ACSD Board of Education Meeting 4/22/25

001which stands nation for and one quick technicality. Can I please get a vote to um so return from executive session? Thank you. Second second. All those in favor? I I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Mrs. Flynn, can you please call the role? Boy, here. Linda Gains here. Jeff H. Sophia Bonet Hollis. Donna Logan here. Maryanne Megan here. Eileen Snook here. Marian Quinn here. Mark Tonur here. Thank you. Um reading of the district mission. Our mission is to empower all students to be self-directed lifelong learners who willingly contribute to their community and lead passionate, purposeful lives. May I please get a motion for the approval of tonight's agenda? So move. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Um any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Abstensions. Motion passes. Correspondence. Um I don't know if anyone has

002any correspondence to share at this time. I don't have any correspondence to share tonight. Um okay, moving on. Um board president remarks. Just want to say hello. Happy to see all these nice faces here and and uh having that sense of spring renewal. Maybe we've all had a little time to ourselves and now we're back. So, um nice to see you all, but I don't really have any other comments tonight. I'll pass it on to you, Dr. Bronte. Superintendent remarks. Thank you, uh Miss Megan. Just a couple of remarks and again, thanks for uh to the Unionville community for hosting us this evening. Um I wanted to just mention and express my appreciation. and I'm sure other board members will as well who were in attendance for the Overlook uh primary school's international showcase. I

003know I saw several of you there and uh just thought it was a a great display of the appreciation that um our school community as a whole and then communities individually because we were at Overlook that night have for uh the diversity uh within our community and how uh they create the space for that to be celebrated uh with our kids and with our families. So, it was a great uh great event and uh thanks to all that were invol who were involved in that and I wanted to welcome our families and kids back from uh spring break. I hope everyone enjoyed a restful break from school. Um also wanted to particularly acknowledge that uh around this time several of our families and uh are celebrating various uh religious holidays or days of observance. We

004had many families I know who are celebrating Easter uh recognizing Passover or Eid uh just prior uh to the break. And um I know it's a time of reflection and celebration for many of our families. Uh and certainly we're entering the point of the school year where it's a time of uh reflection and celebration as well as we uh begin to conclude the school year. Uh with that, Melissa, if she has not done so already, will send an update uh to our community regarding uh the extension of the Memorial Day recess. I think we have two snow days that we did not use uh that were built into the calendar. Um yeah, we clap. Uh given the way the weather has been though, I don't know, you know, who knows? couple weeks it'll be, you

005know, 30 degrees again, but I'm hopeful we're beyond the winter at this point. Uh, and then also that will include the calendar for next school year, which the board approved. So, we'll get that out to families who are, I know, looking forward to receiving that. Uh, with that, I will conclude my remarks and oh, we're going to transition to public comment before presentation. I always forget that. Thank you, Dr. Pante. Um, Mrs. Flynn, do we have anyone for the first session of public comment tonight? Those are agenda items only. Excellent. So, we'll move on to reports and discussions. Unionville Middle School. Lisa Wilson. Welcome, Dr. Rollison. Dr. provide an overview on some of her buildings improvement efforts for this year. And I'm just going to move over next to Eileen since there's a seat there.

006I think I'll scoot to the side a little. Thank you very much, Dr. Mande, and thank you to the board. Um, good evening everyone and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak to you tonight and tell you a little bit about some of the things that we have going on at Unionville Middle School this year. So this year we've tried to emphasize our focus on the district's mission and our core values both with the students and with the faculty and staff. We start every faculty meeting with a review of our mission statement and the core values um which really sets the context for the work that we're about to engage in at our faculty meeting as well as guide all of our decision-m so tonight I'm going to focus on two

007of the values that have grounded most of our work this year. Um, so when we reflected on our goals and our student progress at the end of last school year, we realized that there were uh a few areas that we could do better in. So this shows you just a few of the the changes that we've made this year in response to a review of our end of the year data last year. One of the things we had noticed um not just last year but for the past several years um there were two areas in math was uh data analysis and measurement that our students were doing exceptionally well and consistently and they're actually fairly small parts of the math curriculum themselves. And so we saw this as a pattern. Um, and we were like,

008okay, how come they're doing so well in data analysis and measurement and then what occurred to us is that even though those are math standards, those are two areas that students are seeing in their hack classes, in their art classes, in their tech classes, in their science classes, um, in their computer classes. So across many different disciplines. Um, and it was really the fact that they were getting instruction in those areas in many different ways from many different people. And so we wanted to try leveraging that idea um with ELA as well. So we are seeing this in several of the different math topics. Um so we started thinking about the ways that we can focus on some of the ELA standards in the other non ELA classes. Um wanting students to see of course

009how the skills that they're learning in ELA are not just limited to ELA of course. Um but also so that they're hearing the same types of things from different people. Um so we've really tried focusing this year on the standards that overlap in other content areas. Um two of the high leverage areas of our are vocabulary and instructional um text comprehension of instructional text. So many content areas um teach vocabulary as opposed to putting a word and a definition up and asking students to memorize them. we've started talking about what are the strategies for really teaching vocabulary whether it's looking at roots of words the prefixes and suffixes um using a Freyer model connecting to other learning that students have done um and asking our non ELA teachers to also use these strategies in their

010classroom so something we've done is um at each of our faculty meetings and on our conference days we've had teacher or coordinator shared learning um around those types of strategies so how can all of the teachers in the building support our goals in math and vocab vabulary and an informational text. Especially another shift that we made this year was in our sixth grade L classes. So L stands for language arts skills. This is our AIS class for ELA. Um and in sixth grade we wanted to try something different. Um in the past our teachers have taught their own students for AIS. So they would see them in an ELA block and then they would see them again for an AS course uh to provide intervention to them. Um we decided this year to try something

011a little bit different and we scheduled the multiple teachers at the same time. Um so instead of teaching just their own students, there's a group of students that these teachers meet about every single week. They've added their own PLC time just for AIS. Um and they are grouping and regrouping the students every couple weeks based on either common assessments, I Ready data, or other types of screeners that they've decided are appropriate for their students. Um and what we've seen is even though they're not teaching their, you know, their own students, um the students are getting much more targeted instruction based on their need at a specific time during the school year and they're being regrouped fairly regularly as needed. Um so that was a change that we've tried. Um, and we've also really focused our

012weekly PLC time uh for the core areas, making sure that that was a priority and that time was held sacred for teachers to work on curriculum planning, writing highquality assessments that give us good information about our students progress towards your goals, and then analyzing the results of those assessments to make informed decisions about what instruction needed to happen next. Um, so the next couple slides I'll review some of our building goals based on our mid-year data points. Um, but I wanted to point out some of the things that we've done differently this year. Um, and as you'll see, we feel like they've successfully um, been implemented and given us some very positive results. So, uh, our first building goal, this one's for vocabulary, just to give you an idea how we framed our goals for

013this year. Um, these are based on um, I ready information. Uh, we focused on what's called improved placement. um for a student say who starts two grade levels below, if they make one year of progress from September to June, they're still going to be two grade levels below because they've made one year of progress, but so has everybody else. So improved placement really means that they're moving to a different level. Um they're moving from two grade levels below to one grade level below if they've improved their placement. In reality, that means they've made more than a year's worth of grow growth because now they've closed that gap a little bit. And we felt that was a really important goal because yes, of course, we want our students to all make 10 months worth of growth

014in 10 months, but in reality, many of our students, as you can see, um are more than a grade level below. So, if we want to get them on the grade level, they need to be improving their placement. So, our our three I Ready academic goals are centered around improving their placement. Um so, for vocabulary, again, this was one of our areas of focus for the building. Um we looked at our information from last year. We want to make reasonable but um aspirational, you know, reasonable but stretch goals for oursel. Um we were hoping that a little over 50% of our students would improve that placement and close a gap over the course of the school year. When we looked at our mid-year progress, um 75% of the students that we are hoping to make

015improved placement already met it by the mid-year mark. So we were really happy with that result. Um likewise when we look atformational text um similarly were hoping that more than 50% of our students who were below grade level would close that gap and improve their placement. Um and at the midyear point 61% of those students had already met the uh improved placement standard that we were setting. So again we feel like um in those two ELA areas that we were looking at um we're more than 50% of the way towards our goal for the year. So, we feel like we're well paced for our students to meet that goal. Math is a little bit different um because the skills in math often build across the entire school year. So, we were not necessarily anticipating big

016results in the middle of the year because it's hard to show improved placement of more than one year of growth in the middle of a year when you haven't even learned the full curriculum yet. Um however, we still had about 61% of our students that were below grade level at the beginning of the year already show improved placement. So that tells us that we're doing a really good job on the foundational skills and providing intervention on the areas that they were showing weaknesses in before even getting to the grade level um standards. So uh based on our midyear progress, we feel like we're well paced um to meet our goals by the end of the school year. Um we're really happy with the changes that we've made so far and feel like they've been successful.

017Something else that's changed this spring, um, for middle school students who are taking the state assessment, they will not be taking the third I Ready diagnostic, which, you know, at first we were like, okay, what is this going to look like then when we look at our goals for the end of the year? Um, but I Ready has a great tool in it called the projected proficiency. Uh what that means is I Ready will take the midyear diagnostic and offer you the score that they think a student will be able to achieve on the state assessment. Um because the state assessment and I ready are all very much aligned to the same standards. So when we look at our end of the year data, uh we'll be looking at majority of our students actual state

018test results over the summer and we'll be able to look at them relative to Ire's projected proficiency to see how well the scores in I already correlate to how they actually performed on the state assessment. So we're actually really excited about that too. Um, this year when we we took the ELA state assessment right before the break, we had 94% participation, which is significantly higher than any participation rate we've had since I've been an administrator at Union Bale. Um, so we're actually kind of excited. We think we're going to have really comprehensive data to look at um over the summer and that it'll be much more represent our state test results will be much more representative of our population of students that we have here in the building which gives us much better information about

019how well our curriculum and our assessments that are locally created are aligning with um the state assessments. So with our students, um like I said, we've been working really hard to integrate the mission and the values into the things that we're doing with them. Um so one of the things we wanted to make sure is that they were really visible. Students, you know, it's in their face and they're seeing it every day. They'll understand the importance of it. So out in our main hallway here, you'll see we've put all of our all the values and the mission statement so they're all walking past it every single day between the cafeteria and the gym. Um hopefully those words are becoming ingrained in their mind every time they look at it. Um our ray of light program

020is part of our PBIS program here. It's how we recognize students for the good things that they do in the building. Um and we changed how a student gets nominated um this year for Array of Light to align with all of the core values. So students who receive Array of Light um are receiving it because they're exemplifying one of the values here um at Unionville. So, one of the things that we've done a lot of work around this year is our connections with the community. Um, our students are willingly contributing in many ways. Some of them facilitated by adults, but many of them have been initiated by the students themselves. Um, so these are just a couple of the examples. Our fiddle club um the last couple of Decembers has played um performed at the

021office of the aging. After they perform, they stay and they interact socially with um the people who have come to watch them. It's been really a really positive event bringing a lot of joy to people. Um our students in Miss Alter's art classes, this is one of the student initiated um contributions to our community. They asked about collecting candy to make Halloween um like goodie bags to donate. Um and so Miss Alieri said yes and she put out uh an email saying, "Hey, if anyone's got extra candy, my kids have an idea for a project." She had no idea how many tens of pounds of candy she was going to end up with. They sorted candy for like two days out there, I think. Um, but they donated a lot of, um, the kids put

022in a lot of work to make these cute goodie bags and donate them to Hope on a Mission. Um, our FCCLA club, um, they made blessing bags, so toiletries and hygiene products for individuals in the community that need them. So, in addition to those, um, our students have initiated a Halloween costume collection that they donated to Grace Smith House. Um, our orchestra students organized their own food drive at our winter concert series. Um the whole building participated in Cram the Classroom this year and twice for tots. Um and our students made cards for veterans before our Veterans Day ceremony and collaborated with Senator Hinchi's office to make Valentine's for seniors in the community. Um so they've contributed in many ways and made a lot of people happy. Um but this year we've also um had

023several different experiences where our students were interacting with younger students within the district. Um, one of our traditions in eighth grade now is one of our teams hosts a Polar Express Day for Veil Farm first grade. Um, the first graders come up, they decorate the bus like the Polar Express. Um, they ride up here. Um, they watch the movie, they have hot chocolate and snacks, they do activities. Um, and the eighth grade students, they take it very seriously. They love being buddied up with first graders. Um, it's a really sweet event. Luckily, one of our eighth grade teachers looks very much like the conductor, so it works out really well. Um, we have two clubs that also have been interacting with our students. Uh, we have a new club this year called the Spanish Enrichment

024Club. They've been working on some lessons during the enrichment block at Val Farm. They go down and do some activities with Spanish language with students there. And our future teachers club. Um, that's a picture of them at Knoxtown, but I think they've been to a couple different buildings, but they're writing lessons and carrying out activities with students um, in some of the elementary buildings, a lot of fifth grade classes, which has been really great. So, the fifth graders have been interacting with middle schoolers. It's providing a nice bridge for some of them before they come up here and become UVMS rays. Um, and one of my favorites is the sew monster project. That picture doesn't look great on the big screen, but um our fax classes send a template down to some of the elementary

025classes and they design a monster and then our kids sew a stuffed animal of their monster for them. Um it's really cute, very sweet. Um but those are just a few of the ways that our students are also contributing within the Arlington the school community as well. Um so we've really benefited at Union Bell from some strong community involvement. I think part of what makes us a better school community is having community members interact with our students. Um I think if we want our students to be good nextdoor neighbors someday and strong citizens, it's really important for them to have good role models in the community, be aware of the types of organizations and support that's out there um and the resources that are available to them. So we've had many organizations, individuals who are

026willing to support the build the building and our students learning. Um, we want to offer our students broad exposure to a lot of things to get a sense of what opportunities there are for them in our community, things they might want to pursue or get involved in, um, after they leave Union Veil in Arlington. So, up there's a couple pictures. Um, our Veterans Day ceremony is wonderful for many of our students. Um, it's a real learning experience. They don't really know why we honor veterans on Veterans Day sometimes. So, um, for many of them, it's a it's a very important event for them. they take it very seriously and they have an opportunity to interact with a lot of different veterans who are all different ages who have participated in the armed forces in many

027different ways. So, um hearing them learn from them is exciting. A lot of kids are really proud to bring in their family member or their neighbor um that or you know a friend um that has served um to participate in the event. It's a source of pride for them. So, that's a that's one of our big events in the fall. Um we've consistently had IBM and uh global foundaries engineers come in for ew week. Um each of our three grade levels participates and engineers come in and do an engineering activity with our students. Um a lot of students have this misconception that engineering is like computer very techy metal something. Um whereas building they're building a game actually in this year's activity realizing that engineering can be lots of different design things. Um, our students

028have presented their artwork or shown their artwork, I should say, um, at the Vassor College Gallery and the Beakman Library. Um, giving our students an opportunity to share their talent, show their creative works, um, participate in a real art gallery opening, um, where they get to interact with people from the physical location, but also the public who's come to see their work, which has been really, um, positive experience for them. U,, we've also done, like I said, some learning from outside groups. Um, the Grace Smith House comes in to our sixth grade classes, uh, in their computers classes to do internet safety. We also had Thomas Grimes, who's a Hudson Valley resident and retired law enforcement officer, do internet safety with our seventh graders. This year, um, Nami Mid Hudson came in and did a

029mental health presentation in alignment with our eighth grade health curriculum for our eighth graders. Um, we've also benefited from pet partners having some therapy dogs come into some of our classes to visit with our students, which has been really positively um, wellreceived. But we also feel like again we should be as adults modeling some of the ways that we interact with the community. Um so we've done a lot of work with Sparrows Nest this year which the kids have seen. We have a team that's going to participate in the Sparrows Nest the Superhero 5K in May. Um we have a team who's going to be participating in the Hudson Valley Autism Walk um at Bayard Park. Uh we als we have a career fair where we invite in many members of our community some of

030them family members as well but to speak about their careers and their journeys in education to give our students some ideas about you know traditional and non-traditional ways that they can get into different uh career paths. Um and then one of our favorites uh a tradition that's been going on a very long time is our Thanksgiving feast in the seventh grade. Lots of families come in to enjoy a meal with our seventh grade teams. We're happy to welcome them in. Um, we've also really benefited from a strong PTA presence this year. Um, our students absolutely loved the book fair in the fall and one of the best parts about it was how many parent volunteers we had, parent and grandparent, I should say, volunteers that we had come in um during the book fair to

031help volunteer but interact with our students, help them pick out books, have really great conversations with them about um, young adult literature. It was really nice to see um our students talking to adults they didn't necessarily know but explaining to them the difference between like anime and manga for example. Um so we're just looking for as many positive ways for our students to interact with community members as we can. So we're very proud of the growth that our students have been making um and the experiences that they've been having at Unionville this year, but um it takes the support of a lot of people to make it all happen successfully. um within the building, our faculty of teachers, but our TAs, our nurses, our bus drivers, our kitchen staff, our custodians, every person in this

032building helps exemplify the mission and the values and be good role models for our students. Um and plays an important role in us being able to successfully support our students in their own journeys. Um, we're also really grateful for the community members who understand that middle schoolers are going through um, you know, extensive growth in this period of their life and they're exploring lots of different things, but they are willing to come in and join us and help us in developing well-rounded um, young adults. Um, I want to thank our colleagues too at the other buildings in the district and the central office team for all their support um, in some of the changes we're making and entertaining our ideas for different creative ways that we want to engage our students with different members of

033the community and creating a thriving learning environment here at Unionville. Um, of course, we need to thank our families too for trusting us with their children each day and allowing us to give them all these different experiences and partnering with us um, to try to have a positive impact on each of them. So, I feel very lucky to be here um at Unionville and really proud of the work that we're doing and I hope that you are too. Thank you. Thank you very much. Don't go anywhere. I was just going to slip away. I saw that. So, you got to like maybe if I move really slowly backwards, right? Um thank you. That was a great presentation. Does anybody have any questions for Dr. Olison? Come on, you can't let her off this easy. When

034you're good, you're Mark and then Donna. Yeah. Okay. Back up there. So, not a criticism, but just curious how ready students are. We're talking about the academics at 50 or 61% on on grade level. Are they ready for high school? And is there something that you feel that you need to get those numbers higher? Is it are we still dealing with the pandemic? You know, what's the what do you see as the issue? Or is that are those numbers where they should be? Well, I don't know that they're where they should be. Um like I said, our goal is our goal is to always have all of our students as prepared for the next level as they can be. Um I think each each group of students that we've seen come in has been more

035prepared um as we've kind of come out of the pandemic. So um we've seen each grade level with higher numbers coming in if that makes sense. Um so I feel optimistic about that. Um are they ready for high school? We are getting them as ready as they can be. Um and that's why we keep making the changes that we are. We keep looking at what it is we're doing, how are we doing it, and what can we offer to students differently. So, we've um some of the other things that um were not in this presentation that we've done. So, like I said, we've looked at we changed the model for AIS and sixth grade. We're going to look at some shifts for seventh and eighth grade next year. Um we've made some changes to our

036reading program and added some different coursework. So, um for example, one of our more intensive reading interventions is the Wilson reading program focuses a lot on decoding. We realized that that by itself wasn't sufficient. It wasn't like if kids couldn't read, this was the only problem they were having. Um, so we added in a different special class reading for a different profile of student that has decoding and comprehension support in it. So we're shifting the support classes that we're offering to meet the needs of the students that we're seeing coming in. Um, so yes, I'm very optimistic that we're going to have more of them ready before they leave here. Um, we'll continue looking at the data and using that to inform the things um that we think they need to get there. They're more

037ready than they were a couple years ago, for sure. And we're giving them very broad experiences too. And that's um part of the reason I think the focus on community is so important. Um no, not every student like you know may be the strongest reader but they we want to make sure they have opportunities to find other things that they are really good at and passionate about to pursue. Thank you Donna. I was just curious um you talked about the uh the improvement in the children from uh you know one one to three grades per 100. I wonder with your interventions, are you seeing that sort of across the the range of students or is it like the the lowest the furthest behind are catching up more or you know I wonder how that how

038you see the effects distributed? Yeah, we're paying the most attention like I said to that sixth grade group of students receiving intervention because we changed the model. So, we're really um looking to see how well that's working. And I can say with that sixth grade group of students um the students who began three or more grade levels below, this was one of our standout data points. Um they've already made more than 150% progress on their goals for this year. So, in the students that we're providing the most intense intervention for, they are seeing the most growth. A student who's one grade level below obviously has less gap to close than a student that's three grade levels below. So um we are focusing a lot of our energy um on some of those students who are

039multiple grade levels below and like I said where we shifted our AIS model we're seeing significant growth in those kids. So again that makes us feel like we made the right move in addressing that group of students needs. Anyone else? Well thank you. That was a great presentation. Thank you. I actually did have a question. It was almost a Phil question. Um, does does everyone now I can make eye contact with you. I can give everybody the eye. Um, does everyone set do all schools set three um three IR ready academic goals? Like is that something like you you selected your goals, but is that something we instruct each of our buildings to do or is that something that Dr. Rollison sort of self- selected to do? loaded question. I'd like to say there was

040self- selection in that. Um that being said, uh we gave our principles this year the ability to uh set their goals with the parameters uh that one of those goals should be around uh academic improvement. And a typical uh process uh that I think our principles have learned and and appropriately so uh is to base those improvement goals off of what we would say are benchmark assessment. Assessments that are being administered to all of our kids uh generally around the same period of time. Uh so that they provide a fair opportunity to examine growth over a period of time whether that be from September to June or from one school year compared to the next school year. Uh so our principles primarily have used the I Ready uh in order to do that. Um generally

041it it holds up a little bit better in that our participation rates on the I Ready are higher than uh what we've seen in the past. Dr. Rollson alluded to this uh on the state assessment. Um but you know we're seeing I think a positive trend towards greater engagement there. Uh I didn't include it in my comments. would have been helpful for the you know computer uh based assessments to go off without a hitch this year but that wasn't our fault um that happened you know outside of of Arlington but um super impressive 94% like I don't think all my time on the board we hit that because that was back in the day when everybody was was walking out right and as I noted great Dr. Rolison said I her excitement at the comprehensive

042data that's going to be available to her and her team. I made note of that with a chuckle um just to give you a perspective. So all of their goals don't follow the exact same format but I think what we're observing along the way is that they've they've leaned on a similar set of assessments to do so. I was just curious about that about goal development. Yeah. So thank you both. Yeah. A great representation of some of just some of the work because I know there's a lot more work that's going on here. uh by uh Lisa uh and her team. Uh with that, the board and I spoke in the summertime about areas of interest to hear reports uh about throughout the course of the school year. Uh one of those was uh the

043elementary teaming model which was implemented as a pilot program two years ago uh in Arlington is has since expanded and I'd like to invite John uh and Jennifer up to provide an overview on the teaming model. Welcome. We did want to hear about this because we've seen we were on a road show and saw a little preview. Haven't seen the uh It's always nice to hear how things end, right? John's not going to throw the clicker this week. I may put John in charge of it. Um and just to I know we're talking about elementary teaming, but I was listening to Dr. Lison's outstanding presentation, and I'm over there like pulling up data as she's talking. And just for context, 94% this year. Last year's eighth grade participation was 62%. In terms of the Wow.

044I know that's like a that's a village thing that gets that to work, but that's great. Yeah. So, good job. Nice job. Team effort there. Uh, all right. So, teaming. Thank you for teeing us up, Dr. Bonante. Um I I think it it in addition to pointing out that this is work that spanned two years I think it's Dr. Bonanter were talking about this presentation a little bit earlier today and he reflected back that that means that this is a good example of work that's spanned multiple administrations at this point. Um, and it's a good example of work that we've remained committed to and because of um, what you'll hear from some of our teachers who are going to co-present with us in a little bit. Um, it is work that it's different. It's a

045different approach to elementary school instruction. Um, but it it's we see the potential value in that and we're committed to monitoring its progress, seeing what the possible benefits are, um, being aware of any pitfalls and and trying to mitigate those to see if this is a viable option for us. Um, now Jennifer has been connected to this work since its inception. Um, certainly our principles, we've had some steady leadership in in those areas. So, it at at the really the ground level, it's been fairly consistent, but it's something that the two of us have really had to um acclimate to as we've adjusted to to our new roles over the course of this year. Um so, in Arlington, the the model that we have embraced is based off of Arizona State University's uh teaming model.

046They approached this really um from a workforce problem that Arizona was dealing with. they had massive teacher shortages. They were trying to figure out how are we going to staff classrooms? How are we going to make sure kids are getting um adequate instruction uh and and partnered with Phoenix and Scottsdale and Mesa and their really surrounding areas um and have several different models um and I had a chance with uh Dr. Rodriguez when she was here uh Dr. Roselli came out with us. Um Stacy Tames and a couple other teachers came out and we visited some of the schools in Arizona that had implemented very different models. Um and I think that's one of the important things to point out is that there this isn't a boxed approach. There's a philosophy that's fairly consistent, but

047it's not just you need to do this and this is what it looks like. And we leaned into that in Arlington and there's there are different buildings playing with different models of this to see what works for them. It allows for some flexibility. Um but the core tenants and around the philosophy are really providing equitable access to instruction for students. um providing more opportunity within this team approach to personalized learning, emphasizing inquiry based uh approaches, developing stronger relationships between students and teachers, which I think you'll you'll probably hear some of our teachers reflect back that that was actually an area of concern heading into this because the typical elementary school model is I have a classroom of 20 to 25 26 students depending on where you are. Um, and now I'm going to be responsible

048for double, potentially triple that. And and what does that look like? And how will I get to know my students? And and as I've had conversations with the teachers through this process, um, they're actually reporting out greater levels of um, relationship building and understanding of students because of how they're able to work with them and focus on that. And then certainly last of all the collective efficacy um around around the program implementation and the curriculum delivery. One of the main benefits of it in the elementary level is the distributed expertise. So instead of being responsible for your your average elementary school classroom teacher is responsible for all of the math, all of the ELA, all of the science, all of the social studies instruction within the class, all of with the the exception of our

049tier 2, tier three students, all of the tier one interventions that a student might need around developing some support in math and ELA. Um, with the distributed expertise model, which is the backbone of the teameing, it gives teachers the opportunity to really just hone in on one subject area. Um, and then build out their support network for their students throughout that. Um, one of the the benefits of this is you're not you you as the teacher are really able to focus your instruction around what your kids need. Um, and I imagine we're going to hear a little bit of people reporting out that they're they feel like they're more prepared to deliver targeted instruction to students throughout the course of the day. Um, I'm not going to read all this to you. I've already kind

050of touched on some of the differences, but this is uh the the main breakdown here for students is um you you have instead of having one teacher teacher the students have multiple teachers, they do get to change periods throughout the course of the day. Uh I did talk a little bit about the shift between having one classroom to really double to triple the number of students. um you it's just it's a different way of thinking about it, but the collaboration and the interdisciplinary work that comes in that also is heavily complemented by our PLC work that we're investing in. So, we've been doing, you've heard me talk about our our solution tree work, our PLC work. Um, our elementary schools are doing a phenomenal job across the board with our PLC um, imple re-implementation and

051the teaming model supports that tremendously. You have a team of people rallying around a kid. Um, Dr. Rollson talked a little bit about up here how you see she they are looking at standards across the disciplines and our middle schools are a teamed model and so you you have team time and the teachers sit together and collaborate around well what's the lesson and where are the standards that we can overlap and now we've created a structure where you have a team of elementary teachers who can have similar conversations um and really build targeted supports whether that's enrichment or intervention for students And the win period offers that flexibility. So while I did talk about having content experts so to speak, what our team models will do is when teachers during the win period, they might

052divide up and everybody all of them are teaching math. I'll use that as an example, but they'll share kids across. So, I'll be teaching um the measurement unit and Jennifer is going to be working on addition and subtraction and we're identifying kids during our team time and during win period the students who need those interventions will come to us regardless of who their home room teacher is and other students might go to the other member of our team to get some enrichment experience. So, we're seeing a nice complement between teaming and PLC um in this model and so we're hoping that that uh will continue to to pay off for our teachers. Jennifer is going to talk a little bit about the different models that are taking place. Good evening everyone. Um so, yes, we

053have teaming going on in uh in four of our elementary buildings right now. So, um actually grade uh Knox is experimenting with teaming at grade two this year. Um, Bale Farm is doing both fourth and fifth grade. Um, Arthur May is in year two of teeing at the fifth grade level and similarly Titusville Intermediate School is also in year two of teeming at fifth grade. So, we basically have five different um grade levels uh five different uh grade level teams across the district who are experimenting with teaming. So at Knoxon um they have three uh three core uh general education teachers and one special education teacher for the second grade uh team. So there are about 65 students um in the second grade at Knoxon and they are rotating through the through those three classrooms

054throughout the day. Um in second grade because there is still a very heavy emphasis on reading and foundational skills. One teacher is doing the reading and foundational skills. Uh, a second teacher is doing writing and then also the content areas alternating kind of back and forth between science and social studies units and finding the synergy between writing and content areas which is a good place to find that interdisciplinary connection. And then the third teacher is focusing on math. The special education teacher in all of these models pretty much rotates with the students through the classes. So she would stay with her cohort of students as they move throughout the classroom uh the different classrooms during the day. Um at Arthur May um a little bit different there because they actually have four teachers. So um

055that poses uh both uh opportunities and also a a little bit more challenge because the time is a little bit tighter in terms of students going through four periods a day. So um different days sort of have different structures a little bit in terms of how much time students are spending in each of the subject areas but um again a teacher focused on reading they have also combined writing and social studies one teacher focusing on math and one on science and again their special education teacher rotates. So they've had that model for the last two years. Um at Arthur May at Titusville there are um six teachers. So they have two teams of of three teachers each. Only one of their teams has a special education cohort. So the one team team B also has

056that special education teacher. So they've also taken a slightly different approach to um how they are doing the um how they're they're doing the content areas. So on each of the teams there's a teacher who focuses on math, a teacher who focuses on ELA, which includes both reading and writing, and a teacher that focuses on science. And then what they do at the end of each trimester is take about a two-week period where they are doing interdisciplinary project-based work that is of the social has a social studies content base. So everybody is approaching that social studies content through their own um lens. Um and that's how they're doing um project-based learning but also covering the social studies content. So that was a little bit of a different take on how to um approach the content

057areas at Titusville. At Veil Farm, they have a similar approach um on both fourth and fifth grade. The challenge at Veil Farm is an odd number of teachers, five. So that doesn't work well in terms of having one group of five teachers. Uh so what they did was have a team A and a team B on both grade uh levels. Team A has two teachers and a special education teacher. So in that configuration, one teacher is f focusing on ELA, including reading, writing, and social studies. And then the other is focusing on math and science. Um and again that special education teacher rotating. So that is the way that they have um dealt with that team of two. The team of three is ELA, math, and then science and social studies, kind of alternating back

058and forth between those two subject areas. So, it takes some uh creativity to figure out within the structure of the number of teachers you have, the number of students you have, how to approach the content. And we're happy that our different grade levels in across the district have taken kind of interesting and unique approaches to the curriculum because it helps us learn from each other but also understand um what might be appropriate models if we were to expand in the future. And now um we are going to ask some of our uh veil farm team members uh to come up and join us and talk a little bit about teaming. So Mariah Corddero Betta is our fifth grade uh team leader at Veil Farm. John Valente is our uh one of our fourth grade. Well,

059I had the opportunity obviously to talk with you back in December when you visited Bale Farm and tell you a little bit about the our journey and how our journey was sort of beginning. Um and I did highlight some of the things that our teachers are doing. Um, but I'd like to kind of have my teachers kind of speak to you a little bit about because they're in the trenches about how things are going. Um, I definitely have things that I'm already in my mind working. I just had an epiphany last week that I emailed them all about um for next year. I have these moments of, you know, oh, I want um so anyway, but I'm going to let them speak a little bit to um the things that they're seeing with their students

060um and how they feel that it's going a little bit. So, yeah. So, there's there's many things when we think about the um I'm on the fourth grade team. Well, we we've mentioned that already. I'm teaching ELA this year for those of you that know me. Um it's it's it's a thrilling. Absolutely. I know Eileen. Yay. I know. Who who knew? Who ever knew? But um I will say that my my experience is predominantly I think the stronger relationships and the collective efficacy are two of the more important things that I've seen in this journey and I will outright say I was one of the stick in the muds at the very beginning. I was very focused on I do not want to lose the family relationship that I have with my 25 kids in

061front of me and that was incredibly important to me and I was very very hesitant at the beginning and I will say I'm now on the team of three teachers and so I have 65 kids that I see on a daily basis because of the teaming approach I know those 65 kids better than I knew my 25 kids in years past and the reason is that we meet daily and we are talking with each each other all the time about those kids. And so we have four people with the special ed teacher. We have four teachers who are looking that at that entire team of students. And with the conversations that we have about those kiddos every single day, I know them much better than I ever would know them just with my own set

062of eyes looking at them. And I think that really really benefits and speaks to the stronger relationships with kids. Uh why don't we just tag team? Do you how do you feel about that? So I'm on the fifth grade team. I'm on team A, the two two person team with a special ed teacher. And I was the same way as Dawn. I was not so sure about this model when we started it. I wanted to keep my close-knit family that I create every year. Um, so I was like, "Yeah, put me on that two team. Then I have two classes rather than three." So I was like, I I'll start there. Um, but I've really grown to love it. I agree with Don when she said like that close-knit. You get to know these kids

063more than you ever thought you would because we're meeting on them every single day. So, when I see my second class of the day, like my relationship with them is just as strong as my relationship with my home room class, even though I see my home room class a little bit more. Um, and like I said, I was really nervous about that aspect. I was like, how am I going to know these kids? How am I going to know how they're doing in math and science? But I feel like I know them in ELA and social studies and I also know how they're doing in math and science because we talk about them every single day. And it also allows us to support them behaviorally and socially. So we know, for example, a kiddo that

064might have exe executive functioning skills that might struggle a little bit with the transition between each of the classes. We all have the same game plan. So, we all know that it's even as simple as as Scott will laugh at me, but just making sure that everybody has a pencil. So, as everybody walks out that door, I'm saying pencil, pencil, pencil, pencil. And they're walking into Mr. Adams class and he's saying pencil, pencil. So, it sounds silly, but it's it's knowing that the kids need particular supports and we can all provide them that that support. The other area in which I think the relationships are very much benefiting the children is that you're not only having one elementary school teacher. They have access to two in in Mariah's case or possibly four in my case.

065So if a teacher doesn't necess if a student doesn't necessarily collect with me on an individual level, they have three other chances to find somebody that year that they can really connect with. And and I think that you know some I was worried at first that well you have a kiddo like I've also taught middle school and I thought well the kiddos in middle school are just moving from one class to another and it's really hard to connect. It's very very different at the elementary model because we do talk daily about them and we also just just see them. So we're constantly talking about them and they constantly have a chance to connect with some adults that they can really engage with. Yeah. The other area that I have particularly found really really helpful this

066year and beneficial to the students is the idea of collective efficacy. And when we talk about that, it sounds like a really fancy word, but it really means that the more hands you have on deck, the easier it is for the kids. And so we are using our team time daily to sit down and figure out always looking at the data. There's always some eye that we have on either I Ready data or data that we've created within um an individual team. For example, Scott Adams, as we head into the math, the state math test, he's created a number of Google forms that simply have two multiplication problems on them. And we're giving those to the kids every single day. And then every single day during team time, we can sit down and we can

067say, "All right, who are the kids that got it? What are they struggling with?" And then the next day that we have intervention and enrichment time, we can work with those kids either as Miss uh Dr. Rollison and Mr. Orcut have discussed in splitting them up amongst different teachers or even just sitting down and saying, "Hey, Mariah, come on over. We got to sit and work on this a little bit together." So there's immediate feedback on stuff and we're not still in the multiplication unit anymore. So with the teaming, we're able to touch base and make sure that the kids are continuing to get the support that they need. um anything it's immediate. So we're we're looking at this data and then the very next day we're acting upon it which is not something that

068we were able to do when we met as a PLC once a cycle. So like I could have a kid who you know we're working on writing a claim in ELA who really doesn't get the claim but got finding evidence no problem. tomorrow I know, oh, I'm going to pull these eight group of kids, these eight kids from both classes or from the team and that's what I'm going to work on before I even see them like in class that day. So, it's like immediate feedback, getting immediate action, which is really really cool. And the other aspect of collective efficacy is the ability to use the same structures across different content area. So, you heard Dr. Rollers at the beginning talking about why the data and analysis and the measurement was working so well in

069the middle school and the kids were doing so well. It's because those concepts were being repeated across multiple classes. Uh Scott Adams and I, he's teaching science and social studies and even Mariah and across both fourth and fifth grade teams. We've really kind of collectively developed a structure for writing paragraphs that includes a claim, evidence, explanations, and reasoning. and we've all developed that structure together. So regardless of where the students are writing a paragraph, whether it's about the American Revolution and social studies, whether it's about a science activity where they're explaining what happened with um with some type of experiment, whether they're learning literacy essays and they're learning how to write bigger paragraphs, they're getting almost hit over the head with the concept of claim, evidence, explanation, reasoning, and it's really, really taking hold. So,

070you know, making that connection when they come to ELA, I might give them a science prompt just to kind of remind them that they go together and they're like, "Wait, this is science." I'm like, "Yeah, but you're going to write about the same way we've been writing in ELA. You still need a claim. You need your two pieces of evidence. You need to explain it." And it it makes it easier for them to understand that all these things kind of connect like Dr. Holston said and they're seeing it in multiple places, not just, "Oh, when I go to write it, when I go to ELA, I'm I'm just writing." Now, they're like, "Oh, when I go to science, I'm going to use what I learned in ELA class to answer this short response question." They're

071not left like, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do here now that there's a science question I need to write about." So, that's been really awesome to see that their writing is improving across all the concepts. So, those are some of the ways in which we've we've seen it. um helpful. Uh any questions that you have for either of us? Well, why do we'll do a little segment of questions here before we How does that sound? Anybody's got a hand up? Mark, you you have multiple students in your say first group of the day and they may have different needs. Who's keeping track all this data? We are as a team. Where do you find the time? That's our team time. Okay. That's the team team time. And that's part of one of the

072things that we heard when we began learning about the ASU model is that the one of the things they kept saying is that that team time is absolutely essential for this to work because that's when um you know, Mr. Adams is writing up a quick multiplication Google form and then we're looking at the data the very next day. If we did not have that time, it would be extremely difficult to be able to be as um effective as I believe we are. Yeah. And that's how we know our students. Like I said, I teach ELA and social studies, but I still know the kids in my home room and the kids in my second class. I know how they're doing in math and science as well. So, I can pull them even if I have

073like a few extra minutes in my home room class. I feel like, okay, I need student A, student B, student C, we're going to work on multiplication. just because I know in the back of my head that that's a skill that they need based on all the conversations we've had. Great. Thank you. I guess I have a question. Um, so is this your are you one of the year one people or one of the year two people? Year one. Year one people. Um, is it fair or unfair to ask? Would you you know do you think it's the future? Do you think that it's like would you are you so happy you don't want to go back or Yes. Yes. Yeah. It it it makes when we hear about it and when we we saw

074at um I think it was Titusville we saw the spaces they had done some work with their spaces you know it just it seems to make sense and I don't want to put words in your mouth but it but I it seems like it's more supportive for the teachers too that you're not you know I I actually love the teaming my kids went through this school and I had a child that had a particular issue do and the team model made all the difference because where one teacher might have seen one side of my child when you say they find people but it's also the other way around that teachers see different things and different kids right and I found that very powerful but it must be I I don't know I don't want to

075put words in your mouth but I it must be helpful it's like less lonely or something if you have a hard day right I don't know if that's true is that true yeah and I mean we have students who you know it takes a while to figure out right Yeah, we connect better with some students than others. Um, so during that team time, we could say like, oh, you know, I'm having a little bit of trouble with this student. I can't really connect with them. And that's again where we talk about how we can make those connections. And it really makes a difference academically for these students, but also like socially and how they feel. Um, I think it's really cool because I have students from the other class that stop in my room every

076morning just to say hello, even though they're coming to see me later and like vice versa with my other teammate. Um, so it really that these relationships, you know, are growing and they're working and it I see it affect them academically. I also think um part of you heard Dr. Or John or are we doctor John? Okay. Um but the ASU model really did come from a structure that was trying to solve a workplace problem with teachers with turnover and lack of teachers. And as you all have heard over and over again, teaching can be very, very stressful. And over the last, I've been in education now for 30 years, right? And it has definitely gotten more difficult. I had a little stint outside of the classroom. Now I'm back in the classroom. And I

077will say that my first two years back in the classroom, I went back into the normal um elementary teaching model. And sure, I had an experience of, okay, I've been out of the classroom for a while, so there's going to be some new teacherness that that I'm dealing with. But going from trying to be expert in four content areas every single day and trying to be prepared for four content areas, every teacher out there does their absolute best and does a phenomenal job of making that happen. But being able to really zero in on one content area and you all know ELA was not my first, you know, I've spent 30 years working in math, but the fact that I can switch over to ELA and I actually feel I mean Claudine can tell you

078because she's done my observations, but I feel like I'm a relatively satisfactory ELA teacher. Um, but but mostly that's because I really get to focus. I real I spent a ton of time over over the summer learning more about ELA. I can really hone in on planning one lesson and I'm much more I feel much more effective when I'm really putting my mind on one lesson and I think the kids absolutely benefit from that. Um and also it makes me calm during the day, right? I'm not feeling like I've got to do this and I've got to do that. And that is also a benefit to the kids because I know my job is to come in and teach them reading and writing and to be really excited about teaching them reading and writing and

079I can do that because I'm not trying to juggle lots of things. And we get to go deeper. Like I said, I teach ELA. So when we get into books and we get into stories and we get into likeformational writing and research, we're able to go so much deeper and talk in length about things. So, like we're reading The Thief of Always right now, and the conversations I'm having this year compared to last year and years prior, and I've read this book multiple times with my students. The ideas they're coming up with are so phenomenal because we have that time to dissect the book and to really think about theories and themes and characters and their motivations and why they're doing what they're doing. And same with social studies. social studies, you know, when you're

080teaching science, math, ELA, and everything else, things get pushed to the wayside because you don't have the time. But we're able to put in so much social studies, too, now, which is really, really awesome because some students thrive in social studies. When they hear they're they're doing social studies, their eyes light up. And that's something that I think gets forgotten sometimes, you know, gets pushed to the wayside. There's no social studies state test. So, but it's really, really awesome. and they get really really into it. They come into our spaces knowing this is my ELA and social studies class. That's what I'm here to learn. And the excitement that they bring makes us more excited. Absolutely. Same thing when they go into the math and science room or just the math room. They know they're

081learning math. They know they're in the science space, but because during these dynamic groupings, we all kind of teach everything. They also know that I'm capable of teaching them math and science as well. It's not a surprise to them. Like I'm teaching some geometry right now. and they're like, "Oh, yeah, cool. This is awesome. We get to have a math teacher and you and the ELA teacher." So, it's really cool. They don't just see us as, "Oh, that's my ELA teacher. That's just one of my teachers." You know, I I don't want to bop, but you know, the other observation that I kind of made listening to this, it reminds me I see Mrs. Deonus here. Nice to see you. But she was part of a presentation that was at a board subcommittee meeting a

082year year or so ago with the uh Unionville math team. and what exactly what you're saying with the little iterative tests and those things that are coming up. You know, it's very nice to start to see threads that go through because then the kids know that you're catching them too. Like they feel that because kids feel when they're not caught, right? Because they, you know, so I just think that that's very interesting that some of the language that you're using was some of the language we heard there. And it's nice that they're getting at a younger lang a younger level, right? I think that's great. Just seems like the excitement is palpable here. really great. This was great. Especially Dawn doing ELA. Like what? Right. That's the big That's the headline. That's the headline right

083there. So, so I think it was probably like the the first week of October where we actually did a little bit of math stuff and um the kids were very used to me being the ELA teacher and I sat down during EI time to try to teach work on them with math and the surprise in their eyes when they realized I actually knew how to you know multiplication. Yeah. Yeah, I do. A little bit. Little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. that they're used to. Now they're like, "Oh, I can come to you for a math question." I'm like, "Sure." Hey, then what I see for step up to the Yeah. Just for our friends at home. Middle school teacher, you know, I taught literacy, taught ELA and reading and I was on a team

084model at the middle school and we would meet with the team, but there was no way that I was jumping in and helping anyone with that. You know what I mean? Like it just wasn't, you know, what we did. We talked social emotional needs. We talked about ways to approach the child, but but I'm, you know, I wasn't helping them in other subject areas, right? I couldn't jump in. So, the time that they have on the elementary level, I feel like to be able to do that and to be able to have that time during our EI or the wind time or the enrichment intervention time where they can go in and and and this really as as John had mentioned, this is exactly the PLC work that we're doing. They need that daily time.

085They need because really when you when you really, you know, learn about that PLC time and what you're really supposed to be doing and what that really authentically should look like is you do have to like if you give a formative assessment or you give, you know, a little checkup, you're supposed to within 48 hours kind of get right in there and you know, you can't wait a whole week when you're meeting on the next cycle, next week, like you have to do it right away. And this is giving them that ability. So, they're really kind of a model for the rest of my school in that PLC process. Um, you know, unfortunately the other team, the other grade levels don't have that right now, but when you ask about like the future, like that's

086definitely a piece of this that's like integral into what they're doing and and really important. Yeah. That which then begs the question. So, the excitement is palpable. What does happen in your building with all the other grades that are not having this experience moving forward? Like do do people approach you now and say I want to do that too? Well, I don't know because we put a poll I think we're you know piloting right now and I think as a district let's see how this is going. Um and so no, you know, none have necessarily approached me. they haven't brought up. I mean, I will say that these two grade levels definitely approached me when they heard about it at Titusville last year and like they really are the spearhead to all like you know

087they did all the work and talking with Dr. Rosselli and that type of thing because they really wanted to do like it was their um it wasn't anything that I said let's try this you know what I mean like they it really came from them um to want to do this and like I said I'm already thinking about different ways of you can schedule it we have that two and three person team that Jennifer was talking about and um you know with the two person team they have like these two blocks of like 90 minutes or so and then the three-person team has three one-hour blocks and so sometimes because they're meeting still as a grade level so they're still talking like you know fifth grade math fifth grade the do math teachers or you

088know there's that piece and then there's your teaming piece. Uh but sometimes the pacing might be a little bit different just because of the amount of time you know differ you know they're not quite there in that science unit that type of thing because on the the two person team they have a math and science teacher and so maybe the science lessons are kind of split a little bit differently. Um so I already have an idea for next year of you know I think that we can do both teams in three one-hour blocks and take a look and they would see that third like every other day. So, we've already kind of got things working. Okay. Um, and you know, some of the other things too because of the way those teams were my fourth

089and all my fourth graders didn't have lunch and recess at the same time. And from the student perspective, you thought, you know, like you know, that was kind of like that usually like, you know, recess and lunch. Okay. The fourth graders are kind of out for recess and like get a staggered process or whatever. Then the fifth graders are out. But I had to just because of the two person and the three person and the amount of time that they needed. It's a little bit different. Um, so like two of the classes have lunch a little bit earlier and then the other three on the grade level have it a little bit later. So they're not all out there necessarily with their peers. So that was something from like a student parent perspective maybe like

090they were missing that. Um, so I'm trying to work on that as we move forward. Um, so cool. Sounds sounds exciting. Yeah. Oh, I love invitations. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Um I'm not a doctor, but I have stated that holiday exercise before on TV. Um I uh I I just That's great. unsolicited earlier today. I was at a a meeting um at Duchess Boseies and we were talking with some of the administrators from around the county and I mentioned oh I have to give a board presentation tonight. We're talking about teaming and one of the women who was in the room was like my son is at Titusville and he loves teaming. He loves changing classes. He loves having different teachers. He's so much more engaged. we're seeing his he's more um excited about school

091every morning. He comes in his we and I was like, "Oh, that's you know that's awesome to hear. I really appreciate you sharing that. How as you as a parent, how do you feel?" And she's like, "We're getting so much more feedback from his teachers." And um and we feel like when he's struggling with something, we're able to really uh we have a person to talk to about it. And not that they didn't when they didn't have the team, but it just the it she was emoting a lot of excitement around it. And then I said, "Well, like are you seeing how's he doing academically? His best year so far." So, it's a good segue into how some of the other um measurements that we're going to apply to determine the effectiveness of this program.

092Um because while we certainly do want all of this qualitative data, we also there is whether it's through the PLC process or the marrying of the PLC process and and the teams. Um at the end of the day, we also want to see our student performance levels increasing. Um so just have really quickly listed a couple of the key areas that we'll be looking at um to to really measure the effectiveness of it. I think it is important to note that if something comes back and it's not great next year, we're not going to just abandon this. We're we are really committed to trying to identify um to see if we can make this work and and really uh make it a meaningful experience for our students and for our teachers. So, um we are

093looking at our I Ready data. We're going to be looking at the state assessment data for reading, math, and science, which is a fifth grade assessment. Um, and actually that's one where I'm really curious to see the impact of teameing at fifth grade because science um, and Dawn, you can probably talk about this tends to have historically been the gh, we're running out of time in our ELA and our math curriculum. I'll shorten my science lesson. And now you have dedicated science time um, where with a teacher who's who is really focused on on science instruction. So I'm curious to see the impact of that. Um certainly we have a lot of common assessments uh and the PLC process has supported that as well. We're going to look at our attendance state as well as

094behavioral incidents because one of the things we are hearing is that kids are seem to be more um academically engaged throughout the course of the day which certainly we know engaged kids have fewer behavioral incidents. So it's a little that's a little challenging to track at the elementary level but that is an area that we're looking at. Um we are I am hopeful that we will um survey our families about their experience for participating in in teameing. Um certainly we're in constant communication with our teachers who are participating in this. But I but it is really important to gather um constant feedback from them about what they need to make this successful, what they're uh we spend some time reflecting with them on their experience and any adjustments that they can anticipate. Um, but it's

095also really important for us to get student feedback and and I and I will be curious to see this year's fifth graders in sixth grade next year having spent not not that this is a reason to like early middle school kids, but it will be way less of an adjustment for kids coming from Bale Farm and not because they're riding the Polar Express bus up here. Um, way less of an adjustment for them coming into sixth grade because they've been changing classes for a period of time. So, it'll it I'm just it's going to be an interesting thing for us to study. I don't know if you do you have any of that and I'm jumping out of current here for the people that are in a two-year pilot. Like, have we done any of

096that on the first year? And um you know, we nothing deep yet. We haven't really gone deep into that. I wasn't in this position to look at that. Um, we have some I Ready data, but it's not I wouldn't say it there's nothing that's jumping out initially um as as really being good or bad in either direction. I think also last year was really our first year with our curriculum with our curriculum maps. So I think this year I feel more confident that our teachers who are doing the teameing at the different grade levels have a um a better um you know understanding of of what all of the the content area objectives are and the are more familiar and confident with the resources that they're using. So I think now we'll start to see

097what that looks like. Um, I I just wanted to kind of reiterate what what John said and and the teachers as well that one of the most important things to me in thinking about this model at the elementary level is making sure that we understand this is not departmentalizing. That's not what we're doing. And the fact that elementary teachers are generalists who actually do have a skill and expertise in being able to teach all of the content areas allows lots of different models which we will continue to explore in the future. So, we've really just touched the surface of what can be possible in terms of teaming, in terms of interdisciplinary learning, in terms of project-based learning, um in terms of um passion projects, in terms of other types of um structures that you might

098want to use in those teams. And as we get more sophisticated in in doing this and also just more confident with all of the elements of our curriculum, I think we'll be able to do more with that in the future. Yes, Mary. Yeah, one of the statements someone this evening has made made me think another piece of information to look at would be the panorama data for elementary students who have not traditionally had that many adults in their life simultaneously. if we'll see a difference, you know, moving forward. That that would be interesting to tease out, I believe. Yeah. I um it was genius to have the Bale Farm teachers talk because you can really feel the excitement. So, that was great. Um, not that not that we didn't know the excitement before because we

099had had an update from about them before from Cluing, but um, yeah, you could really feel the excitement. Um, and I, you know, I would love to come and see what's going on. So, I'll be there. I know. I know. I have to. Um, so we were talking, you were talking about the qualitative. You definitely have uh qualitative data at this point, right? Um but you don't feel at this point that you have quantitative data that you can talk about that's you can just say yes on that right we will have data at the end of this year. So we feel um that the end of the year data data is is a better gauge of how students really progressed through that entire curriculum. So I'd rather sort of go wait until you have that

100year June to June. That's typically how we have been looking at our data. So, I would like actually not to have to wait until next June though to see how things are going. I'd like an update earlier. Um, and one of the things I'm interested in among everything is um we I've been hearing for two years that I've been on the board that one of the things our students struggle with isformational text. And so, if in this environment we're focusing more on social studies and science means we're increasing their background knowledge. And so that's one of the places that I'm really interested to see what those what's going to happen with those numbers. Yeah. And we'll I'll make sure this summer that we'll have some comprehensive data to to look at regular. Thank you. Yeah.

101Just to piggyback off Eileen, I think I think what you're hearing is the board I think is as excited as the people that we see speaking, right? And so we would love to hear as you progress like the methodology of rolling something like this out and the thought behind it and and certainly if there was any any like pulling back. I mean I think we'd like to hear that why that would be um nice to have a positive story. That's wonderful. John and uh Jennifer committed to providing the end ofear data to the board uh this summer. um whether we want to pull that into retreat for review or at some other uh uh opportunity, we'll be sure to do so. John I think alluded to at the beginning of the presentation. uh we are

102in year two. Uh but we also made the decision uh really at this point not to further expand the model uh to give the teams that are working currently which uh we heard uh an overview uh of the scope of that this evening an opportunity to further engage in this work uh us to support them uh to be responsive to their needs and then uh use next school year as an opportunity to really review the model as a uh in determining if we're going to further expand um um or if there's any reason to contract. Um I think we're hearing uh at the end here, you know, the criteria in which we would make decisions around the teaming model won't exclusively be made around uh student achievement. Uh that may shine through and that would

103be great. Uh but what I would ask the board to consider if if student achievement uh were to remain uh consistent with what we would see in non-team classrooms but uh the enthusiasm that our uh staff feels you know Dawn spoke a little bit about um you know just how she feels as a professional working within this organization structure and knowing that there's a lot of stress uh you know on our staff they get pulled in many directions ums Also just the anecdotal piece and you know shook my head uh science and social studies do tend to be underemphasized in uh the elementary uh program or historically have been. Um and I think the result of that is something of kids having consistent exposure uh in those two areas isn't likely to reveal itself necessarily

104in one year as much as it would later on in their their academic experience. There's all sorts we have to be deliberate in mapping out now what are the criteria we're going to look to Marian mentioned another one you know the panorama data um uh to evaluate whether this is a model we want to expand um that maybe transcends just the academic uh um uh results that we would see in the program. you know, there's there's probably, you know, we'll probably have a an exhaustive list of things and narrow that down to, you know, maybe, you know, six to eight things that we'll use as a basis for evaluating the program. The other thing I think we have to be mindful of is, you know, Don and Mariah and, you know, Scott maybe have this

105natural uh inclination to lean into to teaming, but all of our staff may not. Um you know I think right now we have some early adopters uh uh which is great but we also have to think as an organization of the implication of uh implications of taking teachers who may not you know really feel that they they have a a readiness to do that um or a desire to do that um um and consider well how do we then expand the model if that's something we choose to do. Uh and then the last thing I'll just be mindful of there there is a financial implication for teaming uh not just from a training perspective but also how we staff the model indirect cost uh associated here that just if we're going to expand it we

106have to be mindful of uh how we're going to budget for that as well. So that's just something I wanted to make sure I mentioned to the board. Uh we didn't emphasize it in the report and that's fine. Uh but we also have to be deliberate if we're going to scale up from you know six to eight teams to double that. that has a financial implication that we have to build into the budget. I guess it requires enthusiasm but also level of vulnerability, right? Absolutely. That you're vulnerable to your peers, right? That you're sharing all the things that you've done well or that you struggle with or whatever. So, thank you very much for doing that. Mary, I would agree. I I just wanted to if I can um you know, Claudine had alluded to

107uh how the team's serving as a model for the rest of the school, which is what we need. And um you know, we're at a I think a point where we want our staff to try out different things. We want our buildings to take different approaches. Uh and we need people to lead the way on that and and this team certainly doing so as well as the other teams uh within the uh uh within the district that are highlighted um in in the report this evening. You know, we have a core value around change being essential for progress. And yes, while Dawn identified an individual change, she's made a pretty significant one. The model in of itself is a change for how we've traditionally worked uh together. Um so uh there's um I think good

108things just to come from that as a process because we're going to need more of it in different ways from different educators in the years ahead. Well, thank everyone. Thanks to everyone. Oh, I'm so sorry, Jen. We heard about the fourth and fifth. I was just curious how the second grade teaming was. That's a different skill set for the little different it's a different skill set. And um I know that um you know uh Dr. Murray is is continuing to kind of work with her team. They they're sort of working through what does that look like for second graders. Um I've had a chance to to be in those classrooms as well and to see um again I mean children are highly adaptable. So even second graders are really highly adaptable. It's a wonderful team

109of teachers, very supportive, very loving. Um, and it feels it it has a those classrooms again have a very strong social emotional feeling which is very positive and I think that's so important for um for primary grades and that's also going to be a place where we definitely want to look at the data because it is a little bit different at that level to be working with different teachers in in in the different subject areas. So we'll certainly be very interested to see what the data shows for that at the end of the year and again what would what was the students experience? How did the parents feel about the teaming? Thank you. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. I'm looking around. No more hands. Okay. Thank you all very much. Um

110all right. Looks like our next topic of discussion is the student board member. Would you like to lead us off, Dr. Yes, I just have an update for the board. I I don't have slides for this. Um, so as the board's aware, and we've talked about a couple of times along the way, we have uh we're preparing to include a student as an exeicio member of the board for next school year. Um, currently we uh we have nine students who are interested uh who have expressed interest. They haven't made a commitment of any sort. We haven't asked them to uh at this particular point. um those are rising juniors and seniors because that was our our target assuming that this would be more for an upper class uh an upper classman and uh really I

111wanted to check in with the board at this point about next steps. So, uh, we have nine students who are interested. Um, but I I don't want to proceed without getting, you know, at least checking in with the board to see if there's any expectations that you had, uh, along the way here as we consider, uh, bringing that group of nine because there's there's not room for nine um, uh, you know, to be exeicio members. I do think we could talk about including two. Uh just envisioning that our high school kids are very busy and maybe we want to work out a rotation of some sort along the way. Uh but I want the process to be something that's obviously fair for our kids. Uh especially considering that there may be more than two in

112the end who really want to be a part of it. Um so with that, I'll I'll pause to see if there's any other questions or thoughts that the board wanted to share before I further shift. I see two hands going up over there. We'll start with Mark. Okay. I was going to say it would seem to me that if we've got juniors and seniors and it would be a nice progression to have, you know, a senior plus next year and then the following, you know, that person could move up the next the following year. So there's the junior Yeah. consistency there. Oh, so what you're basically saying is we continually have a rolling group. We'd start out and then if you were the junior, you'd do it for a couple years. It's just a question

113of whether they make that commitment. But that's a good idea. That's an interesting idea. Then you have like a a senior member. You've got someone that's familiar with what's been going on can kind of help somebody feel comfortable. Thanks, Mark. Good point. It is Marian. My I just had some curiosity questions about are these students that are already involved in student government at the high school? are they students? Um I don't know. I guess that's first question. And then second piece of it would be do we have an a vehicle or a way that information is going to be shared both to these representatives from the student body because that's a that's a big group of students at the high school and then reported back to the students if they're if it's not through student

114government. I guess I'm curious about how that works. And I don't I don't think we've fully shaped that out yet. Looking at the list, just because I don't know all of our students uh yet, uh there's at least a couple who are involved in student government who've expressed interest. Uh but it was not defined as a criteria that you had to be um to express interest in in the role. I I do think in in some way uh the majority of the group are are respectively uh leaders uh within their class. They just may not hold a formal um student government uh position. Uh but you're pointing to something that very well may need to be a criteria for selection was what is the pathway uh that these individuals who are interested uh would have

115with reconnecting with their peers. on matters that are coming up at a board level or you may be interested in hearing from them uh as a representative of the student body um their perspective on on a particular issue as they're part of this group uh next year and being uh included as part of the governance team. So that's something I think you know we have to sort out with whoever that uh or those individuals are who come to be on uh or serve in this capacity. But we haven't defined it yet. We shared with them what the position is through their social studies classes. What the uh uh So what was that process? How did we get to nine? Um so uh Mrs. Bolino at the high school, our social studies coordinator uh worked with

116me in generating uh an overview of what the exeicio role uh is. Um and that's based on information that was provided through NISBA. Um that information was shared with the social studies teachers uh of the classes uh in currently again 10th and 11th grade because we're looking for rising juniors and seniors. Um teachers went through that information with their classes. Uh and then at that point kids were invited to if they were had interest to um share that with their teacher and then their teacher provided their name to Mrs. Bolino. So it was shared rather broadly then. Yeah. At least uh twice formally um and there may have been a third time in between. Okay. I wonder if it would be interesting to have, you know, like you'll have kids from student government to have

117some diversity of point of view or diversity of representation of the student body, you know, like um I'm, you know, I can't even I'm just making things up. Somebody is more athletic, more in tune with the athletic groups or one that's, you know, from uh you know, I don't know. But like, uh I don't know. But your your point's good. I don't know if we get them an email, like a separate email. It's just write your local schoolboard member, you know, I guess because I'm expecting this student to be able to help us understand the student perspective, but how broad is that perspective? You know what I'm saying? Well, I just I'm just curious. And like I said, these are just things that have been in my mind since this whole idea was brought forward.

118So I I'm just curious and I think we want to be wary of um for the student of how much perspective we really expect them to go out and get and bring back because that could be a job, you know, in another full-time job. Correct. So but you're you're I'll say this. I met with our our student government um in the fall, probably due for another meeting at this point, and I think our our kids are pretty attuned to the typical common issues that the majority of our uh high schoolers would say are important to them. Um that they're connected. They're connected in multiple they're hyperconnected. Um uh and and they do a good job of of providing perspective, actionable perspective on what our kids particularly at the high school need um for the school

119to be uh this for their school experience to be one uh just the the positive aspects of their school experience that they want to see continue, but then also what they would advocate for changing uh so their experience could be better. Well, and to some extent too, that's not 100% the role. Like I I hear what you're saying, but like I don't reach out to right all of East Fish to find out, you know, what they want me to do here. It's interesting to see like they really have to weigh in on the kind of stuff that we do like teaming at the elementary school and, you know, they're going to really we're going to still have our same agendas. We're going to still go, you know, to the same places. It'll be interesting to

120see where they put their ore in. Right. Mark's waving at me. I'm waving. Yeah. Hi. Uh I I would think when we hire teachers or administrators or anybody else, we get resumes, right? And I I think it would be whether it's the superintendent or the board that is going to pick these two people. Uh it would be interesting to see their background, how busy they are, what kind of course load they might have. um and ask the question on there, how would you communicate with your peers at the high school if you were picked for this position? I mean, that's a good way perhaps for them to express themselves and to uh express how they might get the information that uh would be beneficial for the board to hear. You know what though, I have

121to say I'm going to push back a little on that because you know what? We don't do that. None of us do that. None of us bring things back to our constituents except for through these meetings, right? So to say to them that they have some responsibility to go back to the high school and spread the word. We know how difficult it is to get people to listen. You know, I just don't want to make it I want to make it. So what is the what is the point of this? Uh it really is it is to have another voice in the room, different voices in the room. Now can they both be here at the same time? Like is that where you can do that? Yeah, you can. I I think that um yeah

122I I think we can shape it to have both individuals present. I think the likelihood of both's schedule and I just worked in an environment uh with previously where we had a student rep on the board. Uh typically you see students who are highly engaged. They have commitments to other this the student who wants to engage in this will be involved in other things and they won't be able to be present at times. Um, that's why I think Mark perhaps idea of having a backup is is a good idea. We'll both be able to be present at times. Yes. But more than likely they'll be working together to to attend the meeting. And so, how do you see us moving forward with selection? So, what I'd like to do is have I think what would

123be a good idea is to have an interest meeting with the nine students who indicated they are interested. They haven't met with me. um and perhaps involve the board leadership in that if that's something you'd be interested in to sit down and talk a little bit about what this role is um how the board operates. uh some of them probably have watched a couple of meetings but they I'll leave the door open that maybe they have not yet excuse me the commitment that uh this entails just to reiterate that and then also to talk through uh I do think that there should be some information then at that point um that they're expected to provide back should they remain interested after that conversation honestly I'd be surprised if all nine remain interested after that maybe

124it's five uh and then at that point we have uh a couple of questions uh that we ask them to um speak to not a resume as much as a questionnaire uh centering on their one why they're interested in the position um their communication skills which I think having them produce something to us will will reflect that um their leadership qualities the types of things they're engaged in uh at the school level and um have them provide that back and use that as a basis of determining uh who those next two students are and are we basically saying that they would join us? So, um they don't enjoy it's just defined as they don't join for exact session. Correct. They don't vote. Correct. So, they'd more or less be here from 7 to 9:30 for

125our regularly scheduled meetings. Correct. Um and then I guess we could discuss or think about whether the cow meetings they'd certainly be welcome to come. Those are open public meetings. But would we describe the job as these meetings? Yes. Yes. Yeah. I wouldn't I would leave cow open, but I I think uh I wouldn't make meeting requirement, right? So, we're defining it as two meetings a month from 7 to 9:30ish. On a good day. They're doing okay with that. We're doing good. Okay. Does anybody have any more coins to throw in this fountain? I just had a thought just to tag on what you were saying is um I I like the idea of the students that are interested submitting something writing, but I'm more interested in in their interest. You know, these are rice

126say rising juniors. I don't need someone that's been on 55 clubs and you know this president of this and I mean this might be a student that is hasn't a strong interest. Uh but they may not have like you know extensive CV yet, you know, not really their college application yet. I mean just a student that has a fundamental interest why would they be interested right you know are they able to to commit and I don't need them to report back to their peers I think just coming and sharing their perspective like we do um you know I guess that's that's my thought it's essentially for their input yeah just their input as a as a as a person a student a person in in school which I think it'll be great I think it'll

127be interesting I'll work with that some consensus great thank All right, moving along to new business. Our new business section of the agenda lists several items for individual individual resolution approval. Documentation concerning these items have been provided to our board members in advance to assure an extensive and thorough review. The Bosey's budget approval. Can I please get a motion? So moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Um Bosey's board of education. Um I'm going to I'm going to read this one. Um be it resolved that the board of education approves the the following resolution. Whereas there are three vacancies in the Boseis board of education to be filled at their annual election. And whereas the candidates for such vacancies are um are

128the five people listed below um which are listed I'm going to butcher everybody's name so I'm going to just leave that there. Be it resolved that the Arlington Central School District does hereby vote for Mark Fleshower to fill the vacancy at the board of education. Be it resolved that the board of that the Arlington Central School District Board of Education does hereby vote for Bryce Holland to fill a vacancy at the board of education. And be it resolved that the Arlington Central School District uh Board of Education does hereby vote for Gully Stanford to fill a vacancy at the board of education. Um can I get a motion, please? So moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Thank you all and good

129luck to those three individuals. Um item D, computer, hardware and software related equipment. Could I get a motion, please? So move. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Abstensions. Motion passes. Item E, civil service settlement agreement. Um can I get a motion, please? So move. Thank you. Thank you. Uh any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor? I opposed. Abstension. Motion passes. Business consent agenda. Our cons consent section of the agenda lists several items for approval by a single motion. Documentation concerning these items, pardon me, 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? Thank you. Second. Thank you. Um, any discussion? And if I just ask Kevin to speak

130to how we prioritize uh certain capital improvements through that would be great. Okay, Kevin, would you mind just c can you use this microphone? Kevin, one of the questions that had come up um leading to this was we have our capital referendum and all the work that's going on with respect to uh the 2024 referendum, but we always have ongoing capital improvement work going on. So, how do we bud how do we budget for it? And then how do we determine which work falls where in terms of priority? So we rely on our director of operations and maintenance, John Wilson, who's in our buildings literally every day. Uh we also rely on our architects who uh are in our buildings quite often, but they also prepare a 5-year building condition survey. And through that building

131condition survey, they identify needs for major systems and buildings that need to be be repaired. and they generally give uh predictions about when that will happen. But then nature takes its course or things happen and we have to move things around because things become like if the roof starts leaking, we have to work on that immediately. Um so we're always making plans. We're always trying to balance that with the budget. We're always trying to balance that with our inter fund transfer to capital projects which tend to be the smaller projects that where we do repairs and things like that. And then we look for the bigger projects and that's what you see for the 2024. So uh if you looked at a 10-year history or 11-year history, you'd see how we had been implementing the

132use of interfund transfer to capitals and then you'd see interspersed with that uh more large uh um projects. So when I first got here, there was a there was a door hardening and and and safety bond. We actually paid for that in cash as opposed to the bond. Then we did a uh then we did the bus garage. That was a pretty major bond. Then we did the 21,565 for the for the roofing. That was about four years ago. We're just finishing that now. And if you looked at what we did inside the 2024 um proposition, you'll see that the high school has a fair amount of roofing in it, which no longer needs to be in that because we've been able to take care of it in the 21,565 that we have now. So

133that's how we do it. It's it's it's uh let's just say it's thoughtful and planful, but things have to be kind of liquid and and moving around at the same time. So, so as a as a board member, how how should I um process like as an example, maybe the reterping of the baseball field compared to say our needs, our capital needs in maybe, you know, what we're trying to do at West Road or LMS. Those can be tough ones because it may appear to be an aesthetic thing. Yeah, but that field is very close to being determined to be unplayable. So, in order to not have an entire sport not be playable, uh we kind of moved that into the into the projects to to to get done. And so, we did that through

134the interfund transfer to capitals because it it because it rose to the need of of a roof leaking, if you will, right? Like like it it it like we stretched it out as long as we could. Yeah. We ran out of time. a little like the roofs at Union Veil and Veil Farm. We had been planning those to be done for years and years and years and we finally ran out of time and we had to, you know, not our best example, but that's what happened. We were we were planning them. We were scheduling them. We ran out of time. Yeah, because they do like bounce tests or something on the turf, right? I think we learned that with the football field. There's a bounce test here. It'll Yes, there there's a GMAX test where

135it uh you bounce a weight and it'll bounce so high and it'll measure whether or not it's out of play, but but the carpet is actually tearing and ripping. And I'm worried about children or students having their spikes caught in it or or or you know, so if you walked out there, I think that it would be relatively obvious to anyone that the fields at its capacity. They usually last 10 to 12 years, and I think it's well over 15. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Does anybody else have any comments for Kevin? Thank you. I appreciate that. On the spot. Thank you so much. All right. So, any other discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor? I opposed. Absent. Motion passes. Now, we skip a lot of pages. Better start at

136the back. Let's see. 22. Uh, page 22. Here we are. Future discussion items. I don't have anything to bring forward. Does anybody have anything for future discussion items? No. Okay. Uh um public, do you want me to extend the meeting? Yes. Can I get a motion to extend the meeting, please? So moved. Uh wait until uh 9:20. Still moved. Thank you. Thank you. All those in favor? I. All opposed. Motion passes. We don't need to use all 25 minutes, but we have them. I Right. I'm Okay. Okay. So, did anyone have any future discussion items? Okay. Excellent. Moving on. Mrs. Flynn, do we have anyone for the second section of um public comment? We do. Mr. Alexander Pantia. Okay, then I'm going to read my little my little speech. This is the second of two

137opportunities for people to address the board. Please state your name and address and keep to three minutes or less. Although we do not engage in dialogue, we are listening. Disparaging remarks concerning specific individuals or positions are prohibited. If you leave your contact information with Mrs. Flynn, our district clerk, the superintendent, or one of his staff will contact you as soon as possible. So, okay. Uh, I don't really have a speech prepared or anything. Um, I just I'll tell you a little story time. So, basically about 10 months ago or 11 months now, I got one of these uh school bus camera tickets in the mail. Okay. And I did some research on this program. It turns out way more than I wanted to, but uh Okay, here goes. Um, so this company, Bus Patrol, um,

138they have a quite hidden corporate history. So I found out in 2017 this company called Force Multiplier Solutions Canada Incorporated changed its name in Canada to Bus Patrol Incorporated in the United States. Force Multiplier Solutions leaders formed new entities across the country bearing the name Bus Patrol. Bus Patrol is claimed has no connections to Force Multiplier Solutions as has tried to distance itself from that name. In 2018, Force Multiplier Solutions CEO Robert Leonard was convicted in a corruption scandal that took down multiple public officials and resulted in the closure of a county agency. A federal prosecutor told the judge this was likely the largest domestic public corruption case in history. Leonard pleaded guilty to paying more than $3.5 million in bribes to the agency's former superintendent and a Dallas city council member. So, after this

139company um ended up stealing about $70 million from that Dallas uh county, obviously they were kicked out. And there's a whole story about this. Um and I I've built a whole presentation around everything I've discovered. Um the insane amounts of lobbying, money being spent, bribery, it's very uh very numerous all these uh incidents. Okay. So, basically have a couple questions. So, like why is this school district doing business with this criminal company? Why did no one investigate or audit this program or this company before opting in? Uh why is legal information to fight these tickets being omitted illegally? So on these tickets that they send you um I found out after an enormous amount of research that there is uh something called an affidavit of non-responsibility. So if you are not driving the vehicle at

140the time of the alleged violation, you are not responsible for paying these tickets and that is not being shown to fight these tickets um on these tickets. Okay. Uh, another thing, why is 70 to 90% or more of the money being generated by these fines going to this company? Um, when I got this in the mail 11 months ago, I thought it was going to help maybe poor kids or provide social services for disadvantaged people in Duchess County. That's not the case. Um, why is there so little transparency with this program? Uh, where's the money being generated by citations being sent or spent? And uh why is no one being given a court date to fight these tickets? Um so apparently no one's fighting I mean no one's being no one's being given anything to

141fight these tickets. Um I know a guy that's been waiting more than two years now in to to fight these tickets and he's just waiting forever. Um yeah that's that's my spiel. Alex uh is Alex did you leave your contact information with cler? So, what I'll do is cuz you probably I think you have a couple more questions, but we don't we've run out of time. What I'll do is give you a call sometime over the next two days, uh, give you some background information on the company, and then I'll make sure I have somebody with me who can answer some of the questions that you asked uh, this evening and other ones that you'll have. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've already foil requested stuff from Duchess County. I I foil requested all the Okay.

142Yeah. Um, and I found out all this insane information. Uh, and I've already I mean I've already made this presentation. I presented to Dan Amar Blair who is the controller for Duchess County, right? And apparently he's going to audit this program. Okay. So, I'm I'm just I'm wondering why at least the last point, why is no one giving me a court date or anybody a Yeah, I don't know if I can answer that one for you, but I can uh I can at least answer the questions related to our district's uh relationship uh with bus patrol. Uh some of your questions extend beyond that, but did you know that we I'm sorry, Dr. Bante is actually coloring slightly outside the lines. No offense, but we don't we don't actually answer questions from here. And so,

143um, I I think what he's trying to say is that he's trying to extend that someone will get back to you. So, if you've left your contact information, Mrs. Flynn, do you have what you need to get a hold of him? Yeah. Okay. So, um, I need to cut you off there, but but I appreciate your patience and I appreciate you stated through the meeting. Um, Mrs. Flynn, do we have anyone else for public comment? No, we do not. Okay. I didn't mean to say you colored outside. That's okay. I colored outside. Um, moving on to committee reports. Uh, advocacy. We we we're just on break. We just say there's not a lot to say. There's still no budget. We're in New York State. So, we continue to wait. Other than that advocacy in terms

144of our resolution kit, I'll be together with my people probably later in May, early June. We'll pull ourselves together and figure out what to do about resolutions. But beyond that, nada. Okay. Thank you. Audit finance. Nothing at this time. Happy. Uh our next meeting is June 5th at 10:00 a.m. Uh site to be determined. Okay. Thank you. policy uh policy committee met on May uh April 9th and we reviewed and discussed policies referring to affirmative action, diversity of equity and inclusion, social emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching. Uh we are in compliance with wording within these policies. Um our next meeting is May 7th. Excellent. Thank you. Um moving on to organization reports, all education foundations. Well, as you all know, this Saturday the 5K is running in the rain. Um, so if you want

145to join, you can register still online or you can register there. Um, and there uh if you have a college senior, this is the week to get in your scholarship application. A high school senior. A high school senior. Yeah. For college. Um, and I believe the deadline is Thursday. So like it needs to get in the guidance office this week. Okay. And the next meeting is June 4th. Okay. Thank you. Duchess County School Boards uh meeting on Thursday, May 1st. Okay. The next gathering. Um PTA PTSA. They're meeting tomorrow night virtually. Okay. Um you want to say district compensation? Yeah, we meet on Thursday of this week. Okay. And equity. Um our last at the last meeting the focus was on um Duchess mediation works with Titusville. We've talked about this a little bit before.

146Works with Titusville and works with the high school on restorative practices. So um the two facilitators from Duchess mediation came and talked about the work that um they do and what types of things need to be there to be successful. Um we got an update just from the high school. The way the high school has done the mediation um small groups have been trained over time. So it started with counselors and then went to PPS and then teachers. Um, and one of the teachers spoke about how they use restorative circles in their classroom. Um, and that really took up the bulk of the time. That was it was a pretty comprehensive overview of the training and the restorative circles. Okay. Thank you so much. And the next meeting is May 8th. May 8th. Excellent. Superintendent's

147closing remarks. Uh, no closing remarks. Thank you. You board reflections? I have one. Oh, sorry. Um, I attended the Overlook Primary School International Showcase on April 9th with many of you. Um, I thought it was a wonderful event. The the students were dressed up, the parents were dressed up, I ate some wonderful food. Um, I got some bracelets from India, which was really cool. Um, I think it was really great. Um, I look forward to the next one. All right, I have a kind of a funny one. So, I was cleaning out my basement over the over the um spring break holiday and I just want to shout out to Mr. Internacola because I found the five black t-shirt that my kid on tech crew did and all the shows that he wrote over all

148those years and what an excellent way he was in the I think it was sound that they did when they were here. So, uh, and he continued on to do that all through high school with the Emerald Players. And now in college, he still does lights for shows where he goes to school. And it's just such a wonderful way to introduce kids to um the possibilities. So, shout out to Mr. Internacola. He always wrote the funniest little shows. So, that's it. Oh, Donna. Yeah, I attended the uh art show at Basser College and uh I noted noted with pride the uh beautiful work from our students and I thought the I think it was UVMS actually that had the um desserts. I just really wanted to bring them home really just they look so good

149and uh it it was really neat to see. So I congratulations to the students and their their teachers. It's terrific. That's wonderful. Anybody else? I'm not looking around very well today. All right, great. Can I get a motion to adjurnn, please? So moved. Thank you. Second. Second. Thank you. Um, all those in favor? I I opposed. of Sentence.