001very good i think we are we are back from exec session we are our regular voting meeting for the board of education for the city school district as uh open for business and um i don't believe we have a modification to the agenda i do see uh rob actually go ahead my apologies we do have a modification to the agenda um one that was added earlier today but i want to follow proper protocols um i move and i'm sorry that my agenda is not loading here for me um sean there is a supplemental to the personnel report is that what you're um alluding to no unfortunately um if you give me one second it's agenda item oh that's right it was the number of the policy that we're going to discuss later that's correct so
002i want to make sure that we officially recognize the addition of agenda item 11.3 a discussion about policy one two three zero public participation at school board meetings and so i move that we add that to the agenda second bypass and uh we will vote on that correction but it is necessary to do that can't do it by consent um associative call the role please okay rob ainsley erin croyle yes sean eversley bradwell yes eldrid harris yes nicola fave yes maura lange yes chris malcolm yes ann reichlen yes patricia wazilow yes thanks everyone and uh sean when we get to policies you're going to keep track of that so we nothing is missed so that's appreciate it very good so i'm moving on and i think um where are we it's uh uh public commentary
003and uh i believe we do have some folks signed up for public comment yes and just before we begin um patricia and emily will be handling this part of the public comments for the agenda want to acknowledge that later on in tonight's agenda we'll be speaking about two board policies one is policy one two three zero participation public participation at board meetings the other is policy one four zero zero public comments and complaints and for tonight's meeting and keeping with our current policy one two three zero um it is asked that all folks who speak uh share their name and topic to be addressed as they speak um and we will proceed from there so um emily and trisha thank you sean uh the first person up to speak is miss karina lockenhoff miss lockenhoff
004you're unmuted yes can you hear me now yes excellent thank you so much first i would like to thank the district for promoting pro-equity and anti-racist curricula such as the black lives matter at school program recent events in the dryden school district have yet again demonstrated how much we need such programs so thank you so much i'm so glad this is going well in our district second i would like to raise ongoing concerns about the lack of equity between distance and in-person learners at the elementary level last summer i presented last october i presented a petition that was signed by over 300 district parents the petition called out severe inequities between distance and in-person learners these inequities were created by the district's choice to open on a five-day in-person schedule at all costs this meant
005that the bulk of resources went to in-person students leaving distance learners in large classes often over 30 students the petition asked for smaller online class sizes and added support to ensure that distance learning students had a learning experience comparable to in-person learners sadly those requests have not been met moreover the district did not live up to its promise to allow families to reassess their learning choice at the end of fall semester although some students were allowed back in person others are still waiting for a spot and are paying a heavy toll online class sizes continue to be very large and what's more concerning is that distance learner are missing out on course goals throughout spring my fifth grader had regular handwriting practice in spite of the online setting because she was in a smaller class
006but since she was switched to the large online class she has written less than a page in longhand since october she's now asked to type her responses and with her with the easy access to spellcheck her spelling skills have taken the steep hit she's no longer correcting herself she's just hitting autocorrect i've now heard from several district employees that this is not a problem because she'll be able to use spell check in middle and high school but unfortunately there's a minimum of spelling skills required to use spell check the other day she was in tears because she was trying to write basic words like else or these but she was so far off that she completely stumped the spell check she was lost this massive regression in skills is happening to a kid whose parents
007are university professors and whose house is stuffed with books and education materials i can't imagine what's happening to distance learners from less privileged backgrounds what's making things worse is that the district has converted all of its dedicated reading teachers at the elementary level into classroom teachers for in-person students this limits access to response to intervention programs that would be critical to addressing learning loss in online learners there are three months left in the school year i'm calling on district leadership to please make a concerted effort to address the learning laws especially in ela um and in the in the writing and spelling among the distance learners please bring back those reading teachers bring back additional resources bring back long handwriting into the online classroom it's so critical because otherwise those students are going to come
008back and fall and they're going to be lost thank you very much thank you miss lockenhoff up next we have yael sar hello everybody thank you so much for having me um i'm also very thankful that today we are not in the webinar format um this is this feels so much better seeing everyone's faces and i'm also grateful that um the public comments come with uh our video on it feels so much more uh humanized thank you i appreciate that um today i am reading an anonymous comment by another i apologize for interrupting our current policy does not allow for the reading of anonymous letters we can send anonymous letters to individual board members to the board clerk to the let's talk portal but we have asked according to our current policy one two three
009zero that folks speak on their own behalf okay so in what are you what i'm hearing from you is that in previous uh meetings when readers were allowed to speak for others that was in contradiction to board policy that was indeed in violation of our current board policy yes and that's part of the conversation we'll be having this evening when we discuss policy one two three zero okay i sit corrected thank you i'm i'm i'm good i'm done thank you and again i would say that please feel free to submit any anonymous letter to individual board members to the board clerk or to the let's talk check portal we will still receive the information emily or tricia thank you sean up next we have mr steve manley uh good evening i y'all had her hands
010raised just as i uh came on i'm not sure if she was fully finished go ahead let's finish up with the uh we're always happy to hear from folks that sign up and wish to speak to the board and uh when we're in person um it really is common practice not only here but across the state that you state who you are and what you're going to speak about um we're we get glad to get letters from anyone uh if you want to be anonymous fine but uh it's really as much we try to be as open past as possible for folks speaking to us always happy to do that and we want to hear from you but we want to hear from you yeah and um others can certainly send members to us so
011thank you go ahead thank you thank you that's very that's very clarified so i'm yael sar i am the mother of um two children in the district uh uh ari is a sixth grader in boynton he is an uh a distant learner ari and his brother adam is um a junior at ihs and is uh also a distant learner and most of you know him as one of the representatives of the rep the high school reps to the board so in response to what i what you guys just told me which i understand and respect i have a question about the let's talk portal and over the past few years and especially since the pandemic began i know that a a great number of parents have written a lot of requests and um basically you
012know either either made requests or just uh shared very uh very strong feelings or just a lot of heartfelt communications to the um let's talk portal and one of the things that i'm hearing from a lot of people who've done that is that they are feeling that it's going nowhere and that the time and the um emotion and energy that they were spending to write their communications then feels like it was depleting because they don't always get a response and um if they haven't saved that information somewhere else um no one no one but but whoever is reading the we don't know exactly who reads the let's talk i'm assuming a lot of board members do but there's no clear uh path for those feelings and and uh ideas that parents share with you to
013be seen by the community and there that's a i believe that that's a loss of uh of parent and constituent um energy and agency so my request is if it was possible to add like a click button like a check box to the let's talk communications that uh would ask the communicators if they would like to have their comment be public somewhere on the vast website situation that um um icsd holds somewhere where the community you know the the tons of emotion and time that parents put into communicating with you guys would then not disappear into cyberspace but could be something that other parents can see and teachers can see and administrators can see and that way that energy has a longer reach and impact and now i'm i'm completely done and thank you for
014allowing me to speak again no thank you it was great great to hear you and what what you wanted to talk about that's outstanding and steve go ahead okay i think i'm all unmuted uh good evening everyone uh thank you all for your time tonight your dedication to our schools i my name is steve manley i am the executive director of ipei the ithaca public education initiative i'm honored in this role to share in 25 years meeting the needs of teachers schools students supporting their risk taking and their innovation throughout our school district this year we are funding among other things classrooms diversifying the authors in their classroom libraries students becoming scientists in their classroom and at a distance the revision of the 10th grade literature curriculum at ithaca high school broadening the scope of
015authors introducing and embedding bi poc literature while challenging 10th grade students to have grade wide conversations excuse me and experiences we are able to fund these ideas and turn them into reality through the gifts made from our community to ipei we then make those gifts available to the ithaca city school district to its schools to its teachers to its students we're honored to provide this support our annual fundraising event the adult spelling bee and generous support from individuals businesses and organizations throughout the year make this work possible and like so many things covid has required us to pause the v this year but we still need your support and mr ainsley members of the board dr brown all the individuals listening tonight i am inviting all i am inviting you all to register and join
016us in the ipei scavenger hunt sponsored by cayuga medical center tompkins trust company warren real estate and cornell university with many other local location sponsors the scavenger hunt is a family and pod friendly socially distanced exploration of downtown and just a little bit beyond ithaca interpreting clues discovering sites of history and culture that have shaped the city we call home registration for this fundraiser event is open now at ipei.org with individual family and pod prices as well as a pay what you can option we want everyone to feel that they can participate in this outdoor socially distant safe at your own pace and comfort level uh event i hope we'll see you the weekend of april 17th and 18th outside of the house with your mask on and on the ipei scavenger hunt all information
017is available at ipei.org mr ainslie thank members of the board thank you for your time i'm honored to work with your teachers and your staff to help make great things possible for our students and our schools thank you steve up next is florenzia arden i don't see florenzia in the chat so i'm going to move on to suzanne vandemark hello my name is suzanne vandemark and i'm speaking today about concurrent learning um i'm a special education teacher here at ithaca high school and i'm also a parent of a sophomore here i'd like to thank the central leadership team in the board of education for the support and leadership that you've provided especially through these last 12 months i have no idea what sorts of things you've had to do to keep things going here but
018i want to say thank you and i want to thank you for letting me speak tonight i wanted to take some time to show and explain what i do as an in-person special education teacher so that moving forward with planning for the next academic year you can all have a picture of the challenges all teachers face i am what's called a direct consultant teacher for three global one classes and two economics classes i am legally required to be in these classes to directly provide special design instruction so that students with disabilities can access their education alongside their non-disabled peers i'm speaking to you from the room where i teach every school day and i'm speaking with a mask as i do every school day um i as i said i teach concurrently which means that
019i teach the in-person students who sit in these desks behind me and also the remote students who are projected on this epson board much like this zoom meeting is being projected right now um the general education teachers that i work with teach remotely so they're projected from the epson board as well uh usually the only face that i see is of the general education teacher be because most students don't turn on their cameras and in fact some students i haven't seen all year the in-person students can talk to the remote students through this snowball mic sometimes it's hard to hear but that's what we use and also when we have to break out into smaller groups and i can work more focused with my student than certain students i usually go to another computer which
020is right here this is a laptop a borrowed laptop from the library and i do i find these headphones work fast so i can work with students closely who are remote so while i'm doing that i'm also checking in with students um in the classroom both the general ed and specialized students that are in the classroom as well um so i wanted you to see um that like many teachers i'm i'm kind of part an in-class facilitator part special ed teacher part mediocre tech problem solver and i feel like my my skills are spread thin and i think it's really important for everyone to understand the challenges and limitations of teaching concurrently i can only imagine what it feels like from a student's point of view i don't think it's worth it to pour more
021resources into this model because i don't think that it would provide much added benefit rather i think our resources would be best spent designing a setup that allows for classes to be either a hundred percent in-person teaching or a hundred percent remote learning many new districts are implementing online learning academies through their boces and i can post an example of that in the chat um i do think that the solution will probably start with a committee composed of staff experienced in creating master schedules that's a difficult task to do even in a normal year and also people from our central administration with the power and knowledge to create this rather quick change so i'm going to leave you with a challenge and i'm wrapping up here um i challenge uh you all for our board
022for the next board meeting to conduct it using the concurrent model um maybe you all could group in the boardroom some at home some community members in the boardroom community members at home and i think you would feel firsthand that of the three modes of um instruction meaning all in person all remote or this concurrent system that the concur system although better than no education at all is the worst model for our secondary students so it's march and time is on our side right now to um plan for this thank you so much for listening i really appreciate it thank you suzanne thank you up next is miss eliza maron maron hello good evening everyone um so my name is lisa maron i am a parent of two icse students and the topic well i
023was also signed up to make an anonymous comment to read an anonymous comment but rather than just skipping my spot i wanted to make sure to go on record so that everyone on the board and everyone listening today realizes that there are multiple people who would like their voices heard but that don't feel comfortable speaking up and maybe just take a moment to think about why that might be and that the idea of just uh telling these people to submit their comments through the let's talk portal it really isn't the same there are uh 92 participants at this meeting today it will be recorded the recording will be shared with the public so when you make a comment here you're sharing it with the board and also sharing it with the community so the community
024can know what others are thinking and we can build from each other and move forward whereas if you're just writing to the let's talk portal only people in the administration are getting to read it and we may or may not get a response as yale commented so i think this model has room for improvement and i'm disappointed that i cannot share my comments today but i wanted to make sure that we reflected on that thank you for listening thank you uh up next we have mr tim harris hi my name is tim harris i'm a pediatrician at northeast pediatrics here in town i'm also the parent of two children in the school district one in elementary school who gets to come to school in person every day and one who's doing the hybrid so two
025days in person in uh at duet middle school i i just wanted to share briefly some of my experiences in the office interacting with lots of children in families throughout this pandemic i at the at the outset of all of this i was most concerned with the smaller number of at-risk children children with developmental disabilities other learning disabilities adhd and how distance learning was going to affect their ability to learn during the school year but what struck me the most is how broad the struggles have been throughout the student population so when i have kids in the office and of course this is anecdotal but i ask all the children who are learning through the hybrid model or at home but especially the hybrid model which they prefer being at home learning or being in
026person learning and it has been universal i've seen just a couple of children who have said that they prefer learning from home and and pretty much everybody else is is pretty clear that they uh feel like they're uh they're missing out so i i um you know my concern has switched to uh the the the problems uh not not the major issues that we are certainly seeing a spike of uh mental health issues and so on but the the kind of sub-acute problems of kids who just are learning less than they typically do they're getting less social interaction than they would in a typical school year and as a as a result such a large number of children are struggling so i i just wanted to offer my services to anybody in the school board
027that would like to have an offline conversation about the challenges of getting more days in school for the students because i continue to be concerned about all of all the challenges that these students are facing from not being able to be in school five days a week thanks that's it thanks dr harris appreciate it oh and i should point out that uh dr if anybody wants to get in touch with me uh dr d'addale will have my contact information i'm sorry thank you up next uh is miss jessica casey hi there um i'm jessica casey and i'm a pediatrician at buttermilk falls pediatrics i'm just want to follow on to what tim said um and i agree with everything he said and for all the same reasons um the other thing i see a lot
028of in my practice is adolescent mental health it's a lot of what i've done for years um and the magnitude of this and how much kids are struggling kids that have not struggled in the past kids who've maybe struggled a little it's really just overwhelming i i don't it's not developmentally appropriate for adolescents to not be seeing each other and so they just it's sort of accumulated over the last year to a degree that i don't know what to do for them at this point they need to see each other they need to have more time out of the house i agree that as much as we can get them back into school safely it would really just be of benefit feel like next year there's going to be a whole lot of emotional social
029emotional kind of trauma that everybody has to work through um and i really appreciate you hearing me say that um because you know academically it's gonna that's gonna be maybe the easy part of catching up i have this feeling based on what i'm seeing um so you know i'm also here and happy to help and have conversations and do what we can to make sure everybody thrives thank you i'll keep it true no thank you dr casey look forward to having more students back in classrooms very very soon and trisha no thank you um trisha so rob uh that was uh dr casey was the last uh person on the list tonight oh very good thank you um sorry to interrupt trisha the list you sent me had kelly boycott was the final speaker um
030hi i i was also going to speak on behalf of others who weren't feeling like they could speak on their own so i had withdrawn myself from speaking today i don't have anything else specific to say but um there are definitely lots of people who don't feel that they can say who they are so i was going to do that i'll pour in an email on the center to tricia though no thank you and we'll uh we'll discuss uh those policies a little later in the meeting and then um but i think uh john are we we good to go ahead and move on so we can get to our our agenda i believe so all right very good and so uh on to student reps okay lovely um first of all i'd like to
031thank everyone who spoke today in public comment speaking on behalf of your community and about topics that are important to you are essential to bringing important perspectives to the table um in my time being a board rep i've seen many people take a stand during public comment section right before our presentation of course um and their words were well spoken and very eloquently said and i appreciated their invite and their passion directly after public comment we the board represents present our section from our community's perspective um and it came to our attention that by not immediately to public com responding to public comments it becomes easy to overlook what points they might bring to the table as more people present their opinions and their topics while i'm aware some board members take notes and try
032to address everyone's concerns which i think is great um we were wondering if in the future it would be easier to respond to public comment and our section individually emma if that's a question for the board i think that's a conversation that we have to have later in the meeting during board responses so i apologize for the irony excuse me sean uh dr dundale would like to speak if that's possible uh sure absolutely but let's hear from dr dundale and then we can move back on to student reps hi i'm so sorry i i thought i sent an email i'm not sure what happened but thank you for letting me speak i'm going to read a statement because i have a lot to say i'm going to try to do it really fast so if
033i sound like one of those list of side effects at the end of um drug ads let me know and tell me to slow down okay um so most of you know me as the icsd medical director but i'm also a frontline healthcare worker and a mom to three kids in the district um i'm here in all my roles tonight to advocate for the increase in in-person instruction this year many of you may remember getting middle-of-the-night emails from me last march when we made the decision to close the schools when i was waking up worried about the safety of our community at the time we knew about the transmission of the virus and covert rates were rising exponentially around us when we closed in march it was the right thing to do i'm again waking
034up with a sense of urgency although the children's have been largely spared the worst implications of covid as they typically exhibit milder symptoms and have a better prognosis the kids are not all right the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on the mental health and well-being of our kids in a recent survey of over 1200 parents of children aged 5 to 12 conducted by the cdc children receiving virtual or hybrid instruction were reported to have worsened mental health or emotional health decreased physical activity and less time to vent outdoors than those receiving in-person instruction additionally the parents have received the parents of children receiving virtual or hybrid instruction are more likely to report their own emotional distress related to balancing work and child care there were also a greater risk on 11 out of 17
035indicators of child and parental well-being scores as for adolescents a national study looking at the children aged 13 to 18 year olds found a doubling of insurance claims for mental health issues as compared to the year before this includes claims for self-harm which were up for 90 suicide attempts up by almost 120 anxiety increased 93 and major depressive disorder by 83 percent i'm seeing similar things in my practice and so are my colleagues as you've heard from dr harris and dr casey what we're also learning is that schools are low risk lower settings for coba transmission recent reports from multiple districts across the country illustrate schools ability to maintain low risk environments even with the reduction of physical distancing by using proven mitigation strategies like we're using like mask wearing improved ventilation and hand hygiene
036based on this research last friday the cdc released updated guidance allowing three feet rather than six feet of distance between students this shift puts school districts in a position to mitigate some of these negative effects of this pandemic for children in our community by bringing more students back to the classroom not only can we bring more students back to back to in school but i think we could do it without jeopardizing the health and safety of our educators bank in large part thanks in large part to vaccines we are lucky to live in a community that has prioritized our schools pushing our staff ahead of all the other frontline workers and from what i hear everyone who wanted to be vaccinated has received at least their first dose all of this is to say that
037we can and should bring student backs for in-person instruction this year schools are not just a place to provide education we all know that they provide so much more than that bringing more students back into the classroom will benefit the children directly affording them greater access to academic social emotional support and other services the benefit of in-person instructions are likely to extend their caregivers in our broader school community particularly those shouldering long-standing inequities which is pandemic has exposed and exacerbated i'm so grateful to be a member of this community and i feel privileged that i see what you all do you the teachers administration and the board of ed behind the scenes and i know you're dedicated so much to our students i am here and committed to supporting your efforts for the students who
038return to in-person learning as my capacity as icsd's medical director and in any capacity you need me thanks thank you doctor and now back to uh hi um so uh another question we have is um if i guess this is also kind of piggybacking on what a lot of um of the people in the public comments um were saying but um if someone wanted to submit a public comment anonymously how will the rest of the community know that their concerns are being addressed and being heard and that the board is taking action on them um as well as the fact that we know that many teachers and other stakeholders in the district prefer to present anonymously um because of concerns of possible retribution for criticizing the district or raising concerns um and we would like
039to know how you plan on addressing and alleviating these concerns as to making uh presenting publicly um and not anonymously comfortable and safe for everyone in the community um so as like uh was mentioned in like the public comments also um there's a lot of people who would like to see like a return to person like in person learning um and yeah so i guess i really just wanted to know how like realistic that is uh can we like expect a full return in person can you expect like partial and like what kind of standards or vaccination numbers would we need to allow that um also i know that biden had stated earlier this month that all adults could be vaccinated by the end of may um and if we assume that's true i was
040wondering what kind of environment we could expect to come next september uh because i don't doubt that covid will continue to exist but so i was really wondering about like the district's plans for issues like child care for teachers that seem to be happening now yeah and i understand that a lot of these questions are still unknown but i feel like they aren't that unlikely so i feel like um i was just wondering what kind of plans the district has for these like very possible situations um i would also like to bring up the topic of bringing awareness to asian american hate violence and racism as you probably know last week there was a mass shooting in atlanta georgia most likely targeted against the asian american community even before this horrifying event there has been
041a huge rise of um anti-aapi asian-american pacific islander violence hate and racism that has been exacerbated by covid and other long-held negative views from the public some iasia students of the aapi community have directly experienced this type of hate like being being spit on and bullied and they are scared it has uncovered many micro aggressions rooted in systematic racism and other feelings of being labeled as foreigners and being subjects of the harmful model minority myth as well as being seen as a monolith when in fact asians are a very diverse group seemingly harmless microaggressions can be harmful to our identity and damage the way we perceive ourselves we grew up believing that we needed to be okay with these types of normalized racism and that's not okay i understand that ihs is taking steps to
042educate teachers and staff and support students about this important topic but i was wondering what the district is doing to include asian americans and other people of color and anti-racist education and policies and we would like to emphasize that bypoc includes asians and other ethnic minority groups it is very common for people to without realizing use the term bipac in a way that is exclusionary of asian americans and other minority groups so we feel it is important for aapi and all racial minority groups to be involved and included in anti-racism discussions and initiatives considering bipod in the chat i have also sent a video from evelyn kim a senior at ihs where she talks about her own experience being asian american and some ways to stop asian hate i think this is a very powerful
043video so i encourage everyone here to watch it anything else right now and we'll just go to our board responses those who wish to respond right now i'll start i'm going to try and address the issues raised uh somewhat chronologically though grouping together comments that were on similar topics so starting with the comment about communication with the board um and and specifically people wanting to communicate anonymously so one thing i can say uh about the fact that we did not follow our own policy for public comment for a number of meetings i think i attributed to um a lot of what has happened since we've switched to this uh remote meeting the zoom meetings is that a lot of we're doing a lot of things sort of on the fly so um we we let
044things happen without actually realizing that uh we were not following our own policy uh so when when anonymous comments became uh pretty prominent um we realized that in some ways it we may see it we might see it as problematic and certainly is problematic in that it does not follow our policy uh so that's why we're going to be discussing this further tonight about do we want to modify our policy and also though i really appreciate people uh bringing up the limitations of the other avenues for communication like the let's talk porthole so i think that um certainly moving forward maybe tonight but certainly moving forward i think we're going to have further conversation about how we can make sure that the community has multiple avenues in order to share their perceptions and to also
045feel like they're being heard by those of us on the board and people in the administration and that they're also being heard by the larger community so um those are things we're definitely going to be talking about and trying to refine um so i guess there there's a lot of discussion about the need for uh getting our students back into the classroom uh as much as possible full-time and i don't think there's a person on the board in the administration or anywhere here who doesn't think it's important to bring students back full time um there are a lot of barriers to doing that um and one of them and dr brown's talked about this often is that we have to operate under certain guidelines the guidelines change sometimes we hear information that sounds like the
046guidelines are going to change uh but we're not sure but we're trying and our administrative team is working tirelessly to plan for um for you know potential changes um to the situation with the vaccine uh the situation with uh the spread of covid and uh what we're being told about what are the guidelines we have to follow um so this is something that is being addressed being discussed and planned for and certainly for next year we are hoping to have every student who wants to be back in our buildings full time we realize that it is essential um and i really thank suzanne for uh for demonstrating so clearly explaining so clearly what the uh the model that she is the concurrent model that teachers um in secondary are operating under and particularly the teachers
047who are in person who have to deal with not only students who are in person but students who are online in some cases co-teachers who are online while they're in person um so uh i'm pretty aware of that because i have a daughter who is a secondary teacher who is doing exactly that and i hear and see uh from her what what the incredible challenges are and also as a member of the curriculum committee we have observed classes that are operating in this concurrent model nobody thinks it's good um so we are all trying very very hard to uh to figure out how we can move away from that um but some of the decisions that were made you know months and months ago uh were based on what we knew then what we were
048able to do then uh and we have to continually reassess how conditions are changed and what we have learned about um what works um what doesn't what works better than things that don't work well at all so just know that this is something that all of us care deeply about um and i guess uh to respond to um and i think that sort of addresses in our admin team we'll talk more to some of the questions that um andrew was asking about the specific uh plans for next year um and then to grace's comments about the rise in anti-asian uh um violence and um and discrimination uh were i think all of us quite aware that it has been rising um and it's really accelerating and it's most disturbing you know the district has um
049has charged every teacher every staff member to be working from an anti-racist perspective and um and to implement anti-racist curriculum and practices that's everybody's responsibility um and everybody is engaged in learning more about how to do that and i think grace's point is absolutely uh well taken that many times it is not recognized that asian americans are also targets and increasingly targets of uh racist action and so for us all to be reminded of that and for our staff to have that awareness as they continue their efforts to make us an actively anti-racist school district and community i think it's really important that um we are reminded of that so thanks to everybody who commented uh i may have missed some things but i'm sure my fellow board members will have more to add thank
050you thanks maurer you uh you've covered a lot and i appreciate it well said um others wish to speak um i would like to add my comments uh to moiras again i will i will try to group comments as as moira said um we are all aware of the limitations of concurrent learning and um and teaching and of course this was unknown territory when we tried to do the district tried to do the best it could uh because one of the uh realities about many many people making heartfelt comments is i don't think there's any two people in this district who want exactly the same thing and everyone has the answer to what they want my husband is teaching at ithaca college he taught for 30 plus years in person last year he taught online
051and now he is doing blended in class talking to kids who are in his class and talking to kids who are as many as a thousand miles away at home on a computer and so he's he's done it all and when he comes home every day after doing the concurrent learning he is exhausted in a way that i've never seen him it's hard and what he what he says keeps him going is the emotional need of people to connect for teachers and students to connect in person and we can talk about what's best and hardest and most effective but you can't take that emotional component out and the teachers i've i've talked to who are teaching at the high school it's hard it's hard and they don't want to do it anymore and they don't
052know how they're going to get through the year but they say it's the kids in my classroom who keep me going and they mean it and that's why i'm sorry that's why they're teachers uh none of us asked for this none of you asked for this um i'm gonna uh and i appreciate all the the doctors who came on worried about the mental health of children i worry about that on a daily basis i've seen it play out with neighbors and family a shout out to dr jessica casey who was my daughter's pediatrician and a wonderful one um this this is this is very real and it is it's the emotional needs that that schools meet that we need to do more um and i want to tie in all the concerns that that our
053our student reps have had um especially grace's comments about anti-asian racism the last four years politically in this country were a horror for me um we need we need to do more um this is it's very real and it's incredibly serious and and i'm gonna tie this in with people um increasingly wanting to make anonymous comments and talking about how they have to make anonymous comments because they're afraid to speak out um i'm so old that i still get the ithaca journal and some of you may may still look at paper newspapers i know the ihs tattler is one of the greatest student newspapers around when online comments started coming into vogue with newspapers the ithaca journal ran online comments and within less than a year they disabled the online comments function because people could
054set up anonymous accounts and would say the nastiest most hateful most racist things that i ever saw coming out of this community on the cover of not having to identify themselves and one of the not all of the anonymous comments were like that but a number of anonymous comments were gratuitously nasty personal comments against people who are serving this public and i was very concerned about that um when i speak publicly i expect to be held accountable for what i say and i have been held accountable for what i say and that's right um and i have to think about what i say and who it might hurt and how it will be taken and i'm not perfect at it i've made mistakes i try to apologize when i do that anonymous comments in my
055opinion and it's a personal opinion um circumvent that in a way that is not not ultimately healthy for this community and we will talk about this in policy we'll talk about that later i will cede my time to other people um i'll just couple things first i once want to um say to steve manley of ipei thank you for everything that ipei does for the district in supporting our programs and in um kind of spurring a lot of innovation and i think the scavenger hunt sounds really fun so um i plan to do it so that that is really great so the other thing is that a lot of things have already been spoken so i'm not going to say them again um but i do want to just say one thing in relationship to
056the let's talk portal and the best ways to communicate with the board those i think that's a really good point and i think it would bear kind of further discussion in in terms of how the comments go through the let's talk portal and what we do with them after they come and how what kind of responses and so i i'm thanks for bringing that up and um the other thing i just want to say in terms of the concurrent teaching model it's a really tough one and i realized this i think it's almost exactly a year ago to this week that the district would to remote you know that the pandemic and everything shut down so it's just a really long it's been a really long haul so um i think people have just done
057an amazing job under a lot of pressure and i i hope we can figure out some way to make the concurrent teaching work better um for for teachers and for students and for families because uh yeah as the demonstration showed it it is really complicated to try to do all these things and it's like standing our head and juggling and you know uh all at the same time so uh thanks everybody for all your comments i'm gonna break with what i told myself was i was not gonna speak during board responses but i am going to speak during board responses um and i uh of course i feel um compelled and i've been doing it my own classes and we may put out a statement as a district um to acknowledge what grace reminded us
058of of the heart-wrenching devastating events in georgia which i define not only as racist but as gendered it was an example of violent racism and violent patriarchy and we know that we don't have to look to georgia we can look in our own community and find the same rise of aapi hate crimes taking place in ithaca and so it requires us to stand with our brethren and sister and ken folk and it requires us to take some significant action both as a school district and as a community and we should um spend some time to give our thoughts and prayers for those of us who pray to the families and to the community both here and there uh equally impacted today because i have family in boulder so i'm watching a nation do a number
059of tragic events so feel compelled um grace i want to thank you for the courage and for reminding us to make sure that we ground our work and what's extremely important um hold on i'm not done elder it's going to take me two other points and then i apologize you leave a gap i'm jumping in bro i thought you knew that i'm i'm leaving a gap to take a breath to make sure i uh can can hold uh in my emotions as much as possible um to emma's question um unfortunately we've acknowledged this board meetings do not promote dialogue our current board agenda structure is guided by policy two three five zero as someone who has a doctorate and policy analysis i'm aware that policies when done right can be liberating and can often be
060oppressive and so it requires us to do some review of the ways in which our policies are oppressive and when do we do something different with them and as we had a conversation with the board reps that was one of the questions i was asking should we have a dialogue about policy two three five zero and that's another question that will raise both in the policy committee and amongst board the board as agenda as a whole um adam's questions that will be part of our discussion adam when we talk about policy one two three zero and i will make mention that both of those policies were passed in 2013 and both of those policies were passed at the recommendation of our statewide organization which is the new york state school board association which gave us
061recommendations for a majority of our policies all of which we reviewed and rewritten but doesn't mean that almost 10 years later they don't need to be rewritten as well so for those who have the fortitude and the patience and the energy please stick around and we'll have more of that conversation later on this evening and then lastly connected to what i was saying earlier um i am worried about teacher burnout and i'm worried about burnout when every field every profession every job everyone i talk to doesn't matter what their profession is um is framed and so there's no doubt that impacts teachers students i'm in constant dialogue with my students and trying to take care of their mental well-being and they're in constant conversation with me trying to take care of my mental well-being um
062so suzanne talking about the idea of doing a high flex model i have the privilege of following dr wazilow right after his class his class gets done i'm in the same room right afterwards and i said to a number of my board colleagues as a 25-year veteran educator if i am asked to do a hybrid or high flex model next school year i may leave the profession and i think i'm a decent teacher but what we're being asked to do and what we've been asked to do is extremely difficult i also understand that no one's asked for this i'm aware that this is not something that we have chosen to do but i have great compassion that i know when i come home every day from teaching that i am physically mentally and emotionally exhausted
063and that's before i start thinking about what's taking place in the world what's taking place both at home in various other states and globally in other countries so i ask for our community one of the things that i know that we need to do is build community we continue to have conversations about how to do that as a board to have different types of sessions that actually allow for engagement and interaction we'll continue to talk about those and hopefully we keep working towards building community even through significant disagreements so thank you for your time um as usual i'm always glad to let sean fully express himself he does it very well um and i think one of the young students said that we do take notes and i have done that in the past as
064well but i'm i think i'm going to dispense with that technique because um that would take a very long time for all of us to respond to everything there are always things that you all say that resonate with us more than others given where we are in our own experiences and emotional states so tonight i'm only going to respond to two things in the interest of time and my soul energy first is this idea of retribution for folks who would come out and talk to this board i cannot tell you how how offensive i find that there's a marginalized person who um had to find my own voice over many years speak truth to power throw monitor of cocktails over the castle wall of previous administrations i understand the instinct i need you all to
065understand our expectation is that you overcome that we don't get the opportunity to hide behind anonymity neither should our public at least not for the reasons expressed i understand and offer my empathy and sympathy for folks who are um non-cognate non-cognitively conformative folks with speaking issues both folks who may just have a phobia of some kind of public speaking and tonight i have some thoughts about what we may do about that if you can stick around for that policy section but um i'm used to make my position clear the the fear of folks in this community who pay taxes fear folks in this community who may have tenure who are in the union i i can't i can't process that and if you ever want a response you better believe that nobody in this board
066is going to respond to anything anonymous if you go back in the past you'll see a pattern we respond to the people who have articulated their position and have identified who they are where they're coming from in this community my second point is to grace grace i just crafted a long letter to the to the board and our administrators are asking us to give proof positive that we are indeed doing as you suggest in incorporating um anti-marginalization in oppression curricula across the broad swath of folks we consider asian here in the west right i think those of us who have traveled know that catchphrase is really not a thing right in the eastern part of the world because the uh the cultures and the histories and the uh and and how certain cultures rub up
067against one another because of colonialism and war it's not as simple as asian in the east but i want to see proof of it because we certainly have touted the proof of anti-marginalization efforts that our fourth graders right produced regarding indigenous populations and um i think everybody is clear now that we have many instances of the same for african-american population we even have a black lives matter week it would it would not i don't know how to say this but it would be very odd to me if at some point we need to have a week for every marginalized group who's been targeted by the same demographic right especially when it comes to mass murder that almost breaks my heart to even say but i want evidence right that we are that we are putting
068the concerns of that um that large group of subgroups in front of our students so they can wrestle with that in the same way we have wrestled with other thoughts these circumstances are hard sean said you know i'm getting choked up thinking about it i just want us all to focus on one fact that in the vast majority of the cases we know there's one demographic it's one single demographic perpetrating these crimes as much as i want to see black lives matter posters and stop asian hate posters and ban violence against muslims and stop the misogyny right what i really want i really want us all to consider is what is our platform to just say no to white terrorism that's a phrase i haven't heard any of these meetings i haven't seen any banners
069in our school district can we get white young men to stop articulating their angst and their mental whatever mental illness they may be suffering and their hatred can get them to stop perpetrating white terrorism it's something that i plan to discuss with our administrators and hopefully you students can be involved as well this is on my my soul the faster we switch our conversations no matter what people say in their own cultural groups no matter how we work across intersectionality somebody's got to say stop killing us that's all i have thank you um i will try not to reiterate what my fellow board members have already touched on um i want to first start off by thanking steve um from ipei for always supporting our our teachers and staff um during the school year and
070especially during this pandemic and quarantine being able to pivot and find creative ways to engage and inspire our students and our district um to karina i feel like you've come to every single board meeting um we hear you loud and clear as we do our other parents in terms of online learning not being equitable your children and children in general not getting what they need or deserve and i would say um i feel that's happening in person as well and when you're on the other side i think it's easy to think that things are great on the other side um having children that are that are doing both um i would say that the current model just isn't working um students aren't getting what they need teachers aren't getting the support they need because the
071support and the needs are changing um burnout is real um as dr chrisley bradwell mentioned um most of us are burnt out we're all working over capacity whether it's me this is my 10th zoom meeting of the day or teachers as suzanne showed us a typical day in her classroom it's not working i don't think it's supposed to be working because we are swimming in chaos so just asking um for grace as we continue to to work to work through everything and find a way where everyone is feeling like they're being heard i don't think everyone is going to get what they want but we definitely want to continue to strive to give every student and every staff member what they need um i totally hear folks that are talking about the let's talk portal
072i'll speak for myself and say that i have personally not seen anything or been forwarded anything from the let's talk portal but in terms of emails that are being sent to the board i will say that we have conversations about almost every single email um so that definitely in my opinion has been an effective form of communication i personally feel indifferent about the reading anonymous letters um i disagree um strongly with eldrid in terms of fears of retribution and retaliation that is real especially if you are untenured um i don't think that i get to question what if someone feels fear or not um especially if job security is is on your mind um i will say that i think that is where union leadership and union representation comes in whether we're talking about the
073district or in general unions exist to to represent their constituents and their people so i would definitely say while we work through um reading anonymous letters that i would encourage our staff to speak to their union leadership if they feel like they're not getting what they need and they're not being supported to suzanne thank you for sharing a typical day in your classroom that looks very hard and i have all the compassion and empathy in terms of all the things that go into your work day and supporting kids that have very different needs and having to look all around the classroom in terms of where you're hearing voices who's yelling out um is hard um to the doctors that showed up um shout out to dr casey she's all three of my kids pediatricians so
074thank you for tuning for um showing up um i want to thank you all for speaking about the the impacts of the lack of socialization on kids we've spent a lot of time talking about academics and students falling behind or not getting their academic needs i think social socialization is a huge part of um development especially if we're thinking about our elementary students if we're talking about our middle school students and high school students thinking about going to puberty and all of the changes and being stuck in a room it's not healthy um so thank you for mentioning that um to emma i completely agree that i think that the board we as a board need to have conversations around separating or segmenting public comment and hearing from our reps definitely in these times where
075folks are coming to board meetings very emotionally charged emotionally drained it definitely puts a damper on hearing from our student reps especially if they have something exciting to share and um our student reps are following that um i know me personally um my head is in a totally different space after i've heard from 10 to 20 folks and then students student reps come on and then we're all scrambling to be able to respond to everyone and people are getting lost in the fray i will also continue to say as dr risley bratwell has said many times that board meetings historically have not been built to have this dialogue um i think it's also important to acknowledge that in the past our board meetings in board meetings in my five-year tenure we have not consistently have
076so many people show up and speak during public comment and because times are changing as well as our board representation again i find you all to be the most engaged um bringing lots of perspective taking a lot of initiative i think that as a board we have to have a conversation around the different climate that we're in and if the board meetings are serving the purposes or the needs of our students um as well as staff and parents and race i i think you brought up an incredibly important point in terms of aapi folks being left out of bipolar language as someone who has studied dei work for a while um i find it to be very complex as well in terms of like some asian folks don't consider themselves people of color and that
077is not to negate that they should be part of that but in terms of how people are processing things and understand things and where they are on their personal journey i think as a district we have to continue to have that conversation and to educate ourselves as well as provide spaces for our students to be able to to process these different things um i think it's also important for us to make sure that we're creating a safe space for all of our students especially our bipoc students so again grace thank you for for bringing that to our attention um and that's all i have for my notes nicole as always uh anyone else yeah i'd like to go home i'm going to try to be concise and i'd like to start with grace and uh
078really thank you for what you shared and i just hope that the folks who are on this call understand you know what she conveyed um with the feeling of not being safe the the mounting aggressions that you know asian americans and asian folks face within this country it's extremely concerning and we all have a role to play in this and we need to take a step back and understand what that looks like and what it means for her to be able to speak and verbalize that um and thank you for sharing the link as soon as i we get off this meeting i tend to jump and look at that to emma i don't want to go into the deep into the weeds on this but i do think and i agree with nicole we
079need to break these things out so we can compartmentalize them and respond to the student reps and also the public comments um to speak to the let's talk um the or the chat um i know that we actually respond to everything that's put in the let's talk comments because we get reminders if they're not followed up to in a certain amount of days i think we if we want to be able to respond and answer and acknowledge any concerns or comments there's a different maybe we can discuss what's that mechanism look like looks like excuse me or how do we navigate that i'm not sure i heard a few different things in regards to people being able to communicate people being able to see a um the public to be able to see their comments
080so i guess let's have that dialogue in that conversation and we did share that you know this is not the best vehicle to go back and forth but how do we address the concerns and be able to react you know one of the things i think this district prides itself on is responding and reacting to emails to notifications to different things to susan thank you so much for giving us a glimpse into your world i have kids i love kids i don't teach kids for that re for the reason you stated it is a task and uh my heart goes out to you and you know i think we also got a glimpse into what is going on and what the reality is we heard from so many physicians that are sharing the need for
081these kids i heard a heartbreaking story over the weekend about you know children at risk and the mounting pressures that they're facing while during this pandemic how do we move this forward and serve the needs for all people from our teachers to these children you know to to all of our um icsd staff and and make this happen and you know it's daunting so i think i concisely covered everyone um i apologize if i left anyone out and that's all i've got chris can i just add about the the let's talk portal um i think eil said this directly at least one other person has said it this evening that the idea would be for all of those conversations all those posts to be to be made public i suppose if the uh if the
082author agreed right that was a checkbox idea the public should know how many of those uh posts that are received in that portal are deeply personal and things that the person and we would never share one and how many are flat out abusive and and uh what's the word deeper than racist i'm shocked that people in our community have the courage to write some of those things which again we would never share with the public that's why the board gets paid the big bucks as in zero and why our staff get paid the large bucks to have the emotional maturity to process that and continue with the work so uh even that is not as cut and dry as it may appear on its face um uh there are no black and white issues that
083we deal with of any scope there's a lot of gray and uh you can see the work that people are putting in to try and resolve that grade to the best effect for our children thanks anyone all switch to speak right now thanks to everyone who spoke earlier and uh student reps and obviously the board members responding if i said that just so we're good okay we really need to get on with the rest of our agenda grace do you want to speak i'm sorry can i say one more thing um yeah so thank you to everyone who acknowledged my point about racism against the aapi community um it's very appreciated but again i would like to reiterate that it's not just what happened in atlanta and the other violences um this year that are
084affecting our asian american students but also microaggressions that are rooted in systematic racism including ithaca um besides sending out a statement and asking teachers to start a conversation in class because i know that myself and some other students and of my friends haven't heard anything about it yet i was wondering what specific actions the district is doing to back up their statement and to include uh people of color and their bipar anti-racist education but i appreciate the direction eldridge was going with this now thank you grace once again for speaking out and uh and addressing uh the board and the administration and um i would leave it to the administration to speak to your to your last question and um and we will get to the administration shortly uh if we can just get through
085the consent agenda and then we can hear from dr brown and hopefully our two middle school principals who have been waiting to speak to us for several meetings now um so can we get a can we can we move on are we good um go ahead and need a motion on the consent agenda please i move the consent agenda second thank you pat thank you eldred uh are there any questions the uh basically has been reviewed in finance and uh nhr anything else that we need to discuss right now rob i'd just like to point out one thing about the consent agenda and i'd like to thank amanda emily and angela if you click on any of the items on the consent agenda there's been descriptors added to it explaining each and every one of
086them just to clarify um we know that a lot of the items on there could be spoken in finances or you know the district financial talk so they went through and enhanced that and also emily did color coordinate the treasurer's report so if you have any if anyone has any questions you know or would like us to take a look at anything else please reach out to myself or amanda and we'd love to see how we can improve on this well thanks chris for pointing that out it is clickable now so that's a it's a big huge improvement so i appreciate it from our business office and you chris for driving that um anything else are we good tricia go ahead and please call the roll rob ainsley yes erin croyle yes sean eversley bradwell
087yes eldrid harris yes nicola fave yes moira lange yes chris malcolm yes ann reichland yes pat wazlun yes very good thank you everyone and dr brown if we could hear from you oh yes thank you for the opportunity mr ainslie it's good to see everyone uh i have much to share but and we really need to get to our middle school folks who have been so patient with us for the last month and a half so we will be brief i'll ask miss talking to help me out here as well uh you know in response to the consent agenda thank you board of education for your approval of the consent agenda which included uh two tenure recommendations i just want to take a moment as we do when folks earn 10 year administrators are tenure
088here to celebrate some folks lynn vanderwert is an educator who has earned tenure in our school district she's our evaluation officer congratulations lynn lynn for folks who don't know has been key for us with our equity report card which is a national model for how to display and analyze and gather data particularly data focused on our equity initiative so congratulations lynn for all that you do in addition to deputy pro car work she is a person she is a one person department when it comes to our assessment models and uh us being compliant with new york state regulations when it comes to testing as well so thank you and congratulations lynn zach lynn is another person who just earned tenure tonight um folks have heard zach's name um zach is our chief information officer our
089cio and zach um pre-pandemic you know he was key with us rolling out having the largest deployment of one-to-one devices in our in new york state um zach has also been leading our instructional technology coaches when we had those he's been behind the scenes making sure our our ubiquitous wireless infrastructure is working and our bandwidth continues to increase and all at the same time where we have uh our budget our technology budget has decreased over the years not increased so again congratulations zach we we appreciate you and lynn also quickly i know the conversation is in our community a lot of conversation in our community about the uh you know those friday afternoon memos that we've been getting for the last year when something big happens um this last friday we heard from uh you
090know federal government uh the cdc guidelines were released that spoke to a transition from six feet of distance between um young people in school districts i mean i'm generalizing now to three feet i just wish to um say to our community that our team here is working diligently to uh monitor the shifting ever shifting guidance and also in conversations about what how to react and to respond to guidance as of right now though the shift the cdc recommendations have not been adopted by our new york state department of education uh our new york state department of health or our tompkins county health department and as an organization that adheres to those three entities uh guidance when it comes to what we do in the midst of this pandemic we are waiting for word from them
091and at the same time we are engaging in conversations with our collective bargaining units as we think about what it would look like to bring more young people back into our spaces and more often so two conversations about getting more young people back into our spaces in this current academic year and also um what the uh shifting guidance would mean for our organization so i need to take a breath but literally if you can jump in here right now you have some things to share we want to talk about some planning for next year um so we have some thoughts for grace and i would love for that to be an agenda item in one of our upcoming board meetings where we talk about um how we're incorporating um asian and uh young all of
092our young people into our approaches to being anti-racist so lily i'm going to take a break you want to jump in and add a few things before we transition then to our middle school folks who have been so patient with us all thanks dr brown thanks to the board and the community i wanted to take just a moment to let folks know that of course we have begun planning for next year we're engaging two strong committees of folks internally including students as well and the first one that i'll talk about which is learning forward icsd this is really focusing on the the way forward regarding learning we hear a lot of folks talking about the covid slide or learning law throughout our country we think that those terms are actually quite disrespectful to our students
093and to our teachers and instead we want to take an asset based approach right so um we are in the midst of putting together a team and we're about to start meeting it's going to be a steering committee it's going to help us really oversee these three big elements of learning forward icsd the first is students as partners and leaders and really working with our students to help guide the curriculum process and to de-center dominant narratives additionally we want to give all of our educators ongoing time and space to engage in ongoing identity exploration and identity work right who am i in relationship to what i teach and how i teach and to education in general and then the third being anti-racist curriculum for all so that includes not just skills and intellect but also
094helping students understand identity criticality and giving them real opportunities for joy part of that of course means looking at year-to-year learning maps really changing the ways in which we're teaching particular standards and when right and taking the realities of covet 19 into consideration and also developing strong authentic performance based assessments the second committee that we're working with is again very very closely tied with our with our union leadership and continuing to collaborate with them which is really around the learning models so um in what ways can we avoid the high flex as much as possible right and actually work through the the models that we that we actually want that are going to work for kids and staff throughout our organization thank you lily dr brown anything else right now lily you want to talk
095about uh what we're doing with our curriculum work um you what the um's grove are doing with our curriculum work to address anti-racism and anti-anti-asian racism that we're experiencing right now absolutely and and uh mary grover i know is working tirelessly with the equity team members and they're gathering they've been gathering right we've sent out resources of course and suggestions for folks to engage in throughout their their communities but you know mary's doing work in the team itself is doing a lot of really great work in terms of collecting specific examples and building out specific lessons to support anti-racist education specifically around our aapi folks throughout our community so more more we'd be happy to update at a future board meeting great idea thank you mrs taught and with that i wish to transition mr
096ainsley if it's okay with you uh to our middle school folks who are eager to share some of their thinking and learning with us all let's talk you want to turn it over to who's on yeah i see lauren i see donna let's see some other folks who are now turning their cameras off wonderful well after a a long it's been a long long time coming we are so happy to welcome our fabulous leaders from both dewitt and boynton um we're really honored that they're presenting together the collaboration among these between these two schools has been exceptional and in part it is due to the exceptional staff and leadership at those schools i'm going to turn it over to them they're going to introduce themselves and get going all right good evening everyone my name
097is lauren wright i am the principal at boynton middle school and my name is carlin gray and um i am the principal at dewitt's middle school good evening everyone my name is donna lucy lender i'm the associate principal at dewitt middle school grath and i'm the associate principal at boynton middle school all right well we are excited to be here tonight um we as lilly shared with you we're really excited to be able to do this presentation together we have spent a lot of time collaborating and finding ways uh to work on things at both middle schools throughout the year so it seems like a great fit to to share out what we've been working on together um so just to start we wanted to just talk a little bit about our setup for this
098school year we've had a number of pretty pretty major changes in terms of how the middle schools are operating for this school year right now we have a hybrid schedule for our students and so we have most of our students are attending school two days a week in person and then they attend three days virtually and that while other students attend completely virtually so five days a week they're virtual and that leaves our teachers teaching concurrently so students who are sometimes in the classroom space sometimes at home and as you've heard tonight it's something that's very challenging but they have been working very hard to reach the needs of all of our learners one of the major changes that we put in place to help with this new system is moving to a block schedule
099and so over this school year we've transitioned from about 40 minute classes to now about 60 minute classes uh one of the benefits that we've seen with this model is that it has allowed for our teachers to be able to plan multiple activities within one lesson and in previous years um you know 40 minutes goes by really quickly but now i'm having that longer time of 60 minutes um with that same group of students they're able to get through more material they're able to offer students um more choices in in the types of materials that they are working on and they've also been able to engage in station rotation which has been really helpful for the concurrent model um one other thing that we really took away from the from the spring and is that
100there was a need to have sort of one-on-one time or small group time built into whatever schedule we created and that was that was a strong need and something that we heard from students um and families and also from our teachers and so we've created a schedule that has a built-in uh time throughout the day which we call office hours and during that time it allows for teachers to have small group or one-on-one check-in with students and to be able to review and uh go over the material that's been taught um more in depth and and i'm going to pass it over to dan who's going to tell you a little bit more about some specific specific things that teachers are doing to make office hours work all right thank you lauren so as lauren
101just shared each school has time built into their schedules for students and teachers to connect this year office hours has provided an opportunity for teachers to make closer connections with students academically and emotionally i would like to share just one example about a teacher who took time to schedule 10-minute meetings with each of her students so that they could come together and get to know one another the students were driving the conversations and they could bring a friend if they wanted to to make it a little more easy to manage the situation so the conversations could be sharing any information the student wanted to some examples where poetry was shared or a musical piece by student and the the teacher just raved about this experience something they haven't had the time or or been able
102to do in previous years and as a result of these meetings they feel like they know their students better than in previous years and so much so that in a lesson they can tailor more examples to fit the interests of students as they're going through now carlin is going to share about some tools being used to communicate with students um actually i'm going to divert obama on that yes thanks dan thanks carlin um so this has been an extraordinary school year to say the least the staff at boynton and dewitt have worked together since last summer trying to come up with creative ways to allow our students to have connections outside of academics this year both schools have pierce student lunch bunch groups where students have the opportunity to meet with their favorite adult and
103interact in a socially distant manner both schools also have created a wealth of clubs so that students have the opportunity to participate in in remote activities beyond the regular school day and also including the school day i would like to briefly share with you a combined list of club offerings please reach out to your home school for specific club offerings so this school year our virtual club offerings are debate club environmental club um queer book volunteer gsa astroneto dj and we also have a bipod club we also offer our fine and performing arts opportunities chorus orchestra and band both schools have also created family opportunities as well such as game nights concerts and variety shows both schools are also encouraging students to unplug and get out and play these past couple of days have been
104gorgeous we realized they are in front of screens all day and we encouraged them to get outside and to get some much needed fresh air and vitamin d which is also important to their well-being and now carl and we'll share with you about grading um so i want to take this opportunity to thank everybody um in my transition to dewitt um i want to thank donna and all the teachers that have graciously welcomed me um everybody's been working their sales off this year so thanks again to everybody so um i got to come to dewitt in the middle of the pandemic which is very exciting but it also uh opened a big door for us in terms of shifting some of our systems that we still had control over so in terms of systems we
105looked at things that worked or didn't work and then we as a leadership team work to ask ourselves what do we want um grading and feedback structures that the width to look like that might feel like and i worked with the leadership team and donna to adopt grading for equity as our core techs for the year and what we did with the standards-based grading system and if you've never researched or learned about standards-based grading there's a lot to know and explain um so i will give you a very brief summary you can look at um a standard linked to a set of assignments here in the example i'm hoping you all can see that and um we're looking at a hundred point scale and we're also looking at a scale that is based on the
106standard space system with a one two four system um correlating with proficiency levels four being above grade level beyond grade level um including on on target on grade level so if you can see here um we are able to give um or address something that has been really critical of critical importance to me as an educator and it came up a lot in terms of our comments and concerns about equity of access for our students one of the questions we asked ourselves was how does traditional grading invite bias and provide misleading information and then what practices can we institute as a community that are mathematically accurate value knowledge not behavior and support a growth mindset um so as you can see here a student with a 0-100 scale and of course this is just an
107example and just closed five assignments so you can make lots of mathematical arguments here but you can see that uh a final grade with a zero three-hundred scale still using a zero to mark a missing assignment results in the student could still reach a level of proficiency because they've demonstrated proficiency and that in many of the assignments have been given and the assignments that are not given um don't necessarily count against them um and this is obviously just an example and we've worked through many many conversations with the rti team our equity team and our leadership team to adjust instruction also just address uh policy and practice and then also increase uh places for increasing student vulnerability which is a a really key part of learning like if you cannot be vulnerable and make mistakes
108which is so critical um and that allows for a space of safety and learning and i know that this is a long and complex conversation i'm happy to come back and share more but i wanted to share that um at the whit we have jumped into this wholeheartedly and i know that lauren can share very briefly where they are at boynton with adopting a standard screening system um so lauren jump in and we're happy to answer questions as they come up again yeah so um at boynton we sort of dipped our toe in the water with standard space grading um in the spring um as we made changes to our grading system after we had initially switched to uh distance learning and we had really great experience with that and and our team was definitely
109very eager and excited to make the full transition to it um but they really wanted to take some time to learn more about it and to really fully understand what this shift would mean for their teaching practices and how to properly set that up and so we've spent a lot of this year learning and reading and and finding out more from our colleagues about how this looks in practice um but we also had a team who was really eager and ready to go um and they just wanted to hit the ground running running with um giving this this sort of pilot ago and so our seventh grade team actually made the transition um to standards-based greeting and and has been has been using that since the start of the school year so our plan moving
110forward is that um in the fall the rest of the building will make that transition and and then both both middle schools will will be fully on board with the standard-based greeting and in the meantime we have continued to have conversations about what equitable greeting looks like especially in this pandemic and what changes and practices um can we make changes to right now that are gonna benefit our students um today so um we've been able to to help teachers make some shifts around you know policies around late work around you know providing modified work for all students when needed and those shifts have been have been really helpful so one more way to look at a gradebook is to look at it through a multi-tiered lens of looking at it organized by multiple standards so
111that last example was just for some mathematical understanding and this one you can look at where it might help a teacher adjust practice really quickly based on a particular standard and that actually will help us significantly with with interventions and also collecting data on how students need additional how or why students need additional support in the content area at this point we're going to shift to on our inside basis work which um is very widespread but is um centered around two key ideas um well actually the key ideas i would say one is around a big shift in how as many many folks i am tempted to say everyone can't say everyone but i know that you know most of our folks are looking really critically at their curriculum in terms of how to redesign
112it to to teach through a social justice lens um we have many people designing units on identity which is the core idea of one of the concepts in goldie mohamed's work around responsive and historically relevant literacy practices sixth grade team worked on that on the splendid um which talks about a blended family and a complex um dynamic within that family but they also use the identity deal and they're going to be sort of the identity as the core of that that text to explore their own identity um and we've also talked about stamped the the text and i think level can could answer how that this head has come to be but he was part of a kickoff or a celebration really a joint um celebration between the two schools where we celebrated having this
113text stamped in every one of our middle school kids hands as a gift um and we can talk about how that happens and we did celebrate black lives matter at school which also happens to correlate with a three day snowpocalypse um which we then just extended into the whole month um and we have then um crossed the intersectional uh line to extend it into women's history and the celebration of women which we have then jumped into celebrating and understanding and digging into issues um continued issues of marginalization through our home-based curriculum which is a a sequence of lessons that we can design collaboratively with our equity team and our administration this week we looked at um experiences of asian americans and we asked kids to respond to those experiences and we have continued to um
114broken student voice so we i'm going to work with a student this week to annotate a video on top of overlay her narrative a story that she has written about her experience so that we can share that with our students and talk and dialogue about how students are experiencing life at school and life in the world and i think that that we have lots of sort of models of how uh concurrent or hybrid instruction works that we can show you but it's certainly something i could just send before through here so we're happy with two questions um this and i actually have one question first of all thank you for all the uh kind of innovative work that you've been doing this year under really challenging circumstances i have a question about the grading system
115i really appreciate that you're exploring and revamping it but i guess i'm still a little bit confused about how it works and how it the students were transitioned to it and how the families were introduced to it and whether people um whether students who are accustomed to grading in the one way are adapting to grading this way so a bunch of different questions so um um well i'll i'll jump in and then maybe lauren can add on um so we started this uh standard speech grading last march when schools closed and it was in response to concerns about equitable grading and access during the pandemic um and what i did when i started at dewitt donna and i worked together with our leadership team and we said what do we want grading to look like
116feel like and sound like and and be that's the way what do we want our feedback structures to look like um and people you know without blinking said we want it to be we don't want it to be biased we want it to be accurate we want it to reflect knowledge and not behavior um we looked at structures and shifts in in schools and we said 21st century schools look different than 20th century schools except for grading which is an archaic structure that has been put in place to mirror this concept that we all should exist within a bell curve that um you know there are f then there are a's or there are 50s and there are hundreds um and we've tried to shift the conversation to how much do you know and understand
117how much can you demonstrate your knowledge and skill less about where you fall compared to other students um so this is a um a continuation of something we adopted last year and our teachers didn't blink to say like this is a structure we want to continue i would say we're we're two to three years from where i want or need to be with this in terms of our physical structures in terms of report cards right in terms of our systems of canvas and the way that canvas and school tool interact to create a report card the way that we can set up um linking assignments to standards in canvas like none of this is clean right i will openly admit that this is a a massive work in progress um but i do feel that
118it is less about compliance less about assimilation um and it's less about valuing kids that follow directions and turn things in on time and bring a pencil to class but it's about what do you know and how can you demonstrate what you know and what you're able to do um and it it is an attempt to mirror what we all experience in adult life which is this you can take your driver's seat a million times you can take the lsat a million times you can do a retake on most things right um and you don't we're not i don't give you i don't i mean i know i'm graded on every moment i exist right but like in your average job you're not like everything you do here's a 100 point grading scale that we're
119going to give you feedback on um you get feedback that is uh protective of your vulnerability like i had a meeting with lily today and she gave me feedback and i was like great i feel like i'm in a safe vulnerable space but you're not giving me an 88 right and if she did sit down and said here's your 88 i'll see you later that would feel very different than what we've tried to do which is really center um feedback on the comments and on you've achieved this standard you're getting near the standard you haven't even like shown up so we can't know um one of the things i told myself was like not doing something is not the same as not knowing something right like a student not turning assignment in is not the
120same as them not knowing how to do it it's just them not doing it right um and so we've tried to change the conversation to like lauren was saying like looking at policies and practices along with systems that if you go back to this concept of mathematical accuracy right oh that's an example of curriculum work that was really oh look at that how i just snuck that in like secretly this is the presentation hold on i was actually so a level three correlates with on grade level like you've got a kid here who's done three out of five assignments pretty solidly on grade level performance right so this is a one-to-four scale whereas you can see this student over here could be the same student could not be has solid b solid d right um
121and then a zero and like um not so great assignment they probably did like three minutes before class right um so if you look at the mathematical accuracy of the zero point zero a zero to a hundred scale it's not it's not as accurate as a smaller window of numbers um and i could come and do like all these fun little activities with you with little samples but that's actually what we did with our staff we gave them sample experiences or sample grade books and asked them to dig into the where the bias where the mathematical inaccuracy was and um people got into it and really like dug in and so that is i hope answers at least some modicum of your question yeah it's okay it's probably for a longer discussion so it makes
122a lot of sense the whole thing makes a lot of sense to me but i one thing i'm still trying to figure out is if you're going one through four how is it that it doesn't end up just breaking down to ranking again you know it's like how does it not just distill down to oh my goodness i'm only a one or i'm only a two so that that that and like how do you address the fact that it's still kind of grating of course it's great yeah you know what i'm saying you're still you're still kind of trying to fit into somewhat of a ladder like how is it but it's okay because i i don't i mean it say maybe it's just conversation for for uh later but anyway yeah i'll just i'll
123just add into that the one through four on each of those levels um ties to a description of where a student is um in relationship to their progress with the standards and and and we talk a lot with the students about what each of those levels is and and then also carlin had been mentioned to the the comments um we've actually worked uh with lynn vanderwert to expand the uh length of characters and the amount um that teachers are able to provide on the report cards and in terms of giving really specific feedback about um ways that students are able to improve or grow which has been really helpful to to actually pinpointing you know what what changes they would need to make um to show growth growth and improvement and and it is much
124much more a larger conversation but i would just say like when i used to give grades in my biology class i feel like you have an 88 and it would be based on five unit tests six labs seven um quizzes and like homework right so we're also addressing this idea of like what are you valuing and what are you grading right so what is it that actually shows a kid's final experience with the knowledge or the skill um so when people dig in and dump homework and class work and discussion and participation and whether you had your you know pencil and your paper cut the right way or whatever right um so there's a lot more in this um and i also want to say that we are three years away from where i want
125to be meaning like what lauren was saying was every kid actually should have if we're talking about this in a real way a series of standards and how they've addressed those standards as opposed to a singular number like an 88 that has addressed 20 standards in a sequence of 20 weeks does that make sense so um carlin and and lauren and donna and dan i have a question that's um i think let's let's say it's in the same box proficiency as i'm reading your lists of proficiency my takeaway or my instinct says it's still based on a written performance right so what do you know how do we know you know it well we know because you're right right because you respond to homework and writing you respond to a quiz and write it have
126you guys given any thought or has that evolved beyond just writing to other methods of um proving proficient proficiency across the broad spectrum of students i'm so excited to talk i can barely constrain myself um yes absolutely um so much of our assessment models have reached beyond just writing right so i want you to know like flipgrid if you have an experienced flipgrid i can send you some flipboards right there are kids talking in french or spanish or in english like i watched a series on on kids reflecting on their learning during a biology unit um there are um oral there are uh just audio strands that kids can use in canvas they can make even videos of themselves um they can um i've seen performances and pieces of art as representation so one of
127our our science teacher was having kids create a piece of art as the final entity of um and it was based on a mirroring of all the melanin colors in their class right it's like so they were learning about skin and the relationship between skin and race and identity and they that was their final project was like a piece of art so um i want you to know that this obviously is very bland like assignment one assignment five right those this is much more than what i can present here but the expansion of assessment opportunities is really great considering um how limited we feel in other ways yeah and i would say that that has um grown even more so this year and through you know the pandemic and having students being located in you
128know different places teachers are really experimenting with finding different ways to assess students and letting students experiment with what ways they're really comfortable expressing themselves um i was in a classroom today where um students have the option to do a powerpoint make a video do a flip grid um multiple options um all within within the same lesson i just did uh so uh i just want to say i'm just so thrilled that the two schools are collaborating and um i think that as we've seen in a number of occasions one of the silver linings is that uh of the pandemic is that it has forced innovation and um and and and really fostered collaboration which i think is so key and you know my experience as a teacher was that i experienced so much growth
129and such a energizing jolt when i had the opportunity to collaborate with other folks um so as a member of the board and the member of the curriculum committee i'd really like to hear from you about um you know what can we do uh to enable you to to do all the collaboration you possibly can how can we help support that because i think it's vital um i also want to say particularly i'm particularly thrilled with what you're doing at uh at tackling this incredibly difficult subject of equitable non-oppressive grading uh it's something that i've thought about uh for 40 years um and as carlin just mentioned you know i've long been aware that any individual teacher's grading system is like this this stew uh that consists of all these different things and then somehow
130it's all boiled up into um and so i also as a member of the board and a member of the curriculum committee i've been talking about you know the need to tackle the the grading system uh for six years now and you guys are actually doing it and i'm thrilled by it and yes i know you know people are are confused they have questions about change but i dare say that that a lot of kids and a lot of parents even with the old traditional you know abcdef system or zero to a hundred they didn't really understand how you know that 88 or that 61 got cooked up um and so i mean a big part of what you're doing and it's it's ongoing is communicating about what these levels uh what they mean and
131and of course these are these are accompanied by rubrics that describe exactly what are the components of a for for a particular standard so um just keep it up and let us know how we can help a question i have is if you all could speak to um how the middle schools are coordinating with the highest high school especially since some eighth graders carry high school credit and the high school still figuring out their grading system great question um so any high school course is still on a 100 point scale so when we're talking about a standard screening system we have to work within the combines and and systems that we have control over right so lauren and i um i know this will not surprise you but we talk almost daily right so um
132what we've done is navigate that to the best of our ability so really what that means is any earth science algebra or language in the 8th grade is still going to be correlated with the expectations for high school transcript in our district which is the 0 300 scale with a 65 or above earning them that high school credit and nicole thanks for your question about coordinating with the high school we've done several things which i can speak to here at later date um we've just had our first transition to the high school meetings um with the team from the high school and um one of the big focus interventions for us right now is focusing on acquiring language credit at the middle school level right um language credit is accessible to all students in middle
133school and unlike algebra and earth science which students are quote unquote accelerated into um but language credit is is critical right because that one language credit can get you a one-up and gives you the social and political capital as you as you enter the high school right so we've really talked about that um you know mattering and and valuing the and trying to work on the interventions that can help students earn that spanish french or german credit um so um we're working now in collaboration with the high school hopefully to do some interventions for students who who may need that extra support at the end of the year with some um extendable work and some common tutoring um yeah and i would just add to that as well um we have also been collaborating uh
134as we're sort of looking at um our equitable grading policies through the pandemic um and making sure that um the the ways that we're supporting students are aligning through our our high school credit courses um and what's happening for the faculty the second part to my question is um would both of you be able to speak to your communication plans with parents and families as i think about your sixth graders so it being a huge transition for the students as well as parents not having parent-teacher conference i know having a first-time middle schooler going having parent-teacher conference was something that was super important to me to a hear about my daughter being somebody totally different at school than you know she is at home um and for parents that are now transitioning to kind of
135relying on their child to tell them what's going on so just wondering how you all are um checking in with families about all these different initiatives and programs that you all have going on as well as the changes in grading and how parents are able to communicate with like all of the teachers yeah um so one of the things that i know um that i'm doing and i know carlin is is doing as well and we have you know weekly communications with families and we try to include updates um there about uh things that are happening whether it's events or um shifts such as grading and so that everyone is aware of of those shifts and and then we also have continued to have um family conferences um available to families we've moved those over
136to virtually and in the past those were always in person and and those are really great time when um we can bring families together with the majority of a student's teacher so um it's it's you know harder at the at the middle school level to have everyone there but um that is that's been really helpful and i think it's it's been very helpful um so the the shift for reading i've seen those conferences be very effective if a family is um you know isn't understanding uh the setup and we're able to to really show them the the grading system and show them canvas and those conferences have been have been really useful thank you any other questions uh professor uh mr ainsley's computer is doing a mandatory update right now for his company so he's
137trying to call in so you can imagine that's his own rob right now in the middle of this but i can i can imagine and i'll give my board colleagues i'll just say again one first of all thank you all for your work thank you for your patience as you know i know this is the third board meeting that we've had you scheduled um like to my board colleagues i am wildly excited by thinking about assessment differently um and carlin i really appreciate sort of one getting away from measuring against other students as opposed to knowledge and the idea of the bell curve really rung true with me there's a lot of research on that as well so um i know that we have work to do but it does help us push us in
138a different direction about promoting academic success um in a much more authentic and genuine way so um i know there's a lot of challenges that we're facing as well so um thank you again for for the work and we'll keep making this happen for other board members are there any other questions comments at this time uh yeah sean this is eldridge i have a question but we don't have to address it now in fact please let's not address it now i'm curious at the middle school level how project-based learning has been incorporated into the grading systems i know thinking about our conversation at the board level and to be honest most of the serious conversations about this has been happening at the high school level so i'm just curious um what what is the thinking
139been about uh groups of kids working together and getting a group grade at the middle school level again we don't have to address it now we can take this up another time we know how to find you maybe that's also a question for us to address when we talk a little more about the coming back to have another conversation about grading including the synergy between the high school and the middle school levels as well so yeah um this is something i'm really passionate about so i i've said multiple times i'm happy to come run like a session where we all interact with something in a way that feels like really meaningful like little case studies of like here's why and here's how and then like taking that next step so happy to help great great
140well if there's no other comments from our board members or questions let's let our administrators at least try to get some rest before school within 12 hours so thank you all very much for presenting and we look forward to on the next presentation and additional information thank you all very much thank you uh board colleagues that was um school district uh item 11.1 next we have on the agenda two policies that are connected one is 11.2 about policy 1400 public comments and complaints to the boe um that policy is also directly connected to policy one two three zero which is public participation at board meetings in fact um policy one two three zero the second policy makes mention of the other policy within it so it gives some indication of how to proceed so we
141thought we would um these are not policies that are up for a vote uh the policy committee decided that it'd be best for us to have a board conversation um i realized that it is late but let's have some sort of conversation and then maybe we can give the policy committee some direction of how to move forward or what's best to have so um let me stop for a minute any quick reactions things that you want to share um how do folks want to proceed well i i have a question that might clarify some things so in my comments i said i find it um untenable that people want to be anonymous when talking about important issues around kids and the cobalt a very important exception the exception was for untenured teachers who very well
142might feel rightly or wrongly that their comments might be held against them so nicole what i wanted to ask you is is that the only exception that you can see being carved out because i think if we identify the points of vulnerability to help us better craft whatever policy we come up with and whatever solutions we come up with i mean i'll talk about some solutions for people who have difficulty articulating right with speech issues and writing issues or whatever i have some thoughts about that but i want to ask you is that the only exception you see being very valuable that we don't throw away walter do you mind repeating the question because i'm not sure i'm following yeah all right let me try to make it more simple this time you suggested that
143uh unchanged teachers may still need to respond anonymously because they're in a vulnerable position where i'm asking you is there any other group that you can see that vulnerability applying to other than untenured teachers so my comments earlier were were less about the anonymous letter and more about staff in general fearing retaliation or um retribution whether we're talking about icsd or i can speak personally working at cornell and getting those surveys about diversity equity and inclusion and i intentionally don't respond to those surveys because people have ran their fingers through my hair they've asked me if all my kids have the same dad as one of the very few black people that work at in my specific division i can be identified and i fear retaliation retribution and all of the things so what i'm
144saying in terms of um comments that were made this evening is i do not want to be presumptuous and assume that someone doesn't fear that they won't get the they may want to they might want to go to a different school for example and they may fear if they say the wrong thing they might not get that switch they may be untenured um i think there are a host of things somebody might want to be a coach they might want to lead a play and i don't think that we can make the assumption that those fears don't exist as folks that as a board where we're just providing oversight to the district and i'm personally not in the building every day i haven't i have no idea what goes on in the building and that's
145why we have the admin team that gives us updates we also have our own personal relationships with teachers and a's and bus drivers so we hear those antidotes but i don't ever want to be in a position where i'm negating someone else's truth or what their personal feelings are um does that mean everything that someone says is factual some of that is just perception but i think that we should be careful not to negate how other people feel is all that i'm saying so let me step in real quick um policy 1400 outlines when there is a specific public complaint and it outlines a process right so if a parent or caregiver has a complaint against a teacher then the expectation is that they'll work directly with the teacher if they do not find that
146there is some satisfaction or that the issue's been resolved and they work with the principal if they don't feel the situation's been resolved in the work with the superintendent and then they'll work with the board um there's an expectation in that process that that would be for lack of a better word a a known process not an anonymous process i just want to be clear about that that's the idea of policy 1400 policy one two three zero again both policies are passed in 2013 and someone has already identified i think it was nicole saying that we're in a different time period and so partly the reason why we're raising these policies for reconsideration is acknowledging the decade that has passed is that following the recommendation of the new york state school board association there's a
147paragraph paragraph two which states that there's when there's a request for public comment it would be made on a form that's provided for the district so we're meeting in person folks may remember you would sign up in advance that it shall include the name of the speaker the address of the speaker the name of the organization represented if any and the topic to be addressed and if it was a statement on behalf of any group or organization that that would also be identified as a spokesperson that was done for a multitude of reasons again all of which we can and should reconsider but that is what our current policy states along with some other stipulations right how long should folks speak for how long is the public comment period for etc um we have i
148will continue to state that our school board meetings are not designed for dialogue or engagement oftentimes they're designed to take care of school board business not to say that public comment is not school board business but to have presentations to pass the consent agenda to get ready to adopt a budget um and items similar to that part of the question that has been raised is similar to what nicole said should people have the ability to speak to the board when they have particular concerns about identifying themselves and that's that's legitimate i also want to acknowledge what pat said is there times in which people will say things anonymously with a particular tone and tenor that they may not say if they have to have their name attached to it so part of it is how
149do we protect people who may want to speak to the board and let us know about their honest concerns and other parts of it are how do we help build a community that is loving and caring um if we're allowing people to treat our school board meetings similar to they would uh an online chat room um or some other form or faction and that's what we as a policy committee we're having a debate about is how do we walk that fine line because of course we want to hear from folks but we also want to be able to build community and and so that's where these two policies led us to please go ahead oh yeah just a couple thoughts one is i can see why someone might want to continue to do a comment
150anonymously and so i'm actually open to that and i think that there's other language in the policy that requires the language to be civil and polite and so could that be the thing that would you know it's not really the same as just an anonymous online forum because somebody's presenting that and we have these other kind of rules about you know how being civil so that's one thing and so um i i wonder if one could have a preference that one prefers that somebody does it not anonymously but have the option if that's what somebody's really more comfortable with since not all people are comfortable speaking in public and yet they still would like the public to know what they're thinking more i saw your hand than pat you're muted moira our policy or our
151process in the past with uh in-person meetings was never that the person whose comments were being shared had to be physically present we have had other people read comments from others but they identified who the person was that that that wrote the comments that um who they belong to and for public comment my feeling right now is that should be the case and that if people have concerns about repercussions um if their name is attached to uh to certain comments they can still send them to the board clerk to us as individuals um and then there's let's talk which i think is another subject that we need to address now that doesn't address what some people were speaking to tonight feeling like the broader community needs to have access to those um to those comments
152um and uh and and i hear that as a concern but i just i became uncomfortable as it became more and more prevalent for people to to participate in these zoom meetings by reading the comments of others and those others are nameless in part because when it's in in public like that um when a name is attached then the listeners can consider the source um and i think that that's that's has value um rather than everybody hearing something that is not attached to a source and it's just there and it becomes part of the public record and it becomes part of the public consciousness um i i have a problem with that pat people will have to understand that i spent 17 years working on academic integrity issues at cornell university and i saw some
153pretty egregious twisting of the truth by a lot of people that you would not expect and um the problem with citing anonymous sources is let's say yes on tenured teachers maybe they didn't want to speak how do how would we ever know that what is being said actually comes from an untenured teacher if they're anonymous there's no there's no accountability if and how does the person who is reading what that anonymous person said how did they have any idea that that person is telling the truth i think public discourse is a right but it carries a responsibility and that responsibility is accountability and look what happened at the last meeting and look what was starting to happen tonight three three of tonight's um comments were citing anonymous sources who were saying they were afraid to
154speak out because of fear of retribution or retaliation just that phrase is damaging and harmful to people who work very hard in this district who for the past 10 years on the board in the past 10 years before that when i was on pga and pta council i saw good hearted well-intentioned administrators trying to work with teachers protect teachers and support teachers and just in two meetings we have seen some of the most divisive and insidious language being put forward to allegedly preserve freedom of speech and i i think that is a dangerous path i think it is a slippery slope i think it harms individuals in this district who work with and for teachers i think it harms them unfairly and i will say to anybody who is still listening at this point that
155if in my 10 years on the board i had ever seen any kind of retribution intimidation or anything that has been alleged multiple times by anonymous sources i would not be on the board today i would walk away because that would be wrong and i am on the board to serve the public the students the teachers everyone and i wouldn't stand for it and i i do not think accepting anonymous comments does any of us any good other board members who'd like to speak i just want to say i think that makes a lot of sense what uh moore and pat are both saying and um i i i you know listening to that that makes a lot of sense to me and i think maybe the solution moira is in what you said is
156that if somebody is uncomfortable speaking in public that somebody can read for that person but that person be named whose comment it is and um i i also do agree with the fact that the implication that somehow there will be retribution the district just wouldn't do that so i mean i think i think that um yeah that that's that that was surprising when people were saying that uh last couple meetings to me chris malcolm are you going to speak or am i calling on you wrongfully no thank you um and actually i want to thank pat for what she shared she said it well and i won't try to reiterate what she said but also we need to ask what is trying to be conveyed now if there's a public comment you want to share
157there's an issue that needs to be addressed and how are we going to address that there's mechanisms in place or if you're saying i want the public to see or hear what i'm saying and share it out there we're saying okay there has to be a name and a face and a person attached to it which i believe is a fair request and like pat said we have to stand behind what we say we're we're in the public we're held accountable for what we say and share forward and and i don't believe that that's too much to ask for folks to say a comment um and you know to say that we don't face retribution or any retaliation or any type of you know angst i i can we know the emails we receive and
158some of the comments we receive um from folks well intentional so i just i'm trying to and one we also have to uphold our policies where and when um we we can we catch this we we let this go a little bit too far and we need to manage this accordingly so um john here's a here's a suggestion and i don't know what we do with it but it's it's just a thought i would be willing to allow uh recordings of people's voices if those people identify themselves for the recording so the christmas point about people's faces no i don't need to see your face right this is really about having the individuals identify themselves um when i was running for the board one of the reasons i ran is because i kept hearing this
159rumor that people were terrified that they acted inappropriately they'd be banished to caroline or banished to interfere if i remember thinking at the time one stop on the new york city subway station are the kids at enfield and caroline any less deserving of good teachers i didn't understand that then i don't understand it now even though i know the different characteristics of the school now far more intimately teachers teach kids kids happen to be in multiple buildings throughout this district um but that's it here's my recommendation for a technological a digital solution i feel compelled to say one thing look we the ithaca city school district like we talk about um and uh our leaders have said is um a racist sexist homophobic organization uh we are steeped in that history similarly we are also
160steeped that there are times when there is retribution or retaliation we we would not be wise to say that as much as we may try to protect ourselves from that it doesn't mean that it is beyond the realm of possibility so i understand people's concerns um that not everyone may want to speak that's one part with that being said i still am uncomfortable with anonymous statements for a number of reasons let me address just two additional points new york state education law at this point in time does not require school boards to release anonymous statements so the idea about being released to the broader community that's a school board choice even if it's stated as at a public meeting the minutes can be it can be struck from the minutes if the board so chooses
161if it's with a name attached to it the board does not have that leeway i hope that part makes sense the idea about freedom of speech has been debated regarding this for quite some time we are not the only school district in fact the vast majority of school districts in the state do not allow anonymous statements folks can do their own research it's a relatively common practice that's the reason why the new york state school board association gave us a policy that's required people to state their name and state the topic that they're going to be talking about as well um and i am intrigued by the idea about what is trying to be con conveyed and it does make me think about how do we do a better job of building community and how
162we do a better job of reaching out and having additional ways of engagement with our with the various communities to be able to have conversations that school board meetings are not the best venue oftentimes to engage in this work or at least have they been constructed or as the work that we've been deemed to finish and complete during school board meetings and so i just want to add those couple of items additional comments from school board members i think one thing that i would also add is that when um anonymous comments are made specifically in representation of our staff if we don't know who the person is it makes it hard for us to follow up on the situation so if we want to do due diligence and make sure that we're protecting our staff
163if we don't know who it is it makes it hard to follow up with whoever the supervisor building leader or director is and i think that is counterproductive to to the comment or the concern that's being brought up if we if we can't follow up um i'll also add for me personally the past two or three months public comment period has been very emotionally draining um to sit and listen to so i i will speak for myself and say that if i knew who was stating these comments i would personally want to reach out and follow up with this person and to learn more about the situation and what i could do better what the board could do better to support staff but if we don't know where these comments are coming from it makes
164it hard for us to to make things better and i feel like i should be clear the board is not saying that there cannot be anonymous statements folks can send us anonymous letters at any point in time to both the individual board members or as a whole and they can send them to the board clerk who invented them to all board members the question we're debating is about whether or not during public comment can should anonymous letters be received and or should we be changing our policy so i guess what i may recommend is that at the next policy committee meeting we take a look at the policy just to review the language as ann said there's other language there about obscene language there's other things that we have not followed about conversations about particular
165employees that we've allowed to continue that there's more than just you know whether or not one has to state their name and state what issue they're talking about and so i think it does warrant us looking at the policy again and seeing if there's other things that we may do differently or may recommend above and beyond this policy i don't know what my fellow board members feel about that i think it is an appropriate use of the policy committee's time to review both policies i'm looking at 12 30 right now and i i think that would be a great discussion and members of the public may attend and make public comment there it should be their own opinion though and not the anonymous opinion of others that they're passing along um and that's what those
166committee meetings are for that's why we pay policy the big bucks that's right and i agree that you know and hopefully we'll get overtime and i will say to committee or community members that our working committees um have the advantage historically of being far more interactive so school board meetings are limited in terms of demand engagement folks should join any of our committees to have um more dialogue so what we'll do is put both policy 1400 and policy 1230 on the next policy agenda just to have an additional conversation to look through them and see what we think and then we'll update the board at the next voting meeting after that policy committee agenda for any community members who are listening who have thoughts or ideas about this policy please feel free to take a
167look and send them our way we have not addressed some of the other questions about how may we be able to do some of the other work of community conversation and community um communication but we'll also be addressing that as well as soon as we can at this policy committee meeting if that if that works for the board yes yes fantastic i'm going to move to item 11.4 which is policy 8240 district traffic and parking this is a policy that has been up for a first reading went back to the policy committee and was moved to bring to the board for a second reading in adoption this evening and so to begin this part of the agenda this is an action item i move policy 8240 for a second reading and adoption this evening second
168seconded by morrow communicate or questions comments we're up for dialogue about this policy amanda maybe for the record is anything that you'd like to say given that you did a great deal of work on this policy only that i hope that it uh you know meets what we had strived to do which was to make our grounds inclusive as well thank you amanda yes thank you for the work you did on this uh yeah very helpful and just to make sure it's part of the public record we should know that amanda has reached out to not just our transportation department but all building leaders to have a conversation about how this would meet the needs of all of our buildings if there's no other questions or comments from board members trisha will you take the
169role yes sean rob ainsley aaron croyle eversley bradwell yes eldrid harris stein nicola fave epstein moira lange yeah chris malcolm yes ann reichlen yes pat wazlu yes thank you the policy passes uh next on the agenda is item 11.5 draft of the academic calendar i presume i'm handing this to dr brown or a member of your team sir and i will transition over to mr van kieran and miss talking who've been working closely with some other folks on this particular item dr brown the folks you may remember there have been a number of presentations by our wonderfully engaged students the past couple of years framing the discussion around our academic calendar on the question who's included and of course by by asking that we're also looking at who's excluded in this calendar right um so
170the uh you know the students had collected a great deal of data and presented it to the board and to the greater community students from south hill worked with students from lacs the past couple of years in order to to to work through this um and their recommendations were to to add days off particularly for some of the jewish holidays right as a start um and we you know the board engaged in conversation last year around this as well and we also talked at length about some of the challenges associated with deviating from the boces calendar right so by including some we then exclude some of our students who attend boces right um and and create uh a different type of separation so it's it's become a bit of a of a wicked problem we've
171we've certainly um connected with boces and encouraged the young people to connect with the boces board as well to see what changes might be ahead for the region that would really include and support all kiddos so right now we have a draft calendar that's in board docs for folks to take a look at and um and we're also we also wanted to start the conversation with yes that is that is the draft calendar we're also really excited that new york state recognizes juneteenth now and it's it's observed on the 20th right even though it falls on the 19th which is a sunday um and and obviously we lifted a number of non-christian holidays throughout the throughout the calendar but uh we wanted to we wanted to put this forward to the board and also indicate
172that we're happy to mock up another draft where we where we pull from some of the other vacations or times off in order to to try to make a more inclusive calendar as well so we wanted to put this forward to you all and know that we're we're willing to of course engage further and make adjustments as possible we also are even just a couple of hours ago we're emailing back and forth with our with our colleagues and the teachers association because we communicate a great deal with them about this as well we'll pause there see if bob wants to add anything in there i'm seeing a no and turn it over to the board board members questions comments um so could um could someone from from the administration remind us and um and uh
173district listeners about state regulations around purely religious holidays i my recollection is we as as a public school that we are prohibited from recognizing religiously based holidays and giving days off for them that's to be happy to talk yeah okay sorry bob go ahead you talk about the case logo no no that's i mean thank you that that is true pat and we reviewed this last year i think and i don't believe the law has changed um and i think even dr eversley bradwell mentioned you know the disparity in uh power structure because how can we take off christmas holiday for example and the court cases have construed it as a secular holiday because it has been it is so widely and broadly uh quote unquote celebrated so it does not make sense but that's
174the way the law stands right now well i i actually agree that christmas is as practiced as a secular holiday and um the way it is celebrated in china which is not a christmas a christian country is basically the way it is here a celebration of capitalism um but it's winter break it's winter recess uh i have one question on october 11th it's both indigenous people's day and also the um staff uh district conference day um is there a reason that you put those on that same put a district conference day on that day i'm so glad you caught that that's actually a typo so it's supposed to be october 22nd as a district conference day so my apologies on that okay all right and other questions from board members lily the only question i
175would ask then is i see that we have juneteenth off for students but we're expecting staff to uh be present that is that is a carryover from the boces calendar so that's something that we're we're continuing to collaborate with ita leadership around so you know one one could certainly argue that um you know as a the state has recognized it so we should recognize the universe and what i'm not mistaken sorry i'll just if i'm not mistaken both ithaca college and cornell university have also recognized the day as well which is a significant move in our local community um in what way is it that carryover from the boces calendar so what's boces doing with with it's a student vacation day but it is uh that's how they've listed it a vacation day for students
176alone students alone so so what what our staff expect what are the expectations for staff on june 20th and so pat that's that's one of the things you know that's just what i was saying to dr eversley bradley is just saying that um you know we're working we're working through that whether that's going to continue to be a only day or if that's going to transition right so there's a certain number of of ita days that they have to work so we have to coordinate with them so if that's the case then maybe we should let the con conversations continue with our union leadership um and all of our bargaining units and see what comes back by understanding correctly you were trying to get something out in front of us to be a conversation piece
177so we can take a look at so then i'd encourage all board members to take a look ask our community to take a look as well and give us feedback about how best to proceed and we know that this will be back in front of us in a pretty short time any additional questions or comments all right if that is the case then we're going to move if there are any other discussion items great i would ask folks to keep an eye on um board communication and district communication about upcoming dates we know that there are committee meetings being held next week um and i'm sure there's plenty happening before then as well recognizing that it's 9 54 if there's no objections we'll call the meeting to a close for this evening and look forward
178to seeing my fellow board colleagues and other folks in the community hopefully sometime soon all right good folks have a good evening good night all