001okay well very good um we do have a quorum and we are uh this is our uh open voting meeting for may 10th and where we are in open session i entertain motions to go into i move we enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing proposed pending or current litigation collective negotiations uh employment promotion devotion discipline suspension dismissal or removal of a particular person or corporation second by chris trisha do you have to do the roll call or yeah okay all right please tell her when you're ready rob ainsley yes erin cruz shawn eversley bradwell yes eldridge harris yes nicole lafave yes yes chris matson yes patricia wiseman yes thanks everybody we uh we will we will be back and uh hopefully probably right on top which means chris i apologize for i
002don't know you're all worked up about the irs we just want the public to know we do not uh create tax law right we don't no we can't do that and we don't talk about bruno but uh we can complain about it but we are we are back and sean i believe you have a modification i do have modifications to the agenda i would like to add to today's agenda to providing 10.3 changes to open meeting law a conversation about the changes so it's a big deal uh without objection the uh this item was on our agenda last time we kind of uh we kind of we did indeed alone um and we ran a little bit earlier today uh dr brown with accommodations and once again it was the largest number of accommodations it
003was how many brothers close to 600 yeah outside outside the quad we were kind of standing in the shade um in the crowd and um and i did not set that up uh there had to be a microphone somewhere but but it was great to break it once again and do that we will do another accommodation ceremony in june just to try to finish up the year but uh nice job dr brown you read all those names in the heat uh you weren't in the sun doing that um but we uh we will get started uh with public comment period uh we have three people who have signed up this evening uh up first is uh dr peggy soyinka uh good evening thank you so much i'll try to make this very quick with my
004three minutes um in january this year i sent a detailed letter of complaint and request for accountability to all the board members regarding the unprofessional behavior and actions of the board president mr inslee last year when i was asked by a parent in the community to help her serve a copy of her petition to mr ainslie and other board administrators members as she was required to do by the new york state education department in carrying out this responsibility we both i and a member of the community were met by an angry and a very hostile outburst from the board president mr ainslie it was severe enough that i became worried about my safety and we recorded this incident on video the board of education members commits to uphold equity fairness and to build a safe
005and affirming environment and to lead by example in a respectful professional and courteous manner i had trusted that the board would uphold this code and that the legal service of process could be done in a courteous and professional manner instead i personally found it to be harrowing very tense and dispiriting exercise as mr ainslie's exhibition of anger and delay tactics threatening to obstruct due process and deny the petitioning parent the possibility of transmitting her petition to the new york state education department minsteinsly you've refused to identify yourself when you were asked you lied outrightly denying that you are the person the respondent you then ask that we leave your property at once and when we put the papers of service down at your feet you picked up the package and flung it into the snow
006where it was sure to disintegrate and become unreadable we rescued the papers from the snow and then i attempted to speak with you courteously again despite knowing me for many years and sitting with me in a discussion a few weeks prior to that incident he denied knowing who we were this behavior really killed my hope that the school board which i previously held in high esteem all of you would uphold the course of justice in an impartial manner or provide a respectful and fair treatment to all members of the community i was personally disturbed as a black woman i felt very vulnerable and i felt the dangers of conducting business with the school board because of your personal allegiances how difficult would it be for another member of the community to file a petition if
007they have to run the gauntlet of such hostile and obstructionist actions by the leaders of our most powerful educational leadership board when i wrote to the board in january this year to review the incident i asked you for an acknowledgement that such behavior was unethical and unprofessional i asked for an apology for the treatment we were forced to endure in carrying out a legitimate very simple formal process required and related to district and school board matters i ask that mr hinsley would hold himself accountable for his actions and that he responds in a manner that upholds the integrity of that office i ask that the school board members receive training on how to accept service of process in a professional manner and be willing to provide support and guidance and i asked for a clear-cut
008description of what we can expect in terms of grievances petitions and processes i didn't get any response at all from any school board member i was ignored and i feel that that in itself was disrespectful and breaks down this spirit of trust in our community i feel this is a violation of public trust it should not be acceptable for the school board to treat parents and members of this community in that manner at the very least you should have responded when i emailed even if you felt you could not comment on the incident i should have been deserving of a response and this is what i'm asking why didn't i get a response and will the school board hold its official members accountable for their behavior thank you very much for the work you do
009and thank you for listening uh to my my comments today up next is liz quadrozy sorry there's oh there's a lot of buttons okay hi liz quadrozy 6th grade science teacher at dewitt middle school nice to see everybody want to give a shout out to the student reps for the work that they're doing it's extraordinary and the time they're putting in i wanted to come tonight um to talk about some of the language that i heard at the last board meeting because it was a little bit troubling um board of education members whether they believe it or not are in a position of power in our community and stereotyping and entire gender based on i'm sorry stereotyping an entire group of people based on their gender or race or sexuality or religion is just wrong
010no matter what comments like it's really hard to talk to middle class white women about the power of dance we have a problem with teachers who have a white superiority complex who just can't do it anymore even when we refer to former administrators as a regime which carries some powerful connotation especially in today's world makes it really difficult to see how we can all come to the table with that kind of rhetoric being thrown at us and as the previous commenter mentioned it's an issue of trust can we trust this to be an honest conversation i also want to point out that all over the place people seem to be surprised that people leave icsd they don't want to work here six percent of our positions are open probably more at this point these sessions
011are videotaped anybody can watch them i know that i'm pretty disheartened at being called a racist time and time again in board meetings and i just felt like it was time to say something we are people we have undergone the most difficult three years in our career and we're still here we haven't left we're trying to make it better language is important dr brown reminds us of that all the time i remind my students of that all the time our community deserves better from the people who run our school district thank you and up next is steve manley come on uh evening evening everybody this is steve uh there must have been a mix up i'm not on the i'm not not planning for public comment tonight thanks steve thanks everybody are there any other
012comments [Music] if not board responses um i just had two quick responses on one to pay i was under the impression that we did acknowledge um her letter i apologize for that and we strive to do better so i apologize for not responding um i also just hearing i was not at the last board meeting and i honestly did not review the board meeting so i don't want to speak to what was shared or what she was referring to because i don't have prior knowledge i wouldn't want to do any disservice i would take a piece of what she said and i truly um understand because it's difficult and i you know i think everyone needs to take a step back and and truly think about how we approach and acknowledge one another's people and
013how we engage one another i know as a board member um some of the tone the language the the outright disrespect that has come my way is concerning at times and even made me nervous um with some things that's been shared with me and i would ask that we all um consider that you know we have an opportunity here and i think just coming off of what she said words have mattered we and i've always said i believe we are a truly collaborative school district and what that looks like moving forward is extremely important especially coming coming out of colvin you know this is our time to really come together as a district and be better go ahead i just want to echo what chris said i too was under the impression that we had
014uh we had given a response um to the communication we received and i agree with chris too that we all this is a good opportunity for us to all reflect on how we use language how we speak to others i should uh address dr petey's comments in particular about the request for a response um dr paye as you're hearing uh the board spent considerable time discussing uh the communication there was a response that was drafted uh i will take responsibility for it not being sent and we will make sure that uh the response that we drafted on march 2nd of you receive promptly it does not address the fact that you had to wait that part i understand but again there was considerable conversation and all board members signed on to the draft and i
015presume that all board members believe that the response had been sent so feel free to contact me at any point in time uh go ahead i would just like to say uh also to dr pate i mean i'm not familiar with the circumstances of this um specific incident but you're talking about a petition um and so one thing that um that we are kind of taught using our little our little model democracy at lacs um we have a certain process where a student can make a petition to to to discuss something immediately discuss it urgently in an emergency um and we uh we recognize the um kind of the the crucial importance of how a petition is you know at our school it's you know in school 300 students maybe if that um so students
016have a lot more say in a much larger community like even empty ithaca is not a huge place by any measure but it's a large community um relative to that and so a petition is really one of the only ways um one of the only ways one of the most effective ways that a you know a person can build momentum behind their movement um and so i would just i would like to say on behalf of myself and behalf of all the students from lacs you know we recognize you know how important petitions are and i you know we feel i feel sorry for the fact that your petition was treated that way that's all well i mean it's very uh very interesting there are two sides to all interactions um so petitions uh are
017presented to the board clerk this is and we get all our if you in the community if you want to write us a letter if you want to petition us it just goes through the board clerk this this was a very upsetting uh morning for my home and my family uh that saturday in january in the middle of copen i awoke to a pounding on my front door and apparently that was as i found out later the second time someone had approached our door um pounding on my front door uh disturbed the household and i went down to um we had not started our day i went down to um see who was at my door i didn't know whether there was an emergency and what are the neighbors um this is during covet uh
018our friends don't did not we did not go to each other's houses so who in the world is at my door on saturday morning and so i went to the door and i opened it up and i there was a person uh in a mass and stated are you robert ainsley um so before i uh respond i need to know who i'm speaking to and i said who are you and she said are you robert ainsley i'm going through this with the wall uh and i said who are you and you came to my door you need to identify yourself and so we were going back and forth like that for a while and then i changed it up and i said who are you and what do you want and i had no idea
019who this person is and was and then um she again asked who am i i said who are you and what do you want and she said i have a paper and i said i don't want it i don't um i don't know who you are and i'm not going to open the door because i can't do that um i don't you will if you refuse to identify yourself and refuse to tell me what you have in your hand it's not going to stay on my house it's not going to stay there i'm sorry and so i did remove it from my porch until such time i said i could put on proper clothes and go out and see what it is but it's not going to stay at my house not going to come
020in my house until i know what it is and then they came back again and uh came down pounding in and then there were two people that might go up and they were taking me which if you're serving a warrant or serving a illegal papers you frankly can't do but i had no again no idea what it was and uh eventually a professor identified herself and said why she was there and i said oh if you have something to deliver to me meaning the president of the board of education you need to do it through the proper way i said this is not the proper way and i said that needs to go to the board and again um and that's where we were and they want to go back and forth and i said
021you know we're done i'm not going to let this come in my house i still don't know what it is and i ask them to remove themselves from my porch and again this is back to much time that we spent on allegations regarding individual in the district that we investigated those allegations we found to be unfounded and without merits that petitioned one to the commissioner of education for new york state they did their investigation they uh the commission of education went at length down to every article of that those allegations and said those allegations were unfounded and without merit and we let it go with that we have not mentioned this since since it was in it was dealing with frankly young children in this district they did not we did not need to talk
022about this anymore so if you read we hear about it again gee i wonder why um so i said you know my uh my wife grew up in new york city um and we lock the door and you don't let people if you don't identify yourself you're not coming and if you don't tell me what you have in your hand it's not coming away i've been married for 37 years plus i do i do what uh my she has trained me with i'm just a farm kid from enfield my wife grew up in manhattan there's ways you do things if you want to serve me papers i'm glad to talk to anybody tell me who you are when you're at my door counting on the door in saturday morning i mean let's consider proper protocols
023proper actions within others you want to talk about how you treat another person um uh let's let's talk about that what was the what was the cause of you coming to my door saturday morning what were you trying to get and you know their petition went to the state of new york went to commissioner of education they investigated for months and came up with their ruling and young jew which is the end of their business and we let it go with that and that was fine um we were there's nothing more we could do so now we're talking about this again and i'm glad to talk about it more but i'm not going to but um just for the community just when you knock my door just you know hopefully you can wear a mask
024if you want but please tell me who you are and what your business is if you refuse to do that no i'm not going to let it let you in i never went on the porch i never left my home i never opened the door um but it said outdoor outside screen part you can see um there's a video yeah that's me am i yelling and screaming no i said you can see my face when she finally tells me what's in this who they are there on behalf of and i said you can see me say oh fine after all that after three times after disturbing my home for a long time on a saturday morning finally tell me what this is all about and i said this is not the proper way to do
025what you're trying to do and i understand why they did what they did and that's that was my saturday morning on january 15th of 2020 and yeah it's yours and i'm just me and um and i certainly don't mean to intimidate anyone um but i suggest you if you come to my house to say hi and tell me who you are i hope that is enough and uh let's move on to student wraps [Music] um hi so um i just has definitely been enjoying the onset of warmer weather um most spring sports are having their senior nights this week i believe baseball is playing in there as we speak um ap exams have also been taking place over the last week a lot of students are swamped with uh stress with those um but also
026really starting to see the home scratch of the school year um may it's also asian-american and pacific islander heritage month and ihs own aapi and allies club um that has been working on a mural for the last few months has begun actually painting it um in the last few weeks with students from all grades and identities are contributing to it um i also hope that you got to read um the issue of the toddler that came out last friday including the comprehensive review and guide to the ihs bathrooms that was in it um we'd also like to thank dan ryman and his team um for coming to ihs and inspecting our facilities some students have already noticed little fixes um however i was made aware that um custodial staff felt that they were also being
027blamed for the state of disarray and dysfunction of our bathrooms um an assertion that i'd like to review this um there really is no way that an unoverworked custodian um could be responsible for there being a 50 50 chance that a urinal or toilet uh will flush or if the sinks will work properly um on that note our custodial staff remains severely understaffed i understand that um there have been multiple positions that have been that have remained empty for over a year or in many um and that we have staff working the equivalent of two full-time jobs in our district out of desperation to both keep our schools clean and functioning and also just to keep food on the family's table i hope that the district is doing everything that they can to raise to
028both raise the salaries of custodial and other crucial employees such as nurses cafeteria workers encounters and paraprofessionals as well as doing what we can to make ihs a more attractive place to work um liz mentioned um how you know we have so many vacancies and how teachers and other staff are leaving our district for even lansing other nearby places that currently pay significantly more than we do for starting positions um and i really hope that these goals are reflected in this year's budget and if they're not that they are very much prioritized next year um our schools are continuing to fall into uh poor maintenance and disarray it's crucial that we expand our staff and raise their faith substantially in order to improve the state of our schools um it has recently come to our
029attention that students at dewitt middle school are experiencing uh transphobia and homophobia in their classrooms students have recorded multiple incidents slurs being written on classroom whiteboards and flat-out harassment in the hallways students have expressed that they feel unsafe in school and as a result as a result of these incidents and another um dimension of this issue is that the students we spoke to went um they communicated with teachers um about the incidents um they said that very little was done and they did not feel heard or that the teachers felt like they didn't feel like the teachers had the capacity um to actually deal with those situations um one student even noted um that teachers who witnessed these actions seemed like they didn't even care um of what was happening given that um given that
030something similar to this has happened happened at lacs this year with transphobic um slurs being written on bathroom stalls um we believe that in order to address these issues additional trainings and professional development could be implemented for teachers to educate them on sexuality and gender and how to deal with situations of homophobia transphobia and intolerance and um specifically for middle schoolers um they're experiencing a time of change and discomfort and this often comes with low self-esteem and bullying it's crucial to support them through expanded social and emotional learning opportunities that can teach them about intolerance and establish a culture of love in our district um well at lacs today we began our a long-standing tradition lscs today kicked off the first day of our 35th annual middle east debate so this is a debate that
031happens in connection with a class called facing history and essentially during the second half of the class each student researches a certain leader in the middle east and then during the debates takes on the role of that leader and represents them and their nation and their beliefs in a debate setting the purpose of this is to you know hopefully by studying extreme by studying extreme perspectives the students can learn how to deal with extremism in their own lives um and i did it two years ago um i represented hassan rouhani who was the then president of iran he is no longer um and it has been happening for you know for 35 years so it's a very fun tradition a lot of students come and watch the debates um and it's always a very rewarding
032experience yeah we recently had an anthem there was a actually easm that happened because uh there has been some bruce information about roe v wade being overturned in this country and uh our community in the past when a major decision like that has happened uh our school is typically called a easn or emergency all school meeting to kind of come together as a community and be like hey how are we doing with this because that is something that will change a lot of people's lives in our own lives and so that's a very common thing uh we the esm form was petitioned out it got around 35 staff signatures and around i think like 175 student signatures uh for it to happen on wednesday the conversation was sadly moved to friday um the community did
033not agree with this opinion uh and there was a separate conversation that was led by our kind of feminism group our committee uh had a separate conversation if you feel like this is a necessary thing for you to talk about happened in the uh black box theater and it was a very impactful conversation our lovely zak kim actually attended it well me and andrew had to leave the other conversation that was happening in the gym which was definitely a conversation to have and i am i fully support what happened as uh my own personal feelings about what happened i am glad that the community was able to process it together because i think that is some of the beauty of lacs its size it's how we run is that we are able to talk about
034the things that happened in this country and kind of doing it together um yeah well yeah yeah [Music] so i also i did attend this along with um a great portion of our student body um and it just was an important conversation to be had because the overturning of roe v wade um leads into like a lot of different like intersectional intersectionality things um within all different types of communities um because it is a step backwards um and i just wanted to say that but um so we've had some bathroom like inequality i guess um because teachers have been saying that they've been judging students based on their parents and not on how they identify um when going into the bathrooms so we've had like a really like big discussion about this and um and
035teachers are i guess not really like they're like backlashing us if you will um on how like students identify um as like pronouns and whatever have you um with the bathrooms and like where they stand and which back um and we are excited about our transportation meetings yeah yeah and going off of zakkim's point um one thing that has been so okay so i've been at la cs i'm a senior right now and i was just in sixth grade that is about seven years that i've been at the school um which is probably longer than some of you have even been on the board um and in my entire time at lacs we have always every single year there has been a proposal a push an idea to make all of our bathrooms gender neutral
036and this has always consistently been blocked for whatever reason the most recent reason being that they did not meet um state standards and we have we have requested that we get assistance with helping these bathrooms meet state center so they can be gender neutral bathrooms because honestly we've got five vacuums in the school right now um and like i think what it is right now is that three of them are men's rooms one is a woman's room and one is gender neutral yes um and so it's really not a great situation um so we are really hoping to make we really we really always wanted to make all the bathrooms in the school gender neutral when we've been blocked so we are i guess we are once again requesting the assistance and as i understand
037that assistance is that um every uh stall must be fully enclosed and every urinal must have must be enclosed in some way with either a full like door or a kind of divider and a screen um which seems pretty straightforward um so that's that's the latest information that we've got on that we are very excited of course with the capital campaign that we'll be renovating two of our bathrooms in the upstairs area which is very good because those bathrooms have been disgusting and almost unusable for quite a long time so we're really we're we're you know bathroom troubles are shared between ihs and aussies [Music] that's our big hot button issue today thanks everyone board responses i i have a question i apologize is there any chance of the middle eastern gates being televised or
038virtual so that is a really um good question they are sometimes they are televised virtual the they're not this year and they have not been the reasoning for this is because um as you might imagine a debate involving all the leaders in the middle east can get a bit contentious and not the most polite there is you know on a very serious note there is a lot of you know anti-semitism islamophobia extreme nationalism um just basically straight up justification of terrorism at these debates which is really not something that we want to be broadcasting at we it's a it's an lacs tradition and we always approach it um with a lot of consideration and care and especially you know it's it's very established in our community the students you know when they say these things
039they are not even remotely saying them as themselves they you know students do not agree with the ideas they are promoting it's very much an act and that's something that is very important and a very you know strong understanding at our school um which is valuable and also we don't really want to be that's why we don't broadcast them so excellent points thank i do not usually sit on facilities committee so i will say that in 11 years on the board this is the first time i've ever heard that lacs has for years to make all their bathrooms gender neutral has come to societies i don't recall it my question and not to interrupt you when he said it was blocked i don't i don't know about the block piece either so yeah um i
040i just don't recall it having been set up i'm going to say that you know we're putting gender-neutral bathrooms in elementary schools middle schools um not every single one but there's no and these were these were all um proposals that had been brought to us by by the students and the the administration is supporting that um and um as for the the remarks on dewitt middle school i've been um spending some time lately talking with the dean of students i have friends and colleagues who are parents at dewitt middle school and i'm i am consistently getting a very different message than the one that you've presented at the board i've got parents who are talking about how incredibly supportive and inclusive teachers are and how their kids feel really supported we were at a community
041conversation at do it a couple of months ago um where the question of gender neutral bathrooms came up and and there was a great deal of support so i i i do think that sometimes when you when you hear students from another school complaining again you're only hearing one voice and i'm just going to add that i see i have heard a lot of statements that that do not paint that picture and no school is perfect and of course this is we want all the schools to be perfect and that's what we definitely aim for i'm thinking it's this is amazing i'll address your comments and say that i think by now you appreciate that this is your balance as i'm listening to you coming about the laughing the laughing at the state of the
042high school our facilities following the disrepair money you want to see spent on professional development i'm literally sitting here responding to a desperate email from the senior citizens who's complaining that the tax burden that we're putting in is unsustainable right even though we've maintained the rate the same amount as in last year and it's actually going down the majority of the last seven or eight years it's gone in the reverse direction right so there are multiple perspectives about the money that can be spent from multiple parts of our community student voice is just one it's a critical one which is what we need you to be here to advocate so i'm not telling you to ever stop just want to give you a different perspective there are people out there in pain who are literally
043thinking about leaving this community right and we have to balance non-unpaid volunteers let me tell you what happens if you get the balance wrong right and the quality of your education and facilities continues to diminish in equity in people's homes right it starts to go away the home values decrease and then people start moving to other parts of the community i heard what you said about lansing we have 5500 students lansing has a fraction of that lansing has much more property on the tax rules than we do because of cornell university's presence again multiple factors that um you are in a position to actually learn about right because you sit here with us at this table given your trajectory what you want to do next year in college it might behoove you to actually have
044conversations with us about these critical functions and areas of finance before you come off sailings if you aren't right you actually have access amanda will pick up the phone and respond to you anybody on this board will indulge indulge you in a conversation about about these critical areas i want you to change your powerful voice i don't want you to ever be intimidated by anybody sitting up here because we serve you just come off as more informed and hopefully more nuanced and balanced as for the lics bathroom situation i can tell you for years since we sat here on this side of the table other voices were were in our ears telling us that only a certain number of students around the country were experiencing the need for gender gender neutral backgrounds right i think
045there was one time where someone said the number of trans students the number of sex within the minority students was something like six and a thousand so doing the math here that factored into a lot of the discussions about where we were where we are is in a different place politically right and the movement is beginning to move much more towards your side of the equation saying that if we did all the bathrooms we wouldn't have this issue the best uh sign i've ever seen in the bathroom is up in college town in the new college town vegas it says do whatever just wash your hands right i think that's a powerful statement i think that's where we are hopefully moving towards but um again we keep saying this keep coming at us your voices
046are being heard and we are trying to do the best we can to balance a lot of complicated issues and uh you know none of us pick up hammers and walk through that olympics know how this thing is set up so these processes a lot of things you're talking about again if you would have the conversations with us you don't understand our frustration many things have to go through the state we have to go through the state education department and fix some of the things you talked about that's crazy and insane but it's what must be done we can't fix it because we have our five bargaining units right that all need to be involved and then you have their own schedules because we're asking them to do multiple things so these are not excuses
047these are complexities there's a reason you sit at this side of table i'm not saying you're on our side but do some investigation do some conversations reach out to us and be more informed so we can have an actual better conversation i hope that makes sense and you're not taking any some attack that's not how it's made the issue of all gender bathrooms uh i don't like the phrase gender neutral it's more actually being colorblind we've been having this conversation but there's no doubt this has been a conversation by facilities we're aware i've been trying to walk the line between making sure that we have accessible bathrooms that meet the needs and the measurements and requirements of the state but i can greatly appreciate the frustration it's it's a long time coming we've been having
048this conversation for about two years real quick about pay of our employees um i believe we have signed new contract which has significant pay increases upwards of 12 for our nurses um recognizing that uh everyone needs to be paid more also aware that as we have these conversations yes there are six percent of our possibly six percent of our staff may be leaving um and if you drive around town you'll see almost every single business has a sign that says help right so we're in a tough position folks restaurants can't open because they don't have enough folks to work we talk about you know places right point being is employment is difficult and times pandemic and it gets exacerbated when we find ourselves doesn't mean we can't do more right does this mean we should
049be doing more and i'm disheartened to hear that our students are experiencing over forms of homophobia and transphobia there's no doubt that that happened i have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that's happened what we do as a district what we do as a school that is on us to create those loving environments yes we are going to have additional training this summer that has always been there it also means how do we encourage more folks it needs additional budget because we should be paying folks to come be trained as well so these are some of the complexities that are being talked about right that's just not here's the training it's how can i pay you to make sure that you are trained as well but yes no form of xenophobia homophobia racism sexism patriarchy we if
050we're true to what we our mission is then we have to find ways to end it and it does take all of us to make that happen so i appreciate you sharing what you shared in this stories you told i appreciate you sharing them with as well and we'll continue to do the work on our side to negotiate those complexities even while new york state tells us we can't do certain things we'll continue to try to find ways um i just a couple things regarding salaries and vacancies so again our salaries are collectively burdened and shaman mentioned the employees association contract was recently settled and it was ratified by an overwhelming majority of the membership so they were happy with it um and it gave significant pay increases to both nurses and bus drivers um
051and custodians are in that bargaining union as well uh as far as you know vacancies at the last hr committee meeting uh claudia sims the assistant director of human resources and who is also overseeing recruitment and retention efforts she and lily telco gave an outstanding detailed presentation of many many ways in which this district is working to recruit a diverse staff and to retain them and i was able to say you know certainly when i came to the district in 1985 there was nothing like that you know my support came from a couple of colleagues who were hired at the same time and were all running to each other going is this really happening like what's going on um and and i spent 25 years here and uh mentored and was colleagues with and friends
052with many many folks and the whole time i was here there was nothing close to what is in place now to try to recruit and retain uh outstanding staff and just one point of correction i'm like 98 certain that the starting salary in lansing is lower than ours i believe our starting salary which was negotiated um uh three years ago i believe um significantly increased starting salary from district to district there are discrepancies in pay at certain levels because of the way that different districts do their salary increases so at a certain level you might find somebody in ithaca with a certain number of years and education who is at a lesser degree than somebody in a neighboring district but as far as starting salaries we're doing really well and that's something that we have
053for a number of years set out to do um and then in terms of salary uh discrepancies one of the things that's also true is at the higher end of the salary range uh people with the most experience uh ithaca's salaries are very very high where in many uh other districts there is a cap on salaries at the upper level so people are moving up moving up and then toward the end of their career they stall thanks uh well chris go ahead i just uh just to piggyback on what maura was saying and i i think it's it's um misleading to say and i'm not trying to talent but you know teachers leaving or people leaving and one we have sought to aggressively recruit and keep teachers and you know grow our own um teachers
054support groups and and things like that and making sure that when teachers are here and they come on board and folks leave for many different reasons so to say that it's for one specific reason is incredibly misleading and it's unfortunate um and i i've said this for at least the last five years we're in televised meetings if someone is saying that and preaching that without sharing all the information and and also the other side of it if someone's watching that that's concerning because that's what they're hearing because we also know that we've got great supports we've got smaller class sizes inside you know one to one aids co-teaching models and all these things that that go into what makes it feel great and i was actually talking to someone we've got what we do in
055ithaca is extremely robust and a lot of teachers are extremely prideful what we have going on here and they shout it out no no job is without its frustrations either um one of the things i'm still scratching my head is how to keep and retain bus drivers because i think as long as i've been on the board we've tried to keep bus drivers and if you drive up and down from one into the state to the next you're going to see somebody recruiting a bus driver um and it's it's just that's one of the things that's just hard to do um but i say all that to say i think we need if we're going to have the conversation we need to do the homework and today okay one folks are leaving whatever that number
056is why did they leave but also at no point in time are we not recruiting are we not trying to retain one good quality folks um and really make sure that they have everything they need to be successful within this district um then that's really the conversation i think we should be having and we can have that's the other beauty we can have that conversation uh one rebuttal um yeah i just wanted to i think i should probably um clarify some of my statements so you know i said i have a few responses i feel like i was addressed a few times um but i i would like to say about um you know my being at ocs and us trying regularly to to change their bathrooms i mean uh i am not entirely unsurprised
057that you haven't heard this um because ever i mean since i've been at this school the the kind of excuse that we've gotten from from many different people from our own administration from the district from the state from whoever has been has been different every time you know when i first was here the excuse was that we don't have the authority um we don't you know as a student body we don't that's not sign that we can control island or purdue and it changed just like okay we can do this um but we need the bathrooms to be up to a certain code and ho hey look at this we're gonna have this capital campaign and they're gonna redo all the bathrooms the capital campaign is gonna redo all of our bathrooms and make them
058all up to code or general neutrality and then it was um and then it was that was kind of pulled out from underneath us that oh you know now they actually aren't going to redo every bathroom i'm just going to redo the two on the upstairs level and those ones are going to be have the option to be you know neutral it's it's been it has been a very kind of long and arduous process of different kind of you know we we we get a step forward and we take two steps back um and it's very frustrating especially when it's changing every time um so i i hear your words and i guess we can you know we can do more to bring this to your attention so we will remember that and that will
059be our policy in the future um regarding gender neutral bathrooms um i hear what you're saying about all gender bathrooms knowing uh knowing what i know from the students in my life who are you know who are transgender who fall under any you know non-cisgender part of the gender umbrella a lot of them have said that gender neutral is a preferred term because the opinion is that um they would like a safe space um to use the bathroom and know that they're going to be around people who understand their their challenges and their difficulties so if it's an all gender bathroom you've got um you know you've got cis people you got trans people in the same bathrooms um that means that there is no safe space uh and it it it's kind of counterintuitive
060because it seems like you're making it all a safe space um but when the when there are people in the community who are not respecting you inviting them into your bathroom meaning that uh is is not really something that i think there's gonna be a lot of support for um and the other so andrew just real quickly i'd love to have this conversation we're having an ithaca college campus as well with the non-cis folks in my life and gender inclusivity is another way of working there are various signs that we're having the debate around to make sure that it captures the reality and that folks do feel safe affirmed and seen let's have this conversation at some point i welcome it absolutely and i'm i'm you know i'm i'm very certain that the situation on
061ic campus is very different from my latest this is just this is just what i've been hearing students the other thing sorry not to pay you off but i got one more um the other thing what i've been hearing um about about do it um i i'm gonna preface this i'm not familiar with the situation any details or specifics but i am familiar with the way that um you know gender non-performing students um and non-heterosexual students can face discrimination um it can be very subtle and very pervasive and it can happen even in a community it prides itself on being the most you know lgbt inclusive school in the district like it was yes it happened at our school at the beginning of this year um and so i i want to you know i
062i absolutely do hear that do it is a great school and very inclusive but i think um and i'm not suggesting that you're trying to dismiss these concerns at all that's not what i'm saying but i think that that hearing that and saying well i also heard that us that do it is really good but you know these two these two truths can also they can coexist i mean you can have classrooms teachers students who are great you know friend groups who are all super inclusive and then you can have people who who are not um and that that exists and that's kind of a very apparent fact of life especially for students who you know even if it's just three people in the hallways that you pass in between your third and fourth period
063class that once a day you know every day once a day you pass them and you you feel that that is a miniscule kind of part but it weighs down on you and you can feel it um and it's it's very i'm speaking as a student who has got many lgbt you know lgbtq close friends speaking as a student who's a member of that community it is very very challenging and difficult to open up about your experiences especially when they relate to any kind of discrimination that you've faced um so i think that you know students who have or having a good time students who are having an open experience they are you know quick to vocalize that to express that that's a really great thing i'm really glad for that um but students who
064are not are going to be you know closed off they're going to be afraid of talking about this especially if they hear from everyone else oh such a great school they must be if they're thinking am i going crazy you know is this just happening to me am i alone um so i think that almost having a school that is you know so prided um is so it says that it's really good about this and then also having supports makes it almost worse in a school that's just flat out on some level it's slightly you know it's more subtle it's more insidious that's my thoughts on that okay i'm done thank you um so we are here to serve our school we are student reps right um we are supposed to be a student voice
065for student issues and to kind of have our conversations publicly that there is a reason why these conversations are public um so the public can hold one you all accountable and also us accountable right students need to be able to hear what we have to say um i find that there's been like a pattern recently of this dynamic where we are not we do not feel welcome on this board and specifically um when we bring issues up to the board about um like earlier today like um bathrooms right we we know how taxes work um we know that we are so thankful for that our community pays and like subsidizes for our education um we cannot be more thankful for that but it just feels like this dynamic that has formed um specifically one student
066student representative continuously um is being degraded for what they're trying to bring to the table it it just feels very unhealthy to me and it feels like um not productive to what we are here to do [Music] so and i'm just speaking for myself um you know what i've tried to do is when i've heard something that is either incorrect or you know lacks the depth of understanding i feel like it's important to um to speak to that and i know that that can sometimes sound dismissive and i really don't mean to be dismissive and that one of the reasons i i sit here taking 6 000 notes is so that i have this to go and ask questions about what's been brought up because a lot of this stuff you know we have our
067perspective from the people we talk to in the community we do visit schools but you know where we're in and out of multiple schools and you know it's it's a part-time job uh on patreon but um so you know we have limited perspective so we hear what you're saying and i know i and i'm not all you know my fellow board members as well you know we follow up with people are paid professionals who have more information and uh so we try to tell you what we do know and then we try to follow up about what we don't know thanks more and there's nothing else um go ahead yeah um i like to emphasize that you know in terms of seeing the people who are getting input and then moving it along to people
068who know the things that need to be known and or in positions to enable to make decisions and changes that is our job we it is our job to represent the student body and their interests and so then we take all of the input that we gain from talking to our students our teachers staff all day long every day um and we bring it here we bring it to you as the board of education of icsd to then take that input and inject it into your decision making you are the public representative and you get the input not only from us but from the staff that we don't see from the rest of the community from all of the constituents of this district and then it is your job to to put that all together
069and do you know the delicate balancing act that we are all aware of you all recognize um and so you know we we bring to the table a lot of what we feel as students what we see around us in the student body um sometimes there are misconceptions sometimes there are things that we can't see clearly sometimes i think things are unaware of and we appreciate when these things are clarified upon um however these those things should not be used as pushback against our points these things should not be used as reasons as to why we should not or we are you know doing things incorrectly so at the time said there is a reason these conversations are public so we can bring out what we see as students what we see in this in
070our peers and for the board to respond to that um adequately in order to you know have this conversation and and clear things up so that the board and the administration of the district can then go on into their decision-making processes it's not our job to do our homework other than our schoolwork for the people we don't represent although we do try okay respond there are times when you just let it sit and reflect on i actually think this is very timely i think it's beautiful i just don't want you to misconstrue clarifying or explaining and there there will be pushback you know and i think that's healthy and i think that it helps because um you know and i think what one thing that concerns me with hearing what you said is i've also
071heard no keep coming at us we need to hear this so i guess but it is a balancing act um and it is a learning process um when you bring things forward and you're right it is public and when you bring things forward to the public and it may not be 100 accurate or a nuanced thing it's our responsibility to clarify where we can you know because one of my biggest concerns is once it's out there it's out there and it's harder to get it back on those things but just because we clarified or even pushed back a little bit that's not an attack i didn't just state that i no no no no i'm saying that from my own education so but london and i'm actually speaking what he said as far as we
072i hope we agree on that and we see that because i think also this is robust and it's healthy for us so uh and we really need to move on we have great conversations with the community with you all with other students and uh what as a board member whether you're new or been out for a while you learn pretty quickly that you take it all in and the solution isn't always available next week and sometimes it takes years to get wherever you want to and but we can't let that stop us from fixing everything and so it's um but it's always part of that process and that process we take it all in and then we go into our work sessions we hash it out for a bit and we ask what can we
073do what how do we get to we talked about earlier today how do we get to yes we you know we're aboard for more than a decade now we've been trying to get to yes not to say no and um and that's our job is to how do we get to yes and it's a long process to get together sometimes but we really do we appreciate the discussion but we do have some work to do and consent agenda is short because we had a really long one last time i'll move the consent agenda if there's any questions regarding consent please do but uh trish is gonna call it role rob ainsley yes aaron croyd yes jordan everson graduate yes albert harris yes marvel yes chris malcolm yes patricia roslin yes thanks everyone dr brown thank
074you for the opportunity that's your opportunity dr brown and i want you to know because i'm looking at some northeast folks that i can't wait to get up here so uh part of me for being fast and brief but i just want to make sure i announce and recognize the hundreds of folks who came up with the accommodation ceremony today students staff members community members parents in the heat we believe i said that thank you for hanging out with me for 25 minutes while we recognize that many folks it was an amazing experience also i don't think i've heard the high school folks mention this today but unified basketball games tomorrow four thirties yeah you gotta move maybe you did all right from yesterday to tomorrow yeah i got moved and that's the place to
075be tomorrow afternoon at 4 30. let's see some outstanding so um the budget vote frequently asked question section on our website is up and running i will just ask community members to go check that out as you are thinking about and learning more about our budget our proposed budget that is going to be voted on next tuesday and then finally just got to give another shout out to jason trumbull it's rare that we have one of our secondary principals being recognized by the state association the entire state association as secretary principal of the year so when you see jason trumbull um that brother's been here as long as anybody else in this organization and at the high school too um just say thank you and congratulations on a pretty special record to that point dr
076brown there was a time when it was thought that the high school really he was just too big a job for one person or it really how do we solve the principal position in high school um just trouble uh so we talked about that we just had to find first and uh and now he was here already stay efficient thank you for the opportunity more dr ron go ahead i'm gonna take my mask down just because i feel like i connect it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to address you today my name is katie o'connor i'm a k-5 general music teacher at northeast um i'm here to talk to you today a little bit about the hip-hop project that we did in fifth grade at northeast um and i need to just kind of
077end yes that eldridge uh was able to observe me presenting about this work at our uh superintendent's conference day i was able to share it with my colleagues in the fine arts department so i just want to kind of open uh this presentation by acknowledging that i'm not an expert in hip-hop um but i uh come to this work with a lot of respect and this unit is a first draft unit this is my first year teaching this so what you are seeing here represents my growth edge as a music educator and a veteran music educator at that that when i was undergoing my teaching teacher training many years ago that we were not really talking about this in the music education space the way that we are now and i'm glad that we are
078doing it because i feel that all students deserve and deserve the opportunity to see their culture held up elevated examined celebrated in the music education space so um with that uh if i can advance the next slide please um i want to be very clear that you know we are addressing new york state music standards here that uh explicitly we are talking about create creating standard number one two and three can that center around conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work next slide please also this unit was designed uh with goldie mohammed's five pursuits in mind in our building at northeast we have kind of had these as a building focus this year every staff meeting we have had it's kind of opened with a focus on the five pursuits um also explicitly in
079the fine arts department we have been talking about what the five pursuits look like in a fine arts space so um next to each of these terms identity skills intellect criticality and joy you are seeing the questions that we are considering uh in this unit that we're asking students to ponder as um as we move through this unit next slide please um we begin the unit with a framing asking what is hip-hop um and again because of my own identity i felt it most important to center the voices of current practitioners of this art um so this is a short video um uh produced by the smithsonian institution which i will not play for the sake of time but i invite you to listen to i'm at your leisure um dj ice cold is a
080second generation indian american um who talks in the video about her uh experience um encountering this music and coming to it um with a rich understanding of how she enters the space as a as a human and as a as a a child of immigrants and how america itself is a remix culture that we are constantly evolving and developing and that to me at a school that is incredibly diverse where we have 38 languages represented feels really important to me to acknowledge that this is in some ways the perfect music vehicle to explore identity in a space if you can advance the slide please but don't let the video play so go ahead you might need to click again [Music] thank you um our kind of second um kind of big picture thing was looking
081at the history of hip-hop uh through the uh anchored in the text when the beat was born which uh our fifth graders we treated as a read-aloud and kind of explore the historical roots of hip-hop specifically dj koolherk and afrika vombotta who as i learned from talking to eldrid is were personal acquaintances of his which was very exciting for me to hear um we really wanted students to connect with the organic um the the organic origins of this where it came from also that it was here in new york state and only about 50 years ago my understanding is that really it's about 49 years ago the party that kind of started it all and so again this is a very recent part of history but one that continues to evolve rapidly and if you
082turn on the music on the radio today many of our students are accessing this music and it's important to see it reflected in the curriculum again advanced two slides we don't have to watch the read-aloud but again if you would like it uh next we explored the five pillars of hip-hop um these are pedagogical constructs um and if there is a clickable link there for you to explore again at your leisure um djing of course that refers to the beat making aspect or the musical underpinnings of hip-hop emceeing or mic controlling talking about lyrical creations of bringing in ela content other skills um so really making this cross-curricular work in many ways break dancing and graffiti are two elements that i was not able to incorporate this year but i'm hoping in future iterations of
083the unit that we can cooperate with pe and art teachers in the building to really make this a more cohesive and immersive unit and i'm hoping we can bring some additional experts to bear on that so looking at you aldrin um the last pillar this was new to me um is also can is considered knowledge or self-knowledge or again how identity enters um this artistic space um and we dabble in that a little bit as well next slide please so the project as construed um dealt with the following prompt that we are working explicitly on those dj and mc skills asking students to write a four-line lyric based on their name their interest and then record that lyric to an original backing track in the music software soundtrack next slide please so here's the prompts
084this is the model that students were given to kind of base their their projects off of my name is blank and i like to blank or i like blank the second line was theirs to create um uh asking them to rhyme the last word of the second line with the last word of the first i like that oh yeah i like that next slide please so what i'd like to do is show you three examples of student work we asked all students to do all steps of the process some completed all with ease some struggled at every step what we were most interested in is that students were showing up as themselves in the musical space so that they could really feel free to be all of who they are celebrate who they are um
085and while you will see there's certainly room for improvement as far as maybe grammatical things that really wasn't the explicit focus of this because my time with them is so limited that i really wanted to encounter the musical aspects if you could please um click the uh sound icon there we should be able to hear this [Music] my name is [Music] so again he said eden really came to this with a lot of joy you can see here she completely expanded on the model that was given um i really i feel like this is a tremendous expression of joy you can hear her referencing rapping with her dad and that this is a meaningful activity for her at home so um i thought this was a great example but when students are kind of left
086to expand on the model what they would do next slide please uh this is from our student of december let's just open by hearing his work please [Music] if you want to reverse the slide so we can look at the lyrics for a minute thank you um so abdessam as you can hear the cadence of his speech is somewhat different um abdusmud is one of our special needs students at northeast and i i share his example to let you know that this work is accessible to students of uh all needs and identities um i uh one particular thing that i want to point out if you may have heard somebody say the word go at the very opening of the recording two other students asked if they could support a decimal in recording his project
087because the recording step was complicated for many students it emerged through the work that some students became tech mentors to the other and once i kind of released control and realized that students had that expertise it freed me up to move around the room in a different way these two students worked really well with adesamot he readily accepted their help and they really encouraged him in a way that was beautiful and let his work emerge in a way that i think is quite powerful next slide please let's listen to isabella's if we can [Music] and you can stop that just about here for the sake of time you convince slime and bounce us back if you'd like so isabella's primary language is portuguese she is one of our enl students and at the outset of
088the project again she came to me and asked a question may i write the first two lines of the wrap in portuguese which is i because i can readily think of many rhymes that work with my name and again i want her to feel successful i want her to feel confident and so letting her use her primary language was great in case you're wondering what the translation means my name is isabella and i like to rhyme for me it is easy because i like to create i just thought what a fitting um lyric and so confidently delivered so as you can see you know this is really rich work i was tremendously encouraged by the student ownership that i saw by the way they developed their ideas creation is a messy process and this is
089not perfect of course you can hear voices bleeding through but i do think it's really real and i think you're looking at a student showing up in a way that allows them to connect to what they are learning and if we can create those more of those connections for them i feel like that has tremendous implications for how students move through the arts their entire k-12 experience because if we can light their lamps young and make them feel like there is a place for everyone here it is going to dramatically enrich the arts program as it develops all the way through i've been a music educator at high school level i've taught at the collegiate level i came back to k5 specifically because i felt like i had work to do here at the beginning
090to help catch students and and meet them where they are um so one more slide here and i'll keep this quite brief i will say as well during the the um course of this some students were far more comfortable than others remember that this is incorporating many different skills we're talking tech skills we're talking ela skills we're talking performance skills so not all students feel equally competent in all areas so we gave them choices about how they wanted to represent their work some um they were given everybody was expected to self-reflect but when it came time for northeast museum walk we gave them choices and said what would you like to share with the community so some offered uh their self-reflections about what they learned during the process some shared lyrics only some shared entire
091performances but again that was done with a sense of safety and creating uh an environment in which they felt they could thrive and show the best parts of what they did so with that i'm happy to conclude answer any questions that you have i don't have any questions i'm just really impressed thank you very impressed i wish elementary music would have been cool like this oh my god i'm remembering my elementary school music teacher she was nothing like him just looking forward to sitting down and down there as a former uh professor in hip-hop so we've come to the right place we can't uh i'm chomping at the yeah i would really really welcome uh you know ways to kind of make this even more meaningful deeper richer the great thing is our upcoming fourth
092graders already have some familiar familiarity with the software piece of this so they're going to be far more adept and i feel like we can dive in deeper on i'd like to really um work on their competency on the performance and that because i felt like perhaps that was under address this year but it's our growth edge for next year so the students are phenomenal what i'm um equally and or more impressed by is the self-reflective approach as an educator um you know that we don't always know things and how do we sort of put ourselves in a space that may be unfamiliar so i'm going to take some lessons away from that as well so i really thank you for being a critical thoughtful reflective educator working in a space that may not always
093feel comfortable but the results of it i i have to really give a huge shout out to you know again our building leadership our equity team who you know i consulted with many of the members as i was kind of conceiving this also to daphne lulu has been really really um diligent in helping the entire department reconceived curriculum i was able to take the anti-racist curriculum writing professional development last year and found that incredibly helpful so i do want you to know that that professional development is bearing fruit and you know it's it's a skill that has to be practiced to be absorbed so you know as we strengthen the muscle i think we'll continue to get better at it but we're trying you know we really are trying i just love the way you
094weaved a lot of that into this process for your children um and the appearance being tech support my only struggle was that when you share the age of it and say you know it's 29 years old yes it is because i remember it's just reality it's hard to date oneself i know you're not that old but i have to say uh thank you you have to rock me um let you just share with one of the best artifacts of culturally and linguistically responsiveness i've ever seen and uh and i have to say it's symbolic too because we hear a lot about recruitment and potential efforts i know how you got here um and the recruiting efforts that went into that what attracted you to us and how we're efficiently retained and professional development so as
095folks are going to vote on a budget next week um you are symbolic of what we're attempting to do and please know on your gift because had uh you've been a music teacher in central virginia back in the 80s thank you thanks well i don't know speaking of safety um about the safety plan should be yeah second reading and adoption tonight okay thanks everybody and i know um it was a review and policy because i observed for a bit i think and sean anything um i'll leave it to dan or there's not much to add but go ahead uh well i mean i i can i can go through it quickly some of the updates if you want i know we've done that a few times before yeah but um um trisha i've seen you
096some slides if you want to put them up but that's okay um so you know first and foremost uh it's ground it's grounded in the culture of love um you know when we were building uh the district safety plan during you know we were experiencing a global pandemic and we didn't want to recreate um oppressive systems we saw it as an opportunity to create a plan um that was anti-racist anti-oppressive and um to evaluate some of our best practices that's okay i'll just go through um so so some of the things we learned during kobit was evacuation lockdowns we learned that uh you know we don't want to have classes uh next to each other we want to have them separately we know how students feel sometimes when they're experiencing a lockdown drill and we
097took it as an opportunity to we you know we don't have to practice it we can talk it out to the students throughout many of our policy meetings um we talked about communication with families so families could have some advance notice uh for drills that were occurring lockdown drills uh shelter in place and really really all drills uh we spent a lot of time talking about when we contact law enforcement and that we started to create a protocol where um if they could contact the building principles and administrators should contact the superintendent and or the deputy superintendent to check in um but of course if it's it's eminent danger to call 9-1-1 um but also also during that situation if it's not eminent danger to make sure um that we reach out to parents and
098guardians that we provide mental health supports and other supports needed um in this document we've added a lot of a lot of resources that include talking to children about violence tips for parents and teachers we've included safety drills and exercises for students with autism spectrum disorders and students with disabilities and we also uh the um we also created a protocol that the state asked us to create um basically uh if if we had to respond to a communicable disease um so we made a lot of these changes we also learned from a lot of events that happened in the community and adjusted our emergency responses and in some of the previous meetings i talked about when we go into shelter in place when we go to lockdown um and i know our buildings have um
099have done a lot of work around that um that's really a very short version of some of the updates we did and um that's it for me i know i know i've talked to i don't know a lot about this short many meetings no a short version of updates but many many hours yeah it was stated earlier about a process right that the safety plan has to be reviewed every year and each year we continue to learn and build and find ways to be more inclusive um realizing the ways in which our safety plan has been exclusive and continues to be exclusive please don't mistake what i'm saying to our community uh but we will continue to own it we will continue to change it we'll continue to learn so uh i'm very appreciative dan
100of your ability to be flexible and listen to the feedback and try to incorporate it into this latest version of the plan which is vastly different than the version was five or six years ago and hopefully the one in five or six years will be all so fast and different and we'll refine ourselves now as well so as memory serves what we have is it was black and it was very much lack in many areas and frankly in all aspects so i appreciate it appreciate the work anything else can we i move this set the safety plan for a second reading and adoption this evening second [Music] and i'll be talking about different things in the future yes shawn everest bradley yes albert harris marilyn yes chris malcolm yes patricia lazarus yes thanks everybody thanks
101once that's not now you can cheer i'm uh we do have our addition to the uh agenda which is changes to the open meetings law not our changes but from the state of new york and john d one let's talk to us yeah i don't know folks had a chance to take a look at the document that is shared as well changes to the open meeting law there are some decisions that will have to be made by each individual school board if you're not one of the big five anyway in terms of what is expected um and how we proceed uh again the document is there and where it is um on tonight's agenda and it is connected to item 10.3 yeah it is a one page uh one page statement that will allow board
102members to attend by video conference if um all additional criteria is met and that includes having a quorum in person that will be a requirement coming up uh as of june 8th so we're coming up soon uh the public is able to attend the meeting at the physical locations we have here we will have to adopt a resolution that allows aspects of virtual meetings we will have to adopt and post the rules for participation um both in-person and public uh there is still some legal debate about whether or not the person who is virtual will have to identify the address from which they will be virtual act that has historically been what's been required and to allow the public to also attend the virtual location that's what historically has been required as well we're still
103making sure that we get clarification on that i'm hoping that will change and we will have to participate in real time and one of the biggest issues or changes of a virtual participation is that the camera will have to be on at all times uh so there's a couple things that we have to consider as a board of how to proceed boards are not required to have hybrid meetings um the new law provides it as an option and thus the need for a resolution which we are uh about three weeks away from having to adopt before this new law goes into effect if it's helpful for us to have our legal team here to answer questions on the 24th of our next board meeting we can do that with resolution language ready to go but
104to answer additional questions that's something that we can also consider um it is not a policy i want to be clear about this it would be a resolution but it would be the ways in which the board operates moving forward um sean do you have any notion um about the public may participate and provide comment virtually in real time whether that squares with our policy of having public comment yes the idea would be that it would be public comment in real time that's that's the idea but you could have it designated our policy could still be it could be an agenda item right as it is and sean could you clarify um you mentioned that um there is a question as to whether like when a board member is participating virtually whether they have to
105um give the location that they're at and did you also say that people would have to be like the public wouldn't be able to participate from that location that is the that is the current law law that states pre-coded things continue to change guidance continues to change but yes prior to the opportunity of virtual meetings a school board member could attend from another location but that location would have to be published and available to the public so if i were running a low-grade fever and stayed at home so as not to endanger the lives of others or the health of others i would have to allow people into my home if you wanted to attend virtually and we would have to make that known at least 24 hours in advance along with our agenda or
106you would stay home and not attend the meeting as well as i would do if we were only meeting in person right as we did in the past when folks are under the weather or not otherwise right and i will say there's significant lobbying to expand the idea of hybrid or virtual video conferencing so it's possible that prior to june 8th we'll get that we'll get a different set of recommendations or advice from the state as well as it's happened multiple times throughout yes they don't always think it all the way through well to me that that would be the critical issue right there um you know what what are the rules around attending virtually yeah right and sean did they touch on you contend virtually but it had to be would have to be
107within the districts no you could be can you can you can be anywhere you can be anywhere in the world and how does that that squarely uh you know there's this vague language about significant reading including but not limited to and um this is ultimate work right all right so this is albany right so we wanted to bring it up to make sure that folks it was on people's radar to be able to do some research and look at the recommendation we did receive a notice from our legal counsel that was far more verbose than what we see here this is the bulleted version that you see here so i would recommend reading both of those and check them we've received the message from um bsnk and i will forward it back around to all
108board members to make sure that they have um and i can also send you the actual statement that came out from um new york state as well and to be clear the uh this is this is in effect now we are being given a [Music] report um extension well having provided an extension until june 8th until june 8th there was at least a month or maybe two months yeah like 60 days they gave us 60 days to comply but it is it is the rules and this is not school boards this is common city council toppings county legislature right this is any public government right any agency that is open to open meetings law right this is the open meetings we haven't really uh we haven't discussed where we will be with our work sessions
109committees we've been we've been remaining virtual for committees but for a work session where we typically would invite many to come in in person and you could have more than four board members attend at once but that's porn so does that if you're going to have more than four um would that have to be in person there's two questions like that or should we we're going to have well the board will have to have a conversation about what will work sessions look like so for example the last hr meeting if i'm not mistaken there are five board members present in a virtual realm that would not be able to happen under this we'd have to be in person it'd have to be notified in advance if we have three board members that are in a
110committee meeting there is a chance that it could still be virtual or for experimenting right but and that's partly why we went that route but if there's going to be more there's going to be a quorum present that has to be in first right and notify 24-hour at least 24 hours in advance right before we switch to the work session format during committee meeting if uh if another board member showed up um that was on the committee or was late or whatever another board member would have to leave the room which that didn't lend itself to frankly board members learning more about what was going on in the other committees and offering their inputs and it's an open dialogue and as as we say that's the best place to have our conversations about frankly bathrooms
111and curriculum and policy and all and all the rest so so we will have a i'm gonna tell you already it's gonna be a busy 24th our meeting on the 24th this um can be on there i'll take a look at the date i don't think we would have much more time we may have another meeting before then i don't know what our first meeting in june is maybe it's june 6th i i don't know with that being said i would probably ask our first meeting i mean the first week in june we have policy and hr and this is something that we're going to have to address on the 24th so i would ask folks to be informed if you have questions send them immediately we can start trying to get some answers and
112put something together folks that may address the questions that we have and we can revisit those questions at our next public meeting so folks know some of the dialogue that has been had and if we if we pass resolution to allow virtual participation would anybody who's attending virtually have to make the reason public i do not believe so and just uh and we'll talk about it more but uh uh check it out investigate it uh and we'll talk more um just some upcoming dates of importance uh just the folks now community knows we will not be meeting next tuesday that is election day um and so that is the uh a bunch of risk of obviously the budget referendums and then the board votes and that is next tuesday we do have to meet on
113wednesday to verify the election results we typically do that in the evening you can do frankly about any time but we do that in the evening and next tuesday is facilities and we really need to have a facilities work session next week because of everything going on so facilities will meet at five o'clock uh next wednesday that's the normal meeting time and then we'll have a special voting meeting after facilities which have a quorum and are we i think we're trying to figure out whether we're going to be totally virtual or are we totally virtual for that we're going to be totally virtual for that um for facilities and also the special voting meeting and this may indeed be the last time since we are in this 60-day window that we can have a vote
114to verify uh election results totally virtually and uh a curriculum works faster than their regular meeting is on would be on tuesday may 24th but that's going to be but can i just say that this is a work with astronomers working with our our administrators for god knows how long right this is cultural responsibility this is complete engagement this is joy this is this is it not just this particular subject but the extent that we can continue this work to expand those opportunities for our kids keep them attached to learning as you heard her say everything she is doing in that presentation is aligned with the standards of the state so i think we should they'll take a small tiny little tip of the hat to ourselves and our administrators and say yeah you often
115get a chance to say yes out loud around this change all right so we uh talked about anything else great uh great afternoon [Music] but it's okay it's not that late and i think we're done right yay happy birthday [Music] [Laughter]