001like well to welcome everyone to our tuesday august 2nd 2022 board of education meeting if i could have everyone rise for the pledge board member maloney is going to lead us in the pledge this evening and if you can have i'd like to have a moment of silence for the following people please anthony klicchio the father of assistant superintendent cathy click hill who passed away last week paul rund a former employee of the transportation department and jacob west the son of a former assistant principal jenny west from odyssey if you could keep the west west colicchio and run families in your thoughts and prayers that would be greatly appreciated mr to the maloney of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and
002justice for all thank you move the agenda table please move by mrs farmer seconded by mr swiki any additions corrections additions or deletions to the agenda i have one i'm going to add 8.04 it's a change order with that all those in favor of the agenda is amended that passes nine to zero i'm now going to open up the code of conduct public hearing i have three speakers signed up for the public hearing is there anybody else that wants to speak on the code of conduct public hearing that didn't get signed up if they haven't come in in the last 30 seconds all right perfect uh shanti parnell i hope i pronounced that name correctly shanti i'm sorry if you could go to this microphone over here to the right all speakers tonight will be
003using this microphone to my right your left thank you i'm sorry i have a student entering her senior year this this year this past year she was top in her school in her entire high school for events meaning truancies suspensions referrals i'm not proud of that fact still no real accountability still allowing her chance after chance after chance and never seeing any change my daughter is falling through the cracks there's been zero accountability she's currently in summer school four days absence plus a suspension already she failed her entire year of high school she earned a half a credit this past year she had a rolling average in one of her classes of 57 but because she passed her regents exam with a 78 the principal gave an override on one of her classes and she
004passed the entire class having hardly been there at all and gave her full credit in discussions with principals and administrators i was told that rules and policies would be strictly adhered to summer school is a prime example of that being false i feel that parents are being lied to by the people running the schools in closing i feel like these discussions completely have become completely pointless because nothing changes and nobody listens bottom line now is that i want answers and no one will give them to me and that's it thank you mr parnell thank you mr steve wexler good evening my name is steve wexler so i have a son uh just finishing autumn lane moving into craig hill so the cell phone policy would not apply to him currently but i have a couple
005concerns and i'll leave you with a final thought the the measure in place seems drastic to me i think there needs to be more discussion between parents and staff and teachers i'd like to hear from teachers that are not having a problem disciplining or having issues with their students having cell phones in class in the classroom as well as from teachers that are having problems and i think if we put our heads together i think we can find a solution that is not drastic the fact that a teacher or an aide will have a cell phone in the classroom does not make me feel any better if a shooter comes in and takes out the teacher where does that cell phone stay in a locked drawer that does not make me feel very good so
006i'm going to leave that that final thought with you and and hope there can be some continued discussion thank you mr rexler mr keisha and i'm going to take a minute to welcome j-mac to our meeting i'm glad to see you here up and looking good gmax no problem buddy glad you're feeling better no probably not hello everybody um thank you for giving me the opportunity and i'm i'm glad we're all here together i'm glad jmx back and healthy 85. um after the last meeting i had the opportunity to communicate with a bunch of teachers about the code of conduct issue and a number of things came up that this young lady already brought up here one of the biggest things a good example i have probably 20 25 videos greece olympia greece odyssey greece
007arcadia where there were fights going on and there were staff available to stop the fights who did nothing okay so right now i understand you're working on a a plan to go and change things in the future one of the biggest concerns of the teachers are we going to be expected to deal with the situation going at hand until somebody from security comes forward i understand mr chairman has done a great job working forward trying to develop a plan but one of the biggest things that everybody keeps bringing up is these fights are going on nobody lays hands on the kids and stops what's going on i don't understand how that can happen i'm sure shantae has the exact same situation okay so i understand we have a plan and we have all these happy
008healthy words and everybody keeps talking about all these people who are playing into what's going on but none of them are the parents and the teachers that's what's going on we have a small faction of teachers that are involved on the committee why aren't we why aren't we at least sending out a survey or at least trying to pull people in and say who have seen all this stuff going on i mean i i have videos going on on buses in hallways greece odyssey greece olympia greece arcadia i don't necessarily have anything from greece athena but nobody discussed this when we had the last meeting with the school board okay i know teachers who are 70 and 80 pounds who don't want to have to break up a fight okay that shouldn't be happening and
009i understand security guards can't be everywhere all the time but by the same token there was a lot of talk last time we met about the code of conduct as a written document has things like no hoods unless i can see your ears and now we're debating about it the code of conduct is the code of conduct it's a legal document let's stand up and enforce it it doesn't matter what nationality what gender you are if you don't adhere to the code of conduct then you deserve to be reprimanded and if we're going to reprimand somebody it has to be uniform it doesn't matter so let's do that that's my take on it and i understand we're still looking into it but let's do something and let's adhere to a code of conduct it doesn't
010matter one way or another stand up for it thank you mr shaw [Applause] assistant superintendent zafetz uh just uh to clarify a few things that i heard in the in the forum for the board just to be ultra clear that no staff especially untrained staff has any expectation to get involved in a confrontation between students there have been incidents where staff have have gotten involved of their own choice but that's by no means an expectation of the district and it won't be we do have trained staff security staff and tci trained staff and some programs that will get involved and are trained to get involved but that's not an expectation from the district and just wanted to let you know too that if there are ever hands-on incidents with students that that's always followed by
011a debrief with director chatterton security team um and anybody that was involved in that incident um just one other point of clarification for the board just wanted to clarify that the committee's worked over the years to provide a document that gives guidance that allows for both more traditional behavioral consequences that we've spoken about tonight with regards to suspensions etc and also more proactive interventions that was added over the past few years with regards to restorative language although that language was added our practice has largely remained over the past few years to utilize those more traditional consequences that are laid out also in the document as well so just wanted to clarify that the implementation of the document has kind of remained as it was but we have changed that language to provide a more proactive
012and reactive approach to allow for all of it so thank you for your time thanks assistant superintendent zafetz and just for um clarification the board will be voting on the um code of conduct at our next meeting in two weeks from this evening with that can i take a get a motion to adjourn the code of conduct hearing moved by ms farmer seconded by mr maloney all those in favor that passes nine to zero moving on to the district-wide safety plan public hearing i will now call that to order um i have no one signed up for to speak on it so with that i got on the board we'll be adopting um we'll have the presentation of the safety plan at our next board meeting in two weeks so with that can i get
013a motion to adjourn the public hearing on the district safety plan moved by vice president lawrence second by miss flores all those in favor that passes nine to zero moving on to gta comments i don't believe i have anybody here from gta gas uh swinging a mess mess accept swinging a mess gus and teamsters all right moving into residence forum again we're gonna use this microphone you're allotted four minutes i'm gonna cut you off hard at the four minute mark i have my first speaker for residence forum this evening is mrs phyllis plantone you're more than welcome to come up mrs plantone welcome thank you good evening greece school district board members and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you my name is phyllis plantone i'm here with my mother amalia my sister
014lucinda we have lived at 41 elm grove road for over 40 years in the home that plant home builders built in 1980 my father and our family were long time well respected builders here in the town of greece for over 60 years my siblings and i are also graduates of a long time residents of the greece area and greece high schools when i was a young girl my dad and i would visit the greece town hall located on ridge road along pond it was a while ago when we walked down the hall to file a building permit or to see someone my father always greeted everyone with a smile and a handshake in or about 1966 my father was approached by the school district to purchase a piece of property located behind the property that
015is our home today that property has an easement that easement is now runs 60 feet wide alongside the driveway through our backyard when we sold it to the greece school district it was because my father had a great love for education and he believed that the school district would use it for that purpose we sold it with the understanding we would have the option to buy it back if it ever came up for sale as a matter of fact the year my father got sick in 2010 he attempted to put all his fears in order he called the greece school district and was told not to worry there was no plans for the land it was not for sale my father shared those conversations with my mother this past winter we were surprised to get
016an unannounced visit from a company looking to survey the property owned by the greece school district after he contacted mr bianchi we realized it was being surveyed to be listed and sold we have since submitted a purchase offer for the full assessed value of the property we have maintained this easement at our cost continuously for over 40 years including raking tree trimming and grass cutting there have been many times in recent years that we had to perform maintenance on the culvert and the stream that runs through the easement at our expense we have had several maps and photographs that can be submitted to show how this will affect our home we hope with this explanation and your thoughtful consideration you will agree to do the right thing we are not looking for a discount we
017are offering the full assessed value to keep our sanctuary this is what was promised to my father and our family our father was a greece rotarian for over 50 years giving back to the community he helped build st lawrence church on north greece road he was a member of the greece chamber of commerce and the list goes on he was a man of faith and he loved god and his family and he loved building homes for people in greece it is very concerning to us that our home may be disrupted by the possibility of the property being sold and developed please give our family the opportunity to purchase back the property thank you for your time and consideration [Applause] good evening i'm addressing the comprehensive sexuality education which seeks to change society by changing sexual
018and gender norms gender as fluid and defined by each person's preferences and unrelated to biology sexual pleasure is a human right this program was not developed by teachers doctors or scientists it was developed by organizations with very specific and narrow interests foremost planned parenthood who will make millions of dollars managing the sexual needs of future generations the program incorporates graphic and sexually explicit materials in lessons that courts have prohibited for children when we saw a video they had blurred out certain anatomical parts for us for the adults for the parents not so for the children in k through second grade students are told that when they are born their assigned sex is a guess made by the doctor and their parents but it may not be right their body may be a boy but their
019brain is a girl boy both or neither they get to decide during these years schools can help them by providing different clothing to see how it feels people have a right to their opinions but not the facts as far as i'm concerned in grades three through five puberty blockers may be appropriate for some students which in some states can be given without parental consent they are now illegal in europe fact during puberty important bone and brain development takes place transgender hormones are the next step in ultimately surgical correction a number of colleges will actually pay for this for their students there are over 300 clinics now which provide transgender service surgeries for adolescents ten-year-olds discuss masturbation and orgasm and how some people get aroused by sexy pictures and movies it's all healthy and good you
020know in ninth grade students are assigned to obtain a condom and interact with at least one adult in 10th grade students are told that they are able to obtain all contraception without their parents consent they claim to include abstinence as part of this comprehensive program and they refer to examples anal and oral sex dr michelle cretella president of the american college of pediatricians strongly opposes this program because it sexualizes children threatens their health by encouraging risky behavior promotes dangerous gender ideology and undermines the parent-child relationship there are currently bills in the senate and assembly to require this curriculum for all public and charter schools in new york with no opt-out even if the bills fail our governor has figured out a way to enter things as regulations through agencies they do not support law they
021make law they're unconstitutional but good luck fighting that for years in court last year in a greece school a first grade child thought she was a cat and crawled around the classroom her mother said she did the same thing at home so they put a litter box in the garage as a former teacher i can only imagine the disruptions that pronoun controversies have caused miss leakey your formants are up i'm have to cut you off okay i hope you will include this in your code of conduct tweaking some of these behaviors thank you thank you and i'm gonna do something i [Applause] i'm gonna do something i normally don't do i'm gonna call on superintendent groutman to address um some of what you raised what i'd like to do is be very very clear that
022there is no comprehensive sex ed curriculum being taught in the gray central school district so it makes me concerned when it's described in such detail and it's described in ways that make people think that that's happening in our schools because it's not i want to be very very clear about that i would also just point out that the cat example is being used all over the place and it is not something that's true for greece so i just say that because i want to make sure our audience and anybody watching understands where we stand and that that's not happening in greece sure all right our next speaker thank you superintendent grumman our next speakers are tracy lynn and megan farley um welcome welcome thank you good evening my name is tracy lynn farley and i
023am a parent of three children um in the greece school district my daughter megan is going to be a sophomore at arcadia high school my daughter nora actually is back there and asked to come with us tonight we'll be a sixth grader at a cardi arcadia middle school and i actually have a three-year-old but she will be going to english village hopefully in two years um a big topic in our home since june has been the implementation of the new cell phone policy um well as a parent um and a full-time somebody who works i do see the distractions of cell phones in schools at home in the workplace i recognize that i recognize that it needs to be addressed somehow i talk with my children a lot about it megan has said there are
024plans the old plan in place was not working because there was no follow through she would often you know she knew the rules she's an excellent student i'm a proud parent both of my children in school are very excellent students they high honorable hannah distinction they are part of sports teams she's a part of above the influence their great students they follow rules other kids don't but what she comes home saying is nobody follows through on consequences so i understand a plan had to be changed however my feeling is the plan proposed is the wrong plan it was a quick decision i was not even made aware of it as a parent until the night of that board meeting i had heard other parents say we got a survey i never got a survey i
025went through all my emails i got nothing i didn't get anything until this most recent one and yes i laid all my questions and concerns out i actually shared it with her she laid all hers out i have a lot of concerns about safety all those things you've heard our biggest thing at home is the mental health of our students and i've seen and read you're proposing this is to be positive in a mental health way our concern is it's a negative for people like my daughter megan who has diagnosed anxiety diagnosed misophonia and i'm hoping she's going to be able to talk about that that's why she wanted to be here she has a 504 accommodation plan for these medical diagnoses and part of her plan is the use of her cell phone in
026school as a tool to help support her so she can focus on her academics she is allowed to have an earbud and listen to music should she have an anxiety attack she's hopefully going to give you some examples if not i will do it for you of when she has had to use her phone to get her through the day so she can focus on her academics and be the good student she is our concern is if taking that away from her we are going to go down a very very negative road she's been through counseling since she was in third grade she's on daily medication we are doing everything we can to help support her and this was one way to get her through the day so i'm gonna hopefully can you talk can
027you explain what your anxiety music your phone at school please you've got about a minute um i have misophonia which is a severe sensitivity to sound and it causes mental and a physical reaction but mostly mental it causes my anxiety it causes um anger anything and it's like sounds like gum chewing and so the sounds of the class from the classroom gum chewing teacher shushing she has a physical painful reaction and she can go no full anxiety attack which happened one day in one of my classes i asked the teacher if i could step down to the hall and he said yes and i called my mom because i was about to have an anxiety attack and my concern is if we had to walk if she had her concern is if she did not
028have her phone and in that moment get the teacher's permission to call me to help calm her down she had to go to counseling office go somewhere to get the phone unlocked you can see how upset she is just doing this she would not be able to do that she would be on the floor sobbing she would not have that ability she's used it for other things but that's the main concern so in our time's up our consideration is can you please think about the negative aspect as well as what you think the positive is because we are going to struggle these first three months of school without that access thank you thank you [Applause] moving on 5.01 can i sorry move the staffing to the table please move by mr maloney seconded by mrs
029flores any comments questions or concerns on staffing sing the knowledge in favor that passes nine to zero assistant superintendents molly good evening i would like to congratulate mr james reeves on being recommended for principal of buckman heights james attended niagara university on a full basketball athletic scholarship where he earned a bachelor's degree in social science after niagara university james played professional basketball for 10 years in germany finland venezuela mexico and the u.s minor leagues becoming a member of the rochester basketball hall of fame after retiring from basketball james intended robert wesleyan college where he earned a master's degree in school counseling and then attended grand canyon university where he earned a master's degree in educational leadership and administration during this time james also began volunteering with the greece basketball association or the gba and then
030opened up the reeves stewart basketball academy as a way to give back to the community through these organizations james has been able to develop strong relationships with children and their families that reside in greece and all over monroe county james began his career in education as a school counselor at the university preparatory charter school for young men in rochester new york is a school counselor and was later promoted to director of operations james continued his leadership path in the rochester city school district as an assistant principal at rise community elementary school in edison career and tech technology high school for the past two years james has been an assistant principal at longridge elementary school as a principal buckman heights he is committed to caring for the buckman heights children each day as if they were
031his own while providing them a world-class learning environment that is safe equitable inclusive and accessible for all children james is looking forward to building positive relationships with students parents guardians staff and community partners as a listening leader one of the most important things to james is family his support system consists of his beautiful and supportive wife of 18 years janelle his son marcus marcus james who is a recent 2022 graduate of the greece central school district and james reeves his brothers carlos and kelvin his father milton reeves who modeled hard work and of course his mother deretha reeves who instilled the importance of education at an early age congratulations james i knew i looked at james being a purple legal and all so that's awesome about a decade before you but i'm going to have
032you come up and take a picture with superintendent groutman and assistant superintendent payne and then since you have such a large fan crew here this evening which you must have made an impression because you have so many buckman staff here in the summer i'm gonna have them come up and take a picture with you as well seeing none all those in favor that passes nine to zero moving on to the individual employment agreement can i move that to the table please move by ms flores talking by mr melanie comments questions concerns on that sing none all those in favor that passes nine to zero moving on to special presentation summer program update superintendent groutman yes i'm going to invite suzanne pettifer to come on up as many of you know greece central is incredibly busy
033in the summer we have more summer programming that we're offering this summer than ever before we always give a preview of this in june so that people know sort of what buildings are going to be used and for what programs but what we also thought we could do is just make sure and make it really clear so that people see all the things that we're offering in terms of reading and academic support for our kids this summer so suzanne's going to go through a brief presentation share some pictures and information about who we're serving i just wanted to get your steps in today i was thinking about you it's her thing is her microphone rookie mistake come on i'm used to everything being so automatized for me sorry about that um so like kathy said
034i'm just gonna go through and talk to you a little bit about all the exciting things that we have going on in greece this summer it really has been quite um quite a bit overwhelming i'll say from my perspective i'm usually we have a few summer programs going on but we have had surveys and conversations with parents around like what are the needs and what are some things that we would like to provide for our students that maybe we haven't been able to provide in the past so we're excited tonight to be able to share with you what some of those new offerings are so one of them we have our k2 summer reading program which has been traditionally available to students in the summer time our k-8 i-ready summer program which we started during
035covid continued this year as well and our 3-5 stem program which was run by boces has moved to being located in our district this year we have our enl summer sessions as well as our extended school year that have traditionally gone on we have kids care back which is really exciting for our families who need more child care for their students during the summer we have additional fun camps that are so exciting to see going on along with our 6 8 middle school specific offerings and our high school programs so let me just take you through some of these so that you can hear a little bit about each one this summer we used our arp funds to provide a lot of these programs and we used them so that they could be free to
036our community which we're really excited to be able to offer and we also had families provide um input on to what they wanted for their programs as well as sign their students up so in the past what we've really done is kind of done these on a well we feel like these kids could really benefit from some summer program and we've kind of picked the students and this year we allowed um students and families to kind of self-select and say hey this is something i'd really like to be a part of and as many kids as we could we were able to register into our programs so it's been really exciting for us to have this so as far as our k2 summer reading program we have about 125 students who are part of the
037program um we have a theme this year around superheroes it was very exciting for the kids last year to have a theme around superheroes so we thought we would continue that this year and the kids are really focused on those ideas of being respectful responsible ready to learn and we have really tried to continue that synergy with the reading and the writing that goes on during the school year the kids are getting conferences not only with classroom teachers but also with reading specialists we have a partnership with roberts wesleyan where we have some folks who are getting their degrees in teaching so it's great to have them in working with our students is an extra set of hands in the classroom getting their hours that they need for their student teaching experience um new this
038year what we did is we really monitored the attendance and if we had openings we invited additional families to attend this program is always something that's very popular that people seem to really be drawn to and clamor to get their kids into we never can seem to staff it enough to get as much as we um you know as many needs as we can matt so um it's exciting this year that we were able to invite some of those waitlisted families to um join um in weeks after um the beginning kids are also receiving tutoring at their building so some of our students who we couldn't fit into our summer program are receiving on tutoring at their own buildings which has been a new addition this year for us as well and again new this
039year we also have a jump start program for our students who did not have an opportunity to participate in any sort of pre-k programs due to covet or just family situations we do kindergarten screenings as a district and we invited 33 families that we knew did not have that opportunity to participate and just have their kids come in and just learn what a building's like um see what it's like to eat breakfast and lunch and and kind of get some experience with just playing with other students and just being in the environment so it's been really exciting to have this opportunity for our students as far as our iready virtual learning program this is one where folks can sign up their students anywhere from students in kindergarten through grade eight and um students basically were
040invited this summer newly to come pick up chromebooks so we had one-to-one devices that kids already had in their hands previously when we did this but because we're collecting and we're trying to like update our chromebooks over the summer we collected everything and then we redistributed chromebooks which gave us an opportunity to meet with the parents face to face so that was really nice to be able to have the parents come in meet the teachers that would be connecting with their students virtually and be able to sign up for appointments that worked for their family what happens is students complete online lessons and they get feedback with the tutors that are assigned to them and they can receive virtual conferences if that's something that they desire and the nice part about this it's really flexible
041so if you're going on vacation you can take your chromebook with you your kids can still interact you can still virtual in for your sessions um or if you choose not to that week that's okay too so it's a more flexible program for families our english is a new language summer program is located with our k2 program we have found that to be a successful way to like kind of get busing and everything all transportation and food for students and so we have them all participating at the same building and this year it's at our brookside campus we have 71 students participating and these are grades k through 12 which gives us a great opportunity to have our older students help our younger students learn language they're working on vocabulary they're also partnering with brockport
042and nazareth colleges with teachers you know we are all trying really hard to like help teachers get all those hours that they need because we know that we have teachers that we need in our district so when we build these partnerships and show them what it's like to teach in greece a lot of times our teachers will want to come and participate back in full time with us after they graduate there's buttery buddy reading sessions and then there's also some field trips that they have for our students in our enl program just to give them experiences um out in the community that maybe they haven't had an opportunity to participate in yet our 35 stem camp is a partnership with boces so we have other districts that participate with us this one is located at
043our lakeshore campus this year and students engage in hands-on science activities it's really more around stem and coming and having fun and then the teachers sneak in a little bit of reading and math on the side there as well and it's very exciting to be in this camp it's very hands-on and messy and kids just are smiling all the time they really enjoy being at this camp for our 3-5 students our extended school year students are selected by and through our cse process and you can see how they're funded here i mean the goal of this program is really to help students maintain the skills that they've gained over the school year and prevent regression we have students that are participating with families sometimes they're able to come in and help and collaborate with us
044as well and then the students are also able to receive any support and services they receive during the school year so again to help prevent that regression and fridays are field trip days and so um it's really exciting for them to be able to get out and go bowling and kind fun kind of things like that with their friends kids care is back and we have 128 k5 students at autumn lane this year um they are working on on all kinds of things during the summer and the nice part about it this year is that our fun camps that we're offering to students after our half day summer school programs are embedded in our kids care camp so during the morning times those students don't even have to sign up for the camps that we
045have they're just a part of their program and then in the afternoons any of the other students who maybe aren't participating in kids care have an opportunity to come in and be a part of those programs they've obviously gone on some very fun field trips as well and it's been very exciting to have them just be out in the community and building those um social emotional skills that we know are so important for all of our kids and you can see all the fun pictures that uh we have of kids just having fun and engaging new this year are summer camps so we have several camps that are run a couple weeks and we've we've located them at different places to make them more accessible for our community as well as to be able to
046increase the number of participants that we had so our fun camps are embedded at the top picture there is our band camp that started out with about 80 students and we ended up with 170 so it was really like this overwhelming we just kept having to repost and hire more staff as much as possible and coerce people into coming so we've had this is just a picture of the band students there's also an equal size orchestra and there was also an afternoon camp that really gave them an opportunity to practice a little theater and vocal skills and that was really exciting for the kids we have creative arts camps that are exploring mixed medias and new instruments the stem camps have been coding with the spheros and enjoying several different hands-on experiments we also have
047sports camps and it has just been really really exciting one of the really nice things about the music camp in particular was that the rpo was able to come and we just got a very wonderful email from them just seeing how respectful our students were and how much they appreciated the enthusiasm um and they worked with us a couple different times and just it was nice to hear from somebody on the outside how what a great job our kids were doing with their talents middle schools are offering all kinds of different things so we really have turned the middle school summer school over to the middle school administration and staff who really know their students best and know what their students need so there's a variety of different things happening at our middle schools across
048the districts and it is happening to support academics but it's also supporting other sports and other interests that students have just getting kids in and at arcadia in particular they had a nice activities for kids who are going from fifth grade into sixth grade get them on campus get them comfortable with opening lockers and just like feeling out the facility especially for those kids who we know that transition time could be a challenge so it's really exciting all the things we have going on there so our secondary schools are a little bit different at the high school level it's really more about credit recovery right and graduation and we start to get a little more serious about more traditional thinking of summer schools so we have two different types of summer schools we offer our
049traditional summer school as well as our alternative summer school which is housed at odyssey this year we offer credit for students and this is at the boces regional summer school so we are the host for that and students across the region come to recoup credit that they haven't had for various reasons during the school year it's primarily based on graduation requirements not electives so kids aren't just signing up to take a class but instead they're really trying to recoup some credit it's condensed and students are required to participate in lessons covering content that just fills in their deficiencies we also have an alternative summer school district for students who require choice in content delivery methods so it this is kids who maybe are needing additional time for graduation they might be under credited they might
050have had attendance struggles there's a variety of things that might have happened to like get in their way for their graduation and so this gives them an alternative way to provide some opportunities for them to be able to graduate on time so this slide just really just basically kind of summarizes that the focus is on learning recovery not information students already know the content delivered is tailored to the students learning style trying to create an environment that might be less traditional in nature to help kids feel more comfortable as well as it's a blended learning model where students complete tasks through small group instruction and some of it is also online so we have that option of kind of trying to meet kids where they are to help them recover what they need for credits
051so here's some points of pride there's a lot of statistics on here we have over a thousand courses in session for our boces regional summer school and 677 students enrolled trying to recover those classes 148 kids are there just to retake exams so we have students who register they just need a couple refreshers and then they try to take that exam a second time to pass and this year we have an increase in our number of our classified students participating in our boces regional summer school our alternative summer school numbers are right there as well and the exciting thing is we also held like a world languages recovery program and we had 21 world language students earn their level one language course credit towards their new york state um diploma requirements so we were able
052to get 21 of our students who just were struggling with that maybe you know just a few few credits or or a few assignments and then retaking exams to be able to get that credit so really exciting things happening we're still midway so we still have i mean it's just august it's just the beginning of august so we still have a few more months or weeks to go um for our summer programs but so far it's been really exciting um to have our students participating and it's it's such a great um buzz out there when you're out in the schools thanks suzanne yeah vice president laura um thank you suzanne um i have to thank romeo and his team for creative funding to be able to add so many things that it's fabulous um i
053had the opportunity to do sports camp with my granddaughter what a nice way to try softball she didn't know anything about it so five days learned how to pitch and it was a great opportunity for her and to be with some of her friends especially happy with the english as a new language program because just imagine being in a country where you don't know the language and then having two months without having any practice so i'm very pleased that you have that program any other questions or comments dr trewick let's see all right great so in my uh years on the board i'm excited to hear that how our camps are evolving that we're able to have more offerings and i'm encouraged about that um i'm always seen as the one you always have such
054positive things to say but trust me if there was something that i needed to say i'd say it and there's something i need to say um there i would like us to consider as far as our camp offerings moving forward um something for our incoming singers so i have five boys one my natural child but then i have four boys that i've adopted and they're going to be seniors this upcoming school year all summer i have struggled with them with s.a.t prep college essay writing we've been touring colleges and i would like to see something for those folks now i know we have classes here and there and we have referrals and we've been in touch with counselors but i'd like something i'd like to see something a little more purposeful you know that maybe
055last for a few weeks um for those for you know for those young people that are you know struggling in those areas um because they're not alone you know they just got their s.a.t scores back and you know in college essay writing they were exposed during the school year but never actually wrote an essay i was surprised at that um so that's just something i think maybe you know we could take a look at as we are expanding our offerings it's nice to bring people up to speed those that are struggling but what about those that are doing well and have expectations to want to go on i know for you know my guys that i'm working with including my son they're going to do early admissions the application went live yesterday they have to
056have everything together by november 1st and they have a lot of questions you know so i'd like to see that so that's just one piece of it and then the second is a little more i guess upbeat and that is um i don't know if people are aware of this but a lot of children in our community attend camps through the ymca and the ymca has been struggling financially they were not able to help a lot of families and so in conversations with them what i learned is because we were able to offer the school district offered you know expanded its opportunities some of those kids that would would have lost out because the y didn't have scholarships were able to take advantage of what we offered in our district and to me i think
057that that deserves kudos that is the district meeting a community need we may not be meeting all the needs but that just really filled my heart you know i remember as a kid going to camp if i didn't have camp i don't know what i would have done so to know that you know there were some alternatives there for some of those kids was great and even my daughter some of her friends didn't show up for camp because they were going to district camp for camp and i'm like so you could have free camp instead of me spending my money for you to go but that's okay it's okay because she misses her friends now but just to just to let you know we are you know doing some things that are you know good
058and the camp did feel like fill a gap for our community so kudos thank you thank you okay questions or comments uh mr swiki suzanne just one question on participation and and really more just year-over-year trends right i know we've had examples of learning loss and we've talked about that right what's that what's that look like what are you seeing i know you're halfway through so we don't know how many comedy credits we'll recover at the end but what's just general participation look like you over here so we have more students enrolled than we have in the past and um we have tried to include as many as possible so i don't like it is midway so i can't really tell you like credit's for sure recovered the only program that did completely complete is
059the world languages one which is how i knew the 21 students were able to recover that credit um but the rest of it is still in session so um we don't give up on kids so if they're not showing up you know we're like on the phone every day like hi how are you coming today how about tomorrow how about tomorrow so we really do try to encourage and if a parent does decide like you know what this just isn't working out for me then we do really try to get the next student in if there is a waiting list for the program so um we have really worked hard to be as inclusive as possible to try to include as many students as possible at all the levels k through 12. so um it's
060exciting that's great yeah mr bonnie gorilla uh suzanne of one of the issues that we know as not just greece but all over our country we're having an issue with families that are breaking down i'm wondering if with the concept of the summer camps if we're looking at any opportunities or maybe we use them where older students may have opportunities to invest in younger students yes so we have tried to do that during covid we kind of got away from we had national honor society kids in the past participating but during covid we kind of walked away from that a little bit our annal program is a program that really does work to do that and we were talking this year um again with all these camps and things that we've had going around having
061students next year participate and support things like the band camp so we have in our feedback from the staff that worked it's always great to have an extra set of hands and it's also a way for our older students to get national honor society credit so we did do that in the past we haven't done it since covid but next year we're hoping for like a more normal situation where we would have our students we actually had more than just our national honor society students we had kids who were sports kids we had kids who just wanted um to be doing something during the summer who would volunteer and so we had connections with the high schools and they would come and volunteer and help the younger students with a lot of different things in
062the k2 reading program in particular thank you i was well i was going to see if there was more questions i wanted to just point out because that actually is consistent with hattie's research around impact and and i know it's a great point for our summer camps but it's also a really important point in terms of structures that we create in schools during the regular school year around older kids working with younger kids in tutoring and different ways so i think that's a really important point to consider this year i think it's just interesting because we added so much so the management and work that's gone into that i don't think that was even on our radar at this point but certainly a way to improve for sure thank you for the work with that
063yeah it was a lot for sure any questions or comments mr mongolia so just a question um clarification before i ask the question absolutely maybe um can i raise a question from your letter is this an acceptable form during the summer yeah i wasn't sure how rookie rookie issues so okay um so this ms grentman shared some information regarding the k-2 program and especially what i just heard a moment ago about students not having opportunities to write college essays i noted that there's an opinion writing element to the k-2 summer program can you describe that a little bit sure what we do is we have been using lucy hawkins work for a long time in the district and during the summer we have used the rubrics from lucy calkins to encourage writing with the students
064our teachers last week actually attended a professional development where um they worked with this they worked with the rubric so we have kids like write about all different types of things just giving them opportunities and we really try to connect it to the books that they have interest in um this year's our theme is superheroes so you know we were talking about we try to get to know the kids and just tell us about you like what's your favorite color what are the things you like to do when you're not in school right so it's like an all about me get to know you type thing and then after that what we moved into was like what are things you're feeling really good and secure about what are the things you're really good at um
065and then we talk about heroes and who might be heroes you know in your life or in your community and so we talk we try to have a lot of our connections with the police department or the fire department they come in they read stories with the kids and we talk about them being our community heroes who help us you know if should anything go wrong so um so that the writing is really tied to like that and kids having their opinion and backing up why they think someone's a hero that that was the one example i can give you but um it really the um writing that we start with when they're little is kind of like making a claim and then having evidence to back that up and when you're little it's kind
066of like more your opinion right they're not able to do a lot of the research maybe that we would like them to get into when they're older but we're finding ways to work that into the curriculum during the school year as well great thank you you're welcome any other questions or comments i'm just going to make one comment um i love i'm just going to echo kind of what dr treywick said in regards to we filled such a void you know whether it's with the why whether it's with church camps whether it's with town parks and rec that there's so there were so few opportunities presented the last few years and we've kind of stepped in and filled that void void to help the community which i find truly amazing it's great to see so
067much participation i want to say that you know the number of kids participating like just in the sports camps that vice president mellor you know it's awesome the number of kids that are getting out there and doing things and seeing kids on the fields and doing things it's just awesome to see so i'm very proud of that program and i just want to thank you oh thank you thank you all right moving on to the property tax warrant superintendent groutman they were going to balance all that fun with romeo mr clearly is going to come up and talk to us about the tax warrant so sorry romeo no problem thank you good evening everyone uh so tonight uh we're gonna put the final step on closing up the 2223 uh budget uh with the execution
068of the uh tax warrant that we are asking the board to um approve for this evening but in doing so we wanted to share some information for the board and for everyone else that is listening the tax levy uh as we might recall is one 121 twenty million one hundred and twenty one thousand eight hundred fifty four dollars it's a two point three three percent increase over the levy from the prior year and it does fully comply with the property tax cap calculation it puts us right at the maximum allowable levy that we can go to without asking for a resident override of the 50 plus one vote and new for this year is it reflects zero appropriated fund balance so if you recall in previous years last year we appropriated four point three million
069dollars in fund balance prior years we had appropriated six six to six point three million dollars from the prior year our goal was always to get to zero and we've finally been able to get there uh this year so that is a wonderful thing from from our standpoint tax levy components you'll see bolded there it's 120 120.1 million dollars 102.5 million dollars will be collected by the town of greece assessor's office and approximately 17.6 million will be received by the district from new york state in the form of a star reimbursement okay the total amount between the two again is the 120.1 million dollars and there's a note there that within that 120 million dollars there are re-levies for about 42 000 and just for some context if a person's who has a partial or
070whole exemption on their home then sells it and the new person that buys it is not entitled to the whole or partial exemption then that portion prorated for the year of the sale is added to the levy again to be collected the following year that's what we referred to at the 42 thousand dollars that was re-levies for the current year the uh warrant the rates for 2021 uh during the budget process we had stated that the budget i'm sorry the tax rate was 24.49 at the time we put the budget together we estimated the tax rate per thousand to be 24.83 and what you have on the warrant is an actual tax rate of 24. 84 cents per thousand of assessed values it's a one cent change from what we estimated back in march um
071but it just increases the rate from 1.37 to 1.40 percent on the tax uh and then just for more contact on that a median house for 160 000 that we used during the budget from where we had projected it would be an additional 16 cent addition to it the total levy again is 120.1 million we're requesting the board to go ahead and approve the warrant at 120 million dollars one small nuance with the timing of the board meeting is typically we would have all the star information back to us by this time in the year we have not received that back as of yet monroe county is still waiting for new york state to provide them some information and when we get that back those will be the final numbers that we will provide to
072the tax collector in greece in order to collect for us versus the number that we will get back from new york state however the tax levy itself will not change and what we wanted to do is just provide an example here so that when we come back next meeting you will see this as you see pre-star the first column there this was last year we we said 24.49 24.49 levy to be collected by the receiver was 99 a million point eight because you can see the read levies and the amount over the star was zero at that point in time the big number to look at is we asked at the time we brought it to the board we asked the tax collector to collect 99.8 million dollars we were expecting 17.5 million dollars from
073new york state however when monroe county got all their information from new york state and the final numbers were calculated nothing changed bottom line the levy stays the same but we had to ask the tax receiver to collect an additional 832 thousand dollars from residents because we were going to get 832 thousand dollars less from new york state in the star payment we're expecting that that's going to be the same for this year so although you may approve the tax warrant for tonight we may need to bring it back on august 16th with a similar change between amount to be collected by the tax receiver in the amount from new york state but the levy will stay at 120.1 million dollars questions thank you mr clearly thank you moving on 8.01 can i have sony
074move the resolution in regards to the 2022-2023 tax levy please move by vice president molor seconded by mr swift any comments questions or concerns singing all is in favor that passes 9-0 8.02 non-district transportation request can i tell you move that to the table please move by ms flores second by ms ferrara any comments questions concerns on that singles in favor that passes nine to zero moving on to zero three to text circulary approval can i move that to the table please move by miss florida second by miss farmer any comments questions concerns on that singing all those in favor i press nine to zero eight point zero four can i start removing the change order flora has any comments questions concerns on that sing then i was in favor that passes nine to zero
075moving on to my anticipated bids it's written information online does anybody have any questions all right on to the consenogenic can i show you move the consent agenda please move by ms flores i'm going to buy mr swift any comments questions or concerns on the consent agenda sing none all is in favor that passes nine to zero moving on to board member board goals can i certainly move that to the table please move by voice prison water singing by dr treywick any comments questions concerns on these sing that i was in favor that passes 9-0 all right board member comments who'd like to go first anybody have any comments mr maloney district but uh i'd just like to let you know that uh post 468 american legion boys won the state championship and around tonight
076we saw that nice it's awesome it's good to hear i always like it when our kids do well over the summer any other board member comments mr bonigorio uh yeah i just want to acknowledge the comments from some of several members of the community at the start of our meeting tonight and i want to just emphasize to all of us here that the code of conduct issues are serious issues that are concerning a lot of our a lot of our students parents i know we have we're going to be looking at some specific proposals for someone said tweaking and this may maybe this is the wrong place to put it but i'm just going to say it seems to me there are more more broad issues that that need to be looked at besides the
077tweaking i just want to just emphasize that point and back up what i've been hearing because i've been hearing a lot of it thanks thank you any other board of our comments that's rare i just wanted to take a minute uh we just got noticed that mr reeves is leaving longridge and me and mr reeves go way back only till last year so it's kind of a little funny story i'll make it quick first day of school when i walked in there i was an extremely hot mess i had was broken be unbroken literally and i was gonna pick on anybody the first day of school and i asked who was in charge and unfortunately it was mr reeves and little did i know that that conversation the bio of mr reeves i probably would
078not have picked on him on the first day of school because he would have squashed me um we have since we have had a great relationship and he has i have said this to him before but he is one of those reasons that i have i ran for school board and i'm bummed i'm i'm bummed he's leaving longridge but i'm thrilled that he is at least going to bachmann heights and i'm going to see him there and i'll give him off on the first day of school but i will see him so thank you everyone thank you another aboard my doctor fruit so i just have two comments um i wanted to just echo what mark's mr bonagard i just wanted to echo with with what mark said um in terms of acknowledging uh the
079community members that came out i know it's not easy especially you know our young person that came out my heart just i just wanted to go over and just hug her and you know my daughter suffers from anxiety as well so that means you know touched my heart a lot but i what i wanted to say is you know i think and i'll speak for myself but i feel like it probably goes for the other board members as well you know we're always open to suggestions i know the dialogue has you know that opens a can of worms of how that happens but i'm i'm listening you know one of the things i heard mr shaw say as is a survey of those that witnessed the events or he said a survey of those that
080were involved i'd like to know more about what that survey might look like because we are successful when we send out surveys and get get data for the first parent who spoke up shanti she talked about you know no accountability and it's interesting because in my day job in my day life i sit on a committee where we're looking at um combating violence in the community and we're talking about parent accountability and child accountability so um for uh shanti or miss parnell i'd like to know what solutions do you see like what are some suggestions it's you know for me to say okay more accountability more accountability what does that look like um i don't i don't know if this is no it's just i will talk i'm happy to talk afterwards you know i'm
081sure any of us are um but i just wanted to acknowledge that that that is a big conversation even beyond this table here we're having that in the community it's happening all over um and i think i know that we all want to do right by children um and make sure that they all succeed in whatever ways we can so um and thank you all for speaking you know to come in the residence forum and you know giving um speaking your truth and letting it be heard we do acknowledge that um and then the last thing i wanted to say which is just turning the corner it's not a is about sports uh so we had a big meeting yesterday at athene greece athena to talk about folks for folks who are going to be
082starting in sports and if we have any sports parents in here sports are expensive and so i was one of the things that i'm putting out there is i think we need and maybe we have it already and you could tell me if we do but what about a sports locker so we have a clothing closet you know and if you know children need help with you know clothing or food or whatever we help them but cleats are expensive shin guards are expensive you know um and i was just you know just thinking that as i saw those parents in that auditorium i was just thinking like wow i know someone in here has cleats that are my daughter's size [Laughter] but i just mean in general we decided to do one last year for
083concerts we now have a clothing closet for concerts because all kids have to wear black and white and every time it was time to wear black and white for a concert in my household we ended up at burlington you know because my daughter or my son couldn't fit anything but now we have a place where you can donate things and kids can get stuff so i'm just throwing that out there a sports closet cleats nine and a half uh shin guards so that's that's it thank you any other board member comments all right i just have a couple things um one of the comments that was made earlier about the cell phone policy um i said it last month and i'm gonna say again tonight that worked perfectly from a school system standpoint a problem
084was developed a committee was put together of all the stakeholders in this district and they made a recommendation at the end of the day after doing hours and hours of research meeting talking discussing broad presentation to the superintendent who then in turn brought to the board of education for adoption so that to say it was a quick decision or a quick anything it wasn't a quick decision that's not how it worked in any way shape or form so i want to dispel that um it's been really good to see so many amazing things going on this week at our leadership academy run by cabinet and others there's some just amazing things i've seen out on twitter and facebook and other places out there so i want to commend everyone for working so hard and doing
085so so many incredible things during the summer and as we start looking at it um school starts in a month it's hard to believe we're gonna be back in a month i can't wait it's one of my favorite times of year because my wife goes back to work so it's awesome um so i love that time of year and i just want to say yesterday um i had the privilege in honor of attending the funeral of anthony mazurkowicz who was killed in the line of duty in the city roster as a police officer about two weeks ago ten days ago and the number of greece students that are serving in law enforcement in this county in this community state police officers greece police officers rochester police officers or unequated police officers i probably talked to
08620 or 25 greece graduates just want you to keep that in mind we have a lot of our kids serving in law enforcement in this community and they're out there every night protecting us so we can sleep all night and i just want all of them to be safe and return home to their families so with that i need a motion to addre oh no you don't get to talk i decided you talked enough you used all your talking tickets i'd like to have a motion to adjourn tough two minutes um i just have a couple of things that i want to point out um one to go back to the summer programs presentation that suzanne shared the one part that i don't think we stressed in there you mentioned it but i think it's
087important because it's unique to us is the partnerships so through the work we've done with community schools this is unique to greece this isn't happening in other districts where there's such strong partnerships with universities businesses etc but we are getting students in and that helps with lowering ratios it helps with impacting kids and you find that in so many of the programs so in addition to getting kids working with kids i just want to that's a goal we do have a lot of great things that we've built into those programs that are a ton of hard work we've got people working incredibly hard all over this district and i just want to recognize that and thank those folks they're not getting a traditional summer as well sports programs didn't get mentioned but i know just
088from an email back and forth with some of our ads that we have served over 2 000 students who've participated in our sports camps for free and again that goes back to our surveying parents getting and hearing and listening and hearing that they want things in our community and they want things for free and we've responded by doing that and again that's unique not happening in most other places so i'm incredibly proud of that thank you to our bng we have had over 100 people in this room learning intensely for this week and our b and g department led by kirk keller couldn't be more accommodating in terms of setting up tables helping us with every need helping us with serving food i mean the the list goes on and on but it has really
089impacted their week and in particular at a time when in the summer they're trying to get everything done to open school so i'm sensitive to that and i just want to make sure that we give a shout out and recognize the work of that whole department i would add to the point so i appreciated the comments i appreciate the comments about the code of conduct and i do look forward to next week because i know we have a few slides to help clarify i think the idea of accountability is one that is interesting because parents teachers staff board members everybody has kind of their own definition of accountability so to some people that means a suspension to some people that means holding a kid accountable so that they're taking ownership um there's all different so
090i think it's hard because there's not a common definition of that and we all sort of see things differently through our unique lens we're going to be sharing some additional information next week to share with the board before that goes up for a vote and then my last comment is about leadership academy so we we are um i think do an incredible job of really learning um and growing and being humble around the work we like i said we have about 115 people in this room who are here to learn for this week dr zafitz i will give him a shout out starts the work with a team of about 20 people that start that planning back in january it goes on and it's done by us we don't pay people thousands of dollars to
091come in and do it we have anchored in um and the team of our leaders is actually doing the work and the leading of that of that professional growth um so it's something that we're really really proud of it's something that is very meaningful we've been able to anchor into the strategic plan we've been able to look at the neuroscience of the brain and how that impacts learning so that we can improve learning in the classroom there's just a ton of great work and i'm proud of our team and just appreciate those efforts so with that we're still looking forward we go through to the end of the week um and uh look forward to incorporating that that work into our year so thank you to them have a good night just for clarification that
092was over two minutes mr maloney i'd like to make a motion to adjourn mrs farmer all those in favor that passes 9-0 thank you everyone see you in two weeks you