001And if we can have a moment of silence or a moment of silent reflection for the following. Mr. Marvin Henson, he passed away on November 20th, 2025. Marvin was a longtime community service volunteer in Greece. Marvin was also a big part of the Greece neighboring chapters and Lions Club. Please keep Marvin and his family in your thoughts and prayers. And also Salvatore, known as Saloto, passed away on November 13, 2025. Cell was a dedicated Gree Central District employee from September 1998 until June 2002 when he resigned as an assistant principal. Sell was an avid triathlete and enjoyed staying active throughout his life. Please keep Sal and his family in your thoughts and prayers. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation
002under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, Bailey. Do you remember what I asked you last month? Are you ready? >> You have a joke. I know you're doing it now. >> I'm going to do it now. I need to laugh. All right, since the weather outside's a little chilly, what do you call a snowman who is having a temper tantrum? A meltdown. >> Thank you, Bailey. Every month. Every month. And with that, um, can I have somebody move the agenda to the table, please? Moved by Miss Fel, board member Felserano, seconded by Vice President Stencil. Any additions, corrections, deletions to the agenda is presented. Seeing none, all those in favor that passes nine to zero. Moving on to we have our student leaders here from Odyssey Middle School. Welcome
003this evening. Come on down. Thank you, sir. What's something great about Odyssey? >> Um, I love the classes and I think this school is really fun. The food is really good here. I like it how it's like not overpop populated like some other schools and I like how like most of the kids are really nice. >> What do you like about Odyssey? >> I like the vibes and also like some classes are like the funnest thing ever. I swear like unlike last year for me. >> What is something you like about Odyssey? >> I like the snack line and I like my teacher sense of humor. their activities like the events and like um when they yeah the fun events. >> Um they take very good care of their students. >> What is something that
004made you smile today? Probably my friends, >> the lunchroom food, >> seeing my best friend Lauren, >> the celebration and having fun with my friends. Hi, I'm Aaliyah and I present to I presented to you guys for like two years now. At our open house, we had a fun night on the track where families could meet our all of our teachers. There was a lot of different activities where our whole community could participate in. There were food trucks like cotton candy, meeting the leopard, face painting, and more. Students could sign up for clubs and other activities. We also had a spirit week where we show our leopard pride and celebrate together. Hi, I'm Alexis and I went to the Odyssey skate night at Horizon. It was so much fun. We got to play arcade games,
005laser tag, skate, and have fun with our friends in the jungle gym. Hi, come here. I'm short. Hi, I'm Meline. Here at Odyssey, we want to make sure everyone feels a appreciated and how they do things. So, some of the celebrations we do are the end of month celebrations or the pep rally. How our end of month celebrations work is for the month we have a focus. Like for November, our focus was no inappropriate physical contact. And as long as you did not have any inappropriate physical contact, you got to go to a during the school day celebration for one period. Our pep rally was also fun and interactive as well. The Odyssey Academy homecoming dance was so fun. Both myself and Alexis attended the homecoming dance. Some of the activities were games, a photo
006booth where we could take photos with our friends, a dance party where we could request songs and concessions where you could buy pizza, snacks, drinks, and more. Hi, I'm Eva. I was able to do cross country this fall. It was very fun to run and meet new friends. We go to the McQuade Invitational each year along with other local meets. Some of the other sports offered to middle school students this year include bowling, modified cheerleading, modified basketball, modified volley volleyball, the swim team, and many more. AB is a class where you can learn about college early on and be prepared for the future. It it teaches it helps teach you skills to use in college and your life. One of the activities that we did in the eighth grade was a field trip to town
007hall. We had police we went to the police station, the library, the historial the histoal recreation society and I forgot the rest, but yeah, this club is always so much fun. No matter what we make, it's always a good chance to socialize and make new friends. Come here. I'm short. Art club is so fun and entertaining. I love that we get to make a fun craft and also talk to friends. I love art club so much. It is so much fun and I'm always looking forward to it every month. Always making fun stuff and socializing. It is so much fun. Especially when you get to get your creative juices flowing. Hi again. I'm in seventh grade this year and I got the character Young Kangaroo. This is my second year doing the musical. It's always
008so much fun. You meet new people and expand your skills. Hi, I'm in this year's musical Susicle and I got the character thing one. This is so amazing and I'm so lucky to have this opportunity, especially as a sixth grader. This is why Odyssey is such a great place. The Greece marching band consists of students from all of the schools. Yet, we have practices right here at Odyssey. Practices run late, but we always get a lot of things done. Greece was even first in the state for a day. When we went to championships, we got third in the state for large school, too. Odyssey is a great school with so many opportunities for our students. Thank you so much for listening. If you guys could come up and do a picture with the Odyssey staff
009and with the board and the superintendent, the deputy superintendent and who has Odyssey? Dr. Baker. Thank you very much. I might make you do something. All right. Next up, we have our union comments. The wonderful Mr. Eerts is here, president of GTA. Welcome, Brian. >> I'm going to remember that you said wonderful. I'm going to tell everybody who said that, so it's got to be true. Good evening, uh, members of the board of education, district leadership, Superintendent Smalling, other staff, and the greater community members. Thank you for coming tonight. Um, I wanted to begin by acknowledging the board board's decision to establish a code of conduct committee made up of district office personnel, board members, community members, and myself representing the Greece teachers association. I chose to join for a very important reason, to represent
010the staff, students, and community of Greece. drawing upon my deep and long-standing connection to this district. I grew up in Greece, attended Greece schools, spent my professional career employed here wonderfully, and I'm a proud parent of three sons who have uh gone through the Greece schools. Those experiences collectively shape how I view our schools, our challenges, and our opportunities. They also make it clear to me that I have a responsibility to participate and advocate. This committee will be offering recommendations to the district's code of conduct committee. And while our role is advisory, I'm generally hopeful that the perspectives we bring forward will prove helpful, insightful, supportive of both students and staff across the district. I look forward to continuing to represent GTA members and to ensuring that the experiences of those closest to the work
011are fully reflected in the process. As we discuss the importance of safe and supportive environments in our schools, it's also important to remember the needs of our broader community. This time of year, many Greece families face food insecurity and other challenges. And one meaningful way we can support our neighbors is by contributing to the Greece ecumenical food shelf located at 500 Maiden Lane. I encourage anyone who is able to consider donating food, resources, or time. A quick online search will provide all the information needed to get involved. Even small acts of generosity make a significant difference for families right here in Greece. Also, the diversity inclusion leadership network along with our nonforpr not for-profit 501c3, the GTCP, is holding a hoodies for the holidays initiative. We all know our 6 through 12 students aren't exactly
012the coatwearing individuals, but certainly will wear hoodies during the colder times. So, if you have any extra hoodies or want to buy new hoodies, please drop them off at any middle school or high school and just label them. Let's see. hoodies for holidays and December 12th is the the end time for those collections. Finally, as we approach the holiday season, I want to extend my warmest wishes to all members of the GCSD community, student, staff, administrators, board members, and families. Make the week, May the weeks ahead bring rest, connection, and joy. On behalf of the Greece Teachers Association, I wish you all a safe, peaceful, and happy holiday season. Thank you. >> Thank you, President Eberts. Next up, we have GASA Gabby Graves and Christina Christophory. Welcome this evening. >> Good evening everyone. Um, for
013those of you who don't know me, I'm Gabby Graves and this is Christina Christa Fory. We are proud assistant principles at Odyssey Academy and we're here representing um, our GASA today. uh GASA board member or GASA members have been really having a laser-like focus on instruction and PLC's lately, more specifically in all of our buildings as well as throughout departments in district office. At Odyssey Academy, we've been focused on goal number one, which is an academic goal. We've started a writing protocol that we are working on in our middle school. We also are focused on goal number two which is establishing an effective PLC. We are using Darur's three big ideas and four critical questions. We've also recently um adopted the newcomer program for grades 6 through 12 at Odyssey Academy. Um this has been
014a big transition but um we've been uh off to a great start for sure. Um the staff has embraced the um the program and really worked collectively with district office and multilingual education department in order to advance the instruction that's happening there. We've collaborated and worked um on different types of instruction including the bridges academic to success with Boseis 2. Um, students are engaged in the ELA curriculum, art core, bridges, we're using Earl, um, and really dialing into our citizens in action uh, curriculum as well. Holmes Road grade level PLC's meet every Thursday to unpack standards, look at student assessment results, and discuss instructional strategies to support students. Our guided coalition also meets once a month to support each and and plan and reflect on PLC progress. Autumn Lane has been really focused on goal
015two and improving their collective understanding for PLC's. Um they're proud to report that they are working hard to move from proficient to accomplish on their collective understanding of DEFOR's PLC. Uh the guiding coalition continues to co-plan staff meetings. Um to date 100% of the PLC's are focused on at least one of the essential questions. Um they're analyzing data and creating proactive interventions during their win time. Arcadia High School has every department in a PLC by content or course. Each PLC has a wig and a scoreboard. They meet in PLC's bi-weekly and are charting our progress regularly. Here are the pictures to highlight the work that they are doing. Craig Hill has been working closely with the Mathtosa uh Lisa Gross during their PLC time in order to create um and have focus aligned CFAs um
016in alignment with the district's uh standards. They've been doing the standard unpacking work as well and they're going to start analyzing analyzing gathering the data from the assessments and the CFAs that they've created. The department of humanities, both social studies and ELA, has been really dialed in and focused on art core, grades six through 8. They've been focusing on vocabulary. That's also something that we've been working a lot on in um leadership as well. And for liter uh literary text, they are expected to describe character traits. Um and for informational text, students should be able to describe the relationship between events, ideas, concepts, language, and time. At Arcadia Middle, each month, Arcadia staff track key lead measures, including PLC meeting consistency. By collecting monthly data, we can monitor how often PLC's meet and identify trends.
017So far, we've seen an increase in consistent PLC meetings across the building. We've also asked teams to be open about barriers that prevent weekly meetings. By naming these challenges, we are able to problem solve together and improve the conditions that support regular effective PLC collaboration. And then finally, uh, English Village. Uh, Arcadia AVID students actually went to English Village and the students read stories and participated in a co-created project together. And the November school reading challenge um, at English Village um, has produced over 2520 um, books collectively read so far. Thank you. All right, Gus. I have nobody here from Gus signed up. Nobody from ASAP and nobody from Teamsters. All right, rolling into residence forum. Miss Lonheart, you're up. Welcome. >> Thank you. Um hello. Um, I am a grandmother to seven grandchildren in
018the Greece school district and I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of their parents. Um, the district does a great job of communicating with families in so many ways, but it's a frustration to many parents because they have to log in to many different apps in order to communicate with various teachers, schools, activity advisors. There are at least eight different methods that are required. Seessaw, Remind, Email, um, My Schoolbox, Pick My Kid, Google Classroom, Infinite Campus, and whatever method, um, offsite people might choose to use, like coaches and advisors, eight apps, each with its own username, each with its own password. Um, perhaps there's a way to whittle that list down a little bit. Um, Remind and Seesaw essentially do the same things, but teachers use different parts of each. Infinite Campus has the capacity
019to do what Google Classroom does on the parent side. For parents, all this information could be in one place. Fewer apps means fewer loginins and perhaps fewer subscriptions for the district to purchase. Um we are aware that Parent Square pulls at least five of these apps um into one place and has some other great features. Um, on behalf of the Greece families, when con when the contracts come up for renewal, perhaps you can consider streamlining streamlining the communication process because in the case of communication apps, the communication apps, more is not matter better. It's just confusing. So, thank you for listening. >> Thank you, Miss Lar. I'm going to call on Superintendent Smallen. He'd like to address some what you said. >> Um, thank you for um coming up and speaking. And I just wanted
020to say we hear you um loud and clear um and we recognize the issue as well. And um as we are working currently for a new website, part of the features that interest us in that website is a feature that you just described. So we're looking into it and and trying to remedy the issue that I'm I just really wanted you to know we are aware of it, recognize it, and are looking for a solution. So thank you. Um, next up we have Kevin Woodbury from the Greece Legion Post 468 Baseball. Welcome Kevin. This is my enforcement team. So, uh, good evening. Uh, my name is Kevin Woodbury. Uh, I'm the vice commander over the American Legion Grease Post 468. Uh some of you may remember me. I was here in August. We brought our
021trophies in from uh the American Legion baseball. Our senior team went to the national championships and finished eighth in the country. Very very impressive. Uh this has generated a lot of interest in American Legion baseball. So much so that we've added another team to the local uh uh league. And for the first time in our history, we have a junior league start. We just started. We have five teams in it. And of course, Gree Post 468 snapped up the first team. So, we have two teams now. A lot of our success was because of you folks. We were allowed to use Greece Athena High School as our home field and it made it great through the entire season. We're asking for your support this year in two 2026 because we now have two teams we
022have to have to support. Uh we're requesting that maybe you can let us allow us to use two two uh facilities for our teams. We don't have a full schedule yet, I don't believe. Yes, pardon me. Uh let let me introduce this. This is uh Jim Capalupo. He's the coach of our senior team and Chad. Yeah. Coco who's coach of our junior team. Uh and of course Chad's enforcers like I said from the junior team. Um, we are going to continue supporting baseball. Obviously, we had the national uh the state championships here in uh Monroe County for the first time ever. We did very well and we did so well. We're going to do it again next year and we're also going to do the junior championships. So, we're going to have two uh state
023championships here next year. Lot of lot of baseball. Uh I have a few more things I want to come out. I'm done with baseball. I got to move on to another thing. We have a program with the uh American Legion called Boy State where we send four young high school juniors to a week-long uh camp where they learn uh responsibilities as franchise citizens. They actually run a a government. They become a have their own city and they all facets of run by these students for a week. helps them learn Americanism and government and all that uh things that they can use later on in life. We would like your help to pick out these four students. They will be we will pick up all tab for it. They don't have to pay anything. It's just
024we would like them to attend. Uh one last thing, uh we have five scholarships that we will be giving out to one student at each one of our high schools. Uh and we would like again your help picking out those students. We uh we really want to give back to our uh our community. It's given so much to us and we want to keep this as a family. If you have any questions, we have a website. Please leave a message. I I'm the one who runs it, so I get all the mail. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Woodbury. I'm going to have you you call my board clerk um today. If you can call her back tomorrow and leave your contact information. I don't know if she still has it or not.
025Do you still have his number or No. >> Bill. >> Oh, Bill called. All right. If you could I I'll have Bill give um Lori your contact information and I'll have somebody reach out to you about the baseball fields and one of my assistant superintendents will reach out about the scholarships in Boy State. >> That would be one >> or the deputy. >> Maybe I'll delegate to the deputy. >> Thank you. Uh Kevin forgot to to mention we also have girl state. So we are looking for four girls to send also the you miss >> deputy superintendent Fleming is all over that. >> Thank you. Thank you gentlemen for coming. Have a good evening. >> Thank you. >> All right. Next up, this one hits close to home for me. We're going to do a
026district recognition. Mr. Richardson, why don't I have you come down up front here? Assume the position that you know assistant superintendent Larson makes all our new employees take. the hot seat. Yep. We're going to put a little star, I think, there and put Gina's name on it so everybody can stand on it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, um, on November 6th, while Dave was on his way home from work, a call came in at approximately 5:30 for a person not conscious, not breathing in a diialysis center. Dave immediately went to the firehouse and responded a call with two other firefighters. At the scene, Dave jumped in, took over CPR, which had been started prior to his arrival. Advanced life support had also arrived, and they were triaging the victim. While Dave was doing compressions,
027the victim's heart restarted and a pulse was discovered. Mr. Richardson remained with the patient, providing basic life support to the 66-y old male and supporting the advanced life support team. He also assisted the packing of the patient for ambulance transport and continued basic life support in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. And for those reasons, the board of education at Greece Central School District with great pride and gratitude and thank you for your outstanding service, dedication, and commitment in serving the students, families, and the entire Greece community. Your immediate response to an emergency assisted in saving a life. For that, we're very appreciative, Dave. And thank you. We're gonna come around and do a picture. >> If you could have the board superintendent deputy. Nice job. All right. Can I ass move the
028staffing to the table, please? Moved by Vice President Stencil, seconded by board member Seaman. Is there any comments, questions, concerns on staffing? Seeing none, all those in favor? That passes nine to zero. Moving on to tenure. Can I s move the tenure to the table, please? Moved by Miss Lake, second by board member Butler. Are there any comments, questions, concerns on that? Seeing that all is in favor? That passes 9 to zero. Moving on to 2.03 GTA MAS additional FTEES. Can I Sony move that to the table please? Moved by Mr. Maloney. Second by Mr. Butler. Any comments, questions, concerns on that? Seeing none, all those in favor that passes nine to zero. Moving on to 2.04 Gus MOA for the addiction addiction of a project manager title. Can I so I move that to
029the table? Moved by Mr. Malone, second by Vice President Stencil. Is there any comments, questions, concerns on that? Seeing none, all those in favor? That passes 9 to zero. Moving on to 4.01. New York Inspires Graduation Initiative. Superintendent Smalline. >> Right. I'd like to ask Dr. Zafett up. Thank you. >> All right. Good evening everyone. Um, so tonight's presentation is likely the first in uh several presentations on this state initiative over the course of the next few years at least. Um, we have a group of people of course who I would like to recognize prior to getting into the presentation who have been um, keeping up to speed on the latest and working um, a little more over the past couple months. Um but this group originally got together in November of last year uh
030when this initiative was first announced in Albany and has been following along and now we have some actionable items that we are going to uh present to you this evening. So, New York inspires uh is the name of uh graduation measures um initiative and as you can see in the logo there, this was a charge by the commissioner actually that started in 2019. So, pre- pandemic the commissioner um charged the state with really reooking at graduation measures in New York State to match the kind of emerging future of the the 21st century. So, what exactly does that mean? Um, the Blue Ribbon Commission, which was a group of people that was put together by the New York State Education Department, um, spent several years going around the state, uh, doing surveys, doing focus groups, during,
031uh, doing information gathering to try to put together, um, put together a a program to to change the graduation measures in New York State to be modernized. So modernize education was one of the things that the stakeholders said that they wanted. Make students future ready and have excellence for all students. And how were they going to do that? So the proposal in November of last year unveiled these four quote unquote transformations that the commission recommended to the state education department to to accomplish these goals. More on each of these as we go through the presentation, but just very briefly, the four transformations are to adopt a portrait of a graduate through New York State, which is, as you'll see, very similar to the profile of a graduate that we currently have in our strategic plan,
032to take a look at credits, redefine credits, what it means to get a credit, decouple readiness assessments from graduation, so essentially provide more pathways u for students to show proficiency in the standards other than a high stakes exam. and to move to one diploma where currently we have three diplomas in New York State. So the first transformation, adopt a portrait of a graduate. That was done at the November meeting of 2025, the board of regent, excuse me, the the July meeting of the board of regents. Um and uh you could see the logo of the portrait of a graduate here. Specifically um we're going to get into a little bit of detail on um the six attributes of the New York State portrait of a graduate. But before we do that, just wanted to call
033attention to again, we have a profile of a graduate that came from the Greece stakeholders as the development of our last strategic plan. And really, this started, these attributes started with um interviews and focus groups with our students and things that were important to them to get out of their educational experience that were then taken to the larger strategic plan advisory committee back when we were developing reach. And that's how we landed on the attributes of our profile which are not identical to but there are a lot of overlap and alignment with the portrait of a graduate attributes from New York State as well. So, the theory behind the portrait of a graduate, adding that to the diploma or excuse me, the graduation requirements is that it moves our New York State um graduation requirements
034from a focus solely on academic test scores with a framework for all the competencies that are expected of our graduates when they enter post-secary life. So you'll see things there like not only academically prepared but things like innovation, global citizenship, communication, reflection um and future focused as I mentioned these are aligned a lot with our current profile of a graduate in our strategic plan where we have um similar attributes in ours thoughtful self-aware personally responsible and then also our core values of excellence with equity equity excuse me resilience and respect. So, moving on to the second pillar, this is where we're going to spend the majority of our time this evening. Um, really redefining credits and assessment and the requirements that go along with those. Um, we don't have a ton of information yet. More
035of what we have is kind of a description of the spirit of these requirements from the state. Um, but we do have a little bit of detail. Um, one of those things being uh the very first thing that was approved by the state for as an action item in the spring was a major life event exemption for um regent exam for students who are enrolled in and have passed the course of study but had a significant life event that prevented them from prevented or impeded them from successfully completing the regent's exam. Um, so we did have um a few applications from um families and from school counselors in the spring of this year. We had 10 the major life event exemptions that were approved and we actually did have one in August. That is a
036typo. We had one um in August. um things. Examples of these major life events are um students undergoing cancer treatment, a student who um got in a serious accident of a dirt bike accident, um student who lost a family member. So, we really tried to keep it to um events that were very significant in nature. Um not that someone was sick and they couldn't make the exam. So, as far as um the regent exams go, I just want to make it really clear that the state has said time and again publicly that regent exams are not going away. In fact, they can they cannot go away. It's a requirement for us under ESSA that we offer regent exams. We value regent exams. We think they're um a quality measure of student proficiency in the learning
037standards and they will be an option for our students moving forward. The spirit behind this decoupling um the regent exams from graduation is that um is that there will be other um alternative assessment pathways for them to complete that will show the same amount of rigor in proficiency in the standards um and also the portrait of a graduate attributes that I mentioned um and it really is up to us at least I think it's going to be up to us what uh how how to ensure the rigor of the standards are in these alternate assessments. So where we're start I'll get to the timeline a little bit later but we are starting um this work initially this spring with a brainstorm kind of a brainstorming session with some of our teachers uh because this is
038going to be um the class of the class that enters 9th grade in 2027 is going to be the first class that has this decoupled regent exam as part of their high school experience. So where we're starting is we're trying to think about what's a process we can use with our staff to at least conceptualize and start to brainstorm what an alternate assessment might look like for the typical freshman in 2027 28. So courses like algebra living environment um uh earth science courses that students will typically take in nth grade. That's where we need to start our brainstorm as we await further guidance. So, not only assessments uh are are being reimagined a little bit, but credits as well. So, the very simple way to say uh to sum up the the credit um requirement
039in New York inspires is that they shouldn't be limited to uh seat time or hours anymore. So, if you think about how you earn a credit, typically in the current high school experience or all of our high school experience really, you go and typically you take a class, you sit in the class from September to June. There's assignments and expectations that go along with that. They get assessed and you either pass or you don't pass that class. The spirit of this is to earn credit not only um through that avenue which would still be available but also through things like uh work-based learning, internships, actual work experience could potentially count um and other experiences which are monitored and supervised in a community setting. Um that could again show the same proficiency in the New York
040State Learning Standards that we currently do with our coursework. There's also new instructional um requirements we need to offer and ensure that all of our students have. These are actually going to be starting in the fall of this year and there's going there's some conversation at Boseies right now as to um how the current learning standards capture some of this. Um and we're in the good fortune or we're in the good position to have most of our students with exposure already in their high school program to these uh requirements particularly with financial literacy education. Uh so we offer courses in the high school program including strategies for success which all students are expected to take if they if they uh can for graduation although there are some students who aren't able to fit it into
041their schedule because they have multiple ensembles or otherwise. Um but the great majority of our students are enrolled in strategies for success which does touch on um financial literacy. We also have a course called math and financial applications, accounting, personal money management. So we do have the great majority of our students receiving this instruction already. We just need to make sure that um we can offer it to all of our students um beginning next fall for grades 9 through 12 and then also 6 through eight and then the following year for for K4. So a lot of work to be done there, but we're building the current state. We feel confident that we're in a good place to be able to um continue our current program with some minor tweaks. What we're not so clear
042on yet is the climate education requirement which will begin in the fall of 2027 for students in grades 9 through 12 and students in grades 6 through 8 and then in 2829 for the students in um K5. So what the work that's currently going on with that is um both for science is currently building a crosswalk between the New York State learning standards and climate education. Um the thing I think that we're we're really waiting on is we don't really know what the definition of climate education is yet and we expect guidance on that to come somewhere down the line. So, I don't have a ton to offer you on that, but as far as financial literacy goes, I feel like we're in a pretty good spot and the instructional team agrees uh with that
043piece. So, along those same lines, um we we need to offer students multiple pathways to graduation. Um we do have a lot of this already built into our uh program, which you saw through the course offering catalog. We do have pathways um for our students and in a lot of sequences whether that be in responding to emergencies or fine arts. Um but this is again trying to kind of broaden the pathways that students have to go from nth grade to earning the New York State diploma through things like internships, work-based learning, capstone projects, um community service. All of this is really TBD. Um this is not something that we've gotten a ton of guidance on yet. Just more again kind of the spirit of broadening those opportunities for um for students to um to progress
044towards graduation. One thing that had wasn't explicitly called out as an expectation of the New York Inspires initiative, but we know that we are that we need to roll into it is how we um work with address, teach responsible use of artificial intelligence. Um it's something that we've been working on as a district and we're going to uh present to the board a little bit on that next month uh through our technology presentation. We have um a group uh that's been working on that for the past couple years and and continues to do that and some teachers um using tools in their classroom already. But really when we talk about kind of scaling that out, we need to to broaden how we're we're doing our core instruction to incorporate AI. Um there's been a lot
045of news about news and um stories about students just basically replacing um their thinking with with AI. And we want to just do our best to avoid that and really teach students how to use the tool responsibly and teach them um kind of re reform our teaching to incorporate that uh into our assignments, our assessments and really guard against using it as a replacement and use it instead as a tool to supplement the learning instead of supplant it and supplant the critical thinking. um really want to make sure that we are maintaining our academic integrity in the face of this challenge. The final pillar or transformation of New York inspires is the move to one diploma. So currently we have three diploma offerings in New York State. There's the regious diploma. We have a regious
046diploma with advanced designation. And then we have um a local diploma which there's a few different avenues for students to obtain um the local diploma. This pillar really moves the the New York State diploma to be one um singular set of requirements and then it's up to the district to add any appropriate seals or endorsements based on our instructional program. So um kind of like a higher ed analogy to think about this is like this is this is the uh the college degree and then the seals are endorsements are things like honors or magnum laudy or the other kind of um more rigorous uh more rigorous pathways or or coursework that students would take. But as far as the state goes if you earn a diploma you've shown proficiency in the New York State learning
047standards. you've shown proficiency in the portrait of a graduate attributes and that's what's signified by the receiving the diploma. So timeline um we're still waiting on a lot of specifics to be honest with you. Um but we have expectations for us uh laid out for the summer or excuse me the fall of 2027. So right now we're in this installation phase. So we're expecting some uh prioritized learning standards to be released. My hope is that there's some alignment with some of our requirements when it comes to financial literacy, climate education, portrait of a graduate. Those all exist in our current learning standards in one way, shape or form. I think it would be very helpful for us if the tools released from the state had some sort of alignment and we're really advocating. I know
048the other ASIS in the county were advocating with our Boseis uh liaison to push the state to try to help us out with that. Um, and hopefully that will be coming soon. In the fall, again, we need to attest to the fact that we have financial literacy instruction going on in the 68 grade band at 9:12. Um, we plan to be in good shape to do that. And then a little further down the line in 2027, that's the first class that's going to have the decoupled assessment requirements and um full implementation is expected in the fall of 2029. Um, so obviously there are a lot of questions to be answered between now and then. Um, we're doing some initial work. Like I said, this spring we're planning on carving out some time with teachers to
049talk about, at least from a very high level so far, what could an alternate assessment look like for a freshman in the fall of 2020 2027. Um, actually would be taken in the spring of 2028, but what could that look like? Um, and what will we have learned by then? Hopefully quite a bit more. And then um we really need to get an update on the portrait of graduate from the state if our expectation is to start to implement that um really anytime soon. Um because that seems to be a huge shift um not only um with kind of organizing it and rolling it out but like with our instructional practices if it's expected to be part of our core instructional program. So, we're hoping for information on that and uh we have a work
050group graduation measures committee which uh board member Falserano is on has an update for you a little later on. Uh we're current we're representative group. We have administrators, operational staff, financial staff, instructional staff, teachers, uh union representation on that committee. Um and the idea is that that kind of core team will take the directors from the state and then each work with their um appropriate subcommittees to put together a plan for uh for the work from their own unique perspective. So that is pretty much all the information that we have. Um would love to hear your questions. Um you know we're always trying to pass on information to to Boseis. Um, and I'll do my best to answer from what we know so far. >> Before we jump into questions, I'm wondering if it wouldn't
051be helpful if Anaria you want to give your report now that maybe would answer some questions ahead of time if you don't mind or if you're prepared. >> I mean, if is everybody okay with that? Just I think it would make maybe it'll alleviate some of the questions that we have. >> Well, not at all. Um, ASI Zaps did an amazing job explaining um what we've worked on as uh committee members. I think it's worth noting too though that um NICET has put forth those first instructional requirements for us to create that portrait of a graduate that does align nicely with our profile of a graduate here in Greece. And that those first two topics of climate education and um personal and finance education um are really going to be important as we get started
052and as a district we must assure New York State that our curriculum is meeting the standards set forth um by the state. So that assurance is going to be very very important and that is incumbent upon us. Our work as a committee has been to make uh note of where and how our current district curriculum is um already our K12 curriculum is meeting those expectations and already we can see a high degree of alignment. So in a way that's a good check for us to know that the work that we have been doing right along is basically hitting the the the benchmark that New York State is putting out now in the New York Inspire movement. Um, while it's been clearly stated that the region's exams will be available to students, the state is giving
053local control to the districts to offer expanded opportunities to demonstrate their learning. And I I would agree with the statement that um with AI in our midst is, you know, is part of the instructional um landscape that we have performancebased and um assessments um and also authentic assessments to kind of mitigate that. kids will use the AI as a tool, not so much as relying um only on AI to generate, you know, their and to demonstrate their learning. The committee will also begin to brainstorm with input from staff how the shift in assessment might possibly be reflected in classrooms. That's another big move. And as we await additional guidance, our committee will continue to strategize how we will meet these roll out timelines with the idea that, you know, it's hurry up and wait. So,
054we're ready, but we need to have a little more guidance um from that. There was a question from a board member on civics and I know Tracy if you still have that and I I believe that with most of this initiative a lot of the things that our students are going to be asked to do um we will be able to find links from other curriculum for example civics would be addressed by our social studies curriculum very highly. So I don't think we're in in a bad way that way. And so I think um this is a great opportunity for us to have those crosswalk opportunities and that the seal of civic readiness is also available to be added to the diploma. So Mr. Zafitz doc, you did a great job, Dr. Zafitz. I'm sorry
055if that was redundant, >> but thanks. >> Um I enjoyed being on that committee. Thank you. >> Thank you, board member Ferano. All right, rolling into questions. M Farmer >> on page 11. Mike and you might not it might not be but I'm wondering about lab hours and how th those uh credit will those credit requirements change as well in terms of lab hours for science classes or we don't know yet. >> I don't have a concrete answer for you. My guess would be that if it's instruction or hands-on experience in the content area that that would count towards a credit. >> Sure. So you were saying earlier that they could get the uh requirements other places than the classroom. >> Yeah. >> This too you think could work in that way because they were
056always so strict on making sure those lab hours were there. >> So we're kind of >> you know what I'm talking about. So, okay. Yeah, but I do I definitely think that >> lab hours would count towards would continue to count towards the credit. As far as like being like a really strict adherence, I'm not sure if there would be leeway. >> That's my question. >> It would probably be up to us. I think a lot of this and a lot of the answer to probably some of your questions is it's really going to be up to us to determine what we want to include as um these kind of alternate measures for proficiency and it's also going to be up to us to determine and ensure that they adhere to the rigor of the
057standards. So like so rubrics and things of that nature. Um we're going to need to make sure that we're we have rubrics and we're calibrated in on anything that's not that's outside of what we currently do. >> Thank you very much. M like >> um I I hate to sound negative, but I I have some concerns as you probably wouldn't be too surprised about. >> Um >> they they mention academic >> but then there are so many other attributes and they never really >> I'm sorry to interrupt. Can you just move your microphone closer down at the senator having trouble hearing you? >> Sure. Is that better? >> Thank you. >> Um, they never really define the academic and it seems like on page 10 it says the regent's exams are good assess are valid
058assessments but we're not going to use them. Um, and there are so many pathways that don't ever involve the actual knowledge that a student has and the ability to use that. Um, and I'm thinking about the senior portfolios and I've only done that for two years, but the the range was enormous. And I can see the range here. Our top students will thrive. They will go above and beyond. Um but the kids struggling th those low reading the kids who are not reading at level. They're not doing math at level. And so how can they use critical thinking skills without knowledge bases? you know, critical thinking is different in in a science class than it is in a social studies class. Um, so they don't exist in the abstract. They're they're tied to that knowledge.
059And I just worry about the kids that are not, you know, they're kind of below the the median and what happens to them. >> Um, >> yeah, I got a couple thoughts that I could offer. I think I think first it's important to to note that the portrait of a graduate is one of four pillars for this and that the state learning standards aren't this they're still the same learning standards. >> Okay. >> So we're still still students are still going to need to show the same proficiency in the learning standards that they're currently showing. The the portrait attributes are kind of like an add-on. So we need to figure out that whole piece. But the standards aren't going away. At least we haven't heard that. >> Those might be really good to share with
060us. I that I might feel a lot better about it. You know, with those standards, >> the learning standards. Yes. >> Sure. Okay. >> Yes. Um and the other thing I think that we talk about a global citizen, I'd love to have them be a United States citizen and know what our Constitution is about and the rights that they have because they live here. So, um, I don't want to lose that with this global mindset. So, >> yeah, I'll just kind of echo what I said earlier, like those expectations, they're within, they're already embedded in the content of our courses in, you know, seventh and eighth grade social studies, US history, civics, and our participation in government, um, CIA, excuse me. So, um, I don't expect those learning standards to change. Good. >> So, well,
061you'll be the first to know to know if they do. >> Thank you. Mr. Mono, >> Dr. Zaffitz, you answered a bunch of my questions with the comment. We don't have enough information on it yet. I I I really appreciate that you're bringing this to us now and hope you said you're going to be bringing more to us. >> That that is very welcome and uh I look forward to hearing that as as more unfolds. Um, but I do have a question that maybe you can address now and it kind of relates to Mary's question to to the extent that we're using other non-traditional means of assessing students we have if they're in an internship or something. how do we control that kind of environment? Or do we so that we're confident that students who
062go into that kind of a learning environment are actually getting the breadth and depth of knowledge that would reflect if you know they were to take a standardized test or something like and apparently they won't be taking a standardized test. So, how do we really know that they're emerging with the needed proficiency? >> Yeah. Um, well, again, I think it's important to keep coming back to the fact that they can still take standardized tests. The regents will be there as an option for for students to take. Um, so they will be there as an option. As far as other options and experiences, alternate assessments, we they there's the same learning standards that we need to ensure that students are showing proficiency in. So, if there's an internship or a hands-on or work-based experience, for example,
063we need to through our teams, through our instructional teams, um kind of vet that assign assessment to ensure that whatever product that the student is producing, whatever process they're going through, and the way that that's documented is meeting the same standards as the regent exam or the the existing assessment. in in that kind of a situation, do we work with if it's a company for example um to make sure that they're providing that that kind of knowledge or do we backfill? I'm just >> Yeah. Yeah. We would we would work with partners to ensure that the rigor is there. >> Thank you. >> Any questions? Bailey, >> I just had a question about kind of what you were saying that um the music students or people have more of a loaded schedule don't always get
064to take like strategies for success. Is that kind of going to be a part of this planning committee is making that accessible to all students. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's a big that's kind of like probably our most >> near-term immediate challenge because especially because we have the financial literacy component next year. So, um, we need to make sure that if next year's seniors haven't gotten that as part of their 912 experience yet, we need to make sure we provide it for them somehow. So, I don't know what that's going to look like yet, whether it's like an independent study or or something of that nature, but um, just kind of back to what we were just saying, we need to make sure whatever we come out with is um, has the same rigor of
065the standards and that every student has access to it. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> Anybody else? Mr. Butler? Bailey inspired me with a comment. So, my 26-year-old son, who uh was in a lot of different ensembles and stuff in his Greece education experience, said to me the other night, he's now thinking about buying a house. And he is said to me, "Boy, I should have taken a I wish I had been required to take a class like this when I was in high school." My I my guess is that because he was in band and chorus and all those things, he didn't uh didn't end up taking it. So I think not only will it help meet the standard that we're required to meet it, it'll I think have some positive impact on on more
066students. So >> yeah, that's certainly the intent. >> Mr. Bonagoro, >> quick one. Are the uh are the classes like the financial u literacy and whatever the climate education turns out to be, are those going to be required classes or or um electives? Uh so it's kind of to broaden that a little bit. We need to ensure that we are offering all of our students in 68 and in 912 instruction in financial literacy and eventually climate education. So it can look a number of different ways. It could be a standalone class. It can also be like peacemeal throughout the standards of like maybe you hit these components of credit and risk management in ninth grade in whatever class and then you don't get to mortgages and interest until 11th. But we just need to figure
067out how we get there uh and ensure that we have everything addressed. So ultimately they'll be embedded in required classes >> or it could be a standalone class like I don't I don't want to say definitely one way or another but we just have we have different ways to get there. Our job is to just ensure that we get there. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> I have a bunch. I usually don't have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions and a lot of comments. Um so we'll start on page 10. Make it easy and I'll try to go in order. My first thing before you get to page 10 is the standards are subjective though in reality. So everybody's interpretation of the standards across Greece, across the county, across the state
068can be a little bit different. Correct. >> Correct. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. So, that was my one comment, but getting the page 10, I don't know if you want to flip there, Mike, or if you're good. >> Yep. I'm here. I got it. >> Okay. Um is there with the decoupling of the regions and you mentioned ESSA um is there a percentage of students that are going to be required to take I mean nobody's going to be required to take a regent exams but as is the standard how if we don't have enough students taking a regent exam what's that going to look like? >> I have no answer for that. I mean there's gonna be a lot of questions. I mean you might not have an answer to but I think as
069this moves forward there's a lot of things that we really got to look at or >> I mean I think this was I'll leave that. So the credit requirements skipping to page 11. Um credit credit requirements will not be limited to seat time hours but all of our state aid is based on students being in attendance. We've been focused on attendance. We've been pushing attendance for 18 years I've been on the board of education, but now attendance really might not matter as much anymore. It seems like we're trying to modify and help our students that are chronically absent achieve the ability to graduate, but yet is that going to affect our aid because Sean and Jordan weren't in school every day, but yet we're going to give them seat time and hours aren't really required
070if I do the work at home or do it on my own schedule or don't do that work. There's no Could there be a reduction in aid based on that based on numbers? I don't have a concrete answer for you. I I can say that at least at least what we've heard through um the information from the state is that the experiences like that the time that you're in class would be replaced with the time at a supervised community location. So whether it's a whatever an internship or somewhere in the community as far as the specifics about how that impacts in person attendance or whether it's like one for one hour to hour I don't have that for you. Um >> but that's what's been presented so far. >> I mean page 12 I mean
071the whole climate education thing is very I guess disconcerting to a certain degree because obviously climate is very political. It's very divisive across depending on your position on you know whether it's all electric fossil fuels whatever that may look like. So I have some concerns. Are we pushing with climate education a narrative to our students based on whoever's running the show in Albany whether it's you know somebody that's proclimate or pro fossil fuel whatever that looks like. I mean, I do have a little bit of concern that like is climate education going to change every 3 years or four years depending on who's sitting in the governor's mansion. >> Yeah, I think that's a real valid concern. Okay. >> Um and that was the first thing that I thought of too when I saw the
072word climate. I was like great, here we, you know, >> we got to do it responsibly, right? So I think our job is to when we talk about what kind of skills we want to build in our students in our take the New York State portrait of a graduate out of it. Think about ours when it comes to critical thinking, analysis, things like that. regardless of um you know who's regardless of who's putting forward we should we need to give our students a broad perspective and teach them to think about the issues and research the issues on their own and come to a conclusion >> and I know skipping to page 13 now um I have I mean reservations I mean everything in education has become about numbers what students score in a fourth grade
073ELA, what they score in eighth grade. It's all about numbers. Everybody, every district across the state is compared by numbers. Graduation rates, you know, percent passing regions exams, everybody looks at that. That's all the information the community gets in the problem I have with how are we going to determine mastery? And in one school district, I mean, you know, I'll use an east side school district that has like a 99% graduation rate. You know, their graduation rates probably be 99 or 100. I have concerns that some school districts are going to see a big jump in graduation rates because of mastery and who defines mastery and what's mastery look like in the Greece Central School District versus the Betavia School District verse RCSD. It could be all over the place. And I mean that's I
074mean I think it's just become a very >> and I know it's not you this is a state thing. Yeah. But to me, it's a very slippery slope we're engaging on that the New York State High School diploma isn't going to have the value that it had and has now. And it's going to be, you know, basically a watered down version because we're trying to increase graduation rates through a false narrative is ultimately what I think it's going to look like. And that's my reservation with a lot of this and reading and it really like I read through it three times because I'm like there's a lot that concerns me. I mean I won't be here but for this community and for this board who's going to be here and you guys are all going
075to be here. I think there's a lot of things that are a little bit scary looking at how this is going to play out and what it's going to lead to from a school district standpoint and public education as a whole in this state. Um, moving on to page 15. I mean, I think Anamarie, you might have hit on this and maybe you can answer it a little bit because I I I'm concerned about like with AI, is it going to be more are we looking at like more testing in the classroom, more like counting? Like right now, we don't really count participation. Participation's kind of a fuzzy thing. In some classes it's count in some classes it's not you know but is that going to become part of the to a grad measure is
076going to be because of the concerns with the AI that you're really not going to be able to do anything. I mean homework's going to be a thing of the past because of AI. So everything is like what skills you have whether it's a proficiency a hands-on skill or whether it's a written skill that you're going to have to demonstrate in some type of an assessment. Do you see it leading to more like in-person type assessments or like colleges do where you're on a computer and like they're watching your eyes and you have a time limit and all that you see where this is I mean do you see think that is this where this is going to go? >> I do to a degree. I think the second part with like watching the computer,
077hopefully we don't get near that, but I do think we got to really take a look at um how we assess and what we assess and then also just like the learning experiences that we're expecting and giving students to prevent against like you said kind of just going home and punching your homework into a a system and having to give you your your essay, right? So, >> how can we use it? how can we teach students to use it to augment or enhance or like deepen your product rather than just replace it. So yeah, I do see instruction changing. >> And then my final question, thank you for taking the time and I appreciate your answers. um on page 17 where you talk about the seals and endorsements. Is there like a state list of
078what seals and endorsements are going to be or is it going to be determined like in our case and I'll use I don't even know if it' be a seal or an endorsement what like RTE for example. Yeah, like we have RT, nobody else does. We could have an RTE assessment or a seal or endorsement on a diploma and some other school district may have a program we don't have. They would have a seal or an endorsement. Is that correct? That's the way that I've understood it so far. Yeah, this I feel like this is this one I don't >> there hasn't been a ton on this one yet, but the way that it's been presented is like they're basically saying this is our diploma and you can add seals and endorsements based on your
079district context, whatever you do. So if RT is what you want to put add one for, you can add one. So I mean I I guess my question is is there going to and as a followup I don't know if the state's done this or not but is there a from like the regions perspective you you know there was a regent diploma regions with distinction etc. Is there is there going to be like a sealer endorsement that I I took all regions you know our good kids you know they're going to you know still take your regent exams and get those or take APs. Is that going to be a seal or endorsement or is that basically going to go away or is that going to be a district option to your understanding? >> I
080wouldn't anticipate that coming from the state. >> Okay. >> I would I would I mean you can I can speculate that if we wanted to do something like that and say that this is our it's a regent's endorsement. Okay. >> We could do that locally local decision. >> Um but as far as the state goes, I don't anticipate anything besides their one diploma based on what we've learned so far. A and I guess just my final comment or question on this and maybe this would reflect more on to one of our former principles at the secondary level or Dr. Baker with her background. Every district's diploma is going to be a little bit different then. So how are you really going to have a handle? I mean I guess from like the you know the
081workforce, college, whatever it's going to be. How are you going to be able to say, "Well, Sean got a diploma from Greece Olympia or Greece Central and Jeremy got one from Weston Kuwait." The diplomas are going to look different. They're still going to say New York State diploma, but he's going to he may have a hundred different seals and endorsements. I may have a hundred different seals and endorsements. How is how are colleges, etc. going to say, "Well, Jeremy's clearly a better student than Shawn was, so we're gonna accept Jeremy into an Ivy League school." and you know Sean's going to be going to a different institution. >> Yeah, I think I think so. I think the seals and endorsements that's a a huge problem. I think when it comes to the diploma, the spirit
082of that is to to mitigate against having a ton of diversity amongst the districts. So like the basic diploma, the New York State diploma, but then when you start adding seals, that's where I can I can totally see your point. That will be something we have to contend with. Yeah. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. Nice job. Can I one sec? Just one quick comment. >> Oh, sure. >> I just um I don't know if I have a point here. Um but it's on my mind. We when you look at what's going to take place over the next three years, when we get into 2027, two years, >> um it's reshaping our secondary schools. So, you know, uh Dr. Zafic talked a lot about the collaboration just to determine pathways and
083assessments. Um that's just one piece of this puzzle here because we're talking about a different way of doing business in our high schools. Um that has been in place forever. Um, and I'm just saying that because um, it's going to take incredible collaboration, patience, um, to work through a process that's not only deciding on assessments, but just what our teachers are expected to do in their classrooms. When you think about a typical class, you know, you're sitting, you're a teacher, you have 15, 20 kids in front of you. You know, they're all taking that same assessment. Now, you could be sitting in a class where you have six taking a regions, one taking a pathway here, one taking a pathway here. Um, so I think just think it's really um important for us to to
084stay together because again this isn't Greece choosing to do this, right? This is New York State that has chose to do it and we could either, you know, look at it. It's just the lens you look at this, you know, if we have the opportunity to create some stuff that could really could open doors for some students, but also ensuring that they're going to walk out of our doors with understanding the standards that are expected there. So, it's it's scary a little bit because we have it's great opportunity, but it's all on our shoulders to determine that. Um, so so that it's just a lot of work and time and we asked uh Dr. efforts to do this today knowing we don't have a lot of answers. So, we could have waited, but we felt
085that it was important for you just to get this upfront and hear it because it's not going to go away and we're going to be continually bringing this back, but we wanted to be transparent, let you all see as much as we know, ask questions, be okay saying, "I don't know." But also wanting you to know that there's some work ahead of us um coming forward. But I I think the work that we're doing, you mentioned, you heard about PLC's. At the end of the day, the PLC's are about standards, and at the heart of all of this is standards. So, it makes me feel good that we're at least already in that process, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of what's coming. But I think we're doing a lot of good work
086to set us up, but there's a lot more work to come. So, I appreciate you coming up, Mike, and doing that. >> Thank you, Superintendent Smalling. All right, moving on to 4.02 02 special education annual report. Superintendent Smalling. >> All right. I will ask executive director Stacy Besi and director Melanie Stevenson come up. >> Okay. Good evening everybody. Melanie and I are both grateful for the opportunity to share an overview of special ed programming in our district with you this evening. Each of you recently received a comprehensive report with an extensive amount of data included. So, if there happen to be any questions regarding any of the information included within that report, but not reported tonight in our presentation, feel free to reach out to either one of us and we're happy to review that
087with you. Um, so I'm going to go ahead and get started. The first few slides you're going to see um really just serve to outline the organizational structure within the PPS department. Um, each year all of my team members attend uh this meeting and with each year, thanks to the support of the board and the superintendent, my team continues to expand and grow um and really aligned with the needs of of our students in our district. So, um we're appreciative that that our team is able to do that. Um at this point, we have the two of us. There are 10 assistant directors, a preschool uh chairperson, many TOSAs, seven clerical support, and four of our assistant directors are now housed in secondary schools. So, we've made a lot of growth as far as expanding
088our team um and really focusing in as few buildings as possible to be able to support. Okay. So, the first slide that I'm going to uh share some information on really outlines our indist programming and it really starts from the top left uh least restrictive moving to the most restrictive residential placement. Um we have a few things that set us apart from other districts. Pime or really primarily the complexity of our special programming. So, other districts do not have the specialized programming that we have. Other districts don't have the number of special education classrooms that we have. We operate about 84 classrooms right now that are self-contained classrooms, K12. Um, other districts also don't have um integrated co-e broadly broadly across uh all of our buildings. So, there's a couple of things that kind of
089uh set us apart from from the rest. One of the nice things about our continuum is it provides for the opportunity for the vast majority of our students who require support and services to stay within their home school without having to change to a different school or uh leave the district. Okay, so this next slide really outlines all of the special education service providers supporting our programs. I've said this in previous years, but it really can't be overstated enough. um that Greece is unlike any other area district and that all of these um providers are employees of the district with the exception of one who's a a Boseis employee. Um and this chart represents over 400 certified staff in our district. Um and that doesn't include our over a 100red um TAs, monitors and support
090staff that are also uh supporting us. If you kind of just move through the chart, we have 186 teachers, 38 speech paths. So you can see we really add up um as we look at all the staff collectively supporting our kids. Okay. So this chart, we kind of call this the anchor chart in our team to kind of just really look at the enrollment distribution across our district. So we have an idea of who we're responsible for providing support for. So I'm just going to walk you through this chart to orient you a little bit. Um our in district students, there's 159 in district students. They're in attendance on our uh 18 school campuses. There are 99 out of district place students placed by the Greece central school district cse. So they're recommended um by
091our district for an out of district placement and alternative placement to better meet their needs. We pay for that and we uh support and provide oversight for that programming. Emily Lathers is responsible for that case load. The 83 students we have underneath are parentally placed within district boundaries. Those are district residents. So those come in three different categories. Those 83 students are either resident students who attend a private school in Greece. So they might go to Greece Christian or to St. Lawrence. They're homeschool students. It's considered a private school in New York State. So they're also counted in there. And then in addition are all of our charter school students. So although we support students in private schools within district, we have to support our charter school students wherever they go. So, Jennifer Dixon, a
092new member to our uh department, um she supports all of those schools and they're quickly growing. Um and it just really extends a case load because one student might be in a new charter school and then we have to provide for services and make sure we're providing those those supports for our kids. Um and lastly, those 25 kids at the bottom, those are non district residents. We have a few at um St. Lawrence and Greece Christian, but they're primarily um from uh different districts in attendance in Dracora, which is our Jewish school. Um Stone Room, I think, >> Main Lane. You can tell I'm not a Greek girl. Sorry. Okay. So, percentage of students with disabilities. This really, this slide is going to highlight what we know to be true, right? That that numbers are
093increasing and every year our percentage increases. So in your report I highlighted that we're at the point now with that in that entire number the 1700 plus students we're at 17.5%. If we look at the percentage of classified students with all change that's the second time when we look at the percentage of of um students who we provide oversight for within our schools is that 1500 um and n number which is about 15%. So it's a little bit lower within our schools who we classify. Okay. So this uh chart really kind of just shares the distribution of classifications. So and it's consistent in previous years. So there's 13 classifications that part 200 allows us to designate for each student who's eligible for special ed services. And year after year, the four most prevalent are what
094you see up there, autism, learning disability, other health impairment, or speech and language impairment. Um, you know, autism I think is pretty obvious. We all know that numbers in our community are are significantly increasing. Um, under other health impairment, um, we have ADHD and anxiety that fit under that, which is also prevalent amongst a lot of our students that fit into that category. Um, and of course, learning disability, that's what a lot of our students are designated as as we um, implement some of our problem solving structures to provide tiered supports um, for them. Okay. And this is enrollment in district programs by service area. So you will see what I commented on before which is that integrated co-eing is our primary service model. 691 students are enrolled uh K12 in that service. Something to
095note although every service the state ad department says even if you don't have a 12 to1 to 3:1 in Greece you have to find one and that's where other districts access um contracted agencies private schools. What's really important to to note is that integrated co-eing is not required by any school district to access. So, it's a choice that Greece makes. Um, we could have a student transfer from our district to say Churchville Chryife and they're not required to find that comparable service of ICT because it's really a a great above and beyond service um that is not required. It's the only on the continuum that's not required and most districts do not have um the number of sections we do. Um, and just for a reference about that service, that service um is in 14
096of 18 campuses. Um the campuses it's not at are really due to space constraints. Um it's two teachers, a gened teacher, a special ed teacher, and a general ed class with a maximum of 12 students. So that's where we find most of our students enrolled in the district. And so this is a distribution. So obviously we always try to equitably distribute across all of our buildings. Um and you'll see that there are four that are lower than than the others. Um and those are all due to to space constraints in those buildings specifically. Um so Brookside um Patty Hillbrook. Is that it? Yeah. Those are the ones that um really don't have a significant amount of specialized programming. They don't have room. They're often in overflow for even their resident students for gened. So, those
097are um some of the considerations that we made when we made recommendations as a department for the level up um capital improvement projects and talking about how we could better support our programs and provide spaces across all of our buildings so that it's not just um inequitably distributed across some schools. Secondary is much more equitably distributed. You'll see um and looking that roughly everybody's sort of in in the same area. uh to note Athena Middle School is it's increased and it's increased because we have a significant number of students that are entering from Craig Hill from um uh Brookside and Longidge who are entering and they haven't had that um autism programming at Athena Middle School. So it's really new and we're building that. Um so that's where you'll see that number. Um, the Arcadia
098Middle School campus has a specialized program of our behavior programming and the rest of the campuses have what most of our campuses offer, which is ICT and 1211s. And before I turn it over to Melanie, this is just a a update on where we are with the um New York State Performance Plan. Spoiler alert, that we're cited again this year. So, we are working on it. We're working on it and we've made a lot of progress. So, for indicator 4, um, we continue to be cited. That's a citation for disproportionate representation of students with disabilities and black students with disabilities suspended um from school. And we continue to be cited. We're at risk for Hispanic students. Um and we've made a lot of progress, I think, as far as some alternatives that we're trying to
099create some supports and being proactive in some of our approaches and interventions, sending expert staff to team meetings to problem solve. We're trying to really get ahead of it so that we can be proactive versus responsive. Um and we're not cited for indicator 12. That's just what Greece uh is required to report on this year. So indicator 12 um requires us to report on the seamless timely transition of kids from early intervention to preschool. So currently so early intervention is birth to two years old and then Suwellen supports preschool 3 to five and then we have five up for for school age. So having that transition from birth to two to CPSC is really supposed to be very timely prior to a student's third birthday and it's really about making sure that we have supports
100in place. Um so last year there were 61 students that transition from EI to CPSE. This year that I think there's already 41 maybe so far this year. Um so a lot of students and that really is not surprising either knowing that our preschool numbers continue to to go up um year after year. I'm going to turn over to Melanie to continue. All right, I'm going to be reviewing some of our uh PPS department priority areas. Um, as always, we place a high priority on collaboration, communication, clarity, um, and building staff capacity around our special education procedures. We do have our handbook uh linked in to this presentation, which really has all of our um, information on policies, procedures, um, so that we can be as consistent as possible and as clear as possible with
101our staff. It's really grown um tremendously over the course of many years um and is certainly a point of pride for our department. Um our focus on MTSS and RTI processes are really at the forefront of our work um because we rely on those pre-referral interventions being in place prior to determining if a student is eligible under CSSE. We're focusing on building level problem solving process at five um principal and PPS collaborative meetings this year, which I'll talk about a little bit more. Um, and we as far as support staff recruitment, we are constantly uh recruiting, interviewing, and hiring for all of our support staff vacancies. And we also continue to utilize an outside staffing agency to support with those positions as well. Um, we're really excited to be working with the human resources department
102to develop an ongoing onboarding process for our support staff um that are hired over the course of the school year so that they um feel ready, able to perform their duties, and that they have continued support over the course of time. Other priority areas for our department include the monitoring of our classification rate and program enrollment. Um, it keeps growing. Um linked again on this uh page is a chart that shows where all of our different programs are located across the district. And again, that has grown uh every year. Um Stacy shared some of the reasons for our classification rate. And I'll add one that we really want to be focusing on is our declassification rate. We're not declassifying students at a high rate. Um currently we've had five declassifications so far this year. It's
103certainly not in line with the amount of students that are being classified. Um, with regard to social emotional learning, we continue to be really proud of the resources that we're able to provide to buildings and to students um, with regard to supporting uh, their social emotional learning as as well as behaviors. Um, those include um, FBA and BIP facilitation, district behavior consultation, and a variety of mental health staff that are part of our programming. and we really appreciate the support um of from you all in terms of making sure um that we do have that uh mental health staff um available to support our programs. Uh on this slide um this is the best slide out of the whole presentation. Here are some of our students in action having fun um from extended school year
104uh this past summer. Um, linked on this slide is a document that we've shared before um that compares our special ed continuum here in Greece with the New York State uh education department continuum. Our special class ratios here in Greece and student profiles are very similar um to the NICE continuum and we've used this document um with our uh GTA special education committee in previous years to help build their capacity in understanding our continuum of service in Greece. and we will be revisiting uh it this year in consideration of staff turnover um as well as the changing needs of our students. That's definitely a constant conversation. Uh literacy development continues to be a huge focus for the district and our department. Um special class teachers who are implementing art core will be provided some professional
105learning this year, specifically focusing on the differentiation and scaffolding um that's needed when you're teaching multiple grade levels. It certainly presents um some challenges as you can imagine. Uh additionally, our PPS administrators participated in a session with an art coach um to give us a highle overview of art core so to build our capacity to support our teachers better um with their implementation. We continue to remain committed to training our special class consultant teacher and resource teachers in Orton Gillingham which is that direct explicit multi-ensory um diagnostic and prescriptive way to teach literacy when reading writing and spelling does not come easily. It's a an approach that is um typically prescribed for students with dyslexia. um our special education TOSAs and Stacy have been leading um the implementation and and review of the New York
106State alternate assessment ELA curriculum which includes the implementation of Retopia uh to ensure that our students have access to highquality literacy instruction that's based on the science of reading and aligned to concepts from the book comprehensive literacy for all because we really believe that all students should have access to that high quality literacy instruction including our students that take the New York State alternate assessment. Um, as you know from learning about ARC, elements of explicit direct instruction are embedded not only into ARC, but also into Orton Gillingham, into Readtopia, and into the speciallydesed instruction that is part of our special education programming across the district. So lesson design components like identifying a learning target um activating prior knowledge as well as guided and independent practice are incorporated along with lesson delivery strategies like checks for
107understanding modeling and demonstration which are all components of effective instruction which I know you've been um doing a lot of um learning and studying about. I touched on CSSE processes and procedures previously and it's really obviously a never- ending focus for our department to ensure that we're staying compliant with the New York State uh regulations. As you know, uh goal three of the district comprehensive improvement plan centers on behavior management. Um we have a variety of lead measures that we're focusing on this year with our department. Uh, one of those um is targeting building level problem solving processes and again we're devoting five of our principal and PPS collaborative meetings um to providing professional learning to building teams in order to strengthen their processes. So we've expanded not just um for principles to attend. They've
108also been bringing folks that are part of their multid-disciplinary team um that engages in their building level problem solving process. There are also additional requirements for attendance and problem solving meetings as well. Um and the interval for reviewing students who have been rem uh removed. Um we're making sure that we are talking about um students when they get to four removals so that we can obviously try to be preventative and proactive and um you know so that the removals don't continue. Um therapeutic therapeutic crisis intervention is also one of our lead measures. This year we are using all four district-wide department meetings to focus on the four questions of TCI and those are uh what am I feeling now? What does the student feel, need, expect, or want? How is the environment affecting the situation?
109And how do I best respond? So we're taking um each of those meetings to focus on one of those questions. Um, we also continue to focus on accurate documentation around student removals as well as holding the required set of meetings during the mandated time frame which we've talked to you about with regard to the compliance assurance plan. One goal that we don't want to lose sight of is um increasing the integration opportunities for students in our K5 special classes. Um, and those conversations continue to happen at building level problem solving meetings so that individual plans for integration can be developed for students. Um so as you can see a lot of important work happening um across the district and in particular in uh the PPS department this year and I think that's it. So time
110for questions Mr. Maloney >> on page 10 um soon as I find it. Thank you. >> Presentation or the the slideshow. Mr. on page 10. Um the 12 one to one >> and the 12 3:1 seemed to go down. >> Mhm. >> And 2526. Is there a reason why that number went went down? >> Yeah, I saw that too. There really isn't. I think it's just honestly an anomaly. We frequently are moving kids from uh integrated placements to self-contained classes as appropriate. Um, it's tough because we have kids. I think we had uh the numbers I wrote down were like 328 kids, 311 kids transferring in, 153 out for a net ad of 158, right? And then we have parent referrals, student referrals, school referrals. So, it really just is dependent on student need and
111how it kind of distributes. The numbers are there. They just are sort of in different programs. 12:1 to 3:1 is a very specialized program. You'll see that we don't have um very many students enrolled in that um because we don't have a lot of those classrooms. Um did that answer your question? >> Yes, I did. Thank you. >> Uh Mr. Butler. Um so looking at page eight in the presentation deck uh the just the percentage uh you know the going from 14 and a.5% up a full percentage point two two years later >> when you play that trend line out five years from now >> um I don't I'm not sure what reason there is to believe it's not going to continue in the same direction that it's going. I'm curious what we are doing
112or need to be doing in order to be prepared for that today. >> Yeah. So, one of the things that we you're right. So, what we're hoping to do is really building the skill set of our problem solving teams and PLC's so that they can rely on evidence-based interventions, collecting data, having a routine of sort of reviewing kids, and having that happen throughout buildings prior to special lab. Um, I don't probably see that the classification rate is going to continue to to decrease that much. Um, and the reason for that, especially in Greece, and maybe not in any other district, but in Greece, is we're here to help. We have a lot of support to help. We have a lot of internal supports to help. Um, so oftentimes we just try to roll up our
113sleeves and figure it out as a team. Um, what we need moving forward is space. So, we are going to have um a bubble coming in um that I'm going to share with the superintendent's cabinet um after the holiday break. We're going to review some numbers. Um, and I'm concerned for for the first time. I'm really concerned that we don't have room for our kids. Um, and it's not even just room for our kids. It's that no one else has room for our kids either. Um, so that's really what I'm most worried about. The state will bark at us about, you know, classification rate of 12 and a half%. Um, we don't really care about that. We just want a place for our kids um, and to be able to to make progress. So, >>
114I don't see it going down. So space is a big is what you're saying we need to be thinking more about >> we have specialized staff. We have the manpower um to be able to absorb a lot of students. We just don't have the manpower to add new sections and classes and we don't have the the room to be able to do it. Um we get staff unlike other districts who go without and have vacancies. We make it work here and that's a testament to the cabinet and human resources and everyone in this district. So if we have a space to go to, we can fill it and we're confident and that hasn't been uh the messaging from Boseies. They haven't been confident or provided us with staff. We're more concerned about space. Um and
115frankly taking on all of the space that Boseie should be providing us a little support with too um to lighten the load a little bit. >> Thank you. It's like >> I I was kind of horrified that kids before their third birthday were already identified as you know needing special services. Do they get placements in our preschool e even if we don't have enough room to take all the applications? >> Yeah. So that we're the placements that have a weight list are not special ed placements. They're locations for some of our special ed kids to be in attendance at. So the real issue is and what Swellin manages and you know 300 plus avails and meetings a year and trying to u make recommendations for kids is that the preschool special education programs are also
116lacking similar to the school age ones. So Suwellyn works diligently and you'll hear that from parents as she's getting blood from a stone trying to figure it out. So if I don't have a special class integrated class, I'm going to try and get into the preschool program with one of our speech providers and have someone come and provide support and get some special ed teacher trying to piece it together. Um but that is not going to provide for the early intervention we need for our kids to make the growth that they need to make for them to be successful. So we have kids age three to five who swellen has recommended for services and have received none of them for the whole time they've been on the wait list. So we've had to really kind
117of back it up and say our systems can't fail our kids when the outside systems did. So typically kids would come in and we would have a series of interventions and supports and now we say if you're a preschool student in Greece and you didn't get services then you're coming into Greece and we're figuring out how to get those services to you. You were owed them beforehand. Um and that impacts staffing too. Good for you. Um, does this the kids who do get the services, >> um, are they able to kind of catch up with their classmates by kindergarten and come in sort of without the problems that they had two years before? >> Yeah. I mean, ideally, so it's really just a we have a a really broad range of students who are classified.
118So, to be classified as a preschooler with a disability, it's very easy. It's very straightforward. So, school age, there's a lot of subjectivity, data review, looking at a lot of sort of um different components. With a preschool evaluation, you have to either score a 25% delay in two areas or a 33% delay in one area that's been evaluated and you automatically get services. So, it's a really more cleancut, concrete sort of system. It's just failing us and that our kids don't have the services that they need. So now they're coming into school age um and every kid is exited. So we're not just declassing kids. Every kid when they turn five is exited so they can enter K >> and our programs can't support the shortcomings from before. So then we're sort of starting in
119this cycle again. And I forgot to mention in the presentation, but the exiting 12th graders and the entering K are not even close. And that's what's causing the squeeze for us, right? Is the number of kids coming in are not equaling the number of kids exiting. and they're coming more significant. So, you know, our special class are, you know, our our kids are coming special class 50 60 entering in in the fall who require a special class. Um, at least we have them. Um, but we've used them. So, if you look at our profile, our our distribution of classification, you'll see Long Ridge is like our 611s, you see, are almost filled because we take every spot up. Um, we would probably have more kids if we had more room and more spots, but but
120we are at that point where it's just it's it's too tough for us to find locations. >> Well, bless you all. >> We're trying. >> Miss Seaman, >> hi. I just wanted to tell you that um two of my schools are elementary that I'm the liazison and um there is not a nook that is not there's no space. every inch of these schools is taken up by by some academic piece to help these students. So, >> I recognize and see it. So, thank you for sharing and bringing it forward. >> And we know our kids take up a lot of room, right? We come with a lot of staff. We come up with a lot of equipment, too. So, we appreciate uh the room and principles have been very kind in hosting us. They have
121that dreaded call every year where I'm they're probably thinking, "Oh my god, Stacy's calling. what programs are here. I know they're thinking that actually. Um, but they are all really really supportive and welcoming to our kids and families. So, and we keep sending them. Um, so we do appreciate that. We know it it adds to the um stress level of a building sometimes. >> Mr. Farmer, >> thank you. My question is kind of connected to Mary's. How are we finding kids? Are are doctors at the early level? Are doctors referring kids to this district? How do we find kids who need that early intervention? How do how are parents connecting with us those kinds of things? >> We do have some information that we share with community members and send out. We have a child
122find responsibility to be able to say to families if you have a concern about your child. So there's literature on our website and that we distribute um to let them know what their rights are as far as referring students. Um really what it comes from their pediatrician, right? family and friends. Um maybe a preschool teacher or a babysitter. It really comes from people who are worried and noticing something doesn't seem right. Um and oftentimes the evaluations don't end up >> don't end up telling me it's alien don't end up um with any services specifically. Um, but it is we're trying to figure out how to get services as quickly as possible for our kids and it it's just a squeeze that we don't have enough and we know there's more kids out there. We often
123are getting more kids in K that Suellen has never heard of ever. They've received zero early intervention and they're nonverbal, not potty trained, have autism, cognitively very low and they have had no exposure at all. So they come in as a general ed student and that's really hard for our system to to maintain. Mhm. >> So I guess I'm wondering is there a system that could be put in place that might help us a little bit more because we know kids who are diagnosed with autism, you know, as infants, six months old, you know, floor play, all those kinds of things that come into play that can help a child develop in a in a uh I don't want to say better, but in a way that could kind of thwart or enhance some of
124the strategies we use for autism And I see that we have increased the number of kids with autism. And I'm wondering if it's being identified at an earlier age. >> Uh I don't know if it's being it might be being identified at an earlier age. It's just really prevalent to to be honest with you. There's a lot of kids who have a diagnosis of autism. As a school district, we don't require a medical diagnosis. If all of the characteristics are there and the student requires that type of programming, we'll make that classification as well. So there are options and support, but it really does boil down to space. So the state department would say, "That's your problem, Stacy. You're going to have to figure out how to be a preschool evaluation site." And they want
125us to do that, and they're pushing us to do that. >> I'm digging my heels in because we can't support our school age students. We have a vacancy. We don't have enough school psychologists to service our own kids. We have a speech vacancy. So when the rubber meets the road, it is on us to make sure our preschool kids get services. But we're unable to overcompensate for shortages from agencies. So we just I'm not hiding it. I say very openly. Swellen right knows that I say have them call me because I'm not going to do it until we have the staff to do it. So >> Oh, so there's no staff for the early interventions. >> Well, they're Monroe County providers. So all of what Su Allen works with is Monroe County agencies and providers.
126They're the approved service providers. So, the state would say the county run falls short, it's on the school district, and it is. I know that. Um, but I'm not the only one in in the county who's digging her heels in because we don't have the staff to support our school age kids. >> Mr. Boro, >> thank you. On page nine, um, we have four uh specific well four disabilities listed being prominent. autism, learning disability, other health impairment, and speech or language impairment. I was asking for some clarification on these. So, the other health impairment at 30 32% um this year, that's a really big number. Is there it would be are there can you give me some examples of what other would be and like how large are they within that 32% because that's the
127biggest number there. >> Yeah, it's our it's our biggest one even beyond um autism or learning disability. So what factors into that? So, it's it's a loose sort of catchall if I'm being real because medical conditions are sort of globally captured in that classification area, but specifically ADHD, anxiety, depression, they all fit into that and ADD would all fit into that and that's really prevalent diagnosis across our schools. Um, so that's often a category that kids fit into in our district. And regarding learning disability and intellectual disability, can you clarify the distinction between those? For me, I'm >> sure absolutely. So, a learning disability is really um it's a student most of the time who is of average intelligence who has a a different learning pathways and they're sort of learning differences. So what it
128really looks at is specific um disabilities in certain areas, reading, writing, um listening or uh math. There's al different categories of of learning disability. Those are really really specific not to a student's um abilities only, but to how they respond to academic instruction. So, the regulations say in order for a student to be designated as having a learning disability, even if they're not performing what their ability is and there's something going on and we don't know what it is, we still have to attempt for students in grades K4 a response to intervention model and we're unable to classify in that category unless we've gone through those evidence-based interventions. Learning disabled kids are typically within general ed settings working toward working towards a local or regions diploma. Our intellectually disabled kids are not. they're working towards
129an alternate assessment. They're not taking those formal um evaluations. They're often considered ungraded um as their indicators are alternate and not necessarily per grade level. So those kids are in our 12 to 1 to 3:1 class which is medically fragile and complex needs are intellectually disabled kids. They might also be in our 1211 NISA which is a self-contained class for students all alternate assessment or they might be in our 611 classrooms um where we we have students who are um significantly functioning uh below. So I I ask that um because when we have a lot of uh anecdotal and rigorous experimental evidence that looks at things like the science of learning, explicit instruction, and you referenced that on page 17. Uh those are things that are really successful in helping to reduce classifications and um
130and to um increase declassifications and it sounds like those kinds of things and and you've mentioned them with regard to explicit instruction embedded in Norton Gillingham at our core. Uh I'm wondering if those kinds of things would be expected. We have seen that that that progress in other districts that have applied those those teaching models um specifically with regard to uh literacy and math. So I'm wondering if it kind of goes back to Mr. Butler's question as well. you know these numbers are rising but do we have expectations or are we applying these in ways that we hope will or expect to bring down uh the levels of classifications. >> Yeah. So again the classification rate is really hard with such a a district with a lot of transient in and out that that part
131is hard for us. It's really about the skills that students are are learning when when they're in school. So, we do believe as Melanie said that every student deserves the right to really explicit instruction, right? Including our students working towards an alternate assessment. And what does that look like for them? Um, and how do we scaffold some of their access to literacy development? It might not look the same, but a student who is a non-reader still has literacy skills to develop as far as recognizing words and being able to access um vocabulary that they need to to to be able to navigate life. Um, so we still have those expectations. uh we expect all of our kids to work towards a local or regions diploma. So that's what Mel said about our work as far
132as really trying to figure out how to all of our teachers are working to implement our core with fidelity and figuring out how best to do it for our kids to make progress. Our teachers on top of that have the additional sort of ask of figuring out a new system or a new intervention and and instruction and now on top of that now it's three grade levels. Now it's prioritizing. Now it's finding some commonality across standards, which is part of the work that we need to do to support people. So it's not really about declassification is important. It's an area of weakness for us, but our kids are not achieving where they could be if we had some more really focused support in literacy instruction. And that's what part of those pilots are doing for
133our kids who are more significantly disabled. Yeah, I wish I could provide the the proper credit, but um there's a statement, explicit instruction hurts no one, benefits everyone, and especially kids with with uh learning challenges. >> And in our training for specially designed instruction, which is one of our primary um sort of topics that we deliver, professional development, explicit instruction is its own portion of that training because every student requires explicit instruction. we kind of go through that and then um adding on the the specially designed piece. So, we agree with you. It's really just good instruction for all kids. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. And I want to add on that. um what you just described is um our RTI or problem solving process which also leads to some of the frustration that you
134all might be hearing within buildings because to your point that we would agree that before to Stacy's before we could go to a classification where a student could then go to an IP maybe from a gened setting to let's say an ICT the expectation is is that you bring that student to a respons response to intervention or problem solving meeting where then part of the interventions are explicit instruction in where the the primary skill deficit is. What we're up against sometimes is that takes time. So that means that once you attend a problem solving meeting, the teacher is expected to go back and and implement that specific intervention for that primary skill deficit. They have to attempt that over a period of time because you can't do it for one or two weeks and say
135the intervention didn't work. So it takes a period of time, sometimes three, four, five weeks to apply that intervention and then be able to assess it to see if you're making gains. Then what happens sometimes is you might not see the achievement. So you go back to problem solving again and then you have to attempt a different researchbased direct instru instruction intervention which then takes a period of time. Meanwhile while that's going on student could be frustrated demonstrates behaviors then what happens phone calls come in complaints come in about so this is part of the larger system. So what you said we all agree with but part of that is everybody has to be patient and understand that the students do need to try explicit research-based interventions before you go to a classification. So sometimes
136we hear well why is a student in this room the student is not achieving behaviors are coming up well which we agree with it's difficult but part of that is now the interventions that have to be put in place. So this is a very complicated complex issue and that part of what we need to do is so that we don't go to and keep on increasing rates and classifying students is we have to be able to have the resources there for the students to get that explicit instruction and sometimes that's hard to ask for one teacher to do in a classroom where you might have four or five students that are going through the RTI process. That goes back to what we talked about earlier. So it's it circles around in and then you and
137then you hear different issues in buil in classrooms because people are frustrated because it takes time to go through this process before a student is found eligible. So long answer but I'm glad you brought that up. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions or comments? >> Mr. Butler. >> One more. Um so on uh page 13 where you talked about the uh indicators and you mentioned that um our compliance assurance plan that we're making good progress. Um is that uh could you talk to me about what that progress is? Are the numbers getting better or are we're encoura like we're doing more activity now to try to address it? >> I would say um both at this point. Um, we have really, I think, limited um or cut down on our removals and and things
138that we might characterize unnecessary removals, things like um removing a student because they're skipping. So, they skipped class, we're going to then remove them further from class doesn't make sense. So, I think we've really tightened up. We've also um implemented a variety of alternatives to suspension, like we've talked about, different accountability projects, different types of consequences that aren't resulting in a removal. And then in terms of the progress towards each of um the citations that we're working towards that it really um surrounding that is our ability to provide the documentation that we've followed the procedure. We've held the manifestation within the time frame. We've held the program review cse to determine what services the student is going to receive while they're suspended. And then oh by the way we've got their attendance and we've got
139a log that they were given that two hours a week of consultant teacher services. So we are making progress um on both fronts in terms of um the alternatives to peace um to suspension and getting creative but then also with regard to our documentation ensuring that we're following those timelines and procedures and that we can um you know prove that essentially. >> So you feel like we're making progress towards that not being a citation anymore? >> I do. But it's I do I do I I do but I I think it's going to be I think it's going to be a long it's going to be a long road. Um because the flip side of that too, like we do have some students that are that demonstrate super egregious behavior and suspension is warranted um
140for a variety of reasons. So, so again, it really goes back to I think one of the things I talked about that we're working on is trying to identify those students that are getting removed earlier. Making sure that we're having a conversation because if it's a big incident like a fight, it's the first in the incident that the student has had like that's very different than a student where we see a pattern of like disruption, insubordination, etc. And then the conversation becomes what can we do for that student so to prevent that insubordination, the disruption to continue. what's behind that? What's the root cause? How can we try to shape that? And those are the conversations that we want um folks to have at problem solving meetings. And at the secondary level, that was one
141of the reasons for our assistant directors to be in buildings um the four days a week. They sit at all the problemolving meetings. They sit at the FBA and BIP facilitation meetings and behavior team meetings and they're really part of the conversation um right when a student starts to struggle behaviorally. >> Thank you. Anything else? Thank you. And thank you all for coming and staying so late. I appreciate it. You can all sneak out now if you want. You don't have to run. >> All right. Moving on to 5.01 audit committee report. Mr. Butler. >> Yes. So the audit committee met >> microphone. Thank you. >> The audit committee met uh last night as a matter of fact and we had a presentation from Tom Zuber of uh Manglemets and Bar audit partner who reviewed
142their audit of our extra classroom activity fund which are those funds raised by students and collected and managed by them with oversight of course from district personnel. Tom pointed out something that I hadn't thought about before which was the intent of this program is to provide a learning experience for students uh where they learn how to manage a business and our he he also pointed out that fact that our extra uh classroom activity fund is very active. Um the audit did identify a few small items and some opportunities for improvement and the committee voted to accept the audit. We also reviewed their single audit of our federal title one funds uh which had uh no findings which is a good result and based on our past performance we've been identified it is a low-risk audit
143which is also a good thing and the committee voted to accept this audit as well. We also had a really interesting presentation from uh an external consultant called 3+1 which is a firm that advises us on how to maximize the return we earn on funds that are held on behalf of taxpayers. We learned that they are not investing the money for us, just advising us on how to manage our cash strategically so that we can manage uh minimize risk and maximize earnings. And we also learned that the district has significantly improved its ability to steward taxpayer dollars uh more so than last year. Uh we reviewed the internal audit plan options that resulted from our annual risk assessment that was completed by the Bonado group. We had a good discussion about which area we should
144select for our internal audit and ultimately the group reached consensus that the community schools program would be the area we select for this internal audit not out of any concern that uh anything is wrong there but because it is a relatively new area for us and has complex funding streams and sources of donations. We reviewed and approved the district responses to both the management letter from the auditors and the extra classroom activity fund report. And finally, one of one of our responsibilities as a committee is to review the district's corrective actions from past audits. And we did that uh showing progress uh especially on two recommendations concerning our procurement processes and the implementation which is in progress of a time and attendance system. So we recommend that the board of education accept all the audit
145documents reviewed by the audit committee last night. >> Thank you, Mr. Butler. All right, moving on to 5.02. 02 acceptance of the extra classroom audit report. >> Sean, can I make a motion that we accept the next four all in a package? >> Um, is there a second? >> Seconded by Mr. Stencil. Any comments, questions, or concerns with that? All those in favor of moving them as one. That carries nine to zero. All right. Moving. >> What? >> So, >> I know. Oh, I love it. Jordan's getting tired. All right. Can I sign move 5.06D the change order at the table, please? Moved by Miss Fel, second by Mr. Maloney. Any comments, questions, concerns on that? The only comment I'm going to make a refund of $115,279.54 to the district. With that, all those in
146favor? That passes 9 to zero. Moving on to the Monroe One Boseis transportation contract approval. I so move that to the table please. Move by Mr. Maloney. Second by Miss Light. Comments, questions, or concerns on that. Seeing none, all those in favor that passes nine to zero. Moving on to the RASP one agreement. Can I so move that to the table, please? Moved by Mr. Vice President Stencil, seconded by Mr. Falsano. Any comments, questions, concerns on that? Seeing that in favor? That passes 9 to zero. Moving on to the budget status and revenue status report. It's written information only. Does anybody have any questions on that? Seeing none, moving along to the consent agenda. Can I sign move the consent agenda to the table, please? Moved by Vice President Sel, second by Mr. Butler. Any
147comments, questions, or concerns on that? Seeing none, I would just like to thank the Greece Education Foundation for their numerous donations which amounted to $26,432.92 91, excuse me. And it was a host of things in several of our buildings and it's much appreciated. And I'd also like to thank the Athena Extra Classroom Fund for their over $4,000 in donations to their building. With that, all those in favor? That passes 9 to zero. All right, moving on to policies. 10.01. This is the second read of policies. Just so you're aware, we'll go through these policies. Number 7511 has been pulled back for the committee to review. And with that, we'll start with 2360 conflict of interest. Can I have Sony move the conflict of interest to the table, please? Moved by Mr. Maloney, seconded by Vice
148President Stencil. Any comments, questions, concerns on this? Seeing all those in favor? Passes 9 to zero. I'm going to make a motion that we move 3450, 5623, uh, 6431, 7120, 7411, 7520, and 8261 is one. >> Seconded by Vice President Stencil. Any comments, questions, or concerns on that? >> Make it go too quickly, wouldn't it? >> Never mind. >> I I appreciate your comment. >> All right, the point. >> So, is everybody good moving them as one? All right, with that, all those in favor? Any opposed? >> Did you take 7330 out or did you include it? >> Nope. I pulled it out. >> Yep. You're welcome. >> Nobody. I'm not. >> Okay. So, that's 90. Um, moving on to 7330 now. Um, can I move that to the table, please? Moved by Mrs. Farmer,
149seconded by Mr. Maloney. Any comments, questions, or concerns on this one? >> Yes, >> Mr. Farmer. >> Thank you. Okay, there's a few here. So, um I'm looking at the first paragraph on page one out of four and I'm seeing um where it talks about uh in the first paragraph reasonable suspicion. I'm wondering how we determine what reasonable suspicion is. I don't So, do I ask questions and you all from policy respond or do I just keep going? You could ask I mean probably easier to answer them one at a time and I'll probably have Deputy Fleming or Superintendent Molly and one or two answer. Go ahead Super Molly. >> Um so that is kept relatively general. Um so when we say reasonable, we want the ability um to have um the through this policy
150to have the ability to search um or interrogate based on um information that would come to security or to building administration. So, uh, a lot of times that could start social media, for example. It leads into an investigation, talk to a student, um, talk to a couple students, find out that there's possibly a student could have a weapon, drugs, something along that nature. That ability to say reasonable is enough for us to check a bag, check a locker, whatever it may be, just to ensure the safety of students. So reasonable is there to be general enough to allow us the ability to uh protect our students >> and that information is kind of comes from or the suspicion could come from kids or social media or things like that. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >>
151All right. Okay. >> Any other questions farmer? >> Um the next paragraph. If reasonable suspicion exists to believe that a student has violated and or it is permissible for an authorized school official to search that students outer clothing pockets etc. Um authorized school official would be who? >> Um school administrators and security. >> Okay. and our parents then notified once those once that's happening our parents brought into the loop or a phone call made to say we had to you know take the search a little bit further are we contacting >> yeah that's best practice 100% that that is the expectation that if a student is searched that they are parents are notified >> okay because I did you >> I'm if you want me to clarify >> yeah I'd like I'd like you to
152clarify I can clarify um because when you're there's also now because of our weapons um >> detection. Thank you. >> You're welcome. um you know so that and that was clear right from the beginning from all of our families through um deputy um Fleming's um events that he held at schools the notices that went out that if the um if there is a detection as they go through the bailards um that at that point there is a secondary search generally speaking where you would look sometimes it could be a belt buckle whatever it may be that is not uh where we're making phone calls during the meeting because that we We made clear from the beginning that that is expected as you come through the entry. So that I do separate that out different than
153your searches that we typically saw before we had the weapons detection system. >> Okay. Um so then down to uh searches and seizure of school property, which I I totally think is fine. I'm just wondering if something might be added that would um so kids know that this stuff isn't theirs. And it seems like uh Anna Maria, you were talking about that earlier. It seems like this could kind of be a connection to to a civics lesson in a sense that our taxpayers and and the money that we get through um our tax base is what provides the these uh lockers, textbooks, computers, etc. for kids. I don't know if kids know that that really isn't there, whether it would make a difference, but I think it's important that kids are also um included in
154language that isn't necessarily readable. This is, you know, legal language, if you will, but I think it's important that kids be informed and I would like to see that be part of this policy or this this paragraph. So, we believe in providing Okay. I believe that this is part of our code of conduct like it's either noted in the code of conduct or it is in some um annual notice that goes out to families to understand exactly that um emails >> you know whatever is listed here that I believe that's done on an annual basis to f I know you asked me that list I didn't have the answer but I do believe >> in checking that that is annual notice that goes out either in the code of conduct or in some type of
155literature that goes out on a regular bas It's also included in the secondary the secondary schools all perform a uh an opening >> uh assembly to make clear not only the rules of the code of conduct but also things that can be searched. For instance, as as uh the superintendent referenced the Chromebook, it's district property. Those are things that can be um confiscated or searched at any moment. >> Thank you. That was going to be my next question. >> Um I don't Is there anybody? Okay, I'll just keep going. All right. So, this is page two. We're looking at um parent notification. We ask our Okay. So, reasonable suspicion. Are parents notified regardless? Because we do ask our teachers to contact parents on a regular basis if there's issues in the classroom or if the
156kids are suspended. Are we also notifying parents in terms of uh what that might look like with uh the parents or or guardian will be notified if any illegal prohibited or dangerous articles are found in the students locker etc etc and that is done re it's always done parents are notified when those kinds of things take place >> there it's documented in each individual school documented uh all those pieces there the search the what they found purpose for it um is documented at the school and parents are notified. >> Okay. So do we have the data is that is that information kept and re and uh shared with people staff us >> captain like how many searches? Yeah, it' be a disciplinary referral. >> Okay. Because >> and it's I mean obviously it's not going
157to be public knowledge that Shan McCabe got searched, but it would be tracked as a number >> because when we spoke earlier, you had said you didn't know. >> No, I said I I I know it's recorded. You asked how long do we keep it and I didn't have the >> Oh, I know what it was for. It was for when kids are taken in the back room with two adults because their belt buckle went off or or are those >> entry? >> Yes. Are those things are those things? They're not. >> Okay. Would it make sense that they would be? >> No. >> Why not? >> Because it would be huge. I mean, when you look at the number of kids that go through the machines and you do some type of a secondary
158screening or wanding, every kid then you have to make that notify. If there was nothing found, if it was your belt buckle, you're then going to make a notify. That seems >> do we know the percentage of kids that might go through in the mornings that are secondary searched? >> So the system tracks uh the each day the percentage of hits that it gets both through the Ballard pass through system and on the bag scanner. So that is cataloged for a set period of time. I think it might be 30 days, but I'd have to verify that number. Um and we do have schools that are cataloging really for purposes of evaluating the system um what they are confiscating in terms of cell phones. So for instance, Olympia just shared some data uh with Dr.
159Zafitz and myself uh with the number of cell phones that they are confiscating uh each and every day. So that's cataloged. the paragraph that you're referring to specifically within this policy, it's absolutely documented when something illicit is found on a student within that referral because that is the justification and the reason for whatever consequence that child gets. So that's stored electronically within the child's behavior record. >> And the system also takes some kind of record in terms of >> referring to the the screening system. Yeah, >> the screening system the only record it's keeping is that there was a hit. So whether that hit was from a okay, >> it's doubtful that it's a belt buckle, but if it's, you know, a a really heavy metal binder, for instance, or if it's a cell phone,
160the system would not distinguish between that. It would simply be there were 112 pings out of a thousand students walking through this system this morning. >> That's Yes. Okay. Correct. Right. It doesn't differentiate, but it does record. >> Correct. >> All right. Thank you. Um, so I'm also wondering about um when um kids are being interviewed by school officials and then the police or the law enforcement is asked to come in for whatever reason. Are we contacting parents prior to the police coming and interviewing the student? That is our practice that we contact the parents to let them know that law enforcement is going to be interviewing them >> because in the policy it said the students parent or guardian may be contacted. So I just I think about my own kid. You know if
161it was my own kid that could be kind of traumatizing if my kid was pulled into the back or whatever and and I would like to know as a parent. So I'm speaking for I guess other parents who might like to know. >> So >> what part of the >> this is the second paragraph under questioning of students by school officials. >> They may be notified um prior. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes you know phone call police show up parents don't answer the call. They might respond before you talk to them and they can't do that. Please would be there um in the room with a student prior to a parent being notified at that point. >> But there is there >> is possible and and so but we do make attempts to do that
162when it's feasible. It's not always feasible depending on what's happening. >> So what do you mean by feasible? >> How disruptive the scene is at the time to making any calls. Police were arrive on scene before we're able to make a call that might happen. Is there followup with the parents? >> So parents at some point during that process they're they are in they are in in um they are uh informed. >> Okay. So okay this next this looks good. So, page three, I'm looking at um so and and we did talk about this, but I want to bring this up anyway because I'm assuming that the the the the security that is working within our buildings now based on the fact that we don't use uh the Greece police any longer. those that they
163are the ones who are also summoned for the purpose of maintaining and restraining order or they are the ones who go to school events or things like that. >> I'll have director Vocal either one Casey answer that. >> Thank you. >> So I was uh just making sure this is on. I was walking up. Could you just ask a question again just so I make sure I have everything? And so since since the Greece police are no longer doing the security in the buildings, are you all the ones who will be at school events and things like that or are we also bringing in the police some of the police officers to do that work as well? >> So we're not we're not bringing the police officers in for regular scheduled events. uh we will
164let them know if we have, you know, we're anticipating a large crowd at a football game, something like that, we do a notification to let them know because uh quite frankly, we think it's good to always have them around and you know, people can see them on a, you know, on a you know, a friendly uh occasion. So, we certainly invite them u as time allows. So, they have been present at those things, but we're not using them for security purposes at any events. And the reason why I asked that is because the uh McCann who was just elected as the new town supervisor, one of his campaign issues was that he wanted to bring the police back into the schools. So be that as it may, we're just going to leave that there because
165it sounds like what we have gone through the past few years has been really good for our kids and that I think are you attributed to a lot of that. Yeah, just to clarify what this policy though is saying is that law enforcement officials may be summoned. So it has nothing to who's regularly there or if SRO's it's just it's a policy that says that law enforcement officials may be summoned in order to conduct investig like it it it's not in place of so even though our security is at all the events and as what this is saying is that that law enforcement may be used for maintaining or restoring order when the presence um of officers is necessary to prevent injury. So, it's just a difference. I don't want you to It's We do
166have our security there, but that's not what this policy is actually saying. It's saying >> it may that we may we have the ability to call law enforcement when the need comes. Yes. Just to clarify. >> Agree. >> Yep. >> Okay. Next uh section. Investigated interviews of students by law enforcement officials. By the way, I want to I like the fact that we changed inter interrogations to interviews. It it it makes it seem a little bit more kid-friendly, if you will. >> So, this next paragraph, I'm sorry, >> it's people friendly. >> People friendly. So, um the next paragraph it says, uh in all other situ Okay, police authorities may question students for general investigations or general questions regarding crimes committed on school property. In all other situations, unless an immediate health or safety risk
167exists, if the police wish to speak to a student without a warrant, they should take the matter up directly with the student's parent or guardian. So, the police would not be talking to a student unless the student's parent or guardian had been contacted. >> And I'll have director Vocal from his past life. So, I think it's just important to differentiate this this uh I interpret as we're not opening our doors to the police to come in and question students regarding issues that are happening outside of school. So, if they needed to question a student about um you know, say a lararseny or or an assault or some type of offense or crime that happened outside of school, we're not going to provide them with just the space to come in and do their questioning there.
168um if it is something that pertains to, you know, some a crime that occurred at school or is uh affecting the safety at a school, then they're going to be there to question him in regards to that particular incident. And this uh you know, in the school district, I would say the majority of the students are going to qualify as uh juveniles or or um adolescents in in the law. So they wouldn't be questioning students without a guardian present anyways. >> Um so we wouldn't they essentially have to follow the exact same rules that we do when it comes to questioning. >> And questioning refers to somebody being questioned >> generally as a suspect in something. Uh if they're interviewing a student who maybe witnessed something or they just are trying to figure out, hey,
169what what's going on or it's something that's not criminal that would that they wouldn't refer to that as questioning. Okay. But if it was, the parents would be >> certainly >> contacted and and be present if certainly. So So then when you go down to the uh next system uh section, the removal of students by law enforcement officials, um it says removal of students by police authorities will be allowed only when written per permission from a parent or guardian is obtained. >> Or >> I know I'm not done. I'm just waiting for him to respond. >> Well, there's nothing to respond to. Yeah, >> he's nodding. He's nodding. Yep. >> Or the officer has a warrant. And what can you give me an example of what that might be like? >> So, yes, warrant is
170um a general term. There's several different kinds. The vast majority of what local law enforcement deal with are local criminal court warrants. And that can be an arrest warrant or a bench warrant. >> And those are reviewed and signed by judges. The civil or administrative warrants that you hear about in the news these days are not signed by judges. Uh Greece Police Department does have a policy that they will not detain anyone for one of those uh administrative or civil warrants for say immigration violations. Uh they're not permitted by their policy to do so. Um the only time they can even really inquire about it is if they have somebody in custody or detained on something else and even then they're not allowed to detain that person any longer than they normally would to process
171them. So say it was a shoplifting at a retail location in town. they can't hold on to that person for an extra couple hours to process them or anything like that while they're waiting for confirmation from uh federal authorities on a civil or even criminal uh federal warrant. They won't hold on to them any longer. So, their policy forbids that from happening. >> Thank you so much. >> Yep. Um, and then of course we have the parent or guardian is present and gives consent or the officer has legal grounds for arrest and we already know because they're adolescence or that parents would be there or >> yes >> parents would be there for questioning for for interview for purposes of gaining uh evidence those types of things. pedigree information that um officers uh obtain is
172not questioning and that essentially. So if it say in the instance of say there was a fight or an an event at a school where the police showed up quickly because 911 was called and they're clearly going to get there before parents almost all the time. If they're just asking a question like what's your name? Uh you know what's going on here? Are you injured? Those types of things aren't questioning. Those are just general inquiries for pedigree information. Um the other thing I'll note too is uh number four in that um an officer needs probable cause to make an arrest and their probable cause if there was a warrant um that would fall under that category in addition to having a warrant. They also at that point have the legal grounds for an arrest. >>
173So it kind of covers both both of them. Uh we would never see a physical copy of a warrant. It's uh almost never going to be at the scene of where something is uh taking place. Those are search warrants, something completely separate. Um and before an officer makes an arrest for a warrant, they have to actually confirm it with the originating court. So they'll contact the law enforcement agency, say it's a Randquite, who will then check with the court. They'll verify the physical presence of that warrant before they will actually detain that person and hold them for uh you know processing or to be brought back to that court uh to appear on the warrant. >> So there's a process. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate this. >> Oh, you're welcome. It's
174my pleasure. >> Okay, I'm all set. >> All right, with that, does anybody else have any questions? All right, with that, all those in favor? That passes nine to zero. And you see the other policies are just for um there were no changes to them. They're before you as well, but there were no changes, so we don't need to vote on them. Moving on to 11.01. Um before we get into these committee reports, if you weren't at the committee meeting or you don't have any information, it will be a no report and that's okay. So if we start, Mr. Baragorio, code of conduct. >> Thank you. The uh board code of conduct committee met uh this afternoon. Now um appreciation to everyone who's put in the long day. Um we have been gathering suggestions from
175the committee members at at the moment we have 14 specific suggestions um for possible changes uh to either process or the code itself. I won't read through all of those. Just some examples of some of the questions that are raised by some of them might be things like do does the um overarching narrative of the code of conduct create an imbalance between restorative practices and traditional consequences? How might we reorganize or streamline it for easier access and consistency? And what additional resources uh personal or otherwise might be needed to support a safe and productive learning environment? Um, I'll just say we don't all agree on everything. That might be surprising, but uh, we've had some, I think, really, uh, good, um, vigorous discussions about it, and I think that's that's been helpful. That's it. >>
176Thank you, Mr. Bangorio. Culture climate committee report. Miss Lake, board member. >> Okay. This is the second year I'm on that committee. Um last year the senior high subcommittee didn't meet because of the blue ribbon work that the state was doing. So they kind of held things um to see what would happen. They did have the last meeting and that really went over the survey results of how teachers reacted in the middle school and high schools to having social emotional um lessons either embedded in their classes, whatever. So, we did have that one meeting. This meeting um was November 10th. I was out of town, so David sent me the um the update. So this was a senior high. Um they looked over this the um social emotional screener that was given at the start
177of the year. Um students take the survey to better help our schools understand their needs by collecting feedback on skills like perseverance, growth mindset, responsibility, and managing behavior. The data help schools identify students needing support and targeted intervention. track progress and make datainformed decisions to improve student well-being, learning environments, and overall academic performance. It also measures how students perceive their school and classroom, including their sense of belonging, safety, and teacher student relationships. Each school was able to examine their data, discuss strengths and challenges, and think about a plan of action. Additionally, the committee spent time digging into the portrait of a graduate recently introduced by New York State as part of New York State and New York inspires plan. The committee examined overlap with Greece's profile of a graduate and identified some possible areas we
178need to look further into as we build our new strategic plan. The committee will meet again January 12th. All right, moving on to district improvement team. Miss Farmer. >> Okay. So, um I want to thank deputy super superintendent uh Mr. was it deputy superintendent >> Fleming or Mr. Fleming. So, the whole idea of this um question or this conversation. So, I attended the second meeting. The first meeting we were um at at a conference. So, I walked in and I'm kind of a little lost thinking what's happening. We're sitting in small groups. We're discussing uh different topics that uh the deputy superintendent has brought up within our small group and then we're reporting out. Um this was uh specifically related to professional learning uh PLC's and my concern was that we were focused singularly on
179state assessments, data analysis in terms of how many kids got this question wrong and what can we do? Should we make a um a CFA uh to um help kids learn these skills? Maybe they they're not sure how to label a graph. So, you know, you do a quick three minute thing at the beginning of the uh class where kids will uh be directly uh targeted to what that might look like in terms of A B intersections, simple things, really simple things that cause a lot of points to be lost on a test. But now we're looking at not even so whatever. But what I especially found that was terrific is I happened to be um at another school and came across an article and it was standing by itself. It wasn't in the book.
180So I was reading the article and I thought, "Wow, this is perfect." Well, this and and I sent it to Mark and Michelle Barton and I thought and and Mark responded, "This was Arata Hammond's work. this was work that this district did for for many years in terms of um uh how can we help our kids and her and what Mark said was that her big thing was we have to get these PLC's up and running in order to make our kids you know do better. So I think I I like what he said was fantastic. It's it's I'm glad to hear that this is a combination of looking at standards because we're we're focusing on standards and um how the CFAs can be analyzed and how that can help kids to improve. So you
181would probably like that. So yes. All right. That's it. Thank you. >> All right. Grading policy committee report. That's me. I believe in brevity. So we talked about the 55s and we l talked about standardbased gradings. We'll report back as the committee continues to work. Moving on to Guardians of Equity Committee. Mr. Butler. >> Thank you. The guardians equity committee is a committee that works to identify and address a concrete list of priorities that relate to the equity goals of the district. The team works to remove barriers to ensure that all students have the access and opportunities they need to reach their full potential. The Guardians of Equity help to defend that work, produce evidence of success, and persuade others to treat equity as a core value. made up of teachers and administrators that are
182members of their building based guardians equity groups. Uh the committee met on November 24th and uh the Longridge Guardians team shared updates from their successful implementation of the quote unquote dilemma protocol which helps teams identify and problem solve and equity related issues. The team shared how they worked together to implement a literacy initiative to boost the reading level of struggling learners by identifying age appropriate culturally responsive texts that would appeal to students needed reading support and intervention. Team spent the remainder of the meeting anchoring into the specific steps associated with the dilemma protocol and brainstorm the ways in which it can be applied. >> Thank you Mr. Butler. Uh the parent advisory leadership council Mr. Semen, >> thank you. Um, so the parent advisory leadership council met on November 19th. Um, we had a nice
183turnout. It was about 20 people. Uh, we had teachers and parents. We had cabinet and um, board members. Um, we actually hot off the press. We re went over spent the majority of the time reviewing the um, the family survey um, 2025. So, this is a family needs assessment that parents fill out. Um this was my first year um and first time um meeting with the committee. So uh the results they said was pretty similar to what we found two years ago. Um but we spent the majority of the time looking at what were things that we could kind of combine together and maybe give some more support and growth to um getting more assistance to our families out there. Um I it was good. I also wanted to comment too, one of the things
184that did come up was um what the woman earlier was saying that there are so many sites to go to um to look for all this information um and the idea is to absolutely mainstream this um so that was a good conversation and definitely a positive note. >> Thank you, Mr. Seaman. >> Uh zero emissions buzz committee report. Mr. Maloney, >> just to report a little bit here. Uh, we've been meeting since 2022 and the committee has um I I missed the last meeting, believe it or not. So, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Killy who did attend the last meeting and has more information than I do. >> Thanks, Bill. Uh, just a quick summary. >> You do. I'll thank you later. Uh so as Bill mentioned, uh we've been meeting since
1852022. Uh the mandate is still in place. We we were not able to buy any new buses according to the current mandate after 2027. We got to have our whole bus fleet converted by 2035. As Bill mentioned, we've been meeting going to conferences, gathering information, talking to other districts, meeting with the state, meeting with Naerta. The long and short of it is uh there's still a lot of questions out there. There's a lot of concern still out there. Um it's very expensive to do. Uh the committee uh is has been pending putting an update together for the board. uh but through further discussion, we're going to wait until after the governor's budget uh in January to see if there are any significant changes to the current policy or regulations that may impact what the update
186will be. And once we do that, uh, we'll put a formal memo update to the board, um, on where we stand and what our recommendations may be for the path going forward given if the current mandate will stay the same or whether there will be changes or not. Bill, anything else? >> Uh, Mr. Richardson, you want to add anything? >> I'm gonna have to have you come to a microphone, Dave. No, as uh as Romeo Killy said, we continue to monitor the guidance uh coming from NAERTA and SED and paying close attention to uh to what is out there, but it's very unclear and uh putting together a road map is very difficult at this time. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> There is an extension that we're applying for in I think December. um
187which hopefully requires a couple years. >> Yeah, that waiver is supposed to be released this month for districts to complete, but there's been no information from SED or NAERTA about when that is is going to come about. >> That's it. >> Thank you, Mr. Maloney. All right. Mono County School Board District Operations Committee report. Superan Smallen attended, so we'll let him >> Yep. The district operations committee met on November 19th. The focus of the presentation was special education and the board packet. Um presentation covered how board members should approach and understand the information um that you receive in your packets regarding IEPs and 504s. Also discuss the board's role within special education programs and services. That's all. >> Thank you, Superintendent Smolen. Monro County School Board's legislative committee report. We have no report on that.
188And Monro County School Board's information exchange committee report member falls. >> Um so the um information exchange committee met November 12th. I was away, but I was able to get the wonderful support from the Monroe County Board and they sent me the um information. There was the topic was lockdown drills 101. Such a light topic to end the evening. um from research to practice and it was uh presented by this Dr. Jaclyn Schelkraut and she is the executive director at the gun violence research consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Um she shared in her research that um it was prompted actually by a mass shooting in her hometown which led to an in-depth look at an active shooter practices at active shooter practices around the country. Um, lockdown drills, a practice currently used in
18998% of public K12 schools nationwide, have raised concerns about potential trauma they cause to students, faculty, and staff who participate in them. While news stories of drills gone wrong have exacerbated such concerns, research into these practices shows the opposite. That when conducted in a traumainformed approach using best practices, lockdown drills can empower students and staff to respond to emergencies and lead to other positive outcomes. And she went on to cite the um that u just by taking the step of locking the door you increase the uh survival rate and prevent injuries and deaths by 59 to 79%. Um she talked about procedural integrity meaning knowing the steps and following them. And she went on to say it's not what you do it's how you do it. and she was really um insistent on everyone, all
190staff, including custodians, cafe staff, being trained on the procedures when a lockdown is called because you never know where that point of entry is or what's happening and where it is. So, she was very insistent about that, but the rest of the procedure sounded like things what we have in place. Move away from the door, conceal, turn out lights, move away from the door, conceal, and do not answer the door. Um she u mentioned that consistency across build the building the district and the state are key for um optimally being prepared in case that worst day ever does arrive. She conducted a very large study over a three to four year period in the Syracuse city school district and her research has led to a conclusion that when students and staff have developed the muscle
191memory their anxiety levels about a risk event are lowered and that there is an increased sense of empowerment. So, um, the next meeting of this committee is January the 14th. >> Thank you, Mr. Felrono. Um, just something I'm going to put out to my colleagues on the board. It's now 20 after 9. We've added these committee reports. They're running long. You know, if we can just be brief, try to a couple couple highlights of your committee, unless there's something earthshattering coming out of your committee, I think it would be good if we could try to have a little bit of brevity because we've added all these reports. So, we've just added about 30 minutes. Now, we all have board member comments on top of that, which is probably going to be another 30 minutes, you
192know, for the staff that have all been here since 7:00 or earlier this morning. And for other people at work, etc., you know, getting you out of a board meeting at 10:00 as we head in budget season and the rest of the year, it's going to be it's going to be tough. So, I'd like everybody, you know, next month with their committee reports to try to consolidate them a little bit. And I would really prefer if you're not at the meeting, there's no report. If the board member isn't in attendance, then there should be no report. We shouldn't be getting it from a staff member or somebody else. It should just be, you know, if you were in attendance, the highlights of the meeting. So, with that, moving forward, superintendent comments. >> I'll cut some
193of these comments down a little bit. >> How about that here? Just give them to me. Uh um I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the um outstanding work of our community schools team under the leadership of Kelly Sperdudo. Um as well as our partnerships with Center for Youth and Food League. Um their commitment to our uh supporting our students, our staff, our community during the holiday seasons really makes uh an incredible impact for those families. And as we go into the holiday season now, I know that they'll continue that work. and I'm just really grateful to have that team and the partnerships to support our family. So, I wanted to recognize them. I also just wanted to recognize um um incredible group of students who represented Greece at the Rock to Change
194uh summit on Friday, November 21st. 15 15 of our students um from our four high schools and the Phoenix Academy. They served on this year's planning team along with students from Churchville Chilai and the Rochester City School District. Um these students, they chose servant leadership as their theme for the for the day and they um led the entire conference um including breakout sessions for more than 350 students from districts throughout the region. Um, so I was really proud that day for the work that they put in and what they led um at this event. I just also want to have a special thank you to deputy superintendent Mark Fleming who has stepped up in place of um our director of equity and led that work with um our equity tossa Cam Groutman as well. So
195thank you. That was a lot of time, a lot of effort uh but it definitely paid off. And just finally, as we tradition or transition into the holiday season, I just want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and happy holidays and hope um the coming weeks you can find some uh some joy and some time to relax with family and maybe forget about work sometimes and just enjoy the season. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Superintendent Smalline Bailey, you're up and you could talk as long as you want. >> No, I kind of have the same topic as Mr. Smallen, so this will be good. summary. Um, so you covered my bases already with kind of explaining what Rock Change is and um, how the three school districts that planned it this year and
196it really was such an a successful event. Um, our three kind of breakout sessions in that servant leadership bubble was lift others up, leading through understanding and lead where you are are. So um, the theme kind of helped us focus on uh, providing for and empowering others instead of gaining more power for ourselves. So I think it was a a very I think everyone kind of could feel servant leadership in themselves and kind of relate to that in a way. Um I know from experiencing the breakout rooms that it was just such an inspiring room to be in filled with so much energy and passion and open-mindedness for everybody. I think that rocks change is such a special place where people feel safe to share personal stories and relate to others and um just kind
197of getting to feel seen and hearing people out and I think it's really positive environment to be in. Um again I want to extend a huge thank you to uh Mr. Fleming and Miss Groutman for all their help with planning the countless hours. It seriously couldn't have done it without you guys. So thank you so much. And then Mr. uh, Smalline for the amazing speech in the beginning. That was incredible and just brought the energy of the room really alive. So, I really appreciate that. And, um, for everyone else who works behind the scenes to make that event happen. I know there's a committee that's been working on it every year um, to make sure that it's a tradition and it it stays alive. So, thank you for that. And everybody enjoy your break and
198the holidays and uh, thank you so much. >> Thanks, Bailey. All right, board member comments. Who's up? Mr. Butler. All right, I'll be very brief. Um, I want to Today is uh something called Giving Tuesday. Uh, it follows Cyber Monday and which followed Black Friday and uh and so if you care about uh this district, one of the ways you can show that support on Rock the Day is to go to rockthe.org and make a donation to the Greece Education Foundation. Uh um board president uh um shared today that the uh the GEF gave over $26,000 in supply and needed supplies to our classrooms. So um I'll declare by conflict of interest that my wife is the president of that board right now, but um that doesn't shouldn't change whether you donate or not. It's
199uh it's a great cause and if you're if you're still watching this broadcast, you certainly care about education in Greece. So you should probably make you probably already made a donation to the Greece Education Foundation. Um and uh the only other thing that uh two quick things, uh Greece Central School District, I think is a great place to work and there's always positions available uh at the district. And so please go to our website and uh and figure out uh um how you can make a career at Gre Central Schools. And lastly, uh I'll add happy holidays. I want to say a thank you to all of the teachers, administrators, building staff who are going to see those students who are struggling for all kinds of reasons during the holiday season. it's not always uh
200um jolly for everybody and so I want to thank those teachers and administrators and staff who are looking out for those students who need a little extra love during the holiday season. Thank you, >> Mr. Farmer. >> Sure. So, um I just want to say that um starting December 5th, um at at uh city hall, mayor and the mayor and the county executive are going to do a kickoff for the week of international human rights. And there will be various things throughout the week. If you are interested in um Google, Google it and you'll see things all over the place. Um the other thing I want to talk about quickly is climate education. I see that as being a good opportunity knowing many sportsmen and outdoorsmen, they believe and see that the climate is off.
201They think that, you know, it's cyclical. We go up and down and around. And so these are the people that I know. And so I think it would be a great opportunity for kids to be able to use a lot of critical thinking skills. And it it's not one or the other. Sometimes it's both. Um, and as far as reshaping our secondary schools, it sounds like it's going to be a little bit more like when I was in high school where kids would leave half the day and go to uh what was it called? It wasn't called Boseies. Co-op or what? >> Co-op. Aa triple tripaa. So anyway, I think if we shape this right, we can have an alternative education that could allow so many kids who are feeling disengaged from the typical sit
202in your seats, get your time. So everything's driven supposed to be driven by the standards. So we have a lot of work ahead of us and we could make it be positive or just continue along. All right. Now, everybody have a great uh couple weeks off. I guess it's another 14 day, 16 day holiday. And um couldn't say it better. Mr. Butler, Todd, thank you for recognizing that not everybody's jolly. Thank you. Uh happy holidays everybody. >> Good Mr. Buro. >> My apologies in advance. >> Oh boy. I'll be I'll be fast. I'll be fast. >> So, I I do want to make some additional comments on on New York inspires inspires. Um and uh and I do have concerns and and one of them uh I think is is echoed by a report from
203the University of California at San Diego that which last month uh issued an admissions report detailing what it called a steep decline in academic preparation of its entering firstear students particularly in math. The report uh uh noted incoming the number of incoming students in need of remedial math surged in recent years as much as 3,000% and uh and noted that colleges around the country uh were reporting similar trends. One explanation given was that grades quote grade well this isn't a quote from the report but grades have stopped meaning anything that the age of great inflation is also the age of achievement deflation where we're giving more and more A's to students who are learning less and less. Uh the u the point I think to all of this is we've got a lot of work
204to do u to protect education in Greece. We need to be really vigilant. I think Mr. Zafitz again Dr. efforts again for bringing that report. Um I'm I continue to applaud things that are really showing um proof of of uh of impact and things like the science of learning. Uh we continue to applaud our district and pursuing those. I hope we'll consider uh making applying some alternative programming in math which might give us at least a second or third uh option to look at alternative strategies beyond the state's doubling down in inquiry learning and um and we need to be careful about what we do. We're not just equipping our kids with technology. often we're enabling them and we need to make sure our classrooms remain places of learning for kids who want to learn
205and not just daycare centers for kids who want to be unruly. With that positive note, uh happy and safe holidays to everyone, >> Mr. Mal. >> Oh, well, not yet. I got to make sure Miss Seaman's good and Vice President Stencil's good. Happy holidays everyone. >> All right, I just have I'm going to be super brief so Mr. Maloney can get to his. Um I want to congratulate Bailey. Mind my little birdies told me that maybe you have the lead in the musical at Athena. Is that correct? >> Congratulations. And I want to wish everyone a happy um merry Christmas, a happy new year. Enjoy the time with your family. Enjoy the time off. Recharge. It's going to be a busy spring from January till June for the board, for the school district. So recharge
206your batteries. Enjoy some time over the break. Eat, drink, be merry, and remember those that are less fortunate. With that, Mr. Maloney, go ahead. >> I wish everybody a merry Christmas, and I'd like to adjourn this I make a motion to adjourn this meeting. >> Seconded by Vice President Stencil. All those in favor? That passes 8 to one?