Board of Education Meeting 9/30/25

001Jeff hate >> here. >> Sophia Bonhales >> here. >> Donna Logan is absent. Maryannne Meen >> here. >> Eileen Snook >> here. >> Marian Quinn >> here. >> 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. Can I please get a motion for the approval of tonight's agenda? >> Some moved. >> Thank you. Thank you. Um, any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstensions. Motion passes. Correspondents. I don't have any correspondence to share today. Does anyone else have any correspondence they'd like to share today? >> Thank you. Board President remarks. Um, I I don't really have much. Welcome. We have a nice little audience today. It's always nice to see people

002in person and hello to people at home. Um I just want to make one comment that this weekend is the um athletic hall of fame >> event and uh championed by our own Dave Goddard who was on the you know he's certainly our athletic director but he's near and dear to our hearts because he was on the board with us for years and um so we welcome I think he's going to be around this weekend. We welcome him back and thank him for his efforts always on behalf of Arlington. Um that's really all I have tonight. Dr. Bronte. >> Thank you Mrs. M. Yes. And if you have the opportunity to stop by or attend part of the Hall of Fame recognition, having attended several times over the years, it's really a nice uh part

003of um uh our community and and and a glimpse into a part of our history. Often each of the inductees has an opportunity to speak uh share a little bit about the people who had a positive influence on their lives. Uh obviously as it relates to athletics, often their families are there. It's a really nice event. Uh it's wellrun and um I'll be there. Uh so hopefully I'll see a few of you there as well. Uh welcome again to those who are in attendance. Uh and a reminder to the board that our next meeting will be at the Arthur S. May school um as we start our our grand tour of the schools throughout Arlington. Uh and I want to thank those members of the board who have RSVPd for our school visit to Arthur

004SME uh which will be on October 9th. And just a reminder that it's a subtle change uh to how we've structured uh the process for visiting the schools in the past where we're inviting board members if your schedule allows uh to uh do a walkthrough of the school uh prior to the board meeting. Um granted this one's a few days prior to the board meeting and uh we'll see how this goes first time around, but I think uh it'll go well. I just wanted to thank Jeff and the facilities committee as well as the staff at Overlook who welcomed us to see their new geothermal system uh earlier last week and I'll leave it to Jeff to share more later this evening about the facilities committee update. I don't want to uh uh hop on

005that agenda item, but it was a really nice visit to the school and uh I think all who were involved gleaned a lot around that uh how the geothermal system works uh within the school and I know I've spoken before about the appreciation that we have for the collaborative relationship uh we have with each of our labor associations and uh one of uh which is the Arlington Teachers Association. Uh we were notified by their president, Bob Meyer, uh two weeks ago that the NICS president uh so the state uh union president uh Melinda Pson would actually be in the area and visiting. Um and Bob coordinated a nice visit uh to uh to Arlington High School and some of the programs that we have there. Uh he invited uh me to attend. Uh Mrs. Roberto

006joined me in that and it was great just to connect with uh the nice president and also let Mr. Meyer take the lead in hosting a school tour uh to see some of our programs which are uh quite extensive and um uh Mr. Meyer did a great job featuring Arlington and Arlington High School in particular on that on that visit. Uh I think I'm on in just a little bit again so I'll conclude my remarks there. Thank you Mrs. Be. >> Sure. Thank you. And now me our exeicio student board member. Would you like to make a report tonight? >> Sure. So this week is not only homecoming week, but it's also spirit week. So today we showed our school spirit by wearing an outfit from any decade that you wanted and we called it

007throwback Tuesday. It was super fun. And we are preparing for our pep rally and homecoming football game this Friday followed by our homecoming dance on Saturday which is a huge fundraiser for student government. So we're very excited about that. Thank you. Mia, I I I'm going to be at homecoming. I was talking to a student today and I heard there may be a tugof-war. Is that true? And who is the tugof-war between? >> So, at the pep rally, we are doing a big tugof-war game and each grade goes up against each other and then the winning grade goes up against a team of teachers. >> That sounds like lots of fun. Thank you so much. Does anybody have any questions for me at this time? or do you have any questions for us at all?

008Okay, thank you. Um, public comment. Do we have anyone for public comment? >> There's no public comment tonight. >> Okay. Did and I don't know if anybody who came in knew that we have signups for public comment. Um, I'll just give you a moment if there's something you're interested in if you would like to speak. Um, your is is there anybody that would like to speak? Either there's two sections of public comment. Seeing none. Okay, we'll move on. Thank you so much. Uh reports and discussions. Um our goals update. >> That's okay. Uh I'll ask Devon just to bring it up. We thought this might display a little bit bigger and really based on what I heard from the uh board uh based on your feedback at our last meeting. There's two adjustments that I

009made to the district goals. And uh the first was just uh inserting in one of the goals as it relates to a plan for supporting new teachers that should read down new teachers and administrators in anticipation that we're going to have uh quite a bit of turnover uh on the of our teaching staff over the next several years having a more thorough plan of support in place for their transition into the district but also including our administrators and part of that process. So uh that's one of the adjustments that we made. And then the most substantive uh adjustments were made to goal five uh here. And Devin, if it's possible, I don't know if this is too much, if we can zoom in on uh the fifth goal at all. I'll let you work with

010that. Otherwise, I'll just speak to it while maybe you're playing around, but I I think the gist, and this may have been lost on my part in the message, we have a range of programs and systems in place in Arlington that are aimed at supporting our kids and and helping our kids meet success. And there are plenty of signs that we see uh that these programs are working or that these systems are working. Uh but we also see plenty that suggest that maybe these programs are um uh or systems are not having their desired uh effect. Uh so goal five is aimed at further assessing this more thoroughly assessing that through this school year and having a plan in place for next school year. So, I I really rewrote the goal uh and I tried

011to uh in the hopes of having more clarity or providing greater clarity not just to the board but to the district because these are district goals on the work that we're going to be engaged in through this school year. >> Does anyone have any questions? Oops, my bad. >> Does anyone have any questions for Dr. Bante in regard to the goals? Sophia >> on number four. I think we already discussed this in our meeting in July and it was about the composition of the demographics of our students and how the teachers demographic composition reflects or not that. >> So then when we say the most the mo most the most highly qualified candidates >> like that you're taking that into account. Yeah. So, Mrs. Roberto provided a staff a staff snapshot tongue twister uh to

012the board as part of the retreat and I know you know that. I'm only reiterating that just for anybody who would be watching. Uh which and we discussed uh ideally uh our staff is truly by in by way of demographics reflects our student population. Um and Hillary provided an overview of some of the strategies that we employ in an attempt to do that. Um, and we've had some success, uh, but we also realize there's a lot of room to grow there. Uh, and that continues to be a focus through our hiring process. Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Anybody else? >> I just have one comment. When um the developing of a plan just so that we're all on the same page. So, is it um is it a moment of presentation to the board? >>

013It will be. Okay. That's what we planned. >> Okay. All right. So yeah, >> plan to present the plan. >> Right. Right. Right. Well, I I knew that you would create one. I wasn't sure if it was sort of a product or a So, it is some sort of a product. >> Absolutely. And John, Hillary, Regina, and I I've already started to meet on this and and develop the structure for uh for that. Um not only the plan, but then we can convert that to a report to the board later this school year. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Anybody else? All right, then. So, are are we gonna um incorporate these by resolution? >> So, it's funny. I was wondering about that prior to the meeting because I couldn't recall from last year. Do we

014usually do so uh at the follow-up meeting? I um we may have >> I think we're we were still iterating on it. So, I think it's perfectly fine if we just put it on the next one. >> That's fine. >> Yeah. I'm not gonna Yeah, that works. If that's good with everybody. Um Okay, >> great. >> Thank you. >> And at this, right? Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh so as you may recall, one of our board members had wanted to hear more as part of a discussion item related to food insecurity and some of the supports that we have in place uh for our students and their families throughout the district. So uh Mark Hicks is here. Mark's our director of food services. And I'd invite Mark to come on up to the podium uh while

015Devon loads uh Mark's presentation to provide a broad overview uh on some of that work in the district and then we'll open it up to discussion. >> Thank you. And I'm gonna move out of the way. >> Are I Do we decide if you're in the way? We're actually trying to test. >> I was just going to use see better. >> Yeah. No, that's good. >> Okay. >> I'm just trying, you know, we're tweaking how we're set up. So, I was just trying to see. Yeah. No, that's good. >> Welcome. >> Good evening, board. Um, I know there's a lot of questions uh surrounding what's become known as universal free meals, although that's sort of a misnomer. It's not named that. It's called community eligibility provision. It's the same program we've always run. It's just

016a different way of uh tracking and feeding the students under the categories that the USDA provides. Um it's a meal service option uh that allows breakfast and lunch to no cost to all students. Is not no cost to us, it is no cost to all students. Um, this relieves the burden of uh discrepancies in the students daily when they come through the lunch line, who pays, who doesn't, who can afford to eat, who can't, and it goes a long way to relieving a lot of that insecurity and and pressure that a child may feel during the day. Uh, previously, C, as it's known, was an option. You either ran the National School Lunch Program that was enacted back in 1946. It's been around that long. Or you applied for C. Coming out of the pandemic,

017we tried twice to apply for C. Because the uh economic pressures and damage that community had gone through, we thought there'd be enough demographic qualifying for that program. We got turned down twice. Finally, a consultant from state ed recommended we form a group of schools that we thought might qualify. And this goes back to uh I want to say 2023 coming out of the pandemic, the official end of the pandemic as the governor referred to as back to normal. And we were able to get six schools to qualify. Um the remaining schools could not qualify. It was weighted in such a way that one side of the district could take advantage of the program, the other side couldn't. But we took what we could get and we decided to run with it. And we addressed

018the board back then and the board came to the decision that we would run the program and then reassess it and see where it went. Well, before we could do that, the governor then stepped in and said universal free meals, otherwise known as C and the rest of the programs will now be mandatory. So, it's not an option anymore. Previously, we could opt out of C even if we started it by writing a letter to state ed and saying we don't want to participate. Um, so now we have to make sure that all the buildings can offer two free meals a day. This is a great way to address food insecurity because now at least during the school year, we can guarantee that students are getting two free meals a day. And what does that

019mean? Well, it means we're not getting too far inside baseball. There's a new way of calculating. In the old days, the old days being last year, I guess things move, right? Um, if you were, are you familiar with this form? This is the USDA application for free meals that a student's family would fill out and based on their income, there's a graph in here, based on their income level, they would have been deemed eligible or ineligible. Um, that's changed. The program no longer requires a family to fill out anything because now we have mandated that every student is to receive two up to two free meals a day at their discretion. Not required to take it but we encourage them. Um so now um the state has shifted to something called ISP. This is relevant

020unfortunately for programs that are very important to the school district called title one funding and foundation aid but it's no longer required for families to fill out. We have decided to post it online and offer it in the buildings and encourage people to fill it out because we feel that it's going to be required at some point that we need these numbers for various other forms of funding. It's not just about school lunch. Um, and going forward, we're now mandated to do this regardless of income, regardless of demographics. It doesn't matter anymore. Um, how does that work? Well, the USDA establishes guidelines. And these guidelines of eligibility are still in effect for our departments to get reimbursed for those meal costs. So, we're like in a catch 22. Yes. Yes. It's all free without restrictions,

021nothing to fill out, but then we still need this information. So, we don't know where that's going to go yet. State hasn't provided a lot of good direction on that. Um, currently we have rolled out as the first day of school, all buildings are providing these free meals. Um, last year 32% of the student population received two free meals a day. 32% of the enrollment, which meant that 68% of the students did not. So, you qualified as free based on your parents filling this out. You got free meals. If you didn't qualify for this, you had to pay out of pocket, which is this my school bucks program, if you're familiar with the debit banking program that is offered. Um that is flipping now because the governor's promise to pay for this is that she

022will reimburse or state not her the state will reimburse the difference. And without getting too far into it, um last year $2.5 million of my budget, my department's budget came from reimburseable meals, money from the USDA. The other $2 million came from incremental sales and kids that had to pay for their meals 100%. So we have a 40 $4,600,000 budget this year, which is probably not correct because the budget was done not knowing about 100% C. Budgets are done beforehand. Um, so based on our experience during the pandemic, this will be very popular. the universal free meal program will appeal to a lot of families. There will still be families that wish to provide their own meals and so forth through the dietary restrictions and so forth. Um that's okay. Um we offer the program.

023Um if you look at the the chart forward Hey Mark, there's a clicker there. Did we turn that on for you? Just say Yep. There you go. Let me go back. So, the definition is the meal service option for school food authorities, which is my state ed title. Okay, I'm your food service director, but when I when I deal with state ed, I'm called the SFA. I don't know why. Um, that's just what the name they have for it. Um, it's a meal service option to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all students without the burden of collecting household applications. The goal was to a strong effort to address food insecurity throughout the state regardless of demographics. It removes the stigma of incomes for families within the district. It doesn't matter anymore what

024your income level is. Everybody's going to get fed. Um, it's no longer an option. It was an option in the past, but because the governor mandated it, we no longer can just back out. We have to participate. We are authorized to do this until June 30th, 2029. We filed, Kevin and I filed for a four-year program. There was no other option at the time, but um the USDA is not the same as the state ed. The USDA governs this program. State Ed administers it. So the state ed and and USDA are not on the same page all the time. So we took the four-year option. Um universal free meals, just for background, that comes from Senator Gillibbrand and and Senator um Sanders have been trying to get universal free meals pushed through Congress at the

025federal level for many years. It's not a new thing. We were successful during the pandemic rolling that out, but as soon as the pandemic was officially labeled as ended, those programs went away and returned to normal. Uh, in the past, we identified students for need by having their families fill out this form and based on the number of people in the household and the income level, they would either qualify or they wouldn't qualify. Um the USDA at that time had a 40% target for C which meant that 40% of the kids could qualify the whole district could go C. It was lobbyed and lobbyed and lobbied and went down to 25%. It's called 25% identified student percentage. What does that mean? Well, they now no longer require this. They take the state roles from SNAP,

026supplemental nutritional programs, Medicaid, migrant homeless, runaways, etc. And they're in the state database and that is vetted and documented. That comes through like 60 in this area, 60 Market Street. That's where all those services come from in Doug County. Those numbers are then to the statewide database and we download it from the state computer. Um it's called the direct certification matching process. We do that every Friday. We only have to do it three times a year. We do it every Friday because our experience during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic because there was very transient flow of population. Maybe not noticeable so much but there was a definite amount of migration and you know ingration back into out of the building. So, why it's important is regardless of economic standing, all these kids

027can eat for free twice a day, breakfast and lunch. Um, currently roughly 32% of the population would qualify on the old program. We're making the leap to 100% of students. Um, our enrollment right now as this morning was 7,641 students. >> Excuse me. Can you do the PowerPoint as you're talking? >> It's right there. Can you see it? >> Yeah, I could see it. But are you on the right page? >> Thank you. >> Copy. I'm sorry. Um, that was what we just discussed about the population. >> The revenue source for this comes from the USDA and state ed. Uh the budget impact is currently we don't take money out of the district budget for school lunch. We don't know what that'll look like in a year or two. Um if you look at that

028blue chart, it talks about the pros and cons of C. The pros are it eliminates the stigma for students in economic need. Um there was some discrimination factor to the old program. You were either a kid who could afford to buy your meals or you had to eat the standard lunch. And you may or may not know, but Arlington had quite a extensive lunch program more than a typical school district would. It's a very strong effort to address food insecurity at the school level. You know, we can guarantee that these students will eat twice a day or at least be offered two meals a day. The cons, we're sort of stuck in the middle between state ed and USDA. We don't know what the regulations and the final acts are going to be. We're working

029on our best best uh educated guess. This is going to put a strain on the current workforce. We're currently a department of 65 people. Um, we project we will need an additional 7 to 12 part-time employees to meet the need of producing these meals and moving the children through the line quickly and efficiently. Costs are going to escalate. If you do groceries, you're well aware of this. And as the demand hits, um I don't know exactly how many school districts in the state last year were C, but there are 730 districts in the state and even half of them were C. This is an enormous sudden increase on the supply chain and it could cause issues. We should be aware of that. The supply chains are already falling in and out of certain items which

030could be predictable. It's an unfunded mandate at this point. We cannot find any real information about where this money is going to come from. Just to show you how it works. In the past, a paid student that got a meal, we would only get 40 cents, let's say, from the USDA. Okay? The state didn't have to chip in for that. Now, because of what's called price equity, the state has to chip in the missing money between what the free children are getting, the $444. Basically, for every child now that wasn't free before, the state is on the hook for $4 a meal. That makes sense. Um, so we have to adjust our thinking. Um, if you look at only six schools doing it last year, we were able to shift resources, inventory, move it around

031the district. Staffing, we can move it around the district. Um, but now that every building is attached to this program, we have to make sure we can cover every building every day. So far so good, but it's early in the year. Um, what did we do in anticipation of this? Um, based on our experience during the pandemic and the offering of Universal free lunch. I don't think you need to know what that is. So, what we did, we have what's called a reserve funds. Reserve fund program is our attempt every year to break even, not to cost the district money, but not to make money off the backs of families. Any money we do make, we put into a reserve fund. The treasurer does. out of that reserve fund over the last two years. We

032built all this uh new equipment. We purchased new equipment. We purchased new delivery vehicles to make sure we could move inventory around the district. Um we have three very large receiving freezers. If you haven't seen them, there's two of them on the back of the high school and one up at Arthur May. And they are used to take in large shipments. We take in 18 wheelers of chicken, beef, cheese, all kinds of products, and then we use our delivery vehicles to move them around the district. Um, and we updated the point of sales system, registers, cash registers, and we provided scanners at every station. We're trying to find ways, we know we're going to have to move a lot more children more effectively through the system, and we worked on that. And along the way,

033we also keep up the training programs and all the different certifications that are needed throughout the year for uh my staff. How are we going to solve some of these problems is we use a software program called Neutriids. And Neutriids we can track down to a slice of cheese all the inventory in the district. And we have a courier in my department who's many years employed by the district and he's very good um who helps move inventory out of those big receiving freezers and out of individual buildings and transfer it to another kitchen as needed. And we do that every morning so that each kitchen can meet its needs because we can't always predict what what the children are going to really want to eat that day. We may have it on the menu. They

034may say, "Yeah, I want that." But when they get in the lunch line, they want a sandwich. So, we have to be able to be flexible. Um, we're working uh with all the vendors and the buyers uh to find um fresh things every day. We're under the restriction of what's called buy USA. We can't be bringing in Canadian produce or Mexican produce or whatever. We have to take what what we can find. And we do that by knowing what time of year it is, who's online. California's coming online with produce. Great. We'll buy California produce, New Mexico, Florida, but we have to move with the seasons. Um, the these guys are very helpful. I have to say our vendors have done a great job. We use Ginsburg's Foods, Asendico and Brewster, uh, Red Barn, we've

035used in the past, a lot of local vendors. We try very hard to keep things local, but we are under the requirements of the federal bidding laws, too, and the state bidding laws. So we are very alert every morning as to the e and flow of product. Um we're working just about daily with human resources to recruit on board train and get people in the system. Uh it would be nice to have more, but as you know, there's been uh a hard time, no matter what business you're in getting employees, and it seems it's getting better now. Um 95% of our workforce were stay-at-home moms who wanted to re re-enter the workforce and it fits perfect for them. They get their kids on the bus, they come to work, and they get home before the

036bus, and it's been great. But it's a very defined workforce as you can imagine. So, it's a challenge, but uh HR's been good at helping us out and we have our little network within the organization going out and talking to people and we hope that uh very shortly we should pick up those 7 to 12 employees. Um I wish I could give you a better estimate of the financial impact on the department based on a universal free lunch. um we should be able to maintain finances given any kind of breakdown in supply chain but we don't know and I want to be honest about that. I want to manage expectations. I don't want people to think it's all you know free and easy. It's not. We all know we all know nothing's free. Um hopefully

037the vendors are on top of it, but I have noticed a trend in vendors to drop off the programs. They don't. It's it's too hard. Um I was asked to bring it up and I told them I I would if we had time. Uh you may not be aware of another way of addressing food insecurity in the district and some of our buildings are running fantastic programs called backpack programs and they're done in conjunction with Food Bank of the Hudson Valley and the Food Bank of New York. Um, I worked with this program when I was at Hudson River Housing for six years before I came to Arlington and I can tell you it's a really good program. It's separate from what we do, but we encourage them and help them. We give them storage

038and refrigeration space and so forth. But the teachers that run it are are really good people. They're really out there trying to make this great. And it's a good program. It's basically every kid that they feel qualifies who reaches out is given a on a Friday is given a backpack of canned goods. uh staples like pasta and whatnot that they can take home and help with their uh help with their famil family's meal plans. Um some very good people involved in each building. Not every building. The high schools are on a really strong program. LMS has a really strong program. Overlook has a strong program. Um and they're doing a good job. Uh that's another way that community can reach out and help with food insecurity is by supporting these backpack programs that are external

039to school. but working out through the school. Um there's I mean we can really go inside baseball. I don't think you want to get into details about how funding occurs, but the CE program is really designed to reduce food insecurity. Um it is on theory a very strong program. I mean there's no doubt about that. uh based on the universal free meals during the pandemic, this will prove to be very popular. It will accelerate as we go along and the word gets out and the community starts to realize the value of it and you will see uh a lot of a lot of uh activity there and I think we're in a good place to do that. We don't know again the financials of it. I have to wait till the end of October before

040I could tell you financially what the impact is going to be. September is not a good month to judge financials. You need a full month of school to see what the trends are. Um, can I take any questions? Anybody? >> Yeah, that'd be great. Linda, >> I have two, so I could do one and wait. >> Yeah, if if they're related. If not, you >> So, why doesn't every school have a backpack program? >> It's not mandated by anything. It's a volunteer program. It's run in conjunction with the food bank of Valley out of Cornwall. >> I understand that. Uh, we have a backpack program at Duchess Community College. I'm the head of that. >> Yes. >> Um, do you encourage these other schools or to have backpack for I mean these children to go

041>> I'm not sure it's Mr. Hick's job to It's a volunteer program in the schools. >> I'm sorry. >> It's a I don't think it's under his jurisdiction. He's affiliated with it, but it's a volunteer program like a grassroot program in each school. Okay. >> So, he's supporting them. But I'm just I just want you to know it's not right. It's not your responsibility >> because what people don't understand is we're not any part of the school budget. We have federal money >> and then this is state and local one and we're not we can't mix. So we encourage them, we help them, they reach out to us. They need uh storage space in the high school, we we clear it out of the stock room for them. They need refrigeration, we help them purchase

042a refrigerator, we can. But I don't have jurisdiction over that. That's the >> I I'm just I'm just asking do you like personally not part of your job, but like uh maybe Beakman uh did you ever bring it up? Hey, do you have a backpack program? This is what we're doing. I mean, I know it's not under your jurisdiction, but I'm just wondering, >> we're very supportive of it, you know, and they they have been reaching out and we have been trying to connect them with things that can help them. Um, again, it's not in it's not something I can it's called the CACF, which is under the board of health. >> Do you know how many schools have the backpack program out of 11? >> Uh, no, I don't. Not I don't want to.

043It's probably five that I know of for sure. >> Okay. Maybe maybe we could get that information. Well, you know, I think I just, you know, don't correct me if I'm wrong here, Phil or Governor, but I I think part of the the issue is that, you know, and that's why you're a separate fund, and again, this is not my bail, but you know, uh our public funds can't go to individual people, right? So, we're feeding kids under this program, but to feed people on the weekends is a different thing. So, that's why they're all volunteers. My >> I understand that. That wasn't my question, but okay. Um my second question, do you ever reach out to local farms for produce? >> We do. There's a 30% initiative it's called, but the problem is a

044district as a larger district, ourselves, Wingers to meet to meet that 30% of our purchase threshold, it's a very large amount of money. So it's like beef. It's very expensive. and bringing raw beef in. Uh I'd rather have the chain of custody from Tyson or uh you know these big processors where I can have somebody to go to. I don't want to have to sue the little guy when there's an ecoli breakout. I want to sue Tyson. But that's just a a liability problem. We do get a lot of produce locally. A lot of produce. We use uh in the past we've used Red Barn which is a conglomerate of all the local farms within a 50 milei radius. Um but there are things that are just not local. You can't get a local banana,

045you can't get a local mango, whatever, you know, it just doesn't work that way. It's a good program if you're small enough that the percentage of your budget 30% isn't a big amount of money. 30% of $4 and a half million dollars. I don't know if I can spend that money. >> What's the 30%? Can you clarify for me what the 30%? >> You can purchase 30% of your food locally. >> Yeah. >> They'll they'll increase your the state's portion of the reimbursement. >> Okay. >> Um it's a very hard target for us to hit. We we do take advantage of the milk. We buy all our milk and sign farms, but again, that's on a bid. And we buy all our dairy and from either Ginsburg and Hudson, Simon Farms and Salt Point or

046Glacier Point and Gardener. >> So we try to, you know, get local as much as we can. >> It's not >> Sophia. It's not. >> No, no, no. It's not that your microphone's not on. >> Sorry. So So we don't need the 30%. We We do our best, but we don't need it. >> Yeah. We use We use Adams. we you know but the spirit of the program is that you'll reach out to a local farm to school farmtotable type program and if you're a smaller district you can get you can get into that mode a lot easier. Um it's not efficient for us to send our courier truck out to a local farm to bring stuff back to be processed by us. That's a lot of labor and a lot of time. Um we

047do get very good produce locally in season. Apples are are one. We use a a company called Champlain Valley Growers. If you're not familiar, Champlain Valley is a beautiful place. Um, and they make delicious apples. We also use Peterson Farms in Michigan for that matter because there's just so much you can get. Um, I wish we could do uh more, but it's just not costefficient to split up into many little vendors, you know. in Chan. >> I was just wondering last year in September there was a percentage of students that were receiving the free or reduced has that now with everybody being able to access it has that number gone up? Do we know what that number is? >> Well, we can only go by >> for the month of September. >> Well, we can

048only go by April 1 numbers because we're not processing these forms right now. So, in our system, we process forms up until the start of this school year, and I can tell you that the the levels haven't changed. We're still about 32% free and reduced. >> Okay. So, I guess my question is the amount of students that are taking the free meal this September versus qualifying for free and reduced last year, is there? >> Oh, it's accelerating every week. Yeah, it's it's going to grow exponentially incrementally throughout the school year until it levels off at some point. We don't know what that's going to be. It's easil easily to anticipate doubling the participation. What we call a participation rate is when a student comes in and buys a meal and in the old days participate

049participation rate was very small. nowadays went to C we will see the growth in that like I said 330,000 kids last year ate free meals >> 30,000 meals I should say that sounds like a lot of kids >> so a huge district >> um could you just clarify for me is this the same kind of free meal that we heard of years ago is it they have to take specific things or is it a broader because you talked about how you had broad offerings have you streamlined your offerings it says you you streamline your lunch offerings and are are people paying for things anyway? Are there still things that children can buy that sort of thing? And are parents clear on what >> what they can get for free? >> We sent out uh flyers,

050communications to parents where Melissa helped us with that. Um how it works >> is every student is entitled to, let's say it's lunchtime, every student in the district is entitled to one free meal. They can come back and buy a second meal at their own expense. They can buy snacks at their own expense. Snacks are not part of the program. Um what is a what is a a fully reimburseable meal? There are five categories as you can imagine. Protein, dairy, grain, uh milk, dairy, and uh cereal grain. uh the student has to take three of those components for us to get reimbursed. So what we did, it really started back in 2015 with the uh Hungry Healthy Kids Act of 2010. We made all the components qualify to the guidelines and came up with meal

051bundles just like McDonald's or anybody else. you know, if you bought uh if you bought the uh cheeseburger meal, it had to have you had to take three of those five components and it would qualify as being reimburseable. We're still doing that, but at a more mag, you know, magnified rate because now every student can choose that. >> So, children children in most schools or all schools have choice of what their free lunch is. >> It's called offer versus serve. We offer five components. They have to take three. Okay? >> They don't want the main entree. We offer an alternative. And each manager also has control over their own inventory. So she can say, "Wow, I'm really building up on pasta. I'm going to make a pasta special today." So it will always be a

052special, an alternative entree and the main menu entree >> and all they can select any of those and it qualifies as their free meal. >> As long as they get >> I think that's different than my previous understanding years ago. >> The standard class A lunch used to be it was an offer versus serve. I think I see Sophia's hand and I'll come back to you. Sophia. >> Yes. So, one of the reasons why we're I think we're talking about because we wanted to make sure that the kids didn't go hungry that there were no kids that were malnourished or hungry during school hours. So, I think what you're saying is that if there is a kid who is hungry or malnourished during school hours, it is their choice. They did they they didn't go

053to the cafeteria. They they they chose not to eat because our your offering is there >> in all the schools and it's equitable. >> So do you know if kids are going hungry? >> That wouldn't be something I would have information to. Typically a social worker or the school nurse would what'll happen is TAs might be monitoring the cafeteria teacher assistance and they would report that to the school nurse or the social worker and that child would be encouraged but our my authority ends at the cafeteria door. What happens in the school building is not under my authority. It would be brought to the attention of the principal. she would reach out to the parent and see if there was some kind of domestic issue as there sometimes is, but there's no way for me

054to know that there's a child in the building not eating. And we certainly wouldn't turn anybody away. So, it has to be a sort of a team effort. Like once we're made aware, we look out for children. >> So, it sounds to me like we do not know. >> We don't know. >> You I'm not saying that you should know. I'm just saying like we do not know if kids are hungry. There's no real mechanism to know unless it's reported to one of the officials in the building. >> Yeah. Okay. >> And that would be either the school nurse, associate worker, or the principal usually. And once the principal's informed, we all try to get involved and make sure that kid eats. We've sent lunches home with kids. >> But it's hard, you know, on

055a personal level to know that. >> Linda, and then Jen, >> um, just to follow up to Maryanne's question. So, a child takes three items. Let's say they only want two of the items, but they haven't that that item they're not going to eat. What happens to that item? Do they just throw it away? Can they put it to the side? Like >> it depends on the item. >> Okay. If it's a packaged item, can they put it to the side so it doesn't get wasted? >> Sealed item that a child is not opened >> can be given away to somebody else. But any item that's prepared fresh that's not sealed in plastic or whatever. I'll give a good example is that's why we switched to grab apples. If you're familiar with what a grab

056apple is because even if the child doesn't want it, they can still take it home in their backpack and give it to the brother or they can give it away. It's sealed. This came about during the pandemic. We switched to a lot of stuff being sealed. Condiments are sealed. They can be reused. Milk is a toughy because milk has to maintain temperature. So once it goes out of the cafeteria, you talk about the chain of custody and you're going to put it on a table somewhere for another student to take. Well, we hope that it's cold enough for them to take it. Um, milk is a toughy. It's ultra pasteurized. It could last a while. Fresh food, no, because it's just to that chain of custody issue. We don't know how that food was handled.

057Uh, Duchess County has a prohibition against what's called a sharing table where you could take all this food and place it on our table. Anybody that wanted it could come take it. But we do recommend any kind of fruit that has a peel like a banana, an orange, a milk if it's if it's recent can be can be distributed amongst the students and the TAs are watching that. Usually it's the TAs that are picking up on that. There is waste and this program will accelerate waste because we have to make sure they take at least three of the five components and you know um we switched to grab apples to encourage that. We switched to what we call grab carrots, which are sliced carrots in a sealed in a bag as well. We're trying to

058make it so that they can just grab and go and they don't want it, no harm, no foul, but they can put it on the table, but they can't put a chicken sandwich on the table, pizza, whatever. >> Thank you. >> Jen, did you have a question or >> I thought Jeff had one? >> Yeah. >> Oh, go J. Yeah. >> And that's part of the direction I was going. So you you you've limited offerings, but you need to make sure there is one of everything for every student that comes through. >> Yeah. >> So the increase of waste is noticeable. >> Um we're going to we're going to have to watch because like I said, it's early in the year. It's hard to say what what what is what yet. Um what's happening uh

059is and it involves line speed. There's only so much time that children are designated to eat every day. And when you particularly elementary schools, if you offer small children too many choices, it overwhelms them and the lines the line stops. You know, they get overwhelmed. They eventually they can break down and the line cry. >> And so we try to avoid that by keeping the elementary schools more simple. And as they move up through the grades, middle school, high school gets more complex and there's a lot more choices. High school is like a food court almost. They can get all kinds of stuff, but it still has to match those components. Um, they can get we we push milk and fruit as a department. I you don't know probably, but Arlington is one of the

060few schoolers. I'm a nationally certified student nutrition person and my assistant is also nationally certified. So, we push programs and we have strange things. I personally will not allow pizza and French fries to be served to the same child. That's to me not nutrition. That's if you like it. >> So, you know, and where I was going with it is, you know, you talk about how the cost is, we don't know where it's going, but we know it's going up. >> Y >> and we're going to have more waste. >> Yep. >> You know, what are the plans? Do you have plans to manage that or is it wait and see kind of thing? Because the last thing we're going to want is our costs are going up. We're throwing out food and there's still

061kids that aren't eating. >> Well, I I work under many years of a simple principle. Nutrition that children won't eat is not nutrition. You know, you can put stuff on the menu that sounds glorious, but if the kids won't eat it, it's going in the garbage can. So, we try to target things that we know will move at a velocity to reduce waste. Grab apples instead of little apples. Little apples become recreation. Grab apples, they can keep. grab carrots. They're sealed. They can keep them. Um the celery sticks are sealed. They can keep them. Okay. Um >> the local the local farms are doing the grab apples. >> Uh right now the grab apples are coming through the commodity program, which is something we didn't talk about tonight, but the USDA awards commodity dollars, which

062are really a program for the farmers. So right now, um it's a mix. Uh, a lot of the grab apples come from Peterson's Farms, which is where the commodity dollars are designated, which is in Michigan. When we run out of Peterson's Farm dollars credits, which will be quickly, we go to Champagne Valley Farms. Um, because they have to be able to process it, seal, wash it with vitamin C, and seal it in a package. And it's a little complex. Same with the carrots and the same with the cell. Everything has to be washed in vitamin C, sealed in a package with nitrogen, shipped out to the supplier, and then sent to us. Um, commodities are based, and the reason we push the reimburseable meal program, there's something called USDA, Department of Defense commodity grants. Uh,

063and what that is is money dedicated to certain growers and farmers throughout the country that is awarded to a school district based on the number of reimburseable meals they sold the year before. So there's always a little lag in the amount of that money. Next year we'll get a big grant. This year we're living off last year's numbers. So we use that money to buy center plate items, chicken, cheese, beef, and then apples, uh tomatoes, anything that's going to be a high velocity item. Um we don't want to get into what's called a cycle menu. If you're not familiar, you can look at a lot of other school districts. Keep in mind, don't compare us to a small district. You got to compare us to a like district. Um, but a cycle menu is a

064menu that basically has the same items every week in rotation. And that's something the state highly recommends. But it also isn't what we've been about. We've been about encouraging choices, smart choices in moderation. We have never been in the 12 years I've been here about putting the cheapest product on the plate. It's not what we want to do. Um, we do it quite well. Um, we offer things that most school districts have not offered in a long time. You can't have chicken nuggets every day. Kids would love it, but is it good nutrition? You know, chicken fingers every day. Is it good nutrition? Pizza every day. It's always a question. Is it good nutrition? We try to be responsible. We have children, too, you know, and uh it's it's a challenge that we take on

065gladly because we want to make sure that nutritional balance is there. We push fruit. We push milk. It's 1% fat-free milk. Um, we push vegetables and our proteins are always available and there's always a protein alternative like yogurt is a protein alternative. If they don't like meat or they have a religious instruction, religious exemption or a uh we have a very large allergen menu system to make sure those kids can take advantage of the program as well. There's celiac, soy, egg, on and on and on. just so many and we're one of the very few school districts in this area anyway that do that. Um so we're trying very hard to make sure the nutrition maintains a goal and not become a victim of having to reduce choices and you know and finding ways and

066being innovative. The meal deal program was that back in 2015 and it's worked out very well. >> Linda, you had a question. hospitals, local hospitals, um, if you're a patient in a hospital, let's say for a week, you get to you you get a menu and then you call the, you know, the the the cafeteria or you tell them what you want and they bring it up, right? Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Have you ever thought about sending something home to a parent, the parents um with the weekly menu, have their child pick their three items with con consultation with the maybe the parent or the guardian? Um would that help move the line in the cafeteria and that way it would be set? >> A lot of the elementary schools already do that. The teachers will

067fill out a form in the morning and send it down to the kitchen. >> Oh, that's good. Um, but kids are fickle. Yeah, we've all had kids. I I assume maybe I shouldn't, but I put my kids through the Winger system. Uh, and we used to sit every night and say, "This is your menu. Do you like this or do you want to pack a lunch? What do you want to do?" You know, and they'd take the lunch I made them and buy lunch anyway. So, you know, and this is the warning about the cycle menu. It gets old fast. and how you know every Monday can't be chicken nugget day sounds good and we really want to encourage that fruit the vegetable and the milk those are three components right there um the biggest

068problem we have honestly rolling this out will be breakfast it's the biggest challenge there's it's not that we can't do it there's no designated meal period in school systems for breakfast >> right >> so to for them to get off the bus get something to eat get to that home room it's a challenge and as it grows it will become more of a challenge we're working with all the principles trying trying to come up with solutions. Can we get them off the bus earlier? Hold them in the cafeteria. We, you know, do all kinds of stuff. Each program is a little different. Obviously, the size of the building matters. You know, administering this program at Veil Farm is much more challenging than administering in Knox. You know, there's 650 kids in Veil Farm. Two lunchons.

069Just one way in and one way out. >> Jen, I think you had a question and then Brian. >> Yeah, I did have a question. I just had a question about like food dyes and food coloring. Are we using a lot of that? Are we trying to get away from it? >> No, we're not allowed to get away from it. It's required. >> So, we're not using any food coloring in any of the products that we're serving. >> Oh, I thought you said calories. I'm sorry. >> No. >> Um, yeah, the vendors have gotten very good. We just uh went through a whole It's mostly the snacks. None of the main plate items have this problem. Lendle Lakes is very good with it. Tyson uh JTM which is also Tyson beef. The problem was in

070the snacks and the processed food. But I'll give you an example. Fredo's which is Pepsi. Fritoles puts out a majority of our snacks and they have removed dye. In fact, if you see our cereals, if you have Froot Loops at home and you open the box at home and they're very colorful and when you open the Froot Loops to school, they're kind of flat looking and bland because they're using fruit juice as opposed to dyes. And it's good. I mean, they're getting away from that. It's a concern. And uh we have a catalog, nutritional catalog of 4,000 items. So, we go through them. We have a software called Smart Snack Calculator, which you can put an entree or a snack. You put it through the software, you put all the ingredients in there, the fat

071content, the sugar content, trans fats, everything, and it'll kick it out as you can't sell this to these students or it's acceptable. And we do that with every product since 2015. So, we know our catalog is good. And then we have the allergen program. We have a soy allergy menu. We have an egg allergen menu. We have menus for every child. Pandas, which I never heard of until last two years ago. There's all kinds of allergies out there now and we work very hard. And how that works is when the student is either scanned in the system at the register or puts in their number and they're an allergen student, a big pop-up stops everything on a screen and the cashier has to look at physically look at what's on their tray. So we do

072a training class every year for allergens and uh it comes up in November. uh all the trainings from state that they're required and we have menus for soy gluten-free etc etc etc and so >> Brian did you have a question >> yes how often do you update your menus and how do you update your menu >> what >> how often do you update the menu of you know different foods coming in and how do you incorporate new foods in >> we we do the menu on a monthly basis and they're done a month in advance because we have to be able to purchase we need lead and we rotate stuff through and we try to we explore products all the time. We have sales reps in all the time with suggestions and products and we

073vet them and if we think it'll sell, you know, we have uh everybody wants to sell the schools until they actually have to sell the schools and it's done on a on a monthly basis and we look at stuff and if something's not moving, we don't reby it. So, that's another way to cut down waste is, you know, you don't keep making the same mistakes. You know, if the chicken's obviously very popular, um, we don't carry any pork products anymore except for bacon, regular pork, bacon, but all our sauces are chicken sausage. We have turkey hot dogs. We do have beef hot dogs. Um, they're special, but they're beef, 100% beef. Everything we sell is vetted that way. You know, it's a it's a challenge to sometimes find product. If the supply chain breaks down,

074that's when you scramble. You know, if the vendors can't get it, I can't put it on the menu. We try, but we got to be careful with that. >> Does anybody else have any questions? You know, I want to thank you very much. This is I think was really informative for me and I hope it was also really informative to our families. you know, if they maybe um you know, didn't understand that there's there's choice and that allergies are handled a certain way. I mean, there's it was a rich presentation and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Well, no, and everybody should be aware that we handle parents as a priority. They call our office, my numbers published 19 different ways. >> Yeah. >> We don't turn a parent away. We try to

075solve their problems. It's not always possible. We have to manage expectations, >> right? Um but no, we and and most of the parents are good at understanding what goes on. >> Yeah, >> there's a few that have concerns and we try to work with them. >> We had, you know, peanut allergies was a big one for years, >> right? >> To get all the peanuts out of the building. And what about peanut butter? So, >> Right. Right. >> You know, there's another one we switched to what's called an incrustable. You can see them in the grocery stores. Yeah. Pre-sealed little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. >> Pandemic. All this stuff came out of the pandemic. It's amazing. And uh we offer all that. So yeah, we're going to keep working on and any parent that

076calls in or sends an email, I get several a day. They get answered promptly. All the sec the two secretaries in my department know to forward those right away. We don't put them off. Um and Melissa's been very good at making sure the information gets out. >> Well, thank you. >> We don't know. And Phil, maybe you'll find out before I will, but >> we're uh we're working on that, Mark. Yeah. alluding to the eligibility uh process for free and reduced lunch which as Mark alluded to at the beginning of the meeting. It's a big question for those of us who work behind the scenes on title one because that's been uh a pretty important factor in our our title one funding and John and I have been doing some research to just assess how

077is that going to be measured in the future. >> This morning once again before I came to make sure >> Yeah. >> that they said no family ever has to fill out a form. Then they published a form. >> Yeah, there's a form. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. >> They're both on the website. We're going to be as compliant as possible. Uh good news is we get audited this year anyway by uh state and USDA. >> So maybe we'll get some clarity out of that. >> Yeah. >> But um we're collecting them and let's hope that you know we're still going on last year's April 1 numbers. >> I see we have maybe one more question. I'm sorry, Sophia. >> Are the forms offered in other languages? >> Excuse me, ma'am. >> Are the

078forms offered in other languages? >> Yes. any uh Google's amazing. We we we print them in Spanish and we post them on the website in Spanish, but any other language can be Google translated just by >> Thank you. >> asking for any parame >> mark. Thanks a lot for your time this evening. Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. Okay, moving on to the Arlington School District pilot presentation. >> Hi, good evening. >> Hi, welcome. >> Thank you. Um, my name is Paul Jun. I'm uh with IP Solar. We uh are a developer, owner operator of uh clean energy uh facilities, mostly solar, but we also have done some battery projects and we'll be uh deploying a bunch of uh electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state. Um I'm one of the owners. I founded

079the company in 2008. to uh be owners and operators of clean energy projects and to you know help decar you know the the country's decarbonization efforts right so um we've been doing this for a while I mean you can I don't know if you have copies of the slide but you know we're um a team of engineers uh lawyers I'm a lawyer by training uh financial experts uh and um construction professionals. So we build all the projects ourselves. Um you know we get financing from private banks and we also receive a lot of state uh funding from particularly from Naerta New York State Energy Research and Development. So um a little bit about what we do. Do I just push this to go to the next slide? >> Yeah, it should. You've been clicking it

080as you're going along here. So it's moving >> but it's not moving anymore. Oh, Devin is there. >> Sometimes you may have to point it a little bit towards Devon over there in the corner and it'll There you go. >> Yeah. >> Shoot at him. >> Okay, no problem. It's not a real gun. Okay. Um highlight, you know, at your leisure, you know, we are um we've done a lot of community solar. We've done a a fair amount of community solar projects where these projects are. Uh the benefit economic benefits uh go to u you know homes, residential customers, um you know people who really can't put solar on their roof because they don't they live in an apartment or you know they don't own homes. So this is a you know a big effort

081on the part of our company. So the project we're talking about is our um this is our um project that we are currently almost complete in construction. It's a 5 megawatt AC um over about 40 acres of land. It's about 15 minutes from here, 59 mill. Um and um uh so we are 95% complete and we hope to get it online uh in the next couple of months. So, why I'm here is in New York um under section 487 of the real property tax law um the the state grants um it's in in an effort to motivate developers like me to come and build solar farms on various communities. Um it allows uh us to try to obtain a favorable tax rates. So instead of being assessed with normal uh you know the normal usually

082the normal uh property taxes would be pretty uh prohibitive for the financing for our financing. So it's an effort for the state to induce developers like us uh to come to them in an effort to get a reduced uh um real estate burden and it would be under a payment in le of taxes. Okay. So, and the default setting is the states um for a municipality the generally the default position is they've opted in. They have to affirmatively opt out in order to make developers like us pay the full uh real estate burden, right? If if for instance if a state if a a town said you know um wanted to assess the full rate for solar projects that we wouldn't be interested in putting our solar farms there, right? because it would be too,

083you know, it would be too uh prohibitive. But again, there's an effort for the state to encourage developers, right? So, so that you know, but as a compromise, uh the state allows the the various taxing jurisdictions to negotiate a payment in l of taxes for 15-year period. So it's it's it's a sort of a um you know a medium between something that can be too burdensome for a project developer but something that allows the the community to receive some form of tax benefits. So um the way it typically works so you know because uh Pleasant Valley failed to opt out the town itself normally we would negotiate with the town uh but um they they failed to do so frankly uh and as a result um I'm you know I have to really you know

084negotiate with uh the next taxing jurisdiction which would be you know uh the school district and the counties is basically leaving it up to either the town or the or the school district to negotiate with the developer and they basically um because the town uh failed to opt out they're not really responding to our uh notices um you know we are trying to you know talk to somebody right and so by default you know the school district is the point you know in connection with this uh you know proposal so what we've offered you know actually a couple years ago several couple years ago, you know, we reached out to the your predecessor and the county uh and offered a number, but you know, it was at the early it was uh during the beginning

085of the construction. So, we hadn't heard much um from the town, but we wanted to make sure that this was um it's bas it's it's been negotiated and concluded before our project is completed. So, our our proposal, I think you can see. So, what we've offered is $30,000 per year uh for 15 years. >> Can you lean just um could you just make sure that you're Yeah, you can move the microphone if you want, but when you lean forward, you're Yeah, that's okay. >> Thank you. >> So, um our proposal was $6,000 I'm sorry, $5,000 a megawatt. Sorry, $6,000 a megawatt. That's five megawatt system. So would be, you know, the the pilot calc, you know, the annual uh rate would be $30,000 per year for 15 years. And I think 70% of that goes

086to the school district and a small percentage goes to the county and so forth. Um and you know if you look at the solid and and the and nerta New York state energy research and development has conducted a survey so what's you know in order to help municipalities towns school districts to assess whether or not a a proposal is is fair. So this is the range that they've published. As you can see, this is being central Hudson, you know, uh the the deals that were negotiated in this in Central H was range between $2,600 per megawatt to $7,600. So, I think you can see uh our proposal of $6,000 is well within the high range and um you know that it's something that um you know we feel is quite reasonable and fair. Um so

087yeah, so you know again as I mentioned it's clearly at the higher end of the range for Central Hudson. um you know the the school district would receive I think approximately 70% of that and a certain percentage smaller percentage um the other mention is that um you know you know if if uh the parties fail to enter into pilot um there's not much there's you know from a a purely economic standpoint as a developer uh the best thing would you know just from a commercial standpoint would be for the you know school to reject our proposal right in which case you know uh you know we tried our best but the way the statute is written you know there is not a mechanism for us to you know for a taxing jurisdiction to impose a

088certain level um frankly which you know what really typically happens that we negotiate with the town to give us approvals and we negotiate a pilot right? In in exchange for planning board approval of the permits in this situation the planning board gave us the approval without seeking a pilot. So it's it's sort of sort of fell through the cracks and as a result um you know it's something that you know normally in a in a sort of a negotiation or a a um an a discussion about rates you know one party has to offer I mean it it's a little bit weird. I mean right at this point you know this is something that you know we want to do and notwithstanding what the um what the statute says uh you know in the in

089the sense that the the the statute doesn't allow for a you know you know unilateral sort of imposition of a certain pilot rate um but you know this is something that I think um you know is is something that and we you know we want to um is good for our project that you know we've entered into a pilot and most of the money is going into a school district. So, there's some um I guess some some benefits to us for having done this. So, um yeah, you know, we we want to be a good uh community member, a contributing community member. Okay. And uh you know, once uh this project is completed, I think payments can begin rather quickly. Um, so you know this, you know, I'd ask that you carefully consider our proposal

090and let us know as soon as possible so we can successfully conclude an agreements. The agreement is fairly standard. It's based on a simple form that's published by New York State, you know, NAERTA and you know it's it's a pretty standard form. We can I think conclude it very quick quickly. Okay. Thank you, >> Paul. Thank you. And I think our our board may have a few questions. I just want to set a few things up for the board before uh you start asking Paul questions. Uh first uh the typical process as Kevin and I discussed this for the board is that if someone an entity is coming to request or make a presentation regarding a pilot proposal that they would have the opportunity to do so. That's what we're doing tonight obviously with Paul

091board would have the opportunity to ask questions. Uh no action would be taken. Uh we would then have it as a discussion item because sometimes there's questions afterwards after you further consider the proposal. Uh so we would put it on for discussion at our next meeting. Uh talk again about it as a as a board and then at the meeting following that if the board wishes to take action that would occur at that meeting just to give you a sense of the timeline. Uh second to that I just want the board to be aware that we've submitted the information that uh Paul has provided to us to one of our attorneys uh who tends to work on these types of agreements or arrangements just to get her uh opinion on the rates that Paul has

092outlined for us today. just as another entity. I trust uh Paul and his assessment that he provided this evening that this is a competitive uh rate with the pilot, but we want our attorney just to do an analysis of that and provide that information back to the board. It would be our hope to have that information to the board. I shouldn't say our hope, our expectations to have that to you in preparation for the next uh discussion. Okay, >> thank you. I got a few questions, but does anybody else have anything they want to start with? So, I I just want I guess I want to start by saying we've seen quite a few pilot payments come through here. This is an unusual one for us. It's a very So, it's an unusual one for

093me. I'll put it that way. Usually, a pilot is a um is sort of a ramping up to where you're paying our full rate. We give you 10 or 15 years to where you're sort of ramping up over time in time to sort of build your revenue, build your business, and get to there. So, I guess one question I have is what happens after year 15? it reversed to the uh normal >> the rates >> rates whatever the assessment will be at that point >> okay >> property >> and you know >> um there'll be you know I guess the assessor will let us know at that point >> so because that because when like Naerta was helping you and there's all these things that are happening with the state I I guess I didn't

094get in your presentation that you were going to you were going to bridge to full. So what is 30,000 compared to what the full tax bill is on that parcel? That's if we don't have that today, that's something I need to know because what is year 16 going to come to us? Like what are what are we looking at? Generally what we you know like I say generally a pilot is people are it's interesting also that you're 95 >> I'm sorry. >> 95% complete. Usually people come in you know like you said kind of what you did with the town is what usually people do with us right. So, um, and they kind of come to the town and us at the same time and they try to get negotiate their piece and our piece.

095And I don't think I heard about this a couple of years ago. Do we hear about this, Kevin? >> Kevin needs a microphone. >> Uh, there's another pilot that was started at another Mill Street and I'm wondering if those two are connected and I didn't >> understand that that's together. Lane. >> Yeah. Mil. Yeah. Lane. I I do have a question. Are you working with the IDA as well? >> No. >> Interesting. >> IDA is the Industrial Development Agency and controls pilots. But >> yeah. Um I think one other thing that I would personally like is the link on the page with the numbers on it that that shows how the link doesn't work. The naerta link. I don't know if I can just find it online. I probably can. from having share that, you

096know, the >> um you know, so what is what is Pleasant Valley's town going to get? They're not going to get anything because they didn't negotiate it before they gave you approvals. >> They're um they they try to opt out. >> Okay. Right. And their opt out was defective. >> Okay. As a result, notwithstanding that I sent them the appropriate notices required under the statute. They did not respond. >> Okay. Right. So, you know, there's Yeah. So, you know, I think we still need to resolve, you know, they're under a misimpression that uh um >> you know, that they're entitled to real estate taxes. >> Well, will they then I'm just I'm just trying to I'm asking questions that maybe don't relate to this because I'm trying to understand this in totality. Does that mean

097in 15 years they start to get payments for that property? >> 15 years they'll get payments. It'll be normal. It'll be assessed at the normal rates >> because I was >> whatever is praised at at that time. >> When you link out to that 487, what you get is a list of all the entities, school districts, and towns that have opted out. So, if you opt out, you can also kind of opt back in. It's just that you're not forced to participate. So, if you didn't opt out, you're kind of forced to participate. Is that kind of how it works? >> Forced to participate, right? >> Forced to negotiate, >> right? >> The town should have uh, you know, made this a condition. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I'm not actually trying to disparage Pleasant

098Valley at all. I want to make sure that's very clear. I just I want to understand where we are in relation to Pleasant Valley. Did you have a question? >> Yeah. Yeah. Um no, I'm just trying to understand how this is different and then how we are. >> Yeah. >> Um All right. Does anybody else have any questions? >> Yeah. Usually it's you know the pilot is negotiated with the town right >> um and is negotiated because we want the approval >> right they want >> they want to you know encourage some development but receive some you know compensation right real estate you know proxy right >> but they failed to do that right >> but they gave us the approval >> right but you're coming to us because you have some kind of obligation

099to the state to say that you tried to negotiate a pilot with somebody >> pilot right >> right that's that's how they awarded that's why they've given everybody this get out of jail free. Yeah. >> But the statute is a bit weird in the sense that there's no mechanism to oh if I can't get a if we can't do a pilot what happens right I mean you know we still get our exemption it's just that you know >> not if we had opted out interestingly on that list is people are still opting out. There are people opting out in 2025 there. >> Yeah. >> Well you know then then there's no solar development there you know. >> Correct. Correct. It's just a question of if you've opt I'm quickly trying to understand this. If we

100had opted out, we're in a different level of of negotiation. We're in a different place for negotiation. >> Correct. >> Right. So, Right. Right. Um >> that's right. >> Okay. Uh so I guess we will continue to gather information. Oh, you know what I want to ask? What's the useful life of the farm >> uh for the solar panels? The useful life is 25 to 40. Yeah. You you know it's a you know warranties are for about 25 years but you know they start going out about 15 one or two will break and a few will become cracks and but 25 years you know usually 25 years. And the fact that there's some kind of partnership with the state, is there any kind of assurance because you're a private for-profit company, I'm understanding, right, that

101you will like after the 15 years still maintain that property or still bring that kind of value and electricity to the community. Is that is that part of the deal that you get when you do your deal? >> The the the tariff is called veer tariff. >> Okay. um in which you know basically it's an elevated rate that a project receives uh in New York and the elevator rate is uh in order to encourage you know otherwise if it's not elevated the the project wouldn't you know pencil financially >> right >> so that tariff is 25 years okay as far as so so for 25 years the project is eligible to generate at the higher rate and the benefits of that rate you know it's it's called a you know community credits well you know

102these monetary credits get you know um dispersed I mean given sold effectively to um you know residents small businesses right at at a discount right and the so let's say you know we generate a certain number of kilowatt hours per for a certain period and that you know translates to certain actual dollar amount in credits those credits get allocated to individuals. I mean, you know, and we want to um um >> individuals you create agreements with, right? Or that that or that your or that your utility does or whatever. >> People go out there and say, "Hey, would you like free credit, you know, you get like a 10% discount, right? Right. And you just get these credits and use these credits to offset against your electric bill." >> Right. And there's no obligation. It's

103just free money, >> right? And you know, the state is doing that in order to Yeah. It's really just an equity principle, right? You know, a lot of wealthy people go solar because they have homes and right, but a lot of people who don't own homes, they live apartments, it's not great roof, right? They can't go solar. >> So, Kim Solar is an effort to address this uh inequity. So, yeah. And you know, and we want to, you know, invite, you know, you know, I assure you that this has been fully there's a lot of takers, right? Because it's essentially >> Yeah. No, no, I I actually understand that I'm supportive of solar. You know what's interesting to me is there's there's solar farms everywhere and we haven't gotten solar farms coming here and what

104I'm to to us and it's the it's it's because you had an imperfect it's because of what happened in Pleasant Valley that you're here with us right because so what happens to like you know when you're out you go out 55 in Beakman and there's that solar farm on across from the car wash are they paying full full school taxes on that solar farm? you know, these don't have to be answered right now. No one expects anybody. That's why we're doing this over the next six weeks. But my question is, you know, those people haven't come to us and asked for anything now. Either if that's Unionville or Beakman, I'm not sure. But have they negotiated something that we get a part of? I guess the other thing that surprises me is that uh is

105that we get 70%. I don't that seems roughly I don't know how that's okay, but I don't know how that's calculated. statuto what is your uh >> uh when someone pays their real estate taxes right >> right yeah >> I think it's on your bill you know certain percentages for school certain you know certain percentages for the county certain percentages so those ratios are you know >> well really what we get is different bills right so we get bit we have our own we generate school tax bills everyone listening to me recently got their school tax bill and totally loves us but whatever you know um you know they get specific school tax bills, which is why generally if we negotiate a pilot, right? Then that's related to the school tax portion, right? We're usually

106negotiating our portion, right, Kevin? Is that how that works? >> Well, a pilot exempts it from our assessed values and takes it off the roll. So, >> right, >> but it also helps give us a revenue so we wouldn't have to tax for that. So in your budgeting process, you'll increase the amount that we get for pilot payments and therefore that helps with not having to levy that as a tax to the rest of the taxpayers. >> Correct. But when we have people come before us, we're not talking about their town portion. We're only talking about our portion. >> Correct. But IP this this solar is a completely different animal than our pilot >> processes. That's right. Right. Right. And that's what I >> pilots will go through the IDA. This is going through NAERTA.

107So, we're going to need some technical help from our attorneys to work our way through. >> Okay. All right. >> I hear you. I'll stop asking questions. >> Okay. >> Not getting to the bottom of it right now. Okay. So, thank you. I really appreciate it and we will give it do attention and we'll try to understand it. It's just, you know, it's a different creature for us. >> I understand. So, yeah, if we can make a prompt, yeah, if you can give us some free feedback promptly, really appreciate >> it. And Dr. Bante told you our schedule. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, you know that many meetings out. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Paul. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Now, I am not liking that much that solar farm across my road.

108>> You liking or not liking? >> No, I'm not going to like it. I think if I'm paying >> Oh, you know, I I I don't I don't I don't want to sound negative. I'm not sure what I don't feel negative about development in our area, right? It's just a question of understanding it and that it's a different what it's got the same name pilot >> but you can tell by reading it it's very different than what we've done before >> right so you just want to understand what you're doing right at least I do but what do we call ourselves lifelong learners right >> okay um new business our new business section of the agenda lists several items for individual resolution approval documentation concerning these items has been provided to our board members in

109advance to assure an extensive and thorough review Um item B, voting delegate. May I please get a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um any discussion? I'll just say thank you very much to Mrs. Quinn for vote volunteering to be our voting delegate again this year at >> all those in favor. >> I opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Item C, international trip approval requests for Spain March 19th, 2027 through March 20 March 26, 2027. Can I get a motion, please? >> So moved. >> Thank you. Um, any discussion? >> Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Appoint investigator item D. Can I get a motion, please? >> So moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um any discussion? >> Yeah, I just wanted

110to brief the board on on this item. We anticipate periodically throughout the year we've experienced where uh the situation where we have multiple investigations going on that consume a lot of our human resource uh administrators. So that's Mrs. Roberto and Miss Fuller's uh time. Uh given that uh Mr. Finch is pretty familiar with human resources and appropriate processes uh related to um investigations. Uh your support of this item would allow uh him to come in periodically if needed uh to assist in investigations. These would be employee investigations. So this is a proactive measure uh in anticipation that again with 2,000 employees sometimes we have matters that we have to look into um and uh it would ensure that we can continue to do so in a um efficient manner without getting bogging up both Hillary

111and Erica uh who perform any other functions in our district uh uh throughout uh various points of the school year if necessary. >> Thank you. Anybody else have any comments they want to make about that? Seeing none. All those in favor? I >> opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Item E, classified administrative leave. Can I please get a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. >> Abstension. Motion passes. Item F, civil service creation of position. May I please get a motion? So move. >> Thank you. Um, any discussion? >> If I could just refer to Dr. Case to provide a little background on this item. >> Thank you. We'd be appreciated. >> Yes, it's uh Thank you. It's an honor to actually be able to speak

112on behalf of the nurses um and some of the great work that they're doing. Um they truly are kind of unsung heroes in our schools. In the short time that I've been here, I've witnessed them go above and beyond for each other, for our students, for our families. Um but we we have a few issues. Um and I truly feel that the creation of this position is the responsible thing to do. And it's responsible on a few levels. Um for one thing, they offer a tremendous level of quality of care for our students and for their families. Part of that is because they get to know the families and the community and um they're really part of establishing the culture. Um however, we have a chronic shortage of um substitute nurses and so we are

113always left in a scramble. are always trying to hire substitute nurses. In the end, we end up relying on agency nurses, probably a lot more than we should. Um, we'll always have a need for and are very grateful for our agency nurses. Um, we have some students that have very complex medical needs, but our agency nurses really do come at a much higher rate. Um and so when we look at fiscal responsibility, it makes a lot more sense um to actually hire our own school nurse to have that person become part of our nursing team um and to really be able to get to know our families. In addition, the agency nurses, they can't do the field trips. They often can't work the full day. Um and they don't know our students like our nurses

114do. Um and the the fact remains that we have a lot of complex needs within our district. We've taken in more students that are medically fragile. Um, we have a lot of students, I think there's seven in LMS right now that have diabetes and and really require not just a nurse, but a nurse who knows them, a nurse who knows how to manage complex needs. Um, so when you put it all together, um, and when I see what the nurses have had to do to make it work for each other, I mean, they're going to each other's nurses offices to help set up in the summer. They're doing so many things just to keep this operation moving. Um, but we are sometimes short-handed. So, um, when we put it all together, it really does make

115sense. It's responsible and in the end, um, I it if anything, it might even save us some money by hiring someone who is becomes part of our Arlington Central School District team. So, for those reasons, I I do strongly recommend the creation of this new position. >> Thank you. Does anyone other have a comment or question? Seeing none, all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Thank you. Um item G, classified administrative leave. May I please get a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you. Any discussion? >> Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Future discussion items. Um, I'll open the fuller for new ones, but we actually have a future discussion item to discuss tonight, which is um, uh, Sophia brought up at our last regular regularly scheduled

116meeting um, a discussion about um, artificial intelligence. Um, and uh, I don't want to put words in your mouth. If you'd like to say if you'd like to reiterate what what you were asking and then we can have a brief discussion. >> Thank you for the opportunity. So my intention comes out of curiosity about um do we have currently any guidance um about the use of AI by teachers, by school, by grade, by student? um how is the faculty approaching the use of of AI if at all and how are are we monitoring the use of AI of kids and and is this being fully delegated kind of like self-managed and on a trust system that everybody knows what they're doing or um with the rampid growth of use and tools that are available um

117is this something that we want to get curious about um and learn more about how or if um anything would be pertinent for us to to be aware of you know of the guidelines if there's any. >> Thank you. Thank you. And I I'll just say for for people listening that um what what we do as a board is um any board member is welcome to bring up a topic that they want to propose for discussion, but we try not to um tax the administration without having some kind of consensus among the board that this is something we want to use, you know, district resources on. And we also want to work in conjunction with the with the um administration to make sure that we're not, you know, replicating things that already exist or creating

118mandates that create problems. So now we're going to have a little discussion and hopefully we'll come out with something that everybody feels good about. Um and and and in our we have something called the board operating procedures. Um and we we need a certain number of us to kind of decide that this is the direction we would like to task the administration. That's the process. So, um, with that said, uh, I I think that, uh, I think, uh, you know, you can't pick up any kind of media without understanding that that's a very prevalent topic in the world and and certainly our world is changing. You know, I I certainly have curiosity in that space as well, you know, and I don't know what um, I don't know if we have a formalized or, you

119know, I don't know what we have. So, that's a good question, Marian. Um, since we've opened up to discussion, I'm just wondering if it would behoove us to have Dr. Benante speak first in terms of bouncing his thoughts off of what what you just heard and what you envision that looking and feeling like. >> Um, and then the rest of us could weigh in on whether >> Sure. >> we think it's >> I heard four things. Let me run them by you just to make sure I heard him correctly. Um Sophia was interested in hearing more about guidance that uh both we've provided and I would uh expand that even though you didn't directly say it. Perhaps guidance that's been provided to us uh about the use of artificial intelligence in our school system. Uh

120how it's being utilized if at all in our classrooms and what that looks like. uh our monitoring of student use given that it's a technology that has certain benefits but also uh could also be leveraged to uh uh to do things that are not consistent with our goals as a as a school system. And um with that, you know, loosely I would say what we've defined as the acceptable use of uh the technology in our uh in our system both for our kids and for our staff. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I think it's consistent with questions we're all we're asking ourselves in some way, shape or form uh continually. Uh so uh with that there may not be because along with artificial with the technology which is ever evolving we may not be clear yet

121on a few of those outcomes if I were to frame those as outcomes but I think they're all relevant to discussion that we're having. So, as long as we're of the understanding that we don't have the uh perfect u you know use case uh if you will or uses defined as we're learning more about it as a system uh we have plenty uh I think that we can share related to those items for board discussion and information sharing. >> Thank you. >> Anybody else have anything like to add to the discussion right now? Um, would you I'm going to speak now to Sophia and to Dr. Bante. You know, would you feel comfortable if we regrouped on a timing for something like that? Like I don't know what the timing of something like that would

122be. We could throw >> I'll throw something out there. It's okay. Uh because I talked a little bit in anticipation of this with our team and um we think that prior to getting too far into budget development would be a good time. So sometime between now and and December would actually so October, November, um would be a good time to actually provide you with an overview because we're pretty involved in this. So pulling together an overview for the board wouldn't >> Yeah. >> wouldn't be problematic. >> No, no, no, that's fine. >> How does everybody feel about that? >> I'm sure that >> I see a lot of nodding. >> Yeah, I would I would just um your team is a super competent one. So you're probably doing this like doing the research of what

123others are doing. >> So just speaking to like there's whole sections of Bassor College that are going completely analog >> period like >> right >> it's amazing what they are doing. It's like the 1960s. >> Well, that's an approach we could take, right? >> It's like a complete reversal, right, for like the pandemic and it was just amazing. And then there's schools in some parts of the country that are that are um fully AI >> and that's like another level of reality. So there's all kinds of approaches. So I'm sure there's going to be research and what the state saying what you know whatever. But yeah, it's it's just >> it's out there like in all the shapes and forms at least what I what I I've been made aware of. And maybe I'll just

124add in response to the couple of things you just gave that um that that maybe we let them reflect because he's given himself a pretty short timeline. So I don't know how much he's going to be able to incorporate what's going on in the world. But because it's moving so quickly, it might be something that we want to be updated on on a you know an annual or semianual basis that we could decide at that point when we hear the presentation. Well, what what else do we really want to know? like that might be kind of a healthy way that's comfortable for everybody. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so we're all good. Excellent. So then I will just ask does anybody else have any future discussion I think proposed today? >> Seeing none. Um the

125business consent agenda. Our consent section of the agenda lists several items for approval by a single motion. Documentation concerning these items has been 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 moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any discussion? Did you want to highlight? >> Just a few things. As I informed the board and this is public information now. Uh Cara Conrad, our principal at Triv Road Primary School has to take a short-term leave and uh we wish her well. Uh she'll uh start that on uh that leave on Friday. Uh and Paul Finch is being appointed. Paul's popular tonight because I've already mentioned Paul's name. uh in the over that period of time which

126we anticipate to be about four weeks or so to serve as the interimm principal at uh Traver Road Primary School. And I thank uh Miss Conrad for the work she's uh doing to prepare her staff uh and also uh the work I know she'll be doing to remain available to to Mr. Finch, which she's not obligated to. I reinforce that. But you know, leaving a building that you've been a part of uh for so long for even a brief period of time can be present a lot of challenges. Um, so I I know they'll be working together to make sure that the kids have what they need uh each day at Traver Road Primary. Uh, second to that, I did want to mention that on tonight's consent agenda also includes the appointment of Kim Van

127Bores to become an assistant principal at uh, Arlington High School. Excuse me. I uh, Miss Van Bores is a teacher at uh, Traver Road Primary School and Kim is in the audience I noticed back there. So give a wave, Kim. And uh with your approval, in a few minutes, Kim will uh begin her administrative journey at Traver Road Primary. And I know she's going to be sorely missed in the Traver Road uh I say begin her assistant principal ship at Arlington High School. I know she will be sorely missed at Traver Road Primary School. Uh and lastly, uh uh let's see here. There was one other individual, Connor. Love, Connor, you're here, right? Give a wave. You're uh Connor, with your approval is being appointed as a special education teacher this evening. and I'm just

128enthused that he's here this evening for his appointment again with your approval. So, just wanted to introduce a few individuals to you um before your vote. >> Excellent. Thank you. Um anybody else have discussion items on the consent? >> Seeing none, um all those in favor? I >> opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Congratulations. [Applause] Yes, we are. You'll all be happy to see how many pages I'm flipping, right? >> 25. Thank you. Nearly there. Okay. Um, are we still with nobody that wants public comment for non-aggenda items? Okay, great. Um, moving on then to committee reports. Um, advocacy. You're stuck. Min um nothing at this moment in time. Uh as you have heard the NISBA mis business meeting is November or October 16th, pardon me. Um I will give a brief report post business meeting just

129on how it all goes with the voting. Um and we have convention coming up this month. So, >> there'll be lots to review at some point, but we have no scheduled meeting in the immediate future. >> Um, Donna's not here tonight, but audit. Do you have anything, Kevin? >> Yeah. So, so we're about ready to receive the audit report and that'll be on the next board meeting. So, we will want to review it with the audit committee prior to that. I was going to discuss it with Donna tonight, but I'll reach out to her and the other audit committee members and we'll set a time that we can meet. Um, generally we do it the night of, but if there's going to be an executive session, we'll want to work around that. >> Right. Okay.

130Thank you. Um, Kathy, uh, Jeff had to leave us. Would anyone else on Cap like to talk or what? Linda, you want to go? >> Sure. Uh, we met last Wednesday, uh, at Overlook. It was a wonderful presentation, very eye opening, very, very energetic. Um, about the geo uh thermal unit, which was huge. Um the uh I'm sorry the person who's the who took over John Wilson. >> Oh uh Mr. C Joe Carter >> Joe was was excellent. U his one of his office mates were there as well. They explained everything to us. Um it was it was very well done and it was nice to go to the school to see it. So I hope that continues to go to the school where we're going to look at new things that are happening in

131our schools. Thank you. Did you want to add anything or we >> Thank you. >> Only thing I would add is I don't think I'll talk to Jeff, but I don't think we have a scheduled next meeting date yet. So Jeff and I were going to connect about where the next visit could be. >> Uh and we'll work with our team to do that, but uh meeting to be determined. >> Excellent. >> Thank you. Uh brings us to policy. >> Uh first meeting next Wednesday, 3 p.m. in the boardroom. Sounds like a game of clue, doesn't it? >> It is. Yes, exactly. >> I'm sorry it's late. Okay. Organization reports Education Foundation. I think that every time. So, the fact that I haven't said it before, I should give somebody I should get half credit

132for that. Education Foundation. Um, we had our first meeting on September 10th. Um, there's a couple of things you can just mark on your calendar. Um the restaurant week fundraiser will be from November 3rd to November 7th. Um some of the restaurants are to be announced. Um I'm sure I'll have more information about that. And then um Bounce in Pikipsy is is hosting a fundraiser for Arlington Education Foundation. It's a day that the kids do not have school, November 11th. Um, so kids can go, they can buy their pass and I think it's 20% of those of the funds that they that bounce raises will go to Arlington Education Foundation that day. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> that sounds good. Thank you. Um, Duchess County School Boards and Bosses, if you got anything, >> we

133have not had a Duchess County School Boards meeting yet for this year. First one is this Thursday at 7 PM. So, catch you the next time around. >> Sounds good. Um, PTA, PTSA, uh, I haven't gotten a notice yet of first meeting. Looking forward to that. What? Yeah, at the end of October. That's what I thought. Um, district health and safety, is anything scheduled for that. >> Uh, we did schedule our first meeting. I'm sorry I don't have the date right in front of me so I won't flip through my phone but the meeting invitation's been sent out. We're getting ready for that. It's in October. >> Okay, good. Um and equity >> um we had our first meeting September 11th. There was a lot of sharing out about summer engagement that was done particularly

134at the elementary schools. Um Overlook um and Titusville did had um a number of uh had I have services for students. I'm not sure what that means, but um they had they had a couple of events for students and parents and had my numbers here say um over 500 students, right? Is that right, Phil? >> That's correct. >> Um which I just, you know, when we talk about family engagement, that's awesome. Um West also had a number of activities and um always our our uh ENL teachers do work at Titusville. the it's always joint with other schools but um the they also had an event for those students which is always welcoming. Um I just made a note here and I think it's just I I wanted to share with you um one of the

135teachers talked about the summer program at the high school um that summer academic program but how they were using restorative practices and I took a quote from her. She talked about um for students repairing the relationship their relationship with their academic mindset and I think that's really important right we when we're talking about kids that are struggling being able to do that kind of work and just letting you know that that work is happening um we did talk >> so could I just a question but so they so basically with their academic mindset so instead of using it for conflict resolution they're they're actually using the same tools to help children feel differently about their past academics. >> Exactly. You know, I think the example that she gave and and anybody who's worked with kids

136that struggle in any way, right, >> are see that there's acting out that comes from deflecting, right? So using restorative practices to mitigate that deflecting but if the deflecting is around academics the acting out is come is coming because the academics are hard >> right so just changing that mindset and letting them see through restorative practices that academics aren't something they have to fight that >> I think that's a great summary and Dr. Cole who who shared that uh is here just because we're introducing people tonight. Dr. Cole is one of our social studies teachers at Arlington High School. She also uh was the principal of our summer school. Uh so Lauren had did Eileen get that right pretty much. >> Otherwise, you can come to the microphone. >> Come to the microphone. That's exactly

137right. >> I didn't say Victor. I had your name written. I was going to say it and I'm like, do I have >> She's here. >> Yeah. Thank you. Totally not expecting to present this evening, but >> a guest star like a cameo role, right? >> Hi, welcome. For those of you that don't know me, I know Mia. I know a few faces here. I was not prepared to say anything. Um, but the summer school program was, I think, very successful for a number of reasons. And one of the things that I shared was that, you know, being a teacher and then moving towards administration, one of my fears was not being able to connect with kids. And I saw the summer school program as an opportunity to continue connecting with students. Um, and the

138restorative practices that I learned in the spring, um, doing a workshop with Duchess Mediation, and I know a lot of people have done that. um came in very very handy when I was dealing with conflict resolution but also just the behaviors as you said um that students would express because you know the students that end up in summer school don't have the best relationship with school. So it was really my goal um and my intention set with the faculty and the staff at the beginning of the program um to see this as an opportunity to repair those relationships because it's not just interpersonal between students. It's not just students and staff, but it's their relationship um to schooling just more generally. and always teaching nth grade. Um it it was just always heartbreaking to get

139nth graders in who had already given up on themselves. And it it's just tough and it was sad. And so I just felt like the summer was an opportunity to look at school with fresh eyes for students and for staff. And you know, we had conversations, you know, just starting with what happened and what would make this better for you? What do you need moving forward? You know, what is the conversation that would help you to kind of get past this and talking to students and and they have history with some of the staff and faculty, right? So, they're not coming into summer school not knowing these people. These are the people that they've had conflict with throughout the whole school year. So just looking at it as a clean slate, knowing that everyone was

140on the same page of trying to get, you know, to a point of success, um it just felt really good. And so seeing kids kind of transform throughout that six, seven weeks was really uh rewarding. So um and and those those that workshop that I did, which was very short, was just really valuable. So the more people that can do it and I know they do more offerings and I've been in touch with them to see sort of like you know what leveling up looks like so so to speak. So um thank you for the shout out. I was not prepared to speak. Thank you for listening but it was I think it was highly successful. >> Thank you Lauren. >> Thank you. Thank you. That's great. >> Thank you. A serendipitous moment here. >>

141Yeah. I didn't even realize. Um and just building on that a little bit. Um there was just a mention of um some of the teachers did responsive classroom training which if you know me you know I'm a big advocate um and it just goes with the also with the training for for um uh restorative practices. So they go hand in hand you know if you're teaching kids young the responsive classroom tenants that leads right into the restorative practices. Um and then just a couple of no nuts and bolts thing over the year. We'll be revisiting the bias incident handbook. Um we'll be working on uh John gave us all copies of overcomming the achievement gap. The equity group will be working through that as well. Um and revisiting the culturally responsive sustaining framework that we've

142talked about before, but it's been updated by New York State. So there will be some work around that. So it was a busy meeting. We pass. >> So, >> well, thank you very much. Um, that brings us to you, Bill. Superintendent, >> I don't have any further remarks. >> Okay. Um, do board reflections. Anything, Brian? >> So, I just want to take a moment to talk about something near and dear to my heart. The 49th annual Arlington Invitational on Sunday, October 12th. Um, I'd like to encourage everyone to come out. Gates open at 12. Uh, the b the bands start at 9:00. There are nine bands stretching from all the way from Skenctity all to Long Island. Um $10 in advance, $12 at the gate. Come out and see some really wonderful performances. Um the

143Arlington show this year is entitled Sticks and Stones and it features music by the Rolling Stones and Sticks. So, hope to see everyone there. >> That sounds great. What time is that? Do you know yet? Yes. >> Most of the day, right? >> Doors Yeah, doors open. It's uh noon and Okay. Uh uh band starts at 1 and I think Arlington goes on. I'll give you the exact time. Uh we go on at 2:24. 2:44. >> 2:44. All righty. Thank you. Um anybody else have reflections tonight? Seeing none, um you're always welcome to reflect too if you like my anytime you like. Just so you know. That's just we say anything we feel like if anything we've noticed or anything we observe. Um usually good stuff. Um, can I please get a motion to adjurnn?

144>> Thank you. Thank you. All those in favor? >> I opposed.