001give it your money back good evening I'd like to welcome everyone to our Tuesday December 6 2022 Board of Education meeting if I could have everyone rise through the pledge which will be led by vice president milora this evening and followed by a moment of silence and if you could remember um Robert Coomer the father of petty law who passed away from our print shop so if you could remember the Kumar and law families Shirley Bennett who was a retired custodian from The Odyssey if you could remember the Bennett family and Josiah Rogers he was a fifth grade student at Lakeshore he passed away as well so if you could keep the Rogers family and your thoughts and prayers they'd be appreciated so prayers for the Rogers family the Bennett family and the law family
002thank you I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America into the Republic for which it stands under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you can Sony move the agenda to table please who by Mr sawicki seconded by Miss Flores any auditions deletions to the agenda seeing not all those in front of the agenda that passes eight to zero uh our student leaders from Odyssey come on down good evening ladies welcome give us a moment foreign 2022 presented by Soraya Alves faraja kimpini Kim Pindi Rania saraj this is Araya I'm faraja and this is Rania Spirit Week what do you think about when you hear the word Spirit Week you see I think about excitement the full fun of it the new idea new presentation and just bringing people
003together during spirit week we had different ideas everyone joined in hand and we presented things we could do for the school and make people want to come to school feel like school it's not just for study but also a place where they can learn about other culture new tradition new events and they can also feel excitement and feel like I'm still a child I can enjoy this stuff we had um red carpet day where we dress up as celebrities or like just fancy people as you can see in the picture and also in the picture I'm the one in the gold so we also had where people dress up as characters and um is this working oh yeah you're good so we also had people dress up we had um Cowboy day which this one
004we kind of took a long time we were debating on should we do a should not because it didn't represent the whole majority but it was still fun people still enjoy it and that's all spirit week is about enjoying the moment and having fun and also it's all about bringing Spirit into students you know students are going through stuff tests and they have to work hard so we need that little distraction to kind of keep them focused and enjoying the moment loyal student section through the fall Sports session good evening my name is Soraya Alvarez during the fall Sports season Odyssey Scholars continue to show leopard Pride by supporting their friends and attending um the home games where they got to celebrate every time we had one appoint okay [Laughter] Odyssey for senior night so
005I'm just gonna read some of it off my phone so The Odyssey falls in the night is a traditional young High School athlete away for as it's the celebration of some of the end of their youth sport careers unionized typically the last home game of the sports session do we sing another student and their parents go to court or field and the seniors are celebrated recognized by the offend their teammate and coach parent um friends usually they give flowers balloon and many things for the seniors to kind of make sure and tell them that they are remembered and loved and we hope them they have the great um the best Futures ever as you can see in the pictures we had it was a very exciting exciting moment for the seniors and they kind of
006show like they're moving into more adulthood they're going into their real world and they have to leave some of the excitement behind so as a senior now we kind of like bring them in and remind them that they can still be a child they can still enjoy the school spirit and still have fun even later on in the future Avid Scholar's trip to Buffalo Avid Scholars and grades 9-12 had an opportunity to take a trip to University of Buffalo where they received a free tour around the campus and experienced the college life and me personally I was one of the Avid students who went to UB and I really loved it because I got to see the whole campus and see and got to experience the college life and I felt like it was a
007great opportunity some of you are probably wonder what Avid Avid is a program that helps students kind of prepare for college and many other things like studying way to benefit school and where to prepare yourself for other things in life Avid is still something that many people are still learning about it's kind of still fresh but it's going to become big later on as people learn more about it and see the benefit of avid as you can see in the picture the students seem to be brought together by Avid when I was in Avid it was a time where we it was kind of like a study hall but at the same time we did work and learn more about like the future what college we wanted to go to um planning and studying tip
008so Avid is something amazing and I should recommend if you have kids let them join foreign so in my grade I'm a junior who attends Odyssey Academy and my Avid grade from my Avid 11 group all planned together with me and my principal Mr Hepburn and Mr belinski a teacher who works at Odyssey Academy and we all plan to go see the premiere of black panther 2 and to be honest it was a good movie if you have not seen it yet I recommend that you don't see it because it was very good good evening I'm Ronnie saraj and I'm an 11th grader in Odyssey Academy as you can see in the pictures we've held a school event it was a skating party and a game night and the game night was held at Horizon
009fun effects and we played um laser tag and everything was so fun we also had a game night we played games like Uno and trouble it was very fun okay response to emergencies also known as RTE is a comprehensive program that is designed to give students the Knowledge and Skills necessary to help lives in emergency situations RTE enables students to work Hands-On with EMTs firefighters and the police after successfully passing the course students will be CPR ready and EMT certified so that's really good the program is perfect for students that are interested in pursuing careers in the medical field and especially students who want to become firefighters and like EMTs paramedics and police officers and yeah any type of first responder thank you for listening it was such a wonderful time presenting the fun and
010best part of our school that's all before you guys sit down we started a new we're going to have you guys come up and take a picture with the board so if you don't mind coming up we'd appreciate that all right it looks like next up we have GTA Kara hi hey how are you well how are you very good thank you welcome good hi everyone good evening Board of Education member superintendent groutman and newly elected members I have not met you yet so I'm happy to see you my name is Carolyn jerovic I'm here representing the Greece Teachers Association as the unit's vice president for educational programs this is my second year in the role and have served our Union in other capacities previously as well most importantly I am a second grade teacher
011at Autumn Lane it is my 24th year one of my responsibilities is to help facilitate access to professional learning and continuous learning for our GTA members what's most exciting about this now is that Greece teachers have been given the opportunity to participate in Choice professional learning opportunities with the Inception and ratification of our new contract that GTA and gcsd negotiated in great faith Greece teachers now have the opportunity to choose up to 20 hours of professional learning of their choice this item in our contract allows instructional staff to access areas of specific interest and broaden their learning to bring back to the students in their classroom like a perfect example would be an AP Physics teacher able to take part in a professional development very specific to his or her subject area and then bring
012it back to the classroom for the um for his or her students needs which might not have been available before in our normal professional learning or professional development our teachers are excited and reinvigorated about this chance to deepen their skill set as they often are doing they'll turn key the learning with other staff members in an effort to motivate students teachers can begin with themselves so we have the opportunity to try something new with easily accessible professional learning whether it's a workshop or webinar or even a field trip many groups have also done the resources are Unlimited in an effort to help us all reimagine how to promote student growth as well as our own professional growth we worked very very hard on this on Wednesday afternoons all spring long so this was such a
013collaborative effort between gcsd and GTA and so we want to thank you all for that there are choices within the teacher Center catalogs which teachers have access to across New York state so for example if a District's teacher Center on Long Island is offering a webinar we get to take it and that goes toward our hours and it's very exciting our teachers are also providing other teachers with professional learning opportunities so we can create book studies or study groups instructor-led development or even independent studies similar to maybe what you would have seen in a college type course I do encourage you all to take a look at the professional Learning Center tab on our Greece Central School District home page Margaret Demba and I write a newsletter together three times a year which includes all
014the information and if you click around and go to our newsletter it's all right in there and it's very exciting stuff within this GTA gcsd collaboration Marguerite and I also attend or will be attending the teacher Center Spring Symposium in Albany in March this year and last our own teacher Center planned that entire supposed Symposium which was full of very relevant workshops led by teachers from around the state it's a very exciting time and teachers have taken hundreds of hours so far in their own professional learning and have been able to make choices in it which is really exciting so thanks for your time please know that Greece teachers appreciate your continued effort and support on behalf of our students always and have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year everyone thanks Carol
015thanks you're welcome oh [Applause] next up Mr Jones see you all blessed I am Brandon Jones I'm the principal at crack Hill Elementary but some of my Odyssey students reminded me of my roots I went to say hello to them and they go don't you remember you had the Lululemon bag and you would collect our cell phones oh okay you know they didn't do the pouches when I was there so I had to do the hard work all right okay well anyway Brandon Jones principal at Craig Hill here to update you all on gasa this is my first time presenting to the board in this forum and what I will say it was really cool um when I reached out to my gassa colleagues to ask them for input to present to you guys and
016what my colleagues are doing around the district is just really exciting I don't know if anybody does it quite like we do it here in Greece and we should be really proud I was at least when I was reading and putting together this presentation so thank you for your time and we'll get going listen let's start with Arcadia Middle School Mr Alum wants us to know that they are continuing their professional learning around zoretta Hammond's book culturally responsive teaching in the brain and really making sure that it's woven in with their Avid instructional strategies there was one group our GTA rep just spoke there was one group who has used their choice PL to really dig into those Avid instructional strategies and they have gone back and turned Keen some of what they learned to
017the staff at Arcadia middle and then of course Mr Lum wanted me to remind folks that you have two more nights so go on over to Arcadia and see their holiday tree Gala a festival of lights on the Arcadia campus and of course we have Brookside Brookside they're keeping these kids in shape at Brookside okay they had their kindness week um the week of November 14th there was a school-wide assembly uh to celebrate kindness week they had superintendent groutman there as their guest speaker and then of course the PE and the mental health team hosted a wellness fair for students they were able to participate and help the wellness activities which included Taekwondo mindfulness and yoga and I could tell you my back was just sore reading that okay Taekwondo all right fifth grade student
018leaders were able to raise 263 dollars for Toys for Tots by doing a November coin Drive how cool is that English Village they gave out um be kind t-shirts that was organized by their PTA this week's staff members are participating in the ready Math training upcoming they have their very good kids Awards each class will honor one student who best exemplifies their three R's their character traits as well as their leader and me habits their sip gold three attendance they are very excited to announce that they are closing the Gap when it comes to attendance between certain subgroups and then of course they participated in the shop with a cop last weekend not just English Village but a lot of our elementary schools participated and Shop with a cop this past Saturday I know there
019was one little guy at Craig Hill who was super excited to come up and tell me about his experience with Shop with a cop that was very awesome Olympia listen Olympia inducted 37th and 8th graders into the National Junior Honor Society last week I mean those kids are working hard 37th and 8th graders Panthers the Pine Brook Panthers uh listen they're halfway to meeting their fresh air fun wildly important goal of seven thousand and seven minutes school-wide if they meet they goal meet their goal they will celebrate with an outdoor dance party that's gonna be quite chilly but I guess if they're going to be dancing you know keep the you know body warm this will be their first attempt at a school-wide leader in me goal listen to Pine Brook they're also their fifth
020graders are celebrating their first ever Esperanza day at the end of November after finishing their fifth grade Common text Esperanza Rising students made traditional dolls listen to a Mexican Cinderella tale made homemade salsa and much more uh also as exciting the 12 on three students at um Pine Brook went bowling a lot of our kids across the district did that a lot of our students with special needs at crack Hill as well again those kids came off the bus they went on the bus they cranked a little nervous but then they got off the bus just exciting and wanted more and I'm sure that's what happened at Pine Brook as well a fourth grader has started a school-wide collaboration to fill a tree display in the foyer with leaves on the leaves K-5 students have
021expressed their ideas of how they can spread kindness talk about changing the world right there right it's really cool office of school and career Pathways wants you to know that Athena and Arcadia participated in the Junior Achievement entrepreneurial Summit on November 18th students were put into random groups with a mentor where they generated an idea for business the group also delivered a professional pitch that they presented to judges and then the top three teams pitched the entire group the winners were decided by all participants present congratulations to Mariela Sosa Taylor Spriggs Tommy Hogan Julian monteaglio no Jean Carlo Pickering who took first place and won rocketbooks really exciting for those group of kids listen Department of World Language has a really exciting thing to share we need to congratulate Mrs Wilder from Athena for earning
022the 2022 distinguished service award for American Association of teachers of Italian this award recognizes members of distinguished service in the field of Italian language literature Cinema culture and civilization and of note Mrs Wilder has been teaching Italian get this for 43 years right I don't think she's in the room but can we just give her a round of applause and last but not least a crack Hill cookers I see a crack hill guy over there sitting right there he just did a yes I love that listen um the staff at crack hill we continue to engage in professional learning whether it's our choice professional learning or our Tuesday meetings around instruction our most recent topics included feedback protocols and Verve verb is meaning you know taking kids with that enthusiasm and that energy and making
023sure that we're using that in our class and not misinterpreting it as negative behaviors we had our first leader in me school-wide celebration so in the past um students who used to earn what we call cougar cash for demonstrating The Leader in Me happens and then they could turn those in for you know little trick it's toys pencils Etc but this year we decided to shift gears and make it a little more communal where students would collect their cougar cash turn it in and once we made a school-wide goal we would have a school-wide celebration and instead of individual and let me tell you we had that last Friday and it was it was something okay we you could see the pictures I got pied in the face okay with some other teachers because they
024made their goal Mr Keelan had his hair put in a mohawk right um some students did some great things around some skits around the Leader in Me habits they presented the school with this check for their cougar cash and they acknowledged our next goal of 2000 um cougar cash tick or cougar cash for our next celebration I'm a little nervous you guys might you know hear me I might have to be out because if we get if I got pied in the face this time I'm really worried what will happen next okay and then lastly if you haven't heard um Craig Hill made the final round for the Democrat and Chronicles Community Choice Awards for Best Public School in the area tomorrow we find out so it's been quite some time we are the top
025three tomorrow we find out if we are indeed the winners myself off Mr Keelan superintendent groutman and assistant superintendent Val Payne we are going to be going and it's going to be like the Oscars I got my speech ready okay I'll be very disappointed if I don't get to give my speech but we are super excited so please wish us luck and hopefully uh Thursday morning you'll be seeing some announcements saying that one of our Greece schools has made it as the best school in the area folks with that said I would just like to thank you all from gasa we could not lead and I'm talking about leader because gassa we are leaders we could not lead this effectively without the support of a board like you all and a superintendent's cabinet like you
026all you all do the hard work here you do that lifting around policies and procedures to allow us to do our work in the building so thank you for that we really do appreciate you guys have a great evening before you leave Mr Jones Brandon I'm just gonna say you did awesome I'm gonna from now on starting next month whenever anybody presents they're gonna have to live to the Jones standard so everybody watch and figure it out so I'm gonna hold I'm gonna grade them on the Jones standard next month so you did an awesome job thank you sir all right next up I have agcept is there anybody here from agcept that would like to speak anybody from Goss that would like to speak Teamsters Karen welcome I didn't see you back there yeah
027you got a tough Hill to climb Karen I'm expecting a lot though come on oh boy not quite what I expected um good evening everyone for those of you who don't know me I am Karen castara I'm the business agent for Teamsters Local 118. um of just a little bit about myself first I came to The District in 2009 as a second career after 25 years in private sector I became a bus attendant bus driver Steward and now business agent first I'd like to also thank the board the cabinet and superintendent groutman for supporting and approving the three recent Teamsters contracts all of which were approved overwhelmingly by the membership so thank you for that um and I want to take the opportunity tonight to talk a little bit about things that are upcoming in
028the transportation department this Friday in this building downstairs in the Commons area is a craft sale starting at nine o'clock in the morning employees will be hosting this and showing off their artistic event or artistic talents which I don't have any of so there's about 18 of them that are going to be selling their things so if you're in the area to stop down in the Commons area in this building at nine o'clock on Friday from now until the 19th of December the department will be collecting non-perishable food as well items as well as personal hygiene items these items will be donated to the Greece Central food pantry and hopes to bring joy to the families in need and in keeping with the holiday spirit there will be a luncheon on December 21st with turkeys
029being prepared by Arcadia kitchen staff as well as employees bringing a dish to pass this has been an event that has been going on for years covet intercepted for a while didn't have it at Kodak and so now we came to here last January and so we're getting that back in in the swing of things if anybody is interested in stopping down on the 21st saying hi grabbing a little something to eat that would be great again I want you know make it short and sweet sorry Brandon and I'll thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight and I wish you all a happy and safe holiday season thank you thank you so much Karen [Applause] and I was a little remiss I'm sorry to my students usually I if you guys want to sneak
030out I usually let you sneak out before comments and I kind of slip through that so if you guys want to sneak out you're more than welcome if you want to stay I'd love to have you stay but it's up to you okay [Laughter] residents Forum um Elizabeth Cade all my public speakers will speak at this microphone here you have a hard four minutes so when your four minutes are up we're going to cut you off I'll remind you to stop but I'm going to cut you off at the four minute Mark okay welcome Miss kid foreign hello can everybody hear me I don't really speak too loud so I'm hoping okay there we go hi I'm Elizabeth Cade I am the parent of two children that we live in Greece but um we use
031Ontario transportation to get um the kids to Rochester Prep J Street in Rochester Prep Brooks and there I guess there was a decision made in regards to the policy for there's going to be no changes to any bus stops for the entire year once you submit your bus form and I guess I'm just here to ask you guys to reconsider that decision that was made back in April you know between April and June when we are required to submit this form we don't know what's going to happen for the school year so for us to you know I get the form in because I need to make sure my child has a bus and so now September Comes and I get the bus information and I find out that they're coming you know at random
032them times and I you know I can't work it out with my bus schedule with my work schedule I I got daycare I got daycare situated as soon as I found out the bus um the bus times and then I was informed that we can't make any changes so with this I am we're at risk of losing our jobs my husband is going into work late every single day because my daughter's bus doesn't come until about 8 20. and then I'm getting off early um I luckily have my daycare provider who's helping me right now um and I don't know how long she's going to be able to do it she is going to be one of the speakers but she's leaving her home with her children you know the children that she's watching to
033come pick my child up from my house to go back to her home and it's called it's causing big problems so she can't do that then I'm at risk of losing my job as well things are not the way they were you know over the past few years during covet my job used to let me leave get them you know bring them to work with me we can't do that anymore so for me and my husband to risk losing our jobs over a bus that passes by my daycare's house every single day literally passes by it it just doesn't make any sense for me and then when I call in and they tell me that I need to tell my day my school the child school to come up with a after school program that
034is what they they gave me tell your your school to put together after school program then you won't need daycare or tell your neighbors you know have your neighbors put your kids on a bus or take them off the bus this this doesn't make any any sense especially in especially because they pass through you know passed by my um the daycare um and I I work in HR I've worked in HR my whole basically since out of college I understand policies I understand procedures but I also understand that some things have to be Case by case basis and if they really re-evaluated my the bus route and seeing that they pass by the daycare it would make sense to them that it should be okay to make that change it's probably how big the situation
035so that kids can be on the bus for at least amount of time so I'm just bringing this to you today because it is causing a lot of issues between me my husband my kids and my daycare provider so I just wanted to bring that to your attention thank you Ms Kate next up we have Joanna Lagana Laguna sorry I first want to commend the board this is a beautiful place it beats what we hand over at district office and I am glad to see a lot of familiar faces and Jeremy and Debbie and Kathy and Bill and Jerry sorry I don't know the rest of you but um my name is Joanne lagona and I live at 194 Sandalwood Drive I was an employee for Greece Central for 30 years and just retired four
036years ago but I am still a District sub my last 11 years was with Craig Hill school and I'm sorry I don't know where you went and sorry I missed um having you as a principal when I was there but we did have a good principal one of my many responsibilities was working with transportation with as many students the Greece has there are often issues with the busing of the students and they have to tell you that I was always able to resolve problems with the people I knew in transportation I'm here tonight to ask why there is such a problem with accommodating the busing of the students who are in the daycare of my daughter she has managed to daycare at 153 Wood Road for 24 years students are always picked up and dropped
037off there where she was able to be getting the students off the bus she was given information on the problem of having to drive to us she has given information is the problem of driving to a student's home because the bus would not bring the student to her home she also has to rush back home to get the other students off the corner of her street where she has other toddlers with her which is very difficult especially with the cold weather while she has been told the trans but transportation in the superintendent that they will not change this for her I'm just wondering why not no one has to go out of the way to do anything of great magnitude to make the change my daughter is asking for transportation to emphasize the importance of
038having a child safety and first at hand I don't know why a transportation employee would have told a parent that a third grader could also take the child take the children off the bus and why also that the comment was Mrs Coles didn't have as many daycare kids in her program that was a quote during covid she opened up her house to all the students that she had she had desks set up for them she worked with the Chromebook she did everything possible to make it as easy as possible for the students not to miss their class all I can say is that the people who run Transportation who ran Transportation while I worked for Greece always had the students best interest at heart I believe the simple change that is being asked for should
039be granted and I also choose Joy thank you Joanne Mrs Cole Renee Cole hi um my name is Renee Cole I am the daycare provider they're talking about I've been doing this since 2002. I've always had these buses at my house which helped a lot when they were just at the driveway which is safer in the winter because sidewalks are not plowed so I have to take two toddlers an infant four students to get them on two different buses and stand outside in the cold with an infant picking them up in the end of the day I'm driving a half a mile to pick up one student come home that bus is anywhere between 10 after three to three Thirty so if I'm late coming back I'm missing two other buses which third graders I
040know they're allowed to get off alone but if I'm not home that's not safe um I was told there's no changes I know of three students whose had their stops changed who are not even in a daycare one's a fifth grader and one's in high school um the regulations for my daycare the children are not allowed alone if they're off the property so to expect them to get off the bus walk to my house alone I'm liable um they all passed my house the one that I have to pick up in the afternoon is a half a mile as I'm Coming Home the bus is right behind me so that child on the bus an extra 10 minutes the weather's getting really bad I've already lost two kids which is my income I'm a single
041mom because I couldn't take three kids with me to go pick up two others and so forth I'm just asking that it was you know they go back to the way they were I am licensed it's not like I'm just a babysitter I'm a licensed daycare just like any other one um the one little boy his parents are at risk with their jobs which isn't fair to them the paperwork for one child was sent in March and they still wouldn't change her stop um just very scary standing at the corner there's you know it's a busy road cars go through the stop sign they don't stop when the red lights are on the bus and if the sidewalks are not plowed we're in the road risking a toddler an infant my son and three others
042getting hurt so I'm just asking that to put it back to where it was at 153 Wood Road yeah thank you Mr cool thank you Corey Grant good evening everybody my name is Corinne Grant this is my little guy Zane um he is a kindergartner this year first year in school and we have been using Renee as a daycare provider I have four kids total and I've had three others go through her over the span of probably about 15 years I'm sorry to interrupt thank you sorry you want me to start over okay all right so in the past 15 years my kids have all had the stop right at Renee's house at 153 Wood Road as Renee mentioned Wood Road is a very busy street it's right off of Ridge Road it's often used
043as a pass-through to get to places like the mall um I lived there myself for 15 years I just moved two years ago cars fly through there they roll through stop signs if they stop I've personally seen them go past school buses with the red flashes on I think it's pretty standard in grease that only one side of the sidewalk is plowed which leaves my little nugget just kind of hanging out in the corner of the street you're not a nugget you're my nugget my little parrot um cutting into my time kid um so I guess when I originally sent in the request it's at the corner of wooden Charles which literally is only two houses down I know that doesn't seem like much um but in the same sense the school bus drives right
044past the house every single day so I guess in the same sense just adjusting it by two houses doesn't seem like much of a big change either on the flip side of the coin I do have concern for his safety mainly because of having to stand out in the road with Renee being torn into a million different pieces trying to get all the other kids situated I have you know personal fear that she might not be able to make it on time in order to get him on off the bus it was actually told that her son who is a third grader could get him off the bus which is not okay with me an eight-year-old should not be in charge of a five-year-old especially with a licensed daycare um and I guess I'm just
045looking for when I wrote in asking for a change it was also stated that there were other kids at the bus stop which is not accurate Zane is the only pickup there we live off of Road and over on Wood Road so he goes to Patty Hill so there aren't many other kids in the area that are going to Paddy Hill so I guess I'm just kind of asking for the safety of my child for the other children that go to Renee and for for Renee sanity um that it'd be reconsidered to have at a universal stop thank you next up we have um Jordan stencil welcome Jordan hello everyone good evening for those who uh who don't know me yet my name is Jordan stenzel I am a second generation alumni of the district
046I actually graduated from Olympia High School in 2004. I currently I have a 13 year old daughter named August who's at Olympia middle school such a weird thing how things have changed over time I'm an active parent in the community I go to the parent exchange meetings I've also been at the community schools meeting and I try to get involved as much as I can and give back to the community so I have a lot of ideas that I would like to propose to you here in a positive uplifting solution you know I know a lot of times there's a lot of complaints here and whatnot but I'm I'm here to just bring Solutions and I I thank you for your time so the first thing I want to talk about is Community Schools so
047as I mentioned recently I went to a community schools meeting which is you know covers different things such as access to food Community Mental Health counseling clothing family engagement and parental engagement and supportive coordination among other things one area of feedback I'd like to offer you here in my two cents is considering a partnership with local community centers or federally qualified Health look-alikes that can provide low-cost free health services to families and children in need especially in our district um the reason this is is because a lot of times these families use the emergency room or urgent care as their Primary Care uh in the in the community and I'd like to try and reduce that by Bridging the Gap there with a partnership so some ideas that come to mind are Anthony Jordan Trillium
048health Oak Orchard Finger Lakes Community Health his branches and Mosaic Health these are just a few examples of fqhcs that really could work together and I think they would love to work together with someone like you to really bridge that Gap and bring Quality Health Care that values diversity equity and inclusion into the district um the next thing I want to talk about is the Greece Olympia Early College High School this didn't exist when I went to Olympia so this is an amazing opportunity I don't know how you guys got involved in it but I'm really excited about it and so my ask here is I know this comes from a state Grant investigate if you haven't already other funding Avenues to expand this I know that every year they're only able to take like
04940 students or whatnot to expand it not only within Greece Olympia but to offer to Arcadia Odyssey Athena and all the other high schools involved right I think doing this will set Greece apart from other schools in the district as an innovator it also provides students the ability to pursue a four-year degree while also reducing costs for families especially those with low socioeconomic status the last thing I want to talk about is the parent exchange pilot at Greece Olympia as I've told you before I'm part of the parent exchange I've gone to several of the meetings and offered my input as a single father during the last plti exchange meeting I kind of expressed how passionate I am about it and I wanted to kind of give back by offering a apparent exchange apparent exchange
050specifically for each school so I proposed with the the different uh Community Schools coordinators and the parent exchange and support coordinators that I would like to Pilot this here at Grace Olympia so we're actually meeting in a couple weeks to brainstorm and go over it and then the idea is to have an individualized parent exchange at Greece Olympia where I would host it along with our partners there the idea here would be that the results of this pilot program would then be presented at some point back at this meeting here to show you the successes and failures and the opportunities that we've learned from right and so that we can then push this hopefully if successful at other Greece Central School sites the idea again is designed with the public interest in mind and with
051my last 10 seconds thank you have a great holiday and I appreciate you giving me the time thank you thank you Jordan [Applause] Barry Lakey welcome back sneaking out thank you good night absolutely I look forward to the time that I can bring good news however I'd like to make you aware of several bills in the legislature currently the first one is assembly Bill a 9963 Miss Lakey I'm going to cut you off here I mean there's 10 000 bills that go before the Senate and the assembly that are just bills that don't go anywhere okay so I mean until they really get adopted or at least during committee level which there's no bills in committee yet they haven't been assigned to committee I'm going to cut you off in talking about them if you
052have something else you'd like to reference what I will what I will mention is they do involve removing parental approval but again they're just okay they're a one member Bill and they're probably not going to gain traction I mean well the internment I'm not going to argue with you all right the internment bills were pulled from the legislature in the fall and they got through as regulations in the agencies so even though they don't go to committee and they may go nowhere they're not going to cut you off it's not relevant to the degree Central School let me just finish if nope I'm not going to finish it I will touch off not talk about specific bills okay okay I would just like to remind the board members that if they support unconstitutional measures mandates
053whatever they are not exonerated from punishment because you still have the pledge the oath you took to the Constitutions of the United States and New York state that's all thank you Mrs Lakey next up we have Mr Thayer Ryan Thayer good evening and welcome good evening my name is Ryan Thayer Greece resident for 18 years now I've had three students children he were one of my kids principals for a couple years they've gone through long range and down to Odyssey all three of them my son is a graduate of 2021 he went on to college I want to talk about my youngest son who is still a student at Odyssey and what's been going on in the last year um uh sometime last year and about April March he told me he was being bullied
054for being short he that moved on from not only being short he was called a racial slur he was called homophobic slurs it kind of got worse and worse I talked to the vice president while over the phone four different times and then on March uh 20 I'm sorry yeah March of 24 uh there was an incident in the lunchroom where his book bag was picked up and thrown by another student it was caught on camera um I met with that vice principal in the uh shake it um in in the parking lot that day my son did not want to go back to class he spent the rest of the day in the in the office um he met me in the parking lot and it was I was told it was boys being
055boys when 2022 we're still treating boys and girls different I guess um the bullying he said it slowed down um in June I found out he didn't slow down he was actually being mocked more because he told nothing was done uh June 9th he was suspended because he hit a kid he had enough and he punched him that kid had pushed him and punched him on two different occasions That Boy hasn't touched them since I hate that he got to the point where he thought he had to use violence on June 16th he sent me a message that a uh there was a piece of a bar that was about six inches in the cafeteria and a boy that had been bullying him before told him in a large in front of a large group
056of kids that he would like to sit on that and ride it I immediately called the current not the current now the previous principle and he uh I told him everything was going on he had no idea went through everything I even sent him a text message with a picture of what my son sent me I have proof of it he said he would take the boys out of the classroom and talk to him nothing happened over the final four days of school my my call on the last day of school went un called running out of time uh this year started out good uh not really big any incidents this principle has done a fairly good job uh I'm gonna miss that he's gotten better I don't want to forget that it's gotten better
057he's told him he's gotten better on October 4th he got into a disagreement in gym class over who won a game with a girl and when a girl uh that girl sent her brother after him that boy came up behind him and pulled him down and he smacked his head on the cement ceramic floor um I didn't get a call from the vice principal the principal or security the nurse called me I picked him up I refused to leave I met with the current principal he told me it would be handled uh on that following that was a Friday on a Tuesday he was here Monday he was mocked he didn't want to go Tuesday I talked to the principal on Tuesday he said it would happen uh this is where I have a big
058problem uh on October 24th that boy came back to school I was told there be mediation there was not mediation uh that boy wasn't ready to be in a class in in an office with my son and the principal and I I feel that is completely unacceptable if that boy was not ready to sit down and talk he wasn't ready to be in school um there's been another incident I had a call to the superintendent that was not returned I I just my son isn't comfortable going to school why is it it's we're not holding these kids accountable for what they're doing and there needs to be changes and it's very hard as a parent to tell my kid every day to you know to ignore them I can't do it anymore thank you Mr
059[Applause] I don't want to throw him thank you we'll give Mr Hepburn the ability to work on it and hopefully Mr Hepburn can get this situation resolved for you all right thank you yep no no it's a hard board policy four minutes thank you all right our next speaker is Mr Milan Miguel Milan welcome to sir my name is Miguel Milan and I'm a parent leader I'm a recent graduate of the parent leadership Training Institute I have four children one that attended Patty Hill across the street K through second grade very quickly it became evident that my son wasn't learning how to read the Educators the Educators continued to double down on strategies and approaches that were being used in the classroom through his RTI and he made minimal to no progress not to worry
060he's a boy we were told and sometimes they take longer to catch on we were patient for three whole years until second grade came to an end and our sun was still not reading but they were going to pass him he became despondent at school and would crawl under the desk to hide or shut down on assignments that he couldn't read this was inconsistent to the boy we knew at home something wasn't right my wife started to research and connect with other parents of struggling readers the journey since has opened our eyes to the silent pandemic that is happening across our schools many kids are not learning to read we are blessed at our house that we have the resources to provide our son with the proper literacy education beyond what Greece was providing truly
061blessed that we could do that recently the nicest data released indicates that Greece only the Greece indicates only 31 percent of your third through eighth graders are proficient in ela so out of 10 000 plus students roaming the Halls seven thousand of them aren't learning how to read and write properly if we break down break it down further into subgroups the lower scores of our students are with disabilities English language Learners and black or African-American students at three percent 13 and 17 respectively I understand many Educators dismiss this data for a host of reasons but I'm a part of a part of the public and these numbers should be transparent to us if your internal numbers tell a different story I request that the superintendent share the numbers publicly share your I ready your school
062Pace data to us your District comprehensive Improvement plan the ELA achievement overall 52 percent what about the you know what about the other half the numbers seem to be screaming at tier one instructional instruction problem and since I'm running out of time and unfortunately I did scratch off a lot of things here and it's my first time doing this so forgive me um I'll leave you with this as a business and local business owner if my numbers reflect what the numbers of the district is I'd be out of business okay we need to do better in Literacy for these children and it needs to start now because every day thank you Mr Milan that concludes our public comment portion this evening thank you to all my speakers so can I I'd like to just respond
063to the literacy point if you don't mind um just a couple of points that I would like to just say out loud to the group um one is what you identify is a significant issue it's an issue here in Greece it's an issue in New York state it's an issue across the country and quite frankly um I don't think there's anybody here that would argue that 31 is good enough for any of our kids so there's no one that's defending that I also just want to point out that it follows Trends it follows really what we have learned to expect in terms of socioeconomics and the fact that in Greece where we have a needy or Community we're seeing lower scores I say that only to acknowledge it because um our teachers are just as
064good as teachers on the east side and yet they continue to outperform us I don't think it's because they all of a sudden know how to teach reading so much better in second grade in a different community I say that not as an excuse but just as a fact we continue to use all sorts of data and the ELA scores are one point in time um we have recently over the last two years particularly with increases in Foundation Aid then I'm really blessed with being able to add more interventionists and language development teachers at the younger levels because this isn't an issue when kids are in second grade it's really an issue that they come to school with us not ready and then continuing to teach reading and maybe not have the supports um just
065exacerbates that and sometimes widens it so we've worked really hard to add additional interventionists and language development teachers because we have more Aid and also because of the stimulus money that we've been provided we've continued to expand our upk programming because again we know kids that are coming to us more prepared and who have more exposure to learning do better um and we've continued to examine and make changes in our curriculum I would point out we're also working on attendance because some of the students that we're finding that are struggling and that are in that area are also connected to really uh patterns of attendance that where they're not here as often so we need to work on that in some cases I would point out that our graduation rates are high our graduation rates
066in most places are 93 between 91 and 93 percent of our high schools which tells me that we're doing something right in between to graduate students need to pass gatekeeper exams they need to actually complete the requirements that the state has provided and we've done well there so I want to acknowledge the fact that yes we need to do better with literacy I want to acknowledge the fact that there is work to do but I also just want to make sure that people know that it is an area that we're committed to we're passionate about and I would also ask that if people have questions didn't want to talk about literacy that you call make an appointment we have people in this room that I know have met with with folks here in the room
067and who are always willing to talk more about the work that we are doing as a school district to improve thank you superintendent Grumman all right moving on to Staffing can I saw any move the Staffing too please move by vice president Laura second by Mr farmer any comments questions or concerns on Staffing seeing that all is in favor any opposed that I am passes to zero before I call on Mr smine I just want to Greg Hale is retiring he's been a long time facility Ops employee he's going to be sorely missed but we wish him all in his retirement Greg has done a tremendous amount of work on behalf of degree Central School District so I just want to wish him well in his retirement Mr Smalling okay good evening I would be
068I would like to be the first to congratulate Miss Ellison Weiss on her appointment this evening as acting assistant principal at Pine Brook School Ellison has been all right Allison has been a part of the Greece Central School District for eight years she attended Nazareth College Suny Brockport and the University of Rochester prior to joining the Greece Central School District Allison worked as a consult at a consulting firm with companies across the Rochester area and she taught in the rochler city school district elson's favorite part of her job within education is forming relationships with students staff and Families she also enjoys working with teams to find what works best for students in celebrating their achievements Allison is looking forward to bringing her work to Pine Brook and having the opportunity to work with the staff
069and families to support their K-5 students outside of the building Ellison is part of multiple committees in the district ranging from culture and climate committee to code of conduct it is excited to integrate the information from those committees and put it into practice in her new role congratulations Ali Ali I'm Gonna Make You and Andrea Dr Payne and Supernanny groutman take a picture welcome congratulations thank you I'm moving on to 2.02 tenure can I starting to move that to the table please buy Mr farmer seconded by Mr stricken any comments questions or concerns on a tenure appointments saying not all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to 2.03 the Gus I'm awake can I suddenly move that to the table please move by Mr swicky second by Miss Flora
070is and comments questions or concerns on that assuming all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero moving on the except I'm awake and I'm starting to move that to the table please move by Mr Maloney seconded by Miss Flores any comments questions concerns on that seeing none all's in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to the nine unit rate sheet can I have Sony move that to the two please move by Mr farmer second by Miss Flores any comments questions concerns on that seeing that I was in favor and he opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to Career pathway update superintendent groutman yeah I'm going to introduce and have Corey Skinner come out up with Mr Todd Smith just to give a little bit of context
071as students come into our high schools I think Mr stenzel you mentioned the Early College Point from Olympia we have a number of ways that our students navigate and and move through high school so there's New York state that has certain requirements that students must meet in order to graduate but what we've worked really hard to do in Greece is create some unique Pathways and ways for students to get interesting and unique opportunities that really set them apart from most other school districts so I say that because I want to make sure that we really sort of brag a bit and glow about some of the opportunities that we have here in Greece because I can compare us to many other districts in Monroe County and Beyond in fact the state really because most districts
072are smaller who have not been able to organize to create these opportunities who may not have the numbers to be able to do such a thing and certainly I don't think have The Talented staff to be able to really sort of get this organized and in place so I want to give credit since Corey has been here it's been a short time he's done a phenomenal job of organizing us of getting us planned and ready and I hope the presentation tonight really helps to really illustrate the great opportunities that our students have so thanks for being here thank you Kathy you just took a lot of the things I was going to say well there there you go I grew up in Naples for those you know Naples it's a real small District certainly these
073are things that we can't offer in Naples and that's one of there's always pros and cons to being a large District right and one of the things I'm always proud of of being in Greece is we try to hold grease and we try to keep these things internal and the opportunities that we can provide for our students as Kathy just said not everybody can do and Corey although he's only been in this position for nine months he's really reinvigorated this because there was a lot of challenges coming out of the last few years with kovid and he's brought a lot of fresh air and life into the program so I'm gonna let him share a few of those updates all right well thank you very much good evening members of the school board and Leadership
074Council my name is Corey Skinner for those of you who do not know me and I'm serving as director of school to Career Pathways and I've been doing so since March there's been a lot going on within the CTE Department over the last six months and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about some of the key updates that have occurred over those last nine months okay keyboard there we go thanks so I know some of you have familiarity with the pathway programs but I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss some of the key elements associated with them I'm going to start with the key question of what are career Pathways essentially Pathways provide concentrated exposure to a specific career area there are usually three units or classes
075within a pathway they provide an opportunity for rigorous authentic career experiences they allow you to incorporate design-based thinking into instruction and they also connect with you connect you to the community employers and post-secondary institutions that are within your community career Pathways typically contain the attributes you see on the slide which is presented up there during this presentation I'm going to focus heavily on niceid approved that's a New York State education department approved Pathways and explain more about each element for now it's important to know that when it comes to nice and approved Pathways they always contain all of the elements that are on the screen which I'm going to discuss in more detail so first I want to point out that we are going to be talking about again about the nice and approved pathways
076on the left however we also have some that are not nice and approved but again for this presentation the real interesting stuff has occurred on the nicest side of things thank you okay before we get started though one thing I really wanted to emphasize and not everybody's aware is that before uh I think it's key that we talked emphasize that CTE has benefits other than for simply preparing kids for a particular career according to the bridge and the skills Gap report published by the U.S Department of Education in 2019 CTE courses help students graduate at a higher rate than their non-cte peers they actually increase the likelihood that a student will attend college in eight years and they can lead to a higher median salary so taking CTE courses is valuable for everybody and it's
077not just for the students who aren't going off to University in fact it's exactly the opposite the now I'm going to start discussing the key components that are associated with Pathways and again this is we're going to be focusing on the nice and approved Pathways all nice and approved Pathways contain some form of Industry exam industry exams provide us with a true Compass as to what skills employers are looking for and they therefore help us with curriculum writing when we design these courses we design them to meet specific industry requirements in addition it starts our students off with an edge when applying for employment if you have this particular skill that lets the employers know that you actually have tangible skills that will help them in their Workforce um as I mentioned we have two
078new Pathways starting next year at the end of The Culinary pathway students complete the culinary management exam 347 and at the end of the engineering pathway students complete the engineering Technologies exam 645. the actual exam objectives and standards are over 12 pages each however here is a simple list of the standards they address you can see that with the exception of safety they are very specific to the particular Career Cluster if you're going to culinary management you're going to know seven knife techniques how to keep every particular kind of food how to prepare every particular kind of food how to save them how to serve them safely you'll have multiple certifications in that area whereas if you're in engineering technology you'll have that design those design skills that you need to be successful in a
079drafting environment um another key component oops I apologize hold on another another key component of Pathways is the formation of advisory boards all nice and pathways are created through a working relationship between an internal self-study group and an external Advisory Board they are involved from the Inception of the pathway and they continue to provide guidance throughout the design they are true experts in the field these Advisory board members are critical because they really do tell us where we need to go and so it's uh we're very very lucky to have those advisable members supporting the work that we're doing above these are the individuals who help to shape our pre-engineering pathway and you'll see that there are Secondary School members there there are post-secondary professors and you also see a whole bunch of organizations and
080industries that sit on our board and give us advice at all levels another key component of a nice and approved pathway is a work based learning experience now one of the things that we sort of did coming into this is we created a phase one internal work based learning experience for kids and an external phase two I'm going to start with the internal so internal work based environment all students require a minimum of 54 hours of work based learning to complete a pathway new guidance issued by the New York State education department this year states that career fair visits and job shadowing can account for up to 20 of those hours so we're spending time teaching kids about the about the career that they want to go into and provide invaluable feedback to them and
081helping them do some research as well for the rest of the 34 hours you need to produce a product or service for stakeholders in this example you'll see that grease gadgets for the engineering pathway allows kids to take on requests from their school think about the problem design Solutions print out those Solutions build those Solutions and deliver them to their school so we're very excited it's that teaching kids how to take accountability for the work that they that they need to do now this is a new thing that we're working on which is what we call our external phase two work based learning so as I mentioned students require a minimum of 54 hours however with this external work based learning we're getting the kids out there we're getting them to co-op job shadowing internships
082this is an area that was decimated by the covet we you know we're basically starting from scratch but fortunately we have a number of excellent Partners including constellation Brands optimax and the Finger Lakes youth apprenticeship program I apologize skip the head one the Finger Lakes youth apprenticeship program that are going to help us place our students out there in the field nicer closely regulates this area and requires teachers to have their work based learning certification approximately 100 students can be supported by each work based learning coordinator the work based learning coordinator needs to visit the site and also work with the students it is possible depending on the program to earn high school credit for work based learning that exceeds 150 hours I'm going to talk about the business Advisory Board shortly but one of
083our key elements of our new business Advisory Board that's forming is we're going to really think about this work based learning component we've got to get kids out there in the field especially when we know we have real partners that are ready to work with them the next part I want to mention is employability profiles now if I were to print you out of employability profile it's about five pages long it's completely unique to those students and I think it's probably one of the best things about the pathway kids start them early with the they sort of start generating this employability profile at the very beginning of the pathway and it's basically a general work relate it's a mix of General work related skills that you'll see on the left and technical skills specific to
084each pathway students are rated by the lead teachers in each class and again it follows them as they go through their experience this page highlights these skills and our primary and their primary sorry these this page highlights the skills that are primarily taught in The Culinary pathway you'll see on the left hand side the general work skills that are critical to kids going into the workforce and on the right that tells the employers how valuable what valuable skills they possess um if the student has documentation of successful completion of pathway courses a passing grade on their industry exam a complete employability profile which again is five pages a finished career survey and adequate work based learning They will receive a CT endorsement on their diploma and that means something that means you have a student
085that knows how to conduct themselves in the workforce and it has real tangible skills that are valuable to your business so now with uh because I want to be cognizant of time I just want to highlight a few of the courses and bring you an update about where this is going and sort of uh what what changes we expect to see on the nice side of things so in regards to the business specialist pathway the business specialist pathway is one of our first programs to be offered at all four schools it is up for reapproval in June and our business Advisory Board is in the process of forming the one of the key elements here as we redesign it is we're going to be taking a look at what employers are telling us modifying the
086curriculum to match and then we're going to be doing again much better with the work based learning component Associated we do have a history of co-op in business we're going to improve on that piece and make sure that kids have a little bit more choice to the Finger Lakes youth apprenticeship program culinary arts this is actually one I'm very excited about our new culinary arts pathway will be based at Arcadia and Olympia due to the large number of culinary one and two students it is a perfect example of bringing in a true industry professional in this case we could not offer dual enrollment Credit in the past because you needed someone with at least seven years of culinary experience thanks to Jason Carlson our lead lead teacher for the culinary program we can now do
087that he has a history of opening up restaurants all across the Rochester region he's also a leader in the farm to table movement so very very exciting you won't find a better expert to lead our kids in this work the program is closely aligned with the MCC hospitality and culinary program and it also contains key elements from the nationally aligned ProStar curriculum our kids will have nationally recognized skills that if they all of a sudden do leave home which we hope they don't and go off to Texas if they say they have pro-start certification they're going to know they can work and operate in a restaurant the early childhood education program is a is one of our great programs that's been running for almost four years uh our early childhood education program is up for
088reevaluation 23-24 so an Advisory Board will be reformed next year uh I know there's a couple people that have expressed interest we're going to get there I promise it provides student teaching experience at both the secondary and primary level we are partnered with MCC offering dual enrollment credit however we have recently begun to work with Nazareth as well and I'm very very excited about building that partnership so the goal is to bring us it's not just one partnership we try to form multiple Partnerships to provide as much value as possible for our students um the other one that was just approved as of a couple weeks ago is our pre-engineering program which I am incredibly excited about this is I said culinary I'm excited about this is my favorite um our pre-engineering program has been
089have proved this month my predecessor Kathy Richardson did a great job of building a robust dual enrollment program in Greece which is when I say dual enrollment it means college credit while taking a high school course in consultation with our Advisory Board which I showed you the members earlier we built upon a structure and formed new connections with MCC professors including Professor Joel isil Alexis vote and Bill hunt the the pathway provides us with direct access to Employers in engineering Technologies Optics and machining we are talking to companies like Corning L3 Harris optomax they are dying to have MCC skilled students coming out of their program and MCC is dying to have our talented skilled kids to go into theirs so it's we're very very excited what I'm most excited about this course you'll see
090the black lettering on the left hand side that means every single one of those courses is a dual enrollment course the kids can come away with a large amount of college credit right from the very beginning and even best of all it's dispersed among Machining engineering and Optics this really will prepare kids with those Next Generation technology skills they need what's also nice too is that this for the first time this pre-engineering program will be offered at all four schools which allows us some redundancy too if all of a sudden our numbers are a little light in one building it means that we could possibly Bus kids to continue their pathway without having to collapse the class uh and then this one was brought up I'm not going to talk long about it because the
091students did a way better job than I did from Odyssey responding to emergencies yeah the only thing I was going to say is it is truly a jewel um the one of the things that uh was was neat is that I know Dr Cleco had a really strong hand in this and a lot of credit goes to her and Chris morose who has continued the pathway over the last couple years and it has grown into something where kids can get multiple so I try to get at least one certification per pathway they have multiple certifications New York State basic exterior fire cper AED Narcan EpiPen EMT certification kids can leave high school and start working for Monroe ambulance as soon as they leave and they're continuing to make it better where they're going to be
092providing kids will be able to enter into the fire profession uh the EMT fire profession much quicker than they would normally be able to on their own so very exciting it's only good things coming so just keep uh we're going to keep improving it but really good news and almost done here I promise the CTE family and fair I also want to thank those of you who are able to attend our CTE fair and family information night one of the key things is connecting is to improve information our goal is to make sure that families know what all their options are that's my that's my personal goal walking into this role some kids may go off to take AP courses and want to go off to a four-year six-year eight-year college experience some families may
093choose to go into industry and then get their college paid for some may just go into industry I want the parents to know if there's if they're going to make a choice they have all the possible information they need to make that to make that choice properly so that was what this event was about on November 17th we had over 24 organizations that were we were able to have parents there they were able to talk to the pathway teachers the pathway teachers were able to direct them to the programs at MCC or the other colleges that directly fed or that directly were associated with those Pathways and then we had industry that were saying well you know if your kid comes over to here we'll be able to provide them a job as soon as
094they start at MCC we'll be able to give you uh you know will be able to pay for your degree and on top of that you'll start starting with thirty thousand dollars parents don't know that those opportunities are out there so we're going to continue this every year I highly recommend that if you can stop by it's wonderful and so it was a really great experience and I want to thank everybody for that opportunity and then the last slide here is I just want to talk a little bit about where we're going this year there's still a lot of work to be done I'm very excited about this work one of the key things is we have a program called Maya learning and this Maya learning program is sort of going to revolutionize how we
095get information to families and kids I could probably do another presentation about it because there's so much to it but it's going to be able to really make sure kids are informed from grade 6 to 12 and Beyond so it's going to build a whole alumni program where we may be able to still offer opportunities to our kids in Greece even after they've left us so it's really it's gonna I'm very excited but we'll talk about that another day we're also going to be we're exploring New York State just approved computer science as a Career Cluster that's in the past we could not make a nicely computer science program now we can so we're starting those talks we already have professors from MCC who are working with us and we have a professor at RIT
096who did game design who does revolutionizing revolutionary work writes a lot of Grants he's also partnering with us as well as well so we're very excited that's our next step to look into and then as I mentioned before we're going to be building out our true work based learning we've got to get kids out there because they have to see what the environment's like so they can make informed decisions all right thank you very much uh I appreciate it hopefully I made that 10 minute Mark but uh I have if you have any questions I would love to answer them and I'm always available to anybody on the board or in our community if you have any questions I would love to connect your kids with opportunities or connect you with stakeholders that can also
097provide you with support first person more I have to say thank you as a former work based learning coordinator we got a little mushy for a while here and I'm thrilled in the direction you're going so keep up the good work and thank you for joining my board for the business board because I need your advice on that so thank you regular board member comments thank you Mark thank you okay thank you the board's going to recess for 10 minutes like to welcome everybody back from our brief recess yes moving on item 4.02 capital projects update superintendent groutman so I'm going to enter or invite Mr Bianchi to come on up to give us an update in terms of our Capital Project work this presentation was incredibly exciting for me which um he sort of
098shrugs when I say that but to have been a part of the planning very early on when we actually envisioned this and then put it up for vote and to actually see the progress all along and how much of it is completed is really exciting and I say that Lou knowing that the last particularly six months to a year has been extremely trying in the world of capital projects so we're looking forward to having you and Romeo give us an update so thank you good evening everyone uh as superintendent groutman mentioned we are going to share this presentation and and do some different slides uh together so um I'm sorry Romy I didn't properly introduce you so um I went right to Lou and not you know I apologize the uh presentation is very similar
099to what we did for the board back in May of 22. it's a brief update on the current outstanding projects that we have at this time including what's outstanding for reimaging Greece There's A Brief Review of the change order process and an update on the number of change orders in the volume and extent of the dollars for change orders as well as where we are budget and actual to date for reimagine Greece so current projects outstanding we still have a capital outlay project for the Early Learning Center digital sign about a hundred thousand dollars um we'll talk about in a few few minutes um we have classroom lock set upgrades we started that a little while ago and there's still some work to be done with that there's a small amount of smart schools Bond
100act the enhanced security project that that needs to be finished is really a delay in materials and then we're going to talk a little bit about reimaging Greece in the different phases rather than again rehashing and revisiting R1 we just marked it as completed those were all the security vestibules uh our two were the athletic field upgrades with the turf and the lights and the other amenities that was completed both of those items were around 2020. R3 was done in 2021 pretty much completed transportation and support services facility completed we have R4 which was work being done this summer still a couple items outstanding there you can see those were jobs and projects at Athena Odyssey Buckman Heights Longridge and the ELC The Odyssey entrance is still being worked on for next summer we have
101our five to be done which is Arcadia Craig Hill and Lakeshore we have a new r5a which is the Paddy Hill gymnasium Edition that will be going up starting in the spring of 23. we're thinking it would be completed in the fall of 24 and then R6 is the final work for reimagined Greece to be done in 2024 and that primarily will be Athena in English Village that's still yet to be designed the capital outlay project as I mentioned it's a digital sign for the Early Learning Center it's ready for bidding we're anticipating it will be done in the spring of 23 and we did this as a minor Capital project so that we would get Aid within one year of finishing the project rather than some of it like we do with other projects
102waiting over 15 or 20 years by doing it in this manner when we finish it in 23 we should see state aid on that uh in 24-25 thank you I'll have Lou talk about the lock set projects so I was thinking in lieu of superintendent grubman's comment about some of the difficulties we've been throughout Brandon was he the gentleman that spoke earlier yeah so I'm trying to think I'm pretty low-keyed so if I'm Brandon I'm I'm behind schedule I can't get parts I can't get contracts and I'm loving it I don't know that was pretty good Lou I'm impressed how's that keep it going I like it okay all right classroom black set project excuse me so this was done in two phases uh the first phase our folks did um I was told not
103to thank Chris Luther for this work but to thank Kurt Keller so well I did that the last time so um uh we installed with our in-house Crews about four or five hundred block sets on the classrooms which is completed which now allows lockdowns to occur without teachers have to having to go in the corridors um second phase of that was a completion um of lock sets but it had uh more Building Trades involved and electrical work and this is going to be able to be able to afford US to lock down the large group instruction areas cafeterias gyms auditoriums and we awarded that contract uh the material is in the process of being ordered I don't have any delivery dates so our completion date will be subject to when we can get the materials
104but we're hoping to get underway in the next three or four weeks and get that work done it's going to be done on second shift in all of the schools and uh hope to be done sometime this spring at the direction of Steve Chatterton we've uh we're going to start with the high schools get get the four high schools done and then move on to the elementary okay uh okay all right so the uh the enhanced security project so that that project is primarily complete um I think it's been very successful it's 95 complete um we're waiting on some blue notification buttons that have been on ordered for 13 months now um so once we get those in we'll finish that off but uh the buildings are all able to be fully locked down and
105uh I think it's uh has been quite a success um and again once we get the balance of the materials in we'll finish that portion of the project oh all right so uh just a quick update on some of these phases um phase four is what we're currently working on so if you happen to go into Odyssey occasionally you'll see what's happening there but we're making some some decent Headway we're very close to opening the library seats are going in the auditorium today the locker rooms are moving along elementary schools are finished so we're we're quite a bit behind schedule but making some Headway in over the next three or four weeks uh we should be uh nearing completion there are still some items that are for example the lights in the auditorium I can't
106get them till March um there are just things that are way extended delivery dates so there are parts and pieces that aren't going to be complete but we're moving along I'm starting to make some process progress on the addition on the side of Odyssey so over the next several weeks you should see a lot more happening there so that's our four our five will be construction going on over summer of 2023. um that work uh will include several schools with with the typical work that we do um one of the questions that you probably are going to have is how do we know we're not going to have a repeat next summer of what happened this summer and I don't um on the positive side we we bid R4 and R5 together so um most
107of the materials for R5 have already been ordered in fact the big problem we had at Odyssey was getting toilet fixtures we have all of the toilet fixtures that that are going in four schools next summer uh that being said we don't know what the labor market is going to be like um just can't get a feel for it and talking with the unions and um we're in the process now of looking at some options on either scaling some things back uh staggered starts um looking at doing things on second shift starting starting some work over some of the longer breaks so we're in the process of trying to put a plan together so we don't have a a replay of what happened this summer can I tell you that that's going to be a
108foolproof plan I can't do that but I've got lechase CPL Architects and my staff and Kurtz staff working on trying to see if we can improve over last year there's just too many unknowns at this point our 5A which is the petty Hill gym this this was the um larger version that we that we went with as well as some work at Arcadia is currently out for bids the bids open a week from today and we hope to award those bids in the January board meeting and the big portion of that is the Paddy Hill gym it's a it's a brand new structure and again the intent is to get going on that as soon as the weather breaks in the spring but it's about a 12 to 15 month um process again assuming we
109can get materials in a timely fashion um and then our six would be the last phase of reimagine Greece and um we finally have a I think Romeo will will touch on this we've finally got a bit of a better handle as to what the balance of the funds uh we have available so we're in the process of uh developing those projects now prioritizing them I have a meeting next week with the architect and CM to get that rolling okay still here all right so real briefly the this change order process uh there's uh the two new board members I don't think you've uh heard this and there are often questions as to how does this whole process work um it's a it's a bit uh hard to understand and um sometimes doesn't make sense
110but at any rate um four steps an issue was raised uh A Change Is proposed the changes agreed upon and the contract is amended I'll tell you how that works um an issue was raised when construction is going on a contractor finds a problem that's not covered in the construction documents it requires Direction be given to the contractors they have to work up a cost um the cost has to be reviewed by a bunch of parties and then we um we we process the change order and um just just to keep this brief um how the process works it's all change orders come to me every more every Monday morning my staff sits down and reviews every single change order that we receive and it's hundreds and hundreds of them we look at every every
111single one every item uh determine what the cause is whose fault it is uh more often than not we find errors in math the contractors forgot to give us credit back on something so we scrutinize these to the nth degree and there's a large percentage of them that go back and get reduced before before I sign off on them um so um so then they're processed and we we we do an amendment to the contract and the work proceeds so where the questionable item comes in is when there's a an error that the Architects makes something on the drawings that were supposed to be there that wasn't there so so that yeah so the situation with that is uh the industry standard or thinking or logic is if that information had been on the drawings
112you would have paid for it anyway so we're we're obligated to pay for the change order um my gripe with that whole thing is you don't get the same number that you do on a change order as you're doing a bid so that's where negotiating skills uh come into place and um I start to brandonize things pretty significantly when when uh when that comes up so we we keep the we keep everybody honest um and then one last item so occasionally things get built and then we found find out there's a mistake that's a different story when that occurs and something has to be torn out and rebuilt then the architect has to pay for that change we only pay for something one time um so we do this on every project in fact recently
113Romeo and I had a conversation with a consultant on some work that was done recently and we made a significant adjustment on their final payment to cover errors that were made and when you see these ten thousand dollar change orders that come to you I'll put a note on the bottom that say we're negotiating with the Architects so we followed through on a recent project with that just to let you know that that in fact does occur okay so uh in a nutshell that's the that's the change order process and it's it it's been the same for years and years okay um let's see change orders yeah yeah just real briefly you can look at the numbers here what I'll point to is um that column that's one two three four five over that says
114change order percent of budget um we're down to 3.76 we were at 4.06 uh back on 5 3 22 when we last met with you so that number is coming down again we like to see that at three percent we typically budget five percent just to cover ourselves so um it's a bit higher than I'd like to see but you know based on uh what's going on with uh with with with the whole construction industry industry in general I don't have much of a problem with that um so again I think we're in pretty good shape there okay Romeo okay uh and the other thing I wanted to mention here on this slide is um change orders over ten thousand that have come to the board there's been over about 90 of them um that
115you have seen out of a total of 745 so again as Lou mentioned before anything over ten thousand dollars a credit or an expense comes to the board for approval and the other thing I will mention is each one of these change orders the facility operation Department maintains a detailed log on what they change your order is for whether it's a design an error a value engineering or whatever the reason is behind it all those details are maintained so now just looking at some quick budget numbers on where we are with the transportation and support services facility again it's 100 complete the budget was construction budget with contingencies funds was about 26 million dollars we spent about 25.4 million so at this point we have a balance of construction a balance of about a half
116a million dollars against Budget on that facility at this time foreign which equals about two percent of the of the budget for it as we look at our one through R6 again these are the budgets with contingency built in um the only estimate at this point is our six it's seven million 863 that number was um about 3.8 or 4 million dollars when we did this back in May and I'll show you where the difference came from on that but our one our two our three and primarily our well our one our two and our three are are completed those are final numbers so you can see a little bit of a balance left over in each of those phases R4 has a 4.4 million dollar balance but as Lou mentioned there's work still continuing
117to go on so that balance is likely to come come down as expenses still come in over the next several months to finish off our four our five the 8.5 million is the bid amount and we haven't done anything here in terms of applying expenditures yet and then R6 again is estimated at about eight million dollars when in the past it was about four million dollars foreign taking a look at the summary again Transportation you can see the numbers there the budget and the actual are one through our six totals about 63.3 million dollars we got about 41.3 million dollars spent we have about a 22 million dollar balance on our one through our six and primarily our five part of our four R5 and R6 have not yet been completed but what you'll see
118under capitalized interest is a notation originally what was budgeted there was 5.3 million dollars that's usually done by our external financial consultants it's to help with some of the financing and interest costs within the project they are very conservative was originally budgeted at 5.3 million dollars we meet with them two or three times a year Well actually three or four times a year we've recently settled on we don't need the 5.3 million dollars that was originally budgeted so we took four million dollars out of the capitalized interest and moved it to R6 and that's why our six went from 4 million to about 8 million dollars an estimate right now and actually as far as the capitalized interest we're not even sure yet we're going to need the million three but we need to keep
119it there on hold for a little while longer but some of those funds may be able to be transferred to R6 as well the debates the way they're going now we probably are going to go back to Disney and and fund the bonds that way so we will likely use more of the million two that's left over but there could be a small balance there and then incidentals we budgeted at 18 percent we're at about 11.4 million dollars in expenses leaves us about 4.8 million dollars um at this point so you can see we've got a balance of about 29 million dollars um with reimagined Greece so overall um I think we're although there's been challenges there's been struggles there's been covet related incidences overall the project is going good we are well within budget
120we have the room in the budget and the whole project to be able to manage it to ensure and make certain that we don't go over the 107.8 million dollars we should be able to do that we'll know better in the spring when we meet with the Consultants again we wrap up the actuals on our four start to really figure out our five and then finalize our six and we will probably come back in the spring with a scope on our six and give you a better number on that in the spring and then this this is a new a new slide we added because it it gets a little bit more uh complicated um so I just wanted to speak to this so what we're currently doing is we have uh Federal stimulus monies
121available ARP and crrsa and although we're well on our way of spending both of those funds in the crrsa world we've got some capital projects that we came to the board to a couple months ago a few months ago and asked for four projects to be funded out of a portion of the federal stimulus dollars that would have been for the VCT flooring the fitness rooms and such we still have a balance there and an ARP um we've still got Monies to spend over the next year and a half there but we believe we could have some balance money there and what had it transpired over the last 6 to 12 months is you can now fund capital projects including existing projects with federal dollars so what we are spending a lot of time looking
122at and trying to figure out is what an R5 and R6 under reimagined Greece would fit the criteria for crrsa or arp that is Coveted related move that work from reimagine Greece fund it with Federal stimulus dollars which will then excuse me free up more funds and reimagine Greece to apply towards our six where running into a little bit of a jam because of the some of the issues that Lou brought up earlier with crrsa the projects have to be done by October of 23. and given all the lead times and the delays and materials we're not certain we can use it but what we may do is fund some of the reimagined Greece R5 and R6 out of ARP and then better utilize crrsa for some other items that we have out there so
123we've got four or five big pots to strategically look at and we're trying to figure out the best way to do it to get the best bang for our buck and get as much Capital work done as we could out of the three funding sources we'll come back to the board in the spring in the 23. to do another update and at that point we should have a better update of what we're doing with the stimulus dollars for Capital plans as well as for our six questions Mr Maloney back when we were creating this uh the bond we had asked I had asked for some tennis court work being done at Olympia was there any money left or can we you do anything with the tennis courts over at Olympia into it or is that
124part of a new project it's not in the scope of the authorization that was approved when we did reimagine Greece so in reimagine Greece we've got the Bro broad categorization but behind all that we actually list out the types of projects at each School tennis courts unfortunately at the time that we put the scope together was not part of the scope so the put that in um could raise objections from residents who could then challenge the work being funded out of that project but we've had conversations around it and it's on the board definitely for scope in the next Capital project thank you Dr drewick microphone with the money that we're saving can that money be used toward other things or is it very Project Specific so like you talked about you know of 500
125000 savings on the transportation facility does that 500 000 only apply like you can only do work in the transportation facility or can you move it to another part of reimagined Greece you can move it but it's really not a 500 000 it's a it's a 500 000 saving to that phase well you look at R6 um and I should have noted this on the slide when it was up R6 is at about eight million dollar budget the original scope of R6 is around 12 or 13 million we've already got it cut out four to five million dollars of scope in R6 in order to fit the 107. um so if there were funds as long as it met the threshold of the authorization and was in the scope of the work which we try
126to leave somewhat General than we could however when you add new items like that they still don't have to be designed they have to go to SCD they need to be approved they need to be bid which takes up time effort and money um so it's not as simple as just going ahead and do the work without getting the proper structural designs approvals um and such does that help you yes thank you it's a question on R4 I think the last time we chatted right we thought that would finish up sometime in Q4 here right in feels like we're 90 days ish behind for various reasons it might not be exact quotes but it feels like in that range my real question is not so much about the delay of the project but just the
127impact of the kids at Odyssey in particular right at the time I think we thought the kids would largely be outside and kind of be able to do pep rallies and stuff out there and everything be cool now you know we still don't have an auditorium concerts are starting to go you got musicals starting to prep and practice how and libraries still not available yet hopefully in the next month or so how are we I guess kidnapping those kids so that they're not disadvantaged and connecting them the resources at the other schools Performing Arts Center Etc so that they can have as normal of an experience as possible you know because of this delay touch the library and then yeah maybe the yeah Auditorium so um we've been having a regular meetings since August with
128uh Folks at Odyssey as well as the three elementaries indicating that we were having issues getting spaces completed um the uh the users of those space for example I had a meeting with the librarian at Odyssey today they've been kept abreast weekly over the last three months just where we are what the problems are what the issues are and um there's family consumer science rooms art rooms Library phys Ed folks Auditorium folks five groups we've been in in contact with those folks on a regular basis letting them know now just so we're on the same page the completion data the auditorium was always the end of October so we're not that far off there the main entrance was the end of October first in November so several of these dates as well as the boys
129and girls locker rooms they were into October so um we're not we're not taking from August to where we are now but in some cases October but in every case we've kept we've kept all of the user groups abreast of what's going on um I I've had a few complaints here and there that I'd like to see some things but for the most part everyone has been understanding from day one Corey at Odyssey has kept his folks abreast of what's going on they've made alternative plans how the Librarians working where they're practicing music so we've been keeping tabs on that all along and I honestly haven't had a a complaint uh from anyone you know is is it going as as smoothly as it should no but I think the folks at have done a
130great job in adapting and making alternative plans to do what they need to do so we're so so the library they are uh putting books in bookshelves today the furniture again the furniture that has to go in there so they can use it I just got the notice yesterday that it was in but they couldn't install it until December 28th well I made a call and it's being installed next Tuesday now um so um we're probably about a week away the end of next week we should be completed with the library about 75 percent of it there's one section of that we had some problems the Makerspace section that the construction is just getting underway again after some some serious design issues and construction issues uh probably be the end of next week and and
131Emily rounding is looking at starting a week from this coming Monday in the library um yeah it's it's hard for me to speak to what what they've been able to do in the interim yeah with the library I'm not certain downstairs but uh for the auditorium I know we've been in you know Dr clickio and and us have been uh in contact because they were talking about would they have to move um the musicals to another location um so those conversations have happened it looks like we're probably going to maintain them here at Odyssey um providing anything crazy happens I think at this point they need to know I Believe by the end of January whether they can utilize the auditorium here and I think at this point we believe it will be done by
132that point okay yeah there's a uh there was a construction meeting of four o'clock this afternoon uh just to discuss the auditorium now I was over there today the seats are going in today um the carpet is going in next week um uh the stage floor is about 95 95 complete um we had new lights going in the auditorium I'm not going to see lights until April um we had doors that are going in this space they were ordered on May 1st they came in today so that's kind of what we've been dealing with so we're we're looking at probably another three or four weeks Max and we'll be in the auditorium yeah and to be clear I'm not I guess questioning our execution in terms of capital I get the supply chain challenges and
133get the materials in and I know you guys are working all hours all shifts we've stumbled over half the workers last night as we're leaving audit committee right so I I really do appreciate all that effort right my my point was really more we're shifting a season here and it's going to get colder and we can't be outside anymore right I don't know I'm just checking to make sure the kids have the right space yeah the exterior bathrooms are gone no I agree and like I said I do want to recognize all that work yeah I'm just saying as we enter this new season and it gets cold right right as as Romeo mentioned right making sure we have access to the auditorium make sure those kids can get be engaged and do their normal
134musical practice Etc it sounds right on the edge there so I appreciate that thank you any questions Dr haywick um as we're you know looking at is there a plan for like for like the future right so I what I mean by that is I know that you know what we're seeing is an enrollment in our in our but we we are also seeing a lot of our programs expanded like Community Schools and you know some of these other things that we're leaving and I'm just wondering like as part of that work are we looking at um creating facilities or additional space for those expanding programs like even you know as a gentleman talks about a health services kind of program or more space for our community a lot of here so I just wonder
135is has that been factored into the work so far or is that part of like the our seven our eight and with that how often is the community can the community expect that we're going to be doing capital projects because I know there was a long time you weren't doing anything and now we're doing all this work and people know it seems like seems like we're always working on these rules so can you kind of speaking I'll start with the the latter question first I believe at least since I've been here and probably since Lou's been here we've done Capital Project work every summer for the last 18 17 or 18 years so I might go back to the early 90s but it's been every year um expansion space and things like that are this
136reimaging Greece will end at R6 and then the our reference will no longer be we will put together a new project to have voters authorize now whether that would be December you know 23 or the spring of 24 where we have the building condition survey that Lou's team has and they're going through to determine scope of work for our next Capital project we'll get input from committee members and from the board on ideas for a next scope of work for a new capital project we have about 10 million dollars in a capital reserve already funded which will buy us a capital project somewhere between 40 40 and 45 million dollars so that there's no additional uh local share to Residents um and all that will start to come together at least initial proceedings on that
137probably in the next three or four months two or three months to see what do we want if we want to have a capital project for 20 we will end reimagine Greece in summer of 24 if we want to have Capital work in summer of 25 to continue on and not miss a year we will probably need to have a capital vote sometime next year either in the winter or very early spring of 24 for the next 35-45 million dollar project which could include Necessities in the building that the building condition survey has said need to be replaced and then any other items that we wish to add to the scope does that help yeah one quick comment just just to drill down a little bit farther um this Petty Hill gymnasium that we're building
138uh we have to relocate roadways and access for fire trucks and utilities there's there's a thought that we at some point may need to add some classrooms on it Petty Hill Petty Hill is full so when we developed this gymnasium where this classroom Edition could potentially go we've set set up in this Paddy Hill gymnasium relocating those utilities now relocating the roadway so that if we build this addition we don't have to touch that stuff again so we do we we've done that on several things so as we're doing this project we're always looking at what's coming up in the future and we make those Provisions ahead of time as much as we're able to and this is also on our agenda in March for our Retreat as a topic to continue to talk more
139about any other questions I just got um two questions in a comment um with the ir6 being approximately at this point about four million dollars short of where we were hoping it was going to be have you guys determined what's going to be caught at this point out of and I guess as a follow-up to Dr Trevor's question so roughly to four to five million dollars you can be cut at R6 with that four to five Million Dollar Cuts be part of the initial next project in your thought process all right I'll start and then you can so there's about 12 or 13 million dollars worth of R6 scope I believe all of it will get designed and then we will see six or eight months from now how we might be able to make
1408 million go to ten with the federal stimulus monies we may not need that other million three in the capitalized interest which would make it eleven we may be able to get to 11 or 12 or get the full scope and depending on how expenses come in um so but that's why we're working hard to utilize the federal grants to try to fund some of the stuff that's in there and actually there's also another opportunity we might have with some of the build uh bilateral infrastructure Bill we learned about today there's some fun we're trying to find a way to free up dollars in our six I'm sorry and reimagine Greece to get back to the scope that we originally did um if we don't get to it it could definitely be part of the
141initial pushes into the next Capital project to start with this is as well no problem yeah and on the R6 projects um we're currently in the process of addressing and we prioritize the projects so uh there's a there's a matrix that we found any life safety issues will stay in the project um if there are significant energy conservation issues they would stay in the project Ada items that were still looking at they would stay in the project so there are certain things that are in there that you know in consultation with our facilities group um uh we could hold off on those if we needed to those would be transferred over to the next project if if we're short on funds and I just want to thank you for the lock sets I've been hearing
142about the locks that's in my home life for 14 years so I truly appreciate the likes that's getting done and I know it took a lot of work and effort so thank you and it improved student safety and staff safety so thank you very much for getting that done thank you both thank you and moving on audit committee update chairman sawicki thank you Mr President the audit committee convened last evening on Monday December 5th to review several items namely the items before the board this evening pending approval the committee attendees included myself fellow board member Tammy Flora Flores as well as District administrators in an at-large community members to begin Tom Zuber of mango Metzger bar and Co reviewed the 2122 extracurricular activity fund audit report and discussion took place regarding our processes number of
143an activity of our clubs and potential measures to further strengthen our controls in the areas of fundraiser Administration and ticket reconciliations the committee also reviewed the 2122 single audit report related to the use of federal funds where the district was deemed a low risk Oddity with no findings next Erica Proctor from the bonadio group reviewed our 2223 internal risk assessment for the district with the committee which remains very similar in risk assessment year over year with no high risk areas noted really an excellent report in not a lot of discussion because not a lot has changed right the biggest challenge this time going off Off Script here so it's a little dangerous but uh the the biggest biggest one noted is really the size of our district and the complexity of the number of buildings
144not much we can do about that right uh in terms of uh you know trying to govern that and oversee that um and that that was really the biggest change and again no high risk items so so really for me a great report uh Additionally the audit committee also reviewed standing corrective action plans related to the district's internal controls the team continues to make good progress in tightening those controls in the transportation area and fixed Assets in particular further updates and resolutions are expected in q1 of 23. with all of the above in mind the audit committee recommends acceptance of item 6.01 6.02 6.04 six point and 6.05 on the agenda this evening which includes the annual extra classroom audit report for 2122 and related corrective action responses as well as the 2223 internal audit
145risk assessment and 2122 management letter responses thank you thank you chairman swiki with that moving on can I Sony move the acceptance of the annual extra classroom audit report for 2122 move by Dr treywick seconded by Miss Flores any comments questions or concerns seeing those in favor and he opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to 6.02 can actually move the acceptance of the 2122 extra classroom audit corrective action responses moved by Miss farmer seconded by Mr swickey any comments questions concerns on those seen seeing none all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero can I Sony move item 6.03 the 2223 property tax collection status moved by vice president Lars seconded by Mrs farmer any comments questions concerns on that sing not all is in favor that passes or any
146opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to the 6.04 acceptance of the 2223 internal audit risk assessment report can I Sony move that to the table please move by Miss Flora second by Dr treywick comments questions concerns seeing all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero can I have somebody move the acceptance of the 2122 management letter responses please move by Miss floor second by Mr farmer any comments questions concerns on that all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero can I have Sony move the 6.06 to BOCES copier pilot project approval moved by Mr Maloney seconded by Dr treywick any comments questions concerns on this one singing all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to 7.01 budget says report it's written
147information and only does anybody have any questions 7.02 is anticipated bids does anybody have any questions or certain information only moving on to the consent agenda can I have this consent agenda moved moved by Mr Sookie seconded by Mr farmer any comments questions concerns on the consent agenda um I would just like to thank superintendent groutman who made a 500 donation on behalf of the Board of Education to Greece Community Schools I'd like to thank Tops Friendly Markets for the gift cards for the degree Central School District pantry and Community Schools in the amount of a thousand dollars and I would like to thank the Olympia class of 1970 for a donation by that class for the reunion Committee of twelve hundred dollars so a total of 2 700 and donations came into the district
148and I'd like to thank all those individuals in the class of 1970 and the top Supermarket with that all those in favor any opposed that passes eight to zero moving on to field trip approval can I certainly move the field trip approval to detail please move by Mr Maloney second by Miss Flores any comments questions concerns on this the only thing I'm going to say is it's awesome to see a field trip I think it's been a while since we've had a music trip uh dating the pre-covet so I love to see this and with that all those in favor any opposed that carries eight to zero board member comments as any board members have any comments this evening microphone I just wanted to say to all the speakers I know it takes a lot
149of courage and bravery to get up to the microphone and you know talk about things that you know sometimes are uncomfortable for folks to hear but I just wanted to encourage people keep bringing you know the issues forward um you know we can't see everything and I think that at the end of the day we all want the same thing which is for our students in our district to be better so I just want to say thank you to all the speakers and on top of that I wanted to say encourage people our holiday concerts are coming up our children are singing they're playing instruments they're dancing they're doing everything um now it's gonna seem like I'm trying to be like Brandon but this is me this is not branded yeah you're low on the
150brand so I know for example Olympia um tomorrow they have a band concert so um if you want a little holiday cheer and a little holiday spirit uh go and see our kids over the next couple of weeks um next week I know the jazz band is doing some stuff and all the schools you know the kids are performing they're singing they're dancing they're doing all kinds of stuff and we need Joy right here we Embrace Joy so I wanted to encourage folks to support our kids and then also wanted to give a shout out to Pine Brook they invited me to their guardians of equity meeting and it was a great meeting got to hear about all the great work that they're doing I know it's not just unique to Pine Brook a lot
151of our schools our all of our schools are doing great work do we have you know work that needs to be done in some areas absolutely but I think it's also good to give folks their flowers and celebrate the good stuff as well well but not be afraid to hear the things that need Improvement either so with that I wish everybody a happy holiday and thank you president for letting me speak very good Mr Maloney just to give you a little update on electric buses uh Dr Trey Wick and I attended Labor Relations meeting and the Gates Chili was the her Gates I should say was the maker of the presentation on electric buses and just to let you all know it's very expensive and we have a long long way to go thank you
152Mr Maloney Mr swiki I would just like to say the Christmas tree Gala or the tree Gala over at Arcata middle uh great event right got got a chance to stop by last night check out all the trees um I of course loved our Board of Education one thank you Miss milor uh for the decoration and Tammy I think you might have helped too yes so thank you both I clearly the best tree in show but there were other contenders uh I like the Buffalo Bills one the cupcake one uh in addition to all the trees there great family night too events in a bunch of the different areas there we also saw the step team perform which was really cool along with some hot cocoa and some donuts so if you haven't had a
153chance to check it out there's two nights left Mr Jones told us all about it so make sure you get there 48 hours to go and vote for the Board of Education tree that's my public service announcement uh as as my colleague Dr Dre Wick said I also wish everyone a happy holiday uh Merry Christmas uh it's great to work with everybody here and I look forward to what is in store for New Year so great thank you I'm sorry thank you I want to Echo Dr treywick's um encouragement of our speakers to come out and speak I know yes it is hard and it does it does take courage to do that so I I also uh thank you all who were speaking today um there were a couple of speakers today who touched
154on things that I've been that have been very very much on my heart and mind as our board members know um code of conduct issues have been a big concern of mine um Mr Thayer's story uh tonight uh very emotional uh it was tough to hear I'm sorry to say that I've heard other stories like that and we do have a lot of good things going on in the district don't want to downplay any of that I've got some flowers to share too tonight by the way but those are stories they can easily get lost in data and there are real people behind them and we can't we can't not pay attention to them uh I'm going to continue to make uh make sure if if we don't have residents coming forward to share stories
155I'm hearing them behind the scenes and I'm going to share them um I do want to point out much like what we heard tonight there are lots of kids who feel I can't say anything because I've heard this one I have to go to a a restorative Circle and then The Bullying gets worse I've heard from teachers that they're discouraged not by Administration but they're discouraged maybe from peers from writing referrals because we need to reduce our referral rates and a common refrain from teachers is that a quote a major issue with retention of Staff has to do with student Behavior especially for students with multiple referrals for class disruption and they say we just want to be able to teach so this goes to creating a safe and welcoming environment for our kids and
156our teachers to learn and teach and we need we need to re-reemphasize that effort I'm confident that we will the issue of proficiency reading proficiency came up tonight and uh Dr superintendent groutman knows that that's been on my mind they've reached out to her about that the city's announcement recently eight percent proficiency is really alarming and then you know got me looking into it uh State education department says we're at about 30 a little over 30 percent I want to thank first of all I want to thank superintendent grotman for her passionate statement tonight that that's not okay and I know that's an issue that goes across the country and but we can't be okay with it we need to continue to seek ways to make that better because again they're they're real life our
157kids that that are being affected by it and it cuts across all demographics um and I want to particularly thank Dr Payne and Dr pettifer for carving out time out of their busy work days to help me get a better grounding on how we're approaching it so thank you both um but this is a critical issue it's it really does go to our kids life success I think I think there were some flowers in there because we've got people doing hard work and are interested to make it better some other flowers sorry for borrowing your your expression there um I wish I could start every day like I started today which was going to Brookside Elementary School watching the kids walk in I think a principal herksmeyer for having me join her there watching the
158kids walk in big smiles on their faces kind of a dance in their step excited to be at school um we watched the morning show presentation there were Brandon mentioned the five kids who uh you know they got leader in me going on there five kids who took leadership not not part of leader in me just decided it was something they wanted to do raise money for Toys for Tots they were awesome they were part of the morning show uh like I said I wish I could I could start every day like that because it was it just really gave me a big lift so great things going on and uh I saw some of the classes in action and and it's encouraging so that's it thank you this is Flores thank you I remembered
159my microphone I guess I just would like to say thank you and happy holidays to everybody um this time of year it can bring so much joy and I'm really excited for a lot of the things that go on in our district but I'm also pleased thank you superintendent development for bringing to our attention as Mark indicated there is always work to be done in our district and I just would like to acknowledge that the team and the administration and the teachers and the staff that work in this District show up here every day because of the students that are here and I like Mark had the privilege of going into my schools recently both English Village and our my Holmes Road school and I just loved even though I was there for other things
160just the interaction that the kids have with their teachers and the joy that they have of being there and the things that they derive from their school day is pretty amazing to me and it's most simplistic form so I would like to say thank you to all of those people who work for this District that show up every day and that they share the very best of themselves with our students and I love that I would also like to say thank you to the district this year this time of year especially is very joyful for a lot of people but for a lot of people it is not and there are a lot of people who struggle with mental health issues and this time of year can be a struggle so I would like to
161say thank you to the district for the resources that it has found and the things that it is done to reinforce the mental health awareness as well as the resources that we have with new staff this year with the things that we're doing with simple things like mindfulness right our board retreat this weekend we had Ann Andrea antonetti come into a mindfulness exercise with us that I absolutely loved that she is sharing with students with teachers and other things just to find simple ways to take a couple extra minutes to remind us why we should have joy and even though that may be fleeting for a moment because while the extra stresses of the holidays there's always time to find it so thank you very much to everybody happy holidays I wish everybody much time
162off and safety and as Dr treywick said enjoy our concerts I unfortunately had to miss my daughter's concert but to enjoy being in the presence of you find people this evening and I will get to watch it on video so she may not forgive me but take the time to go and see those kids and thanks to those music teachers and art teachers and all those that are helping our students Express their creativity in a lot of different ways so thank you thanks Mr Suarez vice president oh Mrs farmer thank you Tammy for reminding us of how different people respond during these these times that many of us find joy and some of us find difficult difficulties and embracing the joy I'd like to talk a little bit about the department of world languages and
163how much I value that whole department I recently have been traveling abroad and have seen firsthand how other countries people in those countries are multilingual and our country our our kids we aren't and I think it's really important to uh look at that a little bit deeper because I believe that it's connected to a love of learning a love of reading a love of embracing different cultures in different environments it allows kids to have a wider world view I'd also like to talk a little bit about the um one snapshot of reading scores that is not all that it is when we look at Proficiency in Reading we tend to be a data driven environment throughout this nation are are there issues absolutely we need to remember that many children were not receiving instruction for
164over a year during the pandemic not online not anywhere this District Rose to that occasion teachers had to pretty much build the airplane while they were taking on this new way of learning for kids and I believe that as we continue to focus in on what strengths we need to and and instill in our children that we will see these scores rise I think one of the things that Greece has done as far as limiting cell phone use by using the Yonder pouches can filter down to the younger children that's the and to families that limiting screen time allows children cognitive abilities to be able to look in other places for Joy for entertainment reading I remember when I was in fourth or fifth grade going to a summer school where in in the in
165the lights were low and we just went and we read and we read and we read and it was a beautiful thing I think that when we limit ourselves to standardized tests or data we leave out other pieces that can be fulfilling for children and oftentimes because of standardized tests New York State we have to limit kids ability or kids um that ability but their access to reading their access to writing because we're focusing in on just one aspect of what that means for kids learning the data from tests do we have struggles happening right now absolutely we need to remember that we just came out of a pandemic that has thrown kids and I also want to talk a little bit about how um someone I can't remember who within this district there was
166a dance maybe it was maybe it was you Kathy how we had such an uh outpouring of kids who attended these dances where they were kind of uh moving away from that kids weren't finding value in it so we can look at that other side and say wow so the pandemic as awful as it was has also given rise to people wanting to reconnect I love the idea that we are not just bypassing cell phones we we uh at home parents we can model reading at home whether we're reading the back of a cereal box or we're reading a comic book or we're reading whatever it is that we might be reading when the grown grown people are modeling the reading this will instill it into our children and I'm not trying to um downplay
167what we know is a serious issue I would like to rise up how parents and families and our schools can come together model the love of reading model the love of writing and as everyone else has said it's December it's time for us to enjoy each other and move forward and welcome in a new year thank you sure everybody said what I was going to say um had the opportunity to go to the career and Technology education fair and family night it was fabulous it was so nice to see our partners in the community there the businesses and the schools and so many parents coming in wanting to find out about the curriculum I want to remind everybody that this Saturday is the Olympia craft fair which I think they've been doing for as long
168as there's been Olympia so please come out and support that Community it's Fab it's a fabulous day um the annual tree Gala two more nights five to seven uh there's crafting there's music and yes you do get to vote on the trees board of education does have a tree and I might say we might not accept the results of the election uh just putting it out there anyway happy holidays to everybody and see you in January thank you vice president Laura I just want to thank vice president Laura for all the work she put into our Board of Education tree I can assure you will accept the results of the election um I mean it really shouldn't be a contest so I agree with Mr swickey it should be a foregone conclusion but we'll accept
169the results no matter what um I want to give a shout out to director of security Steve cheridan who recently became a homeland security threat assessment instructory is one of very few in the entire nation so I want to give him a shout out for that Steve does a tremendous job for this District I mean his day never stops so I truly thank him for everything he does um I want to thank Mr Thayer Mr stutzel and Miss Lakey for staying at the board meeting I mean I truly appreciate that I mean some people I mean I know people have families and they come to speak but there were a lot of people in the crowd that stayed to listen to people speak about unpleasant things in the school district and then left I give
170you guys a lot of credit for sitting in the meeting and listening to what else is going on in the school district so I appreciate you taking the time to listen it means a lot and I I want you to know it doesn't go unrecognized um with that I also want to wish everyone um a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year but I'd also like people to remember those less fortunate this time of year this is a tough time of year for a lot of families um so if you can think about maybe our food pantry our community schools that would be greatly appreciated and with that super Nana groutman yeah good evening everyone I have just a couple of things um one I just wanted to give a shout out and thanks to
171all of our teachers who are leading the events so as much as we want people to go and attend and see the concerts and enjoy that we have a whole lot of people who are very busy at a tiring time of year who are working to get kids ready so a huge thanks to all those teachers and administrators who are helping with those events um another shout out to our community schools team and I say that because it is a team um that is really connected to a bunch of Administrators sitting here in this room as well as right down to the parent level that has been working really hard um since Thanksgiving to sort of get things ready for more need because we do have a needy community and they have been working really
172hard to um collect and make sure that we can provide for our families as well they have worked on continuing to get our navigation Center up and running and we continue to help families with really dire need that they are experiencing and yes we are the only District in the county that actually has a navigation Center that we're really proud of and how we can help um Monroe County School boards Association completed recently and shared out position papers and I'm proud to say that we have board leadership that has been incredibly helpful with the creation of those so there are papers that discuss electric buses and really discuss when I say this in thorough and thoughtful ways about the challenges around those mandates what's good about it what's what we're going to struggle with Etc
173right down to upk funding and they used us as an example because of the advocacy on our end about how do we make sure that we can actually get those funds and use them rather than just sort of say more money was given to pre-k and then we're still stuck not being able to sort of access those funds so I was happy to see those papers and look forward to more advocacy from our board going forward this winter into the legislative breakfast I am incredibly proud when you look across this District at the idea of I know people keep throwing out the word joy and it sounds simple but what you've seen and what we have seen in different departments is heartwarming so everything from Kurt Keller who you know I just use as an
174example because he leads facilities um you know sending out an email about the joy tree that they have started down here in terms of getting people to write down small things that bring them Joy here at work to you know Gina Larson tie-dying t-shirts up in HR um to homework assignments that are getting sent home at the schools around joy to enjoy crafts that are happening at lunch at Lakeshore School I mean there's a million examples but I've appreciated people keeping that on in mind because it is a habit it's nice to do it but it's more around training our brains to think of it differently and to stay focused on the positive things because there are so many good things and it's really how we solve problems too it's we build on good things
175um I want to address Transportation so I know that those folks are not here but I do want to recognize the difficulty that we have experienced this year with transportation so we heard from folks tonight who um talked about wanting different bus stops and I just want to be clear because um I was I'm very aware and I think many of the board members are aware of these situations that policy that was changed has to do with the deadline and the creation of new bus stops the reason that that was created was because last year and we still are in a bus driver crisis don't get me wrong but last year we were in such a difficult state that kids were getting to school late every day you had buses that literally could not complete
176we were combining runs there was no way to to get kids to school on time with the with the number of bus drivers that we were short the the board was very thoughtful in its approach to Transportation the board sat for an entire Retreat looking at different options of the way we could reduce the amount of runs and bus drivers which came we came to a solution which was around not creating new stops after paperwork if paperwork was handed in late um I share that because um what the result of that has been is a lot of unhappy people because if the paperwork was handed in after the deadline we did not create stops the benefit that we found and found is that we actually have created some stability in terms of the runs and
177being able to get kids to school on time so I share that because it is a challenge it's not an easy one and while everybody wants us to just make an exception for one we have over 300 people who have reached out requesting an exception so I'm thoughtful about that because we haven't arbitrarily changed things we haven't arbitrarily added stops based on someone's request we have really towed the line and been incredibly consistent um to like no one wants to make someone happier more than me when someone calls but it has been a challenge so I just want to give some context to that and make sure that people understand it's not quite as simple as just stopping and at that one but at that one daycare those kids are not all going to the
178same place at the same time so it's not just one simple stop um and on that line I guess I would also add to what many of the board members have shared in terms of thanking the folks that came tonight um there's nothing about um like resonance form is a is a great way to surface and share information with the board I would say though it's limited and I want to be really clear about that because it's a moment in time where you can share a story and that can be really powerful and it can be really helpful the work though to solve any of the problems that we've identified is not going to happen here the work is actually going to happen through building relationships and putting together bigger plans and and most things
179are going to be ongoing so bullying has never been solved in a meeting or with one particular disciplinary action reading scores have never been fixed with um you know a new staff member gets added or one thing gets done these are complex problems that require relationships they require time they require work and so I guess what I would say is I do encourage people to come and speak and that can be here but I also want to encourage people to reach out around sitting down and talking I know that that that happens often where people can sit down and sit down with our folks here in the room to get a better understanding but it's really about building a relationship so that if it doesn't get solved you can still be part of the solution
180and helping us this isn't about us and them it's about us as a community really working together so I appreciate the feedback the input I wish everybody an incredibly happy holiday season and thank you all for your time thank you superintendent Grumman Mr Maloney I would like to make I would like to make a motion to a journey meeting that's shocking and if I Mrs Flores all those a favor any opposed never any opposed there thank you everyone have a great evening have a great Christmas thank you