001Sorry for the few minute delay there. We went out and celebrated with the top 10. Uh we'll continue on with the meeting now. Uh next item under that is our recognition of our retirees. >> Yeah. Uh this year we have uh Dennis Dy, our associate principal at Boulevard retiring. Melissa Cana, teacher at the high school. Marine Cooper, teacher. Joe Green, health aid. Dwayne Hicks, retired teacher from at the middle school. William Hill, occupational therapist. Vicky Engles, teacher. Letter Jones, uh cleaner. Juliano Tulle, social worker. Timothy Ryan was carpenter social worker. Uh, Linda Snell, custodian. Mark Snder, cleaner. Sandra Town, bus attendant. Shannon Wodssworth, teacher. Paul Wilder was an automotive mechanic. Um, know many of the staff on here. I wish them all well in their retirement. Congratulations and thanks for all their years of service.
002Uh, next item we have is public comment. If anybody's here for public comment, stand up. You want the microphone or feel free to scream. >> That works. I feel like Cody I should >> It's not even on, guys. >> It's Cody's fault. >> I don't need it, Cody. Okay, this will be better. Hi, my name is Robin Guzlick for those of you that don't know me. Um, I teach physical education at Park Terrace and tonight I'm here representing our elementary. We believe there are opportunities for positive changes that would support our students and families. We have some concerns regarding recent decisions and feel that additional teacher, parent, and community input could have provided valuable perspective during the decision-making process. With that in mind, we would appreciate the opportunity to share our thoughts and discuss several
003ideas and solutions that we believe could benefit our students and the broader school community. We respectfully request a formal meeting with the board of education and district administration to have an open and constructive conversation about these matters. Thank you very much for your time, your consideration. Uh we look forward to working together to support the success of our student community. >> Questions? >> Any questions? Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Anybody else for public comment tonight? Move on to uh next item which is board discussion. Uh we have the minutes from the May 11th meeting and the May 20th meeting. We'll start with May 11th. Does anybody have any questions or comments on those? Motion to approve those minutes by Ed. by Kevin. All in favor? Anybody opposed? Names come back, please. All
004right. And then we have the board minutes from the May 20th meeting. Motion to approve those. He seconded by Kelly. All in favor of those. Anybody know any extensions? I know there wasn't. >> Anybody have anything else for board discussion tonight? >> No. All right. Just me then. All right. Just uh I have a couple presentations to make to some uh departing board members. first one was my first superintendent here when I came on the board just two years ago. I'm just kidding. Uh I'd like to thank Rob for stepping up and filling in this year. Having him here was great bringing in years of experience. I mean, he worked in the district as a former superintendent. It was great having that um experience on the board with us. So, thank you, Rob. Next one
005we have is from Mike Oha. He's been on the board for six years. Great asset on the board. Mike and we've known each other. Our kids have gone to school for a long time. Sorely missed. Hope you get to enjoy your full summer on the boat, though. Thanks. Um, nobody has anything else. We'll move on to the superintendence report, which >> sure will address Robin's >> comment in the superintendent part of my report. >> Um, good evening everybody. Before I start, just wanted to acknowledge a couple things on the tonight's agenda. We have a donation school supplies uh for our scholars at Boulevard Elementary School from 5 below. We appreciate their generosity and also want to acknowledge the retirement. Jill Green, health aid at Gloversville High School effective June 30th and that'll be after 26
006years of service. So we wish Jill a long, healthy, happy retirement and thank her for her many years of service. Um, want to congratulate the top 10. They're not here anymore, but uh, it's always nice to to hear the accolades of our of the top senior class. I think it's a great tradition that High School's had in place for a long time. Um, not every school celebrates the top 10 the way that we do. So, really enjoy the June board meeting, although we always seem to have an executive session for it. Um, I also want to congratulate all retirees that Rob just spoke to and thank Michael and Rob Billy for their service on this board. Enjoy working with both of you. And I also want to uh congratulate welcome our two incoming board members,
007Julian Santiago and Lauren Ioro, who are here. We appreciate your uh willingness to serve. Pay is not great for board member, but uh it's a great community and I think you're joining a great board of education. So, thank you for your willingness to serve the community. Um just uh this is more information sharing. In your packet, you'll see that there's a teacher leadership MOA. You we gathered about 26 teachers over two Wednesdays, uh a couple hours every day. They split into small groups working alongside the administration. We developed uh a teacher leader job description and to the union, you know, uh they tabled it tonight because they just got it Friday night. Uh they want to talk about it. Uh so I can certainly understand that process. So I wasn't able to get it to
008Margie I think until Friday afternoon or Friday during the day. So the union tabled it. They had some things they wanted to talk about. Hopefully we can uh get something off the ground even if it's just a pilot year uh for teacher leadership. We certainly believe uh that it's important to have teacher leaders. Uh I think we'd love to coales the grade level leaders and department chairs that are in the contract and create a more cohesive consistent teacher leader job description. Uh because we believe that uh you know we have a lot of great educators in this organization uh and we think that shared leadership is important especially when it comes to curriculum and instruction. I hope to continue that conversation with Margie, but if you have any questions to board members about this position,
009you you see the proposals on the very back page. Uh some of this is I said it's set to sunset no matter what at the end of this coming school year if it if they approve it and we will be in negotiations with GTA next year. Hopefully, we'll have something to uh base our conversations off in the spring of 27 as we move move forward. So u looking forward to that conversation. Uh primary special education changes. Just wanted to update the board. So decision to move our primary special education uh co- teach classrooms all to Park Terrace. uh you know, we did it for a number of reasons and uh we communicated to the parents or the families that are impacted who live uh north of 1 Avenue who initially or used to attend Park
010Terrace. Well, now will be attending Kingsboro. I did tell one parent who was concerned about her child's friends uh that he made friendships and she asked why can't we just start it prek? But the truth is uh the numbers with the move with special education if we just made it voluntary or made it uh just incoming prek, we would have lopsided section numbers. So, what I told her was uh we were taking a a list of folks who were hoping that their child could stay in Park Terrace despite being in that zone that we changed and when the dust settles early September, we see section numbers will accommodate based on the order that the request came in. So, the principles are aware of that. Danielle's we're going to coordinate with them and their office staff
011to ensure we have a list uh that is compiled based on when we receive those requests. So um you we're doing this for continuity of programming. Uh we have service providers that travel the city. The district pays them to travel the city by having service providers all special education teachers. Uh the special education administration will have an office there that uh will probably be their primary office. So there'll be a second administrator dedicated just solely to the special education programming at Beras. Uh we fleshed this out considerably. I think that the decision is is sound fiscally programmatically uh when it comes to uh professional development um transportation all those doortodoor busing. It should be more efficient. So uh we think it's going to work and if it doesn't we'll be the first ones to uh
012to say it. But we're confident that it's going to be a good move. But time will tell. Um, so I didn't want to and I know that the board received a number of calls over the weekend regarding the the proposed shifts in elementary start and end times. I just want to be clear that is a completely separate issue to the special education reconfiguration. One is not associated with the other. They're two separate issues. I know change is a lot uh for some folks, but the and and I sent an email to the staff today that we did not do a great job of engaging them on this issue. Certainly uh believe we could have done a better job and uh Robin on behalf of our staff has offered an opportunity to speak. I don't know
013if the entire board could get together, but maybe representatives of the board certainly uh central administration be happy to sit down and talk about what we're looking at. Um, so I apologize as I did in the email that this you're finding out via email on a Friday afternoon. That's not how we choose to operate, how I would want to operate. I pride myself on being transparent and communicative. So, uh, we can do better. So, um that said, that change to our uh the proposed change to our elementary start time is based on the fact that as of right now, the high school bus was roll off this campus at about 2:40. Elementary dismisses at 300 p.m. That 20 minutes is not nearly enough to get our secondary scholars dropped off and get the buses back
014to three primary buildings with a common end time in an efficient manner. And I've had numerous conversations with teachers and staff in the elementary, both primary and boulevard, about the uh trials and tribulations of managing kids for what's often 30, 40 minutes as we wait for buses. Um, and parents have complained, I've heard, I can't be in two places at once repeatedly. And you know, maybe this is something we should have done prior to this year to look at this to create a staggered start time between the primaries and boulevard to accommodate those parents and also to accommodate our shuttles, which is our inind bus service that we provide in the city. That's something the district does not have to do, but chooses to do in order to uh help parents and guardians get their
015children to school consistently. Having a common start and end time in those three buildings creates uh hardship for parents and creates hardship for our transportation department. I actually have a letter here from our transportation director about this and I wanted to share with the board. Need to read this at your leisure. Um this is obviously something I've been hearing from the transportation department for years. We looked at at start end times across the region. Some districts certainly are in the 22 225. Johntown has single tripman. They are able to transport their kids all K12 at once. That's why Johntown is end at 225. Amsterdam 310 broader 255, Scotia 305 to 315 between their four elementary schools. Hudson Falls 310, South Glenn Falls 320, Queensberry 325. We have buses rolling at 340. So even with this
016proposed change to 310 and 320, we're right in the middle of of what's coming for the schools that we looked at. Um, it's within the contractual provisions. Uh, this isn't being done or proposed to make it harder on our staff. It's being done to try to create more efficiency to not have our staff supervising kids for long periods of time after school. Um, you know, when when this was proposed in the admin meeting, in theory, it made sense. Uh, but how we rolled it out, uh, certainly I'll take responsibility for for that. So, um, happy to hear ideas from the staff and, you know, we'll continue to call this proposed as opposed to, you know, moving forward, but it is my recommendation right now to move forward with this uh because I've yet to hear
017a reason why it doesn't make sense and with my own eyes and observation over the last eight years um, and seeing what's allowed contractually and what's being done in districts around this region, why that 10 and 20 minute shift is not something that's in the best interest of this community. I've not seen why it's not yet. But again, take full responsibility for poor roll out of how this was communicated. Any questions about that? Uh, last thing I have here is just some dates. We got the Baloria at 6:10, United Methodist at 6 p.m. We have the GTA retirement party at Concordia at 3:30 on the 11th. Our awards night in this auditorium on the 16th at 6 p.m. And of course, our graduation ceremony hopefully out on Husky Field at 7:00 p.m. Cody will make
018that call. Well, me and Cody will make that call uh within 24 hours of graduation. I sent them a video of Instagram. poor kids in Texas just sitting in a thunder lightning storm that will not be global. Uh we will make we will make a decision and sweat it out in our gymnasium which is got air conditioning this coming project but let's hope the weather gods are in our favor and it's a beautiful evening on the 26th at Parker. That concludes my report. I did not need executive session. >> Thank you. Thank you. Uh, next item, a student board member report. >> I don't have a formal report tonight, but I just wanted to thank the board for welcoming me this past year. Um, I'm really grateful for the opportunity to serve on on behalf
019of the board of education and for everything that I've learned from the experience. So, I'm just really grateful for that. Um, and I appreciate you all for listening to me and so thank you. >> How was the trip? So fun. >> So fun. But we do have a cool little flag for you as well. I have one for gentlemen, but I don't see you here tonight. So squeeze down. >> Anybody get a tattoo while they're told not to do There's a long joke about that. We'll have to explain later if you have any questions. >> All right. Uh next then we just have the recommended items. Uh we have items 7.01 through 16.54. Anybody need anything separately? >> No motion to approve those items. Heath second >> Mike. All right. All in favor? Anybody opposed?
020Any extensions? That's everybody. All right. Motion to adjourn the meeting then. >> Right. By John, seconded by Ed. All right. All in favor? >> Sure. Nobody wants to stay in oppos. All right. We'll say