Yorktown Central School District Board of Education Meeting 11-16-2020

001all right can i have a motion to go back into public session so moved second hold those in favor hi good evening welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting for november 16 2020. quickly stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence for armed forces and those in our community have lost loved ones especially the grandmother-in-law of elizabeth reese for all good evening everybody we are going to start with public comment is there anybody did anybody send anything in yvette no i didn't receive anything okay we're gonna move on to the superintendent's upstate we'll turn it over to dr hatter thank you thank you so much so this evening there are um two components of the presentation we are joined by members of our cultural awareness and equity

002task force and yvette i see some members as attendees if they can be promoted to um to panelists so that they may present okay sorry dr harder i have uh estee here yeah okay that is all i'm seeing from emma and the others i'm sure will be joining us momentarily okay so that i'm sorry to interrupt is there a direction i can give to a couple of people who are trying to log into the meeting um it's asking for a password on the zoom link on the website oh if you can go right to the agenda then in public content where it says zoom information it's right there i see michelle just uh and mrs harwich should join us as well okay i just promoted both to panelists so we have three great and we're

003just waiting on i believe one more task force member so we'll begin we'll begin and and this evening the superintendent's report really focuses on two updates for us as a school district the first update is from our cultural awareness and equity task force the board will recall that we formed a cultural awareness and equity task force this past summer the task force has met throughout the summer and and throughout the fall to focus on some really important and good work and the task force will be providing the board with their first formal update this evening in addition to that update i will be providing the board and our community with an update on the reopening of schools specifically with regard to the potential for the designation of being in a yellow or orange micro cluster

004and i'll speak more to that once the task force presentation is completed so i'd like to begin by introducing members of our cultural awareness and equity task force so that um they may present to you they're honored to be here and we really appreciate them taking the time to be here i see other members of the task force in the audience joining us this evening as well and it's wonderful to have them here as well we have 18 members on the task force and joining us this evening to present are our co-chairs dax armstrong and michelle copeland dax is a guidance counselor at the high school michelle is an assistant principal at military strength middle school in addition is mrs horowitz mrs harwich and i sit at the regional committee mrs harwoods of course is

005our middle school principal ms harwicks and i sit at the regional level and we also sit on the task force as well and dr este lopez who is a well-accomplished facilitator in so many areas of staff development dr lopez will speak to us momentarily um dr i've known dr lopez for many years and her work is just remarkable one of the best facilitators that i've ever encountered and she's been so instrumental in helping us move our work forward so um dr lopez thank you so much for joining us it's great to uh have you here with us thank you so much and what i'm going to do if it's okay with you is i will turn the presentation at least the start of the presentation over to you well good evening everyone okay i think

006i'm gonna hear myself on this journey and to share with you an overall perspective from a facilitator's point of view of what's been happening and um in an incredible short amount of time and under the most incredible reality which is covet so i am forever always impressed when uh we create an environment that unleashes the potential of the school community and here i am again experiencing that same great feeling um so i'm happy to be here so my my comments are rather brief and uh because i think the most important people here are the faculty and the administrators that uh live this uh on on a daily basis and are seeking ways to look at things a little bit differently how do we address challenges and difficult conversations in meaningful ways and moreover help continue

007to develop in your town school districts a a a more complementary and inclusive school community so uh let me begin by giving you an essential question and i think you'll see that on the next slide and i don't know there we go so um ron is very familiar with my work with essential questions and things of that nature and key ideas and here's what i thought is what are the ways in which the school district meaning yorktown school district can enhance cultural awareness and issues of equity to ensure a more inclusive school community that is i think is the general and the big idea that this school is going to pursue and has begun the work in that way and interestingly enough that we have met uh in 90-minute sessions um about five or six

008times as a whole group that if i looked at it in terms of minutes it sort of adds up to 12 hours or so in this covent environment to talk about very serious profound uh complicated issues which is the issue of race equity diversity and things of that nature so i have to give my hats off to everyone involved to in that short amount of time that we have been able to do that now that do not include the small committees that are working at either the building level or in small group communications throughout the school year thus far and and that i have to really applaud those efforts the task force engage in opportunities for introspection and sharing ideas resources concerns and personal experiences of discomfort bias racial implications and in doing so as

009a task force building trust amongst its members to be able to share some of these issues in the environment that we're in but in a very focused way so today it's important to note that with all of that and with the time that has been dedicated and every minute of those 90 minute sessions have been very very productive and very very deep in thought is um that they each of the members incorporated their lived experiences and that of the alumni not only from the day that the alum had met with the board i remember in the summer that we had this very very wonderful meeting but this committee this task force invited several others to join a task force meeting for a couple of reasons one is to hear their voices number one but more

010importantly that we were open to their critique about what we've done thus far and comments were from them were quite positive and if we can get to the next slide we will share what we shared with them as well the the uh cultural awareness and task force the equity task force divided itself into three important committees policy what are the issues of equity and cultural difference and issues of race that we need to examine that policy may or may not impact the other one is professional development and there we're looking at what is it that we as a task force need to develop within ourselves to be able to articulate to our colleagues when we go back to our buildings and then looking at how we can build capacity and also is the curriculum what

011is it that about the curriculum that could speak to the diversity in our school community and i am thrilled to hear that um and i've received a variety of emails of resources and websites and things of that nature that would allow for us to begin this this wonderful work one of your great teachers introduced me to one of their textbooks i really recommend this to a lot of folks it's called diversity and equity and inclusion strategies for facilitating conversations on race and i'm sure there are many other resources but what i like about this particular text is its pragmatic approach and also what i like about it is it alerts us to the complications of these conversations the um the challenges of having these conversations and how we might uh develop a sense of confidence

012of how we can approach some of that so i i really have and i really thank michelle in our uh professional development group that introduced me to the book uh i really appreciate that so i think at this point i'd love you to all hear the voices of the great workers the great essential workers of the your school community of what they've done in each of these three major categories that is actually guiding the work in your district so thank you very much you bet you can go to the next slide please this oh uh dr hatter this is me i'm up um good good evening everyone how are you um thanks for uh having me on uh this late hour so uh one of the things that i found interesting is over the summer

013as all of these things were happening socially in our country and everyone was affected um those those first and early conversations that we were having about what our answer was going to be to these issues and and when we initially started talking about forming the task force and you know what it was going to consist of simultaneously there were alumni within our town that were organizing as well and it was very interesting for me to see the petition that went out around the same time that we were also forming the task force and i remember wanting to kind of speak to them but but not being able to because you know it was just so early and we were in uh transition um and so i was really happy to see the alumni come and

014speak at the board meeting and share and i felt that it was very profound and i was very affected by what they had to say so um i made a commitment at that point that the task force needed to stay in touch with the alumni and give them updates and involve them in the work um as much as we possibly could so you know i i i made a you know i focused on reaching out to them and hearing more of their stories and getting more feedback and ideas and seeing how we could integrate that into our work so i've had a number of meetings with um multiple alumni groups michelle was involved as well those were excellent meetings where we were able to share a lot of great ideas and i think that it

015really helps to inform the work uh one of the other things that i've been focusing on is how do we integrate our current students into that work as well so we have a group uh the alliance for broad diversity it's a it's a group that focuses on diversity within our student body and i happen to be the advisor of the group um they have been instrumental in giving us feedback giving us ideas and helping inform our work and so um i've been doing we've been having regular meetings as a club we've been talking about issues of race and about what we can do not just in high school but across the district and so i think that they're a really strong resource that we can use moving forward and i will continue um to keep

016them involved in the conversation the other thing that i thought was a was an interesting thing that we could do is we could take some of those alumni that want to be involved and invite them to come and speak uh within the club and so we've actually scheduled our first meeting for december so we'll have some alumni come and speak for the club and we will have some idea sharing um at that point um so the other thing is you know we want to continue to keep those lines of communication open uh with our alumni with our current students and you know the way that the way we see it on the task force is the work is for them so they should have an active role and an active voice in that work and

017we should be transparent about what we're doing um and and keep our community involved thank you dax uh yvette you made transition thank you uh so the next part of the presentation will focus on the three subcommittees so uh michelle i will turn it over to you at this time good evening everybody um so as has already been mentioned we have split the task force into three subcommittees policy professional development and curriculum um one of the first things that we did when we started meeting was uh talk about the pot we wanted to identify what the goals would be for each subcommittee and how we would go about meeting those goals so if we can go to the next slide so the policy subcommittee identified as a goal that we want to look at what

018changes may be recommended to the district and building level policies that promote the cause of cultural equity in the yorktown school district uh the way that we think that we will get there um is well we talked about a lot of things um where we have landed um reviewing code of conduct um at both the district and building level to better understand the policies that are already in place establish building level teams that will help with the cultural equity work and look at the pbis and sel building level work that's currently happening um and how that can be amended to support the work of the task force so currently within that policy work things that are happening are aligning the characteristics character ed and pbis teams that are at the building level with the work

019that's happening on the task force we've been reviewing pbis and code of conducts at the building level looking for language that is kind safe inclusive that's not gendered or culturally specific and we're focusing on finding ways to frame those codes of conduct and pbis frameworks with expectations that are positive rather than focusing on what shouldn't be done or on the negative we're also exploring the principles of restorative practices as a way to address student disciplinary issues looking forward for the policy subcommittee we would like to review student academic and discipline data at the building and district level looking for patterns looking for things that stand out that may relate to this work we'd also like to look a little bit more closely at the dasa framework in that it's already established and how can we

020use that established framework to support the cultural awareness and equity in teacher-to-teacher teacher-student and student-to-student interactions in our school buildings so the next slide we can talk about our professional development subcommittee their identified goal is creating authentic purposeful opportunities for productive conversation reflection and development in the areas of cultural responsiveness tolerance and equity the pathway for them to achieve this goal or for all of us to achieve that goal really to identify areas of need and growth for teachers parents and students to develop a timeline clarifying the order in which these different area of needs should be supported to research professional and community development models which focus on cultural responsiveness tolerance and equity and to decide upon employing an outside model or possibly recreating various experiences ourselves within our school building and throughout the district

021as este mentioned earlier uh this subcommittee is currently focused on sharing reading and discussion of the diversity equity and inclusion strategies for facilitating conversations on race book and so that shared reading it will lead to next steps forward on this pathway i'm going to turn it over to the curriculum subcommittee good evening everyone i'm going to share a little bit of the work of the subcommittee for curriculum we are a small but mighty group there are six of us who represent the curriculum subcommittee for the larger task force and when i speak to you about some of what we have done to date i'm going to use the phrase i'm going to use we um some of us have been involved in different aspects of the work but we've come together as a committee and

022discussed the work so i'll just talk in we because we are a very collaborative group we're working together to tackle some of the initial work around curriculum and equity so members of our group as well as members of the larger task force have engaged in workshops and webinars around identifying best practices understanding bias and inequity looking at principles for institutional change we've looked to update our resources as sd indicated earlier we've identified some grade level texts that span topics such as diverse families gender identity and texts that really normalize individual differences we've connected with our regional colleagues mostly our colleagues at putnam northern westchester boces who helped lead some of this work and we've looked to them for resources and support so that's some of what we've done on the on the back end of

023the work that we're doing questions that have guided our work to date in terms of curriculum are do our school and classroom libraries reflect diversity equity and inclusion can all students see themselves within our texts and do our collections represent and normalize differences we wanted to look and better understand what our current curriculum practices are with the focus on social studies and ela we want to know what potential modifications or additions to the curriculum and resources need to be made so some of the things as we've started this journey our library media specialists the libraries are such a hub in every building and our library media specials are exceptional at their work and and maintaining collections of books that really are important for our students what they have researched and began to pilot is a

024diversity audit tool that will run reports for us to get a clear picture of what exists in each building library that will help us to identify gaps in diverse backgrounds and i and you know look for purchasing new titles that could address some of those gaps and i'll tell you a little bit when we get to next steps about what follows after we get these reports run we began to look at ela at the k5 level so we really need to determine the extent to which students are reflected in the curriculum and the extent to which they are being exposed to a diverse group of authors characters identities cultures and also different perspectives we reviewed our k5 essentials essential questions on our scope and sequence for each grade level and we were looking to see

025how those essential questions relate to equity issues we reviewed our k5 anchor texts that include representation of diverse backgrounds so what we were looking for is what are we using and and what uh already lends itself to this work so one example of that would be in grade five uh our students read home of the brave so anchor texts as i'm speaking to are all students on the grade level read them all teachers utilize that that literature to help answer essential questions from the scope and sequence so home of the brave on grade five speaks to um the protagonist is an african uh boy who comes to america and it's a portrayal of the immigrant plight to fit in and while still maintaining an ability to celebrate his cultural identity within that story there's african

026proverbs and language portraying african culture so that's a book that we can say okay here we're representing one experience or that students can become familiar with we've also begun to audit our classroom supplemental text so our k5 classroom libraries that teachers have that students can access throughout the day and we're looking to see what we can build and add for every class to have a larger component of diverse reading materials we also need to talk about how are we representing and normalizing differences for our students alongside of that work we were also doing a review of the k5 social studies curriculum our we utilize the putnam north and west jester boces social studies ela curriculum which was developed regionally many years ago and continues to be updated regionally every summer that work is guided by

027putnam northern westchester boces professionals this past summer they began to update some of those correct some of that curriculum with additional equity considerations so we began to unpack what that looked like for our teachers to utilize so for example um grade four is local history and local government so the history of new york state and there's reminders now embedded within this curriculum that when exploring native american cultures and societies in new york state that teachers should be mindful to share that native americans already had existing cultures with government and trade systems in place and those were structures that were developed before um the native american transition so this was to this is to ensure that our students don't walk away with preconceived stereotypes of native americans that is due to how they are commonly utilized

028when studying native americans so it's really to break down those stereotypical barriers that might exist for students we began an exploration of the 612 social studies curriculum had a meeting with administrators and the social studies department coordinators teacher leaders at both the middle school high school to identify and discuss where in the curriculum key issues of equity and diversity are addressed these are content area specialists who offer much value to the conversations regarding historical and current events what we did talk about are specific to some of the issues that were raised by our alumni and we've talked about how we can further build on some of what we have heard and some of where our curriculum needs to take us the little background is that the new york state framework for social studies was rewritten

029in 2014 with revisions in 2016 and 17 and there was a major implementation a multi-year implementation timeline put in place that culminates with new regents exams in global and u.s history in 2021 what was a big change for that curriculum was the addition of enduring issues so enduring issues and any problem is any problem or situation that's existed across many time periods in history and has affected affected people and individuals and groups and we've tried to address it with various degrees of success so for example eighth grade at the end of the year we're asked to look at um many social studies documents that reflected martin luther king the jim crow south uh nativism the charlottesville white supremacy march in 2017. they were asked to look at those documents and make some connections on how

030that issue has affected people or been affected by people and how the issue has continued to be an issue or changed over time so we're really getting students to look at long-standing situations that have continued to be issues over time for english and social studies for english at the 912 level we had a meeting to discuss looking at our texts and conversation around determining the representation of characters from specific cultures race gender ability are the histories and experiences of the cultures multi multi-dimensional are they presented in non-stereotypical ways or multiple perspective and philosophy shared in the literature we're choosing to use and the text we're choosing to use at the high school level this same meeting will happen at the middle school haven't had it yet and we're really discussing what's the next step to

031go around doing an audit of our high school um english and middle school english work that we're looking at you've got if you can go to the next slide so our next steps when we talk about the library audit um what we've come to realize is that our library audit and the system that we're using will give us uh general topics and how many titles we might have in a general topic so if we were looking for uh information on how many books to talk about the african-american experience in our libraries if 24 out of 25 of those books uh speak to slavery that's really not a good representation those books are are of course important but what we really need to also see are everyday lives families doing normal regular things and have representation

032for native americans in that way as well same thing with the jewish americans if we only have books about holocaust we're really not providing a diverse experience for children to be exposed to as we've found some current examples of equity in our curriculum in science and social in social studies and ela and recognizing that we have some good things happening the greater bigger work really needs to be identifying those gaps and where how do we gonna fill those gaps so that is a lot of big work yet to come when i think about all the work that has to continue how do we get our young people to understand the world and how do we educate them to be responsible and understand the historical events in our nation that's going to take more than just

033our committee of six and our greater task force committee and dr haider will speak uh shortly about how this work will be expanded but we do recognize there are good things happening and there's a lot more work that needs to continue i believe mrs horowitz is up next with kind of a summary of how this work fits into some of the situations that we have involved ourselves in as a district in the last few years you bet you can change the slide good evening everyone so a lot of our work that this committee is doing is based on our foundation that this district and mesms has stood by where as a national school of character in the national district of character we have a strong belief in empathy kindness action and acceptance which we have

034used throughout the years in the last five years definitely in the building and across district we bring in diverse speakers who speak on race sexual orientation that speak on disabilities and that foundation has helped us working with this district working with this committee as we're moving forward we have brought in dr michelle borba um who really stressed empathy and empathy is a great framework for us as we're learning to deal with differences and what people are going through we did a book study a district-wide book study on empathy with her book on selfie and just this year with michelle copeland we started doing a book study on restorative justice and we started to implement do some initial implementation of restorative justice in the middle school event you can go to the next slide so empathy

035helps us to build characters the main part of our character building as i mentioned it helps the students see and everyone see that there are we have to understand what others are going through we have to understand um and feel what they're going through and understand and accept so it challenges racism sexism classism ageism it helps us to see and come to understand others because if we don't have that foundation moving we can't move forward we teach you still the students to stand up against the inequality to stand up not stand by and how to improve relationship how to improve relationships so working with empathy as our founding and our building block helps us as we move forward in our work in promoting equity in this in the district and in the community um so

036now dr hatter is going to give our final summary on the work going forward you bet you uh advance to the next slide first thank you to members of our co of our task force and and our co-facilitators and um sd for presenting this evening the well sd quantified the amount of time that was spent in informal meeting what i would assure the board is that there had been many additional hours spent with the sub committees of the task force or whether i'm meeting with dax and michelle to plan for an upcoming meeting of course with sd as well so the work is ongoing the work continues i think what we wanted to do at this stage in the school year was provide the board and the community with an update regarding the progress of

037the work and i hope um what came through during this presentation is that the progress has been made there has been progress made and we'll continue to work toward even more progress and and and additional components of the work so you saw the three subcommittees and the work that the three subcommittees are looking at it and that will continue so my first bullet here a big part of the work was building the team we had 18 people across 13 different grade levels different areas of the organization working administrators and teachers and clinicians we had to build our team we've done that we've done that successfully and i think we have a great team and then what we're doing is having some really important conversations that that work will always be ongoing and then we've identified

038the what what are the areas that we ought to consider and dax has done a remarkable job of working with our alumni and student groups and michelle too and i'm sorry michelle endax have done a an outstanding job of reaching out and hearing the perspective and using that to help inform our work we're going to then branch out into the buildings and have building level task force and task forces and we've had the conversation about well do we have existing structures already within the schools that we can use to advance our work rather than creating another committee within the buildings and i think the overwhelming feeling is that yes we have existing structures within our schools and then in addition to you know close with in addition to identifying what ought to be done well

039now we need to take some actions we need to take our next steps and actually do what we are saying that we're going to do so we've identified the work we have a clear plan and now we're working on implementing the plan and i think marie horowitz marie and i don't sit on any one specific subcommittee we we sit at the regional level and obviously we're part of the meetings and we do attend the meetings but we also attend the regional meetings with many colleagues from the putnam northern westchester area actually we we have some districts from southern westchester participating in our consortium as well through putnam northern westchester boces so that is a terrific group i learn a great deal every time i go into a meeting with them and we look forward to

040providing the board another update as we continue to progress in the work uh we're happy to take any questions that you have my colleagues on the task force are here and and they can certainly answer uh any of the questions that i think you may have and i think they'll be happy to try to answer any questions that you have but uh thank you i appreciate i know how precious the meeting time is with our board of education i appreciate you giving the task force the opportunity to present to you this evening thank you um this this was really incredible i thank the entire committee um as to you're right it was really hard to do it during covet on top of that we're very aware that everybody on this committee is also trying to

041figure out remote learning and hybrid learning and everything else so the amount of time you've put into this is truly appreciated um it's it's hard work it's work that we asked to be done and we're so appreciative that you've done it under these circumstances so i will open it up to other board members with questions we can go around if anybody wants to ask questions i can start with mike uh thanks jackie great job everybody uh this is a lot of work um and we're off to a great start thank you for that it's important um i don't know that i have any specific questions just yet um i feel like we're we've got a good foundation uh i like the direction that the committee is going in and that you know at some point

042we'll see what the the action items are going to be is i guess where i would start to have some of my questions but i like what i'm hearing so far and i certainly appreciate the work it's important and i like the fact that we have continued to engage our students and alumni because the meeting that we have had over the summer um although it didn't spearhead start this process it certainly brought a lot of things to light and i think that um where we are is is a great progress up until now so thank you lisa yeah um so i can echo jackie and mike and um thank you all of you uh all 18 of you i i had no idea that the task force was that large um so thank you and

043thank you for taking the time tonight i know um uh like jackie said this is you know just an added responsibility in this incredibly difficult time um so and this is a a topic that is near and dear to my heart so thank you for for from me personally forget about the board member hat me personally lisa roll thank you um i do have a question and it um it's probably me being impatient and it's probably already on your agenda um but um really dax and mrs horowitz you both raised um a question for me that um you're probably doing it and i just how how is it that you are um including current students who might be feeling uh in today's culture in today's environment somewhat excluded or singled out you know our school

044district is an excellent school district but diverse students are not as common as non-diverse students in our district right i mean that's that's obvious is there a way that you guys are reaching out to them um and trying to include them in the process or giving them a platform in which they can talk and vent do you don't share my question yes in the middle school what we're doing all the students have to meet with their guidance counselors one-on-one so that gives them a platform to speak i have a diverse guidance group so that also helps the students to connect and diverse clinical staff the students see me every morning so they know they can reach out to me just a quick story i had a student come in and i went through all the

045sixth graders introducing myself and he looked at me and said you're the principal i said yes it was a african-american young man so once he saw me as the principal that gave him an enlightenment that okay it's safe here i can learn here so just knowing that there are people here that care care for them and that they can go to different people it's not just the clinical staff they can go to anyone in the building and be heard so that's what's helping us have them acclimate into the building that's you can speak more to the high school so when i joined last year the students actually came to me and they asked me if i would be the advisor for their club at that time it was called the beautifully diverse club and it

046was our it was mostly young ladies but it was our young ladies of color um black and brown and and it was a safe space for them to vent and share feelings and congregate and be comfortable and you know we were all getting to know each other so i had to give them that space to do that but in the back of my mind i was always thinking towards what are our action steps what's our next what are we going to do and at that time i challenged them to come up with a different name a name that would attract more students and a more diverse population because what i said to them is i said listen you know we're lacking diversity in the school and that's your complaint yet our club lacks diversity the

047other way around i said so how do we you know get everybody you know how do we how do we be inclusive on both sides um so they thought about a name change alliance for broad diversity and then they voted it down and i said okay well you know they're they're choosing so i let them do that when floyd happened in the summer they contacted me and they said we have to have a meeting in the summer and i said all right well let's do it and and it was our venting session and believe it or not it was the it was the spark for the task force because out of that meeting um well it was it actually wasn't floyd it was the the high school speaker the keynote speaker they were very upset

048about that and they said we think the high school should send out a letter because that wasn't okay and i said well let you know let's um let's talk about it and so we had the opportunity to talk to dr hatter and he came and he spoke to the group and they shared ideas and thoughts and a lot of that found its way into the task force and one of the things that we thought about very early on was they have to have a seat at the table they have to have a place because they were instrumental in right there at the very beginning so when we started this year they came back to the table and they said you know what we need to change the name we want to bring more people into

049the club we want to be more inclusive and so that's why we're now the alliance for broad diversity we sent the email out to the entire high school student body we produced a flyer and we actually got some new membership and now we have a um a standing wednesday meeting with a link and a calendar invite and it goes out and it's on everyone's calendar and they can always they can link in um so we're doing that we're having conversations we're going to do some educational pieces down the road and i and i like to keep them informed about what's going on in the task force and and the direction and they're able to give me feedback as well so we are doing that i'm happy about that and i'm happy that we're able to

050include them in that way thank you um peter no um thank you great presentation um the question that i did have is the 18 members on the task force are any of them students and the alumni from the the original meeting no or is it just 18 however at um at times what will happen is uh we've invited members of the alumni to meet with the task force so i don't know if it was two meetings ago or at this point three meetings or whatever the timing was task force will correct me on that but we invited members of the alumni to join with us um recently our co-chairs had a meeting with another alumni group i think that was last week that that took place it was another meeting that took place so we

051are actively engaging students and alumni but with regard to the 18 people who are on the task force they're all district employees and then just is the plan i mean when that original um meeting presentation back over the summer there were i i forgot there was there was a large number of people that were that initial call is there a plan to represent this to that same group or um to a broader community and again i know the community could have gotten out tonight and listened but uh is there anything where we can because this is great work by the group and i'd hate for it i think yeah i think it's more than one presentation i think it's just a continuous conversation it's a continuation of the discussion my colleagues on the task force

052please do weigh in and share dax please we we've definitely shared um as we as we've been going um we're sharing and the thing that i appreciate about um dr hatter and the process is it's very transparent so i don't have to worry about over sharing i can be very open and transparent with the direction we're going in um so a lot of what you guys are hearing for the first time our alumni have heard this in some version already um and they've already you know pushed back with their own feedback and with their own vision and things that they'd like to see included and and and and some of those things have found their way into this presentation tonight okay thank you anthony oh hello everybody um thank you for this um i guess

053in all the years i spent at this very proud moment that yorktown is doing this and trying to make it diversified um and as pete was saying people could have been on tonight and i guess that's part of the action you're trying to do is have people be on and listen to what you're talking about um and listen to all the injustices that are happening i guess the question is and i was thinking about how much time i have left on the board because i'm not doing past this that'll be 18 years um i have two more years left on the board so we're talking action here i need to know that i'm going to vote on some stuff and um one of the things that i guess is the biggest task is to let

054people watch know what's going on in our district and how we're moving forward beyond dreams of mine so what's a little bit of a timeline we're looking at and i know it's the beginning i'm not pushing it but i'm pushing a little bit because i need to vote on some stuff here i need to get this right in my heart so how are we doing here i i think um well you tell me we in june we didn't have a task force in july we established a task force and here we are in mid-november sharing with you the progress where we are with multiple meetings with our alumni and so we want people to listen and we want to share but we also want to listen and hear you but according to you so you're

055giving me that timeline that means in february i'll be voting on something so you're giving me that timeline why don't why don't we come back why don't i in fairness in fairness one of the beauties of the task force is it's not two people making decisions it's a very trailer dax that is true we're fully transparent in in what we do and and part of that is coming together as a group of 18 to talk about a timeline when will be will when will we be prepared to provide the next update some deliverables some policy reviews for the policy committee to vote on so we will come back to you with a timeline on some of the action steps i appreciate it anthony because that catalyzes us my colleagues on the task force are hearing

056you you will be involved very interested and very happy and thank you so much for and so another thing is that i think um you were mentioning the kids in the school i would love to have something for the parents to tell you the truth i think some of the parents need this um what we're talking about because it doesn't happen without the parents some of these kids so anyway thank you for all you're doing and thank all the other i guess 15 members or whatever that are not here 13 members and i appreciate everything and i'm watching thank you thank you can i add to anthony's request for a timeline um you're 18 years i've known you 12 of them anthony so um i just want to point out that there's so much positive

057energy around this work not just the 18 members of the committee but this is so important this work that it has to be done right so it has to be at a pace that helps us make thoughtful sustainable decisions so yes we'll have an action plan yes we'll have you know actionable but this isn't something that in a year will be finished and it's done this will be continuous review throughout you know the course of all good work um particularly all good curriculum so um i just ask for your patience mr d'alessandro and know that we are working diligently the excitement is there the need is there the drive is there uh and we want to make good smart decisions that bring people along with us on this journey i applaud you and everybody else

058thank you very much cheryl um yeah i just want to say that i'm very impressed with the amount of work um that's been presented in the presentation in such a short amount of time um i think this work runs so deep and by the two examples that miss horowitz and mr armstrong just gave um for mr armstrong to meet over the summer because someone reached out to him about the situation over the summer miss horowitz a conversation that took place with a child in the hallway these are the moments that are so important and equally as important as all of the work you've done so those two examples just showed me how deep your work runs um and i know this is happening and i know if i asked everyone on task force you know

059everyone would have a story like that so really the proof is in the pudding because you gave two examples of how your presentation has been supported by um you know things that you're doing in your daily life so i thank all of you because it's such important work and i really look forward to seeing the next steps so thank you for putting so much time and effort into this and especially in such a short amount of time um i i just want to say i think this is a great start for this task force and i was uh pleased to see the three uh subcommittees um because there is you know um action items in each of those uh paths um i do hope this is the first of many conversations and presentations you know

060that will happen over the next few weeks and months you know with with us here on the board i have a question about the committee members do they serve on one of the subcommittees or do we co you know or do they rotate between the committee so there's infusion of ideas from one uh you know group to the other how how do you envision that working at this time and that's not to say that this is the way it will stay but at this time members are assigned to a specific subcommittee they're really getting really deep into each into their area into their respective area of focus and then we'll debrief at the end of the meetings so we'll do breakout rooms in zoom where the teams will go into their respective breakout rooms to

061focus members have generally stayed with the committee in which they've been assigned because for continuity of the work so at this point we have not rotated but that's not to say that that's not a possibility uh moving forward great thank you all for all your work thank you so i again i want to thank everybody this is incredible work i have a question and again i'm impatient like lisa and everybody else on the board to get this done one of the things that struck me over the summer at the summer meeting was when the students talked about uh microaggressions and how they're infused in our everyday lives and most of us don't even realize we're doing it it's made me very self-aware and conscious of it and what i'm wondering is how you're taking those

062kinds of things and taking it back so that we're modeling the behavior and the expectations and being very self-aware within the teaching community not to to say those things and to do that it's it's you have to really look at yourself to do that i don't know if that's been a discussion of anybody's um working on that particular part in the committees it has been a discussion it's come up in the training in the professional development group sdu sdu also sits in on a committee with us so esky is part of the professional development uh committee so sd i think uh you might be best to speak to this because you were directly part of those subcommittee conversations you know miss carbon you you present to us the the the sensitivity of and the uh

063the delicateness of dealing with these issues uh what might be hurtful for one group may not be for another language as a group task force and in the committee we've talked about language we've talked about having a scenarios of of what if or again it goes back to these difficult conversations and it's a process i mean i'm amazed how much is done via zoom these interpersonal issues that need to happen and they're very complex when i've done training in person with with individuals around these so imagine when we're doing this in on a remote way but yes we've talked about vocabulary we've talked about looking at the interaction of individuals not only between students but amongst ourselves even amongst ourselves as a board group even amongst ourselves as faculty uh is really key so that

064we're go deeper into that so there's a sense of concern that sometimes people like you just presented oh my god what did i just say or how did i just say it could i offend someone that emerges naturally when we're in this level of awareness and discovery and awareness but it takes time it takes some time to negotiate meaning to mediate feelings to create a level of understanding you know it's beyond tolerance for me it's more of respect and understanding i don't know if that helped it does but what i'm wondering is how that then gets turnkey back down to staff which are who should be modeling this behavior and aware that if it's happening on a student-to-student level that it shouldn't be happening and so i guess that's where is there going to be

065training for staff how is that going to work and we have had these discussions within the committee one of them um is the idea of how we can build capacity within the school maybe do a trainer of trainers within the faculty within buildings you know there's a level of efficacy that has to you know be part of a planning that's my experience in working with school systems is you know what how do we do this so that you can build a capacity in a meaningful way and what is it that we want to build and so that's a discussion in our next meeting at the task force uh uh docs is going to share with us a presentation that he's done as part of training and so we're getting educated ourselves in many ways or

066hearing some common understandings and then look at how we build capacity within each of the buildings and i think that's part of the next step discussion and then it might address some of the concern that mr alessandro might have is you know how can we support that and how will i sign off on that so these these are the kinds of conversations that we're in but it's not just conversations mrs carbonis you know how do we go and move on to making a difference within the schools and this is what i'm hearing from your wonderful faculty that's awesome thank you i so appreciative of everything this entire committee has done you've taken on a really hard hard task and you've broken it down and you're making great strides and i'm appreciative for what you've done

067so far and i can't wait to see your next steps um anybody else have questions are we good good okay did we hear from rushme i don't um i counted okay okay well thank you for the privilege everybody thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you very much everybody have a great night good job so at this time uh my my colleagues from the task force are welcome to hear the rest of the meeting or you're you're welcome to um sign off for the evening uh whatever you whatever you'd like to do yvette can um place you back in the attendees location of the meeting and uh we'll continue on with the presentation again thank you to the task force for joining this evening so the second part of our presentation

068this evening is with regard to the microzone micro cluster zones that the governor and the state of new york have um been discussing and it's the direct result of the infectivity rates within the region so i just want to speak to that a little bit more our reopening has been going quite well this past week was a difficult one for us i would say we experienced a number of positive cases thus far all of the evidence that we have traces the transmission of the virus outside of our schools we don't have any evidence to support that there was spread within our schools which is reassuring i think it demonstrates that the safety measures that we're taking are working however when an individual comes in contact with someone who is covet positive within the parameters set

069forth by the department of health there's a quarantining requirement of 14 calendar days from the exposure so with that said we had to close our high school this week because we have so many faculty and staff who are quarantined and that made it impossible for us to safely and adequately staff the building so if you can't provide supervision within the building you can't open the school so we have dozens of faculty members who are on quarantine many of those quarantines expire by the end of this week so we're hoping to welcome our faculty and staff all back from quarantine at the end of this week assuming that there are no additional quarantines that come to light this week i do encourage all of our students all of our staff all of the people within our

070school community to continue making responsible decisions we're seeing the infectivity rates increasing we're seeing just a number of positive cases emerge and it's something that's certainly concerning we've worked so hard to open our schools and we've worked so hard to keep our schools open we we've gotten creative in the scheduling so that we can staff the buildings that are shorthanded as best we can we have put in so many health and safety measures and it's it's sad saddening to see some of the behaviors taking place that undermine that effort so i just encourage everyone and you know what to do it's it's not a secret try to socially distance try to avoid situations where the virus spreads and where does the virus spread well without a mask in close proximity outdoors is better than indoors

071hand sanitizer washing hands i think everyone knows what the expectations are and what the hopes are at this point now with that said the infectivity rates in westchester county and yorktown all across the region for that matter are rising and they're rising at an alarming rate so again i'm simply going off of the numbers that are on the new york state department of health dashboard it's a new york forward website and what we're seeing is an infectivity rate of about four percent consistently so our rolling seven day average at this point is four point zero percent it was four point one percent the day prior and that was helped a little bit by two days under four percent so that took the seven day rolling average down a little bit nonetheless the rolling average is

072above three percent and if you stay in that designation long enough you're designated as a yellow zone micro cluster and in order for a school district to remain open once designated as a yellow zone micro cluster there's only one option you can only stay open if you test 20 covid tests 20 of all in-person students staff and faculty students who are on the fully remote learning model are not subject to the testing requirement anyone who does not wish to be included in the random 20 testing would have to move transition to the remote learning model so with that with that when you turn a school into a testing facility the challenges are are plentiful and inherent first of all cost is a challenge for us of our students faculty and staff just for those who

073are in person right now in general it would be about 800 people right now in light of the number of people who are out on the remote learning model we're looking at about 325 tests a week and then 650 tests would be the 20 but now you have two weeks to perform that 20 so if you took 650 which is about 20 of our student staff and faculty population and you broke it into two weeks you're looking at testing 325 individuals a week now the cost for that is prohibitive the cost of 650 tests approaches a hundred thousand dollars for that initial two-week period and then it's a 50 if you have to retest so what the new mandate from the department of health says and that mandate came out a little after 9pm saturday

074evening what the new mandate says is that after you've tested that initial 20 and you have the first two weeks to do that after you've done that if the infectivity rate at the at the schools is lower than the infectivity rate of the community you you may discontinue further testing at that point you don't need to test anymore if the infection rate at the school is higher than the community infection rate then you must continue testing random 28 students faculty staff in two week intervals so no one can have a second test before everyone has had a first test so we would be testing everyone over the course of that over that time 20 increments and again it's 50 000 a week to operate a testing program so we can we do it we we

075cannot do it there are all kinds of insurances that are generally obtained by medical facilities and medical organizations the expertise the licensure those are all things that school districts generally don't have can we pursue them sure we can pursue them but those are generally not areas of expertise for school districts doctors offices urgent care facilities hospitals specialize in that with regard to conducting the tests if we do get to that point we could work with afc urgent care to conduct the tests individuals may go to their own family physician to conduct the test they'll have that option but the reality is we can't do this alone if we're designated as a yellow zone micro cluster or an orange zone micro cluster and when i say we it's not the yorktown central school district i just

076want to clarify that it's a region that's designated as a micro cluster and the schools happen to fall within that region so it's not unique to the yorktown central school district a community a region a town a municipality would fall under a micro cluster and any school within that region would be subject to the rules it's possible that the line cuts a district in half and part of the district is in the micro cluster part is not i think a district of our size where schools are in close proximity to each other for the most part i don't think that would happen but it's not um it's not impossible the reality is at one hundred thousand dollars for the initial investment and then the potential of fifty thousand dollars every week thereafter and in truth

077we'll find positive tests if we're testing 650 just by the sheer mathematics of it and then what happens is you close your schools anyway because the contact tracing that takes place and the faculty who are quarantined as a result which is what we're experiencing right now so if we are designated a yellow zone micro cluster we certainly can do everything within our power to obtain the free tests give them to our partners over at afc urgent care and have them conduct the tests but the reality is all of that takes time i've been emailing with the state we've been going back and forth they've been responsive as of late and um the reality is i just don't foresee an outcome that doesn't require us to temporarily at least transition to our remote learning platform so

078i i welcome i i open it up jackie i'll turn it back over to you for a discussion about the yellow zone micro cluster and and schools going remote i would like to do everything in our power to stay open we've worked so hard to just let this go but in reality when you think about the enormity of the testing program that school districts are going to have to create and the cost that comes with it i'm hard-pressed to think that a temporary closure of in-person learning and a move to remote learning is not the likely outcome until we're either emerged from the yellow zone and the infectivity rate is back down below that threshold below the micro cluster threshold which i'm hoping with some really good and smart choices of everyone within the community

079that that would happen sooner rather than later or we would need the financial support and the logistical support to deploy administer replenish the reagents process the tests dispose of the testing materials report the tests to the department of health and all of the things that go along with creating a laboratory essentially within the school so ron can i just ask a question before we open it up for discussion beginning of the year you were saying we're we can't do testing so is this now testing is this something a new mandate from the state that didn't exist in september when we opened our schools correct correct schools were not allowed there are all kinds of hipaa requirements there are all kinds of privacy laws that prohibit us from from doing this there was a new executive

080order that was issued issued by governor cuomo the executive order is well intentioned it gives school districts a pathway to remain open and it also opens the doors for school districts to get licensed as limited service laboratories they call them lsls and that's something that we're considering but our i don't believe our school insurance policy will cover medical malpractice should that um be part of our pathway forward but yes jackie you're correct we were not permitted to do this early in the school year this is all relatively new we don't have answers for everything we're still asking questions of the state to clarify the executive order but um this is new and it does give schools the opportunity to conduct testing pete did you have any questions no jack anthony well just i guess more

081of a statement certainly everybody here would love the school to be open as normal but it's not normal times and we're doing the best we can to keep them open but certainly we're not going to keep them open at the cost of our teachers or administrators or our students that's for sure so you know we're going to adequately do what we can to keep them open however if the schools need to be closed for the safety of the kids then that's what we have to do it's not deemed by us being a red yellow or purple zone it comes from the state we're going to abide by the rules and and then we'll be back strong as can be when everything lifts and everything seems to be better i have a couple of questions so

082um the testing that would be provided by the state um as i understand it there's two kinds of tests there's like a rapid test and then that you get a result like within 30 minutes that may or may not be entirely accurate then there's another kind of test that you can send away to a lab that could take up to a week what kind of test is the state willing to provide to us they're providing a rapid test uh it's an abbott product that is a apparently results happen in 15 minutes so the pro side of the ledger here is that the rapid tests are very quick and you get results however the other side of the argument is that the rapid tests with regard to accuracy pale in comparison to the pcr tests that

083are sent out for a few days so those are part of the considerations the tests that the state is providing is a rapid test so so just so i can understand what the state is asking us to do the state is asking us to administer testing that may or may not be accurate to 20 percent of our and i'm going to call it the school population that includes the staff and the students that may or may not be accurate um so that we can open the schools so that we could be deemed safe even though the testing is not accurate is that am i like no i i think you've you've captured it and i think the big wild card here is who's paying for it that that's the other piece right so that was

084going to be my next thing and then how will this happen so so we don't we have we're being asked to do testing that that might not be accurate we know is not entirely accurate um we don't know who's going to pay for it unless you know tom you know i always look to you you always have the magical answers i'm hoping you have the answer to that one who's going to pay for it and then um what's the timeline for administering this testing and how is that going to happen so that we can reopen the doors because that's the goal and i think you know whatever side you are on with respect to coronavirus everybody wants our kids back in school and things to just go back to the way they were in february

085right everyone just wants the world back the way it was and that's our ultimate goal is to to be back so how do we how do we get this testing accomplished in the time frame so kids can go back to school and what happens if we go what's the next phase orange what happens if we go to orange what if we go to defcon orange what happens then so all good questions with regard to who's paying for it the state has indicated that they will provide tests tests to the school however there's so much more than just providing a test kit someone has to administer the test someone has to process the test report the results produce the results that's staff it's expertise and it's expertise that resides outside of our district so we would

086have to contract for that with regard to paying for it i know we've been promised payment but the reality is part of our state aid is being withheld there are two grants that we were expecting for a large scoreboard outside on our turf field and playground equipment at mohansek and brookside and those in the aggregate grants are over 350 000 we're told that those payments are being delayed so when i couple the withholding of state aid whether it's temporary or or permanent and went with the withholding of grant money is that we were awarded we we won those grants and those monies are being delayed i do question whether i i hope i can take the state of their word but i do question um how soon the reimbursement for the tests or or how

087soon the test kits can make their way to the district that's the first piece if we do go out the logistical piece we're working with the state on how to mobilize for testing i i've never run a covid testing operation truth be told that i've done some other things in the schools but i haven't mobilized a covid testing operation yet we can do it we can build it we're going to try to but um those are all things that i'm relying on on the state to assist with an afc urgent care to assist with if we go to an orange micro cluster that is something that's concerning because the reopening the reemergence from the orange zone is going to be more time um consuming because to re-emerge from an orange zone you can only open

088first of all it's a mandated closure of four days you're required by order to close for four days if you're in an orange or a red and in order to return to school in an orange or red we'll talk about orange for now because the red's a little further on the horizon in order to return to school in an orange zone everyone students staff faculty everyone has to have a negative test from the date of closure to the date of reopening within that window so it's not twenty percent it's one hundred percent of students faculty and staff must receive a negative test if they'd like to return to in-person learning that's more concerning i'm hoping that we never get to that point but should we do should we get to that point two things can

089happen we can try to return to school in an orange zone which requires negative testing for uh the school community or we wait until we're no longer in orange zone so that we can reopen in either a yellow zone or no designation we wait for the numbers to come down so i don't know which would happen first trying to get 3 400 people tested um it may be end up being the same amount of time as having the numbers come down more organically through social distancing mass squaring and respiratory hygiene um thank you i have two other questions um how have you taken the temperature of the staff in terms of how they feel about the testing whether it be the testing or the 100 testing how do they feel about that and complying with

090that requirement i've heard mixed honestly i've heard mixed feelings and mixed emotions i think the uniform sentiment is that we want our students back i think everyone wants their students back and they want them back now uh at least everyone with whom i've spoken with regard to the testing i think there are concerns truth be told there are concerns to having to undergo the testing with regularity obviously our staff are professionals and they're committed to the work and then there's no question of that however i've heard some concerns i've also heard g that might give me some peace of mind to know that 100 of everyone has been tested and then i only have to worry about the false negatives in this instance so i've heard mixed reviews on that but the universal sentiment is

091that we want all of our students back every day yeah um and then my last question is about um the commitment that we had asked parents to make to one program or the other the fully remote or the hybrid um can parents now change their minds if they commit hybrid and now they want to go remote yes yes parents are able to change models they can go from hybrid to remote remote to hybrid it may take a few days for us to adjust the schedules for students also there are certain factors that may further delay or may change the schedule so if an individual was hybrid they went remote and now they'd like to come back there may not be room in the class at that point generally there is room in the class at

092the high school level the there generally is room at the class at the elementary level it becomes a little more restrictive but yes people are able to transition and especially if we're in a yellow zone and testing is going to be a mandate actually the executive order indicates that we have to give individuals the option to go to the fully remote model if they don't want to partake in the testing right that's what i meant if we if we get mandatory testing people change their minds and not not comply with that um okay listen dr hatter thank you so much um you know earlier there was a comment i think it was by dax armstrong about your transparency and um i have to echo that sentiment in every aspect of what you do from this

093whole thing you have been you know with us 100 and um i can speak for myself i think i can speak for the other board members that that we appreciate the way you come forward with information with us thank you especially yeah i think um dr harris it's obvious you know i think um any anything that's possible uh you know at our end to keep schools open i think that's being done and i i commend you i commend uh um you know mrs o'shea tom cole our administrators like it's it's clear you know i think you're all working around the clock to make sure our kids are are back um i do struggle with the thought of our schools becoming test centers and labs um that that is problematic for for many reasons um you

094know that you've laid out um i and and and even with a negative test it doesn't necessarily mean a good free environment so i think that's even if we were to get all those test kits and set up you know the uh the intensive lab it doesn't guarantee um that there's actually you know uh no carriers of the virus um i do have one question it sounds like you know we'll be in this for a long haul right and um yes there's a vaccine on the horizon but even with that um so i i do worry about you know mental health for for our students um you know our younger kids our high school kids i i do you know think about that so i wanted to know if uh you have any thoughts and

095what more uh can be done at you know at our end by this by the district to ensure that they that our students are um you know getting what they need that's i appreciate you raising that because that is so important to us all is the mental and emotional well-being of our students and we're seeing areas of concern uh we last week just to try to get ahead of the situation as best we can although we'll never be ahead of the situation mrs o'shea mr rosen and i met with michael orth who's a director of mental health services with westchester county to talk about resources that could be available to us trainings that could be available to us and and different avenues that we can create for students and their families who are struggling with

096mental health crises i've been in touch with the alliance for safe kids and talking to them about different things that we can do to support our students i think what a lot of this will come down to because our clinicians are stretched very thin and i think the conversation about additional clinicians is an appropriate one and this board has been so terrific in really connecting with the importance of the mental health component of our students and their emotional well-being and i really admire the board for that with with our work i don't think it can just be the work of the clinicians i think it's working with our teachers faculty and staff alike to be able to identify some of the key warning signs to be able to identify some of the indicators that would

097lead us to probe a little bit more to say okay i know you said you're okay but are you really okay and to have those conversations a big part of it and this is part of the reason why i'm so committed to keeping our schools open is it's difficult for a student to walk into a counselor's office sit down close the door look them in the eye and confide in them on a zoom call that's one of the real values of keeping our schools open and so that we can continue to meet the needs but irrespective of us keeping the schools open we are working with westchester county and some of our partners in the region to identify ways to support student mental health needs and faculty mental health needs even if we're in a

098remote environment so those conversations are ongoing i think a lot of it will do with broader training than um than our clinicians and we do some training for our faculty and staff at the beginning of each school year but i think additional training especially in this environment is going to end up being one of the pathways that we select and lisa you were in the meeting you're welcome to add anything that that you have i think you covered it i think that we are recognizing um the increased needs that we're seeing and we are attempting to respond appropriately and i'm glad you just also indicated dr hatter the staff well-being as well and we're making sure we're cognizant of providing resources in that area as well thank you sure uh no i'm good thanks i

099think it's been covered in the prior comments right um i don't have so much as a question as some things i think need to be said um you know just to kind of recap right now our schools are open um everything that we're discussing is what happens if and uh we've done and i'm not going to take any credit for it but dr hatter and his staff and his administrative team and and the teachers they've all done an incredible job of working to not just open our schools but but keep them open there have been numerous challenges uh we've done an i think an excellent job of meeting those and what pains me is that it's not what's going on in school that's creating the problem of how do we keep our schools open um

100we've we've proven our model has been proven to be effective at keeping people safe and providing a good learning environment and we know that teachers want students in the classroom we know parents want the students to be in the classroom we all want students to be in the classroom and yet the actions of people in our community don't match what they're telling us they want and i get it it's it's been long time it's been you know whatever 10 months we're going to call it 11. it's been a long haul to get to this point people are tired people are stressed out and we're all feeling the effects of that unfortunately though you know the actions that we take are causing the problems that we're facing and we can fix it but we need a

101commitment from members of the community to recognize the situation and and try to reverse some of the trends that have occurred in terms of how we're interacting with other people and um if we can if we can accomplish that in the next couple of weeks and bring some of these rates back down this problem you know doesn't become bigger than it already is so i'm really i'm imploring people to just you know stick with it um you know get out outside if you're outside great you know stay away from from people as much as you can wear masks um you know wash your hands all of those things that we've now come to understand are simple and and they weren't in the beginning i understand that but there's a clear pattern now you know avoid

102indoor spaces with crowds um it's not it's not rocket science and if we can do some of these things over the next couple of weeks we have a chance to avoid everything that we're talking about so i don't have a question i just have a challenge to to the members of our community because you know the overwhelming amount of stuff that i see from people parents is how can we open schools further what can we do to you know get more kids in classes why don't you open this that and the other thing and yet we can't do any of that if the the parents themselves and the rest of the community aren't practicing um you know good behavior because it jeopardizes everything that we're trying to accomplish so that's my soapbox um dr hatta

103was much more um elusive in his uh comments and i just felt like you know somebody had to throw the gauntlet down and just let you know we can fix this if if people will just do what they need to do to stay safe and uh protect themselves which in turn will protect everybody else in this whole in this whole cycle um you know it sounds cliche but we're all in this together is exactly what this is all about so i'll end on that note thank you mike very well said i totally agree with you um i think all the questions have basically been asked and answered um my only comment is dr hatter you have led us with your team to this place where we are right now and we're in a good place

104in our school district and so i'm going to trust your judgment as to whether we become a testing facility which kind of hope not but or whether we do it what needs to be done but i think you have led us in a good path and i think that we just need to keep following your directions i i'm concerned about being a testing facility because i don't really think that we have medical expertise or insurance coverage for it um i know that's going to twist tom cole with that insurance coverage um but i'm going to follow your lead on this one i trust you well i i appreciate that we looked into the medical insurance and we were informed that we're not covered for a this type of insurance to conduct covid testing is generally

105beyond the scope of what a school district would be expected to do so we would rely on a third party external partnership but a lot of this hinges on the actions of the state and we want to keep student schools open in reality and i know nothing but to be up front with you and and to be upfront with our community in reality should we be designated a yellow zone or an orange there will be a period of closure there will be a period where our schools have to go to remote learning and i think what our work is going to be is to reduce that period to the shortest extent possible i couldn't quantify it for you at this point because it would just be an arbitrary number of days that i'm making up

106or an arbitrary number of weeks that i'm making up but there make no mistake if we're designated as a yellow zone micro cluster there will be a period of time we've tried to be proactive we've sent emails to the state and if we're designated a micro cluster please explain to me x y and z and i'll share with you there's a district in the county that is in a micro cluster they've been in a micro cluster for a couple weeks now they have not received testing supplies at this point to my knowledge they have not received the testing supplies and the resources from the state to my knowledge to date so you want to be proactive you want to get ahead of it and you send the emails and you send the communications and and

107you fill out the required paperwork for the schools and you just hope that there's the same urgency that your urgency is being met with the same urgency on the other end so i i appreciate that i'm happy to if any other questions come up i'm happy to address it i believe the designation is imminent at this point for a yellow zone i do believe that it's going to happen just based on the numbers and uh the dashboard and i'm not getting my numbers from anywhere special i'm going to the new york state dashboard in fact i'll be issuing a letter to the community about micro clusters i will include that website that i'm using within my letter so that everyone has the same information that i'm privy to can i ask you to change your

108verbiage just a little bit when you say we're a yellow zone or we're going to be designated or the county or the county yeah but you say we kind people sometimes feel it's a school district it's yes at a time i i have a question so so let's say tomorrow there's a yellow zone designation what what happens next we'll we'll stay open for tomorrow if we're designated yellow zone we'll stay open for tomorrow um we'll get we're hoping for additional that that was one of my questions is do i have two weeks to make a decision or do i have two weeks to complete the testing with the reporting do i have a day to make the decision as to whether we close i don't want to have students in the middle of the day

109and then at a midday press conference we're told that we're a yellow micro cluster and now i have to call the buses for an early release schedule so those are all of the questions that we still have that that are that remain to be answered but one would want those answers before the designation is made how much time do we have before we must go fully remote before we must comply so uh i i if we're designated a yellow zone micro cluster we will not be mobilizing an early dismissal our students will at least finish out the school day here and we'll hopefully get some guidance when once we get that designation as to what the timeline is over those next two weeks and we are um and now the wii i'm using is yorktown

110central school district we are prepared to be remote in every building once that designation happens yeah and remote learning will look different from the hybrid model that that our students are experiencing at the elementary level at the secondary level there has been more experience with the remote model because unfortunately we've had to close our schools at the middle school in high school more often than we've had to close the elementary schools in fact outside of two days for brookside our three elementary schools have been open the entire school year we have not shut them down even during the cyber attack we've been able to keep our elementary schools open for the most part however that model will look different the students will be on a computer um i i've received some conflicting concerns that my

111child's not spending enough time on the computer during the remote day to my childhood has way too much screen time on the remote day of the hybrid model how can we reduce that so those are it once we go to a fully remote model if that day comes and i hope it doesn't but if we do there will be an expectation that students are spending a few hours on a screen because at that point that is our only way of teaching and reaching our students so there will be increased screen time for students at the elementary level at the secondary level it'll be consistent with what they're experiencing now specifically at the high school level and middle school it'll be very consistent what they're experiencing now except five days a week okay anybody else are

112we good all right thank you there's a long superintendent's update all right got uh board reports to go on to audit committee rush me uh we're good no new updates at this time let's go mike um uh fiscal's busy uh this is our you know starts to move into our busy time of the year we met back on october 21st to look at the overall financial position of the district we talked about various cash reserves uh how we look and we were looking specifically at capital projects and uh funding for that going forward uh and we will meet again this thursday the 19th um to talk about our transportation provider and uh some contract stuff going forward and uh the financial implications of it so that's our next meeting general policy tour we last met

113on november 5th we reviewed 13 policies regulations and exhibits of which two will be reviewed and adopted tonight three regulations and exhibits will be deleted and we will be next meeting on december 9th thank you steering really doesn't have much to update at this point we haven't met since the last update so we will let you know when we do uh board action items can i have a motion to approve the minutes from the october 19th and november sex second meeting second all those in favor aye opposed emotion approved the treasurer's report for october 2020 all those in favor all right emotion approved the claims auto report for october 2020 second all those in favor aye opposed emotion approved the extra classroom report for october 2020. so move thank you thank you all those in

114favor aye aye opposed policies emotion due to approve the first read and adoption of the following policy and regulation you have 47.50 which is promotion retention of students and 6240 are the investments regulation did anybody have any questions or comments on them can i have a motion in a second don't be resolved that the following regulations and exhibit be deleted from the policy manual because they're obsolete and unnecessary we have 4750r the promotional rotation of students regulation 5220 e2 student health services exhibit 8635 our information security breach and notification regulation second all those in favor we have personal agenda upon recommendation of the superintendent uh motion at the following the approved we have certified personnel we have appointments part-time appointments regular substitutes other compensation other compensations teaching stipends loses absence and resignations classified we have

115uh personnel we've removed from the sub list additions to the sub list and a resignation second all those in favor all right closed business office resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent the board of education approves the e2e exchange services agreement for the 2021 school year tomorrow resolve the board of education here by authorizes the superintendent of schools to execute the agreement for the yorktown central school district school resource officer program with the yorktown police department beginning january first twenty twenty through december thirty first twenty twenty three so moved second all those in favor high closed captioning not available emotionally accept the following allowance dispersants and j m heating and air conditioning for the 2020 capital reserve projects we have allowance disbursement to provide materials for um an additional rooftop hvac in the amount of ten

116thousand dollars allowance disbursement to provide uh replacement ceiling fans directed by the owner in the amount of ten thousand dollars so move second all those in favor all right closed emotional arranged the following replacements as of november 16 all those in favor aye opposed emoji approved the following gifts grants and donations with gratitude at yorktown high school 16 from blackbaud giving fund on behalf of the new york life employee match program so much exactly all those in favor hi hi you're up to public comment of that did anybody put in no they did not okay we're up to board comment uh mike oh no i've said enough already thanks lisa i've said quite enough peter i'm good thanks me i'm good thanks anthony i am good and still awake by the way cheryl i'm good

117thanks uh i'm good too just wishing everybody a happy thanksgiving we won't see it till december ron tom lisa anything all right can i have a motion to adjourn to uh executive session with no intention to return to public session so moved good night happy thanksgiving