001one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you can actually move the agenda to the table please move by Miss floor second by vice president Laura any additions corrections deletions to the agenda singing monologue the agenda that passes seven to zero Mr Hepburn student leaders from Odyssey welcome oh Dr Hepburn I'm sorry I apologize Dr hupper congratulations oh I got an excuse that all right thank you all for having us here tonight I am Tavia Smith I am a junior at Odyssey Academy and I'm also part of the RTE one program I'm Delaney best I'm a junior and I'm also part of the RTE one program hi my name is taryana sessler I'm a senior at Odyssey Academy and I'm a part of the rtu program hi my name is Melanie
002Hernandez I'm also a senior Odyssey Academy and I'm a part of the rt2 group and a former student of the rt1 hello my name is Juan karujo I am I'm a senior at ISU Academy I'm part of the RT one and two program we are here to talk about just some things that Odyssey has been doing lately and we want to talk about our program RTE so to start RTE responding to emergencies is primarily a program that gets us prepared to work as First Responders this class is also a MCC dual credit class meaning we can get college credit in high school um so the class that I'm in is RTE one this is more of a firefighter based class and even though it's not my career of choice I still get so much experience
003from the program such as life skills I get problem-solving skills emergency management skills all things that everyone should have access to because in the real world you never know when you could come up on an emergency and to have those skills is so important so every Wednesday and Thursday for the other RTE one group we have our training days and here we have um battalion chief gebo who comes in and devotes his time to help us learn and for our own success and we also have a lot of field trips throughout the year where we go to training grounds and work with firefighters and we get a feel for what it's like to be a firefighter at the end of this program we get certified in beefo which is basic exterior firefighting operations and hempra
004which is Hazmat first responder operations tomorrow is actually our final skill or our final exam where we get tested in our writing our written exam and our physical exam I believe that every single board member here has been invited to that um from like 12 30 to 2 30 you can come watch us present our skills there's going to be food and we would love to see everybody there tomorrow at Odyssey going off of what Tavia said recently we've been doing a lot of stuff at the uh North Greece fire training ground we've uh we've been uh practicing vent roof venting uh tapping a hydrant we we actually got to climb a I think 40 foot fire truck ladder I was kind of scared for that so if you're on the presentation yeah that was
005really high but uh we also learned how to like tie knots and just climb climb a ladder but like the right way I guess authority too which we mainly focus on EMS and Emergency Medical Services we observe calls from the radio preparing us for future jobs such as dispatchers at the Monroe 911 Center we learn from Dr Cushman as the head of EMS director the many many nurse shadowing positions welcome to all of us wanted to join the medical field our EMS instructor Mr Carver taught us hands-on experience and Hands-On experiences and Hands-On um stop the bleed also CPR and during the end of this year finishing we will gain our EMS certificate to elaborate what tyriana was saying I wanted to talk about more of what we're up to right now currently we attend
006school every single Monday at 6 30 in the morning before school starts and during this time period we learn more about the different situationals that we have to approach and how we will approach it you know sometimes we may approach a scene where we don't know what we might do in the moment but during this class we learned um what type of problem solvings that we have to do you know you can come up to a patient that may have autism or if they're non-verbal and during this class we learn how to talk to non-verbal people so it's a great opportunity for us to communicate with people who are non-verbal and with that being said I feel like this class really helped me as a person I feel like without this program I wouldn't be
007able to speak to other people as I would normally now you know sometimes I find myself talking to random strangers at the store and I don't really talk to people like that so it's just weird for me but I just I really enjoy being in this program because it really broke me on my show so with sorry with that being said I wanted to speak more about um what we're up to right now and we're learning about different medications and the different tools that we use how to stop the bleed as tyriana was saying um you know we just have to learn the appropriate mechanisms that we have to use in order for us to fix the situation um currently We are booking appointments with Monroe and Brockport ambulance so that we can do our
008ride times ride times are when we ride with the ambulances to get live action and it's a great opportunity for us to experience what it is to be on a live action you know um the live rides don't really I mean they'll show us like um sorry your mind just went blank um the rides they'll show us um like the different situations because we can't really predict what will happen so if we're on these rides it'll show us really how the paramedics will really approach the scene so it's just a great opportunity for us and yeah as mentioned before I am dually enrolled in RT one and two I have plans upon graduation of doing search and rescue for a fire department and upon training for our skills day tomorrow I hit the hydrant having
009the fastest time of a minute and 40. it's not a competition but it's a competition we value Community Building at Odyssey principal Hepburn had lunch with Priscilla Parker and Daniel Rudd a vision Financial Group to discuss financial literacy principal Hepburn host and the select choir as well as Dr Driscoll from Roberts Wesleyan also on April 29th the seniors completed a series of activities on the senior scavenger hunt while principal Hepburn and assistant principal Graves celebrated educator sneaker Joy day on Friday April 29th our mix and selectquirers competed in the New York State Music Association major organization competition both choirs received gold we are super proud of our music departments classrooms at Odyssey have been busy being productive creating projects doing Hands-On activities and preparing for both state and AP exams on any day you can
010walk into a classroom and see our Scholars achieving at honestly we love having student celebrations we are always looking for opportunities to honor scholars in grades 6 through 12. recently we honored our students of the month and had a sixth grade extravaganza where I Scholars participated in a number of activities we have been busy with the March spirit week we have we have many scholars dressed to impress we have been we have Mosaic students engaging in equity equity equity work across our community many of our Avid students have been touring colleges and most recently attended the Red Wings game these Gladiators made history this season led by odyssey's own Miss randalletti they for the first time in 18 years came out on top winning our local regionals sending them to the world championships in Texas
01110 members from the team were selected to represent Greece at Worlds while a dedicated group of eight other students collected and Scout data from home our team landed 29th overall and were knocked out in the second to last semi-finals Falling by at least seven points the Gladiators hold the highest qualifying match score of the whole season with no penalties at 205 points Greece turned heads with this year and they don't plan to stop here we are super proud to Showcase a high population of women of Step thank you Mr analetti okay we are out of sea all right I got a question Heads Up Guys come back up we're going to do a picture and I have a couple I'm going to make a couple comments um I'm super biased to the RTE program Battalion
012Chief jubo and I way back in the day did a lot of talking about that at the firehouse in the middle of the night after calls so I'm super biased about your guys program I'm so tremendously proud of you I can't wait till tomorrow to see what you guys are doing I know you want to be a firefighter what about the rest you guys what do you guys want to do um I want to go into nursing and possibly get my doctorate's degree and go into more Orthopedics nice I also wouldn't be a firefighter awesome major more in Psychology and I just feel like this program is really good for me as a good background check so I just really like this program for that awesome awesome well congratulations all of you and thank you
013and we're going to come up and have you guys come up and do a picture with us if you don't mind [Applause] thank you good luck tonight foreign [Music] Greece Gladiators robotics recognition superintendent groutman yes so we have a sea of blue sitting here and we got a little bit of a preview from our student leader comments but what I would like to do is just read some really important information to recognize you and the season that you've had and let you know just how proud of um of all of you we are as a district as a superintendent and I know as a board of education so I'm going to go ahead and read this and then I probably have a few other comments because because I'm me um so the Greece Grant the
014Greece Gladiators robotics team was started in 2005. it has progressed through several coaching changes and many high school students have been on from the four high schools here in Greece prior to 2023 the Greece Gladiators had earned only one award only one this past March however at the 2023 Finger Lakes Regional first competition the Gladiators were ranked number one throughout the entire event ING with nearly a perfect 13-1 record so let's just stop for a second 13-1 record number one can we just give it up thank you but there's more they won the award for excellence in programming this is earned by the student pre-programming the robot to do certain tasks on its own for the first 15 seconds of each match additionally their coach Marissa Marissa ranelletti won the Woody flowers finalist award given
015to the coach that best represents a model for the team to emulate and best embodies the mission of first robotics in the end the Gladiators won the competition along with their Alliance Partners from Spencerport and Canandaigua this weren't win earned all three teams the opportunity to attend the first robotics World competition Additionally the Gladiators for the first time in team history attended the SEC a second competition in Pittsburgh so this is the first time we've ever done this at this competition the team ended the weekend ranked number two along with the alliance along with Alliance Partners from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania the Gladiators won first robotics Greater Pittsburgh Regional competition the Pecos the peak of first robotics competition in the season is in the world championship which took place in Houston Texas beginning on April 13th
016the Gladiator Gladiators were able to send a contingent of 15 team members to the competition to participate in on the Galileo field and were able to progress all the way to the semi-final around with the Alliance teams from Michigan Texas and the Netherlands this was one of the true International Alliance sorry this was a true International Alliance of high school students coming together as one team to compete for one goal an experience the team would not have gone I'm sorry an experience the team would not have had without the help of Greece Central School District the Gladiators head coach Marisa ranelletti assistant coach Lori Manhart are both Greece Arcadia High School alumni they both take great pride in helping their Bright Young students pave the way for potential Futures in stem with Hands-On skills leadership
017management marketing web design and so much more finally the Gladiators finished the season ranked number one in New York state out of 141 teams 36th in the U.S out of 2 687 teams and 40th in the world out of 3294 teams can we just give a hand so those are statistics and what you know about me is like I'm the worst like reading a speech or things like this is like not my favorite thing what I just want to say to you as a superintendent is I was with your coach Marisa close to six years ago Marisa um and I share this story because it's really meaningful um I was really really impressed that um you had reinvigorated the program it's been around for a long time but um had pretty much died out um
018your passion your excitement and your vision started years ago and taking over this team and the work that you've done to really make it accessible for kids make it exciting for kids has been just incredible so I want to make sure that I just give you a shout out and say thank you for that because so much of what happens with our students is because of a teacher or the adult and you make a huge difference in that way and I also want to point out because we've got a lot of other adults standing here or in this group if you are an adult that has supported the team as a mentor or a parent that's here in the audience can you please stand up as well so just take a look so one of
019the beautiful things about robotics is the adult support that comes in and what we know from research is that Partnerships like this matter and make a huge difference so all of you have touched and made a huge difference to every one of the students on this team and made a difference in their life and to look at a team and see the sort of representation particularly from females on a primarily stem male dominated activity is really really impressive so thank you so much to all the parents to the mentors to the family members who are here and who've supported the the team along the way and to you students you are amazing and I look forward to many many years of success so thank you so much sure time I just wanted to take a
020second to just say thank you so much for um seeing our our micro oh sorry um I would just like to take and I'm sorry if I get a little emotional because we know ronaldi does this from time to time but um I want to say thank you to the board and I want to say thank you to all of you individuals that have seen me all the way back from when I decided to take this over until now I could not have done it without any of your support I could not do it without you guys cheering for us and I think the entire Community has to know that the confetti didn't even fall yet by the time that me and Miss Laurie had the whole Board of Education on the phone and they
021were like don't worry we're getting you and the kids to Texas and I knew then that this was really a turning point for Greece Central and I really do think that we're going to be a force to be reckoned with and I think it all comes back to you guys also supporting the kids they really see it they really feel it and I know they are not all here in force but I know they would all say thank you so much [Applause] come on you guys a lot of banners um thank you [Applause] foreign now rolling into our Union comments we'll start with GTA Mr Johnson welcome um before I begin my plan remarks as someone who's an elementary teacher it's always so cool for us to see what our kids do when they get
022to the middle and high school level so huge congratulations to the Gladiators team the kids from Odyssey Sports Arts academics like it's always so gratifying for us to see where they end up it's just so cool um so yeah so my Premier remarks good evening my name is Peter Johnson and I'm an English as a new language teacher at Brookside Elementary School I'm also a GTA rep and GTA's political action chair it's been my responsibility to organize conduct and provide an annual report on the process we use during Board elections typically most teachers dislike getting involved in politics they'd rather be focused on teaching and working with their students but as we've seen in recent years schools have become politicized at all levels of government so more and more of us are realizing that if
023we don't speak up then the loudest voices will be making decisions for us and they may not be good ones I'm pleased to share that interest in our interview and endorsement process was at an all-time high this year another welcome development was the addition of other Greece unions into our process we've worked with axep for a number of years but this year we were joined by gasa and Teamsters as well our students are taking quite a few assessments right now and any election is essentially an assessment that asks two key questions are the voters confident their Community is moving in a positive direction and which candidates have the strongest ideas and how to make sure progress is made to be clear these questions do not ignore that there may be problems and issues Greece teachers
024are not ignoring the very real challenges our district is facing I'm not going to stand here and give some pollyanna's remarks claiming all is well we know we have work to do in Greece but are we just going to complain about our challenges or are we going to continue working on making improvements so how are we moving in a positive direction in regard to safety and student Behavior when the Town of Greece wanted significantly more money to pay for sros the district solved this problem by hiring former sros directly while still maintaining our strong connections to the Greece PD new weapons detection systems will be added to our middle and high schools we had Capital Improvement projects that added security vegetables to our schools the district established a code of conduct committee which has brought
025teachers and administrators from every building together to ensure consistent understanding and application of the code of conduct across the district student suspensions are unfortunately at an all-time high we've already passed the number of long-term suspensions from all of last year this demonstrates that students are being held accountable for negative choices but also points to the fact that suspension isn't necessarily an effective deterrent as we know the Adolescent brain is still developing and consequences for actions may not be Forefront in their decision-making process this is why proactive behavior and safety measures are so important the district has invented has invested in mental health and behavior supports such as additional counselors social workers and Behavioral interventionists we have partnered with the Center for Youth Genesee mental health and Hillside to get our students the help they need
026we've invested in social emotional learning to help our students learn self-regulation and management the district climate and culture committee brings teachers and other stakeholders together to guide this work we are even partnering with area pediatricians to support work in mental health and Community engagement so is student Behavior since the pandemic an issue yes this is a complex and challenging problem with no quick fixes otherwise we'd have already done them is also the case that student behavior is an issue in every other District we hear from while many in our community are concerned about student Behavior as are we they also praise the progress we've made in adding mental health and Behavior Support to students and the development of our community schools programs Greece teachers agree these are good ideas and signs of progress and one
027last thing let's not forget that the vast majority of our students are well-behaved kids this is really about getting to support some of our students need to be their best selves in academics we also recognize that there is work to be done our student performance on grades three through eight Ela and math tests isn't where any of us want it to be we recognize we need to improve one thing every candidate we talk to agreed on was that parental involvement is important to Student Success I think everyone in our district agrees on that but what that looks like for every family in our district can be very different we need to recognize that our district is at 64 percent for free and reduced lunch given the fact that we all agree that parental involvement is
028important but for many of our families this may take the form of working multiple jobs to keep a roof over their children's heads food on a table and leave little time for much else what do we do what are we doing first of all we work hard teachers provide additional before and after school support we offer learning opportunities during breaks in summer we modify collaborate and do all we can for each one of our kids a majority of us are parents as well we know how precious a child is and how every parent hopes they will do well in life but our efforts can't just be at the classroom level our board over the past five years has been instrumental in supporting the Community Schools model this is critical because it connects families and students
029to the resources they need to be able to come to school and be ready to learn this wasn't something that was needed in Greece 20 years ago it is now thank you for supporting this initiative our district is always looking at improving our curriculum and we are nearing the end of the curriculum review process for English language arts Greece teachers around the district have been piloting different curriculum options and meeting regularly to discuss their positives and drawbacks as I understand it a final decision by this important committee will be coming soon we are hopeful this new curriculum will be a benefit to our students and appreciate all the work the teachers piloting these programs have put into this effort I'd also like to mention the mtss RTI committee which stands for multi-tiered systems of support
030and response to intervention this group of teachers and administrators meets regularly to make sure that we have a well-functioning processes to get students who are struggling the support they need to wrap up Greece teachers have helped have felt supported by the Board of Education and we thank you for that is everything perfect in our schools no it's our district Ron well yes Greece teachers have confidence in the direction we are moving we believe in the ideas that are being implemented and we are optimistic for the future our Union also supports positive efforts for our community independent of the district through our social justice committee and scholarships to students considering a career in education if you'd like to learn more support these programs please check out our website agreeseteachers.com thank you [Applause] Mrs welcome good evening
031my name is Stacy brindisi I'm the executive director of pupil Personnel Services for the district but I'm here tonight as the president of the Greece administrators and supervisors Association also known as gasa and I'll let my colleagues introduce themselves good evening I'm Karen castera I'm business agent for Teamsters Local 118 and represent the teamster employees in the district good evening I'm Mark Fleming principal on special assignment and I'm the vice president for gasa so we thank you for your time the three of us are standing together United tonight um to share that for the first time our respective units were engaged in a collaborative process um with GTA and AG sap in endorsing board candidates this year um at the close of the process all of our units were United in support of the Board
032of Education candidates whom we feel are best suited to serve on our school board if anyone is interested in specifics about our respective units endorsements you can feel free to reach out to any one of the three of us directly and we're happy to share additional information and before we invite our principal colleagues principal Ferris and Julia up to present information tonight more guess the comments we want to encourage everybody to vote in support of our school budget on the 16th thank you thank you good evening Board of Ed good evening Greece Community I'm Andrea Julia I am a proud administrator in Greece and a very proud Pine Brook principal I'm here to speak on behalf of my administrative colleagues to share all the celebrations that we have this evening so it's hard um in
033the day-to-day operations in the day-to-day problem solving to really know how are the kids doing but I'm here to tell you that the kids are doing well and the kids are thriving and they're thriving with the choice and voice and ownership that we give them every day at our schools in Greece we give them chances to participate we give them chances to share their input and we give them chances to be student-centered and so in the spirit of being truly student centered I decided that I would not share with you all of the highlights from our schools but instead I will allow our students to share with you so please enjoy our gassa comments this evening good evening Greece Board of Education members and the Greece community I'm Malachi from Miss velcopic's fifth grade class
034and I'm Lily from Mr valkovich's fifth grade class welcome to the Pine Brook Morning Show today is Tuesday May 2nd we have some breaking news to share with you first off we have exciting announcement from the second grade our building interventionist Mr Fowler in our math teaching assistants have been working to challenge kids at their own math levels all year one of the activities that Pine Brook students in grades first to fifth participated in was a New York state sponsored 24-game tournament 32nd graders finished in first place in our region out of five or 150 school districts here are second graders being surprised on our morning show with their Awards hi everyone I'm just here to kind of put a ramp on our 24 game head during our math win times and I have some
035second graders here with me showing you the certificates that all of you that participated should have received I know I've got to get to a couple of fifth grade classes but I will get to them soon um so I just wanted to say thank you for lunch for getting a little message here I'm getting some breaking news [Music] oh I just got word we we had a grade level team that actually won their region okay they won um they're region of over 150 participating school districts congratulations on your trophies a plaque a thousand dollars for our school and a trip to Albany to compete at the state level this opportunity wouldn't have been possible without your support of a building interventionist at Pinebrook thank you Mr Fowler stay tuned to see how our team places
036on May 20th in Albany good luck guys hi my name is Dylan I want to talk about how English Village students are leaders we are proud to be a leader in me School this year we took over the Eevee morning announcements we also have recycling helpers and safety patrol markers last week I was tech support during the very good leader award assembly we are very proud to be leaders in our school [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] our kindergarten leaders in reciting our Autumn Lane mission statement [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you for giving us the opportunity to share what's going on in our schools and I thank you for all of your service to our Greece community thank you that was awesome [Applause] moving on to 2.01
037to 2324 budget presentation superintendent groutman yep I'm going to have uh Mr clearly share with us a short presentation we have presented multiple times now what we have for you this evening is a little bit of a hybrid so we've taken a short presentation that is a summary of what you've seen the last two meetings and then there's also a couple of clarification slides that Romeo will take us through as well as just a quick update on some of the information we got just yesterday from New York State good evening everyone thank you um as superintendent grout and indicated um oops we have a video here a narrative completed in-house by Rob Linton uh it's an overview of our budget in our budget uh for 23.24 and we'll play that now hello and thank you
038for taking the time to learn more about the Greece Central School District budget proposal for the 2023-24 school year in Greece registered School voters head to the polls on May 16th where they will decide on a funding plan for the 2023-24 school year and a bus replacement proposition voters will also select three people to represent them on the board of education developing an educationally sound and fiscally responsible budget is a year-round process and a responsibility that we take very seriously our 2023-24 budget proposal is aligned with the reach 2027 Greece strategic plan funding is focused on three key areas igniting learning cultivating trust and expanding opportunity let's take a closer look at how the budget invests in these core District commitments supporting the educational growth of our students is our number one priority and it's
039where we direct the majority of our tax dollars the 2023-24 budget supports targeted Ela and math intervention supports to help students reach and exceed grade level expectations it also supports the purchase of updated research-based curriculum and staff training investing in academic intervention programs has helped Greece maintain an on-time graduation rate of more than 90 percent well we're proud of that Benchmark we also want to ensure that students are ready for life after graduation that's why the budget proposal increases access to Career pathway programs and includes 78 courses that are eligible for college credit quality schools contribute to the overall well-being of our community the budget proposal expands our community school strategy which positively affects students attendance and achievement based on feedback provided by families who participate in the district's annual need assessment survey we have
040expanded the school day and a numerous student clubs increased access to Community Resources and supports helping thousands of families each year the budget also promotes Partnerships with Community organizations including the Center for Youth food link together now and Genesee mental health we actively listen and seek public input through family and Community engagement activities surveys and expanded Community participation on school and District committees great people are essential so it's important that our school budget supports professional learning and career ladders so employees can continue to grow and Thrive right here in Greece with refined hiring practices a focus on Wellness in the promotion of a positive School culture it's now easier for Greece to attract and retain the best candidates in all job titles ensuring the safety of our students and staff is a critical responsibility the
041budget places a high priority on safety by funding 35 full-time security personnel and two full-time armed school safety officers each year staff participate in specialized school safety training in areas that include threat assessment therapeutic Crisis Intervention and emergency preparedness we've also added safety monitoring tools and new technology to safeguard our schools from a variety of potential physical and cyber threats we also believe a healthy and safe environment promotes educational equity and emotional Wellness the proposed budget expands funding for mental health professionals like social workers psychologists and behavior interventionists it also supports drug resistance education and vaping intervention programs and funds on-campus Substance Abuse Prevention coordinators Greece continues to staff classrooms based on actual student and course enrollments but we also consider other factors the needs of our district have changed more students require special education
042services and English as a new language programming poverty rates also continue to rise which means Greece students often require specialized services and supports to reach their potential the budget proposal includes 54.3 new staff positions 84 percent of which Target and strengthen the instructional program we are able to add these positions thanks to permanent increases in Foundation aid from New York State it's important that the district operates efficiently each year we evaluate our programs and services and identify efficiencies wherever possible approximately 75 percent of budget funding goes towards the instructional program our budget proposal remains within the tax levy cap for the 13th consecutive year and reduces the tax rate by 30 cents per thousand dollars of assessed valuation the 2023-24 budget proposal totals 290 million seven hundred and fifty two thousand and fifty dollars and
043represents a budget budget increase of just under 25 million dollars the 2023-24 tax levy increase is about 2.2 million dollars or 1.87 percent more than the 2022-23 tax levy the 2023-24 tax rate is estimated to decrease by 30 cents per thousand dollars of assessed valuation to 24.54 but will not be finalized until July 2023. if the budget is approved a Greece homeowner with a House assisted 170 thousand dollars would pay 51 dollars Less in school taxes next year in addition to deciding on the budget voters will also be asked to decide on a proposition to purchase 33 replacement school buses and two minivans for student transportation annual bus purchase propositions are part of the district's ongoing long-term plan to keep our bus fleet up to date and stabilize taxpayer cost approval of this proposition would
044not affect the tax levy or the tax rate voters will have the opportunity to select three candidates to represent them on the board of education there are six people running for three-year terms on the board incumbent's William Maloney and Sean McCabe and newcomers Todd Butler Miguel Milan Septimus Scott and Jordan stenzel more information about the candidates can be found on the district website greececsd.org now that you know what you'll be voting on let's review where to vote on May 16th all Greece Central School District residents voted one location The District's transportation and support services facility located at 1790 Latta Road polls will be open from 6 a.m to 9 pm then you must be a registered voter to cast a ballot thank you for taking the time to learn more about the 2023-24 budget proposal
045if you need more information please head to the district website greececsd.org education plays an important role in our community so please remember to vote on May 16th so before we move on uh to a couple slides that I wish to touch make a couple other notes on I did want to share that as superintendent groutman had indicated appears that the governor's office in the legislature have come to an agreement on the budget we got budget runs preliminary budget runs last evening early today just wanted to share a couple items out there verbally since we learned about it today I couldn't get it into the presentation there's uh the majority of the bills that the legislature has approved are still being vetted and reviewed by our advocacy groups to be able to share out details on
046what's behind each of those pieces the majority of our of the of them are done there's still a couple days worth of work so we'll be getting additional information over the next couple days but a couple uh points to make when we compared when we were aware of the governor's budget state aid budget for us back in January and we compared that to what the legislature has approved last night today the legislative budget budgeted state aid is actually less by about 265 270 thousand dollars than what the governor had prose proposed back in January second point is if you recall a few meetings back we had taken the governor's budget from January state aid recommendation and through conversations with our financial consultants we made adjustments to that budget particularly to building Aid and we increased
047that building Aid projection on the governor's run back in January by about 1.2 million dollars and that was because we're confident we're going to have reports in that will generate state aid for us that the governor's run didn't pick up building Aid per the legislature in the building is equal to the building Aid that the governor had proposed when we increase that by the same factor 1.2 million dollars the total number that we used for state aid in this presentation is about 152.3 million dollars where within 200 000 of that number so we weren't sure at the time what we were going to see but I wanted to verbally uh and reasonably assure everybody we're within a couple hundred thousand dollars of what we included in this budget for state aid we are fully confident
048that we will get that money and maybe some more um as we go forward so I'm still what we what the board adopted and what we're putting out in public is a valid budget there's no significant changes to those figures also a couple other quick notes that we're aware of it looks like the building level reporting uh that the governor wanted to do will end uh this school year which will help out the administratively a lot it's a lot of work for not two there's about a hundred we were hopeful that we would see free Universal meals for all students across the board that is not in the legislative budget there is a hundred and thirty four million dollars allocated for free meals for that are accessible to schools in low-income communities not sure what
049that means yet but details will be coming out on that between tomorrow and the next day and lastly what we do know is minimum wage minimum wage will raise will go up over the next two years I've seen numbers from 15 to 17.50 depending on where you are uh in the state so I wanted to put that out there and do a verbal update for the board moving on a couple points uh the video covered this but I did want to point out over on the right hand side of that 25 million dollar increase 19.1 million or about 77 percent of that is strictly due to Foundation Aid increase we are not spending a whole lot of money because we're spending it we got a whole lot of money that they have made us whole
050on that they vote us for the last 15 16 years um but Foundation Aid increases the largest component increase in this budget of uh 9.39 percent increase almost eight eight and a half percent of that 9.39 is strictly due to more revenues coming into us from the state second item I wanted to touch on was this slide with the tax bill I just wanted to make a note that these are savings that we anticipate if your house was assessed at 170 000 last year it's reassessed at 170 000 this year you should see fifty one dollar decrease in your tax bill that's with no star basic start and enhanced star and I did want to point out at the bottom the basic star maximum amount that can be with adjusted from your tax bill is
051seven hundred and thirty four dollars as indicated in the enhanced star exemption is Cap at 1574. in past years that number has changed and has increased but for 23.24 that cap is the same as what it has been the last two years and lastly I wanted to show a couple examples of a couple of reports the last couple weeks uh there had been some questions asked and some comments made regarding line item budgets um within the budget book there is a requirement on us from New York state that we have to provide a budget book and and the reporting in that book we meet minimally and we have additional information in that book however we can't go to print with that book until the board adopts the budget so when the budget was adopted on
052April 18th the book became available Friday the Friday or the Monday following board adoption within that book these are just a couple examples we provide detail what we've referred to detail by objects so what you see on here is just an example you can see how much in the 2324 budget is spent on salary for pre-k teachers Kasich teachers 712 teachers how much we're proposing for equipment contracted Services supplies tuitions BOCES expenses you can see those within the budget book additionally um we also break down the budget by function function is traditionally for the non-instructional site Department of Finance auditing tax collection fee purchasing again same information Department of Finance you can see the instructional salaries the non-instructional salaries how much is budgeted for contractual Services materials and supplies and similarly on the education side
053of it you can see teaching regular school broken down by object students with disability this is their line item budget um occupational education these are only two or three of seven or eight pages in the budget book but I wanted to make a point of making sure that everybody knows the budget book is available on the website it is available at district office it is available to any Resident who wishes to see it we will get you an electronic or a hard copy within short order thank you Mr Chloe all right with that I'm going to call the public budget hearing order we have nobody signed up so I'm going to close the public budget hearing moving on to Staffing 3.01 can I just want to move the Staffing to the tail please move by
054Miss Flores seconded by Mr farmer any comments questions or concerns on Staffing I've seen one all as in favor that passes seven to zero moving on to the jewel agreement now so we move that to the table please move by Mr farmer a second why Miss Flores any comments questions concerns on that seeing none all is in favor that passes seven to zero can I assume move the non-unit rate sheet to the table please move by vice president milar second by Mr suwicki any comments questions concerns on that singing all those in favor that passes seven to zero moving on on 3.04 or GTL MOA additional FTE can I assume move that to the table please Blue by Miss farmer second by Miss Flora is any comments questions concerns on that seeing not all in
055favor that passes seven to zero moving out to the Gus MOA title Edition can I Sony move that to the table please move by Mr farmer second by Mr swicky any comments questions concerns on that sitting on all those in favor that passes 7-0 moving on to item 3.06 and 913 resolution can I so I move that to the table please move by Mr swicky seconded by Mrs you got to raise your hand Miss Farah oh I didn't see you I was looking your other way all right with that any comments questions concerns seeing that all is a favor that passes seven to zero moving on on 5.01 recruitment hiring and retention presentation superintendent groutland yes so um as you know we have had a large focus on recruitment hiring and retention like many fields
056there is a struggle oftentimes to find people good people to work and also um just a lack of of people wanting to work in the first place we have provided multiple touch points on this for the Board of Education and also multiple presentations publicly because we want to make sure that we're really promoting the efforts and the work that's going on within this department and I would say just personally having been in Greece for 20 years and also looking across and talking with my colleagues we've done more really targeted coherent work really good work in this area and we have seen the payoff of that in a lot of areas and are in a much better spot even though I know we still struggle and are short in some spaces are in a much better
057place than many places in the county in the state and in the nation so with that just from a little context I'd like to have Mr smallin and Mrs Larson come on up from HR to give us some updates in terms of the work that you're doing I know we heard about it in the fall but this is a great time to provide some updates okay good evening um Gina and myself are very excited to have the opportunity to share with all of you a summary of the work that has taken place um throughout the year in the area of Staff retention and recruitment when we're also excited to share some of the work that we're just starting and that we look to continue as we roll into the summer and throughout the next school
058year okay so one of our areas of a focus from the Department of Human Resources and with our committee on recruiting and retention was we really wanted to focus part of our Focus was to look at our branding what we wanted to do was have very clear concise language that demonstrates our commitments to our employees of what you get in return from coming to work within within Greece we wanted our employees to know that when you come to Greece it is a place where employees we want them to feel supported and we want them to feel empowered to reach their own professional goals so that is clear language that we will continue to promote with our people and as as a way to recruit other strong candidates to come to Greece thank you um so
059one of the areas that um that we wanted to do and in collaboration with Laurel was that we wanted to spend um we spent let me back up a little bit I apologize we have spent a great deal of time for our department and the committee on recruiting and retention just researching best practices in this area of Recruitment and Retention we were not aware as we went into this work how much actual information is out there when it comes to being very um intentional when it comes to recruiting and when it comes to to retention one of the pieces that was shared to us from Laurel was the idea of an employee value proposition and this is something that is used throughout schools throughout the district or excuse me throughout the country and also in
060Private Industry and when when you look at an employee value proposition this is um a commitment that we as an organization are giving back to the employees in return for their services and their time so greet our department and in collaboration with the our um committee on recruiting and retention drafted what we like to begin is our own employee value proposition in an employee proposition as you could see here is aligned to our strategic plan our reach 2027 procedure plan and what we hope to do today and throughout the rest of this presentation is demonstrate to you all of the work that we've done throughout the year that falls in alignment with our strategic plan at that point I'll let Gina take over sure so in the area of Recruitment and Retention in speaking about
061district-based recruiting events to Kathy's point we have a lot of Pride points so we've now held a number of district-based events using our own employees as the key resources to recruit new employees you've heard us speak about the successes in the past with our facilities and operations event our transportation events and our agcept support staff events our most recent event was last Tuesday which was GTA held right in this room and we were really excited to hold that event it was open interviews maybe you saw it on TV there was a five-second commercial that ran I think 180 to 200 times over the course of I think six or seven days so we had that opportunity to get out there we also had a lot of signage out front we had lots of traffic through
062here we actually were able to get 80 teachers in this room over the course of that that night now maybe 80 doesn't sound like a lot to you but for those of us that have had a hard time finding certified individuals and finding candidates to actually come 80 is an incredible number I'm actually really looking forward to meeting with my raspa group which is all of the HR individuals from the area to kind of boast about that number about them coming through so we were very excited to hold that event and today we actually hired our first individual already from that event and I'm extra happy to say that it was a Spanish teacher and Spanish is one of our yay one of our hardest areas to fill so success built on success in addition
063to that we we staffed that event with our own people so it wasn't just human resources staffing that event it was our building administrators our district administrators and in addition to that it was 12 parents so our parents who came to our recruitment event or came to our parent training event and then signed up to come and sit next to an administrator either from a building or District to interview prospective employees so very powerful really exciting we're we're jazzed about it so um so that was really successful and I credit much of that success to that partnership that we've started to build so we look forward to that continuing um in addition we have upgraded our website um you'll see when you go to our website now it's much easier to navigate to our job
064opportunities tab Laurel has helped us out with navigating to that site when you click on it it also brings you to information about Greece Central with lots of videos and other information as well as information about the Town of Greece and the Rochester area and that is for anyone who is looking to relocate to this area there's lots of information there additionally on that same page we have now added the community referral form this is something that we talked about as a goal back in the fall and now it is finally coming to fruition we're very excited about it this is something where a current employee or a Community member can recommend a friend or family member or someone that they know to come and work in Greece it's on the website and once it's
065filled out it comes to human resources and we disseminate it out to our directors and supervisors and then they can reach out to the individual this form has only been live for a couple of weeks and we've already hired our first individual and that individual is a psych aide again a really really hard position to fill in the district and to give some context that person had not previously applied to the district they were recommended we reached out and they said sure I'll give it a try so a lot of success there all right in the area of employee and Community engagement um you've heard me talk a lot about the interview training we're always looking for ways to expand our opportunities um if I as I've spoken about a lot of times a number
066of times we've formally trained 37 parents for interviews and we've already engaged many of them in interviewing this spring not only the 12 parents that came to our event last week but a number of them have already been involved in our administrative interviews for different positions that we're hiring both at the building level and at the district level we are looking for more ways to engage them the issue that we're running into now is that we have so many parents that want to be involved and there's only so many interview processes that we have so it's a good problem to have right now but one of our goals for this coming year will be working on decentralizing some of our processes and running more at the building level so that we can engage more parents
067in the process so we will be working on that and making sure that those processes are run just as as tight as they are at the district level but still engaging our parents as much as we can the district share decision making committee has been tasked with revising the shared decision making plan for the district and this plan is one that ensures that voice indecisions excuse me ensures that voice and decisions are are made and it outlines how voice is gathered district-wide in that committee includes a voice from excuse me excuse me outlines how a voice is gathered and it includes multiple stakeholders from all levels throughout the district as well as a parent member we have expanded our professional learning opportunities I know we've spoken about that at the past few board meetings to
068the tune of over 400 opportunities within our professional Learning System and if you can't find anything in those 400 opportunities you can certainly look around the county as well right now our Focus has been heavily on GTA because that is something that's outlined in their contract and they're also the users of our Frontline system but our goal in the coming year will be to look at our other units as well to make sure that we are finding professional learning opportunities for them making sure that we're meeting their needs and in the area of agency and acknowledgment we've spoken a little bit about State interviews and that's something that we're going to be focusing in on for the remainder of this year and into next year we're looking for more informative ways to gather input from
069our employees and one of those new ways is through stay interviews in the past we've used exit interviews together input when an employee leaves the system but that really only gives us that rear view look stay interviews are an opportunity to speak to an employee when they're still with us giving us an opportunity into some insight as to what some current needs might be for that specific employee or for our system um it's a way that we can build relational Capital with that employee and with teams as well as building trust this has been a key Focus for our Recruitment and Retention team as well as with the Department of Human Resources and something that we are just starting to expand to our extended cabinet and then we'll look to expand it beyond that in
070the coming months another way that we look to celebrate and acknowledge our employees is through a number of different celebrations coming up soon we have our 10-year celebration and retirement celebration we have our years of service which is celebrated in June and that starts with 10 years of service and then we have a number of smaller opportunities that happen at the building level and within departments and that could be anything from earning Civil Service titles passing your CDL test earning a master's degree passing a teaching assistance exam and many other celebrations so we're always looking for ways to honor our employees okay and under career ladders um with career leaders this is how we promote within and encourage employees to grow and develop right here in Greece so um last year we did go through
071renegotiate all of our Union contracts and within each of those contracts that already had this language in there we looked to not only keep that in there in the contracts but we also look to add different opportunities for people to grow within the district so that might look like lead positions that you might see in a Teamsters contract you could see lead positions that are now embedded in the Gus contract so those are that's contractly language that we wanted to hold on to you also see that opportunity and with with our teachers in GTA with teacher on special assignments that have the opportunity to step out of the classroom work district-wide and that and just demonstrates other areas where they can continue to grow that they might not see if they were remaining in their
072classroom in addition to that we've spent over the past couple years we've talked we've actually take a deeper look at some of our organizational structures me personally within an apartment of Human Resources this was a large focus a couple years ago and using HR as an example we looked to find ways that when somebody comes into a department like human resources how can they see an opportunity where they can grow and continue to build their career rather than coming into a position and that's the only position they could they could stay in we've also looked at some restructuring within the department of special pupil Personnel Services where somebody coming into that department can see a career letter opportunity if that's the path that they want to take so this has been a key focus of
073us as we continue to grow and look to recruit people that they can see that there's opportunity when they come to Greece that when you come here there's opportunity to grow if that's the decision that you choose to go we also in our negotiations have continued to keep tuition reimbursement as part of the contractual language that provides people the opportunity to look for other opportunities within their own field you can take a lot of our teachers have gone back for leadership type of positions we've embedded that in the teamsters contract that stays there so there's opportunities for them to grow and take coursework if they so choose and finally our hiring practices so this has been a a large Focus for the Department of Human Resources over the past few years and that's really just
074refining our hiring practices so that we can select the best highly qualified diverse candidates who represent our core values um one piece that we we took a look at just recently was revising the language that's within our job postings over the years our postings have remained the same and what we wanted to do was that when our postings are out in public that they demonstrate our values and our commitments here in Greece so shortly you'll see that that language will be on all of our postings that represent what we stand for here in Greece um we continue to revive refine our interview our interview process Gina mentioned it earlier that we've spent a great deal of time um working with our administrators and their in their building level team to demonstrate our interview process what
075we like to do now is you go into the next year is how that how can we take that and push that back into not only the buildings but across all the unions so that when they're hiring it's a streamlined process it's consistent across the district and that we're using what we called uh behavior-based questions that allow for each of the candidates to demonstrate their skills their values and their beliefs so we get the best candidate when we when we make that recommendation for hire and lastly we are looking for new opportunities or new or innovative ways to recruit so right now um what you're seeing across the county and especially here in Greece people are are going from one District to another um and and it's almost like the wild west and so we
076have to compete with those other districts that are looking for the same openings that we have so we're exploring different innovative ways one of the one of the incentives that we're looking at is possibly um student loan reimbursements so how can we attract that something that's not in the private Industries uh schools are beginning to look at that but we want to be the first to to see if that would incentivize summary to come to Greece we have tuition reimbursement but that's not um necessarily appropriate for everybody but some people are coming with those loans and that that could be a way to stagger some of those payments so by staying longer you could see that the student loans could be an option to to keep them and look to our district versus some of
077the other districts so that's a summary of what we've done a little bit about what we hope to do and at this point is there any questions I had an opportunity to come to the recruitment event last week and it was it was just amazing um if I was someone not from the district and I walked into this room I would have been overwhelmed by just the welcomeness of it the brightness of it everyone was saying hello and welcoming and I'm thrilled to know that many people came I was here for about an hour and a half and there was a steady flow so hopefully more of those that look great any other comments Mrs Flores I just also want to congratulate you on the hiring event I have had the opportunity to speak to
078not a huge population but a few people who have both applied as well as just been recently hired by our district I know our contract has played in with some ideas and I've heard in one of those people happens to be a GTA representative for their District that they currently work in it's quite apparent that Greece is a coveted district and it is very well thought of when it comes to people thinking about switching districts and why so I'd like to definitely say thank you to our Administration for creating an environment where in a con in the context of places where we are struggling to find people that 80 people showed up here thank you and one of the things that I got neglected to mention is that we actually had our GTA president on
079hand here as well who certainly did not have to come but came he was on hand with his table and you know greeting people reaching out talking about the union you know talking about all the great things going on in Greece and I think that is just one more nod to you know the great relationships that we have here so I apologize besides my comment I do have a question and I'm not sure that the question should be directed to you but maybe to Veil Kathy or Mike why has Staffing retention important to us what happens to the students in our district if we are in an environment where we have teachers who are constantly leaving or we have chaos and constant change especially within our Administration and where we find there is not unity
080in the message that we send across to our students for where what's T what they're teaching different things like that what does that kind of District look like and what happens to those kids so it we look differently at how we're presented in the community because it does have an impact because teachers people who don't want to be in an adversarial environment have choice where they haven't had in the past and we all know there's so much to teaching more than just teaching your students so it can negatively impact for sure so if we have a tremendous amount of change within our district that would negatively impact the learning abilities of our students would that be a correct statement it could thank you I could add just from being a building principle um within a
081school or any large organization time or change takes time and and I think sometimes people get frustrated with that but when you're looking to change within an organization like this before that change could actually take place you need people have to understand the why and that takes time to look at data and allow a staff in a building to understand you know why that change is necessary if they can program whatever that may be and so that process takes time if you're going to do it right into a Fidelity so when you have turnover within uh within a building whether it's the building principle or whoever it may be when you lose that consistency your bit you either are starting over to to go back to the why so everybody understands the purpose behind that
082or you're just implementing that change which you could do top down and people can can follow the direction but without the why you typically will not get the impact that you're looking to get with that change so turnover being in a building I was at Long Ridge where we would have some turnover what leads to that is you just never get that change fully implemented to see the results so that's how I would see that turnover within a building I would also just add I mean I that were in a relationship field so our teachers get better because of relationships with one another and with their Administration in terms of building networks of support so um and that takes time so to build relationships to learn curriculum to learn strategies all does take time so
083the idea of consistency matters and the more disruptive and the more turnover is in a school particularly with teachers and with Administration there is direct connection to research related to achievement in terms of that declining or not being as good so yes I would say that clearly thank you and I would also add there you you can't have retention or you can't have effective recruitment without quality retention and culture so you can recruit as much as you like and push and try to bring people in but if the culture doesn't doesn't if it's not desirable all of that recruiting really is meaningless so they go hand in hand with one another so you can't really effectively recruit if you're not focused on retention any other questions all right thank you both thank you moving on
084item 5.02 Safety and Security superintendent Goblin so um we have talked at length about security and safety in our district we've talked specifically about the idea that that it is a system so um Mr Chatterton is here this evening to talk to us about Safety and Security and give us an update but I want to point out just the complexity of this work the difficulty of this work it involves everything from infrastructure to Staffing to training it's a huge set of work but it's also our number one priority in a school district to keep our kids and our staff safe safe so with that I'll turn it over to Mr Chatterton to give us some updates greetings thank you for having me I appreciate it um my name is Steve chatterj I'm the director of
085security for the Great Central School District I'm a retired police captain I've been running security for about 10 years what the overview I'm about to give you is not about me it's about my team I have an assistant security director which is John Hunter person I have a safety coordinator which is Mike scaly and then I have several qualified security supervisors at the high schools that were constantly in communication with to keep these standards up to date and as I wind my career down I'm going to be very Frank with some of the some of the issues facing security in schools as we go forward I sat back the last few months and listened to board candidates talk about security there's a lot of misinformation dispute out there not true some things that came forward
086you know no one's ever asked me my opinion so it's nice to get up here in front and explain what we do and how it's a 24-hour seven uh Southern operation and then I don't want to leave out my secretary my Administrative Assistant who does all my ordering all everything Lori sitting in the back because I don't even know how to get into wind cap so make sure we throw that out there you know we have safety plans our safety plans are top-notch in the state I urge you as a board to uh fight with New York State ad as you go forward and get some of the ridiculous requirements removed from the safety plans they're good in concept they're not listening to retired police captains they're not listening to retired police Chiefs WE Post
087we are required to post our safety plan on our website think about that it's the most ridiculous thing ever every year when I send our safety plan in I tell them how ridiculous it is our plan is very general it's on our website but several districts throughout the state accidentally send put their building level plans which are their confidential plans on their website which hurts other districts like us that are trying to protect our integrity to protect the way we do things because other districts have to follow the same standards and they post everything on their website our building level plans are also second to none but again there's a problem with New York State out there the theory in 2014 was to get everybody to submit their building level plans which is a great
088in theory those safety plans go absolutely nowhere once I hit submit to them they disappear police departments cannot access them they contain our floor plans and things like that but when we download them we have to actually hand deliver them to the police department the floor plans are not readable the confidential information is not readable so they make all these requirements and they're really a waste of everyone's time I just saw some proposed legislation to add you know signage to football fields put those in your safety plans it'll take school districts that are not used to that hours and hours and hours to do that and it will go absolutely nowhere and it makes our students know safer than they were before the safety plans were submitted and we've been passed by private security industries
089that are making schools safer that are better than New York State ad and we actually chose to go that route which I'll start which I'll go over in a little bit our security guards are part of our system you know we talk about Staffing levels our staffing levels our second to none at the high school level we have almost more high school security guards than anybody else in the county uh one of our biggest challenges is civil service we can't hire qualified people because of civil service law laws rules testing they're giving I have three people waiting to hire right now and I can't hire them because there's not a valid list I've also had a lot security guards go because they couldn't pass a test based on you know and they've done the job
090for two years and I had to let them go because they couldn't pass a written test so Civil Service needs to be addressed in my opinion going forward for the hiring of security guards we have a threat assessment team that's second to none in Monroe County I'm a certified certified homeland security threat assessment instructor every building has a threat assessment team our district has a district-wide threat assessment team this came out of Parkland and if you recall back in 2019 we actually made national news for stopping a bombing of kids that were planning to do damage to our school so we're constantly using systems in place to try to stop the pathway to violence and stop kids from going down that route so our threat assessment team is a model for other agencies or other
091schools throughout Monroe County we're constantly doing prevention and mediation so yes we still have fights in our building absolutely but we would have many more if my team was not doing their job if we didn't have the relationship with the police department that we have that let us know that things happen outside of ours just tonight I've taken three calls outside of hours far things going on outside of school nothing to do with school but I'll be I'd be able to call my team and I'll text them as early as six o'clock in the morning and say hey pull these two kids off the bus and get them separated and let's do some mediation so my team is very good at doing that we're in constant communication from six o'clock in the morning until 10
092o'clock at night to prevent things from happening so who knows what we've prevented you can't measure prevent preventing fights but I know in my mind we've done it hundreds of times you know we've done the standard things that other districts have done too you know we've added cameras so we have almost 60 cameras in every high school now in middle school we have extra cameras in elementary schools we've made double entrances bullet resistant glass lockdown buttons Panic buttons everything's standard you know if someone wants to do damage to your school they can do damage to your school but we've made the target harder and we cover every New York state standard possible we're one of very few school districts that do that in case we are audited we did lose our Astros which was very
093highly publicized but we did not lose our relationship with the police department I speak with the deputy chief probably an average of three times a week about getting reports about ongoing issues about concerns we have he's very receptive if I need a report he gets me a report I send him an email that serves as our foil and I get the report so they're very Cooperative with us they help us and our our relationship with them has not changed they in turn call US 24 7. so that we may have a missing kid they might want to know who they hang out with so I can call my supervisors and say hey who does this kid hang out with we help with Police Department find our kids off hours we help families and we do
094you know as much as we can to help the police with our students and keep them out of trouble as possible we also have a communication process in place so that every assistant superintendent and super and the superintendent know exactly what's going on in every building every day so they get updates constantly we have a group text message we have daily emails and we talk about the issues that we need to fix then in addition to that based on uh Parkland report we have Anonymous reporting which is a safe School hotline where possibly looking at replacing that with the app that we're going with very shortly and then we also have light speed so light speed actually monitors our students Chromebooks and anytime they're on our internet about what they're searching so we have keywords
095triggered most of these alerts are related to self-harm and you know I said to an executive session at the beginning when Lightspeed came out I was the most annoying thing I've ever dealt with because I was getting 30 a day but we've made adjustments to that and we've saved kids lives you know that we're thinking about self-harm that might have been talking to the suicide hotline live on our Chromebook we call their parents we send somebody to the house sometimes we send police to the house but we're constantly monitoring their activity and our principles monitor them all day and call kids down to the office and ask why they're searching certain things and it really helps us on a prevention aspect of it our district safety officer a review of them so far I'm never
096gonna say negative things about our Astros I loved our Astros I'm sorry that it didn't work out but our replacement has been a 10 out of ton so we decided to go with armed security officers who were retired police officers and there's advantages to that you know they work for us us worked for the police department so we couldn't control their time off they had to pick up a police car that had to come to the you know that had to come to the school you know there's delay there they you know get their lunch breaks their vacation they have training they have sick days so we were paying for all that now we have District safety officers we hired Eric Hughes while I would never say enough about if you ever see them interact
097with kids it's amazing he's there from seven to three every day he doesn't take a lunch he's actually at our seven to three Thirty every day does not take a lunch most days are a quarter to seven he has an outstanding relationship with the kids everyone knows he used to be a police officer we didn't give him days off he hasn't taken a sick day and he's there every day for eight hours so he's the timeout Todd Gamers at the other school same thing you know we control them so we did not lose our cooperation with the police department because we don't have us Rose because of a cost dispute does not mean we don't have a relationship with our police department they still have our swipe cards every cop in the town agrees they
098get hired they get a swipe card they get into our buildings in case of an emergency they still can call me 24 7. if I don't answer the phone they know to call John if that John doesn't answer they know to call the security phone so we still have access to them I still have the Norse and South cars phones which are bosses so we don't have to call 9-1-1 we call the boss and the boss assigns a car which is a huge Advantage because we get information much quicker than going through 9-1-1 and that was at the permission of the of the deputy chief he said call the North and the South call don't call you don't have to call 9-1-1 so we are looking at some new things moving forward we're always adjusting
099things we're looking at policies we're looking at changing a couple policies on use of our facilities which hope you know hopefully goes before you very soon times have changed five years ago I would have told you I would never even consider weapons detection and you know this is not what you're thinking about this is not metal detectors this is a weapons detection system that's highly Advanced that we researched with um our safety team I'll go over that in a second but it was in response to parents concerns students concerns and it was response of social media posts we've never dealt with social media posts with kids flashing guns before now we do I have still never seen a real gun in school 10 years 11 000 students per year I've never seen a gun in
100school so does that mean it can't happen absolutely not with what's happening in the United States we have a duty to protect our students so this is uh you know in response to that and a lot of why we're thinking of doing this is outside of school issues not inside of school issues um so we involved the safety team so we looked at two different systems one is called evolve you'll see it at uh you know like football games and you'll see it at you know they're actually in Vegas now of all of us in Vegas and it's not your traditional metal detector you walk through several people at a time you don't have to empty your pockets and it will pick up different things evolve we did not like because several several reasons cost
101was eight hundred thousand dollars for four units four double units it's a lease you don't own it and it did not pick up knives so and uh We've like I said I've never seen a gun it picked up you know guns and bombs which the first thing the kids are going to do is Google evolve and they're gonna the first thing that comes up is it does not pick up knives so to me it didn't serve as a tournament the deterrent and also it was very heavy 350 pounds you can't move it we want to be able to move it out use it for football games because if football games we're having people from all over the county show up it's not just our students it might be you know from Gage from irondequoid from
102the city so we don't know who's there and we figure this will give us help so we looked at oh we we decided as a safety team to take on the whole task it was unanimous to try open gate because you can fix the settings and you can pick up knives and we talk to school districts who use it and said that they had us assign custodians outside to pick up the Vapes to pick up the drugs to pick up the different things that it picks up and it picks up knives depending on the setting so this is a trial it's a true trial I do not have my mind makeup made up on whether we're going to use this or not but we want to see how fast it gets the kids through how
103many false alarms we get our intention is not to search kids like and make them feel like they're in prison they're literally going to walk through if it goes through I'm actually going to design the setup like the Tampa Ray Bay Rays have I went to a Tampa Bay Rays game I walked through my wife and daughter walk through they didn't go off I went off right I have this bulky wallet metal wallet so I went off but instead of searching me they had me empty my pockets and go through a second one so I I was never physically searched I just emptied my pockets put it through I went through and I passed so my goal is to take the four that we are have on trial take I know well I'm putting one
104of them and then the other three are going to go to another school but two of them will be the main and the second will be the backup and only worst case scenario would we have to search a kid so my goal is to make them feel safe you know and make sure it works make sure we don't have a lot of false alarms so my mind's not been met up but why we made up but why I like this is because even if we decide not to use them at school I'll use them at football games so it's not a waste of money if they don't work we come to you in a couple months and we say you know what we didn't like them you know and we're not going to go forward
105with them if they work and you know it cuts down on our Vapes and a cuts down on kids coming in and with weapons and it makes kids feel safer then we'll get more and we'll put them at all the high schools so no decision has been made and I don't want it to seem like it it has been the other thing we're going to is we went to a safety a safety app it's called the tap app and clps it's a safety platform so since I've been here I've been approached by about five different companies uh trying to sell us a safety app I've looked at all of them none of them have ever impressed me um we actually found this one because we were looking for threat assessment software to document what we
106were doing and to protect the district so this isn't just an app it's a complete platform that every school will have access to puts a lot more responsibility on principles um and it makes the director's security job much easier to keep track of our drills are there safety teams meeting most audits that come out they get gigged for having a safety team but the safety team not Vermont or this or the threat assessment team is existent but are never met so this will ensure the principles are allowed on the back end to enter all their drills all their safety information it gives us sample policies which have been vetted by uh attorneys in education it's FERPA compliant it's New York State ad compliant and it allows us to do so much more than just the
107app but I'll explain the app in a second it also has an anonymous student student platform so that if we decided we wanted to replace safe School hotline with an app which kids use app they don't use phones and you know we went and watched a rollout at another district and all the kids said they would rather use an app than a phone line and safe School hotline is twelve thousand dollars a year this app is included with the platform so that'll save some of that it also has a threat assessment module that actually will help our counselors document what they do when we do get a light speed alert so a counselor gets a Lightspeed alert they're going to be team managers they'll be allowed to go into the software they'll only see their
108cases they'll enter the student's information and if they put it's a suicide assessment they automatically get the Columbia rating scale and then they can download it they can give it to the parents they can show what the scale showed and it covers the district because it'll say what we did to help that student and it all they can even set a reminder to interview that student a week later after they've done everything and so they can call the student in they'll get an email reminder same thing for threat assessment so for threat assessment if they enter it as a threat assessment case will automatically get the Dewey Cornell rating scale which is very outdated not designed for schools but this company actually he has one of the top gurus in homeland security and threat management
109like three stops higher than me and he helped develop it and he has a new scale going front of Homeland Security that is just for schools much shorter and designed just for us and it's in the final stages of being approved and once it's approved it will be in the software and our team will be able to use that rather than Dewey Cornell because Dewey Cornell is very long survey our old Dewey's Cornell survey to determine if a student was a risk it was like 24 pages long so this will help us on that it also helps us the app portion of it is on your phone it's going to take care of so many of our problems with communicating with teachers with communicating with administrators with communicating during emergency it's simply an app on
110your phone that will give to all teachers I'm going to try to show you what it looks like here and when you open it up it has a standardized uh shelter in place hold in place evacuation lockout lockdown so every will be able to put every school into a hold in place and we don't have to make phone calls so if something used to happen the Security Supervisor of the school would call me I would call John I would call Mike I would call the district safety officers and we're making time phone calls on the way to the school now we we put this on all our administrators phones already we put it on all our security phones already we had an emergency the other day at Greece Athena a fire alarm was pulled by
111the time my phone went off I looked there are already four people in the app communicating in the app it becomes a group text message inside the app and it labels who's talking so I was able to see my security supervisors in the app say we're on the way I was able to see my security District officers say they're on the way I was able to see my security supervisor at Athena say it was a kid pulling the alarm it was a freezing cold day we have it hooked into our transportation department government so they know if they get the alert that's under 32 degrees they automatically start sending us buses no phone calls and we had the kids back in the building in five minutes so we're also linking this to the fire department
112we just had a meeting with the police department and 9-1-1 an officer of Emergency Management and our goal is to get 9-1-1 into this so that they'll get lockdowns only so by the time if we ever had an unlikely event of an active shooter or a risk to our students somebody activates this it goes right to 9-1-1 they would be sending cars before we even have they even have their first 9-1-1 call and then we'll be able to communicate through the app but more importantly we've installed all this fancy equipment for lock bounds lockdown buttons blue buttons and you turn the knob and it makes our swipe cards inactive it turns off everything it puts Gates down it gets everyone to lock the door it makes an announcement it's scary right we have a much
113more a higher much higher chance of having a false alarm for those locked arms that cause causes Panic then we actually do a real lockdown so this solves that problem because it'll be on all teachers phones and we'll be able to get into that app and actually say this is a false alarm and they'll see Steve chatterton's name on it or they'll see the HUD security supervised and then we'll be able to communicate we're going to follow a procedure we're going to come unlock your door with law enforcement and then at least that eases everybody and they on understand it's a false alarm Irondequoit just had a false alarm it lasted two hours with guns being drawn kids texting their parents teachers not knowing what was going on people crying that will not happen with
114this app this takes care of all that it takes care of so many of our problems like teachers on the playground always we're asking how do I get notified if there's a hole in place in the building how do I get notified if there's lockdown so now they'll be able to get into the app see what's going on and then if they're on the playground we always teach them walk to your evacuation they'll be able to get into the app and put a message in there I'm taking if I'm at Olympia I'm taking my class degree or to Buckman so we know where they're at we can get in also allows them to take attendance and also allows them to put in missing students and it also allows them to see the incident command system
115of who's in the bill who's in charge of the building and I was able to drag our portal plans into the app so now those useless the useless portal that I told you you about that it goes nowhere I can download it into the app so now it's not useless anymore but it's not because of New York State ad it's because of a private company making New York safer than New York state that is so we're excited about both things because we think it'll make our building safer we think it'll improve our communication so far it's been we had only planned on rolling the app and the platform out to a couple schools because my daughter's boyfriend turns on my internet I don't even know how to do that stuff and I was able to
116figure this out so if I can figure it out anybody can figure it out and then once we started rolling it out to schools everyone loved it the teacher said it gave them you know at ease we got it for transportation so because Transportation has no lockdown buttons or alarms so you bought it for transportation in this building here we got it for Phoenix you know and it looks like we're going to be followed by about 10 other school districts and then we'll be able to communicate with those districts that we were in a lockdown or a lockout to just by sharing it with them which makes it much easier so we're excited moving forward you know and again I appreciate you letting us come here and tell us tell you what our team does
117because like I said I have a team you know I have Tom Jenkins doing my cameras I have Scott naremore doing my PA you know I have Kurt color doing my facilities and all my installs so it's not this is not just me this is my team you know so we're excited moving forward what we're doing in security questions [Applause] so with that we're gonna recess for 10 minutes welcome back to our Tuesday May 2nd 2023 Board of Education meeting do we have one meeting thank you all righty then 6.01 change orders can I tell you move the change orders to the table please move by Miss Flores seconded by Mrs farmer any comments questions or concerns on those the only comment I will make is those changes amount to 58 000 approximately 58 770
118with that all those in favor that passes seven to zero moving on to 6.02 extra classroom activities report can I have somebody move that to the table please move by vice president milora second by Mr swicky and comments questions concerns on that signals in favor that passes seven to zero moving on to anticipated bids it's rare information only does anybody have any questions all right moving on to budget revenue and status report that's information only does anybody have any questions on that all righty consent agenda can I certainly move the consent agenda to the table please move by Mr swiki seconded by Miss Flores any comments questions concerns on the consent agenda I'm just going to thank let me get to that page here I would like to thank the Arcadia extra classroom fund for
119their donations I would like to thank Wegmans for their um donation in the memory of Ray Bauman to the um sponsored by the degree circadia class of 1972 the Athena extra class or Athena mental extra classroom report or extra classroom fund the Olympia extra classroom fund and at Holmes Road smola Consulting for donations towards the purchase of laptops for school assemblies in the following areas of the library phys Ed art room and school-wide celebration so thank you to smaller Consulting for that with that all those in favor of the consent agenda that passes seven to zero moving on to item 11.01 the approval of the chairperson for the district election can I just want to move that to the table please moved by Mr Farm our second by Mr bonagorio any comments questions concerns on
120that saying not all's in favor that passes 7-0 can I have Sony move the election inspector approval to the table please move by vice president Moore second by Mr swicky any comments questions or concerns on that seeing not all those in favor that passes seven to zero now we're in the second read of policies Mrs Wiki can I make a motion to move them all together to okay I would like to make a motion to separate all these there's many comments that we do have to make there's several of these this might take a minute this actually was actually supposed to be up for discussion I see on our sheet that if we wanted to provide discussion we were able to do so so okay kind of putting them all together will kind of defeat
121that unless we can kind of summarize just for clarification is there a certain policy or you want to talk about each policy because it's our second read on them so that's my question well if there's something that anyone would like to say that's open to the floor for anybody to answer to add any comments but yes there are several comments that people can make okay Mr bonagorio um thank you educational opportunities yes okay any other comments uh what do you mean as far as providing more comments we have a motion now to move them all is one you just made a comment speaking against it Mr barnagorio made a comments beginning again it wasn't a comment speaking against it was to get some clarification okay well the motion on the table is the move them
122all is one thank you okay and so right now that's the motion on the table is there any other comments on that motion moving them is one all right all those in favor of moving them as one please raise your hand those opposed it passes five to two we're going to move them all as one all right with that they're all before you does anybody have any questions on any of them before you or would like to make a comment on any of them before you as a group Mr yes bear with me one second there's about 10 policies here all right let's see this is regarding and I'm just gonna make while you're finding these went through our policy committee at the district level it's a board level committee they were all passed forward
123to the board unanimously by the committee just as clarification Mr bonagorio are you ready yeah okay I'll go with you I'll get Miss Pharaoh a second to get her together Mr barnegorio thank you and yes I I agree these were passed unanimously um by the by the policy committee and I love the the principle that we're applying here which is to provide equal opportunities non-discrimination point of order you're just on you're on 81 30. okay I just want to make sure thank you yes so the the title of that one is equal educational opportunities uh so I I just need looking at this after the fact and thinking about it further it just needs some clarification uh it is the policy of this District that each student attending its Public Schools shall have equal educational
124opportunities that goes on uh and then lists a variety of characteristics race color creed Etc sex sexual orientation gender identity and gender identity is an addition um I'm not sure I understand the distinction between the term sex and gender identity is there a differentiation between those two items I mean I'll take a crack at it in layman's terms um and I don't know if somebody wants to I mean I look at sex is I'm a male and my gender identity if I identified as a female I would be a female so it would be that would be my gender identity for all the smart people in the room is that accurate yes I would have taken sexist sex identified at Birth and then gender identified by the person themselves and with that too I mean
125what what I've I've seen again in the business world and whatnot right is this is where like the use of pronouns come into play right so you might be he he she they them right non-binary in that sense as well and so that would be somewhat different right than sex versus you know that that classification protected under federal law since 2014 so this is nothing new so for their uh clarification then does this create any conflict with Title IX protections for uh for women and girls and opportunities for them no can you elaborate I don't I that's kind of there's they're separate things and I don't think it's related to this policy well we I also for help me understand then if if someone identifies someone has a sex assigned at Birth that is male
126and identifies as female how does that factor into Title IX protections for example in sports we follow New York state laws and the laws is such that protect separate classes so depending on the situation we would refer to law first which supersedes school board policy I didn't notice the law and it may be my ignorance there but I didn't I know the other that a variety of laws are referenced I didn't see though that legislation referenced is it in there I was going to read from um some guidance from New York State Ed Department from 2015. um Title IX and the education amendments in 1972 specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs and activities the United States Department of education's office for civil rights has issued guidance recognizing that
127Title IX protects transgender students against discrimination based on their gender identity and that's referenced in here the third one from the bottom can I add a comment to that your question are you done I don't want to cut you off or if you have something else the moment I yeah okay thank you so I just want to clarify because it does say extracurricular events and if we do take out the sex sexual orientation and we're putting in gender identity does this give the ability for women to play in men's sports I'm assuming correct it is under extracurricular events I'm assuming that is under Sports can I ask a point of clarification you asked about removing sexual orientation and that has not been removed I realized I didn't say that but yes this is regards to
128the sex sexual orientation gender identity so my question still stands though is this going to allow women to play in girls to play in voice the sports thank you so I want to just clarify a couple of things um so a female it could be a female that identifies as a male or a male who identifies as a female and so would they be able to participate in a sport or activity that is like designed by a particular male or female like where they differentiate right so yes so then obviously if if the girls can play in the men's sports so obviously opposite well it's not girls it's well it's I mean I think that there's a difference in terms of the way you're saying it but if it's a student who was um a
129female born a female and is now identifying as a male I think it's different because that wouldn't be necessarily the way we would talk about that but yes they would depending on the sport and depending on there's there's a lot right now that has just come out through the state um that is being brought down through all the sports or athletic organizations around what does that look and sound like and how does that work in sports so I can't say clearly or definitively for every sport for example it would be just like that and I know that there's some work that section 5 is doing on that to provide us some guidance so it's not a clean answer right now for you right I was going to say because then that would bring it brings
130up so much more policy procedures as far as you know you've got girls and boys and and going each other's Sports uh we have a locker room situation shower room situation I mean we got to make sure that there's a system and this isn't new I mean like this has been years this is just a conversation yep so okay just want to make sure yeah one more clarification um I think one of the uh answers suggested in a distinction between a person who's transgendered and a person who identifies as a different gender but maybe not may not be transgendered physically um I don't know if I'm saying that all correctly is that is does that factor in so point of clarification Mr farmer um are you saying that this person may not have had bottom
131and top surgery I I'm asking if that's the distinct if that's what's a distinction in the answer I'm not clear can I just ask a question so the the intent of the policy right is to ensure that we have equal educational opportunities for all shapes and colors however you want to identify yourself whatever ethnic background you have basically anything that's covered by law right that we will educate that student to the best of our abilities and ensure that they have equal access to an opportunity any way you want to slice it and if that's the case right I I honestly I'm indifferent to what pronoun anyone wants to use what they want to identify as or anything like that we're saying we're going to give them an education 100 so so I I don't understand
132what we're debating here we're having a discussion I don't know what we're having a discussion about do you does everyone agree with that then I I consider 8130 closed because there's nothing else to talk about unless there's a violent objection from someone at this table that what I just said is inaccurate I think the discussion is closed and I'd like to move to the next policy does that does that impact the way we handle uh locker room issues it as as stated right we've been dealing with this for years right this has been a thing in our schools for years passing this policy does not change the kids that we are educating that's right it does that's right so again I don't understand what we are debating on this specific policy we haven't debated anything
133we've been asking questions which conversation constitutes as a conversation yeah I'm not a debate we can to what end though to what end are we solving something here because I thought that's the point here right the before us is a policy that's already been reviewed by our committee are we comfortable with it or not and now we want to discuss it further to what end what are we solving tell me the issue at hand because the policy is designed to give us equal opportunity equal present equal opportunity to all of our students we probably could have been done with this five minutes ago but we were asking questions and you keep asking to keep going forward if you want to end the policy you can I can because I tried to do them all together
134and we couldn't do that all right getting back does anybody yes yes I have more discussion 8130 follows the law is that correct and the school district's goal in this update of this policy is to enable us to follow the law is there any part of this policy that does not follow the law thank you could I make a point of clarification just about lack of rooms we were one of the first school districts in the area that stopped using them approximately six years ago where students no longer change for gym we've stopped this so it's if that's your main issue we took care of that years ago because all student many students said that it was an uncomfortable area for them so we met the rights of all students and removed that barrier thank
135you Dr absolutely any other discussion on 8130 all right we're done with 3130 Mr what other ones would you like to discuss I think we're good we'll let sawicki end this I'm happy to talk about others if you have questions Miss France your duty as a board member to fulfill your role if you have questions or concerns you should be raised those questions or concerns yes and if you have further questions or concerns please address them I just wanted to make reference I know there was one regarding the the covid um and they changed the pandemic are we advocating for I know that we're trying to Advocate locally are we still trying to do that I know that the policy was referenced around covid and I know that we're kind of getting out of it
136in a reference like a pandemic kind of a situation yeah so we kind of want to specifically yeah so this is basically if we have another pandemic if we have covet 20 it would be covet 20 and it's a broad-based it's more of a broad-based our other policy was specific to coven 19. now we have a pandemic related policy so if there's another pandemic that comes we will have a policy in place for that all right that was the intent of the policy perfect good thank you anybody other and so many other questions or comments on any of these other policies all right with that sing on all those unfair their policies before you opposed did you vote okay all right passes five to two moving on to board member comments board member comments who
137would like to go first a board member comments tonight yeah I'm sorry Mr s I'm sorry nope it's okay I had the pleasure of attending an event at a school that I am a liaison for English Village this past week they had an event with where they had a bingo night and had pizza and did a buy one get one free from their school um book sale I pulled in the parking lot and I couldn't find a parking spot the place was packed there were over 400 people that went through there and I just want to shout out a congratulations to Katie and Stacy who are the Community Schools parent and site coordinator for organizing an amazing event the interaction amongst the parents that was going on there and the sharing that was going on
138just the the general Vibe of what you feel when you walk in that school especially when an event like that is going on and the positive comments from the parents the positive comments for the kids of how excited they were I just couldn't miss stating what a great event and I know that those things are going on at our other schools and we're seeing a high level participation for people who want to be involved so thank you to especially our community schools Representatives who are making those types of opportunities available to the parents and students and families to be able to get together and talk about common things and be able to have their kids share a really great time outside of their usual school day so um outside of that I would like to
139remind everyone is if I don't think that it needs a reminder that May 16th is our day to vote irregardless of how you feel about the district it's so important to get out and share your voice and to vote and we have a lot of people in this District who don't take that opportunity we have a lot of the same people who come in and share their opinions in the really important to all of us but there's a majority of people that we don't hear from and we look for different ways to try to find Avenues to be able to speak to those people and to be able to hear from them and I think this District continues to try to do everything that they possibly can to involve all the stakeholders to be transparent
140in the information that they share I Echo a lot of the things that Peter Johnson was sharing as our GTA rep in where he was stating that despite the fact that there are a lot of things going wrong in this district and they're not where we want to be we are finding ways in trying to understand why why aren't these things happening and what do we need to do to build up other outside resources I think for our kids the question does remain why are Ela scores and math scores lower than they should be why is that the case at every other school district I don't know but I think that what is important is this school district has taken a tremendous amount of time to put into place other programs to try to support
141kids in other ways we have to be able to capture students attention we have to be able to offer programs and services that prepares kids to want to learn because if you have a child in front of you that is unfocused and has no interest in the material in front of them no matter how hard you try it will be ineffective this district has put forth programs such as clubs and other opportunities for our kids in secondary school the kids who came and spoke today that are doing the RT program Amazing there's other interests available and I think that by looking at all of those outside programs it lends to the idea for our kids that if they want to learn how to do those things the basis of their education which is Reading Writing
142math is going to be really necessary in order for them to follow through with those other activities so I'm excited about the things that this school district has put forth I'm excited about this things that are in the budget that the district has so thoughtfully and responsibly thought about to support our kids there are a lot of mental health issues that are going on it affects my family directly and without the additional support of the school district those people that I know in within my family and those other people that need those resources in order to be able to come to school ready to learn is so so important we need to keep understanding and identifying those underlying issues I also resonate with a comment that in our public forum earlier about school is not
143apparent I tend to agree that school is not supposed to replace a parent but we are in a situation where we have a district where parents are stretched beyond their limits and these kids come to school and they don't have what they need and the district steps in and provides services programs and actually somebody who cares and wants to listen to the kid in front of them to be able to provide things that unfortunately some of our parents just can't manage all the time so is it the right thing for school to be a parent not always but one of the things I love about this district is the kids come into this school and the teachers the front line as I call them and everybody else around them they care enough to realize may
144not be they may not be a parent but that kid still needs that kind of support they need to understand morals and manners and all of those other things so while we don't want to think that we need school to do certain things there's a certain reality we have to face whether it be a reality about what we need for getting better reading in math scores or what we need in order to tackle the mental health issues so our students are ready to learn chaos takes away from our students our students need stability they need to be in a situation where they're not facing constant massive changes they need to be able to have people support them the point of this board for me and this is my opinion only everybody else would need to
145speak for themselves whether you're running or already on this board I came to this board with No Agenda because of the fact that it is a commitment to the whole package I'm not here representing one particular school I'm not here representing one particular group I'm not here representing one particular problem I'm not here representing one particular thing that's going really really well hardest part about being on this board is being willing to look at all sides of things and represent the entire package and while you may not always agree with it and I can assure you that I do not always agree with any of my board members at any given time the important part is as we sit here as a collective group and try to figure out what the best way is to
146help our students our students need our support they need the services that this district is stretching their funds to provide I encourage you use your voice please go out and vote thank you thank you Mr Flores vice president um so those of you know me I'm a music person so even though I did do subscribe to the Rochester Broadway Theater League I also attend all the plays in Greece Central and I was happy to end my season with the Wizard of Oz Junior at Arcadia middle school and SpongeBob SquarePants at Athena Middle School how exciting to see the younger students trying their their skills and putting on costumes I thoroughly enjoyed all of them and I can't wait for a new season but we are also now in concert season and every school is going
147to be having their spring concerts please go out and support the students you know especially the young ones first year playing the violin it's so exciting um happy that we have girls playing flag football I didn't think I'd ever be able to say that and I hope to get to a game soon it should be exciting I want to remind everybody that the art show starts May 4th at the mall and students are all our schools have artwork that was selected to be there so please go by and support those art students and finally to the firefighters that were here before there um I was at Odyssey one day and I thought there was actually a fire because there were fire trucks and students in gear and in fact I even called Sean and said
148something's going on here what a wonderful experience for our students to work with the community firefighters and I'm thrilled I'm career educator so I couldn't ask for anything more thank you I just have a Mr Speaker Mr swickey thank you president McCabe yeah no I appreciate that all right and and miss miss Flores sparked some things for me as well right so um you know and part of it was you know talking about why why you run for board right um and you know I'm not running again right surprise I'm I wasn't on the list right um but but uh yeah it made me reflect on why why did I run to begin with right and I didn't have an agenda right I had I had three kids who or at the time just going
149into kindergarten right and from a servant leadership perspective right I felt compelled uh to lend my time my talents right or what some people call talents right it's very loose definition um and and put that out there right to try and help and uh yeah I would say somewhat surprisingly I think I snuck in and won right um and I was like okay well what do we do right and I certainly answered thoughts right but largely I didn't have an agenda right but I didn't know I was a finance guy and I stomped over to Romeo's office so quick I was like Hey listen Romy we're going to crack this budget we're going to figure this out right because we're we're a at the time 230 million dollar you know uh District here we're gonna
150figure this out I I know we're wasting money away right got to be burning it we're not right like and and it took me a bit you know to to be humble enough to to recognize even where you may bring expertise right um you really haven't have to have an appreciation for how the whole system works right and you know this this Village metaphor which was referred to earlier and it's gotten far more run than I think I ever expected um not just for me but other candidates have used it as well um it made me reflect too that maybe a village isn't the right thing right and I'm going to date myself here a bit right and go a little geeky for everyone do you guys remember SimCity it was like one of the
151first windows based games right and the whole premise of the game before there were Sims before there's Minecraft and all that right was that you had to build the city and you had to get people to come to your city and then you you tax them and you got dollars and then you got to build a skyscraper right well in my my younger days right I just wanted to build the amusement park in the city that was it right I was going to get a roller coaster and that was going to be bringing everybody to my city and I was going to win SimCity and I was pretty successful at that I built the roller coaster and people came the whole while the mayor keeps popping up and it was like Hey You Know listen
152everyone's hungry we need a few more restaurants right um hey you know maybe we should put a library in right that would be great um and I'm like no not the roller coaster maybe we'll put a baseball stadium right and I just went off on a total tangent and next thing you know my my city didn't make it right everyone left and nobody went right and and for me right um I'm going to use that analogy to think about how oh I serve as a board member for how I served as a board member right and and really in areas where it's not my expertise right I listen to The Experts and I I heed that advice right um and and I hear that right when I I hear teachers administrators support staff tell us
153you know what they're seeing in schools right some may say hey John that's to the extreme maybe you're trusting everybody too much and and there's there's a fair argument to that right you know do we need more data sure there's some times I could ask for some more right and I could be annoying on that looking at Kathy right um but but you know on the whole right I'm gonna trust the experts in those particular Fields right to do their jobs right and and for me you know as I I'm still a a customer here of the district right my kids did not not on the Doogie Howser program they did not get through in the last uh six years right so I'm I'm still around for a bit right um but I I ask
154like Miss Flores right that everyone gets out and votes right and do that in an educated way right read the budget packet go through every line item that Romeo put in there right and and digest it you won't be able to digest it but try right because there's a lot there right and I'd say through six years I still don't know every line item you know the way Romeo does right but I trust him right um but read the packet watch the candidate night form your own opinions right one of the other reasons I'm not running for board I'll give you two reasons right one for me there's a lot of uh false narratives that play in the media right and I'll I'll point to social media in particular right make sure you recognize the
155source that you're getting your information from it's so critical not just for School Board elections but in life right and I in many ways I feel this most recent election is kind of like what we saw in the presidential election three years ago right where I feel like I need an intern that just does fact checks the whole time and tells me which side is right so get your own information watch the candidate night read the budget packet form your own opinion and then get out there and vote it's the most important thing you can do for your city right for your kids right to make sure they have the best education possible thank you I am going to miss you and with that it's my turn um I was lucky enough last week to
156be able to recognize um several Greece students they received the Monroe County Youth award last week at MCC and as a school district we had the most students besides the city of Rochester so I'm very proud of the fact that we had so many amazing young people that were recognized by County Executive Bello in the County Legislature to afford amazing things our kids do where I was also lucky enough to present an award one of our assistant principals who's leaving this year Mr Dave Hoffman and he's been a strong Advocate especially with our marching band and in the schools for 35 years almost 40 years I believe it is and he's going to be missed as he heads off in retirement but it was an honor to recognize him last week as well I want
157to take a moment to Echo what my vice president said about the girls flag football I was lucky enough to flip the inaugural coin between Arcadia and Athena girls flag football it's absolutely amazing that we have that I want to thank the Ralph C Wilson Foundation for making that possible across Western New York and it's amazing to see how many young ladies we have participating in flag football and the RT I said it a little bit earlier that um those kids are amazing what I'm most proud of is looking at the group of kids that was here tonight way back in the day when we started talking about responding to emergencies conceptually the fire service in the town of Greece is very white and it's very male and to see that group of kids tonight
158that was one of the goals to increase diversity in the fire service by bringing more women in by bringing um young people of color into jobs in the fire service and that program is evidence tonight is pushing people into those jobs that they never thought they could get which I think is absolutely phenomenal and lastly I want to take a moment to congratulate our superintendent of schools she is being recognized next week by the Genesee Valley acsd awards committee and she's getting a word for outstanding leadership and I just want to congratulate you I'm looking forward to attending and you should be very proud of that award so with that you're up my remarks will be short I um the main thing that I want to say right now in terms of closing the meeting
159tonight is how proud I am of the budget that we've put forward the budget is uh incredibly long process we start talking about it in November December we really don't stop talking about it all year long but we really get into the thick of it early on the most important thing that we do with that is get input the most important uh part of that is making sure that we're funneling dollars towards what's important and to the things that match our values when I see kids stand up that are part of the responding to emergency that's because we funded things when I see the robotics teams having the success that they've had it's because we have funneled dollars to those things like extracurriculars and sports and music and our goal is to graduate like citizens
160graduate happy healthy Civic minded responsible students and we may not be perfect but what I will say is I'm proud that we are a humble organization I'm proud that our Union reps will stand up and acknowledge areas that we need to grow and also acknowledge where we want to build on success there is plenty of work to do and we've put forth a budget that really is going to allow us to do much of that work but I will also say one year will not fix everything that is wrong in our district or the country New York State any of it um reading doesn't get fixed with a program reading doesn't get fixed in one year Behavior doesn't get fixed in one year so I would ask and plead for you to really look at
161what we have put out in terms of the budget documents you will see programs services staff funded that are really putting their money where their mouth is and helping students in those key areas that we've identified with Ela math and behavior as well as being able to continue to provide a wealth of opportunities for our kids which we know they need to get a sense of belonging to show up and and actually feel good about being in school so I'm proud of this and I'm proud of a budget Department that doesn't just look at numbers there's many districts that do a lot of that and you can put forth the budget easy on paper that's balanced particularly with the foundation Aid that we're getting but our budget department is different in that they really do
162care about our students that we're graduating they really do care about making sure that that budget itself is representing what we want and need for a community and I appreciate that and I'm proud of it and I look at it and say oh my gosh even as a someone who's in a house for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars I'm going to save fifty one dollars next year I'm gonna that's gonna be less I think that's a big accomplishment and one that we've worked hard on in terms of how we designed and what we're putting forward so I would encourage everyone to vote I hope to see more people out in terms of participation our response has been about less than four percent in this District that come out to vote so my hope is
163that more people will have their voice heard on May 16th thank you very much I'd like to make a motion to adjourn our meeting please in honor of Mr Maloney Mr farmer all those in favor zero thank you everyone have a good evening