001allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to make a motion that we approve the agenda for tonight's meeting any discussion on tonight's agenda all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carried i'd like to make a motion that we approve the minutes from the may 17th meeting second any discussion on those are all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carried and that brings us to regina all right it's a long one stay fun the boys are playing right now in their first round of sectionals for baseball in lyndonville the softball team plays tomorrow in bradford and track sectionals are on saturday the drama club was able to end their season
002with their annual picnic on sunday nice to add the season with normal seeds we played together born the volleyball stand on walls which was kind of obsessed um the course concert was released on friday the show choir concert finished filming today and the band and orchestra recordings were made on saturday will be released soon the marching band color guard also had a makeshift parade at the track for memorial day we had some really nice weather like it wasn't the hottest places so the voice recitals are wednesday from high school and thursday for middle school both at 6 30 and wednesday is also junior and senior awards that aren't just as far as like i gotta steal the spot on may 26 geneseo essential school invited local artist andy reddock to come and speak during lunch
003hour virtual day this opportunity was made possible through the geneseo central education fund andy did two zoom sessions with students one at middle school lunch and one at high school lunch and he shared his artwork his story and the places he's traveled throughout his life the sessions were very well attended with 39 students in the first session and 22 at the center the entire zoom call was recorded and made available to students via email and school classroom and if anyone else is interested in seeing them please contact mr a or mrs adams this year like many other traditions the normal presentation of the k-12 artwork had to be modified and in the winter unsure about what the spring would look like the art department made the decision to photograph artwork and prepare it for a
004virtual format and the link to the online art show can be found on regencio art social media pages congratulations to jacob french and harper antonucci for their awards in this year's digi's competition jacob french finished first in the 10th through 12th grade category for video as a senior and harper who is in eighth grade finished second in the seventh to ninth grade audio category and mrs miller has their submissions [Music] billy yes dad were you thinking about eating that cookie uh yeah is that a problem yes i claimed that cookie yesterday remember hey uh everyone uh this cookie's mine okay so don't eat it uh no i don't think i do well i don't care it's mine i know dad but it just looks so highly appealing to the taste buds billy get out of
005the kitchen [Music] seamus have you ever really wanted something but the powers that maybe have wanted nothing more than to keep you from having it yeah yeah that's how i feel right now what is it that you want a donkey [Music] yeah i know wait what a donkey oh all right my offspring i am going to sleep in order to preserve my body goodnight all right dad good night sheamus this is my chance [Music] where do you think you're going young man [Music] now i don't want to have to tell you one more time get in here get in bed stay away from my car [ __ ] and jacob will be going to rit for film production this fall for the corrections and then the next one is harper's audio find the perfect song for your
006video in five seconds go to artless dot io so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] all right so congratulations to jacob oh wait that's still a fact the ap senior art show is up for viewing they held an artist joel earlier this evening for family and friends and they would like to invite all to enjoy their pieces that will be displayed in the foyer until the end of this week speaking of aps all ap exams are over thank goodness and we are headed into finals during the month of april njhs made spring greeting cards for the senior citizens at board in the states and they also met on may 22nd to do spring cleanup at the temple health cemetery they worked for the morning picking up six and breaking up leaves getting the cemetery ready for
007memorial day weekends nhs just recently held a wish list drive for the teresa house that our nhs president and vice president delivered there today student council is also holding their final spirit week of the year this week and lastly the yearbooks came this morning second period i got a call from mr cage room to go find mrs green we went down to the dungeon and got all your books um and the 2022 yearbook staff started working after school for next spring that's it i'm done well done thank you regina excellent reporter hello hi andreas all having a good evening the 8th grade is uh taking a field trip on thursday june 17th they are going to the geneseo movie theater and then to mini hands for lunch and to enjoy the fun activities this should
008be a great way to end the school year with some fun second student council has put together a final spirit week this year this week consisting of some fun dress up days for middle school today was hawaiian day tomorrow is show your pride day in honor of pride month wednesday is pj day thursday is decades day the 6th grade will be the 70s the 7th will be the 80s and the 8th grade will be the 90s and of course friday is blue and white since in honor of school spirit mrs kulzer put together a nice slideshow highlighting the recent performance of the geneseo marching band memorial day performance of 2021 here's the slideshow now and mr a has put together a short presentation highlighting a couple amazing students who won awards in this year digi
009competition then let miss miller play the file that mr a.s sent to her [Laughter] and for sports uh the two modified baseball teams the softball teams and the track teams they're doing very well and does anybody have any questions thank you andre yes that was excellent thank you have a good day um before we move on to the next event i just want to take a minute i have a brief statement i'd like to make some people here know and some people don't know but this will this is my second to last meeting as your board president and sitting on the board um so i wanted to take a moment tonight to say a few words because i won't see a lot of people who are sitting here tonight again after this board meeting um
010it has been my distinct pleasure and honor to serve on this board for the last eight years and i've been so fortunate to work beside david mike craig dooley chris and kathy and i'm grateful for their unwavering support one thing i've learned while being on the board is that everything a board member does every decision we make and every penny we spend affects a human being like those behind me it has often been a daunting task and decisions we have made have never been made lightly i am so proud of the work we've done together these that past eight years we've seen a transportation facility built that we badly needed for two decades we undertook the hiring and installation of a new superintendent of schools business official elementary principal special education administrator as well as
011countless number of new faculty and staff we have tenured some of the best teachers to be found anywhere we've built sensible and thoughtful budgets balancing the needs of the school and maintaining the integrity of our educational and extracurricular offerings with what is fair and reasonable for the taxpayers of our district our decisions have not always been popular but they have always been made thoughtfully and with the best of intentions we are elected to our positions but we are volunteers giving of our time and talent to try and do what is best for the students in this district solely because we care deeply for them their families the staff faculty administrators and our community at large i'm so thankful and grateful to my fellow board members for their steadfastness diligence hard work tenacity and integrity it
012has been a pleasure to serve with all of you i'd also like to thank cindy and the administrative team for all the years i've worked side by side with them behind the scenes and at public sections you're an amazing group of hard-working individuals who always put the needs of your students their families your staff and community first you work hard and often long hours and are not thanked nearly enough for all that you do our district and our students are so fortunate to have all of you i am grateful for the patients you've shown me and for working with me over the years on a variety of visual issues in a professional thoughtful and caring manner i will truly miss working together but i know that what we have started you will continue and that
013gcs and its students will benefit from it in the future to the faculty and staff i want to thank you all for what you do each and every day to help our children succeed and to reach their personal goals and to achieve their dreams the dedication commitments support and love you provide to our students and their families is what makes geneseo central school special our children and their families are lucky to have you and i know you will continue to provide our kids with what they need to feel loved and supported and to me gcs prepared for the future and finally i want to say goodbye to the kids the kids i've so enjoyed getting to know over the years to watch grow and learn and i've loved every play game performance art show recital
014and every presentation i have seen over the course of my time on the board and as a parent who had children who attended school here i'm sure i will be back from time to time and see many of the kids around town but it won't be quite the same and it's because of them that i wanted to be on the board it was for them that i put in the long hours and spent the time that i did trying to do what i could while i was here to make their experiences here the best they could be all one can hope for when you leave a role like this is that you made a small difference did your best to be a positive role model to leave things hopefully a little better than what they
015were when you arrived i hope i succeeded in that thank you to everyone who supported me during my tenure and i wish everyone the very best in the future i will always be a proud alumni and as a community member i will continue to be supportive of geneseo central school's mission vision and goals and at this time i would like to invite some of my very favorite students back here to come on up and tell us what you got what's your presentation and as an update from a snapchat that says not done yet i'm going to guess our boys want an upset against the number two scenario okay one of the things that um i had shared a little bit about the beginning of this year and i've heard from both mr bailey and myself
016is a little bit about restorative practices um so as a district we're committed to making sure that we continue to support students academically but also to social emotionally so making sure that we're helping them with self-management and self-awareness and building relationships so um one of the focus areas this year was on building community in classrooms so we have some of our staff members participate in some ongoing professional learning and partnered with the center for this big settlement so my update this evening is two part um i invited mr hazard and he has invited some of the sixth grade students to demonstrate a little bit about the sort of practices um there's a range of restorative practices and really we're focusing and on discussing tonight the community building circles which is something that mr hazard has
017implemented into his classroom regularly and wanted people to experience and be able to see a little bit of what happens with mr hazard and community circles or what he refers to as real talk fridays so i'm going to turn it over to him um for our students to demonstrate that and then after we're gonna dismiss the students so um they may go outside and enjoy um the weather or do some homework uh whatever fits in their schedule and and turn it over to some people that are with us via soon center for settlement so mr hazard thank you and um thanks for being here yeah i could give a ten minute presentation on seo for half of you and it would be not meaningful these guys will teach you what we actually do um mrs
018miller came to me last year about this we went to some training and then it kind of took off because the kids took off they enjoyed talking many of you have probably been that many of you have been on facebook maybe around the election of 2020 or 2016. and adults say we know or they they block each other but we're trying to do we actually try to have discourse we have conversation and we do it in a respectful way so we start off and we just we talk and we share we listen and sometimes we don't agree on everything and sometimes we just laugh but in a year and a half of doing this we talked from everything from vulnerability with benny brown to social justice to dreams to cancer to politics to celebrities dying
019to mindset to time to coverage be scared all of these different things and what i found is the more you talk to kids about it the more i learn about it and the better they feel because there's a lot of anxiety at school around a lot of these issues and i see images on the news and you see images at school you see that's attack and if you're a kid you know exactly what i'm talking about i have two kids and they go home and they're watching they think it's true this is a great place to have these conversations that come from from from snapchat from the grant all these different things and so these guys are awesome so these guys every friday i try to find something that i think they're going to do
020because when they get into it sometimes we talk for 20 and sometimes honestly it's the whole entire period and amazingly we're still going to get through all our content it's really weird if you give these guys like time to talk and make the word meaningful it's amazing how much you picked it so really i just want to be authentic if i could teach them i should be offensive and be real and some of the things they share this year that's just pulling me away and i would just encourage them to keep doing it and these guys are all volunteers there's nothing attached to this there's not a cookie cake at the end there'll be a thank you card but they're here because they want to be here and there were actually a bunch of other
021kids there tonight soccer game or something like that so you know eleven sixth graders show up on a monday at a board meeting you guys we recognize that because they're on their own so this video this ted talk is great that dogs are good this guy goes 15 minutes and i wish we had not 15 minutes but you know this is matthews what shows on tonight's our challenge i don't know we got stuff to do you got lots of fun stuff to do today how do you accept rejection how do you embrace it all of us have been rejected at one point in our life not talking about my love life bennett they're not going to go there today but we have to learn in life you are going to be rejected and maybe at
022the college of your choice it may be the travel team you want to play for and maybe trying out for the place all of these things come with rejection kids fear rejection number four do you want your own adult nightmare rejection how do you get better at it around all of us oh this guy this guy had some ideas this guy went around we aren't watching the whole thing but he tried and blogged a hundred different ways of being rejected and he taped them and what he found out is but one thing for sure i could be a better leader i could be a better person i cannot let that six-year-old keep dictating my life anymore i have to put him back to his place so this is where i went online look for help
023google was my friend i searched how do i overcome the fear of rejection i came out with a bunch of um psychology articles about where the fear and pain are coming from and then i came up with a bunch of rara inspirational articles about don't take it personally just overcome it who doesn't know that but why was i still so scared then i found this website by luck it's called rejectiontherapy.com um rejection therapy was this game invented by this canadian entrepreneur his name is jason calmly and it's basically idea is for 30 days you go out and look for rejection and every day get rejected as something and by the end you desensitize yourself from the pain and i love that idea i i said you know what i'm gonna do this and i'll film
024myself getting rejected 100 days and i came up with my own rejection ideas and i'll make a video blog out of it and so here's what i did this is what the blog looked like um day one borrow 100 from 400 from stranger so this is where i went to where i was working i came downstairs and saw this big guy sitting behind the desk you know he looked like a security guard so i just approached him and i was just going i was just walking in that was the longest walk in my life i just hair at the back of my neck standing up i was sweating my heart was pounding and i got there and said hey um sir can i borrow 100 from you and he looked up he's like no why
025and i just said i said no i'm sorry then i turned around and just ran i felt so embarrassed but because i filmed myself so that night i was watching myself getting rejected i just saw how scared i was i looked like this kid in sixth sense i saw dead people but then i saw this guy he you know he he wasn't that menacing he was a chubby lovable guy you know and he even asked me why in fact he invited me to explain myself i could have said many things i could have explained i could have negotiated i didn't do any of that all i did was run i felt wow this is like a microcosm of my life every time i feel the slightest rejection i was running as fast as i could
026and you know what the next day no matter what happens i'm not gonna run i'll stay engaged day two requests so the next day he goes he gets a burger refill i'm sure all of you have asked for one it's a thing for well daily and so what i want to really focus on and this guy's great people come up on time talk it really gets very fascinating because i wanted if i was just having this in my classroom i'd be like i'm really curious about what he said about running away from rejection from why and so can we put the slide back on because they have their five questions on there and what they do is we just go around and they talk about so i really figured i need to give them props
027it's not really helpful to just be like hey let's talk burger refill have some ideas he actually asked and he has a different video he asked for like the of the olympic signal or symbol and donuts he went to a christian stream and the lady's like dude i can do that he's like how am i going to do that 15 minutes later she comes out and she's got all these donuts in there like it's amazing it's amazing if you go out and ask there's always a possibility that somebody's not going to say that if you go out and ask maybe they don't say no why do you think that even if a request is crazy it's still usually doable a lot of the things that the guy asks in the board are doable requests i
028mean maybe the requests that aren't exactly appealing to the other person or aren't the best thing that they might want to do but i don't know it's just i think you do know anybody want to build off well's answer jayden i know you had some thoughts um um yeah i do definitely and i think everyone can probably agree that at some point depends on what you do um i know the main reason why i did that is for the embarrassment um perspective thinking about everyone around you with like all the eyes never really just assuming that everyone's judging you for um kind of being rejected from like tears people older than you younger there's always basically like your teacher doing this to you right now cut myself off um shoes and pretend they're asking questions
029and if they say if i simply say no i won't ask a question i will first get because i'm scared of what they're going to say do you think after watching this video maybe you're more apt [Music] he was asked why so he he had the opportunity to explain himself so if he said it was for more of a good cause going towards something and you could pay it back then the chances could have been more of a guess but the guy probably thought he was doing something bad with it so you think if you explain why you're saying this yeah do you agree with that about it because you're kind of nodded why would you agree with them me um so building off what she says whenever i ask a question i don't usually
030i think that but i'm like anything can happen but wait mostly so kind of like what will say yeah i says like if somebody asks why why is one of the most crucial words in these points of view because it could change anything like when he asked for a hundred dollars like he could be leaving it for like something like somebody who's like really sick which then it's a v he probably would have given it to him but like if he wanted it to like buy candy probably would not have given yeah what's the intention behind it okay what's the attention behind the y right andrew you wanted to uh i would with two i would say um recently i have tried to make it my personal goal to probably do more things that will
031end up in me getting rejected but i still want the chances that's not happening so why is that goal for you uh i have i have struggled with um like confronting people for a few years now so you know do you find when you confront people it's not that bad uh now that i've started doing it more it's become a lot more easy but that's the whole premise of this guy right is the more you do it the less scary it actually becomes do you agree with that well yeah more people say no to you the more you're going to get used to it and it's not gonna be like that feeling where it's like you ask for something and they say no and then it's like it feels bad but then if you do
032that enough you're gonna be like it's a perfectly normal answer it's just no no it's not a big deal cheyenne you can't say no to this can you go it kind of tells the story right there's a story once you find out the story we're a little more empathetic to that olivia answer do you run away if i have a chance to meet him i will definitely take it like in all honesty if someone if i ever ask like even a stupid question i would just be like why not like why don't why can't i someone asked me why so is s why to them let's see what happens couple quick ones i know this is time's up this is what happens this is why some days it goes for a while is um take
033things personal you kind of get my knot in your mind get down on yourself and you think badly when that's not delayed and you're getting in your head you shouldn't do it now you should be thinking about one way i had to do it think about how far you accomplish and taking their objection as a way to accomplish more and learn from that change you're sorry about getting in your head i've been there in it gets tricky it's so hard we talk ourselves out of so many things about it number three how did i deal with rejection earlier um i would kind of forgot a little bit and just say it's not really a big deal i would see it as a learning opportunity because i would see all of my mistakes and think about
034where they've been done better the next time i'm in a similar situation i've done things bennett says uh usually when when i uh after after i get rejected or something like that my in my brain i kind of resort to uh immediately moving on and thinking up nothing of it so then i i just think of it as a missed opportunity and i technically everybody has millions of opportunities in their entire life so one one can't ruin all of them even michael jordan missed some shots these guys are sixth graders right now [Music] you're not jumping right into feelings necessarily um but that's how um so um next on the agenda like i mentioned we've been partnering with the center for dispute settlement and um have been working with three individuals pretty closely this year
035with a small group from the middle school high school and some members of our elementary building and um so ask them to join us tonight to share a little bit about the work that we've done and where we'd like to move forward with the partnership with them for the upcoming year so it is linda clayton and diana who are with us so i will read and they can unmute and again they're just doing a brief overview and um all right thank you so much stephanie for uh and all of you for having us this evening i i am by the title there in my box linda bell with the center for dispute settlement um what a wonderful introduction and what a wonderful way to see and to know that we are absolutely in the right
036place with the kind of work we do we knew that from the work we've been doing with your staff but to see tonight's um engagement and inclusiveness was just for us a really treat wonderful treats so thank you for having us and thank you for allowing us to witness that i really want to thank mr mr hazard who was part of uh what we did these these past few months um for actually demonstrating what we're here to talk about great demonstration um a little bit about the um center for dispute settlement and then i'm going to like clayton and diana i don't know how they're going to do it talk about the work we've done and hope hopefully where we're going to go with this um the center for dispute settlement is an alternative um
037dispute center we're part of a large network across the state of uh new york and um just to kind of do it in everyday language if you peeled off all the layers of what we actually do at the heart of our work is what we call community building that that's really who we are we believe that healthy relationships are the very foundation of healthy communities and so we work with individuals and organizations institutions and systems uh to support this kind of people-to-people connection through things like dialogue that gets us talking to and connecting with one another uh through mediations for those times when we become disconnected and find ourselves in conflict and through healing our centered work that supports us in getting back to our best selves and reconnecting to others into society again we're
038here today to connect with you uh as we hope to embark on a strategic partnership with uh the gcsd to enhance your efforts as you've already seen to create that peaceable and inclusive school culture and climate that we see you working on this partnership is under our restorative initiatives and again we do this work in schools community organizations justice systems government agencies and municipalities and clayton is going to take over now and kind of explain to you a little bit about what that are uh that rp which is restorative practices and rj which is restorative justice work looks like and the role it plays in this very important work of building relationships and communities so clayton yeah thanks linda hello everybody uh my name is clayton lyons i obviously work for the center for dispute
039settlement uh thanks to stephanie for inviting us here thanks to all of you for your engagement uh so you know in my brief comments i'll just share a little bit more about what rprj includes and then really why uh we feel it's such an important priority for you and we all to focus on um so as you just saw from mr hazard's presentation restorative work is based in dialogue and it's based in conversation it's about conversations which can be incredibly difficult like rejection which is something i certainly don't talk about often and definitely did not talk about as a sixth grader restorative practices are really a philosophy as well as an approach to community building and harm response and we already saw from stephanie's first slide that restorative work is done along a spectrum with
040some of them being circles other examples including mediation some being one-on-one work which we call conflict coaching other work just happening through social emotional learning being prioritized restorative work is all about intentionally making the time for relationship building within the school community so that includes in classes it includes among faculty staff and administrators and it can even include parents and we believe prioritizing relationships is such an important key to making peaceful communities and to engaging students because it's only through relationships that we can hold ourselves accountable necessarily through relationships that we feel uh students especially are able to mostly themselves and in this time now the now than really any other um we know that as you return from covid uh we all need community like never before and so that's why we think this
041time is really ripe for bringing this type of work into your district and really into every other district um who's willing to work with us and so a big part of restorative work uh is palm response so we're sort of working restorative justice holds that conflict is an opportunity for personal and community growth you know it's really important that we have relationships first and foremost that way there is something to return to when there's relationship breakdown uh in restorative work uh harm responses or restorative justice seeks to achieve accountability by allowing those most directly affected by a situation to have a say in what comes next we feel that those who have a say can feel empowered in that process and have their own healing and we feel there is no accountability like that which
042comes in relationship with others you know some folks often wonder how we can never hold folks accountable uh without the type of consequences they know schools to enforce uh very regularly the likes of which includes suspension and the answer i give is that really the evidence has proven and so have testimonials that when someone is forced to really hear how they have harmed someone else and hear what that impact includes and then make things right with an established plan that's where the most personal growth comes and that's what's most difficult for us to do as individuals so it definitely matches social emotional learning and it matches a lot of the other initiatives that you've seen on this call so far today a brief word on why we believe rp and rj to be so important
043i guess for one it's effective right so this work has been proven time and time again to increase student achievement improve student attendance grow student and parent engagement within the school community rprj has also been proven to reduce dropouts and decrease the need in the use of class discipline all of which increases student success in school and certainly later on in life restorative justice as a response it reduces recidivism recidivism especially recidivism recidivism for violent offenses and serious harm and we feel restorative work really empowers students like we just saw and connects to initiatives like i said social emotional learning as well as diversity equity and inclusion and so over the past year we've really been able to work with a lot of staff in your district in the social emotional learning focus group during
044our time together we introduced the basics of restorative practices in restorative justice we offered experiential learning in the form of circles and we plan for the future and an overwhelming majority of teachers who participated in our workshops shared that they felt the experience of worthwhile they felt they would recommend the experience to other educators and to other folks in the community not just educators and they felt that they learned a substantial amount even in the short time we had together we had one workshop session per month during which in an hour which is not that long we covered a range of material including the basics of restorative work including a lot of the why including a lot of the how and in the next year the agreement that we've reached with your district and which
045i hope you'll all be on board with and help us out as we go is to train a cohort of faculty and staff who can then facilitate circles as educators in classrooms with each other as colleagues and certainly track all of the progress that we make this progress includes the rate at which students feel connected to their classmates and feel connected to the broader school community this progress will hopefully include increased student achievement as i've mentioned as well as decreased truancy and as we follow this cohort of folks we're going to offer an additional learning and workshops for other educators whoever wants to be included and make a strategic plan for how this can really be implemented more fully as we go and how we can do this in a realistic manner that doesn't reinvent
046the wheel but builds off of all the great work you're already doing so all of this to say we're here to help you out with whatever we can and we're very appreciative of the opportunity to do this work together and we're certainly here for any questions thank you very much thank you i'm just going to jump in real quick and just to say an extra thank you to stephanie and craig for inviting us in it has been wonderful getting to know both of you and just the environment of geneseo is ready for this um and i'm excited to work with everyone on the local contacts in geneseo and i also am so excited about our group of teachers who are willing to step up and be the champions for restorative justice at geneseo so i
047look forward to seeing many of your faces as i'm coming in to the building more often thank you so much for sharing and staying on and i thought that you also were able to see the small group of sixth graders so we'll be in touch thank you so much thank you thank you um so again like i said i know that was long but just wanted to give people a clear understanding what's happening in the classroom and where we're going what that's worth so um thank you thank you excellent thank you stephanie you know as i as i sat through and watched the students go through the practice of their restorative circle it really made me think about what we've accomplished this year we reopened in some conditions that school has never had to face
048society's never had to face and it was a lot of hard work and every single staff member here would have been well within their rights to figure out the instructional component of the room and their classroom and leave it there and they didn't throughout one of the most difficult years in education time and time again we're hearing these amazing stories of what our staff is doing for our students um and it's and it's across the entire spectrum of our district from fine arts to what they're doing in athletics to really building on that social emotional learning curriculum and and how to deal with with rejection i i see that headline of rejection i see the word in my my my chest titans because no one likes rejection but man if i had a conversation like
049this okay mr hazard if you could bring those kids back um if i ever to do another reopening plan yeah um i might need to talk to that free publicizer okay because there was a little bit of rejection when we get our real plan um but seriously i really hope everyone can reflect on everything that we've accomplished this year it's truly truly been amazing to watch what our staff and students have done this year it's it's something i couldn't be more proud of and this was just one example of the hard work that's been happening in our district i'd like to thank paul that was fantastic i really i mean amazing to have the kids to hear that come out of young kids now they're they're very good and carly's keeping that seventh grade science
050teacher keeps that going at the next level which is great so thank you very much [Music] this afternoon i have four friends and actually they were recognized for leadership by their teacher because they were helping others on the field trip they were hoping they went to the livingston county museum and they were so proud to come down and show us their goal through cards for leadership so the teacher writes a little note on the back for what they were recognized for so um you can just go right to the next slide basically i just was trying to i really wanted to make sure as cindy said there's so much that's been happening this year but i just wanted to update you on the spring happenings in the elementary and i'm not going to read through
051them all there's just been already so many things that the teachers want to do for students and our students are just loving it today we actually had our remote third and fourth graders that worked with mrs thering they actually came back into the building and she sent me a picture because she said i've never seen kids so excited to eat cafeteria food and she sent me a picture and they were just so excited and they all had matching t-shirts and they were excited to be out on the playground some of the field trips we took our first graders on well our first great teachers arranged for that trip for them to go to stony brook and i was fortunate to join them the kids loved it um we had bowling happening picnics at highland park
052the veterans memorial park um the asshole's teachers took our students to um only to the library to get pizza they had a picnic out of the log cabin down on main straight on the zoo mobile's coming we have field day with our departments putting that on and we're really going to try to make it a special special time for our fifth graders who have missed the whale watch again so they they have a bunch of special events planned with little field trips that are happening their final walk through um but all the while i can't stress enough the um students are engaged there's still you know there is a sense of urgency probably more so than ever this year with the academics but you wouldn't you can sense it but you wouldn't know it in
053the sense that the teachers have made this such a warm and welcoming learning environment for our students um we did just finish all of our spring assessments and all of those things you see on the bottom left that's the data that we'll be using and we've already started to look at it in regards to seeing where our students came to us at the beginning of this year and where they'll be at the end of this school year i just want to publicly you know say that we will be celebrating bettina and elaine who are leaving the elementary building after many years i did put their picture in our last little newsletter i know that all of you are aware i'm not sure if everybody is um erin juan garner is heading off to the the
054elementary principal at alexandria central school district and i'm really excited because she'll still be a part of our faux seas and i'll see her at my monthly principal meetings i'm very excited that kate mills she's a long-term sub is joining us at fourth grade and kathryn agwertz who has been with us all here building an attorney leave at kindergarten is coming out as a second grade teacher we write down tomorrow i'll be interviewing all day for a reading ais position and then on wednesday on stephanie and i will be doing the final rounds for our special education teacher and i didn't publicly think um i'm not i don't think i was at that march meeting but um and i think uh jen even said it the amazing teachers that we have on staff and we
055do have a lot of new teachers in our elementary and the most recent to get tenure christy fryer who's now christy marine i should put emily kane who's been out since february and maternity leave janet jones who's going to be jenna sentora on in july so we're going to introduce in the building um you can just click if you're ever interested in seeing more of what's happening if you go to the elementary home page on almost every day i tweet different pictures with little captions and if you just scroll down the other day i just took right there i just took a walk through the building like um we had a retired ap bio teacher from webster that's one of our teachers cats that came in and had kids working looking at insects under microscopes
056and then if you keep scrolling um i went into business careers room and kids were freaking looking at owl pallets and i just i felt like i was in rooms with scientists they were just so engaged um and so anyways you're always welcome to look at that and there's a combination of a lot of different things with our google but also with our academics so i had a quick question i know it didn't happen last year i don't know that it's allowed to happen this year are you guys going to be able to do the senior walk through you know i just found another school that did that and i kind of because everything's so busy but i didn't talk i know i don't know i mean but there's a small enough class and maybe
057they could just go outside and i don't know yeah i just i i understand if you can't i just know that we did it like two years ago and i know how special that was it was uh yeah so sweet so yeah i just i just thought of it because i saw somebody did but i think they did it outside um great thank you thank you for the update and thank you stefan for doing dual roles here [Laughter] impressive well done now i know we've been hearing um about students um work we've been hearing about the great curriculum work and we've seen fan pictures and how we're doing athletics but now i'm going to talk about mask updates and so i know you're on the edge of your seats for that but the reason i
058want to talk about the the process is i want to give you the timeline and how things have happened rolled out not been communicated been communicated so um our first slide on june 4th i thought i was being um positive thinking and trying to head issues off i said you know we're gonna have warm weather this week some of the students wearing their mask outdoors with the heat and humidity you know we need to look at having the possibility of kids not wearing their mats outside so our school position dr collins i drafted a letter i sent it to him and said this is perfect um you know based on the fact that we were using the original terms from our realty plan mass would be worn until determined not to be tolerable so during
059the heat and humidity it wouldn't be tolerable and while they're outside they could remove their mask and while indoors they would still have their mask on and they'd be required so i'm thinking i'm ahead of it i'm informing the community we're going and then at two o'clock on june 4th we receive a letter from the new york state department of health commissioner it's to the cdc and in this letter it talked about aligning the mask requirements with the camp requirements that stated kids whether they're vaccinated or not could take their mask off indoors and outdoors so quickly the headlines blew up that mask are optional in new york state's school starting monday and if you looked at the news on saturday morning that's all they were covering is that it's over the masks are off
060and here we go so so the next slide's up so what did that letter say it basically said that indoors math will strongly be encouraged but are not required for students campers and staff teachers counselors who are not fully vaccinated and similar to the outdoors is what we had already put in our letter and then both indoors and outdoor students campers and staff who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear a mask so instantly we knew we were going to have much like any issue that we've had with coved we knew we would have people on both sides of this issue we know we have people who are ready to throw the mask in the garbage and never put them on again and we have other people who feel that we've been open and
061have been successful because we wore the mask so we knew it would be a very controversial issue so then to the to the next slide so over the weekend the genesee valley superintendent group was um zooming on sunday we're all trying to collaborate and determine what our next steps are um and in that meeting many of us had already agreed we can't stop this momentum it really seems like not wearing masks in school is the direction we're going in most of the group is in consensus that's what we're going to do on monday we're only going to have students wearing masks in the hallways or when they're entering school and then we get the email from the commissioner who says nope no changes to your math policy at all so in the zoopy we get
062that number and it's like okay so we we try to put the brakes on and then today governor cuomo in his press release says that mass outdoors are no longer required the key piece with that is when governor cuomo states that in a press conference that is not formal guidance we still have to wait for the executive order before we can truly change our plan and the the next bullet ernie that was also about robert zas who is new york state public high school sports athletic association for school athletic association said no math also applies to inelastic athletics so i went back to my original thought process of saying we've removed the mass outdoors because they're no longer tolerable not because we're changing our policy but because we are just changing how we're implementing our
063policy so now we go on to the next one so consistent with new york state guidance and our reopening plans again we are saying that due to the excess heat and humidity and elevated classroom environmental temperatures that when students are outside they can move the rest and we still have the availability of teachers inside the classroom to give their mass breaks so teachers still have the authority that when the students are safely social distance they can remove their mask and they are removing their mask when they eat so again we are allowing our students and staff to remove their masks outside on school property we will continue wearing our masks when we're on the buses in our hallways and while inside our school buildings in large groups would you say that we will get together
064through this together that's what we do right we just need to stay and say fast and by the way how many how many days of school are left to have these changes um thrown at us at the last minute not many so um you know the next area that i want to talk about is that we do know that we have the federal funds that we need to have our grant application in by june 15th that did require us to have um stakeholder feedback so we did some other survey we had 178 participants um take the survey 160 of those were parents and guardians we had 30 staff members and three community members and the the main areas that people felt that we needed to support on the next slide stuff it was overwhelmingly the
065number one concern an area that that our community staff felt that we needed to support was mental health adding mental health staff adding mental health services making sure that our staff and students needs are being met so that is something that the admin team and i are really looking at different ways that we can increase the services and supports for our staff and students because it was overwhelmingly identified as a need support learning loss again this came in lots of different suggestions between tutoring summer school after school tutoring um lots of suggestions for learning loss increasing our technology needs and you know john would tell you that we really increased the amount of hardware that we provided and that has really increased the demand for what his office does so looking at how we can
066best support him and alan as he continues to best meet the needs of our students in richmond we had a lot of people say they really felt that we needed to continue to offer as many of our extracurriculars and steam initiatives to make sure that we have our students engaged and excited definitely to have continued to ensure that we open five days a week in person that was also important a lot of people felt that we needed to make sure that that is still our plan and it is still our plan people wanted us to invest in our fine arts program and number seven we did have a few people who said please refund the orchestra program to what it was at in its current status and um prior to the survey going out i
067had already reached out to karen canyon and had set up a meeting and said you know we currently have a new model you're doing the the three through five program we have mr celino in the middle school high school and i said this year because we were on a hybrid schedule and we had a lot fewer numbers this year she was able to meet every student's um request to be an orchestra but she anticipates that when we go back to school five days a week in person that number is going to increase and she wouldn't have been able to at the current level meet all those needs so i've asked her to put a right proposal in writing to let me know what she would need to make sure that we are providing orchestra to
068every student that would want to participate next year starting in grades two through five so this year we only did grades three through five but in the past they have done that mid-year starting like january february where they um really try to recruit second grade students and introduce the the instruments so i've asked her for a proposal so that we can work together to make sure that orchestra is fully supported in the elementary building next year and then we did have one person say you know you have pre-k that is available on a lottery basis which is true we can only take 18 students i think this year we had 36 people who had um you know indicated that they were interested in the pre-k program so you know pre-k is an interesting um concept
069because you know we have a grant for one classroom so we just need to look at um you know is there a possibility of eventually offering that in the future and at this point i don't know but those were the different areas and that was from the community and the survey both mike and kelly have met with their team leaders and provided a very similar list it really is it really shows how much in align our community our teaching staff and the administrative team are but they really these needs have been identified in every single opportunity we've asked for feedback so we will be working hard to try and meet all these various needs any questions stephanie yeah you're the number one i thought oh somebody said something that that's you know anybody anybody going
070once going twice all right so we'll move on to uh committee reports audit and finance mike we did meet tonight we talked through a few topics and future planning for transportation some of the processes around payroll and the federal funds um pending federal funds nothing beyond that to report at this point we'll meet again prior to uh next month's first um i think it's safe to say that ces just took a back seat this year it's official we didn't really meet this year because we kept hoping we have the ability to have community in and do things with community and that really wasn't what happened though we did a lot of kind of like the surveys and things like that but that really didn't take our committee to do that so hopefully that will be
071picked up again next year when we can invite more people into the building um gcef they continue to meet again offline or online but off campus meeting the needs through people that the teachers that submit her grants that they might want to do things in their classrooms and uh are always eager to help in that area well and mike and i just recently met with gc a few members of gce and um you know they actually came up with the idea of changing the focus of of what their group typically does they will still take um applications from a teacher to provide a yes speaker or a field trip but really more of that fun to help when a student can no longer afford an opportunity in our school really trying to help and support
072as many of those initiatives and making sure that we are not denying any student access we're also looking at that as a district um i know that was something that the focus group economically disadvantaged focus group had looked at was identifying different areas that they felt that we as a district need to look at to make sure that we are not setting um policies or regulations or just procedures in place here at school that are not allowing all students to participate because of an economic need so we're we are looking at that as a district as well policy david obviously wouldn't we didn't meet this time but you'll note uh a couple of items uh 8.09 is the second read on the sexual harassment of students policy required policy also 8.10 public access to records
073says that's the first read on that required policy thank you that brings us back to you okay under personnel i'd like to make a motion we approve items 7.02 to 7.07 any discussion on any of those items just as kelly said really want to wish aaron wayne jr well as she leaves us sadly but is on to the next step in her career in administration so congratulations and you will be missed yeah congratulations are you all in favor all right any opposed all right motion carried under new business i'd like to make a motion we approve items 8.02 through 8.10 second any discussion on any of these items all right all in favor aye any opposed motion carried and your business office i'd like to make a motion we approve items 9.02 through 9.04 any
074discussion of those items all in favor brings us to discussion items which there is one for the board meeting day of oh chain meetings on monday or change to tuesday oh yeah we talked about that every year all right that's right it's that time of year so do people want to keep the meeting once upon a time we used seven tuesday nights they got changed monday nights is i'm pretty good and staying with monday nights i am yeah all right i guess mondays it is and okay i'd like to make a motion we enter into executive session uh for continuing discussion regarding contract negotiations and one personnel matter second all in favor of going into executive session all right any opposed all right we're in executive session thank you everyone for coming tonight see you
075yeah kevin if you'd like to stay at our new board member please are soon to be full new board member please stay and join