide a learning opportunity for critical thinking which is an essential skill third by telling students the whole truth about the history of the usa and the rest of the world i believe it will make their education more engaging and interesting
112for them last but not least dei will give students an opportunity to develop empathy for others in areas and situations they may never be exposed to outside of their education it can help to reduce bullying and create a more enjoyable educational experience for all students dei develops critical life skills i want to thank the brave people who have worked to shape this initiative especially counselors teachers staff the superintendent and the school board thank you cheryl goldberg what's up my name is cheryl goldberg i'm a retired new york town central school district teacher i was dismayed at best horrified at least to see the vitriol that parents felt comfortable hurling its staff in the yorktown central school district the most apparent complaint that a staff member a black lives matter supporter is somehow threatening their values
113by indoctrination of students is unfounded when black lives matter became an organized movement several years ago i admittedly was offended i didn't understand why all lives didn't matter my understanding of this movement has evolved i soon learned that this movement was vital to address the disproportionate violence that has been historically inflicted on black and other minority and marginalized groups had it not been for the unmasking of data and historical records made possible by the organization of black lives matter i would not have been able to grasp the extent of the inequities in treatment that black and other marginalized communities have endured i now understand that our country's founding fathers in writing that all men are created equal gave us a goal that we have not yet reached it is a more perfect union that we
114aspire to and must work hard to achieve history is written by the winners who exert their power and influence on others they work hard to maintain control black lives matter which advocates for equality of treatment and opportunity for all marginalized groups based on race gender sexuality disability and i'm sure others that i've not mentioned has given voice to those groups it has revealed that our nation's history has not been accurately portrayed the contributions of many groups are ignored and or suppressed and opportunities unequally available providing recognition and opportunity to all groups does not diminish any group it elevates us all a public school education like the one available at the yorktown central schools exposes students to a variety of ideas opinions and interpretations as educators we value a diversity of ideas and encourage students to
115be critical thinkers and empathic citizens when new information comes to light it is incumbent upon educators to discuss it with their students even if the topic is uncomfortable 30 seconds galileo galilei caused the church such discomfort when he espoused the fact that the earth revolved around the sun that he was excommunicated or in today's terms canceled for over 300 years our country is over 300 years old i hope that we could do better than that elicit um hi my name is ella and i'm going to be a senior at y at yhs um one of my favorite classes this past year was ap us history and that's really saying something because i'm more of a math and science person um one of the things that i really admired about our apus history teacher was that
116he didn't only prepare us for the ap exam but he also really taught us to understand american history he taught us to understand how we got where we are now what we did right and what we did wrong we learned about every admirable every awful and every average act that was passed and part of learning about our history is examining it from every perspective the good the bad and everything in between and i feel like we're made better when we don't just challenge our own assumptions but when we have our assumptions challenged by others like our teachers and our classmates um and that's something that i want for my younger sister oops and future students to experience and enjoy as i did thanks for your time and your attention ariana hello my name is ariana
117kamage and i'm an incoming senior at yhs and forgive me preemptively if the speech is a little rough my original one would not have been allowed to be spoken tonight as a student of the school i feel a need to come out and say something we are not being taught crt we are being taught how to think for ourselves because we are all people who deserve the most and the most is the truth we are a country built on the slaughter and the exploitation of minorities when according to our constitution no state shall deny any person the equal protection of the law an equal protection means education it means open discussions it means listening to those who have something to say about the hate and bigotry they face in their daily lives it means educating
118our teachers about the truth of our nation and what it is like to be a minority and that truth will transfer to our students and our future generations we need to rethink our education system the commitment our school has made to equity should not be skin deep it is an issue every human in this country faces and is an issue that yorktown must listen to we must take actual action here this is what democracy is it is not attacking a black man a human who is part of our faculty in our community online for expressing facts and attempting to dox him in front of the world by the way this is the man who has done far more for our community than most of the people here can say that they have ever dreamed or
119thought of yorktown is better than this we should be better than this as a student of the school district frankly i expect more i expect equality i expect believing others trauma in history i expect to be taught the truth from my teachers i'm a first generation american my parents gave up every single thing they had in their life to give me a chance at an education they never had and that education needs to be worth it i and we all deserve to be told the entire history of our country the truth no matter how uncomfortable it makes some middle-aged white women on facebook and that's coming from a white girl we all deserve better because skin color does not determine worth this is my school my town and i will not let the school erase
120and ignore the truth of our history thank you um the whalen family collectively you have three minutes thanks actually we're all short i just wanted to quickly say that i have oh good evening board of education and administrators my name is david whalen and i have um faith and confidence in the board of ed the administrators the teachers and all of the counselors social workers and csca staff all of the staff throughout my experience with the district i have faith that you will treat all our children with respect thank you i'm megan whalen and i have three children in the yorktown central school district and i just wanted to speak about my daughter's experience her first year in the high school during covid she was a full remote student and scared and our family was
121new to the high school and a person in this school the yorktown guidance department and julia's counselor in particular made our year wonderful that person took care of her made us feel welcome helped her find her place in the school she was a little insecure about where to go what clubs to join how our academics were going to go and the yorktown guidance department was wonderfully helpful to us i registered julia for the wrong regents exam and that person helped me get out of that they they were just the yorktown guidance department was wonderful and we just couldn't have asked for a better experience for julia my daughter so thank you hello my name is julia whalen and i'm a rising sophomore at yorktown high school i would like to share some of the thoughts
122my friends and i had about the guidance department at our school these are some direct quotes from my friends first the yhs guidance counselors are literally so good they worked with me to try to help me pass my classes during covid and now they're helping me so i can take ap bio next year second once when i was panicking about missing study hall because i couldn't find it a guidance counselor was super helpful third a yhs guidance counselor talked to my husker discovery class about a club and they were super nice and patient with us even though my class was full of people who didn't really understand and here is my quote during my freshman year i was a fully remote student who hadn't been in the high school and had no one to guide
123me the yhs guidance counselors helped me feel welcome accepted and like i belonged during my first year and were patient and tolerant through any mistakes i made i ended up having a great year all thanks to their continuing support thank you linda kingsbury hi i'm a resident of the yorktown central school district i've lived here for over 20 years and one of the reasons i moved here is the great reputation that our schools have for giving our kids a great education so thank you for all the work you guys do to make that happen others have spoken already quite a bit about the need for dei and the ability of our kids to be curious and to handle even the difficult truths and i really can't add anything to everything they've said so well but
124those who know me know i always try to understand the other side so i did a little research or rather i drafted my college son to do a little research and he looked on the internet and he found a site called citizensunitedamerica.com which has something called an a2z guide on how to combat critical race theory and on that guide is a quote model school board language to prohibit critical race theory and we read through that together it was quite a long document with a whole bunch of legalese as to what would and would not be allowed in a school that passed such language um and at the end of it there was a list of some i i would call them red flag words they were words that were either forbidden to be used or
125that at least should raise a red flag and one should be very cautious about how to use them in educating children according to this site and those words were obviously included the phrase critical race theory they also included diversity and equity and inclusion then also included phrases like culturally responsive teaching racial justice and even racial prejudice i don't know how we can talk about u.s history without discussing the word the phrase racial prejudice and they included other words like social emotional learning now my very same son needed a lot of help with social emotional learning when he was little he turned out great but it bothers me that we could be censoring all these things or raising them as red flags that if a teacher dared mention these things or if it if an education
126a training program for teachers dared mentioning these things that that there would have to be an investigation you know censoring teachers doesn't work micromanaging classrooms doesn't work let's allow teachers to do their job let's do allow them to tell the truth about our history we have good teachers here we have good administrators here we can trust them thank you thank you maria sanford hi my name is maria stanford and i grew up here in yorktown and i have some kids in the district but tonight i'm going to read a statement by rachel freddy she's the co-founder of yorktown for justice she also has three kids in the district but she couldn't make it tonight we are in such a contentious time i think it's important to remember why we are really here and how yorktown
127is part of a larger cultural story a year ago america began to reckon with its difficult history with racism this conversation is long overdue in our society racism is a much more pervasive and insidious problem than simply having equal rights and people being personally kind or mean to one another racism is embedded in all of our systems still under the law education medicine and housing for instance and is often invisible to those who do not bear the brunt of its inequities critical race theory explores this concept of how racism is perpetuated in the legal systems crt is caught taught at the collegiate mostly post-collegiate level as it's very complex and nuanced enough development developmentally appropriate for most k-12 students we aren't realistically discussing crt in the yorktown central school district what your community members are
128requesting and advocating for are dei and crs measures celebrating diversity inviting inclusions supporting equity and becoming culturally competent responsive and sensitive there's no secret agenda no guilt trip no over emphasis on our differences to the detriment of our commonalities just a deep desire for all students in our district to feel safe welcomed supported and represented this isn't about a cultural war between community members and parents this is and always has been student focused last year july 27 2020 a group of yorktown central school district students and alumni spoke to the board about their experiences part of their ysycsd experience had been discrimination bigotry racism sexism and homophobia often this was between students and staff was made aware but to no avail other times this was proliferated by the staff these students and alumni petitioned the
129district for dei measures i'm sure there are countless students who graduated from yorktown central school district and did not experience these prejudices personally but one's person's one person's good experiences do not discount in others we promise justice and liberty for all and all means all di measures are good for all students we know this from research we know this as educators we know this as parents they make students better critical thinkers more knowledgeable about cultural nuances and more adept at handling complex information so many of us move to yorktown for the amazing school district 30 seconds i fully support this school district's vision to support this work i trust that they will make educationally sound decisions and i trust that these changes are in the best interest of our students thank you very much roseberry
130boral thank you school board for recognizing me um i grew up in yorktown my once again diego can you fix the microphone sorry i came to yorktown when i was three i grew up here i have been here well over 50 years my children were raised here and went to the yorktown schools me and my five brothers and sisters including me six we came through the yorktown schools when i first moved here my father had been an immigrant from czechoslovakia he had escaped communism and one of the reasons i'm here tonight is because i did see that video where this curriculum was accused of being communist i know a lot about communism from all the things that my father shared we talked about it around the table growing up we were concerned and always were
131told about looking out for flags for political situations that could make that enter i can't imagine that anybody would equate social justice with communism it's just insane to me i'm grateful that this curriculum is being introduced i am a teacher now retired i retired from teaching and i'm now working in the mental health um counseling and um i'm sorry i just i didn't prepare anything but i just was so upset that i just felt like i had to come and say something please encourage this i am a lifelong teacher and i am learning things about this crisis among our fellow americans that how many people died for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness how many people in wars died for that to lift up people and and bring about equality and bring about justice
132we're so unamerican if we can't teach the truth that's all that got us to 30. extend it again there's 14 more people i think we should finish yeah let's continue all right can i just david do i have to give it time or can i just say we're going to go for the last of the public comment all right so we're going to finish off for the 14 people who are on the list to speak have a motion so moved second all those in favor all right thank you michelle gilbert [Laughter] [Music] okay uh good evening i would like to first thank the board for the open forum for the community to speak out um on everything that has an impact on our students in this district i'll do my best to stick to the
133community guidelines that you've put forth my name is michelle gilbert i am a current yorktown resident and a product of the yorktown central school district i've also watched my four younger siblings go through the district and i'm now watching my friend's children go through the district i hope to possibly one day also send my own children to yorktown schools my family and i have been active members in this community in a lot of different ways since moving here from queens 28 years ago one of my favorite things about this community has always been its devotion to the children who are being raised here alliance for safe kids or ask which was started when i was a student has grown within our community and continuously works to fill the needs of our kids my family and
134i have worked with alliance for safe kids in different capacities since its founding and i'm thrilled to see its legacy continue with the involvement in the central school district's cultural awareness and equity task force the task force that was formed last year is a perfect example of this town its organizations and its district making strides to do better for yorktown's children as our nation becomes more divisive it is important to give yorktown's children a safe haven to learn and grow without bias or bigotry diversity equity and inclusion are meant to show all of yorktown's children that who they are matters that their history is important and that their future has no limits i'm here today to ask that this board our teachers and our counselors continue to pass that message on to the kids in
135our district thank you holly davis [Applause] good evening members of the board and superintendent dr hatter my name is holly and i'm here tonight as a concerned parent advocating for my children in our community the board of ed and superintendent have constantly not been transparent regarding what is happening in our schools with our children my question is what is the policy that yorktown district has between social media and educators and staff no answer i didn't think i would get an answer to begin with back on june 7 2020 we had a march in our community at the devito field a school guidance counselor delivered a divisive speech i would like to put on record the ending of a speech where he spills hatred into the community as i quote it's not my job anymore the
136job is for white people what are you going to usher in for the new year and millennium are you going to usher in bigotry racism donald trump or unity love and oneness are you going to let people keep taking talking madness or are you going to correct them these statements are biased and racist this is what our tax dollars are paying for on june 16th i quote white people what are you going to do are you going to use your privilege to do something good i hope you will this is unacceptable and extremely questionable behavior coming from someone who works as a school guidance counselor and is very influential to our children i am not going to have a debate with either side this is unacceptable for an educator to publicly state his own bias
137his influence on the community will transfer back to the schools next let's talk about the petition that was created on change.org most members of our community were unaware of this petition and what it entailed moving forward because of the yorktown for justice petition of demands that allegedly stemmed from racism within our schools and community is it safe to say an equity task force was created under the radar without parental consent or involvement two things racism exist all over the world in many forms degrees and has always will be unfortunately racism can never be 100 eradicated the board of ed works for us we entrust our children to you and is unacceptable how our children are being treated there's no excuse for a child or parent to feel intimidated or bullied i'm here today to tell
138you that this is your rude awakening parents are no longer going to tolerate it you know what i do know for a fact exists here in our schools is bullying i've talked to many parents that have chosen to either home school send their children to private or move out of the community it's quite alarming that when talking with many parents they have expressed that they are constantly worried about what they can say or do when it comes to their children and situations that arise because in feel of retaliation 30 seconds their children will encounter imagine if your child was taught to feel guilty and ashamed of the color of your skin crt or whatever you want to call it is a master's ideology that says if you are born white you are oppressor and if
139you are born black you are born oppressed this ideology is complete opposite of what martin luther king fought for which was don't judge a person by the color of their skin but by the content of their character this is a culturally responsive sustaining education framework that is being implemented within the public school systems in new york thank you carmella pinch no this is not i'm going to ask that the audience remain silent be civil thank you my name is carmela i live in yorktown teaching crt is unconstitutional so i am happy you're not putting on the record at that it is not being taught but i don't know if i believe that it has already been banned from teaching in many states across the u.s it does not have anything to do with academics and
140will only take away from our children's valuable authentic learning time this will only promote hate and create division amongst their peers these ideologies are not to be taught in schools but rather a parent's responsibility schools are to teach children how to think not what to think every single student is supposed to feel individually exceptional be able to focus on academics and not a curriculum based on making race its focal points children are in school to excel academically artistically and ethically to the best of their abilities the role of schools in this country is to lift as many boundaries as possible for every individual student not throw imaginary boundaries in front of them that might highlight or focus on their differences and force them to internalize guilt or make them feel that they are a victim
141the idea of these obstacles or privileges that others have decided can be determined by their skin color or ethnic background is absolutely absurd that is abusive we need accountability and respect for one another we should not be focused on race when teaching academics as quoted from alvita king mlk niece we are all weak equal and we all human beings if this is going to be implanted in our schools parents are going to fight to have our tax dollars follow our children that was holly's speech mine is something else how do you think white children feel when they are called privileged when their parents or our police offices when they are from republican families you think they aren't made to feel low you're right all of this has to stop racism exists in society but not
142to the degree that you are portraying it's portraying it to be unfortunately we will never eradicate racism 100 due to cultural family norms and beliefs it is ingrained in society but that being said we cannot force our children to believe they are white privileged or racist we cannot have our schools implement programs to our children that go against their family cultural norms of beliefs it is not the school's job to do so as our children get older and experience life they will be able to make their own decisions and their beliefs we cannot force and indoctrinate our children to accept belief of others but we can expect one to ex respect all others beliefs as long as we respect others we judge we judge others on their content of their character and not the color
143of the skin then we can say understand what martin luther king has said we cannot confuse and groom our children with radical non-conforming non-cultural family belief systems this is the do not make breaking of denying dynamic families lisa muzo yeah can i just ask when when sp when speakers are coming up i'm going to ask that they state their first and last names that was the rules thank you hello my name is lisa mujo i've been a yorktown resident for the past 15 years and both my boys are going through the yorktown school district as we speak my oldest son is going to be entering high school in september my little one is going to be in fifth grade i am a teacher in a another school district and i have a masters in multicultural
144education the very first thing i learned in my master's education class was from margaret mead who was a cultural anthropologist and my teacher said your job is to teach students how to think not what to think you are to present them with facts good bad ugly indifferent it doesn't matter i could tell you right now that my students have no idea what my political standings are what my religion is no i'm going to ask the audience to remain civil and quiet thank you it is not appropriate for my students to know my beliefs i am there to present facts i'm a science teacher i present all kinds of information to my students regardless of the race of the person that created or came up with the invention i give them the facts that is my
145job as an educator it is not to change what they think it is not to go against what their parents have taught them even when i teach evolution i say hey guys this is on the regents you have to learn it for this you do not need to believe it that is my job as far as everything else that's going on in the community i can only say that my boys have experienced nothing but kindness from all of their teachers they're also part of scouts bsa not boy scouts anymore scouts bsa and they are very happy to incorporate and include the girls in that troupe i just want to say that what's happening tonight with people ridiculing the other side is disgusting and you'll notice that the conservative people here did not make fun of
146the liberals thank you the next speaker's name is hard to read it may be mel they live on winslow we're just going to go on to the next person uh kimberly brennan joseph prisco hello thank you for giving me time i am a yorktown resident born and raised product of your school system i'm currently a teacher in new york city i am recently moved back to yorktown about a month and a half ago to raise a family and um yeah so i wanted to read something from a doctor her name is goldie mohammed and she wrote a book called cultivating genius if you haven't read it i recommend reading it it's something that might change your mind on everything and provide some facts all right dr goldie mohammed speaks about the importance of criticality and
147enabling students to question both the world and text within it to better understand the truth in history power and equity she goes on to better explain criticality by framing it as the capacity to read write and think in ways of understanding power privilege social justice and oppression for populations who have been historically marginalized when youth are allowed to think and learn with critical criticality they're able to see name and interrogate the world not only to make sense of injustice but also to work toward social transformation in addition students need spaces to name and critique injustice and ultimately have the capacity to build a better world for all criticality helps students to tell the difference between facts and truths this is my favorite oftentimes facts do not capture the full narrative of people but are taught
148in schools as histories of people of color truths in turn are the realities and lived experiences of person experiencing the moment which equally contribute to the same narrative and that was written by dr brown advancing criticality pushes students to cultivate the tools to dismantle dismantle deficit ways the world of the world and to protect themselves against wrongdoing they learn the historical institutional and structural elements that shape the world and that explain why forms of oppression exist because they do one fallacy is that criticality is only for people of color or others who have been oppressed across the world this is not true black and brown people have historically been oppressed across many lands and they did not create situations that caused them to be oppressed this is similar to thinking that culturally and historically responsive
149education is only for african-american or latinx students this is a false and limited way of viewing education similar to suggesting 30 seconds that i'm almost done sorry suggesting that greatness is only reserved for african or latinx students the people who need criticality the most become those who share identities with the oppressors teaching criticality helps students assume responsibility for the ways in which they process information to avoid being passive consumers of knowledge and information criticality helps students read the world with critical eye refusing to accept unexamined information as factual or true thank you james good evening my name is uh james kasian um i've lived in town for about 20 years now and the proud father of five yorktown graduates and one who's currently still working on it and i want to just thank the board
150of education for its commitment to confront racism bigotry hatred and of the lesser-known ill of ignorance uh in our schools and i'm gratified to hear uh from dr hatter a wonderful leader of our school district uh the acknowledgement um that racism does indeed exist because a journey begins with acknowledging that we do have a problem and like other communities we have a problem here in yorktown and there's a pernicious nature of of racism and hatred is such that if we if we take our eye off the ball if we're not cognizant of working hard to eradicate it uh diligently then it it it only serves to further disenfranchise alienate and impede the success of all students and i had a lot more to say tonight but i think i've heard a lot from this room
151and i've been i'm very proud to to be here with our community members tonight um but i want to just end with this the goal for our education should be our for educating our children should be simple that we should engage and educate our students so they can go forth with competence and agency into the world much like we heard from a number of young people today jacob and rachel uh uh uh our two ariana's the sophomore and the senior uh uh julia thank you very much i'm very inspired by your words tonight um but as uh george price and his lovely wife uh mentioned earlier if we can't if our kids can't identify they can't identify with the learning that's happening in the college in the classrooms if they don't hear their voices in
152in their literature that they're reading if they don't see hear and see their stories being told in the history that's being taught if they can't share their perspectives in the classroom then i think we'll be failing in our most important endeavor at all and that is to to set forth students who will be confident and filled with agencies so that they can make good decisions in this world after all that's what we're looking for as parents in this community you take wonderful care of our of our students and i greatly appreciate your work don't take your finger don't you know don't take your eye off the ball keep working hard we're behind you i think this room is behind you i know this community is behind you i'm behind you and i thank you very
153much i'd also like to call out mr kennedy i was very inspired by his words in diego thank you for elevating all of our voices tonight [Applause] devin brown hi i'm devin brown um briefly i'd just like to say that when this board is faced with condemnations of what's being referred to as critical race theory from people who have never read nor could identify an author of critical race theory nor likely would be able to articulate what critical race theory is as an ideology it's not the responsibility of this board to kowtow to people who argue from ignorance in advocacy of codifying ignorance briefly i'd like to suggest that this board that your duty is precisely to prevent that from happening i support dei initiatives and i hope if given the opportunity to do so
154that this board will consider protecting the teaching of critical race theory in this district i'd like to express agreement with a woman i heard earlier carmella i believe her name was he said that the responsibility of our educators is to teach us how to think not what to think we're not going to name names please i'm sorry uh well this sentiment i think we can all agree is more or less true enough of our educational system and how we conceive of it but the problem is this culture has not taught us or our children how to think about race and it will not do so by banning the exploration of texts or theories that's all thank you richard gianesca [Applause] hello my name is richard giannoska i'm a 2018 yorktown graduate please sorry um some
155of you might be surprised to see a college university student return back to speak at a school board meeting because even when no family members in the system i'm here to regard crt or as some people on the board would like to put it dei i want to make a point why i should be why it should not be in our school slash community crt slash di is not being used to create equality nor is it to bring us together united's brothers and sisters it is actually doing the complete opposite dei slash crt is teaching young kids to look at people based off their skin we are teaching our kids to look at people differently i'm not saying you can't be proud of who you are and where your roots come from but it's not
156the school's job to teach our students to look at people differently because of their skin morgan freeman said it best when asked about black history month he said the best way to stop brace him racism is to stop uh talking about it and he's right this is the way to look at it i believe that no one is born evil nor is anyone born a racist young kids are the most innocent beings on the planet the moment we start to teach them evil thoughts they start to lose their innocence here's some history we can look at the story of adam and eve as they lived in the garden of eden life was simple and it was sinless but as soon as they took a bite from the apple from the tree of knowledge their innocence
157was lost and they became sinful instead of teaching our kids about the negatives we should be teaching them in a positive way to help them make them better people as they grow up we need to teach them how to look at character teach them what it's like to be good people how to value all lives it's about teaching what's on the inside not the outside i do have a personal experience for what i from when i was in school i remember when i was in eighth grade health class we would learn about stereotypes this is a negative way of teaching because kids may take this the wrong way let's say a kid walks into a class and sees a stereotype happen they're going to start to believe that for the rest of their lives dee
158and crt is trying to demonize the white race and create a stereotype that all white people are racist and that all my minorities are incapable of succeeding when that is not true there are many successful black people in the world and asians and all other races luckily for me my parents raised me to respect all people and look uh look to please excuse me luckily for me my parents raised me to respect all people and look to them to see who they really are not not at them based off their skin color i'm a firm believer there's nothing wrong with improving our schools and the way of teaching but adding dei slash crt will only teach uh will set teaching backwards don't take the innocence away from our students and teach them how to look
159at character not skin thank you [Applause] kate and greg brown are kate and greg brown here no okay we're gonna go yes i was a student in yorktown schools for 11 years beginning in 1960. my mother is a 65-year resident of this town she was the first person to sell a house as a real estate agent to a black person outside of the junior lake community it was an unspoken rule that no real estate agent was to show a house outside of the poorest section of the town but it was spoken between real estate agents and brokers my mother was one of the founders of the fair housing council of northern westchester and i still see a problem here i look around i've been in and out of yorktown schools over the last few years
160and i look around and i see a very white community here and there's not much you can do as a board of education but your black population in this town is 3.4 percent so you do need some critical race theory teaching in this town when i was here in 1970 and went to an american to a social studies class american history and asked the teacher if we were going to be studying the vietnam war that year he said no we're you're not going to be taught anything about the vietnam war while you're a student in yorktown high school it was not in the curriculum and yet i and a lot of my fellow students were facing the draft but we weren't supposed to get any critical theory about that and i did notice my oldest
161friend in the world his name is the bottom plaque on that stone out front and several other people i know so you should consider critical thinking when you're trying to educate your students because it will have an impact on them i have a lot to say but i i won't go on i'll just stop right there thank you maggie brown is maggie brown here no okay agnes phillips no sorry room worthy okay um hi my name is harira murthy and i am a proud product of yorktown schools i've been here my whole life alumni from 2013 and i've come back here to speak at this meeting because i really believe in our community and that we can do better thank you dr hatter thank you matt slater for your support of of dei and our
162in our classes last year when students shared their experiences i appreciated your forward thinking and i appreciated you listening uh to their experiences and i want to address some of what has been said today we are not indoctrinating our students and we are not uh depriving them of their innocence we are invalidating everything that these students i mean these students were vulnerable and these students trusted us with their traumatic experiences when dr hatter put out a survey it revealed lots of trauma in our kids and this uh the uh the remarks that have been cited uh tonight are super invalidating and they continue to further that trauma and when you when we think about prioritizing uh hurt when we think about uh uh prioritizing the uh her sentiments of uh of people over the trauma
163that these students continue to face when we invalidate their experiences that that's just that's terrible uh so that's my first point i also wanted to speak about the counselor that 30 seconds and that has come up in a video that like many of you have seen uh he's been a tireless advocate for our community i've seen them in all of the counseling meetings that i've attended virtually and we are so lucky to have him as a resource for our students and we're so lucky uh yeah just so glad to be here for our students who can find and thank you hari was our our last speaker um so that concludes public comment um ron i don't know if there's anything you want to address or if we're done for the night no i just appreciate
164everyone coming out and thank you for sharing your perspective as you can see that there are many perspectives in the room just wanted to clarify policy on social media 9150 it doesn't specify social media but it's all interactions in general i believe that was emailed on june 14th and then again july 7th so i just wanted to clarify that transparency piece all right then i'm going to ask for a motion to go into executive session with the no intent to return to public session so for the matters of contractual negotiation just second second all those in favor all right good night everybody thank you thank you