BOE Meeting 12/9/25

001Second. >> Thank you. Um, all those in favor? >> I opposed. >> Abstension. Motion passes. Um, please let's all please rise for the pledge of allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nation, indivisibley for all. >> Francesca, could you please call the role? >> Brian Arnold >> here. >> Jennifer Boy. >> Linda G. >> Jeff >> here. Donna Logan >> here. >> Megan >> here. >> Eileen >> here. >> Marian Quinn >> here. >> Thank you very much. The reading of the district mission. Our mission is to empower all students to be self-directed lifelong learners who willingly contribute to their community and lead passionate, purposeful lives. May I please get a motion for approval of tonight's agenda? >> So move. >> Second. Thank you. Um any discussion? Seeing

002none, all those in favor? >> I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Um correspondence. Does anybody have any correspondence they'd like to share at this point? Seeing none, moving on. Board president remarks. Welcome. It's nice to see some friendly faces in the audience on this very, very cold night. Um uh I guess I just want to say I hope everybody had a a lovely Thanksgiving. Um we won't have another regular meeting like this. We will have a uh before the holidays. So I want to wish our um our staff and families a very rewarding holiday break. Um the board will be meeting next week on a regularly scheduled cow meeting um on the topic will be special education like a workshop for us on our special education programs. Um and let's see uh and that's really all

003I have for tonight. Dr. Vante >> thank you Mrs. Mean and just on that note uh Dr. and her team have been uh preparing the presentation and overview for the board for next week and we have a lot of information. I know Dr. K has a lot of information to share uh just to make that meeting the best use of the board's time and to ensure that there's plenty of time for dialogue. There is one U report that it's the special education audit that was completed two years ago, Regina, approximately two, three years ago that uh we're going to share with you tomorrow and just ask that if you read that ahead of the meeting, if you're able to go through that, it it will just help uh make sure that we can consolidate some

004information at the meeting uh because there's a lot of good information there that I think you're going to be interested in discussing and it will help the conversation stay focused on some of what's included there as well as some of the additional information that Dr. Kishan and her team have gleaned uh since she's arrived in the district and just to make sure that our time spent most on uh discussion and questions and answers uh as opposed to you know explanation about uh some of the material. So if you could I'll share it with you tomorrow and if you could just be sure to review it ahead of the meeting it'll I think really help uh when it comes time Tuesday night. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Uh just one other thing. >> Absolutely. >> Uh

005I meant to say I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. That includes the people who are watching at home. Uh and we had uh one of our administrators receive a special recognition uh last month. And I'm going to ask Mr. Orchid if he could come uh to the microphone just to share a little bit about that and uh help recognize this individual who is in attendance this evening. Mr. Orchid, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. >> Good evening everyone. Uh so there's probably a little bit of a who is he talking about right now because there's a handful of administrators and no one knows this is coming but um we are excited this evening to recognize Dr. Michael Keelley uh who was recently recognized as the outstanding leader for 2025 at the

006Nicekate Conference. So, I'm going to read just a brief blurb about what that recognition entails. Um, the 2025 Nicegate Outstanding Leader is recognized for their vision, innovation, and dedication, and how it has significantly advanced the effective use of educational technology within the Arlington community. Dr. Keely's fostered meaningful partnerships to support and expand digital resources, contributed to the development of systematic and systemic future focused technology plans, and modeled continuous professional growth through the promotion of highquality technology related learning. Through ongoing collaboration, he has elevated professional practice and inspired others to transform teaching and learning through the thoughtful integration of digital tools. So, Mike, if you could join me up here. I have the Mike didn't know we were recognizing him for this tonight and I don't think he has a official speech prepared, but um I

007don't know if you just We're going to be presenting and talking to you shortly, but I'll turn it over to Mike just really quickly. >> Yeah, I'd just like to uh thank everybody who nominated me for this award. I'm really humbled and honored to have received it. It's truly a testament to the work that we do here, but even in the broader region. Um, I participate in several uh groups here in in Duchess County. Uh, one is called an ITSAC group. It's a group of tech directors that get get together. Um, I participate with a curriculum and instructional technology council here in Duchess County. Um, and it's really everybody working to together collaboratively, not just Arlington, but other districts, bringing ideas, uh, even challenges that we face in integrating and using technology and then bringing

008those ideas and some of the new emerging technology, uh, back into our district and putting that, uh, technology into the hands of our educators and and into our students and ultimately trying to make everybody's lives through the use of technology a little bit easier when it works. And uh, thanks thanks for this honor tonight. I'm really appreciative of it and looking forward to presenting with Mr. Orott on the AI presentation a little bit. >> Congratulations. >> And just wanted to reiterate what uh John shared and some of what Mike alluded to. Mike is takes his professional learning and professional development uh very seriously. whenever we have questions around infrastructure or tech integration. Uh if Mike doesn't know the answer himself, he can quickly uh attain one and I've really had the it's just been a

009pleasure over the last year plus that I've been here. I think uh Mike is one of the the best in the business and I'm not surprised at all that he was recognized by his colleagues in that way. So again, Mike, congratulations to you. And while most would Oh, we don't have uh the discussion yet that's coming up next. I was going to say while most would who receive a recognition at a meeting would be able to sit back right now, we're going to turn it right over to Mr. Keely to present, but we're not because uh uh we have public comment before that. >> We do. And let's see. So, um yeah, and I'll just say that Mia couldn't be with us tonight and we'll look forward to seeing her at our next meeting. Um

010so, we're going to move across the exeicio student board member section. Um do we have anyone for public comment tonight? No one. >> Okay. Well, then we are moving right along to reports and discussions. >> So, we'll turn it over uh at this point to uh Mr. Keley and uh or Dr. Keely and Mr. Orchett. Uh and I'll just remind the board that uh this evening's overview was uh provided or started with a request by a board member to hear a little bit more about artificial intelligence. Uh some of what uh we're doing as a school district, our preparedness. Uh uh there's a few key questions that I know Mike is going to summarize at the start uh just to reflect back to the board. Uh he has some information to share and then we

011will open it up for further discussion. Mike, I'll let you take it away when you're ready. When Devon's ready, good evening everyone. Uh the board had expressed an interest um I believe about a month ago in learning more about artificial intelligence and Mr. Orcott and I are excited to be in front of you today to talk about how Arlington is starting to uh work with artificial intelligence integrated uh in our classrooms offer uh professional development and training to our teachers. And before we get started um we have several elements of artificial intelligence that we've uh worked into our presentation. And so the slide that you're seeing for our opening was actually developed using uh Gemini images. Uh which they have a funny name for it. It's like the banana nano program. Um but you can

012see there in the image all we said was that we were doing a presentation on artificial intelligence um to a board of education for the Arlington School District. Uh and so it generated an image and it was really close to what you see uh right there. The only difference was the signs uh were blue. So, we asked it, can you change it to a maroon color? Um, but artificial intelligence isn't perfect. And if you were to zoom in on uh the logo of the tree in the background, you would see that that it's really il illeible how it it formulated the letters or or how it's tried to spell out Arlington Central School District. So while AI is a great tool, uh in some ways it's still experimental, it's emerging, uh it does not always

013provide accurate information and human interactions with it uh will be really important and so we want to emphasize that as we start to move through our presentation this evening. Uh we wanted to remind the board that some of the things that uh you had expressed interest in learning more about was guidance around AI and and what we're doing here in the district uh how it's being utilized in our classrooms, how it's being monitored for student use and the acceptable use of technology uh for our staff. Uh to start off our presentation this evening, uh Mr. Orcott's going to start by talking about how it's being used in curriculum and in some of the training with staff and then he's going to turn it back over to me and I'll talk a little bit more about

014how we're trying to secure data and and privacy concerns um and some of the other ways that uh we're integrating it into our classrooms. So Mr. >> Thank you very much. So while Dr. Keely also pointed out that that opening slide is uh an AI generated slide. All of the images through this entire presentation were AI gen uh generated just to for context and give you an example of how it can support presentations. Um what we have found is that some of these large companies Google, Amamira, I Ready, Amplify, ELA which are owned by larger curriculum uh companies in in the United States have were very quick early adopters of AI technology and as a result it it's already being implemented into a lot of the platforms that our teachers are using and that our

015students are using. Uh all of our students and all of our teachers have Gemini Standard turned on in their Google in in our Google Suite. So they all have access to um a very controlled level of AI integration within our district Google classrooms and and um on their Chromebooks. Amira, which we spoke a little bit about um last year. It's a it's a program that our teachers are using to support reading fluency and reading development in the elementary levels is an AI assistant. And I went over to a couple of the elementary schools last week and watched our students interacting with this and they basically are reading to a cartoon character and that cartoon character is providing them feedback uh along the way. So, it was in one example, the student was mispronouncing the word

016move and the little character said it, "I think you're trying to say move. Here's how it looks on the screen. Let's say it together. Move. Watch my mouth." and a little mouth popped up on the screen and it was it was like a regular image of someone saying move and you could the kid was interacting with it through the headset and um and when I was talking with the teachers afterwards they said the students really enjoy it and they folded it into their their IE blocks or their flex time and it's another tool that they can have three or four students reading and the teacher then gets analytics back. Um it's not perfect, but but it's another tool that they're using to support um students learning how to read. I Ready uh very quickly adapted

017AI into supporting students with personalized instruction. So as our students work their way through um I Ready teachers get diagnostic results and then the platform is basically making recommendations about targeted work that can be funneled directly into the students accounts so that they're getting um the immediate support that they need uh to whether it's enrichment or intervention. And then Amplify ELA, which is a new program that we're using in sixth grade ELA this year with some of our teachers, uh has an AI built in that's monitoring and providing feedback for students on their writing. So, it's really uh been a very powerful support for our faculty. Outside of the instructional technology, AI has really been helpful with helping teachers prepare to support learning. One of the main immediate usage uh uses was around translation. So

018there are a number of platforms that offer these services. Uh but our teachers are able to put materials right into whether it's chatpt or Gemini. Um and then there's some more specific translated translation focused platforms and get accurate translation of the text and then also level it to make it accessible um based on the level of the students English comprehension in the other direction. So they can take a a text and and make it more accessible for students if they need to. It's also there's a lot of professional learning right now around using AI to support lesson planning and lesson development. Um, it can quickly go out and find New York State standards, pull resources in, craft quick little activities, generate documents for teachers to use that that can support instruction. So, that's been a

019helpful tool um, as Dr. Keelley said, to make everyone's lives a little bit easier. And one of the the bigger three years ago if we were giving this presentation, one of the cautionary things we'd be talking about is it's uh what they were referring to as hallucinations. So AI would you could give it a prompt and if it didn't know the answer, it would make it up and it would present it and it would manufacture sources to say, well, this is where I this is where I got that information from. And and if you took that information and put it into the internet, it didn't exist. Um it is that is happening less and less frequently and as a result platform like Google has uh created tools within their AI to support uh whether it's

020teachers or administrators or students to go out find information curate it into one location and really assist with um you know what used to be kind of the card catalog system but now it's it's AI by creating that for you and you can get all your information right there and get quick summaries. So, it's been really helpful for people to use in their instruction. >> No. And what John is alluding to in Google is uh when the AI now answers a prompt that you ask it to do it in Google Gemini specifically and a lot of the other platforms are starting to do this. uh it shows what it calls its thinking and so it actually shows uh the end user could be a student or staff member teacher uh the exact sources that it

021was citing. So it's actually much easier for you as a human to go in and and look at those sources if you're questioning is the data accurate? Uh is it true? Is there truth behind what's being presented? rather than when AI first sort of came out and everybody was started dipping their toes in, you had to go out and do some of that research like where's it and you didn't really know where it was pulling from and in the artificial intelligence there can sometimes be bias too. So you can be and humans are still very important here uh the decider the critical thinker to see is this information relevant does it appear uh in some cases scholarly is it accurate um and should is it relevant to the the question or the task that I'm

022asking it to perform. >> Great. >> Thank you. Um early last week we were sitting with Dr. Bonante going through this is what we think we're going to present. Take a look. Give us some feedback. Uh and and as we're sitting there, we're like, we should ask AI about AI use in Arlington. And so we're sitting there and punched it in and it went out and found that we have recently launched Admiral Al on our website and AI completely created this slide. Uh and so we felt like it was a appropriate example to include within it while also highlighting our districts. Um to quote the last sentence, first major step into public facing AI application. AI wrote that entire slide, did the research and presented it. As far as professional learning opportunities goes, um right

023before we came into this presentation, I ran another report just to make sure our numbers were accurate. Since since the spring of 2022, which is when AI really started to be a thing in our world, we have had over 742 teacher professional engagements that we are aware of that got logged in our professional learning system around AI. So some of those logs represent one person who's extremely passionate and has engaged in 10 things. Um others of it are one session at a superintendent's conference day and it was what can AI do for you? Um so we're we're seeing varied levels of engagement. Um, but at this point with 742 engagements since 2022, a significantly large number of our professional faculty has been exposed to AI at this point and is beginning to think about the

024different ways that it can support their instruction with students. >> And I just want to call attention to the professional development being offered on uh in the technology department. We have two technology facilitators. So one's for secondary typically, one's for elementary. They often overlap and work with each other though on presenting sessions. Um but they have been studying AI um all different sorts of versions and platforms of AI. Um right now the teachers have a choice of what they want to engage with or what they want to learn and everybody's kind of found their own comfort in various platforms. And so we're trying to meet teachers where they're at and as they're and help them grow. And our technology facilitators, they're available uh for structured professional development might be on a professional development day or

025after school hours. They offered a lot of sessions this summer, but they also are available. They go to out to the faculty room. So like just sort of water cooler talk and and talking to teachers and and gauging their interest and then scheduling time to follow up more individually or personalized uh learning for them. So we do have that as a resource which I think is really important. uh the research has shown through the years that ongoing professional uh development and growth is important when you're integrating technology and so we have that resource available for our staff and and our teachers to help them learn more about AI and integrate it and and similarly I know that at least 200 of the teachers have participated in the sessions with the with the technology facilitators alone.

026Um so we also want to talk about student AI use. Um so we've been uh hearing and seeing especially through our tech facilitators um and and the teachers that they work with students are using AI very much as an assistant um uh and AI really in general is is making things a lot faster. So it's about saving time. So AI can process large amounts or analyze large amounts of data very quickly more quickly than we could by just simply Google searching and going website to website to website. uh the artificial intelligence can take a large data set uh often the end user the student or or faculty member can curate that data set so they can upload reports they could upload links to websites prior presentations whatever the resource is in some cases videos and

027then ask the AI to um decipher it or to come up with common themes or patterns or whatever or whatever the problem uh that they're trying to solve is. Uh so it makes the research portion often much faster for uh students and teachers alike. Uh we also see students using it for uh creativity. Uh so where we used to have to go out and maybe find clip art, the AI can generate a specific piece of media uh that we might want to use in a presentation. It could be a still photograph and I could say I want to have a picture uh that represents the Arlington tree logo. um and I'm doing a presentation on astronomy, so I want to have some stars and within typically a few seconds, um the AI can generate that

028that image and then you can give it another prompt if you want to tweak it. Uh same with video. Um you can put a prompt in. I want a video clip that demonstrates uh a shooting star because we're studying astronomy. Um and it will create a clip shooting star. Maybe I want to put a house in the background. Um, I want to have, you know, the blanket and and the picnic basket next to me cuz we're we're stargazing tonight. It will create based on the prompt a short video or or image very quickly without having to go out and necessarily spend time finding that perfect image uh that may or may not be exist or be created. Uh there might be copyright restrictions on it. Uh so it's making uh creativity uh come alive. Um,

029it's making it easier for students to uh create their own videos or patch things together. Very professionally looking, whereas we used to have to spend a lot of time with programs like uh iMovie and and FileMaker and things like that uh and and take video clips and stitch them together or do re-recordings. Uh the AI, you don't necessarily have to do that. Um, and so student use, uh, is really what we're seeing so far is they're leveraging it for research purposes, um, writing assistance, mathematic assistance, and and really an assistant to, uh, being creative, uh, for for their school presentations. Um, one of the most important things going into this school year was, uh, really addressing AI in in the student code of conduct. Um, we've used software for many, many years. Um, we've never

030uh addressed a specific piece of software to my knowledge in a code of conduct any place that I've worked, but this is moving so quickly. We did want to offer clarification, very easy clarification to our students of what the district's expectations in of its use. And it really aligns with uh the existing code of conduct and and the plagiarism rules and and honesty expectations that we have. But we did include language in there that explicitly addressed how AI should be used, that it should be used for learning purposes, not for cheating, not for plagiarism. And we really wanted to call attention to that in the student handbook going into this school year. Uh because artificial intelligence is so new and it's evolving so quickly. And it's called artificial intelligence today, but we don't know in

031a couple of years what it might be called tomorrow because it's evolving so quickly and it's becoming embedded in so many different programs. Some of the key expectations and regulations that we have for students is it should be used for helping synthesize the data. Uh putting those resources in and and uh having it analyze um hopefully resources that the student curates for it. Uh maybe they take a bunch of websites and they wanted to analyze it and and identify patterns um or things that may be alike or different. Uh helping them personalize their learning. Uh, one of the really great parts about AI is that you can uh connect it back to what you're passionate about. So, as a student, I can say, I'm trying to learn math, but I'm struggling and I'm really interested

032in basketball. Can you help me uh relate this mathematical equation or problem to uh the game of basketball? Any AI can generate prompts or questions to help the student learn something based on their passion. And it works both ways. teacher could gather student interest perhaps through a Google form at the beginning of a school year deidentified. We don't need student names and we could just say here's the student interest for my class. Um I'm doing a lesson on I'm just going to go back to astronomy. I guess I have stars on on my mind tonight. Um but uh I'm doing a lesson on astronomy. Can you connect it to these interests? And now very easily the AI can start to brainstorm and help a teacher develop individualized lessons or personalized lessons for the students based

033on their passion. And I think we all would agree that if you're passionate about something, you usually tend to lean into it a little bit more. And so that's another uh area where AI can help. Uh AI study guides. The AI is very good at creating uh flash cards, virtual flash cards where students can plug in key terms or definitions and say, "Hey, I have a test coming up. can can you create some flashcards for me? Um there's uh ways to uh create games in the AI. So I could say I have a test coming up and I'd like to create a game in order to study and some of the AI platforms uh can help develop a game just on the spot randomly uh with very little prompting and the student can sort of

034gify and do learning at the same time. And of course, collaborative project assistance, bringing students together uh using products like Notebook LM. And in Notebook LM, uh Google in particular has something called Gemini Gems. And a gem is where you can bring in lots of information. Uh it almost becomes an AI assistant or expert on that curated information that you've brought in. And more recently, Google has uh created a way to share those gems. So from a student perspective, you could share that AI assistant, which is very personalized. You essentially created the assistant and share it with your classmates and start to work through a problem or or a a project. And then obviously prohibited uses. Uh you can't claim AI work as your own. You shouldn't do that. In fact, many of the images

035and videos that the AI is generating do have watermarks on it. Uh so, you know, we're going to follow copyright. Students shouldn't be cutting or cropping those things out. uh plagiarism and dishonesty has been around forever. Um we have high expectations for students and this is no different. AI is a tool. It's another tool in the toolbox. They need to use it uh appropriately. Um and they also shouldn't be misrepresenting uh the authorship. Oops, went too fast. Uh communication about using the software. Um, we've done a lot of work through our staff newsletters in the past, technology newsletters that the technology department has published and we work really extensively with our building technology leader uh leaders throughout the district and we have meetings every other month. Uh, just to refresh the board's memory, uh, each

036building typically has two building technology leaders. Those are teachers who help out the technology department and they're really a council of teachers who bring forth uh ideas or concerns about technology use across the district. Um, and so we've worked with them to clarify how we should be using AI so that they can bring that back to their buildings. Um, especially because most of the teachers in those buildings are are trusted face, a familiar face, trusted resource. Um, and so we've been communicating with the staff about how to experiment appropriately with AI. Um, we also have to comply with New York State Education Law 2D, which was passed uh just before the pandemic began in January of 2020. the law was signed in and then boom uh COVID pandemic hit and everybody's scrambling to try and

037use whatever software they can to uh do distance learning. Um but as time has moved on, the state is focusing back on the privacy uh components of that law. They're doing audits of that. And so we have a process in place for teachers uh to follow in order to comply with the law. The big part of the law is um not giving out unless there's a privacy agreement in place, personally identifiable information. We often refer to it uh in presentations or in speaking as PII. Um and so our district has a process where if a teacher wants to use a software and we have an extensive list of software close to 400 titles are on the list as either approved or or disapproved and some have notes on certain limitations on how we can use

038it. Uh but if a teacher wants to um ask for a piece of software, they can fill out a form and then and then we work together uh with the curriculum department to vet that software both from a privacy compliance perspective but also from relating to uh the curriculum department whether it's through the curriculum maps does it align with state standards. Um but we really want to be mindful of the data that we're putting into certain platforms or programs. And from a technology department perspective, um Google has made it a lot easier to restrict those loginins which exchange a lot of account PII on the back end of our systems where we have to approve the signin with Google button that staff and students used to be able to just click. Uh it has to

039be approved before they can do that. So we're really mindful of protecting uh student data. And also uh we wanted to talk about the guidelines. Well, what if a piece of software isn't on the list? Not every software an educator uses is going to be on the list because some may never collect personally identifiable information. Uh so we've given guidance if you're using a piece of software that's free. Um and there's no personally identifiable information being exchanged, then that's okay to use. Um it's not okay to ask students to go to a website and put in your first name, last name, date of birth, maybe your address. Um, but if you go have students go to a website that's not on the list and it's not asking for any identifying information, it's not asking for

040a login, that's that's uh uh perfectly fine. Um, and so our staff and what we're seeing is they have a lot of choice in the AI that they're choosing to use because many of the AI platforms at least at the moment are not requiring uh loginins and a lot of them are are free right now. Uh so it's giving our staff uh a great breath of choice and and really ownership and personalization in the way that they're developing their lessons and they're getting students to interact with artificial intelligence. I'm going to turn it back over to Mr. Orcott. He's going to give you some instructional examples of how teachers in the classrooms are using some of these platforms. So Devon is going to support this portion of it. Um Devin, if you want to before

041you click on to the So we're going to start with the Halloween escape room. So I reached out to a couple teachers that I know are using AI um fluently and regularly in their classroom. And at the high school, two of them um are Hungu and Aiden Toppley. Hungu is a math teacher. Uh we recognized him last year as a New York State master teacher. part of his recognition um was around his use of technology. So for our audience at home that has access to this on the PDF, I would caution you to do this with little children. We're not going to go past this slide because I I there's a a few jump scares built in and um it was Halloween themed for high school students, age appropriate, but uh we're we're not going

042to go too far past that. But this entire thing was created music the voice over the imagery um was done through AI. The only beyond the prompts Mr. Sue created the mathematical examples uh that the students were going to have to work through and as they solve the problems they move through the escape room and they have different experiences along the way. Um, there's a cipher that as they solve these problems, the answers lead them to the passcode to unlock. Um, I stopped after a little bit because it was nightmare fuel at one point. Um, so Devin, would you mind just clicking the play button up top for a second? Is the volume going to play? black box. Outside the doorway, a strip of red emergency light bled onto the floor like a wound. Papers

043stirred on a nearby desk, but the air was perfectly still. A cold wave of fear washed over you. Where was everyone? How long had you been here? You looked back up at the wall clock, a digital error glowing in the gloom. >> So, you talk about engagement. You talk about creating something. Uh, and now Mr. Sue is he is tip of the spear in terms of his engagement with this. He's he he's very passionate about it. Um he is a high level example of what teachers can do with AI. Could you go back to the slide Deon? So he I I he included everything that he does, but basically he coded it with chat GPT agent. The videos were were made with Sora and Google storybook story book. I don't you don't need me to

044read all that to you, but all of that is AI. and then he puts in the piece that he did and he set it up there. Um, so it a really high level uh example. Um, also he created battle equations. So this is now we're going to have some audience participation here. Um, so when students click on it, they go to the battle equation and they can start their game normal or hard. We'll let the board pick. What do you want? These are math problems. So we're going normal. Okay. We're going normal. 1x equals 6. Survey says 6. And we just took 15 health away from the goblin. We're the wizard. We're battling the goblin. X + 11 = 25. 14, I hear. And now go ahead. we move on to level two. And so

045the problems you just it's just another way to gify it, keep kids engaged. They can challenge their difficulty level. Um and it again all AI. He used coding to create it. Used AI to engage in it um and and share it out with his students. Could you go back to the slide, please, Devin, or are you still working on that one over there? I'll let you you can do it if you um the other example actually comes from fizzed. So Mr. ToppPley has he he sent me several things that he's been doing, but one of them was he he used this uh website, the web app Rally Zone, and he used it to create a bad mitten tournament that his students could challenge each other in. It kept track of everything that they were doing.

046The, you know, the most valuable player ended up being the students who won the most matches, the most improved players. Um, and and it's it just was a way for him to bring a new level of engagement to his bad mitten tournament, which would have had the brackets against the wall, but now the kids can follow along on the cell phones that they don't have out because of the cell phone policy. Um, uh, but it it just it's another example and I thought the fact that it was in a PE class um, which is not necessarily a place you thought you would find AI, um, would be a good example to show. And we have one more example to share with you too. >> Sure. Um so one of the things that uh we're starting

047to see with artificial intelligence is that um it's becoming very easy to create virtual avatars. Um and part of part of my job and our department's job is to kind of keep our finger on the pulse of where technology is headed, especially when it's emerging. Help our facilitators start to understand that technology. Uh so one of the things that we were able to do um this school year was uh we had some of the building principles reach out at the start of the year. They're having some back to school nights and they said, "Hey, can you help us out? We want to present to parents and families how do you use the student information system? How do you submit technology help desk ticket?" Um and we said, "Sure, we think that we could help you

048with that." Um especially because we only have two technology facilitators, so they can't be at all your buildings at the same time. Uh so we leveraged virtual avatars um to to do that. Um and so our facilitators were able to create uh what looks like a traditional presentation to a family. Uh but what you don't realize is on the back end and we've communicated this to our principles we can within minutes even less than a minute uh translate it into nearly any language so that we can make it accessible to all families. Um, and as we're doing the presentation or the facilitators were working to generate their presentations, uh, when there's edits that need to be major, simply editing a transcript and then just rerunning the program. So, you're not constantly sitting there. I don't

049think my hair looked good or I blinked too much in that video. Uh, you're not constantly spending the time reframing yourself and re-recording yourself. Uh, and it made it really easy. And so, that was one of the ways that as a department we've been able to leverage the technology. Another way that we've been able to leverage uh the technology or that we're starting to experiment with is uh interactive avatars. And this is not in uh classrooms yet. Uh but I could see it uh coming down the line in the next few years. Uh so I think back to I think it was the early 90s uh the ATM, right? The automatic telling machine first came out. And I remember banks put advertisements on TV or or posters at the bank. And I remember being younger

050and going into the bank and and there was a poster and it said the new teller works 24 hours a day. Well, I could see a situation where our teachers could work 24 hours a day. Uh but it would be uh an avatar of themselves. And what we're starting to experiment with and learn is that you can start to train these avatars on curated resources that um you want to use. Uh so these avatars could be available with a familiar face to students after hours uh where students could interact and ask questions like math questions or ask social studies questions uh get clarification uh and it generates uh a transcript or or a script of the entire chat. Uh you can give the avatars a persona so you can tell it about yourself and and

051have it learn to uh to act or or behave like you. And this is in its very early stages. This is just really becoming more widely available to the general public. Uh I think we've heard about deep fakes for a while, but that seemed to be more uh really high-end users or multimedia companies uh maybe influencers. Um but this is becoming more and more uh affordable and widespread. And so what I'm going to try to demonstrate for you this evening is how one of these interactive avatars works. I will caution that I don't think the platform was designed for such a big audience or a big room. It's typically you're behind your individual computer. Uh but we'll see uh we'll see how it how it does and we'll see if we can do a chat

052with it. Go ahead, Devin. >> Hi Dr. Keely, I'm >> Thank you for your update. Here to help. >> Hi Dr. Keely, I'm here with a group of board of education members. Can you tell us how virtual avatars might be able to be used in K through2 education? >> Hello and thank you for your question. Virtual avatars can be a powerful tool in K12 education by providing engaging, personalized, and immersive learning experiences. Here are some ways they can be utilized. One, personalized learning assistance. Avatars can serve as virtual tutors or assistants, helping students navigate lessons, answer questions, and reinforce learning concepts in a relatable way. Two, enhanced engagement. Avatars make lessons more interactive and fun, capturing students attention and increasing motivation, especially in remote or hybrid learning environments. Three, cultural and language support. Avatars can

053be programmed to communicate in multiple languages or adopt culturally relevant personas, making content more accessible and inclusive. Four, social emotional learning. >> Dr. Key, thanks. Virtual Certainly one compelling way to use virtual avoc rooms. >> What are some of the best uses of avatars um in grade school? >> Absolutely. One of the best uses of virtual avatars in K12 education is as W virtual peer models or parent supported engagement tools. For example, avatars can help parents participate more actively in their child's learning by guiding them on how to reinforce concepts at home or by serving as relatable avatars that demonstrate social emotional skills and positive behaviors. This can foster stronger homeschool connections and support student success through consistent messaging and interaction. If you'd like, I can provide more details on this application. >> No, thank

054you. presentation. >> So, in conclusion, um Mr. Orcott and I wanted to bring some sort of recommendations of what we think uh the next steps for the district will need to be. So, we think it's important to continue allowing staff and students to experiment with AI and uh we're very big on giving them uh choice and finding the right tools that fit their needs. Um, as Mr. Orod had demonstrated, some of the teachers have already uh taken the lead on that and found platforms that they're integrating into their classrooms. Uh, promoting a responsible digital culture. Um, and some and a lot of that will align with the, um, New York State Ed, uh, computer science and digital fluency standards, uh, which have also been around since 2020. Um, and we're doing a lot of that

055work already. uh but it's continuing to grow that um coaching teachers on the responsible use of artificial intelligence and teach having them teach students how to use it responsibly as well as how to uh write um really good prompts. Um it's uh AI is not something like a search engine where we go to get information like we used to. It's an exchange. It's a conversational exchange in many cases. So teaching students how do you talk to a computer? How do you talk to AI conversationally? And we did a little bit about like about that tonight. um preparing students for a future with AI in both personal and professional life because whether it's uh whether it's here in in the Arlington School District, they're going to start to encounter it, especially uh at the secondary level.

056Um and then when they graduate, they're going to be expected to use it in the workplace. Um and in their professional life, many of our students are already starting to experiment with it or or interact with it. and then defining for our district what does the use of AI tools look like for students and educators and I think we're still working our way through that being that the technology is so new it's still emerging it's evolving as you saw uh through some of our demonstrations tonight uh but we want to start to craft a vision of of of what AI use in the classroom really looks like especially as that technology uh changes and evolves did you have any final thoughts John so uh at this time We're open to questions if you have any.

057>> Does anybody have any questions? >> I have some questions. Um, how did you determine how students were using AI currently? How did that information? >> Sure. Um, so I know John has done more qualitative sort of conversations with uh the curriculum leaders um his his directors that work under him. from the technology department standpoint, we started looking at the web filter data uh where students and staff are going uh using uh generative AI. So there's a category that we can turn on on the filter and we can see the analytics where the where the web traffic is going. Now what we don't have is what are they doing necessarily with it and that's where John talking to staff, talking to the directors that work under him, he can collect that qualitative data to give

058you the demonstrations and the examples that he gave tonight. uh but from on the back end of the system we can see uh significant amount of traffic both by staff and students going to use many of these tools and and some aren't even the mainstream chat GPT Gemini Microsoft copilot there there's even smaller tools that some of our staff members and students are are leveraging and going to which is why I think choice at this stage is really important >> yeah sure >> and I guess a similar question for the the slide about key expectations and regulations I guess my question is how were these developed and how were they disseminated to staff and students? >> I guess what I'm trying to get at which might be helpful to just say is how much because

059this was um this came from us, right? How much was this? Well, let's go figure out where we are. And how much of this was actually we're we've we're, you know, like are we surveying what people are spontaneously doing or are we in some ways um working with interested people and less interested people to develop a framework? >> Yeah, I don't >> think in a like in a structural way, but I am still interested in the key expectation regulation question. Yeah, I think that we we have to work towards a framework and that's where I think we're doing to develop what does AI use look like here in Arlington and our department more of an infrastructure sort of software standpoint work with the curriculum department and the leaders and the and the content coordinators and

060tech leaders to develop that. Um but what we have done is and I think this really goes back to the student handbook this year is that we really placed an emphasis in the handbook so that when students read through the handbook with their families that they understand that there is a responsibility for using artificial intelligence that it's not something that nobody knows what it is. Uh because a lot of families aren't familiar with artificial intelligence. They're not familiar with the term artificial intelligence. They're not familiar with AI. So outlining that and then uh putting it in the handbook, outlining some of the prohibited uses such as plagiarism or taking that content and making it your own. >> Yeah, I think to respond to the question a little bit the less so this year but more

061over the last couple years as AI has really entered our space there were a lot of concerns um around academic integrity. was the kids are going to use this to cheat. How are we going to know what to do? There's, you know, they're not even reading now. It's how are they if the computer can just print it for them? So, a lot of of these types of guidelines. More specifically, this now this isn't posted on classroom walls. This isn't, you know, in their student planners. It's this is there is language within our code of conduct and teachers have access to I know at the high school level they've put language like this into their syllabus or into their early documents that are communicated out to families. Um but that but we reached this in collaboration

062with a lot of our teacher leaders around this. How are we going to what's the line between creating an environment where people feel safe and supported to experiment with this? Because if this is the type of technology that if we're not open to and playing with it, we're going to be left behind in terms of our ability to respond to it and to quite frankly be literate in it. That's a big element of this. Um, so the key expectations and regulations, I mean, I I don't know exactly where the the the regulation piece comes from with that. We haven't we certainly haven't passed like a policy or anything along that but it's more I think that that language is specific to the code of conduct that there is there is explicit language within the code

063of conduct. We extended um in the academic integrity section the expectations around it. >> You know I I read that and honestly it feels a little I mean it's just a clause right? >> Yep. um including cheating and plagiarism through the use of art artificial intelligence. I I really am totally missing Mia. So um I was really hoping to ask her if she understood what expectations there are when she sits down because I do think that I know this from even my kids who are in college, you know, that there's this um sort of good expectation that you don't want to cheat, but you need use some of these tools for research and things. And I think helping them to understand like where's the process to help them understand where the where the line is.

064You know, cheating off of somebody's math homework was a very clear line. You knew you had crossed the line. when people are telling you there are appropriate uses for you to use this tool on this project that it becomes a little blurred when when you stop using the tool and or where your input to the to the external process. So I, you know, not to be critical, I just think that there's probably, you know, that's a good area to maybe have some work in, right? Um, >> yeah, I I I wouldn't I agree with you. I think and just to draw some parallels to what you're saying in terms of I I equate Mike and I were actually talking about this a little bit earlier this evening, some of it is the equivalent of like

065when the calculator became a very common tool in the classroom. There was a very similar response. you can't let kids use calculators. They're never going to learn how to do math and it's cheating if they're not solving it. If the calculator solving it, it's cheating. And um Mike drew the parallel of when the search engine became a thing. And and the response then was well, but if kids aren't going to the encyclopedia or going and taking the book off of the shelf, how are they? Um, so I would I agree and I think some of what we need to really think about is I would say that a lot of these conversations are happening in the classroom level with the classroom teachers who are framing their expectations around how their students are engaging um with

066the AI. And I I think some of it is there are some teachers who have really I don't want you to use it at all. And we see those teachers pivoting more towards ondemand in-class writing assignments. Um uh and then there's other teachers where it's let's the a lot of it has to do with the comfort level that the teachers have themselves have adopted. Now I recognize students don't transfer that from class to class. They're developing their own comfort level and some of what they're navigating is how does Mr. Orcut feel or Dr. Keely feel when I'm in front of them about how I'm engaging with AI. So I agree. I think we have to create some more consistent work around that. I agree as well. I was at a conference recently and uh one

067of the presenters said and they kind of presented this model uh uh for the schools that they work with uh human first artificial intelligence as a tool and then human end. So, human prompting, writing the uh the prompt or or or the problem that they want to solve, using the tool, the AI, to find a way to to the to to the problem that they're trying to solve or the issue that they're that's before them, but then taking a human lens again and and taking what the AI has output, using your critical thinking skills to make sure that there's truth in that information, that it's it's valid. um and then even crafting that information and refining it and massaging it uh whether it's through your critical thinking or writing skills to really make it your

068own at the end of the day. And that really resonated with me at that particular conference was that humans really play a key role in in utilizing this similar to other tools that we use in our daily lives. Um it's really the human uh it's the critical thinking, the human mind that really uh helps provide ownership of the of the information that we're owning at the end of the day or producing or showing to somebody whether it's a a teacher or um an evaluator of saying that this is what I created and this is how and I can show you how I was able to to reach that end. >> I see too much. First I saw Sophia, then I saw then I saw Donna. First of all, thank you so much for this presentation

069because it was very well done. It answered a lot of the questions that at least I had as a board member. So, I'm really appreciative of everything. I am going to agree with Marianne in the topic about specificity because what in these great examples that you gave us my observation on the side is that there is inequity because you have some teachers who are applying AI in ways that other teachers are not. So as you develop the next steps for the guidance or the policy, it will be important for those expectations to be equitable so that the kids have a similar experience and you don't have a cohort of kids that comes out of that class being a genius at AI and and others that are actually afraid of it. So I think that that's

070from an experience perspective I guess it will be important. And my second comment is for neurodeiverse students there are also very helpful tools that are coming out as products for for teachers to help with emotional regulation etc that I think will be worth for you to also look at because that part of the population has different needs obviously but they also AI has also developed some of the like the one that you were saying about learning you know how to pronounce or whatever emotional regul to be very it has been very well reviewed. >> So I think this kind of goes to um the first point that you made Sophia. If we're we're going to make this equitable, it's not only what the teachers are doing, but it's in my mind where the curriculum lies.

071So do you would you see a point where like every seventh grade student initi class or I think there's a like a technology class in middle school, right? Learns to write a prompt and and learns how that's done and then within then learns the more complicated things. This is when I use AI for research. This is when I bring myself into it and it becomes a formal education in the use of AI. Do you see that as something that we would be doing down the road? I >> I think that that's certainly something we can consider. Um and as Mike mentioned, there's the computer science and digital fluency standards that were actually published even pre-AI. So there's a level of um revision occurring within the states standards around this to incorporate AI into it. But

072something like that's a great example that we could I think the other piece to consider too some of some of the work that we have in front of us at the secondary level in particular is the blue ribbon commission and um as we look at the fairly recently released New York State Portrait of a Graduate and as the state continues to kind of drip feed information about what they're envisioning the secondary education experience to be like what you just described is a really good example of the type of experience that as a district we could say we want all of our students before they graduate high school to have an experience around this and know how to write a prompt and so that is work that we can define and fold into into that. >>

073So so my question actually is kind of along lines what you you mentioned Dr. was my experience with AI um is you can have a prompt you get information it may or may not be right the human needs to get involved so my question what's what's >> I I'm a ventriloquist as well so >> pretty pretty amazing right there you go there you go that's right >> are we so >> are we good >> he's in tears >> I believe it was Hey. Um, so, so I guess my concern was I'm thinking about younger children like I mean this these Gemini I can like this cute little child with their with their device, you know, talking to this computer second grader. I mean, do we know the computers tell that AI telling them something that's

074accurate? Are they giving them gibberish? Are they giving them, you know, I mean, you know, maybe I wonder if there is something that's that the school is purchasing and and has agreements with that. Maybe there are are guard rails or like you say, there's um, you know, curated content that the AI is is using. So, I guess that was my concern like how do we know that it's useful for a child that doesn't have the knowledge to assess whether it's useful or not? >> Yeah, I think that's a valid question. Um, I will share that when we looked at the analytics, our younger students are very rarely if ever using the AI. I mean, the numbers are in like probably double digits or single digits depending on the grade that you're looking at, especially like

075K through two. Um, but uh most of the AI right now, there's there's really no true guard rail. As John mentioned earlier, when the AI first came out, there was a lot more what they called hallucinations or false uh knowledge or data that it presents. It still does that from time to time. Um, it's getting better. Uh, but there's no company out there that right now that will put a true guard rail or say that ours is 100% accurate. The best thing that I think our educators can do is if they if they help build out like a Gemini gem for example where they're uh putting specific information or documents to have the AI learn off of in that they know is accurate. You basically the better information you put in the better output you'll

076get. uh they can curate some of those experiences to make sure that the information is typically more accurate because it's it's it's learning or training off of the data that they provided. But when we're talking about and you probably heard this in in the news, they refer to AI as large language models, which is like the entire internet. So you have everybody who's ever posted anything that's false and everything that's true. So it's trying to sort through a lot of that. uh the smaller the model or or or if you own the data uh and you provide those resources, you're typically going to get better answers out. So I think part of that is part of the discussion today and one of the next recommendations that we have is is helping our our staff understand

077how do you use AI and then start to model it so that they're leveraging it for more closed data models, closed data sets, specific to their uh curriculum, specific to their content and their classes so that students and teachers both can get more relevant or more accurate information. Jen, >> when the students >> You're not on, Jen. >> And you never will be here, Jeff. Oh, you got it. There we go. >> When the students um put information into a search engine now, if they put something in that's restricted, it doesn't come back. It blocks it. If they're using AI, does it also get blocked? >> The web filter should be blocking anything that's explicit. Um but with any web filter and even filtering before AI, there are things that sometimes get through. Uh we

078do have a mechanism where teachers and families alert us through our technology help desk ticketing system if there's something that they believe is inappropriate and then we take a closer look. We do have a way once we're made aware to manually block something. Um but typically if there was like an image being generated that a student shouldn't see, the filter is still filtering that content. It's still it's still blocking that. Yep. I was just curious at the secondary level, do you know if if um any or all were using grading AI that were grading written either papers or short answers to see if they you know my understanding and some things I've seen are they can they can run it to see if it is AI and they can also run it to see if

079it was a human typing it. Do we use things like that? We don't. And at most of the conferences I've been to, those systems are tend to be inaccurate. There's there's it's been talked about at a lot of the conferences and even the roundts locally that I've been at. Uh some districts that have purchased those products or tried to use them, uh they haven't found that they're completely accurate or a student is using AI for part of their research. um they have have interpreted and used critical thinking and really taken similar to like an old school Google search and and reynthesized that data and presented it that the it gets flagged uh as AI use but it's not truly AI use. Uh so it most districts are staying away from that. Uh what I will

080say is that I think our our faculty and our staff have found that if if you're using like a Google Docs document uh and you look at the history uh or the timeline of a document and you see that a document or let's just take an essay uh was created in a matter of two three seconds uh copy and paste it in. um they typically have that data or that analytical data to call out or have a conversation with a student to say, "Hey, something doesn't feel right here." Plus, our staff typically are getting to know our students, right? So, they know their style of writing. They often know their ability. So, if you're coming in with a dissertation style essay and and you and you're in eighth grade or ninth grade, teachers probably going

081to have a conversation to better understand how your writing improved essentially overnight or through through a project or assignment. Um, but no, we don't have any specific tool or program that we're buying and I probably wouldn't recommend it at this point just because of the things that I'm hearing from some districts that have tried to to do that. >> You know, to just follow up on that point you just made. Um, when you uh when you when you write I think I just lost my train of thought like here in real time. What's your name? >> Never mind. I think I'm good. I What? I can't think of what I was gonna say. Isn't that terrible? Um, I need my AI person. Um, my AI brain. Oh, well, we'll just let it I'm sure it'll

082come to me in two seconds when we move on, but sorry about that. >> I do want to just loop back. We have had um a tool for a while built into Google though uh to detect plagiarism which is still available to teachers and it's called originality reports. It's part of the Google Classroom suite that the teacher can use. >> Thank you because I remembered what I want to say. So, I'm going to say it super quick before I forget again. You know, as adults, what you hear in AI circles is you're now holding people to higher minimum standards because it's so easy to write a well-composed email or well composed letter. And I wonder how we're so um I would say the caliber of some of our letters coming from our community has increased.

083Um you know, and you say you say to yourself, hm, what are we what do we want? Like how I guess that's almost a philosophical question. Do we want the students to use AI to sort of this is what I'm saying? Can I say it better? And uh like I drafted this letter to Dr. Bante about X and I drafted the letter. It was my ideas. I really feel passionate about X and but I know that it's not perfect and that I'm not the world's greatest writer. So I take my draft and I throw it in and by golly, doesn't that turn out to say what I wanted to say just the way I wanted to say it? Now, are we considering that to be and and I don't expect you to have this answer,

084but they're the kind of questions you need to ask. Are we expecting that to be the the child's work? Like, are we counting that as the child's work? And so, are we instead looking for process? Are we saying to the child, what was your process? Where were your draft ideas? Where were your brainstorming ideas? Where did that go into a tool? You know, and then in the end, you want to put your best foot forward. the fact that you've hit polish or whatever, you know, um I'm just curious our kind of thought reflections on things like that. >> Yeah, I think we're still developing those thoughts, but what I will share is at some of the conferences that I've attended, there was an ELA teacher, and this really resonated with me when you were speaking.

085Um an ELA teacher, high school ELA teacher, longtime teacher was uh experimenting and using some AI in their classroom. And so what he did was he had a platform where the students were writing their college admissions essays uh and they were using AI to revise it. But the platform he was using had the ability for him to see their prompts as well as the revisions and then the additional prompts. uh he also shared at at the conference that he had also done uh they had read the book uh tale of twin cities and that similarly they were writing an essay or a book report to report back and uh and he could see all the prompting or the processes as you said um that they were doing so that you're seeing in real time almost

086their critical thinking and how the student is synthesizing the information that the AI is providing back. Uh, one of the members in the audience raised their hand and said, "Well, what is the difference between the way you used to do thing to the ways that you're doing it now? What's the big difference?" His takeaway was that he's seeing more revision than just typically like he would get the paper, hard copy in, mark it up, maybe with the red pen, give it back to the student, and they might do some edits uh, and hand it back. But what he said he was able to see which he thought was more valuable was the the critical thinking process of what they're writing into the AI, how their mind is thinking. And then he could help guide them

087uh maybe have you considered prompting it to do this or have you just considered uh crafting the essay slightly differently uh because of x y or z and I and that really resonated with me that the human factor is still there. Uh so I think back to the the the original question was what what are we doing here? I don't think we've we've flushed that out quite yet, but this particular ELA teacher that was doing a presentation, he is starting to think in that way, I think, that you were alluding to is is are we evaluating just the end product, but also the process or how we get there. >> That's an excellent explanation. And but what's interesting to me about that is the other thing we were hearing is that college admissions officers are

088really looking hard at whether or not your essay's been written by AI. So the fact that in the end what got you know PDFed to a school that method might have actually been detrimental to the child because they're not seeing all the prompts they're not seeing necessarily all the work behind the scene. They are seeing something which probably turned out pretty pretty darn perfect. Right. So, you know, um I don't know, it's interesting what who was who was at um convention when they they said one of the colleges put out a prompt that said um put your put put why put put into like chat DBT why you think you would be a great fit for this um university and then generate the outcome and then do an essay that is a critical analysis of

089what it said about you. So, it's interesting how they're trying to kind of everybody's trying to find this the way to find the truth, right? Everybody's hunting for the Holy Grail, you know, and um which is is the child showing up in the work, right? So, it's it's a lot of interesting thoughts to go through. >> Yeah. I will say from we had hired a couple positions over the summer due to some attrition and people leaving within our department and the resumes and cover letters looked really good coming in. So on paper it's getting harder to figure out if a candidate is good until you really get them in front of you and human aspect talk to them. >> And did you use AI to screen the candidates? >> We did not. No. >> Lots

090of places too. Right. >> But that that is where industry is heading. In fact, in private sector, what I'm seeing is a lot of um industries are using AI similar to what I presented, interactive avatar, some sort of a chatbot or interactive avatar to screen the candidates first and then, you know, funnel that off to the HR departments looking over at Hillary. >> Does anybody have anything else? >> Well, thank you very much. Um, I guess we'll wait to see how this evolves over time. Thanks, M. Here we are. Um, moving on to budget development for the 2627 school year. >> Just wanted to share with the board that uh Kevin and I have worked to develop this draft or overview of how we anticipate processing through the budget development process. So, it's here for

091your reference. As you know, I'd ask that you just uh remain flexible because we do usually make some tweaks or modifications as things come up through budget development, but this is a a working draft of how we envision entering into the discussion with the board starting in January. >> Thank you. Does anybody have any questions about the draft calendar for boards, board development, budget development? My goodness, I need a little button. I need a button that makes me perfect. That's what I need on my thing. I think Devon, I need a little I need a little correction button. Okay, moving on. Um, uh, where are we? Our new business new business. Our new business section of the agenda lists several items for individual resolution approval. Documentation concerning these items have been provided to our board

092members in advance to assure an extensive and thorough review. Item B, approval of an international trip. >> So moved. >> Thank you. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstensions. Motion passes. Item C, approval of overnight trip. >> Can I get a motion, please? >> I'm sorry. So move. >> Thank you. Thank you. Um, any discussion? Looks like uh seeing none. All those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Item D, um, certified administrative lead. Can I please get a a motion? >> Thank you. Any discussion? >> Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Item E, civil service abolishment of position. Can I please get a motion? >> Thank you. Thank you. All those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Item

093F, civil service creation of a position. Could I please get a motion? >> Thank you. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Item G. Uh, can I please get a motion a memorandum of understanding between um Pauling and Arlington? >> Thank you. Thank you. Any discussion? >> Certainly. >> I I think it's pretty well articulated in the resolution, but I'll just elaborate that sometimes uh smaller school districts may only have one student competing in a particular sport. Uh and that's the case here. uh polling has a swimmer uh and thus they can't form a team. Uh so they'll reach out to larger school districts to see if they would allow uh uh for that student to engage in practices and attend meets uh with a larger

094team uh not on behalf of of Arlington as a Pauling student uh in in this case. And uh given the way that swimming uh is organized, this student uh is competing as an individual uh in in in events or is anticipated to. So um trying to be good partners here uh with another local school district who sometimes need our support uh so their students can engage in uh activities that they really care about. So that's what's happening here. >> Thank you. Any questions, discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? >> I opposed. Motion passes. Item H, memor of understanding between Duchess County Board of Behavioral and Community Health and Arlington. Can we please get a motion? >> Thank you. Thank you. Any discussion? >> Just note you previously approved this uhou. However, uh I believe

095there was a name change uh at the county level uh for the county department of behavioral and community health. So the agreement has to be modified uh which is really for uh disaster planning um or emer advanced emergency planning. This would allow our facilities to be utilized with our permission if needed by the county. >> Thank you. Um all those in favor I >> opposed abstension. Motion passes. Um item I pathfinder executive coaching contract. Can I please get a motion? >> Thank you. Thank you. Any discussion? >> Yes, please. >> I'll try to continue to be concise. Uh the board approved previously a mentoring arrangement with Paul Finch, uh whom you're familiar administrators and that's been I think going fairly well. However, it brought forth a question on a part of few of our tenur

096administrators regarding executive coaching support that had previously been in place uh but had not been arranged uh at least over the course of the last year since I've been here. Uh so I appreciate uh my colleagues holding me uh accountable for providing that type of support and uh this contract does so again for tenur uh uh principles in the district. Any discussion or questions? Seeing none, all those in favor? >> I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Um item J, the second reading of policies with revisions. Um can I and there's a whole list of them there. Can I please get a motion? >> So move. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Item K, poly sec policy second reading without revisions. Um,

097can I please get a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um, any discussion? >> Just a really quick Thank you so much to your committee and to Fran because this is so much easier. >> Fran is amazing >> on those of us that are not part of your committee. It's it's made it a lot more pleasant. So appreciate that. It's unanimous. Okay. All those in favor? >> I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. That moves us on to the business consent agenda. Our consent our consent section of the agenda lists several items for approval by a single motion. Documentation concerning these items have provided to our board members in advance to assure an extensive and thorough review. May I please get a motion on the consent agenda? >> So move. >>

098Thank you. >> Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? >> I >> opposed abstensions. Got to say it out loud. >> Okay. Thank you. Um motion P. Motion passes with one abstension. I saw you raise your hand, but it it's a it's a vocal vote. Um thank you. I think we captured it though. >> Um, are we comfortable? Okay. Um, that moves us on to future discussion items. Um, we don't have any to clear from previous meetings. And does anybody have anything they like to propose at this time? Seeing none, moving on. We know we don't we still don't have any public comment, right? No for our second section. So that moves us quickly along to committee reports um advocacy. Um um just no meeting is scheduled. Um just a couple

099dates for into the new year in February. Just people want to have it in their mind. There'll be plenty of reminders. In terms of advocacy, uh, NISPA presents us with a couple opportunities to, um, interact with legislators. Uh, there's a virtual capital conference on Friday, February 6th. And then the following week on Wednesday, February 11th, there's an in-person lobby day. Some of us may or may not depending on calendars be traveling up to um Albany for that day to actually some of our legislators. So there'll be more on that but that's just something that came across our air. You might have seen that in Bob Schneider's address or something. So just pointing it out. >> Um I'll leave the um Maybe maybe Fran we can add the the February 6th we can get you details

100the February 6th virtual capital conference because and then we'll leave the other piece to the advoc advocacy committee to decide who's going to go what they're going to do but but that virtual capital conference is is act well it's you know it's easy you sit at home and you watch it but it's excellent used to be in person but now it's um so that's something that that anybody who wants that kind of knowledge um is and we can talk at some point about what type of like you say, you will get a lot of information on it, but it's usually pretty interesting, right? >> Yeah. No, it is. It's a good opportunity to get caught up. >> Um, thank you. I like to put things on people's calendar so if they want to, it doesn't,

101you know what I mean? >> They can plan ahead. Um, next is audit. Donna, >> so we've had nothing since our last meeting. Uh, but Kevin Sheldon tells me we will be meeting before our next board meeting in January. Uh two things we'll be talking about our corrective action plan for the audit. There was one item that needed to be addressed and uh we will need to pick a topic for the internal audit. >> Okay, great. >> Um Kathy, >> uh we met last Wednesday. um administration gave over stop uh gave us some ideas uh about some projects using uh our capital reserve and they'll be presenting that to the full board um in January. >> Excellent. Okay, thank you. Um policy. >> Oh, our next meeting is tomorrow 3 p.m. >> Okay. All right.

102Moving on to organization reports. Um, Arlington Education Foundation. >> Uh, nothing new since our last meeting. Our next Jan our next our next meeting is in January. >> Good. >> Okay. Um, Duchess County School Boards. >> I'm going to defer to Yeah. Those of you that were in attendance. >> Yeah. We we had a nice dinner and meeting with our colleagues. Twice a year. They do an in-person event for the Duchess County School Boards Association. Um, Patrick Longo from um NISBA presented. Is this last name? >> And um And uh so thank you to Justice County School Boards for hosting that. Um we we ran a little late. We didn't get a Boseies update except for happy holidays to everyone. So I'll pass that along. Um PTA PTSA council. I went to Oh, uh January

10328th I went to the PTA council meeting. Um uh you know, they're always very interesting. The one thing I wanted to pass on I think might be of interest is to mark on your calendars. And I'll give you this date. I'll send you this date, too. Um, February 28th is the um, it's a Saturday. It's the science fair. It's the math, science, and technology fair at the expo at the high school. Um, I I'm not available on on that Saturday, but uh, I used to love to be a judge or a listener. Listeners to younger kids, judges for older kids. The science fair, the projects then go on can go on to the Duchess County Science Fair. So, if that's something you're interested in, it's just the morning. It's like 9 to 12 on Saturday

104morning. Um, and you would go to mstfair.com and you can sign up as a volunteer and and one of the ways you can volunteer is to be a listener or a judge. So if that appeals to you, you can use that mechanism. Um, >> so so that's an actually an excellent question. That's an excellent question. So for the younger kids, what you are is a listener and it's a science fair and you walk up and you just talk to them about what they did. They have their board. It's it's a wonderful experience. I I worked on it for a lot of years. For the older children, I think this year they said they're they're actually kind of um rejuvenating it a little bit. They're um they're going to actually have training for the people who

105do the judging for the science level projects in part because they want them to to help them if there's tweaks they can do to perform better at the Duchess County Fair. They want to help them with, you know, if they've delineated their scientific process correctly, that sort of thing. So, they want to make sure, do I have that kind of right? Peanut gallery. >> Okay, thank you. And, um, you know, we have PTA pina gallery here. Thank you very much. But, um, so, uh, so there's opportunities to just to go and then and then honestly, you can just go, but if you were just going to go, it might be fun to be a listener. It's very fun to to listen to the young children. So, um, and, uh, maybe what I'll try to do

106is I'll try to incorporate when I communicate to Fran the date and time of it, the the the place you log in to sign up as a volunteer and then they'll reach out with details and such like that. Um, district health and safety. >> Okay. Equity team, uh, we had a meeting last Thursday. Um there's, you know, this time of year there's a lot going on around the district in terms of equity and trying to support families. Um so I'm not going to go through all of them, but I I do want to just um tell you about you for last year and this year, you already heard about the coat drive at Westro and um from that they invited Arthur May to come in with them and the the um at at Art May

107thought that traveling to West Road may be a burden for their families. So, they decided to do their own drive. Um, and they were supported by West Road. West Road was able to give them some codes. They were able to get codes donated from within their own community and um they were able to do a successful drive um for well they're they're doing a drive with um during parent teacher conferences. So, just you know they in in those meetings the share out they hear one thing from one school and it becomes the book clubs have grown and um now supporting the families have grown so I wanted to let you know about that um the meeting itself was a lot of time was spent again on um looking at the liberation mindset that comes from

108the book that we all have um overcoming the achievement gap trap and just really trying to define that and understand what that mindset looks like because that needs to really be the foundation of the equity work that we do. >> Thank you. Um, that brings us to superintendent's closing remarks. >> Sorry, I'm just writing something down. >> That's a reminder. Uh, I just wanted to mention Marian for advocacy and I invited Maryanne to this, but I'm wondering I should have probably invited you. We're meeting with Assembly person Barrett and State Senator Hinchi to talk about the building project at West Road and it is an advocacy matter. So, I'll be sure to include you on the meeting invite. It's uh and I realize this is late, but it's the 18th in the afternoon >> of

109December. >> Yep. It's coming up at 3 o'clock over at Westro. So, I'll include you on the invite, but >> Okay. >> If you can attend, great. Uh we'll have the architects there, Kevin and I, and we'll just talk a little bit about the project and some legislation we're looking for them to introduce as part of the state budget that will allow us to maximize our state aid on the project and there is a precedent for that. >> I knew that that was >> Yeah, we've talked about it before, but I >> Okay. Um >> Thank you. >> that meeting has somewhat it's on my calendar, but it seems like a week from now seems like years from now. Uh I also just wanted to note that uh the board may have seen advertise the

110uh public hearing I think it's the zoning board meeting for the Lrange Town Center project uh which is being held at Lraange Middle School. They needed a space that was big enough uh to accommodate the audience that they're expecting. We're not affiliated with the event in any way, but again uh the town officials have gone through the use of facility process for that. Uh but I believe and Jeff and I were talking about this coming in. I I think it's tomorrow night and that if any board member is interested in attending just not as a necessary but I think Jeeoff you said you may go. I cannot I have a conflict with a school event. Um but I just wanted to raise your awareness around that. It does give um me because I had the

111opportunity to talk to the clerk uh there who was wonderful about the event and just some of the other projects that are proposed in Lraange. And I'll just say I'm glad we're doing another enrollment study uh because she talked through some of the projects that's just in the town of Lraange that have been proposed uh and and the scope of those and the timelines and that's why we do an enrollment study just to capture all of that and that's just the town of Lraange. Uh town of Pikipsy, you know, has its own and uh the other townships will as well. So, we're doing right uh by engaging in that study and that'll capture the work that's currently on the books throughout the district and I'm interested to see what we'll find uh by the end

112of the year. Lastly, uh some point along the way, uh you've had a couple of uh I've alluded to a bus electrification feasibility report. We finally received the draft of that report. Uh we're just reviewing it and then we'll share with the board uh the implications of that uh in the near future. But we got our draft which we've been waiting for. It's taken a little time. Uh so that's in Kevin's hands and uh he's reviewing it. I'll review it and then if there's there's a little bit of an exchange if we feel like they've missed anything. Uh but assuming not we'll we'll have it to the board and then we'll set up some time to discuss might be a cow maybe a discussion item on a regular meeting. I'll work with Maryanne on that.

113>> Nothing else. >> Okay. >> Oh, one last thing. Oh, >> sure. >> Because I forgot at the beginning. Yeah. Uh for those of you who went to the NISSBA conference, we heard uh Scott Levy present on why school boards matter. He was one of the opening presentations. Uh Fran and I had debriefed after uh the conference and I thought Scott was great. He's a school board member down in Westchester somewhere. Uh had I thought a really uh poignant uh keynote or opening. Uh so Fran went ahead and coordinated ordering the books for all of you. So, uh, you know, maybe a a shared reading at some point, uh, when things are less busy during the school year, but for now, uh, we wanted to make sure you each had a copy. So, thank you,

114Fran, uh, again for coordinating that. >> Thank you very much. Um, that's great. That moves us on to board reflections. >> Sophia, >> um, I was able to attend the the DCS um, school board, the the dinner that we attended, and I just wanted to share the topic that was covered. It was neurodyiversity and it was given by an individual who themselves they are um part of the population and it was a very um it it changes when somebody that is talking about the experience is the experience >> it's not academic it's not preaching it's like this is how I live things and I think that brings authenticity to the to the topic and it was a good reflection for me personally to continue to be educated about the symptoms And some of these symptoms

115are not seen. They are invisible or people choose not to share. And yet our environment sometimes is not conducive to help them get through what we normally the neuro, you know, typical people that we are that we get through and we listen to things and we can understand and we can read. And it it was just a very good moment of reflection for me as an individual. And I think making not only schools, I know this this our district does a phenomenal you know um work on this area and I think it was more about like the community and the families around and how can we further educate them so that it becomes not only an experience of kids at school that is it's beneficial but also outside in the community. So I thought it

116was very instructional. It's a little long but it was good. >> Thank you very much. Does anybody else have any U two things I think I get confused when we don't meet >> I know >> regularly but we did do the national honor society induction a bunch of us >> were there um so >> here we go another year of kids doing wonderful things for their community >> um and appreciate that and then another shout out um to the ATA um used to be a functioning member of that Now, as a retiree, I get to visit the children's holiday party as Graham and just every year I'm wowed by the experience. We move from building to building and each building puts their own spin on the whole idea. Um, but it's just it's a great

117community builder for the the people that um have children in that particular age group. was at Veil Farm uh last week and it was it was great. So, just shout out to that. >> Thank you very much, Jeff. >> I want to wish my daughter happy 18th birthday. >> Oh, snaps to her. That's great. Yeah. Wow, that's a big one. >> That's a big one. >> Did she run out and buy a lottery ticket? >> I'm sorry. >> Did she run out and buy a lottery ticket? >> Not yet. can try to >> I don't know what else you can vote. Of course, you can register to vote. Excellent. Um, anybody else reflections? >> Seeing none, um, can I please get a motion to adjurnn? Thank you. >> Thank you. All those in favor? I

118>> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes.