001all right i'd like to call the meeting to order would you please stand and salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i need a motion to approve tonight's agenda duncan and tracy any discussion all in favor aye okay so we're going to start tonight's meeting actually with public hearings so the first public hearing is on the senior citizen disabled tax exemption and historically the school district has approved what the county approves and the county usually does a two-year approval so every two years they usually make an adjustment to the amount so this is the second year so there's no change from last year and so that is what
002a resolution will show under the action items but it's at this time if there's anyone that would like to address the board and ask any questions about the senior citizen disabled tax exemption this is what this time is for scott is chat on for the uh youtube channel should be mine says chat disconnected but that might have been earlier although i don't have anybody on it i just have two waiting it says i just want to make sure i get all three places between my email tracy chatted yeah i said welcome uh 12 watching now it says go back okay i see that one you have 12 watching yes uh 13 now that's bizarre okay hey kyle come here a second got a password issue i don't know what that's everything there you go thank
003you okay i don't have any um oh my god let me get my email back i brought my mouse for a reason okay i have no emails nothing in youtube chat nor google chat okay um i don't want to make sure i don't have anybody raising their hand okay okay though so i will close the hearing for the senior citizen and disabled tax exemption and now we will start a second hearing and at this time we're going to be looking at two resolutions for two additional um exemptions for veterans just a little reminder of october 2018 is when the board passed the alternative veterans exemption and we had a taxpayer several months ago question his eligibility and at that time we researched that there's two additional exemptions that the board can consider and so they
004are under action items for the board to consider so we were looking at under excuse me the cold war veteran if we were looking at an option that would be very close to what the option is for the alternative veterans exemption which is ten percent which is an option of six thousand and thirty thousand for those who qualify and this is for active duty for the end of world war ii to december 26 1991 and we had looked at an estimated number of veterans who would qualify and there were in both green and albany county 39 and we estimated the tax shift to be approximately 8 600. and then when we looked at the eligible funds exemption these are [Music] reduce the assessed value of property that a veteran purchased with eligible funds this is
005your pension bonus insurance monies up to 7 500. now this is would be our world war ii veterans so we estimate at this point that there would be nine eligible and that tax shift would be approximately just under 23 000 and we know that this would eventually go away there's no new veterans that would qualify for this exemption so those are the two exemptions that are a part of this hearing if anyone has any questions they can ask at this time kyle i just have one question or scott am i going to be able to see in the sidebar if if a person raises their hand because i can't see everybody in my on my screen i just don't want to miss anybody if they if they have a question okay so so eric raised
006his hand okay so it comes up like that then okay were you just testing me okay thank you i just want to make sure it worked i don't want to miss anybody um so i have no emails i check youtube let's keep switching back on me nothing okay then i would close this hearing and then the board would take action later in the agenda okay you go to open forum the eligible funds hearing open you close that yeah i did both of them oh you did both at the same time okay all right i'm sorry so open forum yep okay all right i should have let me check i should have one person on here that had wanted to speak i don't have anybody raising their hand okay i don't there was a young woman
007had wanted to speak but i don't see her on here um no she's always welcome to okay anybody's welcome to go to the second open forum okay there's no activity we'll move on building level teams for the high school mr ward thank you good evening everyone good evening tonight i'm joined by present to you the high school comprehensive education plan in creating this plan the blt used the 2021 district goals and honed in on five specific areas 1.2 increased use of data to improve student learning in ela and math 1.3 increase critical thinking skills and oral and written responses 2.1 increase effective collaboration 2.2 incorporate and support student social emotional learning or scl and 2.3 reduce chronic absenteeism i'd like to thank all the people who helped work on this plan high school blt members
008linda esposito casey gannon tag russell aaron sharkey tim albright brenda schultz and kelly hubecki dan hash who's been extremely helpful in the sel and absenteeism goals emily karam nancy andrus the ela and math departments counselors and pps staff this was a collaborative process to reach the final copy of this high school sf document it started in june of 2020 with a school improvement workshop that involved administrations administrators and blts from all three buildings we analyzed data and went through a root cause analysis process that led us to identify the areas that were in need of improvement this work ultimately led to the dsep plan that was worked on and completed over the summer in september there was a site visit done by the district review team that included todd hilgendorf dan hash brook van fleet
009as well as nancy andrews from kazda and melissa macaluso from questar this team visited classrooms conducted interviews and looked at data and building practices out of this site visit a needs assessment was created that became the basis for the work that needed to be completed for this school comprehensive education plan from november through january the high school blt met with the additional help of special education teacher emily karam to work on the high school sf and the blt's 2021 goals good evening everyone as my lights in the classroom go off here here i am hello thank you for having me on behalf of the uh high school blt um i just wanted to quickly report on the process from the blt perspective we were approached on at our regular october 30th meeting todd hilgendorf had
010joined us and gave us some more information about uh the process that we were getting ready to undertake um and as part of this process we were asked to uh establish and set up a series of work sessions throughout the month of november so at the conclusion of our october 30th uh regular high school blt meeting we had uh planned a four two hour work session in order to start our process with uh putting together a step plan the entire high school blt team consisting of matt ward six high school teachers a parent member and two student representatives we attended these meetings throughout the month of november in addition to our regular blt committee members we were also joined by emily kara who was a high school special education teacher so that she could provide
011some additional insight in this initial development of our plan so the five goal areas that we'll be reviewing tonight are ela math social emotional learning attendance and a survey goal or ela gold the long term goal is the essa academic progress measure goal will go to 191.6 from our current uh mark which is 180.5 kovid has made the gap in our gap in our regents data and last year's regents exams were cancelled and there's a prospect of this year's regents exams being cancelled as well so we needed to focus on a long-term goal for improvement the root causes for the school's current outcomes in ela are that i ready data and three through eight assessments have not been consistently used by the high school ela department to identify gaps in ela skills and content knowledge
012the ela department and school programs will need to collaborate in order to prepare all students who take the 11th grade common core regents for the exam and teachers have to work on more focused approach to help students be successful on multiple choice questions section of the 11th grade common core regions there's also a need for a more consistent and targeted approach for rti labs and ais with a focus on standards setting benchmarks and addressing individualized deficits and improving skills in order to get there the action steps is it all classrooms will be expected to have their lesson objectives and agendas posted in their classrooms the ela department and school program teachers need to meet and review past regents exams and practice scoring them a number of our school programs such as the strong program access
013and self-contained rooms take the grade 11 common core regions exams in these situations students are not taught english by our ela department teachers the data from the students in these programs is reflected in our region's data however it's important for these programs and teachers to be familiar with the regents exam in order to prepare their students for it there also be collaboration on research-based instructional strategies that should be used in classrooms for special education students this will focus on learning styles progress monitoring and meeting the needs of the student iep administrators will conduct walkthroughs for all teachers representatives from teacher groups will do a book study regarding instructional practices for student engagement questioning discussion and literacy tasks the book title is engagement by design by douglas fisher and nancy frey and russell quaglia it focuses
014on understanding engagement and actively pursuing an increase in student learning through building real connections instead of just going through the motions i-ready and three-through eight assessments will be used to identify students prior to the beginning of the school year to schedule them in ela labs and then mr hilgendorf will facilitate work through the plc to research educational software that aligns curriculum and assessments to state standards this data can be used to inform instruction at the high school level our math goal which aligns similarly to the ela goal our goal here is in june 2019 as a academic progress measure was 127.9 the long-term goal is 144.7 like ela our regents data is not available because we haven't we didn't have an exam this past year and we what happens this year still remains to be
015seen the root causes for the school's current outcomes in math iready data and three through eight assessments have not been consistently used by the high school math department to identify weaknesses in math skills and gaps in content knowledge there's not a consistent and targeted approach for rti labs and aif they need to focus on standards work within the department to set benchmarks and then hone in on the student deficits to improve skills and there's a need for more collaboration between the math and sped teachers and planning and differentiating instruction the action steps to get there teachers again will be expected to post their objectives and agenda and visible place in their classroom teachers and admin will collaborate on research-based instructional strategies they should be used in classrooms these instructional strategies will focus on learning styles
016progress monitoring and meeting the needs of that student's iep again administrators will conduct walk throughs also the book stud the book study will happen with the math group as well and it's the same book as ela engagement by design uh and finally mr helgendorff will facilitate work through the plc to research software that aligns curriculum and assessments just like ela the perception survey goal from the survey statement i find what i learned in school to be relevant to real life which was a 2.6 and this school is preparing me well for what i want to do after high school at 2.7 the average student target response will be 3.1 or higher for both of these categories the root causes for this current perception data is that it's possible that course offerings may not appeal to
017all of our learners students also may not have a full understanding of what opportunities exist beyond the school agree and greenville the action steps for the perception survey goal are already underway the blt members will survey teachers on courses they teach and have those courses are relevant to life beyond greenville and we will also be conducting a survey of our students on courses that are relevant and courses that the students would like to see offered and our work has already started as a result of our most recent meeting in january we've already started brainstorming on the questions to finalize or build those surveys later on this week with hopefully being able to administer both of those surveys to the faculty and to the students at the start of march following the the participation in those
018surveys the survey results will be shared with the faculty in order to obtain their feedback and recommendation we're hoping that the student voice and the and the choices that they present will be represented in our future course offering which addresses the first root cause that we have identified departments will review feedback for consideration of new electives and the students parents staff and faculty will complete the 2021 perception survey towards the end of the year thank you brenda our social emotional learning goal our server on the survey statement i feel like i belong at the school the average student target response will be 3.4 or higher we want to raise that from 3.27 the root causes for this is k-12 there is not an aligned consistent sel curriculum well in the past we have had the
019character education plc this did not provide a consistently delivered character education program and the perception surveys indicate there is a need for a supportive and caring school environment at the high school the action steps to get there is to survey teachers and teacher assistants to gauge their understanding of the sel benchmarks and then our pps staff will look to create a student screener and then administer it to students this will assess student sel needs and help determine strategies for pps staff and teachers to use and incorporate into lessons also mr hash and i have been working with trainers from the national coalition building institute ncbi first for short for the last several months this is an international leadership organization that trains people to be leaders in diversity equity and inclusion skills these trainings began in
020january and the responsible faculty and staff and students has been extremely positive the two training sessions have been created have created a solid foundation moving forward and everyone involved is energized and excited about being part of this program and finally we will re-administer the perception survey to all faculty members and analyze the results compared to the winter survey and our last goal category chronic absenteeism we'd like to reduce chronic absenteeism from 29.2 percent to 21.8 percent by june 2021. the root causes would be reasons for students not being chronically absent have not been systematically explored or addressed there's a lack of relationships between staff and some students these students may lack connections to school and then we lack interventions to support students who are chronically absent the action steps this year we have a pilot
021program for attendance mentors we're currently piloting this program at the middle school in high school this intervention is designed to help tackle a few of the above root causes an adult mentor can provide additional information about the barriers a student may face when trying to get to school additionally this pilot program provides a supportive adult who can work to create a relationship with the student and finally this provides us with another intervention tool to use to support our students so from piloting this program this year we'll gather data and plan for 2021-22 we'll also plan to have a celebration for mentors and mentees towards the end of this year thank you everyone can i understand the term chronic absenteeism in the in reference for example are we talking about current of our students currently have
022chronic absenteeism or is it 29 percent a particular student or a group of students are missing 29 of the time i don't understand chronic action chronic absenteeism 29.2 percent yes this is we were given these goals um as we work through the um all of the information that we were provided they looked at a a few years of our data and that's where the 29.2 percent comes from it's uh it's in the years that this data was gathered that was the chronic absenteeism rate and they set a goal based on our numbers our figures they set us an attainable goal which is that shift of a bright round well maybe i'm dense i still don't understand what it means uh i don't want to hear from you i want to hear from somebody that tells
023me does that mean that every day three out of ten students are missing no so duncan what that means 29 chronic absenteeism chronic absenteeism by the state definition is 10 absent or more so the student is 10 of the days over the course of the school year so that data point 29 comes from our state report card it would actually be 1819 school year data because that's the last full year of data that the state has for schools so in the 18-19 school year 29 of our students were chronically absent meaning they missed at least 10 or more days which equates to about 18 days throughout the school year so it's what you thought duncan it's no it is three out of yeah yeah three out of ten missed 10 days or more that's that's
024different than when i i mean if we missed if three out of ten were missing almost if they were missing three out of ten days as a collective which is the other way of looking at it or at least i was worried about it it's obviously this is high but um i want to make sure i fully understand we have basically 3 out of 10 kids who miss 10 days or more in a school year is that correct todd 10 so 18 days okay 10 or more so they miss 18 days wow yeah wow 3 out of 10 miss 18 days or more holy and we're and we're trying to reduce that down only a little more than 2 out of 10 will miss that it seems to me the other way of looking at
025this is why does such a number of kids miss so many days and is there a way to change what we do so that the kids will come we're targeting at at kids rather than the root cause of why they don't come i mean that's one way i'm not saying my ways right way i don't know i just trying to understand what it is thank you i think thank you yeah dan working on it yeah sorry uh duncan you're speaking to one aspect of reasons students might be absent so is their engagement piece definitely is going to be a part of it is there are barriers from home that plays a piece in this yep that's another piece of it is their mental health situation our social emotional goal all of these pieces play into
026a reason a student or students might be absent when you say this is a this is a large number of kids we agree with you three out of ten kids are missing 18 or more days of the school year that is a ton of tips but it takes us intervening on all of those different barriers to reduce this number that dan and i i really understand i i agree exactly i agree with everything you're saying it's more than just one issue but i was just trying to understand it now i think i do much better than i did just looking at the slide thank you yeah dan it's tracy um following up on what duncan was saying are you seeing any differences or trends by grade so for example seniors might account for a large
027percentage i mean i'd be interested in seeing some of the nuances i'm not expecting an answer but that's i guess kind of a question and the other question matt this is for you would be how we'll be assessing this year if regions are not administered will there be final exams something that could approximate it had has a decision been made i mean could you talk to me a little bit about it not being another last year so let me answer first and then and the map feel free to jump in so you're right 12th grade is certainly a peak time we do have that information thankfully partnering with um and current and harvard proving ground they are doing a ton of data work for us and they actually have just provided us with a slide
028set that looks at it in every single way you could imagine we're looking at by gender we're looking at it by grade level we're following cohorts through and you've spoken to in other pieces sometimes we do notice specific cohorts of kids have a lot of absences so we're able to monitor those over the years and again we have to figure out what is the intervention that's going to support that student and that student might have been chronically absent in the elementary school and a new barrier appears as they go through middle school an additional barrier so it's chipping away at all of those all of those different can you send me the link thank you dan to the what to get on youtube yeah so tracy to address your question i think what are we
029doing to if there are no regents exams at the end of this year at this point we haven't talked about having final exams we still haven't heard if regents exams are officially cancelled so we're waiting on the state to come come forward with that word teachers are still teaching to the standards teachers are still meeting with kids there isn't i wouldn't consider it a lost year while things have changed and there are definitely teachers have had to hone in on different areas of their curriculum to focus uh focus on and some of it may have been pared down as opposed to other years we're still teachers are still teaching every single day and students are still expected to to meet the grades in in those classes i think the thing is if let's say a
030decision is that regions are canceled the question will be how do you motivate a bunch of high school students to continue studying to continue learning and so forth so that becomes the challenge obviously yeah and that's the something we've been working on all year and we've brought back a number of students who have struggled academically so that they're here uh every day to keep in mind what new york state did last year you had to pass the class in order to get credit for that regents exam so there is still motivation in uh in that if a student were to not pass the class they don't get credit for that regents and we don't know where we'll be next year but i'm not thinking that new york state is going to do away with regents
031exams so they would still have to repeat that course and take a regents exam next year so there is there is motivation for passing that class which would then uh give them that regents credit at the end if if there isn't a regents exam thank you matt go ahead jay thanks daphne i i have a few questions um but i'll just pick up with um where i think we left off on attendance the pilot program for the pilot program how many adults and how many students are in it right now we are at 13 adults and 17 students this is luckily we're able to build on a practice that we started during emergency learning and that was a number of the amazing educators in greenville said we need to keep in contact with these kids
032and we need to make sure that we're getting a hold of them and we're willing to do one-on-one meet and and reach out with these students in any different way so we have been talking about this mentoring intervention and and doing bling the foundation for it um so kind of we were able to piggyback on what some teachers had done at the end of last year to kind of build this program the difficulty of this year is the same difficulty that we share whenever we talk about any topic is uh people are spread very thin this year with the amount of things that they are trying to do and trying to juggle so we are so grateful to have the number of mentors and number of students involved that we do and we'll continue throughout
033this year to look to build on this program but the benefit to this size is this really allowed us to think about the process involved of identifying students through our data work talking about what a mentor and program actually sounds like what are those weekly meetings um like what happens if a student doesn't show up what happens with all these different variables so we're able to have a small enough control group to work through these problems to make sure that this is the intervention that we can provide our counselors and our students moving forward great and if you go from pilot to just fully implementing the program how many adults would you expect to have in the program and how many students would you expect to have again fully implemented yeah that's you know right
034now we're working on a voluntary basis um so we are willing to take as many educators as we possibly can the student piece is an interesting question as well because um we would like to get that entire 29.2 matched up with it with a mentor the problem is is that sometimes this isn't the appropriate intervention for that student because there's barriers that are preventing that student from accessing the mentor whatever it might be going on in their life or their mental state so we would love to we want to use this intervention for every student we possibly can um you know as many as we'll respond to it and for those students that do not respond to this intervention we're going to reach back in our in our toolbox and and search for something as
035well okay that that makes sense thanks thanks for the answer dan so another question different topic and presentation going back earlier when on the slides discussing ela and math if i remember correctly for both one of the root causes was paraphrasing i think it was i ready results not used consistently um a couple questions one how i don't remember when when the district started using i ready how many years has that been in place that you know it potent that those results potentially could have been used in other words was the first year already was used five years ago seven and three just just for a baseline uh four years i believe is the first year that we started uh trying it out at the elementary school and i believe it was during that time
036two through eight that we were trying it out so roughly four years three years of good implementation four years of being around the product okay and if i i'm just trying to recall the slide i think for if i remember correctly for math under action steps although that was a root cause there's no action step that specifically said increase consistency of usage of that and i don't remember if that was the same for the ala so if that is the root cause you know it is the part of the plan to increase the consistency and the usage of the i ready evaluations and i guess if not then i'll have a follow-up question and matt before you jump in and i know you're gonna um you know i do want to let you know that
037we previously did use this i-ready data it's just how we used it is really what we wanted to zoom in on it and focus on we used it to identify students who were struggling and were able to put them in ais labs up at the high school and that was the primary use of this data this kid is struggling they are going to need some extra support at the high school we know that before the school year starts we'll get them in the lab from day one um so so that's how we previously used the data and talks about what are those skill deficits what are those areas that we see coming up year after year um do we need to focus in on we know this entire cohort might struggle in this area so
038how can we focus on those skills and we can even project throughout the grade levels as well when we're looking at this okay if kids are coming in with this deficit what happens the year before and then the year before that and then the year before back and we can still use this as a pathway um down through the grades to really make sure that if we're seeing that there's these skill deficits we can go all the way back to the rear event and start building building students up that makes sense that that sounds though if i'm hearing correctly that the i ready has been used consistently for one purpose and now you want to use it for other purposes as opposed to using consistently which suggests that you know it whoever is using it
039like not everyone is is using it when they could or should so i just want to understand like what that inconsistent means and and how its usage will change yeah well yes and we always work to improve our consistency uh just in our daily lives so so that's that is also our focus to make sure that we if we have these products if we have these tools we know how to use them and we apply them consistently and to also build the bridge between eighth grade and ninth grade students so that there isn't a a stop at the end of eighth grade and then they pick students go to high school and there is uh no record of what were they doing the previous year there needs to be a more concentrated effort of analyzing
040this data and then pinpointing what those deficits are in the labs and pre-algebra classes so the students can uh those deficits could be attacked for the individual students great and is that actually reflected as part of the action steps or or no yes it is okay okay thanks um one other question i have is for for this high school plan and the middle school plan also i i've been i think looking at them very narrowly in terms of uh you know their causes and the action steps and although they're they're kind of thriving scoping to try and take comprehensive approach um they're still very focused so taking a step back i realized what i haven't thought about was whether this is part of you know could be part of any larger structural changes that are
041happening that i'm that i might have lost sight of so two questions and the first one is just that is this part of some larger structural change that's happening that i might not appreciate from looking at like this presentation or just the middle school plan or elementary school plan i i might have missed the first part of your question jay i'm not sure what what your question was if there's a larger plan in the works with with this well it's it i guess um yes whether they're part of some larger um like changing course or reorganization or something or you know that goes beyond the scope of what's outlined in the action plans that's the general question and i have one specific question and they are they're separate but related so i don't want to
042you know give the impression on being being coy by inserting a general question here the the specific one is you know in the past you know a couple months ago and i think last year there was um some discussion a couple meetings the the district had said they were considering um doing away with the accelerated program middle school and that also ties to you know some of the teaching in um high school and so i've i haven't even been considering that in the context of these plans and you realize that i should just ask to make sure that that's not somehow you know an assumption that's going to happen isn't somehow baked into these plans that's one specific example of the type of kind of broader change that might be baked into the plan and
043so that's a question is that specific example or some other kind of broader change in curriculum or teaching or programming um you know happening to implement this that we should you know kind of take the hundred thousands of view of and understand that's also happening the the answer to that is no i there is not a bigger plan a larger scope to uh to any of the uh to speak to the uh acceleration topic that was never part of the planning of this sf it was identi analyzing data finding where the the needs were looking at the uh the needs assessment addressing the immediate needs based on the uh what what the school comprehensive uh education plan needed and um but no uh no larger plan nothing in the works that i'm aware of and
044uh thank you thank you for that um that's all the questions i have known on the plan thank you i have some questions pat yes dave um miss dave finch um very well done matt as usual very well done miss schultes i want to thank you for your presentation unfortunately i have some questions um to follow up with duncan and tracy a little bit i i know that we had some um historical presentation on absenteeism i think it might be good for admin to remind us that the 29 doesn't come from last year i believe it's been systemic for a while um so i do appreciate that as a target but if we could get that information for the next meeting might be helpful uh matt and uh brenda if i may call you brenda
045um i ready do is that do we use that in the high school plainly speaking at the moment no we've had conversations of using it in algebra uh for next year but at the moment we are not using i ready at the high school level i'm not familiar with it at all matt so i have to apologize um does it does it mesh well with the multiple different curricular areas in the high school and i'm not familiar enough with the program because it's used at the lower levels to speak to that i know that it assesses foundational math skills which many of our our math department feels that there are students that they have they have to re-teach or they have difficulty with foundational math skills so that may be something that we could explore
046using in our labs uh in the future and we've we've reached out to i ready about this question for the past few years is you know what what their thoughts are about their product at the high school level they really don't see it going past especially the instructional tool going past eighth grade you know they kind of talk about you think some schools continue to assess to use the assessment school that it has but um it kind of grades out right before the high school um so they kind of advise that if we do use it to primarily use the assessment so the plan is and correct me if i'm wrong but we're going to use data coming out of eighth grade from iready to make adjustments or placements of students in ninth grade and
047moving forward with the high school improvement plan uh if there is no reagents exams i guess the plan might be as matt mentioned develop some kind of um final exams is that correct dave i didn't hear the last part of your question that uh i think cause you're speaking into a microphone away from you it cut out on me all right where'd i leave off i heard you talking about using the i ready uh exams at the eight the ninth grade level right so my wonder is um if it as as dan mentioned if the program kind of cuts off in eighth grade how are we going to use ireti in the high school if there is no platform for it to be used and then if there is no reasons exams hey are we
048going to do final exams for this year and b when are we going to find out that we're going to go with that plan so right now at the high school because we needed to make room for student desks being spaced out and uh cutting down on the population we didn't being in the building we don't have the the labs that we've had in previous years we don't have uh the pre-algebra labs the pre-algebra class or the the labs and other classes because there also were regents exams last year that would have identified students for ais which then would put them in those labs using i ready from eighth grade and student scores we should be able to get a baseline of where those students are and where their deficiencies are so that they those
049skills can be honed in on by that pre-algebra teacher if we continue using it into uh ninth grade we could continue to see on a regular basis where that student is and if they're progressing in that class okay thank you um another piece of your plan is um these these uh walk-throughs that you're that administration's going to conduct with the teachers and and and in the middle school plan and in the high school plan you talk about um developing a tool i'm sure it's going to be some kind of form um but nowhere in either plan the middle school plan or in the high school plan did i see anywhere where this tool is going to be shared with staff before um you do an initial walk through is that is that something you're gonna
050share with the faculty we don't plan to write anything down when we're doing it going into classrooms we're trying to get out in classrooms more we're we've talked look fors would be do you have your lesson objective and agenda posted um but as far as it being evaluative or a a tool that is uh that we're going to be going in and writing things down that's not going to happen it is uh we're we're looking to get out into classrooms we're looking to to be visible and uh and this is this is part of what will allow us to do that thank an advent team that you to work with nancy andrus who did some of the cycles at work and did the the final reports for us through casa so even last week we
051part of our cabinet time was nancy joining us and talking through some of the best practice and research behind walkthroughs how to keep it simplistic but also look for things that we know we want to look for a specific example and again mr reed in the middle school has kind of been the first one to go through this process all the way through so today his faculty meeting part of that time was was devoted to talking about how do we get teachers to talk about purpose in the classroom and objectives and what does that look like that would be a piece of if we're doing walkthroughs or when we're doing walkthroughs we're looking for that it could be it's posted on the board it could be if it opportunity presents itself i'm visiting and i
052can ask the student hey what are you doing today to get an idea of has purpose been part of the lesson for that day all of that we're going to share it's not going to be a surprise to teachers if like suddenly i'm arriving at their door and they don't know why i'm there it will be shared as we get ready to go into that process so they so they know again the middle school is kind of further along in the other two buildings just by the nature of the way that the scheduling worked out so even today that was part of our faculty meeting for the middle school to start talking about that and uh the faculty had it was it a give and take did they have questions about that no we talked
053about purpose we again we tried to keep it simple okay that we're looking for something overly complex it's taking some of these very specific things that from the site visit from feedback from nancy from best practice that's come from state ed what are some things that we can put in place that idea of purpose was one of those we don't have to make that more complicated than it is right just what's the purpose what are we doing today and why i understand um on as usual jace took a couple of my questions but that's fine um i was wondering about um maybe miss schultz can answer this question how did blt discover this book engagement by design have you read it i have not read it mr finch so the uh we were given as
054a result of the uh final uh walkthrough report that was conducted in september we were provided with a list of books this book was among uh the the list so i personally have not um have not read the book i did volunteer to be the blt representative to participate in the book study okay thank you i didn't mean to surprise you um i i would i would and uh encourage all my colleagues on the board to review that book there's some good points it's certainly broad um my i did have a question but jay had covered it about mentors um and the part was covered was it is a volunteer program i think that mentors are useful um but i do know that the student and teacher ratio needs to be kept small otherwise it's
055you're not mentoring if you're assigned 10 kids you're not and and another thing i think that um if you're only looking for teachers matt i would suggest that maybe you you look at staff in a broader level you might have kids that that might take advice from other people that work in the building um that i could see that working and and then you would have a broader population to um choose from yeah our the mentors are not limited to only teachers we have staff and uh and other faculty members who have taken on taking on the mentor roles excellent um so far when when do they find time to do that well is brian the only one doing it or is that going on in high school yet yeah no no it's at the
056high school middle school and high school these these educators these faculty and staff from around the building find throughout their day find time after school they are they are looking for every single angle texting and emailing and calling and and doing google meets they are looking for any single avenue that they can use to get a hold of some of these students and they are working tirelessly way beyond um some school hours to keep in contact with the amazing job that they're all doing okay thank you everyone follow up question if no one else has something but i'll wait if anyone else wants to go go ahead jay great thanks quick follow for dan i think when you're talking about irene you mentioned you said that it can be used for evaluation and for instruction
057so the question is on the instruction piece can you just talk to the extent to which iread is used for instruction you know how's that worked into you know a teacher's um lesson plan and is there a limit on the extent to which it's used for instruction or how um previously prior to this year it was um mostly used with our ais population um and these were students who outside of their normal 40 minutes of reading or math or ela they would be assigned to an academic lab or they would have some ais time with with an individual and they would go on we're really looking for about 45 minutes a week so we're looking at you know if the student met with that teacher about 20 minutes every other day or 40 minutes every
058other day 20 minutes of that time the student would be working on the iready program while the other half of the students were getting direct support from the teacher especially in those groups of eight nine ten students within an academic lab this allowed a teacher to do some grouping and also have some smaller group time while the other group was working on the the computer program and then they both lost places so it gave us a great tracking tool interest could assign lessons very similar to the lessons that were going on in the classroom teachers were also able to provide some lessons on some foundational skills that students have struggled with this year we've been able to expand our already use a little bit you know they've been able we've had more kids taking part
059in the instructional piece even those who are not in an academic lab there's a lot of discussions about the assessment itself and um teachers at the elementary school in the middle school are setting goals with students and talking to kids about targets and really kind of talking about this program quite a bit and pushing kids to do the best they can because we do have in the back of our minds that um state tests might not happen so we really want to make sure we get the best best data possible to help inform next year and to inform the second half of this year frankly you know what sometimes threatens me that we're only halfway through but um you know to guide the second half a year so it's an instructional tool that teachers can
060use primarily in those ais classes so you can't hear me nodding as you end thanks for the answer can't see either anyone else okay thank you very much both of you all of you three of you four of you [Music] okay i need a motion to approve the minutes from the meeting of january the 11th i have dave and tracy any discussion all in favor all right i need a motion to approve the finance reports for the month ending january 31st tracy second i need eric thank you any discussion all in favor aye i need a motion to accept the record committee on special education recommendations duncan and eric thank you any discussion all in favor agenda duncan i need a second eric thank you any discussion all in favor ray did you vote hi
061thank you i need a motion to approve the resolution for the rental bill library proposition to be placed on the ballot for the annual vote in may eric and tracy thank you questions all in favor aye okay i need a motion to approve the senior citizen and disabled tax exemption rate for 2021. duncan and eric i'm sorry eric and dave look at that i already had discussion all in favor aye aye aye okay i need a motion to approve the resolution of the greenville central school district board of education in relation to the eligible funds veterans exemption hey dave you need a second tracy second all in favor for the greenville central school district board of education in relation to the cold war veterans exemption in accordance with section 458b i need a motion to
062approve the resolution of the board of education in greenville central school district for the purpose of entering into a contract for cooperative education services tracy a second eric thank you any discussion on that all in favor aye aye aye i just have a question on that can we still do a lot of printing can we still do one do we still do a lot of printing or most of it no using not using a copier i'm sorry we still um i would have to ask the the building principles i mean they still do copies for sure but i would say definitely a lot less with the computers those printers also have scanning units in them yep so we use that a lot for that effects machine machine yep yeah yeah they're multi-function machines i don't
063think it's going away quite yet 20 years ago it was supposed to go away right did you get everybody i did thank you i loved the one well you had it when i was working oh my goodness i could send it from my right to the other one that's why i got there i didn't know it was on the copy or thought it was the middle school transportation i need a motion to approve the middle school comprehensive education plan tracy i need a second eric thank you any more discussion on that to approve the high school comprehensive education plan dave and eric reports any discussion i have a question why is your name as the why is it all lowercase what are you talking about on the fire reports okay on every one of them
064where your name is recorded as i've forgotten about the whoever did the work your name is in lower case all the time yeah i don't know he's european daphne everybody else is an upper case yeah he gets bold lettering for christ i think it's just you daphne i don't know i think it's just the way it goes through because i'm the user i'm logged in on the portal so maybe i'll have to look at that every one of them i went back and checked yeah created by yeah is that tammy is that also the annual fire inspection because i i wondered if it was just the cos for all the new buildings no it was all of them the entire district was done what'd they find one of the things that i've been told they've
065already corrected yeah it's just it's all in that attachment it is i looked through but okay i'll look again i think some of it was signage the only two buildings in richkin lead chords the architect nice job rich yeah if that's all you got yep we got a vote correct all in favor all right a motion to approve the revised 2021 school calendar thank you questions um tammy what are faculty are what are they saying about their revisions they are very appreciative of the time that we have given them so far they really used the january meetings and different ways some did a little they had options so that some were professional development they could meet with their teams they could just do individual work they could meet with students so they all used it
066in different ways but they all have expressed appreciation and the hope that we will continue to do it so um february break is next week so we didn't make any changes to the february calendar so the march one already had half days for ellis so we've added that for the middle high school again that's going to be time for them to meet reach out with parents reach out with students to um fill those gaps there and then we will look at the rest of the calendar of what makes sense to help okay thank you okay i need a motion to accept donations from the greenville central school district hey eric and tracy questions all in favor aye need a motion aye appoint membership to the district level team committee okay duncan thank you questions good
067evening everybody so at last month's board game there were some questions that were asked and as we as an admin team talk through them and we're putting together some classes we really thought that the the large umbrella they all kind of fit under was critical thinking so tonight i'm going to share some information from a k-12 perspective in my role and then each of the principles i asked the free building principle to share some examples of what critical thinking looks like at the different levels this is by no means you know an all-encompassing presentation it's just to give you some context of when we talk about critical thinking what are we talking about and what are some of those examples for my piece i want to make a connection between our work around critical thinking
068and how it connects to our current standards that we are working within um so from that k-12 perspective critical thinking is really always a part of any curriculum work that we do so when you hear us talk about curriculum work or curriculum mapping or teachers needing to work on curriculum critical thinking is certainly a piece of that because it's how do we get students to not just learn the content of a course but also interpret and analyze and evaluate and synthesize so another way of thinking about this is if you hear bloom's taxonomy those higher levels of blooms that it's not just remembering information and regurgitating it but it's really being able to again process analyze evaluate synthesize so that is truly part of all curriculum work that we do and thinking about how do
069we continually up our game in the area of critical thinking and what we have students do for critical thinking connecting it to the current set of standards here is my realm of looking at everything that we operate under from the state and all the different sets of standards so when you think about the core standards ela science math social studies in recent years all of those sets of standards have been updated and revised at the national level but then also certainly at the state level within new york how does that connect to critical thinking again using those core standards for those core subject areas that i mentioned something that's different about those current sets of standards is that there's certainly more of a focus on critical thinking but there's also even within each of those
070sets of standards something that it's called practices so i'm going to go through each one just to give you a little bit of an example so what do we mean by practices in ela so english language arts in our current set of standards there are lifelong practices for becoming a reader and a writer and there's a variety of them but just one that connects back to critical thinking the idea of how you use writing to enrich personal language background knowledge and vocabulary through writing and communication so it's not just a simple learn this and do it it's bigger than that another one under the readers make connections to yourself other texts and evaluating texts ideas cultures historical perspectives and it's a larger continuum that's the ela on the map side our current set of standards
071that we operate under for math there's also math practices one example of those construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others so that truly requires a student to not just know the math process but more than that to be able to critique and analyze other mathematical reasoning under science ms schultz oh she left us i think she's not on the screen anymore miss schultz would be able to speak to the current science standards are much more heavily focused on inquiry and there are practices that are referred to as the science and engineering practices which part of that is analyzing and interpreting data constructing explanations and designing solutions and developing and using models all of that falls under one of the practices within the current science standards and last but not least in those core
072areas the social studies practices again there's a whole list of them but the the social science practices look to represent the social science and historical thinking that students should be able to develop throughout their k-12 education one specific example is gathering interpreting and using evidence so again all these are different pieces within these core content areas and within the standards in those areas how critical thinking has had an increased emphasis certainly in recent years not to leave out other areas because there are standards for all different areas i wanted to just pull two other different examples in the art realm so even our art standards have been updated in recent years there is a section of the art standards that focuses on understanding analyzing and evaluating works of art so not just simply doing a
073drawing or creating a painting but truly being able to look from a historical perspective or looking at different genres of art and being able to evaluate them and speak to them analyze them and then the last example in terms of different courses physical education within the physical education standards there is a section on developing strategies so i like this one because it's different than other areas but certainly if you think of athletics or a game of some form to develop strategy that requires critical thinking you have to understand the rules of the game you have to know how the game is played you have to know strengths of other players in order to be able to develop that strategy so a different form of critical thinking last but not least in sets of standards is
074a set of standards that is less talked about but incredibly and equally important and that's the information fluency continuum ifc easiest way to think about that is it's kind of the set of standards for our media centers for our library and i mentioned that one because a key piece of that is how do we use resources and all the things at our disposal in this information society right how do we get information how do we evaluate the information that's out there how do we determine if a source is valid or not that all fits under the set of standards or the continuum as known as the ifc um so again just wanted to kind of give that broad perspective looking at the sets of standards that we work within there is a focus on critical
075thinking and those higher orders of of thinking or bloom's taxonomy um going back to what i started with again every time we talk about curriculum work it's an ongoing process and it's looking at our current practice it's looking at the standards and how our practice aligns to those standards it's looking for areas of strength and weakness and certainly looking for areas of how we continually increase the level of critical thinking that happens in all of our classrooms shifting gears just a little bit when we talked as an admin team the other thing that was that was at the top of our list was an example of how we focus on this came up in the creation of our district improvement plan so it's been referenced a little bit tonight in the presentation of the high
076school specific plan the last summer when we developed the district improvement plan one of the priorities in that plan is the the priority of increasing critical thinking through questioning and discussion so that is part of ongoing work example of what that looks like is principles throughout different points in time this year each of the building principles has focused on that with their faculty so that's an ongoing piece of the work that we're doing around continuous improvement across the whole district the last section i'm going to touch on and i'm going to turn over to pete because you know his elementary principle we always make him go first so that's his fair warning the other piece i just want to touch on that connects back to critical thinking the question came up of how do we
077encourage students and work with students teach students to evaluate sources in the current day that we are in and as current events come up i just want to mention a couple things in that area first with regards to january 6th obviously a historic day there was a lot that happened on that day that connected back to current events and how that what that looks like in the classroom for my role the following day on january 7th my list serves on that day were blowing up with all sessions up freeze they were lighting up they were flooded with lots of different information and resources for teachers that were encountering things coming up in their classroom how to address that in the classroom in an appropriate way so i cultivated pulled some tammy forwarded some to me
078i pulled some from different resources and shared that specifically with our middle school and high school social science teachers with the reality of that's where it's going to come up the most that's where it does connect to their curriculum it does connect to the practices that we mentioned earlier one specific example there that you can actually check out i can send a link out is a site called all sides so it's a website that actually pulls news stories from all different sides of the political spectrum how is that useful well that for a socialized teacher can be used in a way to say hey there are different viewpoints there are different perspectives we are not promoting any one perspective but you need to understand where those perspectives come from what's the historical context for that
079this is a resource provides perspectives from one side from the other side and then right smack in the middle and that can be used as a tool okay we're gonna pull three articles that are about the exact same news event or news story and look to see what's the difference between these three articles even though the facts behind them they're coming from the same event how is it being portrayed differently so that's just one example of a resource that's that exists that's out there that teachers have been able to utilize um and then the the last piece for me and then i really will turn it over to pete is connecting this back to what i mentioned earlier the ifc or that information fluency continuum this is something that starts all the way back in
080fifth grade so vicky hawkins as our technology coach she works on pieces of the ifc she also works on pieces of digital citizenship and part of that curriculum is in fifth grade it's the first time that she starts to work with students to evaluate resources or better understand if you're looking for information and you start finding information how do you determine where it came from is that reliable information can you find multiple sources that back that up and have the same information is it a reliable source or is it a personal opinion blog right what does that mean at the fifth perspective and what's meaningful for a student at that age and then that continues all the way through middle school and into high school i would say the finale of that would be thinking
081about an ib student and senior year completing a research project that they have to do a very large amount of research and evaluating of resources that would be the culmination of that for a student in that situation but that is certainly part of the work that we do with students all again under this umbrella of critical thinking and getting them to evaluate resources understand information where information comes from and what to do with that information so that's just my overview from a k-12 perspective the standards and how we connect back to those the ongoing curriculum work that we do and again this idea of how do we work with students or teach students to evaluate the information that they are finding i am now going to turn over to pete to share some examples of
082what does critical thinking look like a couple examples specific okay thank you mr h so at the elementary level we do have a couple examples of this and i'm really glad that todd highlighted the concept of the practices within the standards because that's really an area where the creative and constructive process falls in and so i wanted to you know since we see these things all the time i want to take a few examples that are happening in real time right now so um within the last two weeks i was in one of the kindergarten classrooms and the lesson was on how the boys and girls are applying the knowledge that they've already learned and the critical thinking skill that the teacher was asking them to apply was we've taught them all about different text
083features about the number of words per page how you match text to pictures and and how to choose a just right book and so what the teacher did was she had the boys and girls go to their own book bags which has a collection of books that they've either selected themselves or that the teacher selected for them and it's the books that they're going to to read until they can master those books and there's a range of books in each of those bags and what the task for the day was the teacher reminded them how do we analyze text and again these are five-year-olds how do we analyze text and the teacher had the kids make a pile from all the books in the bag and then sort them out by which ones were the
084easiest for them to read independently and which ones were the hardest for them to read independently and she actually had them make them into a stack so that they went in that order and as i walked around the room i was really pleased to see when kids had 8 10 12 books how effectively were they able to sort out the differences by analyzing the complexity of the text in each one just by supervise reviewing the superficial features of it and then they had them with the time that we had not only sort them but go in and begin reading them to themselves and they could even go into pair share everything and that's an example of kids really using those critical thinking skills to apply it to their classroom practice i also want to share
085with you an example from one of the older grades and this is a lesson i was not invited in for it was i stumbled into and the kids were just so excited about it because it was about dung beetles and the lesson and anything about dung if you're a third grade is fantastic stuff and so the lesson was on stinky and the teacher was asking an overarching question that they weren't going to answer in one lesson but it all involved in wha about around why questions about why do stinky feed which are an actual thing um how are they populating from the environment so effectively and the answer was you know when the kids started doing the research and charting it out it was because dung beetles think they are done because of the smell
086because the texture and therefore they take them and they bury them as they're going through their life cycle and so the kids were actually comparing seeds that were moved by dung beetles versus ones that were not and analyzing and making inferences about why the seeds that were moved by the dung beetles did so much more effectively than seeds that were just dependent on the wind or natural elements for their effective germination so you know again we got to see those really those critical thinking still tapped into to create a very practical purpose within the classroom but school-wide we're also working on this you know when we talk about our character education assemblies a lot of that work is looking at critical thinking skills and so you know most recently we've been sharing the book and
087some lessons from the book hidden hidden characters which a lot of people know from the movie that was released not too long ago but it's the story of four young black um scientists who were not well known during the time of the space race but they really want work he figures about getting us to the moon and we actually asked the kids to without telling them that we were going to be reading and studying the book kids and figures and characters we actually just asked every kid in the building to draw a scientist and we told them the scientists should have the tools that they used they could be in a specific place and what we didn't tell the kids was to draw a boy or girl scientist and one of the things that we
088were super pleased about was when schools often do this over 90 percent of their kids will draw male figures and our school over 45 of our kids drew female figures which is a huge discrepancy with what is an average response or a typical response but the kids were actually talking about their scientists in ways and applying these skills because we're talking to them about gender differences nothing's relevant we're talking about age differences nothing relevant we're talking about race differences not being relevant and we're seeing evidence of the kids applying that in ways that we're really pleased with so those are three examples from what's happening right now in the building in ls at the middle school and just to kind of you know question discussion at the middle school and high school this year has
089been has been challenging in the hybrid model one of the things in terms of students who are home remote because we have live stream you know really going from the classroom home and you know we are finding you know kids don't want to have a lot of discussion when they're in the meet um you know when they're in person there's definitely it's easier to have not sure why we can try i know teachers have been trying to talk with kids about it so they're trying to find other creative ways through technology to just see it you know if they're contributing but that has been a challenge this year but we still need to be working on these skills too and teachers know that we've had this spoken or fed discussions and faculty meetings this year
090and it is something that we're always trying to to push and promote you know at the end you know you might not see it every single day in a classroom but if you've started a unit at the end there should be a point where you're building up to some higher critical thinking skills in your lessons that that complete a unit um a couple just but just a quick overview too just in general i mean if you think about what a lot of our the standards say a lot of them are really just pushing students when you when you give an answer well what's your evidence what's your argument for it and that's just a general theme that you're seeing in a lot of the classes with the standards is yeah if you have an answer
091well why did you get it you know explain um and you know that's a tough thing to do but those are always being pushed mean if you think about it with even just with math okay well show your evidence of work right you might end up you know getting the wrong answer in the end but did you show the steps of how you came to an answer and then we'll go back and maybe figure out the maybe minor mistake you made or why didn't get the exact correct answer but are you able to show the steps of what it took you to create that answer that math problem just a couple quick examples in one of my teachers class this year is an ela class in seventh grade students were learning about irony ver verbal
092situational and dramatic irony and you know it wasn't just memorizing the definitions for them and can you tell me the what the definition is for that it was they learned the definitions then they had to kind of you know make sure they were understanding it through discussion but in the very end they were applying the knowledge they gained this was over a day or so with each other in either breakout groups in their meets the students were discussing um with the teacher kind of just going on facilitating and listening to the conversation students had about these three different types of irony and they had a series of different types of pictures and they had to discuss type irony they saw and why and you had kids who are saying well i don't see irony in
093this picture at all and then another student's saying well i do and here's why um so students again providing evidence for why they felt there were certain types of irony and then the teacher was able to take students responses and then push them a little bit even deeper and say well what if the picture looked like this and you know again push them to another deeper level um you know socialize example at the eighth grade level is just you know students again gaining knowledge about immigration but in the end after they've gained the knowledge of what immigrants went through in the late 1800s early 1900s creating you know unemployed imaginary immigrant and you know to try to gain more understanding yourself by um you know connecting the struggles and challenges immigrants face you know so
094again students really taken the the knowledge they've gained and getting a deeper understanding of it and then i know there's been there was some discussion about just overall you know how are students doing the research how do they know what is good evidence to look at how do you find things on the website and as mr h had said you know they're starting a lot of that to fifth grade i know in sixth grade in ela classrooms they still do some different assignments that really look at you know because in the ela classes that they're building on the research skills each year again when you're you know coming up from the argument and things like that you want to have reliable evidence but they do various skill building assignments like website credibility investigation so there
095is assignments to help support kids to kind of sort through especially on um the internet today or on social media what are credible resources so you know again this is always ongoing um but you know i think our you know teachers know where we need to get with students each day and how to keep building those skills um from year to year thank you mr reeves uh i'm gonna echo something mr reeve said and that's uh that the hybrid environment has certainly presented itself in a different way than teachers are familiar with and students by and large while they're home don't respond at the same level as they did when they were in person going back to january 6 all of our social studies teachers gave an opportunity for students to to talk or share
096their views our social studies teachers focus on the facts on what officially was supposed to happen rather than what was unofficial um there's there's processes and uh and in our government and uh procedures and they didn't get into opinions and uh and and wanted to stick to the facts of uh of what happens in government and what was supposed to be happening on that day we have uh ela where students are doing argument essays at the beginning of the year they're introduced to a controversial issue they read several articles expressing different opinions they synthesize the information they write a claim of their own and then they support the claim with evidence and also write a counter claim we have english classes who are who do studies with on different books that address social injustices one
097of them is uh the nickel boys which uh it's a true story i'm a reformed school in florida and uh focuses on jim crow laws freedom riders ruby bridges martin luther king speech and zion hill and and brown versus board of education um i'll say that in one of the classes i i went in to observe a teacher had set up a jam board and she had students both at home and in the classroom and the jam board was set up with pictures that students were were supposed to comment on and it was the first time i had observed a lesson with a jam board and it was amazing how the conversation unfolded digitally and you could see students asking questions about another student's comment and then somebody answering that question and just it was
098it was a whole new experience of of observing a lesson and having to take notes on a digital question and discussion uh where our danielson model doesn't really address that when nobody actually talks they're just typing and it was uh it was unique but um certainly challenged students thinking and uh and forced them to have the discussion in class um teacher one of our teachers also does uh does something on the serial podcast uh season one where uh this uh dean saeed is accused of murdering his high school girlfriend and people believe he's falsely convicted uh and the podcast investigates the case students are need to learn about uh how words affect the things that uh how things play out and how to be objective and subjective with information um and finally i'll just say
099you know some of the book titles that i know uh arielle's a department's uh using or like the hate you give bear town if you haven't read these books i strongly recommend them they are uh they're powerful they they teach about social injustice they give a a different point of view um and it's it's really refreshing to know that uh we have teachers that are teaching books that will appeal to students as well not just focusing nothing against the classics but they can be a little dry and these books that our ela department are using is it really do uh address current events and current things going on and challenge their thinking well this is great i mean first thank many thanks to each of you i you know it's clear that everyone really took
100some time to consider um the the question and put together this discussion i really appreciate it i know everyone is busy to begin with so i appreciate new year your um effort to answer my question i also appreciate the patience of the other board members for you know listening the discussion also um thank you you know as i said before i think that critical thinking is is absolutely essential for college and career readiness and you know the other aspect it should be touched on which is how you develop that skill to also be able to navigate the current information ecosystem and critically evaluate sources so this has been a really terrific overview i i appreciate it i mean it's clear that there's a lot done um i'm glad here and because an aside it's it's
101also fun to hear some of the more specific examples about you know how it's done whether it's the podca cast or the dung beetles which by by the way dung beetles don't just lose their appeal after um high school they can say amusing for years beyond that anyway i'll i'm done thank you very much okay all right okay i'm going to start the discussion with high-risk sports with the with the larger overview and then uh denise will then share more of the details so very quick turnaround it was on january 22nd which was a friday is when the state and the governor announced that schools could start high-risk sports february 1st which was basically a week but the caveat was if their department of health local department of health had to approve it so everyone's
102department of health have handled it differently some have worked together which ours have worked together with other counties they took this very seriously they wanted to make sure that the decisions that they were putting forth for schools was for the safety and health of students so it took them over a week before they would even begin to start saying what metrics they felt school districts would have to meet in order to have high-risk sports so the biggest one was the seven-day rolling average had to be at four percent or lower for high-risk sports to begin board of education has to approve high-risk sports the medical director which i'm happy to say today has given approval so that was one of the things that the county wanted to see parents must sign an informed consent they
103need medical clearance so this one is really still i think there's room to push back because the state has waived the physicals for this year because of coveton students getting into their doctors but we do have some students that our medical director is coming in tomorrow afternoon and is happy to see some students that were not able to see their doctor so those are the big things so what was really happening is we were concerned and this is the details that denise will share more is it's a short season if for basketball they have to have six practices our concern was if we were waiting to get below the four percent we have lost all of these days then we've lost the season so when we talked with the county about how do we start
104practices is when the discussion happened about testing students two times a week until you get to that four percent so that is what we've been working with the county with we actually picked up this is all pending your approval but we do have kits on site if the board approves it so while we're doing this as a discussion there is a resolution for the board to consider so we are prepared to test right now the seven to d yesterday's number was 3.3 in the county but the seven day rolling average is five so they it's dropping quickly unless something changes because of the super bowl we hope not they really expect that we could potentially by the end of next week meet the metric of being under four percent so let me turn it over
105to denise so she can talk about specific sports and everything that she has been working on so one of the caveats in there or one of the requirements was that the district would develop a sport specific plan which we've been working together on since since we got that word since i think february 3rd so that has been submitted to the um to the medical director and she approved that today um tammy touched upon the testing we're trying to figure out all the logistics of testing twice a week um this week we would only have to do once because we have kind of a shorter shorter week or window because we're going to be starting on wednesday um and you know one of those pieces is to get that parental consent so without parental consent that
106kids are for testing then kids cannot participate in the season until at least we get between below that four percent um face masks were an issue in the fall so section two has taken a more restrictive a slightly more restrictive approach to the face mask requirement and they are saying that if you're unable or if an athlete is unable to tolerate a face mask they must have medical documentation in their home district that basically states that so parents would need to get a doctor's note for for them not to wear a face mask if they can't tolerate it um another big issue for the patroon conference and a lot of districts are spectators whether or not to allow spectators in um for the contest i know the protruding conference was very set was saying no
107to this initially and then reevaluating as the metrics kind of go down and seeing where we we fall with that or potentially just allowing two parents for a senior night type of a game we do have the capability here for live streaming through the nfhs system that they installed this this past fall and we also have the capability of recording games and then sending those links out for parents to see i know it's not the same but at least it's something in our kids can play i believe that most people would be receptive to just having our kids getting back out there and being active and playing season's length for us would be so they said february 1st we could start um our season length would or season um the length of our season would
108be february 10 through march 13th is when the winter season start stops um and then the other thing is you know prioritizing levels because it is a short season um what is the priority um again most of the ads believe that varsity is the priority because those kids are not going to be participating again potentially your seniors are going to be leaving and getting them the competitions and games that we can there's a lot of talk about modified being practice and skill work and you know potentially doing like a play date or some scrimmages with local schools so i guess at this time if you guys have more specific questions can you talk about which sports we're talking about that are high risk high risk is basketball volleyball wrestling cheerleading and i think those are
109my four that would include girls volleyball which is in the fall season two which is going to start in march denise it's right i have a quick question are they expecting athletes to wear a mask while they're on the court yes the whole time during practice and when they're competing so we talked as a coaching staff a little bit about you know kind of having more kids on the team so maybe typically we have around 11 kids on a basketball team maybe having around 14 because we anticipate having to sub more often to give those kids mass breaks this is eric uh does that mean they're going to be wrestling with a mask yep yes um and i know mr cohen will say to me denise uh they're not gonna stay on um so you
110know it's gonna be like any other situation with like their head gear if it falls off the next stoppage they're gonna have to put it back on and then they start over thank you you're welcome denise it's jay two questions one with the testing how long does it take to get results 15 minutes so from the time that you take the test the rapid test um it's going to take 15 minutes okay i said two i think i actually have one right now sorry okay uh can i ask a question as a follow-up to that is the rapid test an antigen test yes denise dave i have a series of questions um okay where does albany county fall into this for us so the patreon conference i don't know if you guys know the patroon
111conference actually falls or has four counties so albany county columbia county greene county and rensselaer county rensselaer county already has been given the okay to start um albany county was just given the okay to start because they just fall below the metrics and columbia county right now is sitting at 4.3 percent so they're close they're closer than us um but i know in talking with the department of health they feel that we're probably going to meet that metric either mid week next week or the by the end of the week over over break my question was albany county department of health because i'm i'm wondering about this we have students i don't know what percentages but students coming out of albany county it's where the school district is right i figured that um yeah but
112we fall into green county right but um as albany county as far as the patroon goes then they their their department of health has given the okay yes that was a quick change because a few days ago she was adamant against the columbia county has given the okay no they haven't met the metric the four percent seven day rolling average yet okay that they're closed all of this as you know is going to like um be challenging as far as scheduling any types of competitions with people meeting that metric at different times so scheduling is definitely going to be a challenge tammy as far as the the information from the medical medical expert was that verbal consent or did she put it in writing she put it in writing today by an email okay so
113i did ask her if because first she just said i had no problems then i said does that mean you have no problems with the high-risk sports moving forward with the metrics and then she wrote it out the exact same way because i i actually thought in all the documentation i had read and i couldn't find it again i thought that the board was um required to communicate with the medical expert on this but i couldn't that might have been something that my mind made up um it was on the executive summary they said each school superintendent must right i saw that part and then the approval of the school district medical my other question i don't know if if jeff wants to chime in [Music] i don't really understand why we weren't as a
114board asked to vote in this fall to approve sports but why we're asked all boards are being asked to to approve this um plan at this time this was one of the things that the council put out there there was a stipulation right is that putting responsibility on the board in your your opinion i'll let jay ask or jeff if you have legal here go for it right that's right how are you doing hello hey jeff hey very good question one i've had my whole life has been high-risk sports in the last week the answer for you is some counties are actually requiring albany county but even though even if green county is not requiring action i believe because we're talking higher risk sports and quite frankly some districts are parsing out each of the
115higher risk sports would be approved or not wrestling for example is a common one that may be parsed down so you are correct you weren't asked i don't think you were asked to approve in the fall you're never asked in years past to approve sports typically a board would get involved when there's a decision to add a new sport or take away a sport but this is truly the genesis of my question comes from in the county's plan they are asking for safe harmless the entire county the executive anybody that steps foot on the county property i think it sounds a lot like our governor quite frankly that likes to give permission to go ahead and do things as long as you guys approve them um that can that that part concerns me i don't
116know if you had it and again some districts are looking to have both pieces consent acknowledgement is hey i want my child to play basketball i understand by doing so my albany county is requiring that again some are not some are i've offered that to you i also know i reviewed i'm not sure which one you have up tammy but there's a more limited consent form that i reviewed for tammy that basically just says you need to understand you're doing agree to all of this if you participate thank you jeff um today's couple questions for you more specific um how are they going to conduct tryouts or how are we going to select the team i'm not sure what you're asking but they're going to do that the same way that they have in the
117past okay all right um in the early parts of of the school plan i think um that that you provide under a draft and in the general part of it you talk about pods and then um there's a a statement in um that's italic that you said that the pods are going to be discussed in the more sport specific portion of the plan it's not anywhere in any of the sports so i wonder how pods were going to function you want to give me an example in basketball and it's fine if you say that it wouldn't really work pods wouldn't really work so so basically i mean examples of that would be so like say all your bigs in basketball are in one pod so when they're doing individual skills um they're always going to
118be working together like later on so some part of your practice would be done in these pods and then the more like um game-like situations would be held later on in the practice or at some other point in the practice same thing with like wrestling um they have natural pods by weight class because they're not allowed to wrestle somebody that's you know big um in a weight class or two above them so they would be put into pods during their individual work they would be working within that pod um so hopefully they're only having limited contact with um certain kids during that during that time does that answer your question thank you um on testing who on campus is going to conduct player and coach testing so we have so that's going to be we
119have a team that's going to work together for that purpose and basically the nurses are the ones that are conducting the test itself and then that test is going to be evaluated by i guess anybody else like myself or tammy or aaron or anybody else would be there to evaluate that and get the results and then that would be put into the spreadsheet and then sent off to questar and then any adult i'm sorry duncan i'm taking too much time um any adult that's involved coaches assistant coaches they're they're going to be tested twice a week too yes and so if you have a basketball practice that that starts at seven o'clock or something like that there's going to be someone here to conduct that test we just kind of took a look at that
120today and trying to figure out the logistics of that you know it that's a little bit challenging too as you have a hybrid uh schedule with some kids in and some kids out so we got half of our population in on any given day um so we're looking at a 7 15 to 8 o'clock time frame in the morning for those kids that are remote to come in and conduct that testing which would be done in our auditorium and that way it gives them time to get back home for their first period class as well and our staff we actually didn't talk about that too much but deb is here on campus from three to four um that mackie every day so she said that she's willing to use that time frame if we need
121it as well thank you if we get to if we get to games does the league or the section have officials that are willing to participate do you know so um i know i've been receiving communication from like officials groups there are a lot of officials that are opting out of officiating for this season which is going to make it a little tricky as well and again that's i believe why our priority is on that varsity level making sure that we get those games covered first and then we can work our way down from there and see what we can do um yeah so that's that's going to be a problem or a potential problem with getting games covered and especially right now too dave we don't have a schedule because we can't really put
122a schedule together until all of our counties have given the go so when we decide if we're proving something when we know that we're approving varsity sports or or varsity and jv or or all of it or are we going to just give a blanket approval and then um you'll decide we're going to ask tonight i think that's what sorry tammy but i think that's what we're looking for your guidance on tonight to see where you guys sit with that i know as a patron conference we were talking about varsity being the priority and then second priority was varsity and jv and then the third priority was all three levels um you know i think it's important that we give kids an opportunity to get back in even if it's at a modified level for
123them to be in the gyms and and working on their skills even if they don't play in a competition i still think it's important for them to be able to participate and get some level of exercise and fitness back it's been a long haul that we've been kind of sitting since uh since the the fall go ahead duncan i was kind of comfortable um dave kind of asked the same question i did i thought maybe we could test outside of the arena so to speak in other words any of the athletes could come in at a regular the time that we're here if we have to test twice a week we could do strong on tuesday and and um whatever but separate and distinct in other words show up at the nurse's office take the
124test go back to class okay and that that would cover it but if you're go if you've already planned that out that's okay by me however you do it if you think it works i'm concerned however that if if you're saying that the reason we want to do this is to just give the kids an ability to to get off their duff and and to work out i'm wondering why we would be going at that if our physical education in the normal sense is in accomplishing that i think that's a great question duncan and one that i can't really answer and why you know why we're given approval to do this and nothing has changed in phys ed i'm all for sports i'm a big fan of sports but i'm really concerned that number one
125at best i can see we would have 30 days or no you said the 13th of march correct was the last day we would have something like 20 to 20 to 23 days in which we could compete at best that means to me five or six games i don't know and then i didn't even think about the referees good question dave that that really concerns me um i i'm kind of i'll tell you i'm i'm really on the fence about approving this at all well and i will say that i mean even during our fall season we pretty much had the same type of a season it was a six week season um and we ended up playing um seven seven games so we limited it to two a week um and um we were
126successful in running it so i was pretty happy with that um i think the the issue with the winter is is uh pretty much being indoors and people have different concerns being indoors i don't think it's unmanageable though tracy um i had i guess two questions one is do we have what i'm calling a circuit breaker and what i mean by that is where is there a point or a number of cases which would result in the season terminating so for example you have one case okay everyone goes into quarantine you've got the school potentially who could be shut down then you've got another case that happens in the way that i'm thinking about it is if we were to have a circuit breaker whereby three cases within a two week time frame and i
127don't know the exact number but something that says when this happens then we need to stop it it's not working i think that that somehow needs to be in the plan and when i read through the plan i didn't see what i'm calling a circuit breaker so that would be my first question and then my second is related to the resolution and point number two we're just asking the parents to provide informed consent these are all indoor sports and i think a waiver to jeff's point might make sense so so those were my kind of two issues with it we can definitely add a waiver if that is what the board would like to we could add that to the consent because nothing is going out to parents yet i would say the county has
128basically said that we would stop if the school had to close because of the number of cases not if the school had to close because we don't have enough staff so i would hate to put a metric down because we don't know what it is what if one student in the middle school has it but it never spread because all of our cases have been outside cases that have never spread on site so i think we would look at this differently if we had if we knew covet spread on site because of a sport i think then that would obviously we would look at that differently and so would the county because everything is going to go to the county and they have the right to say it has to stop and you quarantine for
12910 days that's a good chunk of any team season i think that's really my concern that okay we tried and it works fabulous but you know where where is that threshold what is our tolerance for pain and and i don't have an answer for that and i would definitely like to make a result make a motion to add the waiver and i i think that we have to so go ahead jay thanks daphne uh i just have comments now somewhere um my opinion is that these are sports i mean clearly they were originally deemed to be high risk and you know we were told before that they you know we shouldn't have them because of the higher risk the green county school sports plan that we're provided with the agenda says quote the state's decision
130to permit high-risk sports and recreation activities does not mean that their risk has changed so the risk hasn't changed it's just the the state and counties perhaps risk tolerance has changed or at least to say you know we'll kick it to the boards to make their own decision under certain circumstances and for me this goes beyond my risk tolerance here i think that um they're higher they were deemed to be high risk for a reason um we know that there is at least one variant of the virus that is more easily transmissible and we know that it's in the region and there are studies showing that you know that that variant can you know quickly outcompete the others so it's going to you know we have we know it's out there and you know the
131the higher risk um sports you know it just presents um in my opinion too much opportunity for um that on campus transmissions happens that we haven't had yet so as much as i sincerely would love to see the kids you know getting back to something approximating normal and getting out youtube sports as well but i do not support um going forward with the high-risk sports at this time i think that we're better off just trying to you know hunker down there's an end in sight there's a good vaccines out there and hopefully you know soon the um infection rates will continue to drop and and we'll be in a better position to move forward with high-risk sports but you know as as things stand right now i don't think that there are mitigation measures that
132we could put in that would really reduce the risk enough for me to be comfortable approving it and for those reasons i i will not support the resolution that was attached to the agenda everyone's ready could we put the motion on the thing so that we have the vote so we know which way it would unless someone has more to approve questions or no the resolution yeah i would have a motion to approve it and then okay so everyone can vote just so we know if it goes forward are we going to accentuate motion so my motion would be to add in the waiver it's that parents sign the consent and agree to a waiver second that let me just see what we're looking at first and what would the waiver say yeah i need
133to have clearer lawyer this is a dangerous sport i think that's already in there tracy if i can just say that that's already in the parent consent form that we've drawn up that indicates like what the risks are that you know there's a number of things in there i know jeff has looked through that um i think it covers all of those pieces but if jeff disagrees then this would be a specific waiver is that covered in number two in number two for the resolution it just says um consent it does not say the waiver so i would make a motion to add in waiver for that all right so the i have a one waiver that we're talking about so what would the waiver say right i've made another and we haven't seen that
134that's the one we want to use and so the resolution does not reflect i mean if you could look at the resolution jeff have it right here point number two i understand what you're saying right you know i like my eyes dotted and my teeth crossed and so [Laughter] you would if your intent is truly to have the consent slash that would work for me just so that we're all clear that we are asking parents to sign off on both of those elements and the waiver is what waiving the school district from any liability liability yes for contracting covid and yes absolutely well that's that's what i ask okay correct i just think it's cleaner so do we have a motion well for the reason i'd like to at least read it i don't have
135it um it's on board docs the uh no it's the green company it's the green not give us the one with the waiver another one talking about the waiver the resolution just states as you said an item two informed consent so we can go inform consent slash waiver okay it's asking for a read of the waiver that's correct okay okay let's pause so i can pull up an email from jeff that had a sample waiver correct thank you this one was this one says a different school district's name april park is that okay to project that or should i just read it right it's pretty long so let me send it to um todd and he will project it so the board can see it yes that was done over there there's not been a
136second we have a motion i thought ray's second did ray seconded i thought yes okay so who had who made the first i know it's true who made the initial motion for the initial resolution tracy who seconded that ray did no no no no she was the waiver i don't think there was ever a motion to adopt the resolution i agree it was a motion to amend the resolution i heard there was a motion to adopt it with an amendment she was doing it in one tone so i'll back up then let me just i'll make a motion to amend the resolution no vote yet just to amend it i think parliamentary we're supposed to make a motion and get a second to get into the discussion right and then amend it correctly we're kind
137of stuck at the very beginning okay we need an initial resolution initial motion for the initial resolution first and second duncan was correct so is there anybody that would like to i will make a motion that we move this resolution okay i need a second to that second okay ray great we're into discussion now correct can you make your amendment okay so now i would like to make a motion to amend the resolution to approve high-risk sports to include a consent slash waiver okay i will second that okay let me just give me one minute please and so we have tracy and eric okay and discussion i have a point of order question uh this whole entire item was in discussion information and i i don't believe it's an actual item you wanted to vote
138on it it can become one if you get a motion for it right is that correct not that i'm aware of no we've done it before now needs to be voted okay so in the discussion right now my understanding is that you're going to bring us up a document for us to read yes i've sent it to todd if he can project it switch out a name to another name so we can read it on the screen um okay i just since it was the other school you gonna scroll it at some point thank you wait not too far i have a this is jay if i may ask a question of jess jeff um looking at the assumption of risk it says you're jumping ahead in the sentence debilitating injury comma or death to
139my child and myself if there was injury or death to someone other than my child and myself for example my significant other different sibling grandparent this does not cover that correct let me answer that this week for youtube to hear same cautionary note that i provided to tammy and every other superintendent anytime a district asks a parent and student to sign a legal release there is always going to be a bit of an uphill battle to enforce it um that's be knowing and all those other things that jay would be familiar with also it probably is not going to be very protective if there's gross negligence or intentional misconduct so for example let's say the plan is that all the student athletes will have mask on during all practices and a coach doesn't enforce that
140at all nobody's wearing masks at all ever you might call fall under gross negligence so it's not an absolute blanket of immunity but as i say is better than having nothing but his question was not so much the kid what happened if his parent or a sibling contracts the disease from that kid does that are we covered in other words the kid no no no i i i'm thinking no thank you duncan this last sentence all right i'm not able to connect the language is there twice in the paragraph and it says death to my child myself so using my family as an example if i sign this for my son to play and my wife gets sick and is seriously injured or dies because of covet i can sue the district for her injuries
141because i never waved that risk i never i never waved that right all family members including pets no i understand the question how do i scroll down on this toddler he has to ah there we go it's a waiver from the student and his or her parents whether or not a third party could sue would be a whole different question thank you something can do for you jay so you can't necessarily say family members you can't actually enforce a waiver of liability against somebody who's not a signatory to the to the waiver um that's a pretty also a step or two or three removed from the situation so i would have bought my green county folder had i known this was smooth at the risk of being labeled a flaming left wing or liberal i
142cannot i'm with jay i can't support this the quote high risk end quote adjectives put on on the sports program you know i worked hard with others to get wrestling in here i cannot see wrestling uh being conducted in this environment basketball i think of kids rebounding and and just standing next to each other at the fall line when the the referees are are having a little conference or whatever max or no masks i can't support especially those two volleyball little different but getting close uh i think i'm with jay i'm gonna i'm not gonna be able to support the resolution okay before we go there can we continue the modification of the resolution yes now this copy is is a sample correct right this is what we would use this is the one that
143jeff has prepared for other districts got okay with everybody i think he's asking to move the question of adding the slash waiver to the resolution okay we've done that we we had her first and second i know and this is the discussion correct it's not mike no one else has to we need to vote all right so are we time for a vote this is the question so now you go to a vote on the motion to amend the resolution right correct okay all in favor oh okay i'm in favor all right you have to give me a minute because there's so you are in favor of offending your resolution with the waiver in it okay i'm in favor of the slash paper right okay um and jay right if hold on daphne i'm sorry
144i just i want to make sure i'm hearing what i'm voting on correctly all we're voting on is whether to modify the resolution to add the hold harmless like the wave of liability right correct and there will be a second vote on the actual resolution to allow right yes okay then to modify the resolution i will i'll vote yes um because you know recognize that i said what my opinion is i might not have you know be with the majority when you vote on the actual resolution if the resolution itself is passed i would rather see it have the liability waiver in there so i will support that modification and so um as a recapture can we vote i didn't get everybody so vote again everybody here voted for it okay and ray yep yes
145okay thank you all right 7-0 okay thank you for that clarification jay you're welcome so are we back to discussing the resolution yes all right in item three right now as as far as the resolution we hereby resolve one was the items two was the informed consent waiver item three is we're delegating to the superintendent and and this brought tracy had brought up the question regarding what's going to be the trigger and and in this delegation it includes the authority to temporarily suspend the district's participation i want to know what that trigger is when are we going to know when we're suspending i think it's hard for me to put a line and say this is where i will suspend it i think i will look at every case and then discuss does this need
146to suspend it i would talk with the department of health obviously with any case and we would talk it through and if we needed to suspend it i would suspend it but for me to just say this is what it would be it's hard for me because i don't know what that circumstance will be all right having just gone through my personal experiences and understanding that the antigen-based testing has many false negatives because i was false negative with my antigen but my rna came back positive and that using that as a mechanism to find positives it's very good but because it has false negatives people who are participating with the thought that oh i got a negative i'm good may have a false sense of security and i'm very concerned from that perspective that if
147we think that having those nasal fast rapid antigen tests are going to find the case or give us a surety that everybody's okay when i talked to the doctors about that they purposely said oh yeah there are many false negatives you need the rna to make sure you're getting everyone i think it's a program if we're thinking that this is going to be oh everybody's clean today not so much so i want to give everybody an understanding that the negatives that come out of there don't mean you have a don't have a positive i just want to be clear too is the county is making us test until we get below four percent so testing is not going to go throughout the season okay i just want to make sure everyone is aware of that
148so we're going to go to a high risk sport without testing after we fall below four percent well you're not going to know even if you go back up okay well we're going to know the same way that we know in school is testing anyone that's symptomatic jeff you were going to say something well i was just going to add since i was the architect of that resolution in that language by intent behind that last paragraph because the whole everything about cobit 19 is so fluid and fast changing and certainly will be so in the sports area should you decide to head into that greene county may come out with something tomorrow that would have tammy have to make a change in what you're acting on tonight and it could be testing it could be
149the positivity rate it could be we don't can't get enough officials it could be a whole range of things that my intent was to have the board and trust the superintendent to have the flexibility to react to those situations as they arise whatever it might be obviously with the understanding that a superintendent is going to report back to a board at some point but sometimes you can't wait that two weeks or four weeks between meetings to actually revisit the seasons season's over the week after our next meeting yeah okay the season's over they're a week after our next meeting uh to clarify what pat had just mentioned denise you're looking to start practice correct thursday looking to start practices on wednesday or thursday so we can get in the required number of practices um and
150then once we meet that four percent threshold then competitions can start after we've met our six practices or our 10 practices for wrestling and they approve that waiver did you have to ask the county for a waiver to even start practice now they are letting us start they did approve it okay right now we could do open gym which is nothing competitive it's just individuals working on their drills so that's allowed right now but in order for us to start counting real practices is when they initiated the testing right and they okayed that they okayed it if we do the testing yes and the board i thought she said that i just wanted to be clear right and that testing would be until we reach that four percent or lower threshold and then we go
151to two a week no then we stop testing then we can stop testing okay then they will stop testing so they will this is hard i mean the willingness to continue testing will would actually be based on the kits and what kits are would be continue to be available the guaranteed availability i don't have no so right now the county has plenty and the questar has enough for us to have started if we were designated in a zone and they would replenish them but they've asked them if we can use those for athletics and while they said yes they said they would not be replenished you know that was an issue for us because you know the conversation was should we just start testing before we're in a zone just regular school and when we
152check to see if we could get additional supplies of the test to do that the response was no that they would not guarantee to keep giving us test kits if we were not in a designated zone can they be purchased not that i know of i don't know because we have to work with a lab i wouldn't know how to start that okay venture i know it's not easy no it's not and it's for such a short time 30 days 31 days we've got a break next week so after everybody's home back from break how do you know the kids would be practicing kids would practice next week if you approved it but the numbers could go after next week too then we wouldn't hit the four percent to have competitions right that's all based
153on us meeting the metrics okay and carol have approved it so far they can still do the practices we could still do practices if we continue to test if we were above four percent i mean the last week the numbers continue to come down what's her number today 3.3 was yesterday's number but two days ago we were yeah yeah we have to can't we we need the rolling average is five percent right this seven is the rolling is it five three seven day i was told today was at five at five nobody's doing better i mean it depends on who they're testing too i know once they receive an influx of school districts numbers i would imagine the number's going to go down a lot quicker too i'm pro sports i believe i know i'm
154hard i'm internally wrestling with this one really hard i agree can we get this to a vote yes that's all it took is there a motion there is we're voting on the okay initial motion amended to have consent slash waiver okay so this is for the resolution correct yes getting a motion to approve it all right so all those in favor no because we already have that motion yep you have a motion just need to know who's in favor all those in favor and just give me hi so we have eric ray tracy pat did i get everybody okay so that's four for it three against it so given that it passed and we now have um policy for high-risk sports going forward like to make a motion to modify that by adding two additional
155requirements one that the high-risk sports plan be modified to require masks so to get rid of the opportunity that if you can't tolerate the mask you can get a doctor's note i would say no mask no play and the second one that the if there are if there is any um event where there could be an audience that it just be live streamed as tammy said could be done so my motion would be to modify the program that was just adopted by adding those two requirements no math no play and any event with you know where you could have an attendance would have to be live streamed two other things i think could be considered but i'm thinking from the discussion either no one would support or could just mean effectively killing what you just
156approved would be mandatory testing regardless of the infection rates in the county and just say approve three of the four but not wrestling because of the difficulty of keeping the mask on the proper procedure would be not to move to amend the resolution that's already been adopted if you're in the minority would be actually to propose a new resolution say amen thank you i i thought i was i thought i was moving to amend the the program policy that was just approved you can you can make a new motion jay you can't amend the one that's been approved right i i was i don't know what the right terminology would be but what i was saying was move to change the program that was just you know we now have a program or a policy
157i don't know which would be appropriate to call it i'm moving to modify that we didn't approve them no resolution improving high risk support he's talking about the sport specific plan is that what you're talking about jay yes yes the high-risk sports plan so we now have board just adopted a high risk sports plan i'm moving to modify the high risk sports plan hold on with two elements we just approved the resolution that's all uh i think we approved all three the sports plan the yeah the plan was just in there for reference and if we after we discussed it if we wanted to do go ahead with the resolution um that was there for reference so you're saying we now can approve the individual sports no the county said each school superintendent must oversee
158the creation of a sport-specific preparedness plan to be approved by the school medical director that does not need to be proved by the board of education so jay wants to consider adding us to add some things to it so tammy can we ask you to add those things how do people feel well i don't know if we can ask but i don't know if we can change if a doctor says a student can't wear a mask if we could then tell the student he can't participate jay would you be interested in doing um to keep it simple i don't know if it's that going to do but one concept at a time i certainly would be in support of removing wrestling from an option yes if it's if it's easier and preferable i would be
159happy to go piece by piece so if you want to talk about like taking in one consideration whether we remove wrestling okay sure if you want to have a separate wrestling was part of that resolution so i think then you would need to amend that what you said jeff amend the resolution to it take wrestling off you can't revisit the resolution that's been passed um if i'm understanding correctly jay your aside from the wrestling comment is directed to the plan to provide sports okay that's not actually something you approved in that resolution right it's what you quite frankly the authority of the superintendent the athletic director and the school doctor to provide that plan doesn't mean you can't have input but you have not approved the plan okay so i apologize i don't know the
160the appropriate procedure here so forgive if i for please forgive me if i'm using the wrong terminology but what you just said jeff the board could take an action that would say of the high-risk sports that we just voted on or something to say do not include wrestling in the plan that is developed no because the resolution including i don't have in front of me but included wrestling and it was approved four to three so that the wrestling ship has sailed so it should have been and originally could have been amended at the time much as the waiver piece was it would be a discussion item at that point so jay when we were looking at the resolution it composed of a part one which was which items were being included a part two which
161was the intent and consent slash waiver part and then a part three which was the board giving authority to the superintendent to do this and to not do this and we've approved that resolution with the waiver added to part two correct okay if there's no procedural mechanism to do what i just requested fine i mean i'll defer to jeff's guidance on that and if there isn't a procedural way to move forward on it that's correct then jeff is that only for wrestling or does that also apply to say wearing masks for example or only live streaming games those are those aspects of the plan tammy okay the plan the board could have input into the plan so i'll pick live streaming which i actually think is covered by what i recall from seeing from greene
162county and either new york schools uh public high schools or the section it's i think it's covered in there but to answer your question jay if the board wanted to have input on that type of thing you would form a resolution on that and act on the resolution understanding that ultimately the requirement is the superintendent has to have a plan that's approved by the school medical doctor and i think tammy may have used if you guys i'm not saying you would hey we don't anyone wear a mask any time ever well that's not going to get approved so you you'd be taking a useless action at that point but if you wanted to address audience for t you know at school matches you could do that so my question about the mask though if a
163doctor says a student cannot wear one that's the only way we would accept it can we say that student cannot play right i'm just making up and i'm asking that question to you all right can we do that legally is say someone cannot play because they cannot wear a mask i don't know if there's a case out there i'm just asking a question as you know tammy we've spoken many times we're on the cutting edge of everything new do i think if a student is medically ineligible or incapable of wearing a mask could they still participate i think you would have to allow them to participate just as you have to allow them to participate in school activities right now they can do it instructionally they can do it in sports nice try jay that's
164my belief i mean i hope that there's no requests but you you run there may be i'm trying not to get the legal weeds here but if you decide that student athlete the right of participation because they are medically unable to wear a mask you're asking for a disability discrimination lawsuit as of spectators spectators issue because it was more of a right permissive thing i mean i could see a board saying we don't care what the medical director says or the county says we just don't want spectators at the meeting we'll do live streaming i think that's a subjective element you could probably address we currently don't allow visitors into the building so we would have to amend some document that i know i've read to allow visitors in our opening plan i'm sorry dave
165it's in our opening plan okay so in the opening plan there were no visitors anywhere inside the building so then we wouldn't be able to allow we for the most we had talked about no spectators we had met with all the other superintendents but there was some discussion on senior night would we allow parents there on a senior night we did talk about no spectators from other schools that if any school allowed spectators they would only be their own students not from these were just things that were discussed right i mean i think denise definitely favors no spectators but it's that point do you allow it for one game or do we just say this is a year that we cannot allow it right i'm fine either way i mean contact tracing would be right
166gonna be so hard i think we can support the no spectators in favor of that yeah yeah i it just if i can interject a little bit i mean in the discussions and in all the conversations we've been having in section two there are no spectators being allowed in i don't i don't think any district is allowing that at this point they said that they might evaluate it and reassess it as the season went on depending on the metrics but i think most people are adamantly against that right now because it really is an uncontrollable variable i agree so it if the current plan says no visitors spectators will be visitors um even something for senior night for example i mean to tracy's point would there have to be some change in the reopening plan
167to allow that or is that just something within your discretion tammy that you could do if we had done that then it would have had to make we would have changed probably some other language in the reopening plan i'm fine with saying that we won't do it in my opinion you do not have to go back and amend or modify the reopening plan it's a good question as always tracy but i don't think you need to do that you're you're developing a plan just for this specific topic okay so jay i think your thoughts in there i'm sorry could you repeat that i think your thought or intent is already in the plan there will be no spectators okay okay in that case i guess for for the two things there's no action and i
168i assume there's nothing i need to withdraw because i don't think there's anything proper like actually advanced right right correct i need a motion to uh oh no just to talk no this is a discussion but 8.3 is just the textbook it's a request for approval right well but just to discuss it first the approval will be next month so the book is here if anyone wants to did you bring the book yep i have them right here right the form is actually a request for approval no discussion unless somebody wants to everybody wants to see it there all of the books are here i think it's a great idea because i think that all students learn differently and some will use textbooks more than others but by having it i think it just benefits
169okay reminders just make sure you're using your microphone make sure you're talking to your microphone let me ask sorry the board of education business budget meeting number two is uh february 22nd uh two weeks from now at six o'clock cluster's annual meeting is april 14th that that will be zoomed no snacks quest our three uh annual business meeting is april 20th uh we have to res we did reschedule board leadership development and that's scheduled now for saturday march 20th at nine o'clock at the right here at the library did we get more topics for that tammy are we still working on that no i think we are set with the agenda jeff's going to join us for part of that workshop in march [Laughter] surprise i'm returning what was loaned to me and we were
170going to be talking about things so we're set okay timmy do we need a moderator or someone that can help facilitate it for the goal section that's it um i don't think so i've invited mr hilgendorf so i don't think we need so you're going to help moderate it all right thank you okay first reading update to policy number 6372 data security and privacy policy everyone should get a chance to read that also the first reading on policy number 6120 sexual harassment policy and the first reading on a new policy student sexual harassment also a first reading on an update to policy 1120 board policy development and a first reading for update on policy 5220 notice of breach of security those are all first readings and do we have any items for discussion at future
171meetings anyone would like to bring up a topic okay open forum i have one from ellen worga i'm writing due to my concerns regarding high-risk sports i know this is a difficult topic because parents and students are pushing to return to normal by participating in basketball wrestling and volleyball the problem is the norm at this time does not exist i know that students pressure their parents who will then pressure coaches who then pressure school administration and the board of education to make a decision to return to these sports at this time would be the easy course but the unpopular decision would be to say no spring sports are just around the corner and are lower risk sports as of friday february 5th at 4 pm the 7 day rolling average for greene county was 5.7
172i know it will be said that students will wear masks use hand sanitizer maintain social distancing to lower transmission but this is not a real expectation even if the district required testing of students the fact that parents can refuse for the student would negate this i know it is said the children do not get very sick from covert 19 but studies are not conclusive as to future issues that these students may have also the district has done a wonderful job of keeping school open and keeping our students safe once high-risk sports begin cohorts will no longer be maintained and a student with a covet infection can spread it to the greater community as a member of our community a parent a grandparent and a health care worker i'm asking the board to consider the ramifications
173to the school community as a whole and to the greater community again that was submitted by ellen morga let me just check my other two i don't have anything on youtube and um brian go ahead brian reeve i'll be real quick uh i just wanted to i know we'll recognize his people later in the year here but recognize that on the personnel agenda we had four teachers and a teaching assistant who are retiring so congratulations to them they're going to be sorely missed as they have put their heart and soul into the district for many many years so just congratulations to them thank you brian yes i don't have anything else okay then i need a motion to adjourn to executive session so moved to return i'll second that hi okay you