GCSD Board of Education Meeting - March 4th, 2025

001e e good evening I'd like to welcome everyone to our Tuesday March 4th 2025 Board of Education meeting if I could um board members money and Butler are excuse this evening and if I could ever everyone rise for the Pledge of Allegiance which will be led by board members stencil and we'll follow that with a moment of silence for Ralph zako he passed away peacefully with his family on February 28th Ralph's other great love was music hundreds of families throughout the Rocher area and Beyond were in some way positively affected by Ralph's extensive career as a music teacher at grea Arcadia High School and a coral director at Lakeside Presbyterian in ch St Charles churches with his wife as his accompanist Ralph helped found the Greece Central Coral soci society which he loved for 45

002years everyone who has been blessed to sing Under Ralph's Direction has stories to share that reflect his sense of humor charm and personal interest and bring out the best in every person through his gift of music so if we could keep the Zino family in your thoughts and prayers that would be much appreciated Al to flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under godible with liy and justice for all thank you okay if I could have someone move the agenda table please moved by Mr stencil second by vice president farmer are there any additions corrections to the agenda sing none all in favor of the agenda that passes 7 to Z moving on to our Union comments president eberts welcome this evening hey good evening

003everybody I didn't realize how fast I'd be up here so I appreciate that that's very nice um first off I just wanted to share with you all the results of our GTA food drive benefiting the Greece ecumenical Food Shelf um through a collective efforts from staff in schools district office Transportation building we were able to collect over 3,000 pounds of food and we donated over $3,000 worth of um money I'm sorry to uh pass along to the Greece eum ecumenical Food Shelf um and it's just a great thing to to continue doing this we've done it for 20 plus years um hundreds of thousands of pounds of food and a lot a lot of money too so we really look forward to helping our community in the future as well with this additionally um our

004women's committee chair Karen Schindler is hosting another her stories event on March 12th so I know many people here have participated that in the past if you're interested please check it out um it's an event that we honor every day heroins who make a difference in our schools and Community um it's on our website and social media platforms if you're interested in learning more tonight I want to take some time to recognize the powers of part power of partnership true engagement where the expertise of Educators is not only acknowledged but actively shapes the the decisions that impact our schools should have never drank milk before I came here apparently that was a bad idea there was a time many years ago when new curriculum programs were introduced with a little input from those of us

005working directly with students thankfully our last few superintendents really understood the need to use the expert opinions of those who work in schools on a daily basis and thanks to initiatives like The Guiding Coalition shared decision-making and the creation of and refinement of school Improvement plans that has changed teachers are no longer just implementing decisions we are helping to shape them The Guiding Coalition plays a key role in ensuring the teacher perspectives are essential to discussions that drive progress when we each fulfill our responsibilities with purpose and dedication we create an environment where meaningful improvements take place we are grateful for the trust and the confidence that the Greece csdu leadership and our Board of Education have placed in us your commitment to supporting and trusting Educators has strengthened our ability to make informed thoughtful

006decisions that support Student Success by continuing to engage listen and respect the expertise of those in the field we will keep moving forward because when teachers administrators and District leaders work as a team we build a stronger more effective school system so thank you for your dedication your Insight and your commitment to our shared Mission and let's keep this momentum going have a great night everybody presid eberts before you leave can you check on that date that I have it as a different day I just don't know if it switched or she changed it a couple times but that's the most recent okay and then there's a mixer on the 28th but it's all on the website too okay thank you thank you Dr Herer brought some props with me all right um good evening

007everyone I'm very happy to be here this evening my name is Dr Shannon heler and I am the principal at the Early Learning Center and I'm very happy to be able to share some of um our guesta remarks with us this evening uh share on behalf of some of my fellow colleagues and the work we're doing around our guiding coalitions that have goal number two for our school Improvement plans as it relates to our plc's so um very happy to do that and as you can see you might see some green throughout this presentation because those of you who know me you know that I might like this time of the year um so folks uh first up here we have um some feedback and comments from Patty Hill in regards to their goal number

008two and their work at their school of plc's um you can see that they have some of their um their evidence there of the work that they've done um on the screen um some work around their Norms um in particular um that of their scope and sequence for their different grade levels like to make sure that they have a clear pathway in this work together and that it's communicated as such um some of the call outs here is in regards to their goal which uh States Patty Hill will increase from initiating to developing on the PLC rubric by the end of this year um so they're tracking uh their wig um their goals so with their lead measures um those actions that they're using to um guide their work as long as uh with their

009lag measures which is how they're going to assess the work that they've been doing um they're looking at their common instructional agendas for each PLC meeting make sure those are in place reviewing and reflecting like I said on team Norms that seems to be um a theme throughout the evening and the share out tonight um which is so very important to the foundation of our plc's and then um how we're going to measure that measure our success in relation to our goals they're calling out midyear checks with a PLC rubric rubric um and some leadership or some lead measures in their data and then their staff perception survey and they want to have a notable increase um in that so a little bit from Patty Hill next up we have our friends from Olympia um

010I can hear Brandon in my head right now um but um in regards to Olympia I want to share out just some of the major highlights that they shared with us um in regards to their PLC work at at their school um so many of us are involved in that learning by doing deor um book study um they are as well and with that um wanted to share out the following from Brandon and and and his team so they have um read the the book that we just noted and then their next steps are really creating professional learning opportunities from that book and really um what they had talked about is um really focusing on topics that will include like defining plc's for them um what are they what are they not being very explicit

011with that work um professional learning on trust as well um making sure we're promoting psychological safety in the work that we're doing together and that we're building collaborative relationships um in addition they added that Ela and math Middle School PLC is underway and continues the work they have been doing all year and what they're talking about is like identifying their um essential standards unpacking those standards what does it look like in the curriculum how are they meeting each individual student goal and and how do they know um so that's some of the work that Olympia wanted me to share out with you what's next my friends from our IA middle school and um again you'll see the same throughout but really wanting to talk about just how important the meeting Norms are and not just

012meeting orms to say okay who's going to have this role who's going to have this role but really like making sure that we're staying true to the PC process that we're trying to put in place so Arcadia wanted me to share out with you the following um guiding coition at Arcadia Middle School is working like we said with plc's to implement effective meeting Norms they incl include clear purposes shared accountability and datadriven decision-making um many of their plcs have already established norms and are implementing them regularly support needed to advance the PLC process includes time for planning vertical alignment and guidance on data data collection and standards um taking a look at those what are those most effective means to do that so not only are they sharing with us some of the work they're

013doing but what they would need to further their work going forward so appre appreciate that share out and then I wanted to kind of Go and show you this so um last week I just took some snapshots as we were actually in this room and um we had a chance to come together as a pln um the principals and um our district leaders and we had a chance to meet as we often do and we took a look at our guiding Coalition and our PLC work like where were we what's going well what do we see in the immediate future that we want to act on um some questions we may have and like support going forward so you can see here um my fellow colleagues it was nice because next to me I had

014my fellow um Elementary principal colleagues and then like to the left of me were was like Shauna site and I work that we're doing with the department head so we were all together so really it just shows how pervasive this work is it's not just done in isolation in our schools or only like at you know four times during the year but we're all in this work together and what was great is that we were able to bring um a member of our guiding Coalition team with us so to share in that work and I found that so very very valuable and I believe um many of our other colleagues did because it's really showing I think transparency for me it happened to be a a pre kindergarten teacher who came with us who's part

015of our guiding Coalition she's also on our sit team but I think it shows trust like true collaboration transparency and also just time for us to um be thought Partners um so just truly valuable and then because I like artifacts you guys um I actually brought our poster because now I'm going to go ahead and do the ELC show for just a moment but um what I was going to say is this is the the little artifact that we have that you can see on the screen this is what each team walked away with um so after myself and Michelle hippen me um our teacher that came we then shared this work that we did um back with our guiding Coalition team and that of our school Improvement team so making sure that this work

016is very iterative so just some of the categories and I'm I'm going to um Save You by not sharing all of them many of them are very similar to my fellow colleagues that are sharing out in other schools but what has your guiding Coalition done so far this year so in addition to everything that's been noted so far some of the things that um we wanted to highlight was that we had administered a trust survey we um are meeting regularly with our prek through K2 staff um that can be a more challenging um piece to get around because we're all on different schedules but we're valuing the fact that once a month we're coming together um for a half an hour to share out the progress um of the guing Coalition and our PLC work

017and doing that as an alignment in Continuum prek through K2 so really wanting to show how valuable this work is and making time for it and for that messaging um we've developed a building like building blocks I would say for a a an effective PLC that we brought back from our guiding Coalition and bedded through that team and sit but like just a little simple graphic for everyone in our building um building BLS of a PLC and we had determined as a collective unit that it would be Trust urgency and collaboration and collaboration in the sense of not just people being present but like really um raising each other up to the next level making each other better accountable the whole nine and then um one of the other pieces that I'll share with you

018is our scope and sequence that we've created as an ELC to kind of help us do this work so we had them we had um each month this uh going into this school year kind of seg segmented into what work we're going to do each month with our guidance Coalition or like at least what we thought um we would do as as far as leading us to that end goal of having a really um highly effective PLC process going into next school year um so you can see here that we have some notations in Red so those comments and red that work actually came out of this time that we were um allocated for this pln work um and again I'm just highlighting what the ELC did but the red notations are like time that

019we had to adjust modify we again took back to our guiding Coalition and then to our sit process and we then we're going to take back to our our entire staff so this accordian model of sharing out this work being transparent asking for feedback um but that time that we were given last week um was very very helpful in kind of um having us question um where we are at this time where we need to be and um kind of going forward with a sense of urgency in a great way like we're excited to do this work we want to make sure that we're thorough though and that everyone is vetted in and then just um our goal at the PLC as it relates to um or at the ELC as it regards to PLC

020um is to have that process in place next year some of the things that we shared out on this template that I'm holding was just um what are immediate thoughts of going into next year with this plan and we just kind of highlighted some of the things that um I shared out already um one of the things that we've implemented along with that prek K2 connection is um an additional extra PLC time to do vertical alignment work each month with each of our grade levels um that's something we started um three weeks ago and we're going to be doing for till the end of the year to kind of see how that works and get feedback but that's literally looking at student work um as it relates to the standards process and looking um vertically

021along the grade levels so we're excited about that all right you guys that's what I have to share with you this evening and um does anyone have any questions or comments thank you Shan you're welcome and thank you for the time all right I have nobody sign up from Gus Teamsters or except correct all right moving on to Residence Forum we have five speakers this evening I will call you up you can come up to this Podium and you'll have three minutes to address the board our first Speaker this evening is Bridget melli melli welcome all right good evening board my name is bridet melli I'm the mom of two children Arcadia middle and Arcadia High School I'm here to address the continuing violence in our schools and also including locked bathrooms especially at Arcadia

022High School I'm a working professional and I'm guessing a bunch of you are as well when it comes to the workplace we are handed a handbook on day one of hire in there IT addresses all the rules and understandings we need to know annually we are also required to take sexual harassment training and work Place violence training you are required to turn in your certificate to HR once you have completed your training showing you understand the rules violence is also not allowed in the workplace and there are steps to overcome situations that may be hostile or argumentative that is taught in these trainings if you feel that your workplace does not adhere to these steps and the workplace remains hostile what will each of you do you're going to look for a new job aren't

023you the students don't have a choice the school is their workplace the teachers that are on your staff is their workplace each student and teacher should be able to come to the school to feel safe as this is their job they're entitled to a safe and orderly purposeful place for all students to gain an education their mental health is being ruined as well as many students are scared to come to school that's a huge red flag to me and should be to all the rest of you daily hold in place is due to behavior that could be and should be corrected my daughter was subject Ed to this Behavior last year she was an eighth grader playing varsity soccer representing Arcadia that's a big accomplishment meanwhile when she was playing she tore out her ACL

024miniscus she returned to school to have boys Target her and kick her off of her crutches she went to the proper authorities just like you would with HR and the authorities told her well that's just normal middle school boy Behavior that's unacceptable to me they also told us well we don't have enough video so it never happened that's when I went and filed a Dasa because who vice principal Arcadia sought that this wasn't an important thing Mrs clicko reached out to me and she didn't find this funny at all then we go to locking in the bathrooms my daughter also has a medical excuse to use a bathroom ninth grade now she's in high school the nurse tells her that she's not allowed to she politely tells her I have a medical note on my

025file please check my file the nurse denies her again she tells her you can go this one last time never again I call the principal the principal says there must be a mixup this is now the second time I've spoken to the principal about locking the bathrooms I get an email the next morning from the nurse stating that oh she did have a note on file and I gently and asked her why this happened she didn't have a good answer for me she said I don't have an answer so to you as a board of education I'm asking you guys that you take take things seriously because our students cannot be for their mental health subjected to this every day thank you m Mell our next speaker is our next speaker is Milana melli welcome

026this one nope thank you all right hello Board of Education my name is Milan melli and I'm a ninth grader at at Arcadia High School I'm part of NJ chess an honor student a musician above the influence anniversity athlete as my mom has reiterated I'm inviting all of you to come with me one day to shadow me to see what the life of a student as Arcadia is like going into high school I did not know what to expect and I was subject last year to violence I played Varsity soccer as an eighth grader which is a huge accomplishment I was representing your school when I tore my knee out I came back to school and was physically assaulted and got kicked out from under my crotches repeatedly I brought it to the concerns of

027the vice principal and my principal which we told that it's Middle School behavior and it didn't happen how's that her response great right no sorry now fast forward in ninth grade my first day I was sitting in the cafeteria in study hall while a kid was yelling outside threatening things and came in there and started screaming at everybody and punched a kid right in front of me wow our days consist of going through metal metal detectors fights and and good kids being forgotten while the bad kids get away with everything and this happening is not letting me be able to learn and not letting me be able to use the bathroom as they are always locked in that whole situation my mother just talked about I am not alone in this feeling but I know

028that I'm strong enough to come in front of all of you and talk about it instead of sitting there and being scared to say anything you guys should ask the students how they feel because I think your eyes would be open immensely we want change we want safety and we want you to hear our voices again I invite each of you to come with me and sit through da of Arcadia unannounced I appreciate your time tonight and I hope you can make a change for us in the future and the generation of students thank you thank you Moana uh Tiffany kilbury ready good evening thank you to the board for hearing our voices tonight my name is Tiffany and I've been a Greece resident for 43 years I graduated from gree Athena High School in

0291999 I chose to stay in Greece and raise my son here my family and I own several businesses in Greece as well with that said I am here tonight to speak on behalf of Greece Arcadia where my son is a 10th grade student my concerns are based on the frequent disruptions in the school a few examples are an altercation with two female students during dismissal an ambulance had to be called due to Medical Emergency an incident that occurred where a former student was let into the high school by a current student which led to a holding place for quite some time as the police had to be contacted also the a more recent one where a student and a parent had a crisis and we were in a two-hour holding place for one student at

030another issue was at our Olympia Arcadia basketball game where multiple police were called as a former student was jumped in the parking lot and the most recent was was Thursday of last week where there was an altercation with two female students in the hall during classes fighting on the ground screaming with one staff member trying to break this up the school went into a holding place for about 15 minutes or so due to this incident think about being a student who comes every day ready to learn then think about being in the middle of taking a test or doing an assignment and the announcement comes on that you're going into a holding Place doors need to be locked and students need to clear the Halls not knowing why or what's going on now you're expected

031to finish taking your test or focus on the teacher and not be distracted how is that possible it is not possible and it interrupts the learning for all other students what about the students that are locked in the cafeteria during this time with minimal Authority this cannot be safe when meeting with the principal she didn't seem to want the extra support the parents are requesting there are many wonderful teachers students and staff at Arcadia there's a small group of students who are making education hard for the bulk of the students at the school this is not only a affected our academics but the desire to go to school we need more parent involvement we do not have the resources to support the small group of kids who need the actor support they choose to act

032this way because they know there is little to no consequences these issues have not only affected our students and staff but the surrounding businesses what kind of image does this portray for Greece the school is focused on fa favoring students with behavioral issues we have lost all credibility as to what school is about academic laughing with friends and how to be somebody in this world I asked the board to please help support the school with increased security guards security cameras near bathrooms more social workers and consequences for actions something must change our academic rates are at an all-time low when behaviors are on the rise academic rates decrease we must raise our standards thank you thank you rock roxan angst sorry if I pronounced that wrong good evening thank you for allowing me to speak

033I am the parent of an 11th grader Who currently attends Arcadia High School I also have a daughter who attended four years and graduated in 2020 I have for the past eight years dealt with School administration primarily on the issue of school violence I been lucky enough to never have any direct issues involving any of my children however both have been significantly impacted from the events that occur at school my main ongoing concerns surround School fights lockdowns hold in place weapons being brought to school bathroom usage and availability and the lack of accountability exercised by the school with these problem students there are approximately 1100 students at this school with less than 5% causing these disruptions although this is a very low percentage they are having a significant impact on the large majority that attends

034school responsibly not only are students impacted but parents are as well we are left to unte our children that this is acceptable or responsible behavior and that despite our child seeing students that were just involved in an incident walk freely around the school afterwards that in reality there are consequences for actions we are left to send them every day to school where we have proven evidence that it's unsafe we are forced to talk about ways to keep them safe when they are at school because we see the danger and know what could happen just since the beginning of this year there have been more than five physical fights during school hours one requiring outside medical attention on February 7th my daughter attended a high school basketball game at Arcadia where police and fire and EMS

035were called for a large fight another incident where a student brought a taser into school another incident where there was a report of a student bringing a knife into school and lastly a student making a Snapchat holding guns and this is all in just two months and these are only incidents that I have been made aware of it has been this way for far too long I don't feel I'm being overd dramatic as a parent when I say this is a serious problem do we have to wait for the next bomb threat to be real do we have to wait for it to be a gun instead of a taser I ask of you all are we doing enough are there more ways we are there more ways we can support the administration at Arcadia

036are our standards for Behavior accountability and responsibility that low is it too much to ask to have a school for your children to attend to be proud of and want to engage it when is this going to be recognized as a serious concern with immediate and direct action do we have to wait for that escalating incident to occur I will not be left saying I didn't speak out I didn't make people aware I didn't plea for a change will you all be able to say the same thank you [Applause] thank you Mrs angs next uh Courtney cardo thank you welcome uh good evening my name is Courtney cardo I'm a mom of four gree students I'm here to talk about school safety common theme we are currently in three different schools within the district um

037not sure how aware you are some of these classes look like during the school day my fourth grader is currently in an ICT class and since the beginning of the school year there's been issue after issue with a small group of students but one in particular there's been desks tossed chairs pushed down thrown over walls cleared of students work students having to leave the classroom for behaviors students having the behavior walking out of the classroom choke holds against other students and just playing out this uped behavior during teaching time now we have a new student coming into the same class with documented behaviors so bad it became common knowledge over the weekend through a news Outlet my daughters have two teachers who are freaking angels on in those building in that building and are just

038downright fabulous to the students they have gone above and beyond to keep these students safe and themselves I'm here to to ask you a simple basic question what about the other student in these classes that have to experience this why aren't there education's not as important what about these teachers who have to Endor this day in and day out they went to school like many of you because they wanted to teach and make kids' Futures bright not to be a bouncer out in elementary school we are losing good teachers because of this why do they have to endure this why should N9 and 10 year-olds be fearful of going to school because of another student Mr mcabe what if every time you came to a board meeting you never knew if Mr Maloney was going

039to have a good meeting or whether he was going to throw his binder and chair at you that's what they're dealing with every single day in this building my daughter has severe anxiety over this situation she went from loving school to asking to stay home all the time morning routines became fights to get ready needing to go to the nurse frequently to Escape the Room teachers came up with a plan for her with a safe pass to leave to go to another class while we appreciate the fact of what they did for her why does my child have to leave a room where she's supposed to be learning because another student is so disruptive why isn't her education just as important and why isn't her emotional well-being not taken into consideration I know there's protocols

040I know there's needs for documentation I know our State put us in this situation but what I don't know and I don't understand is how you as grown adults sit here who are supposed to be our voice on education who are elected to represent us can sit there knowing what I'm saying is happening and not fight for us and our kids not fight for the taxpayers who can't afford to go to private school cuz our taxes are too damn High safety is a giant concern as you can all see you need to start recognizing this and you need to start changing something CU When something HS happens you are all going to be held accountable thank you Mr cardo that concludes our residence form for this evening moving on to Staffing 2.01 can I have

041the Staffing move to the table please mve by Miss Mar second by vice president farmer any comments questions or concerns on Staffing seeing none all those in favor that passes seven to zero moving on to tenure can I ass move the tenure to the table please move by Mr stel second by Mr bagorio is there any comments questions concerns on tenure seeing none all those in favor that passes 7 to zero moving on to 4.01 Essa designation update superintendent smallen hi I'd like to ask uh Deputy superintendent Mark Fleming to come up and share our latest update on ASA designation thank you thank you superintendent Smalling good evening ladies and gentlemen thank you for the opportunity to share with you an update regarding our Essa designation uh as you know School Improvement is a complex

042process uh we are going to be providing you with a uh series of informational meetings uh with regards to the change that we are undertaking with regards to school Improvement tonight's presentation specifically is targeted around two particular goals one is to uh to notify you at our public meeting about our asset designations and our second goal for tonight is to show with you to share with you uh the steps that we have to take mandated by New York state in order to achieve that school Improvement so let's begin with uh a definition of essas I'm sure you all know this is a federally mandated program the student succeeds act this replaced the No Child Left Behind Act from a number of years number of years ago uh and what this act mandates is that New

043York State uh designates the bottom 10% of schools in multiple areas and subgroups that are in need of improvement there's a variety of measures that they use to determine whether or not a school is in the bottom 10% you can see on the screen in front of you the ways in which success is measured it includes academic achievement graduation rates English language proficiency absenteeism and college career and Civic Readiness so all of our schools K12 are measured within these particular measures of Success New York State also designates subgroups that we are uh held accountable for so we have all of our students are held against those measures of success from the previous slide but then we also have subgroups based on race uh based on English language Learners based on students that are classified with

044a disability and those that are economically disadvantaged we are required to make sure that all students and all of those subgroups are progressing adequately so as I said New York State designates schools that are in the bottom 10% in the state for one or more subgroups uh as being in need of improvement this identification occurs annually uh so it could be that all students in a particular school have been identified for needing progress either in academics or in attendance or in graduation rate but it could be that one particular subgroup or multiple subgroups also need to make sure that they are uh making academic progress there are four different types of designations that New York State hands out I want to go through each of these the first is LSI this is local support and

045Improvement they used to be uh known as school schools that are in good standing uh New York State changed the name of this designation uh operating under the principle that schools are always continuously trying to get better so schools that are in good standing are known as schools that are LSI again in need of local support and Improvement uh the next level of designation is TSI or targeted support and Improvement these are these are schools that are newly identified for one or more subgroups and those schools SCH need a local uh set of supports governed by The District in order to make progress schools that are classified as atsi are additional targeted support and Improvement schools these are schools that have had one or more subgroups that have been identified in that lower 10% for

046more than three years and then we have schools that are designated as CSI schools in need of comprehensive support and Improvement those are schools that are in the lowest 5% across the state currently here in the Greece Central School District we do not have any schools that have been identified as CSI we have one school and that is Greece Olympia that is currently identified as atsi and then we have four additional schools that are in the TSI designation two of those schools Lakeshore and Pinebrook uh have been TSI schools and then we have two newly identified schools Buckman and Craig Hill the the remaining 12 schools in our district are all in the LSI rating so to get a little more specific and granular in terms of the designations before you you see the subgroups

047that are identified for each of those schools uh that need to make progress uh our atsi school uh is Olympia and they have been identified for their black students as has Pinebrook and Buckman again those are both TSI schools our students uh with disabilities at Craig Hill have been identified and then Lakes Shore has two subgroups in need of improvement our black students and our students with disabilities so New York State specifies a series of required actions that each School District must undertake in order to help schools move uh into an area of improvement where they can move out of these particular designations and I want to go through those particular actions and the timelines with you now the first action is to assemble an Improvement planning team we of course at all of our

048school sites have school Improvement teams but New York state is very clear that a team must be involved in the planning and processes that are required in order to help this school move out of its designation that team needs to conduct a survey of parents staff and students so all of our stakeholders and the team also has to conduct a needs assessment to really drill down into the data to see what schools need to do to move out of their designation additionally each School School must develop a skep we love our acronyms here in New York that is a school comprehensive education plan now of course here in in Greece all of our schools operate with a school Improvement plan this particular document is a very specific document set up by New York state with

049specific protocols and processes that each School must follow there are three uh main structures within that scap the commitments or goals that each School must commit to action steps or key strategies that the school must conduct and then the progress targets that they are going to identify for both the middle of the year and the end of year and the use of benchmarks to see where they are in terms of making that annual progress furthermore each School must identify an evidencebased intervention known as an ebi to be included within their scap what exactly is an ebii this is a research-based strategy uh that is going to be utilized within the school to help address the gaps that have been identified by that root cause analysis in other words what is the work the targeted work

050that we're going to do within our building to help get at the identified problem that the stakeholder group has pointed out furthermore uh New York State requires that this ebi be from an improved Clearing House so New York state provides a list of accept acceptable interventions that can be um implemented within a particular school to help it make progress it also provides a list of various Clearing Houses including the what works Clearing House that schools can reference in order to find out exactly what strategies they're going to implement within their buildings to make progress another required action is that the district itself must must Provide support organized support to each of the identified schools so that's where a district office here in Greece will come in to help make sure that each of our schools

051are making adequate process to shed their designation so how exactly do we do that well just very briefly we do provide professional learning and support uh twice a month we have our leadership and our principal learning networks Dr heler referenced those earlier in her gasa comments where we're pulling together our teachers and really focusing in on those ebis specifically here in Greece as you all know we are utilizing our professional learning communities doing very targeted and uh meth phical training around the professional Learning Community process uh so this work is going on in all of our school sites with a particular um set of focus and support within our identified schools additionally we provide our schools with data Dives throughout the year an opportunity for the school Improvement team and the administrators to come together

052and really drill down into that data throughout the year to see the effectiveness of the strategies that they've implemented and to see how they are making progress furthermore we do structured School visits throughout the year to go and visit the actual school take a look at classrooms work with the the team in the building uh to determine how their progress is coming and to offer any support that we can lend to them New York is very clear about the timeline that we have to follow uh here is a snapshot of the timeline that's required for the development of our skep just today Buckman as a newly identified School participated in a New York state Le webinar to really get a deep understanding of the work that they need to do in writing their own skep

053uh throughout the month of March they'll begin in Earnest their skep planning identifying those stakeholders that I referenced earlier that are going to make up their Improvement team and start to discuss and look at what ebis they might decide to employ in April they'll do some data analysis that will include student interviews to gather the data that they need again to inform what ebi they will employ beginning in May they'll start to do some uh root cause analysis to drill down into the data they've collected we also host our parent exchanges throughout all of our buildings and Buckman will be utilizing that as an opportunity as well all of our schools uh that have been identified to really gather parent input on what work they need to do in their building to make adequate academic

054um progress in June and July the actual step will be written and formalized uh and then it will be submitted here to the board of education for review posted on our website for public viewing and then the board of education is required to vote on the approval of the skep plans for each of our five cited schools uh as I said we'll continue to provide updates on the progress of our school Improvement processes not only for our designated schools but for all of our school sites here in Greece and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have Mr sunel um Mark I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation um it looks like you guys are doing a lot of hard work and I don't even know where to begin I have

055so many questions cuz there's just so much to this I wanted to ask and this is really coming off of um page seven on their slideshow so schools designated is TSI or atsi require specific interventions what happens if the school does not meet the Improvement targets within your designated time frame and is there a contingency measure in place if that does happen so there's not necessarily a contingency measure in place uh what could happen is if you are not making adequate progress with your particular subgroup that you've been identified so in other words if the same subgroup continues to fall short of the academic targets that have been set uh by the state uh then your designation could you could move down that scale uh so when you are a CSI school for instance New

056York state is going to provide individuals that are actually going to be here on site that are going going to have much more input into the plan that you are writing and much more oversight so that will be an example of uh just the level of support increases if you are not making that adequate progress Mr thank you thank you Mr Fleming um first off I want to acknowledge this has been an issue a concern for some of us for quite a while and I know we've had updates in the past I I but what I want I want to take this opportunity is to say thank you I it it seems to me that you're hearing our concerns and I hope also concerns of other folks out there so thank you for that um

057page eight you give the the designations can you give a little more insight into that I know there are academic disparities disciplinary disparities what are we looking at among these schools here so in terms of the specific designations here right correct so these are based on uh academic performance uh so it offer a little more clarity on that uh students in grades K through 8 their academic performance is measured by uh the annual Ela and math exams that are given by New York state in grades 3 through eight so I didn't contradict myself there uh students in grades K1 and two are also held accountable for how students in grades 3 through eight perform it's a complex formula that I won't bore you with right now but just rest assured that that so these designations

058here are based on students performance on those particular assessments that are given in the spring thank you you're welcome any other questions they have a few okay anybody else all right you can roll with them okay let's see a couple here Mr St go ahead while Mr barago is getting there I wanted to ask about the root cause analysis piece yes because I love data and I'm always interested in this um what are your methodologies or how do you collect the data specifically do you collect data beyond what the state is mandating as well and aside from the quantitative piece are you also looking at the qualitative piece that both the teacher and the teacher's reporting and that you see in the classroom I guess yeah great question so uh the data so first of

059all we're not analyzing initially the New York State performance data because we don't have those results necessarily at our fingertips uh so we don't get quite the level of data that we would like right away in terms of how we could dig into that to set the the work that we want to do uh so what we do here is we pull various assessments uh you're familiar uh with I ready the other assessments that we use to really try to drill down that data there's a number of different root cause analysis protocols that we utilize there's a fishbone protocol there's the five y's uh so that's what a team will use they'll decide which one they want to use to dig into the data uh and then of course it's but it's not just academic

060data so even if the citation is for academics we're going to look at attendance data we're going to look at Behavior data to see what kind of correlations could we make uh for why maybe students are not performing uh but qualitative data is important as well and that's why schools are required to conduct that needs assessment survey uh so we're looking at our survey data from Panorama we're hosting uh the parent exchanges to hear from parents what are you seeing at home what are we not doing as a school to help your child succeed so that level of qualitative Street data absolutely plays a role in writing these plans did I answer all your questions thank you you're welcome Mr so um you you you've identified the process for it um will we will we

061be given some specific concrete actions that are being taken and will these be done in a way that's consistent across the district or is this going to be a building by building approach yeah great question so the key to an effective School Improvement plan is specificity uh in my 25 years of education I've seen School improvements plans that have failed because they're too vague too general or quite frankly try to do too much when we're specific and targeted uh on what's wildly important that's when we're able to move the needle uh and fortunately uh New York State and this current iteration of their Improvement requirements uh recognizes that So the skep plan asks you to be very very clear and specific about what key strategies you are going to undertake so yes when those steps

062are submitted to the Board of Education it's going to be very clear what buildings are doing now in terms of your second question uh with regards to whether or not there's going to be consistency across 17 SCH plans uh the the evidence-based uh strategy thank you the evidence-based strategy that a school is going to use could vary I would tell you the professional work that we are doing here as a district for all of our school sites is around professional learning communities so most likely what you are going to see Within These school plans is a focus on professional learning communities again how are we pulling teachers together to have collaborative conversations about kids about what's working and what's not and what do we need to do to act on the data that we are

063seeing on a week toe basis in our classrooms that's essentially what Prof professional learning communities are that is on the list of ebis from New York State it's endorsed by educational researchers across the world that process so I think you will see consistency but each school is unique and that's why we ask a school Improvement team through a shared decision-making process to put together that plan uh and so you you'll see some variation but I think broad Strokes will be similar thank you um I do sure you got one more you got more than one one or two we'll go Miss Lake sure um one of the concerns I had with School Improvement plans last year um was that the goals were not very specific right and measurable right and and so that's something I'm

064really looking forward to seeing so that I feel I have a lot more information um in order to approve those so you referenced I think maybe two meetings ago uh Miss like the use of smart gos for instance right that notion of that being tonight too specific and measurable right so what we are utilizing within all of our school Improvement plans and what we're asking even though New York state does not do this what we're asking our identified schools to do is to use the 4dx process which asks schools to identify a wildly important goal that is very very specific your X to Y by when here's where we are here's where we want to get to by June and here are the specific strategies or lead measures that we are going to undertake to

065make that goal happen so think that you will see an increase across every single School site because of the Mandate that we've put in place around specificity thank you I'm looking forward to that you're welcome so I I have to go back to my original question which was regarding the specific citations I believe in the past at least one of our schools was designated for disparate disciplinary action suspensions in particular maybe two schools uh but I just want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly these are specifically only for academic performance that's correct these citations right here these designations are for academic performance correct so have the other issues gone away the the the past issues regarding disparate uh no so that's a different citation so the the at the the citations that I showed

066you on this particular screen here LSI down through CSI those are for those measures that I showed some some previous slides and that's what these five schools are cited for we are currently what you're referring to we are currently cited for our suspension rates for um black students and students with disabilities and that's part of our cap that's a separate designation that's a district designation okay in in that regard then are we actually looking at more than five schools that have designations with regards to the cap that's a district citation our entire district has been cited for that okay thank you you're welcome one one more for the time being I guess um what when will you you gave us broad timelines and then the last page shows um that you'll be coming back to

067the to the board with uh specifics and then the board will be required to make uh approvals but there's date on that when will those so uh it's interesting New York state has in fact just during our study session uh released the scap and what that document specifically looks like we had to make some projections so the specificity around that date has not quite been released but we'll be sure to update you that as soon as we have that information thank you you're welcome any other questions thank you thank you all right moving on to 4.02 technology update superintendent Maline okay I'd like to ask Mr Brad Malone to come up and share our technology plan thank you good evening thank you for having me tonight my name is Brad Malone I'm the executive director

068of information and instructional technology and digital Innovation next week marks my ninth month in the district and or ninth yes and in the nine months my team and I have done a comprehensive review of the hardware and infrastructure of the district to make sure that we had understanding of what is in place and where we need to move to uh superintendent small and cabinet thought this would be good opportunity for me to review my findings talk about some of the challenges and opportunities we've identified and some of our action steps moving forward we're going to talk about five areas of focus tonight the first is with staff devices when I started looking at our staff devices it became very clear to me just like every District in the country around 2020 there was an explosion

069of devices in the district and all of a sudden people that didn't need devices before all of a sudden needed them some of that related to the pandemic some of it is just the increase of instructional and operational software and web- based resources that are out there all of a sudden our par professionals who had never needed devices before needed them to support our students learning our mechanics our School nurses people that never needed devices before needed devices to do their jobs on a daily basis in this exploration what we came to find is that during that explosion of tech technology about 1,700 employees needed a device on a daily basis but we have about 3,400 devices assigned out to staff and that there's lots of reasons that occurred um but that's leading to some

070some issues now as those devices start aging out some of those challenges that we've identified is that we don't have a clear refresh schedule uh for those 3,400 devices we have no life cycles we have an aging Fleet and we have a limited Reserve inventory so I recommended three major changes to the cabinet around technology practices with staff devices and the first is that we need to streamline the number of devices we're allocating out to our staff uh just from both a financial point of view as well as uh maintenance and support we need to get back closer to a one:1 ratio and we're going to do that by pinpointing for each position what device best allows them to do their work and making sure that's the device that we're assigning them out we also

071need a life cycle one of the goals I told my team is I want to be able to point to any employee that ask me and tell them exactly what year they can expect their device to be replaced they might not be happy with that answer but at least they'll have an answer about what when that's going to occur and so that that we have done and finally in my first few months here I got a lot of requests from our teaching staff we we give the majority of our teaching staff Chromebooks and many of them wanted to switch to PC laptops with Windows operating system and with a lot of exploration I'll be honest it came down to a really a preference there was not a instructional need that they needed them for but

072they had a preference with Microsoft Word and with some other things and just liking that operating system better we looked at the market we looked at what instructional tools we needed them to use we looked at the fact we support Microsoft devices and chrome devices in the district and we' decided you know what there's not much of a price difference actually in some cases Chromebooks are actually more expensive these days which is a huge switch in the market from 10 years ago so we're allowing our teaching staff a choice to decide what device is BET will best work for them we want to make sure that they comfortable when they come in and that they have a device that they feel comfortable leading their instruction with we have a four-year refresh plan that's based around

073the bargaining units except for GTA which is so large I split it in the the next three years and we're going to move through and replace the those devices over the next four years that's a little about our staff devices we also discovered a lot about our student Chrome books as you all know we give St student Chromebooks to all of our students our elementary levels we currently assign them out with class sets we give the teacher a set of devices at our secondary schools we give them a device in sixth grade and then there's no real plan about when they give a device again seven years until they graduate is just too long for to for a device so what we're going to do instead is we're moving to replacing devices in grades k36

074and9 and what and they're going to be assign to individual students even at the elementary level we have hundreds of students that can use devices over the summer for academic summer supports that when they're in the classrooms we couldn't assign out to them so we're going to change that that a little bit another major change we're making is that currently when students damage devices and I'll let you in a little secret children break things um and after seeing thousands of devices broke very few of them are malicious but most of them are just because kids are kids and so what we do now is we send them over to bosies and then bosis builds us for parts we're going to switch to a warranty system that's going to stabilize the costs it's also going to

075dramatically increase how fast we get these devices back because bosis can takes months and longer to replace because they're just not staff to be able to replace them quickly when we move to warranties manufacturers can replace in days or weeks we'll mail them out out to them they'll fix them they'll send them back to us so those are some of the major changes we making student devices We've Just Begun investigating our printing situation in the district we have about 800 printers in the district with the average age average of 10 years old that's very old in technology ages we're having trouble both getting replacement parts and honestly for some of them even toner to be able to so over the next year we're going to develop a plan to both shrink that inventory uh I

076think 800 is a very generous allotment of printing of printers I believe we can bring that down without affecting the the ability to print by that much and we're also going to um replace them over the next few years the next area is the that Network infrastructure and we're going to be talking very specifically about our W wireless network and before I get into it there's two terms I think it's really important for us to talk about the first is end of life this is a date that the manufacturer stops selling a specific piece of equipment so if you think of it in terms of Apple iPhones when they come out with the iPhone 16 last year they stop selling the 12 that's the end of life for that that 12 and that's kind of

077a signal to the market that this is a a device that's being phased out a model that's being phased out next is end of support this is a much more important much more critical uh date to pay attention to in our world this is when they no longer offer support for that device they don't patch it anymore giving security updates they don't update the operating system and they won't help you if there's a problem this is like when all of a sudden your iPhone won't take updates anymore or you can't use the latest apps this is an inconvenience and a minor security issue when we're talking about consumer iPhones it is a critical vulnerability when we start talking about networks what we've come to find out in our exploration and our investigations is that our

078Network switches this is what kind of controls the traffic from devices out to the internet and back about uh 237 of them will be end of support in October 2025 again under support is When Things become a really critical situation our controllers which is basically what allows um when you walk down the hall it passes your laptop from device to device device uh those are end of life at the end or just a few months ago and they're end of support again that critical date is just in January 2027 which is approaching very rapidly and finally uh and probably most concerning to me is our access points these are these things up on our ceilings in every classroom in the hallways all over the place that your devices are connecting to to in order to

079get back to our Network 42% of them are already end of support so that is a a concerning situation that we want to rectify as soon as possible so with working cabinet with working in the finance department we developed a plan that over the next two years we're going to need to replace our wireless network entirely all parts of it will need to be updated to uh the latest models this will allow us some opportunities to bring some new features and technology in but most importantly it'll diminish the vulnerabilities that we have to outside agents and the final topic I'm going to talk about tonight tonight is our telefony system this is our telephone system and I'll be incredibly honest with this this entire system is has been under support for a couple of years

080and so what this means is that we're no longer able our servers which control all the traffic of telephones ringing um as well as even the device the phones themselves are under support meaning that um we can't get support for them they're not being updated it's really critical time we're we're feeling it often with our servers going down if a phone falls off a table and breaks it's very hard for me even to get a replacement for it because they're not selling them anywhere we have to buy refurbished ones off the market and so this summer we're going to do a complete overhaul of our tilan system and that's going to involve replacing every phone in the district as well as we're moving away from servers to a cloud-based system that's going to allow us

081a lot more granularity as well as a lot more control and we think a lot more stability in the process I know that's incredibly fast but again we just wanted to let you know steps where we're finding ourselves some of the the big initial action plans that we have and I'm certainly able to ask any questions or go in any more detail about any of the areas miss m this may sound simple but I don't know the difference between a laptop in a Chromebook Absolut that's a fantastic question it looks like a laptop to me they look very similar in fact in some some manufacturers the they're exact same body okay it's mostly the operating system one's a Windows operating system okay that we have here that you're probably most familiar with and or the

082Chrome Windows which is entirely web based so there's no so there's no software on a Chromebook it's all based on cloud computing um and it it allows for um you can have a lot less power to do very similar work okay thank you yeah absolutely M like you have been a busy man wow it's incredible um uh what what do you do for cyber security we do a number of a number of things for sure um we we meet reg monthly with an outside agent uh agency that we look at some of our practices they they review the best practices we patch our devices our our Windows machines get patches every month when they come out they're pushed out to all of our machines we um en Force things like multiactor authentication that's when when

083you sign on to your email for the first time you need to set it up so you have a second way to do it usually your phone uh we there's a whole host of ways that we are looking to uh Safeguard our Network and our users privacy as much as possible is there any kind of a is there like a firewall or anything that absolutely we have a firewall between us cut you off we're going to do that in a memo to the board we're not going to discuss that publicly what our systems are just from a Safety and Security standpoint so you'll get an update in the superintendency report okay thank you thank you sorry to interrup board member like but I [Laughter] just question vice president farmer thank you thank you very much

084I'm wondering what we're going to be doing with the desktops that we are talking about getting rid of honestly the desktops the majority of our desktops are out of age they are under of support they can't take Windows 11 and then in October 2025 Windows stops supporting windows 10 so they're not going to get any more patches security so what we do is we actually buy all of our equipment through bosis and and so we actually will just return them bosies and they will do whatever they decide to do with them can they still be used for typing documents printing things out no from a security point of view it's they need to be out of the system for sure oh from a security point of view yes because they end because Windows 10 is

085the end of support in October 2025 they're not safe to have in here uh Windows devices are some of the most vulnerable um devices in the world so you want to make sure that they are patched and once you can't put a patch on them you don't want them anywhere in the network okay thank you one more go ahead do we still have kids in our district who are working on Chromebooks and and uh smart devices all of our students have Chromebooks they're all assigned to Chromebooks yes but there used to be uh Kathy used to talk about this that we had a group of kids in our district oh that work for us oh I'm sorry I misunderstood the question yes uh there's not one currently it's actually one of the long-term B benefits

086of the warranty system is that they have some of the manufacturers we were're in conversations with have entire programs and Cory Skinner and I have been in length discussions about revitalizing that I would love to bring it back uh my former District I always called it my white whale I was never able to get up and going I'm really hoping to bring it here in the next two years thank you thanks Mike I just have a couple questions anybody else um when you talk about the Chromebooks being damaged like what percent of the Chromebooks are damaged on an annual basis and how many are and what percentage are destroyed um damage and Destro I I'll be honest I don't have those numbers here I just haven't done that calculation uh I was in a similar

087position in another district and it was around 20% um that were damaged over a course of the year I would guess that it was very similar I can start doing those calculations it'll take a little bit but I'll certainly get those numbers for you and then on your slide on page 10 on device deployment schedule yeah I know you do it here are our staff members going to be able to get significant notice and reminders that that's upcoming instead of like the Friday before we're going to do it over the weekend and you don't have a computer anymore yes absolutely that's one of the things we're working with the technicians about is that they're going to be reaching out setting up appointments uh it's a really change in practice they're going to set up Pro

088and that and that user will tell them when they want them to come over and do it within a span of time okay because I know we've struggled with that sometimes with technology updates and nobody knows it's coming until it's already come yeah so and that's what I hear about I I I believe in over communication when it comes to those kind of changes changes hard for everyone and so I I really want to make sure we get that news out as it's happening and as a followup to the device deployment as you're doing these groups of people are the employees going to have enough time to transfer either I mean I've seen some desktops that are loaded with on their you know right on the desktop on the on the um desktop computer are

089they going to have ample time to move everything to the cloud or into different you know Google Docs whatever we're using are they going to have ample time again because I'm concerned that you know if we don't give them the time there's going to be things that are lost or things that don't get transferred over which is going to become a problem absolutely and this I can't take credit for this because I set up long before me but actually when you're looking at those desktops that's not actually the desktop of the computer it's actually back on our server okay so honestly the second they log into a different device it will all be there oh perfect awesome so it's it's just a shortcut that's appearing like it's on the short on the desktop gotcha okay

090thank you so much yeah thank you thank you all for the time I think that's the first time anybody's got an Applause in a presentation might have to have you present more often sorry up your game Fleming all right moving on at 5.01 can I ass move to the table the 2526 bus replacement purchase resolution mve by Mr SEL second up by vice president farmer any comments questions or concerns on this I'm just going to make a comment just so everybody's aware this does not there are no electric buses being purchased by the gree Central School District I got that question today from two different people so it's no electric buses so with that all those in favor that passes 7 to zero moving on to the consent agenda can I have somebody move the

091consent agenda to the table please mve by miss m seconded by vice president farmer any comments questions or concerns on the consent agenda seeing on all those in favor that that passes 7 to zero moving on to item 10.01 guiding documents resolution can I Sony move that to the table please move by Mr stencel second by vice president farmer I'm going to let this was submitted by board member like so I'm going to let her speak to it first yes um thank you um I've asked that these very lengthy and significant documents like the school Improvement plans and the Strategic plan um be given to us six weeks in advance um that's not I guess I'm not supposed to change the language or anything but the idea is just so we have it and so

092we can have the time to spend and be able to make an informed decision um it was very helpful to have your update today and to be able to give you feedback based on what we remember we you know um dealt with last time so that's why I have done that um and again um I just want wanted some extra time um from Friday to um Tuesday for those documents and now we have two more schools and that's just a huge amount of material so that's why I had suggested that or asked for that any other comments all right um I have a couple points I guess of clarification um what's the you mentioned PLC in there you have PLC mentioned that was a very that was a rather long um do you mean the

093professional learning plan yes oh okay that's the PLC is something different so I just wanted to make sure it was the plan yeah it's it was the long docum I got to page eight and I thought I was going to lose it and so I guess i' i' like to make an amendment to your resolution um I would like to change PLC to professional learning plan please I would like to take out sip School Improvement plans because the board doesn't vote on school Improvement plans I would replace that with the scap which is the plan we vote on um I would also like to drop it from six weeks down to two weeks um and then I would like to remove and should include an in-depth review of the proposals by the administration I'd like

094to remove that and I would like to um that so that last sentence would read um so it'll go the advanced notice will provide ample time for board members to review the documents including a review of I'm going to change specific to research based strategies and supporting evidence and supporting evidence from New York State s approved Clearing Houses I just don't want to use what works specifically so I'm going to make that is a a um I guess is an amendment to the resolution can I get a second I have a question we have to get a second first second second of by vice president farmer Mr bagoro I appreciate the numerous adjustments in there I'm wondering if we can well I have I have a question regarding the remov removal of the in-depth there

095was a lot there I'm not sure I'm following all of it m so I I was going to suggest maybe we could um revise that to a two-step process just so we can narrow some things out and just make it a little easier to follow all of the changes that are going on on but I I guess my main question is you you're removing the in-depth review and I'm not sure exactly what you're replacing that with and nothing it would just go away it would be ample time for board memb is to review the documents including a review of specific research-based strategies and supporting evidence from New York State approve New York State SED approved Clearing Houses I'm not sure I think in indepth review of proposals by the administration I mean typically that's the

096presentation we get I would guess it' be so we get a presentation on all of these from the administration so I'm just assuming that that would continue is opposed to I don't know what more in depth would be I guess is my question so that's why I removed it would would it be an opport would there be an opportunity I guess if there's enough time would there be an opportunity should there be a lot of questions to have to dig beyond what might happen at one of these presentations it might presentation might raise a lot of questions that we might want to a little deeper into so I think maybe with more time available I I guess would we potentially be able to have a followup to dig into uh some of those questions more

097you say so I think the bigger question the the what stood out to me with the six weeks was only the concern so this is well we as Mark mentioned we just got Clarity on when they needed to be uploaded right and um I'm assuming it would be no later than the second uh meeting in August because prior to the start of school the six weeks would for them to be completed and handed in by the six weeks would require all of the plans to be completely done by the end of the school year and then when you saw the timeline what that does is it eliminates July um which which is a critical time for schools to work with their teams and then also Summer Leadership so um it wasn't by any uh wasn't

098a means to keep them from you it was a means that to have them six weeks in advance it would eliminate that that time frame that they need I wasn't sure um exactly um so that that's the six weeks but wasn't quite sure what an in-depth review of the proposals by the administration if if who you were referring to by Administration that was cabinet that's reviewing the the school Improvement plans because if that's the case we are um for example Mark and our school Improvement team um Works hand inand all the way through that process and to number one make sure it aligns to what we know New York State's requiring so that in-depth um review of the proposals or of the skep plans is part of that continuous process right through till you see

099them and and it takes and it it is explained at the presentation and can the presentation be sometime before we vote on it yeah and I think what what um what I heard um Sean recommend was if we could get them in rather than that fright like um the board meeting that leading to that like not seeing them the first time at that Tuesday if we could back it up almost like our policies to some degree to that meeting before where you could have that time to look the other piece is that um these are living documents so you know as they're if they're approved let's just say that following meeting and uploaded our U buildings do refine as as time goes on so we always have that ability uh I think the struggle that

100we're put in when um is that they are working on the almost to the time that we have to submit them um to the state and but during that time we they do not work alone they work with us and the state so that's the only struggle Mark when you were mentioning we could ask the questions you know when they when you have them the the issue is is at that point they um they have been reviewed at least by from us from our standpoint to then be uploaded so I don't know what we could do afterwards is the struggle that we're in with the timeline but our plan is to continue between now and that time to bring the board up to speed through study sessions or whatever it may be so that you're

101along for the process I also wanted just to make let you know that the New York State uh clearing house or what they suggest includes the what works clearing house that's in New York state so in fact that's recommended so it just doesn't lock us into just that it does have um several options in there and that's one of them and this is the thing I like of the most is that the feedback and the changes it's a continuous loop so um I I see that being done so it's not as critical that you know we know that things that come up will be continue to be worked down in the next year too so anything else on your Amendment all right I'll so I'll read back so everybody's clear on what the amendment will

102be that the result the final draft of the guiding documents the dcip the skeps scce the Strategic plan code of conduct and the professional learning plan will be presented to the board of education at least two weeks at least two weeks prior to approval the advance notice will provide ample time for board members to review the documents including including a review of research-based strategies and supporting evidence from New York State s approved Clearing Houses so with that we'll do a roll call vote we'll start with Miss M yes yes yes yes yes yes and I'm a yes so now back to the main resolution as amended um I'm kind of assuming since we all supported it that we're going to support it so all those in favor any opposed that passes 7 to Z thank

103you and moving on to 10.02 can I have some you move this resolution to the table please move by Miss Farah second by Mr baragar bagorio um with that Mr bagorio it's your resolution I'll let you speak first great thank you um so the the objective of this resolution is to um to re for the board to receive timely uh information regarding uh the results of our various perception surveys uh I'm asking that that essentially that uh the board be given the information uh I think it's written in here um to within uh 15 days of uh maybe that's yeah within 15 days of the um District administration U having access to it um the intent is um just to make sure that we do we are kept in the loop of of U the

104percep ctions of our of our staff our teachers uh um whatever you know the various staff members parents um students and uh the various items that uh that I've referenced below are some goals that we would want to have uh embedded in this whole process one being maximum participation of the uh various u u constituent groups um that the information uh be insightful in the sense that uh it it references avoiding uncertain or undecided responses um I think a lot of a lot of people sometimes uh kind of check that uncertain box in order to avoid taking a position and uh I I think it's it's important as much as possible U for uh surveys to push people to to really kind of stay M stake their claim um that's where we can be as

105a district most helpful um it needs to be impactful meaning that respondents um should have a good sense that this information is is being gathered sincerely with the with the goal of improving our district and uh and it needs to be anonymous I know it is uh some people never feel secure about that um but I think these are all kind of assurances that we just want to emphasize so some of these may be measurable some of them may not be but I think these are these are the the goals and the intents uh behind uh doing this we want to make a better District we all want to be in the loop on on how to do that anybody else I have a couple comments I'm gonna do them for each of the resolved

106on the very first resolve therefore be resolve maximum participation respondents should be confident that the responses are completely Anonymous so their perceptions can be honestly shared without concern about recourse of any kind the through Panorama all of the surveys are Anonymous we do not have access to any of the names or identif identifiable information that is connected to survey responses GTA executive leadership has never fed a negative complaint regarding any of our surveys um on your second bullet point therefore be it further resolved survey surveys should be constructed to avoid uncertain or undecided responses neutral responses avoided to bias responses and encourage honest implant the fivepoint lard scale is the gold standard for attitude perception surveys any scale construction should include a midpoint or an undecided point if they don't you are essentially forcing respondents

107into an opinion they may not have thus skewing the data if the majority of the responses are neutral that is an indication that it's worth examining and potentially revising the question not the scale on the next bullet point therefore be it further resolved impactful who responders should be confident that the responses will be cultivate trust Etc the perception surveys have been done in our schools for eight years these surveys play an important role in our school improvement process building leaders have always encouraged all of our stakeholders to participate and have used the data to improve systems as needed in the next one the 15 day um I won't read it all did you know that's I mean I'm supportive of that one the district does have the results um and parents within 15 days so

108I don't see I have no issue with that and every and again every response in the survey is anonymous so I don't think we have to worry about that um and in the last bullet point the survey window was consistent year to year this year was administered January 6th to February 7th more than 5,500 students in grades two to 2 through 12 a th000 plus teachers and 2,000 families plus families completed this year's survey so with that I would like to amend the resolution and um I want to cross out the second therefore be it resolved insightful surveys should be constructed to avoid the uncertain undecided responses and avoid biased responses that encourage honest input so I'd like to strike that as part of my Amendment and [Applause] what was the other part here and

109they are Anonymous so I don't necessarily know if we need um are completely Anonymous should be confident their responses are completely Anonymous I guess we can leave that but they are Anonymous so it's kind of redundant so with that can I get a second on my Amendment Miss L is that a second thank you could you read your the first one you changed I'm gonna I'm eliminating therefore be it further resolved insightful survey should be constructed to avoid uncertain or undecided responses that's that second therefore be resolved I'm striking everything else I'm leaving are you including Panorama this is an anonymous I mean it is you said it I don't know if it's included I didn't include it because it's kind of redundant I guess I don't necessarily know if we need to even have

110yeah that's what you know that are completely Anon I mean I guess I can leave it I'm I guess for me it just I I wonder if it causes people to think that they aren't Anonymous if we have to say that yeah that was my kind of thing I what do you think Mark well I I bring that up because I have heard respon or potential respondents say yeah I don't believe they're Anonymous and I think it from my perspective I'm I'm I want to make sure that they are I want to give our full uh confirmation that they are we're not trying to find we're not trying to dig we just want to assure that's all it is so you're thinking in writing it will bring that Assurance yeah okay sure super small I

111just I wanted to be sure it goes to our conversation um with that we can give those surveys within that time limit I just want to be clear that it's it's the district surveys it's not the individual schools that we don't have the ability that we don't create reports that it's just the district survey results for the three stakeholders um and that it doesn't cause any confusion that it would be the individual schools because those those are done through the buildings on their own computer what we took so as long as that's clear I don't know if it has to be written there clearly but as long as everybody has that understanding yeah and I just want to thank you for that clarification in our prior conversation any other discussion on the amendment all right

112those all in favor of the amendment that passes 7 to zero now back to the main resolution um any more comments discussion on the main resolution saying none all those in favor that passes 7 to zero moving on to superintendent comments superintendent Smalling good evening um I was aware of the speakers coming tonight so I just prepared uh a little bit of a response for all for all of you um and I did want to just take a moment to acknowledge the parents and the students um from Arcadia and some of our other schools who spoke this evening about their concerns um we hear you and we recognize the issues that you have shared um I've been with the district since 2005 um and I do believe that as a district we have been open

113about the challenges we Face particularly addressing violence and meeting the behavioral needs of our students in our schools uh I don't feel that we shy away from these realities um we do try to confront them h on with transparency and taking action and I do recog ize that sometimes that action um maybe uh parents don't agree with but we do try to be transparent and take the action the best we can to support our students our staff and our families um our commitment extends Beyond accountability and consequences we are also focused on addressing the root causes that contribute to these issues um to the end um just wanted to share some of the significance and steps that we have tried throughout our uh the years especially over the past few years uh we have um

114looked to expand membership in student parent voice and our code of conduct committee um we have added several positions um dedicated to violence prevention um our social workers counselors and uh teachers on special assignment we have had significant positions uh to meet the needs that you all shared tonight um we have provide extensive training uh and professional development for our staff including implementing programs like leader and me um at the elementary or K through uh eight levels um and social emotional Learning Blocks to teach and reinforce pro-social behaviors um we have facilitated dozens of mediations to prevent and resolve conflicts among students um we are continually looking to engage parents I'm grateful that you are here but we look to engage parent meetings to Foster collaboration and understanding um we have established Behavior contracts for

115some of our most um chronic students uh individual students that that those are needed for and we do continually enforce um short and long-term suspensions I mean that was brought up earlier today um we do know that when there is violent behaviors we do enforce short and long-term suspensions um those do not go down um these are truly complex challenges that do require strong trusting Partnerships uh between schools and families and just today um Miss Larsson and I we just returned from the New York State Council of school superintendent winter conference and I had the opportunity to work with superintends from across the across the state and they all are voicing their same concern s um these issues are not unique to our district they are part of a broader conversation happening in schools and

116I'm not saying that to excuse it uh I am not saying that all to excuse it I just know that this is a school and Society issue that we are all truly struggling with however we know that real progress uh happens when schools uh parents and community members work together and we have seen success in gree in some of our schools very recently when um collaboration uh schools have worked with parents and community members to create a safe and supportive uh environment for all students I do believe that together we can and we must ensure that our schools um remain a place where students feel safe valued and empowered to learn um I do appreciate you coming tonight I do assure you that uh we will continue to be very focused at our schools where

117we hear these con concerns and continue to work and encourage families to come in to our schools that's where that work takes place is in our schools and we will all of us will commit to being a part of that and supporting as as best as we can so that your your children are coming to school feeling safe feeling valued and having fun you know and getting back to what like I think somebody mentioned earlier laughing and enjoying time with friends and learning um and so we are committed to doing that work and looking forward to working with you uh I also had one more comment I just wanted to extend my gratitude to Deputy uh superintendent Mark Fleming um for his insightful presentation this evening also wanted to thank uh GTA and gasa for

118sharing more about our work with school Improvement and our guiding coalitions I want to recognize the dedicated efforts of our school Improvement teams of our um district and building leaders our the district and school guiding coalitions all who've been laser focused on advancing professional learning communities we firmly believe that strong effective plc's are the key to empowering our teachers and support staff by equipping them with the tools and collaboration needed to meet the diverse needs of all of our students so for all of you involved in that work your commitment to this work is making a lasting impact on our school SCH and our students and I'm grateful for that thank you thank you superent small Mr Alvarez you're up thank you um so the superintendent advisory Council had a meeting last month in February

119where we looked at um superintendent small lean's entry plan and was able to um have an Insight on the goals that the superintendent has to accomplish for the district and then we were also able to speak to several District leaders who were helping us our second annual student Leadership Summit and discuss the different ideas that we had and the different ideas that they had to ensure a great event um last month was Black History Month and I had the amazing opportunity to speak at the celebration and see different student um performances and as well as their art in the dist that they showcase for the district and in recognition of last month being black history month I also want to acknowledge that this month is women's history month a month not to not only to

120acknowledge the cont utions that women have made in our society in the past but to recognize the impact that they continue to make on our daily lives um The Odyssey black C Union is hosting a cultural showcase for all high school students across the district where students will do a series of performances that exemplify their culture through fashion dance singing spoken word and more the date is March 14th and it is starting in The Odyssey cafeteria at 5:00 moving into the auditorium promptly at 6:30 and ending at at 7:30 the Olympia student Olympia students hosted a black Scholars lunch in where they celebrated um black students for the academic achievements and a special mention to this is that the culinary class that our District offers cat to the event which is always great to see

121um the partnership and the support within the school community and then the black the black Union at Athena hosted their third annual blackout Gala and many students have stated that this event was not only successful but it had a great to turn a great turnout and many of them had a great time coming together to celebrate excellence in our district but as well as enjoy the time together and then at Longridge um many students had the chance to cast a vote for who would they like who would they would like to see get pied at an assembly but the ability of their ability to vote was based on their growth in I already scoring which was told to me that many of the students that voted it was a very high number meaning that many

122students participated in the voting because of their growth of the scores so that was a nice highlight for me to hear and then finally um last month February 7th a young black girl passed away at Odyssey and her name was Brio uh she was an early grad with many aspirations on becoming entrepreneur and journalist and to those that knew her they knew that she always had a smile on her face and while she was being while she was always very softspoken she had a strong Advocate a strong voice for advocacy and change um she made an amazing impact on the community and her Legacy and spirit will forever dwell in the building and with that being said I want to express my um my appreciation to the Greece Odyssey staff teachers Administration and as well

123as District leaders for their support to students I for one was Belle's best friend and I knew that um I knew that I could I know I could say that the support that I received was sincere and genuine from everyone in the community through my own moments of sadness and grief and it truly shows how connected our community is and dedicated to ensuring that students have that support system to be successful whether they're inside of whether they're in the school or outside of the school thank you Mr Al board member comments Miss like I was able unable to attend the last meeting because I was in Albany advocating for community schools I was pleased to share with our legislators how the Greece model strives for Equitable opportunities for all students regardless of the difficulties in

124their lives supports the instructional goals of their schools and involves parents even with fraction night or Valentine's Day dance I did however watch the meeting with particular interest to the midyear strategic Plan update and questions raised by my colleagues I thought about our three commitments and measures of success our strategic plan is thoughtful and complex but it often leaves me Lost In The Weeds I also thought about smart goals in a plum line you may not know what a plum line is but um you may all be too young but before levels they would um put a string on a thumbtack and a weight at the bottom and that was due north north and south and you could pretty much level anything any picture frame any collection of pictures with that Plum line but it

125was always something you could count on um so I believe that complex problems often have Simple Solutions not necessarily easy but simple we also seem to agree that change is needed but because entangled in the solutions what if we decided on three wigs which is why I came prepared tonight some of you may not know what wigs are but they are wildly important Golds and I'd like to suggest mine which is why I ran for school board one safe and orderly environment for everyone in the building or around the building and even businesses in the neighborhoods 100 % Proficiency in reading math at reading in math at grades three four and eight and a high level of support for classroom teachers for each wig we now establish smart goals and thanks to my friend to

126my left they are specific measurable achievable relevant and time bound we collect data and review it in relation to the wigs that's always our Plum line we look at every initiative and program that we have in the district and nothing is off the table Arc after school clubs Community Schools peer accountability Council restorative practices seal everything we do and we hold it up to those three is it getting us closer to that goal not at all or even is it making it worse can we tweak it to make it work um the last one the high level of support for classroom teachers um I really have a heart for this um being a former classroom teacher um the plc's are great but they're not everything that teachers need um teachers are responsible for their classrooms

127but I believe too much of that the responsibility is placed on them beyond that students must clearly understand rules of conduct so that teachers can do what they do best every non-teaching staff member should contribute to a safe and orderly environment even if it means Manning bathrooms or being in the cafeterias where kids are having lunch um also that that neutral response that we talked about has bothered me it bothered me from the very beginning and it was really interesting how Mark broke it down once and we were looking at the different the different kinds of questions and where teachers agency was involved something that they could do um deliver instruction to my students the neutrals were very low in other things that might be kind of a controversial issue or a delicate issue there

128were a lot more neutrals and so really wondering about pulling out those neutrals and ignoring them or looking at what a high degree of neutrals might be saying what message might be embedded there um especially many of those each those issues teachers are intimately involved with every day and um of course having done that for 34 years it's hard to believe that any teacher would say oh I have no opinion on that one um I suppose it's possible but our best and our brightest teachers can and will transform schools just as they can transform the lives and futures of their students it's currently in Vogue to equate all voices but it's important to recognize as recognize that some voices divide and tear down or others make the world a better place and many of those

129have been our teachers we're fortunate in our district right now to have a dedicated capable hardworking leadership team open to feedback now may be the time we can really personify excellence in education thank you m Lake you're welcome board member m um I have a few comments I had the opportunity this past month to um part or enjoy the celebration of black Excellence my colleague over here did a fabulous job it was so wonderful to see so many students from our district participate in that um I also Early Learning Center is my place and I went to another Westy University and I it's so invigorating for me to see our youngest students because they're our future and they're so excited to be there and participating I love it uh it's music time for me and

130of course it's musical so I had the opportunity to see The Little Mermaid at Odyssey I could tell every one of those students was having a fabulous time I love that and the next two weekends Arcadia middle Arcadia High School excuse me is doing into the woods want to remind people that Arcadia won the last two years Rochester Broadway Theater League's production of the year I think they have a good chance again this year uh finally um uh on a personal note I at the last board meeting we voted on the veterans exemption and I voted against it and I didn't explain and I'd like to um my father was a World War II veteran and had earned two purple hearts so he was injured in the war was always very active in the American

131Legion and the um VFW um when I thought about my dad my dad would not have wanted his neighbors to pay his taxes he he wanted to serve his community for that and that's the reason I did not vote for that um I'm happy to pass and I have a challenge for all the veterans in our community they said there was around 3,000 of them I'd like you to come out in May and help support the budget because sometimes we don't even get 3,000 people in the community to vote so um support our schools if you can please I'd appreciate it thank you Mr Borio thank you I uh I also had an opportunity to get out and see The Little Mermaid saw some of our staff there and it was a great time really

132amazing uh really amazing group of young people um I want to uh just acknowledge uh our student uh board members comments uh regarding his classmate um because I had a conversation with someone from another District who um was kind of lamenting the lack of um expression uh when something when a tragedy happens in in some places and I'm I'm just really taken by the amount of care that we see around here and uh so s and I know uh Mr mck acknowledged uh that student and several other uh people in our community at at the last board meeting I wasn't here like U board member Lake I was away but had the opportunity to watch the meeting afterward and uh and I appreciate that that's it I think it's really telling uh about the character

133and caring of this District so uh my sympathies to you and your friends and uh and Briel B's family that was I want to extend that same care uh to the parents who came out today to address concerns and to the young student who bravely spoke it's not an easy thing it's not an easy thing for parents to do um I want to Echo superintendent smalling's comments that your voices and your collaboration your participation uh on committees um just being involved in in so many different ways is really really valuable please be involved continue to be involved um it's it's extremely important I know this isn't a Q&A opportunity um I'm going to propose some thoughts and I know we've been shown that we do not shy away from suspensions when when um bad things

134happen and I also know we've been repeatedly shown we have obligations under the compliance Assurance plan and the law that we have to take certain actions and we can't we we can't do those things lightly we have to be attentive to the the needs of all of our students including those who at times create chaos violence disruption but I want to Echo the voices of the parents here tonight that we cannot we cannot forget about the other students in the process uh John hadti in his book visible learning focuses on the importance of school as being safe for students and he emphasizes that if classes are to be inviting places that are fair and safe and places where students are respected as Learners then there is no place for bullying no place he says that's

135a quote he he cites research that says that uh that bullying behaviors have a significant a strong and significant effect size uh a negative correlation between achievement and bullying um and the same is true with disruptive behavior students can have a disruptive a negative effect on their own be on their own learning and on other students learnings learning and he says quote again a major message is that poor Behavior needs Fair clear and understood consequences he points out the strong effect sizes for positive consequences negative consequences and combinations of both but he emphasizes consequences matter the effects of understood consequences are high for reductions in the in the regular classroom and higher in self-contained special classes and I'm wondering and and maybe at some point superintendent smallen you or some of your staff can can

136help me understand and and maybe investigate I know we have and I thought this was part of the issue under the u under the the designations that we talked about earlier that part of it was due to disparities in in uh in suspensions or or discipline apparently I was off on exactly where that fell in but since so many of our students who create disruptions and violence are often it's a small number and uh and often they're repeat offenders is there a way that we can separate that small group in to deal with them in a different way I know that that's not for a discussion now I'm just I'm just putting a question out there there has to be and I view our role not just just as oversight but also advocacy how do

137we how do we together talk about changes that can help us deliver better results for all of our students because we cannot forget the students who are here with the intent of learning and we can't forget about our teachers either who are in that environment so thank you stay stay involved thank you Mr Bard comments Mr Farah all right thank you I just wanted to go over a few things that have happened over the past month a couple of us did get a chance to do the black history Excellence luncheon over at Olympia that was a great event to see our culinary schools US students did a great job with that also we also had uh an opportunity to do The Little Mermaid and see that the vocals were amazing from Ariel and urso they

138really builted those out as far as uh Sebastian I think he took my jacket out of his closet or out of my closet the Sparkles um I had an opportunity to get back from New York State regarding our advocacy from Mund County School Board Association where we got to sit down with the senior Deputy Commissioner Jeff mat me um regarding what was going on where we're going to see things what's going on with the electric bus mandate um if there's anything that we can see with the governor's budget we we got a lot of updates um I think a lot of us were in um agreement regarding a few things I know that there's going to be some changes possibly to the foundation Aid a lot of this stuff really though Romeo you did cut

139touch on um so not much more different happen from from that um they did there's a plan pilot for a project based learning um we're going over graduation measures portraits of The Graduate uh we are going to be looking at the Rubiks uh so with all of that I also want to thank the parents for coming out here for Resident forums I know sometimes it's not easy to hear a lot of these things whether it's good b or indiff so I do appreciate all the feed that feedback that we do get from our parents uh lastly um let's see here there is a Springfest coming up at Arcadia middle school as a district uh for Community Schools April 26 from 11: to 1:30 I hope to see all of you there and that is all

140I've got thank you Mr Farah Jordan you good all right vice president for arm um just a few things um syus I I I so appreciate you having the the the strength to share what you shared about your best friend it reminds us that we are taking care of each other that we need to take care of each other the advocacy from parents coming in talking about how can we take care of all of our kids how can we take care of my kids I um sometimes wonder if um what we're seeing out in you know over the years with the school things that horrific things that are happening in our schools and I appreciated the mother who said when my kids come back home I have to retach them and that just what an

141incredible thing that we do as parents the opportunity to have to continue telling our students our our children I'm sorry our children so you being here says that Greece is an opportunity for us to come together we passed this veterans uh exemption last week because we care about the people in our communities when I listen to Jeremy and everybody talk talking about the safety of our kids we know we feel that and we talk about it and we discuss it we want you to know that thank you thank you vice president farmer all right um I want to thank all the parents that came here tonight it's not easy to come to a board meeting and speak publicly um especially about something that you're not happy with and I totally get that I empathize with

142you and with the issues and your advocacy is well taken and the board we're doing what we can do and going to continue to work harder to make turn the environment around in all our schools we want all our schools to be positive we have some things coming later in the spring that are going to hopefully improve the school climates in all of our schools so I just want to take the time to thank you I want to thank our students for speaking tonight the messaging was heard I just want to make sure you guys understand that and to be honest Ian I me kind of echo what vice president farmer said I wish I had a district full of parents like you we probably wouldn't have any issues in our schools if we have

143more parents like you so I totally appreciate that I'd like to wish good luck to the Greece Arcadia true leading team as they had the states this weekend hopefully they will be state champions and we can recognize them here at a board meeting I would like to thank the flam I institute for the eye screenings they gave our students that is much appreciated and Eye Health is significant into all your other health in your body and I'm just going to finish up um it is women's history month and I want to recognize um some amazing women in this room who make this District a better place every day assistant superintendent Flagler assistant superintendent Baker assistant superintendent Larson our board clerk Lori Manhart they work tirelessly on behalf of this District day in and day out

144I mean there's no five days a week 9 to5 with them it's 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year so I want to truly appreciate all what you guys do on behalf of the school district and the effort you're putting in I want to recognize the women on the board that I serve with board member mour my former vice president she's been a huge support for me over the last several years Miss L comes in is a new board member she brings a lot of good ideas she's willing to talk she's willing to discuss she's at advocating on behalf of this District every day Miss Farah the same she Advocates passionately about this District I mean her and I don't see I ey on some things but um I appreciate

145the fact that she works hard on the for our students and our families in this district and vice president farmer she brings a unique perspective I truly appreciate it took a while to get to understand Tracy but I I think I finally figured it out a little bit so and I I truly appreciate what all four of you do on behalf of our students in a volunteer position it's a lot of work it's a lot of phone calls it's a lot of stress and I just want to thank you all and with that I want everyone to have a good evening be safe be healthy God bless and go bills and you're the senior member tonight like to make a motion to end this meeting is there a second Mr stel all those in favor

146thank you everyone