November 21, 2024 KLSD BOE Meeting

001good evening everyone today is Thursday November 21st one week from Thanksgiving and uh possibly some snow today so glad to see yeah glad to see some rain on grass surfaces only happy to see some rain to help us with some of the uh brush fires so um we're looking forward tonight to hearing a report on technology and thank you to jeffon and Chris Nelson for joining us um but before we begin can we oh can someone please make a motion to return to public session motion by line seconded by Bill all those in favor 7 Z and um before we begin can we please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all

002welcome everyone and um as I said tonight we're looking forward to a presentation on technology I did just want to point out that we um when we have our presentations we've changed our format a little bit to have our presenters join us at a round table and so their backs will be to the public but we're not intending to be um rude or disrespectful but it really helps us to have more of a conversation with our presenters when we sit in this fashion so um you know we want our meetings to be in public it's required by public meeting law um but we're still trying to work together um through our meeting um and just for those of you who are here for public forum we will um have board announcements and a report from

003our student board member presentation and then we'll turn to public forum so um we thank you for being here and have an opportunity to see the presentation that we see and then um you'll have an opportunity to speak after that and with that are there any board announcements I would if I could begin I just wanted to congratulate the high school um students who were in theater who had the play over the weekend I was able to go Saturday night great it was really nice to have the um I don't know what we call like kind of the close seating or smaller theater small stage that they created was really wonderful and made it like it felt like sort of an off Bradway show it was really nice and um the play was terrific and

004you know congratulations to them and thank you to our administrators um who support them in that work there was really just um a lot of great talent there and lots of teamwork you could see the kids really work together so congratulations to them and thank you to all who made that possible yeah I'll second that the play was wonderful and I also wanted to congratulate our girls volleyball team um it was just two weeks ago tonight that they made it to the County Center for their next round of play and I know a few of us had the opportunity to be there and cheer them on and truly they were speaking their own language of volleyball and it was such a joy to behold it really was and really just couldn't have felt more proud

005of the girls and of their coaches and it was just beautiful teamwork and a wonderful Testament to their sportsmanship and their talent and their dominance and they were great and I know then they've gone on to play one more time and I understand their season has ended I was there for that t or that game I should say as well that match several of us had the opportunity and what a beautiful season and congratulations to all of I'm very proud of them and and what a what a season for Tom raditi to go out on absolutely 22 years um of dedicating endless hours those our coaches put in more time than parents and administration and us we understand like they're breaking down film they're working with the kids they're making sure our kids are mentally

006and physically prepared so you know our our it's amazing what they do with our students very happy for him it was a lovely lovely Capstone to his career as a so thank you and I think also with the play we had our great art show um so you know that's always fun to see as well um that was also very well laid out and there's hours that go into that as well beautiful art congratulations to the Arts students too yeah oh we also had an opportunity to go to the Tilly Foster Farms dinner and to hear some um discussions about Foundation Aid and um there I guess will'll be more to come on that as we find out what the state's going to do this year but it was a very it's always a very

007nice dinner um beautiful location and just some really it's a good chance to connect with some of our other board members across the region um and just learn from some people that are doing the work thank you I had forgotten about that and it seems like a left time leis girl was very well represented so thank you for that and it was a really important with Michael regarding Foundation Aid and glad that several of us had the chance to hear from him and I'm sure there'll be more to come thank you for a Ming that great Ian would you like to give your report sure so this past month has proved to be pretty eventful with our schools contributing to democracy and becoming voting centers on Election Day Veterans Day being celebrated and our vets

008being honored around our schools and the approval of block scheduling for our next school year at the last meeting this this month and the coming one looks to be a lot more tame with both Thanksgiving and winter recess being just around the corner starting with Meadow Pond they've had their PTO book fair on the 7th and 8th of November and the 12th and 14th of November with parent teacher conferences coming up on the 14th and 18th of November and a community meeting in spirit day on the 27th of November increas Miller recently celebrated Native American heritage month with a visiting from the Red Hawk Native American Arts Council who gave students Taste of Native American culture by showing them a variety of cultural dances authentic clothing pieces and giving them an opportunity to have a

009Q&A as with last last month's celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month we appreciate the effort that increase Miller puts into educating students on the diverse groups in their Community they've had their parent teacher conferences on the 7th 14th and 18th with a fifth grade bingo game on the 14th as well and they're having their prek panel yesterday for prek parents who are looking to learn more about our schools Katona has had their parent te conferences on the 7th 14th and 18th their holiday gift Drive begins on the 2nd of December and December 20th they'll be having their fifth grade students versus faculty volleball game in terms of the Middle School the students have been enjoying their new playground complete with a swing and rotating climber as well as the renovated theater entrance every day on the

010way in and out of school to build more Community across their grades students in and their home bases work together to create design and ultimately present their own monster doors to the entire School November 8th their Veterans Day assembly had students honor those who fought to protective freedoms that they enjoy today with students getting to walk their family members who served down to receive their recognition and starting today through the 23rd they'll be having their fall drama and their fall production of Allison Wonderland moving on to the high school October 25th saw the best buddies Chapters at John J and Fox Lane come together and have the first annual buddy bowl a football game dedicated to the mission of the best buddies Club where our very own Ellie pernick opened the game with a coin

011toss November 7th had our field of honor our annual field of honor our celebration and recognition a Veterans Day where the John J fetes Club organized and honor the veterans in our community and thank them for their service with both speeches and music from various members in our community November 13th students celebrated their letter of intent signing ceremony in which students who plan to continue their Varsity Sports careers in high school sign letters of intent surrounded by the students who supported them our High School production of the dining room went from the 16th to the 14th of November as many of you said it was a great show I saw it and personally enjoyed it a lot our art show also opened on the 14th again very well put together with many students being able

012to show off the fruits of their labor and and ultimately receive the recognition for the hard work that they've been putting in for these past few months our thanks and giving week starts next week with the spirit Day themes being flannel day class color day and cozy clothes day and the 11th and 12th we'll be having our freshman play a production of the cards of Fate lastly for student government and other committees throughout our district Lee John J is going to have their next leadership conference on the 2nd in which we'll plan our annual Unity day for high schoolers and check in with our freshman class to both build community and make sure everyone's doing okay campus Congress recently had a visiting session with Dr Blanch to create and establish our goals to develop our

013community further as well as creating plans to realize those goals whether it be through this year or through the next years after that our equity and racial Justice committee will be meeting December 10th and the effective use of time committee met November 18th just this Monday and are currently working on a frequently asked questions as well as other ways to get information to our parents teachers and students about the effects and details regarding block scheduling thank you thank you very much Ian that was a great summary and great to hear all the things that are happening in November we really appreciate that update do you mind if I put you on the spot and ask question um how do you think students are feeling about block scheduling I know you discussed it at campus Congress

014what's your sense of um student engagement in the in the process so I think in general students are definitely a little apprehensive about the big change the main concerns are surrounding 80 minutes of classes are not exactly fond of but I think our plans to rework the pedagogy will definitely offset those complaints and hopefully lead to a lot more engaging classes another complaint is the fact that the max um classes they can take will move down from 9 to 8 um I think a lot of the concern comes from the effect that'll have on College admissions But ultimately colleges tend to look at things holistically and the fact that we'll only offer eight classes as a Max instead of nine will ultimately offset that I guess fear of worst college admissions chances aside from that

015I know a lot of other students are excited about it personally my grade is a little detached saying that we won't be there but even then I think a lot of other students who will ultimately go through block scheduling are also excited for just a change honestly to experience something new and hopefully have more engaging experiences in the classroom great thanks for that I appreciate it and I I think too so I was also at that meeting of been on that committee um I think they've got some exciting webinars and interactions planned for the community to really learn more about that so that'll be good to help lay some fears and some concerns and question questions about that I think it's a pretty well laid out plan that they've been talking about so I think

016it'll be good and you know thank you for your contributions I always love interacting with you at those meetings thanks and so we're going to move on to our um item 8.01 which is our presentation on technology and Chris Nelson and Jeff son are going to join us the name tags I'll go ahead and start boarding as these gentlemen go ahead and get themselves situated so we're going to go ahead tonight and and uh Jeff and and Chris will walk us through a little bit here with the um kind of digital learning program review that took place last year we'll go through that at a high level view some of the process that was involved some of the questions are involved some of the learning points that were coming forth of that and then kind

017of where we will go next steps and we'll be talking a little bit about how we've gotten an update since this has actually taken place and Chris will speak to this a little bit about the timeline has changed from the state as far as their um our next technology plan that goes to the state and then also how opportunities will be able to hopefully be embedded into some of the KSD 2030 work so you'll kind of see that coming forward so I'll hand it off to you Chris thank you sir thank you Ray and and and thank you to the full board here um it's it's always a privilege to come up and kind of talk about technology it's it's a big investment I think it impacts a lot of uh the work that we

018do on campus so having these conversations I think are important um in my tenure uh in the district I've I've had an opportunity to go through several technology plans um and I don't know if the full board understands that this is a requirement by the state uh the state as part of their state funding formulas and such require us to document and and set goals in terms of how we anticipate using those funds so every three years we go through a cycle of uh producing um you know you some expectations from the state at the same time uh having some local input in terms of things that we like to see the technology do for our learners and in our learning environment so um when I uh first started in the district uh I inherited

019one of the plant so I I came in kind of closing out a technology plan that was uh focused on Smart Bond monies uh those of you that were here long enough to understand that the the state was trying to up the ante in terms of bandwidth and and and Wi-Fi and and infrastructure for schools um that that was a very he heavy emphasis on infrastructure um and that was something that I think when I came in we we really tackled a big project we we had a lot of camp us uh uh Growing Pains to be able to get our Network to where it needed to be uh but we got there and I think that was a great uh commitment both by the technology team and the Investments that we made um fast

020forward to the next plan that we developed it was a process to look at the classroom environment uh we we received a lot of feedback from our teachers and and and some thoughtful design in terms of what a learning environment might consist of and can we shift from one computer classroom to one that is more mobile uh our faculty gave us a lot of input in terms terms of where they worked and how they worked and where technology could fit in in their professional lives um and that was the first introduction of of laptops for our teachers and that was a big shift and and quite successful in terms of asking folks to take their laptops away now I think we'd have a different impression than than asking them to to First make that shift

021uh and then of course um I have to speak to the fact that the pandemic hit us uh mostly because the fact that that plan was pretty much written for us uh we had to respond to a remote environment uh which accelerated a plan to the state uh which re uh required us to kind of demonstrate how we can be remote at the same time uh re-enter the learning spaces in such a way that gave us flexibility and Hybrid models and using the technology in such a way that we could distance and be able to um you respond to any other uh emergencies in terms of you know you responding to the whole pandemic was very interesting for us from a technology lens so um but we we survived it um and that gave us

022a great understanding in terms of how students could exist in a onetoone program uh it probably wasn't as thoughtful as our earlier plans because we it was more reactive than it was proactive uh but we spent the last few years um you know understanding uh the those impacts and and and and now we're at a point the state um is asking us to do the next round of Technology planning so so last year in anticipation of that uh we worked through a process with the district technology committee to to do some research uh we broke into different committees with had different themes for each of our meetings gave us an opportunity to look at Trends it look looked an opportunity kind of anticipate what the next three years could be for us uh when you

023take a look at topics like AI or augmented reality and and all the different uh different ways of using the technology um we had to educate ourselves in that capacity uh and then we also wanted to to kind of get an outside perspective in terms of uh how well are we really doing with the technology integration uh components of of uh the technology and and that's something that you know it's obvious obviously we can ask you know from my perspective how we're doing perhaps there's some bias and and pride in terms of of what we're doing um so historically we've asked outside people to can come in and give a lens and then that's where Jeff's work comes in in terms of asking him to to to kind of just come in as an outside

024perspective kind of take a snapshot of where we are uh and provide us a base of of of understanding in terms of where uh our users might provide some feedback giving us maybe some recommendations in terms of starting a foundation to do the planning process uh and I think I first thought when we brought Jeff in last spring uh that we would be doing that good work this year uh in terms of the planning process but uh most of the districts throughout across the state uh had kind of said well you know we we kind of paused after the pandemic we we weren't really focused on technology because we wanted to reset the Norms just to get our students back into the classroom uh that the state provided us an extension extra year uh to

025kind of think about it so although we were ready to move forward with planning this year uh we're just continuing the conversation and continuing to work with our stakeholders uh to understand where we are so we want to honor Jeff's work as I think he's got a lot Insight in terms of what he's been able to collect for us in terms of an outside perspective our technology use uh But please understand that this is one of many conversations that we'll take back to the technology planning when we start that process next year so so Jeff welcome hopefully intruction y great thanks Chris um one other thing that um I'll add just sort of to building off of what Chris was saying and and it helps to put a little context into this is um the

026technology planning Pro process which will essentially be restarting again U next year um this time around so the the plan that you're currently in actually had slightly different requirements from nid um and I can speak to to that sort of thing because in fact actually uh my firm has worked with districts here um in New York for a long time um we do a lot of work with u your Rick um or the regional information center uh lower Hudson Regional information center in this case um and um actually did training for about 25 districts um in uh Southern Westchester um just uh well actually I get I'll get lost on the time trck here but it was um as people were putting together the current plan uh my point of all of that is that

027um nid was actually asking for evaluation in the current planning process which is actually something that they've not done before and I think it's a good step forward for the state to to actually um uh encourage districts to come up with ways to measure their progress and to do the kind of work that um very fortunately K lbo kind of stepped up to the plate and did um even without the uh plan or the state actually demanding it so you know I I think um I don't think anybody feels it this way but you didn't lose any ground by doing something when you did it in fact actually you probably did more work than you needed to but it was the work that you should have been doing anyway so um that's that's a good

028thingk um so I have a uh series of slides um which I will kind of uh move through as as efficiently as possible um trying not to spend a whole lot of time looking at slides so that we can actually have a conversation about some of this stuff so um just to get started um Jeff son son Associates I told you a little bit about our our background already um I think that some of the board probably knows uh the background also um our stock and trade is program evaluation so we in fact actually don't only work with um digital learning and instructional technology but we do program evaluation and a educational program evaluation only in a broader sense um we're interested in technology we've developed quite an expertise in technology but it's really um

029technology as a tool so um that's what positions us to to look at what's going on in the classroom um we can say a little bit to Chris and to the district about um the technology part itself um the the infrastructure and those kinds of things but that's not really our expertise and that's not really what um the district brought us in to do uh this turns out actually to be our fifth engagement with Katona lewisboro something which I just bring up because I think it's cool um we've worked with you from 2000 so um we've uh been here and and I've been in this room and in this building and actually was in this building before you enclose things as much as they're enclosed right now so we were in the open plan version

030of this building I believe um but we were here 2000 2003 2004 2005 and then just this past year so um and I've already talked a little bit about the relationship with lri the goal um that this whole project is organized around which um was really articulated by Chris was as it says here on the um slide to develop a snapshot of digital learning and Technology within the district and um operating down to the classroom level to see what it is that's happening in classrooms and buildings throughout the district um the emphasis being on Snapshot because as Chris noted this was a project that actually um we originally um uh started this work planning it back in February of last year so it's actually almost been a year at this point um and we came

031into the district to uh do our data collection right at the end of the um spring semester last year so that's what that snapshot is a snapshot of we realize that that school districts static or rigidly fixed according to you know we're going to do this and this is what we do and this is all that we're going to do um things change and things are are flexible and dynamic as they move along so um you know that's the grain of salt that you probably want to take some of this with because I'm sure that a lot of things have happened since we were here doing this initially so an evaluation is going to be built around evaluation questions and uh there were four evaluation questions um that drove this evaluation um we were looking

032at the uh basically uh what are teachers and students doing in the classroom Visa integration once again this was really about how technology was supporting teaching and learning and it wasn't so much about what kind of computers people had or you know their network access or um the degree to which they use Microsoft tools or whatever the case may be but whatever it is that they were doing we were interested in in taking that snapshot of how technology was working in the classroom um the other big piece and that's something that we do in in all of our projects and and there's been dozens and dozens of these projects um throughout the years but that's sort of the core thing that first uh question right there um the other one though is about the value

033um and the values that the um the learning community and that includes parents and and uh caregivers as well as the teachers as well as the administrators as well as of course the students um the values that they have with regard to um the impact that technology has on teaching and learning so um as a practical matter what that really kind of gets into is it helps explain what it is that's happening in the classroom okay so once again that infrastructure piece may come in to play a little bit in terms of if there's you know are terrible infrastructure issues or no computers or something like that obviously none of those things are issues here in Kon lboro um what actually happens in the classroom has a lot to do with um the value that

034the community places upon technology so we're looking at that um the third one is um the extent to which the technology is adequately supported and maintained that gets a little bit back into the infrastructure piece but the supported part a lot of that is around professional development because you can want to use technology as much as as anyone you can believe that it's an important thing for student learning or for uh human development um but if you don't have the professional development that actually supports you in being able to do this stuff and not just how to turn the computer on or how to get into some app or some program but really it's interesting you talk about blog scheduling and you talked about the changes in pedagogy all right so um that is going

035to all be about to some or is going to have a lot to do with your use of Technology okay what are those changes in pedagogy that you're thinking about we could talk about that for the next three days but a lot of that's going to have to do with um how technolog is integrated um and what constitutes digital learning and how digital learning is being used here within the district that's the reality of where we are in history um so that's something that's going to have to happen and you're going to have to have training about that okay um and training that's around integration and the last question is um uh was really one that that as as Chris put it um he wanted to hear about the winds you wanted to hear um

036what's out there that's happening right now that people are feeling good about that seems to be working that is notable that can ultimately you know be highlighted help frame professional development feed in into the planning process do more stuff like that well what's stuff like that all right so we wanted to hear about those wins so those are the core questions I think this next slide we don't have to spend much time with it's the schematic process of how we do this um I think it's pretty straightforward is not really rocket science um the uh uh part here that I would say I just draw your attention to is that very first piece which is about de developing indicators um in a traditional program evaluation you need to have performance indicators okay usually our methodology

037of evaluation or our methodology is all built around collaborative participatory evaluation um we do not believe in coming in and sort of being the people who say oh okay you know good not good um there are people who do that um we don't do that that's more along line with the audit process which is why we never refer to what we do as auditing even though a lot of times people think that it is auditing um it is a collaborative participatory evaluation which ideally and this can feed into your planning process I think as you look forward to planning um can feed into um uh the community developing an understanding and a set of indicators for what it is that um the district Al accomplishing Visa digital learning um in this case we did didn't

038um do that piece so much but we actually used a research-based framework um to take a look at um the the practices that we saw and that's all detailed in the report we don't need to go too deep into that right now but that gets into things like um istd standards net standards um and samur and those kinds of things uh data real quick um we did uh observations in classrooms in all fiveyear schools um that law we were in every classroom talked to just about every teacher um uh we actually recorded 120 observations we interviewed all the principles as well as the associate U principles in most cases um we had 78 focus group participants uh that included in different kinds of groups students teachers um administrative staff um parents and caregivers and um

039we also uh did online service many of you have probably and people listening out there in the in the zoom World um probably actually did some of those surveys um we had 667 responses fabulous response in terms of surveys um like I said we've been doing this all over the place and for years and we do not often get uh those kinds of of survey responses so that's an indicator if nothing else of the engagement of your community okay which is a you know I I will try not to just kind of keep coming back and saying the same positive things over and over again um but uh you really do need to to know that your community is very engaged with what it is that you're trying to do so and that's that's very

040positive because I work in a number of districts where the community can't be bothered okay or the community can't be bothered around this particular topic um you know you've got the if nothing else the resources that demonstrate that the community is engaged year so very uh moving on what did we find um once again um the the main thing that we found is that digital learning Technologies are being used um broadly and widely throughout all of your schools um that is extraordinarily positive as well sorry can I have a question that's okay sure so I I know the that the pandemic kind of forced us to have each student have technology um in their hands on a daily basis to to do school from remote positions but you Al also often now are hearing in

041the news about students having too much screen time and you know they're they always have their phone in their hands they're so in tuned to social media which may not be so good for their mental health um can you give your thoughts on how much we're using technology in the classrooms um as a beneficial way with also still giving time for nonscreen time sure and actually if if you let me go ahead and build here we're going to get to that because that's obviously an important issue as well um so what is it that uh this bullet here is saying that um they're making use of the technology for information acquisition analysis and a way to demonstrate their learning okay so those are are if if we were to you know and the full report

042does this you know provide a lot of examples of literally the kinds of things that people are doing all right but to get to your point um or start to get to your point um one thing that we found that is not as positive as those first two um bullets is that there's relatively little uniformity from class to class um as to how teachers um guide and Implement that technology so another way of putting that is teachers and I don't mean this to be a negative on the part of teachers because I will say this now and I'll say it again later on I tie all of this back to training and professional development and and guidance but there is um a term I use a little bit later on is the amount of intentionality

043around the use of Technology varies from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher and that gets at this this point that you're raising okay which is that um it's one thing I mean it's great that that students have access to these devices and frankly you know the fact that they they have it's it's a one-on-one environment um you know we could we could bat that around for you know a while as to whether that's positive or not positive but literally I'm telling you that that's the way it is okay um students have access to to those devices and every district is trying to get to one: one if they're not in one: one right now the pandemic booted pretty much everybody over into that that place yeah and and I think we're we're in an

044interesting time with technology right so it's the technical challenges the acquisition and having a a working inventory uh being able to have the supports uh to build consistency and continuity with the technology I think we're there it's it's it's we we don't hear the barriers um and and that was something that that we we couldn't have these conversations until we could establish at least consistency and continuity there so so we very rarely are down with Network in fact I can't speak to a time that we've been down in the last two years I I can't speak to folks that haven't had the technology when they need it and where they need it and we have the resources to do that so so now as we look at the next planning piece is is how can

045we Define use and and that's something that from a professional lens the intentionality how do we plan how how do we look at our lessons and find fits of Technology uh use to support their learning but but then also a kind of a parallel track is that how build proficiency and and fluency with the technology if we're not consistently interacting with the technology so so you know if our goal is to build skills if our if our goal is to be able to have uh choice in terms of creating different ways to communicate and and and and develop products that are there we have to have a Continuum of practice in such a way that kids have opportunity which I think we have opportunity now but but defining use in such a way that we

046can ensure that's there and so some of the inconsistencies and and and Jeff can probably expand on this is that that if if you have a a highly engaged environment with fourth grade classroom um they may be relying on a third grade classroom to build foundational skills so that they can accelerate the opportunity for kids to do that we've seen now this one to one program in place for four years now we're actually entering our fifth year and so our seventh graders for example for five years have been using the tablets and their proficiency is so much greater than when we first introduced the seventh grade graders devices because we didn't have that fluency with the devices and what we're seeing from that are much different prod you know sets of products that are being

047created with it you go to a library now we have a whole podcasting lab and we got a long list of folks that that want to go in and and create you know with their garage band uh you know opportunities to kind of use their voices and advocate for their their learning and and debate and and all the things that go along with it it's hard not to do that without the modern tools um because that's what kids are listening to those are things that the kids want to create because that's the world that they're in uh and we want to be able to help them you know find that balance in terms of doing that so so I think that's these these moments where we're talking about it I think we may not have

048answers for them right away but part of the planning process is if if that's our goal and and at the end of the next technology plan can we have a better understanding of the use of the technology in such a way that we can have the outcomes that we're looking for I'm excited you know with Ray's work in terms of the Strategic plan you know we're changing you know the structures in terms of time in the classroom and we we go back to plock scheduling provides a whole different format in terms of being able to leverage the tools curriculum mapping process in terms of really understanding our outcomes and goals uh with the curriculum and then with that might we have a column that has the resources that support that and some of them will

049be digital and some of them may be more traditional in that sense but at least we'll we'll have those opportunities to have those conversations in such a way that it's structured and viable uh because now we we're talking about it we have those those things in place so so I don't want to detract from the presentation but in the same regards I just wanted to I hope that puts a little more context into it yeah and are we still are we still supporting the families in our district that need you know boosters and internet access I know that we were doing some of that during the pandemic we do our best um some of those are Community not not anyone in the community but just the geography if you will say even with the best

050cell phone you can't get connections when you take the left turn out outside of increase Miller right so it's we could give other the boosters in the world you're not going to get internet service there so so we do have some challenges there but we we have some great relationships with our vendors and and we have we've help a lot of families in that capacity U the state still has some funding that is is provided to the um telecom companies to be able to do that so I can't say we've had a perfect uh solution for every family but but we do the best we can to support them a lot to to unpack there and and you know this is is to me the fascinating thing about this work is that it ties into

051so many things and there's no simple answers um there's no you know technology good technology bad um but it really is all about what you you know how you use it how you're trained what the the the framework is within which you're putting it one one of the things that that Chris said is you made the analogy to Tool um and you know I think the the way that I understand um and you know my belief with regard to um what digital learning is and and these tools that we have and this goes I think directly to the you know should kids at whatever age be using these things is and how much screen time should they have is that um uh technology actually represents several tools but categorically it is a tool um that

052is in um the a Learners toolbox okay it's not the only tool all right and there's a lot of things in there that um are not a computer or a website or or some sort of interactive media or something like that um but just as you know back home in your toolbox you know you can't do everything with a screwdriver I mean believe me I see people do it I see people try to drive screws I see people take a screwdriver and hold on to the middle side and use the plastic side and try to bang Nails I see people use screwdrivers trying to to scrape the cocking out of Windows um and uh it generally doesn't work out very well when you do that all right so you need to understand that youve you've

053got screwdrivers you've got hammers you've got all sorts of things you've got power tools and those are all appropriate in their own way and it is the role of the teacher building as Chris is is referring to something that we talk about in our report and talk about in this work building a Continuum of skills so that ultimately by the time students get to this building they have developed the the understandings to say okay this is when I actually want to take that computer and do something with it but you know there's other situations where to put that thing away okay because now it's time to actually have you know IRL conversations with people in you know my classroom or my teachers or whatever okay you can't expect second graders necessarily to figure that out

054yeah they all know how to sit there and do this but they don't necessarily have the judgment to be able to know that there's a hammer in the toolbox as well as this the screwdriver SL phone okay or iPad or whatever it is that you're giving them the teachers need to have that kind of skill the teachers need to be supported to develop the sort of Frameworks that can um uh guides the development of student skills so that students can grow those things over time and basically what we found and I'm not sure where this connects to the uh bullet points but who cares um the uh uh real Point here is that teachers in K lboro don't have that we call it a scope and SE um they don't know what it is that

055students at any one point in time ought to be able to do they don't necessarily have any guidance um around you know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate okay um and some teachers therefore develop their own guidance develop their own concept of what it is that they want do some teachers decide that they don't want to do any of this and you know if nobody's going to make us do it then what to decide and we'll do something else um that may work just as well but may not be necessarily beneficial for those students because those students are not going to be with that teacher um for more than a year and they're going to go off to another teacher next year and that teacher is going to have students from multiple other teachers that

056you know fed into to his or her grade and doesn't have any idea what those students can or cannot do so you see how there's without the scope and sequence and without the the uh guidance to teachers around how that scope and sequence should be implemented you develop a more and more chaotic um spiral upward okay or downward in Jeff you're speaking to technology right the kids ability to learn different aspects of Technology well not just you know there's very few children that actually need to be taught how to use technology so so what are you referring to I'm referring to how they use it for as a tool for learning okay this is not about whether they know how to turn the phone on or to get into an app or something like that

057they all know how to do that um they know how to do that nowadays before they ever even show up in one of your elementary schools because it's it's almost a thing that they do from birth at this point but what they don't know is how to make the the decisions about when is it is appropriate to actually be on it how to interact appropriately with information other people um the devices themselves sometimes digital citizenship safety security we can all go to websites but we don't necessarily know how to evaluate whether the stuff that we're seeing on that website is useful not useful harmful not harmful that's digital citizenship as Julie's referring to and that's something that has to be taught so that's two different things so to me we could we could have a

058course at across K through 12 that engages at the right moment in time in various aspects of digital citizenship and security and so on we could we could teach that well the state released those standards last year started to so those are those are accounted for already in our curriculum they've been they've been identified by the state but we have not we don't have a viable curriculum around it yet plans but right yes it's not about the use of technology and about it's about yeah it's about learning about it's interact interact and integrate technology I get you now I'm with you right and so one of the pieces that again as Jeff was sh last time in the district that the team is already working on as our our um kind of our system our

059structure of professional learning communities and this is one of the key pieces and even in just report he'll speak to the idea about laying in these new standards into the curriculum mapping process and that's a piece that uh Chris is involved then our our teachers will be involved and Julia will be leading that from the team there that's the embedded part that Jeff was speaking about and then a little bit about the usage of that technology the idea about lower order or higher order thinking skills and that's a piece that I think de is speaking about is when I have technology in here am I doing some pretty basic skill components or am I really applying that information I creating some synthesis am I looking at doing some research so that's a part we are

060prepared and ready when we get to that point to do our own internal kind of check and monitoring in a certain way as we're resing each other's classrooms and saying not so much looking about what the instructor is doing but what are the students doing are the students engaged at that level that we would desire them to be at a percentage we want we're always going to have a blend in there but we don't want to be too heavy and a low order thinking skills just want to make sure more of a high order thinking skills at a high level of percentage of the time and again Jeff mentioned about the block schedule that will provide opportunity in there and we want to make sure that when technology is determined to be the tool to

061use it is mostly appropriate used for students who are engaging in higher order thinking skills again that kind of bloops economy thing about application and the synthesis and that's a piece that we'll be prepared and ready to do that once we get those standards and learning expertise laid into the system to and that makes perfect sense to me I I just felt like we're coming at a curriculum problem from a technology perspective which is fine but really these are curriculum questions that we're talking about here oh absolutely technology as part of the curriculum it's not these are not really technology issues these are curriculum issues and where how do we build curriculum correctly to address these issues I can't say much Jeff when you started again just being new to the team that without the

062infrastructure without the the capacity that's there without those resources we wouldn't be able to have this conversation right now so we're at a place we're able to have a really rich conversation to move it forward so sorry Jee yeah no that I I agree with all of that um you know you've got the infrastructure none of this is about the infrastructure right um but it is really all about the you know I short-handed to say integration but I you know go directly to to what Ray saying about uh uh higher order thinking skills and blooms taxonomy and such and we have an entire chapter that lays out the the the theoretical underpinnings for this in the um full report itself um but uh that establishes the why okay you know the what you've got the

063what and most people like I said even without spending any time doing professional development children um they they've got the what you know we use it because we like watching the videos we've got it because we like going to websites you know we've got it uh because we use it to talk to other people but but why and how do you Channel that so that it it becomes constructive in terms of supporting true learning that is a u an issue that starts with Vision Works to policy um has to be implemented through um professional development and the plcs that you're talking about is is an aspect of that um but ultimately then comes down to the level of curriculum as you're saying um there needs to be work actually mapping this stuff to the curriculum

064I do want to talk about that for a second though to clarify a little bit the computer science and digital fluency standards that were released were deliberately TurnKey to teachers and staff and do have kind of their own standards separate and apart from our traditional learning standards so like one part of the things that we developed in conjunction with Mike Samano one of our former instructional coaches was like a scope and sequence of activities that the technology Tas throughout the district this year are imparting in all of the buildings so I don't I don't want to make it seem like that hasn't been happening or separate from um our efforts it's it's a joint I get it it's it's a shift that we're just starting the journey and and I think that's the piece that

065this plan will help us understand where we're going on that journey and so we we have the foundation um that we have the right people in place we have the structures that Ray Ry is introducing to our faculty to be able to understand it um but I I think what Jeff's work is asking us to continue to think about is is how do we Define uh once we get there and and so what what what does it mean to be technology literate as a middle school student what does it mean to be technology literate as a high school student and and and and if we can be clear in those expectations I think it provides more confidence for our faculty to know that they're using the technology properly and then we can put up the

066right safeguards in place and say you've deviated from this in such a way that we can have conversations with kids to refocus them and so so that's where I think when we talk about just giving someone device and at home maybe it's a cell phone and in the classroom it might be a tablet if we can't Define our expectations for it that's where the children will fill the gaps with social curiosity and that's what that kind of takes them into an abyss and then that's what you know is is stressing the adults out because we know they can be productive tools and we know that there's so many other skills they need to develop in order to balance the life uh that they should be having as young adolescents um but the tools are still

067part of their life and we I think have a responsibility uh to Define that for them and provide them opportunities to both practice that and make mistakes in such a way that we can refocus them to understand the true purpose of a lot these tools because the tools are not going to go away the world has becoming so digital that that it's hard pressed to to eliminate that we might delay it we might put it in different context but it's important for us to be able to to Define it and I think that's that's our challenge so if I if I just made briefly um the report was thorough and I appreciated the opportunity to read it and I think that there was a lot of important information for us to to to take on

068you know the the if if I understood it correctly so the the three sort of main recommendations and I think that what I took away from the report was that there are kind of big picture recommendations that are going to fit into planning processes and that are going to fit into work that's underway I also saw a lot of low hanging fruit and there are things that we could probably do right away that would be some wins for for for the school and and for families if I understood it correctly the recommendations would be that we need a plan to really sort of put some meat on the bones of what our vision is and what you were talking about Chris and then there's this issue of s and sequencing which is there isn't a

069ton of differentiation right now in terms of what's given to kids whether they're in first grade versus fourth or fifth grade and that's created some friction and some issues as well and then the third is you know so great that we have such an Engaged community that was participating in the surveys but there's really an opportunity for us to both make the community a part of our planning process y um and in doing so to to improve our communication with regard to what it is that we're doing what the expectations are um so that there could be more of that school Family Partnership with regard to to technology as we do that planning so I I would love to hear about the process of the planning and how we're planning to incorporate all of the

070various voices whether that's teacher across the the different levels and whether that's parents and even students you know to participate in that so I think that's one important piece that I think we should we should definitely not lose um and then I think it would be a Miss I know that this the scope of this is really technology for Learning and so the devices and the applications that we provide students for learning but if we're going to look at the whole student I think we can't ignore that fact that they have their own devices and so technology is a part of their life holistically and so we is it's an opportunity that I think would be missed if in the planning process we didn't also take an opportunity to think about where are our policies

071right now with regard to personal use in school do they feel that they're still adequate is there an opportunity to sort of and how do these things interact right how do personal versus school you know a lot of the school uh laptops and iPads are used for personal you know during personal time and so how do we kind of look at this holistically and not sort of create a wall where really there is a one between how kids are interacting with technology um so um that's sort of the the big picture things that came to mind for me but I also think there's so much in there that we could just run with that would be huge wins like um you know just teachers were talking about some of the issues that they have with

072blocking like maybe that's something that could be quickly fixed um a lot of parent frustration around certain games like Geometry Dash like maybe that's something that could be quickly fixed so I'd love to hear about like what can we do because the report is so rich and so helpful both in the long term but also their short-term things so I'd love to see um and understand more both the big picture but also the the near-term steps that we can take yeah well can can I just I I think just for let's just if you want to finish the slides I think that would be so felt like no I think if you can finish slides and I think ultimately like we're going to have a plan like this is background for us to create our

073technology plan right which will include the things that you're that you're talking I Define in the process of like who's going to create that plan as an important part right yes so why yeah I mean I think we've talked probably about a few things that are in your slides but yeah I mean basically I thank you for reading the report and you basically said that what I would say for the next rest of the slides so so we're good I I you know and I I love low hanging fruit as much as the next person so you know I wouldn't want to deny you your fruit um you got to get rid of Geometry Dash um it's a game um parents are are quite upset by it um that's I think we we don't use

074the term lwh hanging fruit in the report but I think we pretty much make it clear that that is something that should not uh should be rained in okay now it does tie back to a bigger picture um and I think that you know I'm I never want to forget about the bigger picture why is it that something like that is being used nobody's evil here what it is is it's something that people have it it fills a need um it looks like something that would be useful um you know in if it weren't as as being used as rampantly as it is being used by some people right now it probably would fit a need um but it's something that um is happening because it's filling a void and that void is the the

075the vision and the the broader understanding of what the value of these these various tools are so I would not you know I know this isn't what you're suggesting or anybody suggesting but I wouldn't go after an individual teacher and say you know you're doing something bad I just think that that they need to have other tools and they need to have broader understanding and that's the thing that that that really needs to happen here in terms of professional development and and training and planning and and so on and so forth so just to to kind of Pop through the rest of these it's it's pretty quick now um you're right we think that the main thing is that there needs to be a vision for technology role in teaching and learning um and uh

076that has to be something that's ultimately go Vision um is uh built then supports or drives a framework for expectations for teachers as well as students um and that's all of that stuff that you were just talking about the skills the policies the curriculum linkages by grade and subject um that's the mapping but I also you know there's a cultural aspect of this too and you know it's not my job to to um tell you what you have to do or change about that but you know every district is different you know I know this District um because like I said I've been coming here for a real long time um there are certain things that are constants here one is that you have a um an environment where um there's a lot of autonomy

077um and and uh Independence and uh you know I think that that we have different things happening in different buildings we have a different tone as far as um how technolog is being used how support staff are being used um so on and so forth I think that getting some more um uh uniformity around that will be important how that happens without actually you know um unduly Dam in the spirit um that makes Katana lewisboro a you know a unique and wonderful place is is tricky um maybe maybe I just take a tack on this on or jive a little bit yeah um what you described there is exactly uh part of them our work behind ourselves as a professional learning community and the idea about um even today we had a little bit of

078a learning experience yesterday for some of our teachers and some of our administrators and this differentiation between the idea about maybe we're cooperating on some work and we're doing a little basic coordination and then really truly getting to a spot of where we are collaborating together so from classroom to classroom and then building to building and to do that we need to come together have those conversations about what those standards were looking at about the learnings from each other and so that structure right now really does is not intended to frankly take away from the autonomy of our classroom teachers amazingness the hope is is we can bring that together leverage that for more and then they'll create a guaranteed and viable curriculum across all of our schools and in all of our classrooms so

079the structure that uh we're looking at will certainly support where Jeff and the team have identified so that is kind of work that has started and it is this idea about coming together and not just coordinating work but truly collaborating in that so as the team was talking before third grade to fourth grade we need to have those structured specific conversations fifth grade to the Middle School those conversations we need to afford our teams the structure and the opportunity to come together and that is a piece where again professional learning you'll talk here on this topic we'll talk about best literacy practices we'll talk about best instructional practices all of those things the classroom today my opinion is more sophisticated and more demanding Upon Our Educators than has ever been and so to do that

080we are still though looking at a very minimal amount of time to work with our teachers to work on their learning and so one of the things I've talked about the board before as well is how can we perhaps afford our teachers a little bit more time to do some of this work and do it in a collaborative fashion so hearing this and I hope you heard some of our conversations before is we are well aligned to bring this right into our current thinking so these are not standing apart quite frankly they're really complimentary of each other here's the here's kind of the the process that we're talking about and then how do we bring that to some of those again guaranteed viable experiences for our kids we owe this to our teachers so then

081they can help the children so thank you yeah and it's it's an it's an ongoing challenge I mean as you're talking I am reminded of the very first work that we did here 24 years ago um which uh in a the the first cycle there which was a year or two um basically resulted in something and I there may be some teachers around who remembered this um uh there was something developed called the kellster and uh I don't even remember exactly what that was short for besides col Katona lewisboro something but it was a um it it was a tool that was designed to engage teachers around collaborating on developing curriculum units and classroom activities that integrated technology in a meaningful kind of way okay because the understanding even then was that you're going to

082need to have curriculum based activities that um brought this technology in so that it could be something more than oh we're just going to learn how to type or oh we're just going to learn how to format a floppy disc or something like that but that if you're going to do this you were going to have to use it in a way that that built upon instructional goals so it was a tool that was designed to get teachers to collaborate in uh grade level bands I think um across buildings to do that now you know different times different ages I'm not suggesting that we go back to the kellster um I probably don't have the word processing program anymore that would but um but the the idea of collaborating and nowadays we would do this

083in in terms of plc's and and such um is is Right On Target you need to keep doing that kind of thing um and I think that that's pretty much we've talked about the recommendations we talked about the findings um you know my last page here it's just about that there is a um full report that talks more about this I'm sure you'll engage with that as you um go further into your planning process and such um and we're always happy to to help you um through whatever way we can to navigate some of these processes so I want to thank Jeff for his comprehensive observation process and and and the report as as you all have read is gives us a lot to think about um but let's let's continue to dialogue I I

084I think the the challenges that we have I think everyone's going through these challenges I don't think don't think it's Unique to to to our school district um but as much as uh technical challenges can be challenging I think this is this is going to take a lot more work I think there's a lot of great conversations we need to have and and and like I said I started the conversation with the appreciation to at these forums because I think it's important to hear your perspectives and and where we want to build uh the technology but uh note that we're we're also listening to other stakeholders you know was was at KES last night had a chance to and meet with some parents at at the PTO meeting and we'll continue to kind of you

085know bring in more voices as we do uh the good work of of planning um the actual planning process we mentioned was delayed so we won't actually start the the actual planning process until the state gives us some better guidance in the spring um so in the meantime you know we can certainly highlight some things from this to kind of maybe do some First Steps but but the long-term piece I think will kind of challenge us to kind of kind of think about where we want to be in a few years and and I think we've got the right you know we got lot of smart people in the room right so I know we'll get there so okay thought questions yeah other questions I was going to ask one question um I had a

086hard time um understanding how typical some of our um opportunities are so I really appreciate the history that you provided at the beginning of our conversation and it seems to me as you just said so I appreciate that you sort of brought back to this observation that this can't be unique to Kona lewisboro right so many districts in the region accelerated their efforts to create a onetoone environment where previously that might not even have been a thought it might not even have seemed aligned to the community's values in many districts nevertheless As You observe you know we're all there now so I am wondering if you can just answer the question with respect to since you're working in so many other districts um how how typical or how um aligned are our opportunities to the

087opportunities and challenges that you're seeing in other school districts um you mentioned for example even with respect to the survey response rate I appreciated hearing you say that that was great because I didn't know relative to what another District or or even what our response rate was you know so if you can just provide some context for us because you're working in so many other districts I would appreciate that everybody is having these these concerns I mean you know once again without rehashing the entire um thing um people went out um during the pandemic and everybody came back with a computer um most districts did not take those computers away at that point and say okay well you know we're going to put them back on the carts and we're going to do whatever um

088take them out of your hands but this the kids then started having them and carrying them around everywhere um this has created the same kinds of of issues and concerns um in pretty much every District okay um two additional things to say about that one is that you do have a very engaged Community okay so particularly at the time that that we were here gathering this data there were U there had been parent forums there had been you know conversations about uh screen time and um attention spans and those kinds of things um you know I work in a number of districts where nobody would have heard those news stories or read that book or you know had any of those conversations so they were like he they got computers now great hope they don't

089drop them um you your parents you have voices within your community that were like hey wait a second what's going on here you know let's let's think about this thing so it probably seems in some cases like you know it's a bigger problem here the the situation is the same it's just the the reaction to some extent and I think in this case the reaction is good it's people are asking questions people um people want to know people want to hear things it's not that people hate technology there may be some people hate technology but that's not the that's not the main point all right but they're questioning okay the other thing which then brings us right back to what we've been talking about is when people have questions you need to bring them together

090and have them talk about it and also your job as Educators I will say is to provide guidance okay the the average parent nobody wants to hear this but you know know they're not Educators professionally they're professional other things and that's terrific okay but they don't work within the the constructs that Educators work in in terms of curriculum in terms of uh the the the same kinds of of uh structures okay so they need to hear from you what it is that is the value of this and to know that you've thought this through and haven't just sort of you know said oh everybody's got a computer now great um but that you can provide and that's the the thing that was top on the previous Slide the vision okay that's your responsibility and that's

091the the point of this planning process not to get into a major conversation about this but um the AI wave yes do we have a policy or a game plan it could be a yes or no answer we had a group of teachers that worked this summer with a consultant that that uh surfaced a lot of structures uh that are being applied uh throughout the faculty base um we haven't gotten to a point of developing a policy uh only from the standpoint that we we are still trying to understand it so to build a policy and react to where the current stage is I want to say it's premature but we just may not know what it's evolving into enough to build a structured policy around it so and it's moving so quickly and it's

092moving very quickly right right right so so we had almost 20 Educators last year try a variety of different tools and products at different grade levels uh we did a lot of research on it applied it in some different settings uh we we found what works well we found some things that don't work well um and then they all met this summer and and and and made recommendations and handbooks had some conversations with the principles in terms of of how we can have more of a consistent message around it uh but even since the summer uh there's been so many iterations of of changes with that AI uh that we're we're still trying to grasp you know the full context of it so we have no student policies regarding AI we practices yeah yeah so

093so if I may just maybe just for context maybe some examples so so our high school English Department had many of those members on there so so they are encouraging the conversation around AI the role it plays in the writing process the way that they can leverage those tools for creative writing and and and and being able to get um feedback through an AI process um so we're we're starting to leverage the reasons why we have ai and and giving context in ways that we can understand how that can improve the learning environment in the same light we're creating structures that when needed we can lock down the browsers in such a way that if they need to write on demand either for an assignment or an assessment or those types of things that we

094can manage the learning environment in such a way that we can put restrictions or guard rails on it in such a way that we get more authentic feedback in terms of doing it so I don't know if that's that's that's a policy yet but those are the practices that we're putting in place in the classrooms in such a way that we're we're we're learning and adapting as as it grows great so and just to to provide the bigger context on that one outside of this District I mean EV every district is struggling with this right now it is the topic among people who do what Chris does you professionally it is probably um one of the major topics that teachers everywhere are talking about um it is a fast moving train though and and the

095complexity it's not a separate tool it's it's being embedded in the tools so it's hard to differentiate it's kind of like that debate on spell check right so it's at one point in time you could manage spell check but it's just built into the program AI place that same kind of contextual uh you know piece for teachers but but they're creative and we're we're having conversations and we're putting you know safe environments in front of of the kids to be able to explore at the same time you know getting the products that that are more authentic great thank you well thank you Jeff I really appreciate great great conversation thank you folks it thank you thank you [Music] B that's we're moving on to item 9.0 uh public forum so um for those of you

096who have not been at board meetings before public forum is an opportunity for us to listen to the community and hear um what you are here to talk to us about we don't engage back and forth during um public form so if you ask questions we're not going to answer them um we do reflect on what we hear and try to reflect on it in meetings that follow from when you speak um we encourage you to speak for No More Than 3 minutes um 3 minutes is the max we we have a visual timer that Kim has over on her desk um it will be green on that timer until 2 minutes and 30 seconds it's yellow for the last 30 seconds and will beep when you're at 2 minutes and 30 seconds just to

097let you know you only have 30 seconds left and at 3 minutes the light will turn red and it will beep um and we um you know we do encourage you we have nine people signed up to speak so 3 minutes becomes half an hour if you're all speaking so um we do want to hear from everyone so please if you can respect the 3 minute limit we would appreciate it um and I will also do my best to pronounce everyone's name properly and I apologize in advance if I mispronounce your name so um Kristen Wickham binsky and if you can just introduce yourself and let us know if you have where your kids are in the District that would be great great hi everyone my name is Kristen Wickham binsky and I'm the parent

098of a student at increase Miller on April 16th 2007 I was a freshman at Virginia Tech walking to my early morning biology lab as the sound of gunshots rang out law enforcement yelled for students outside to run a group of us ran across a large drill field and locked ourselves inside the dorms 32 student and teachers were killed in their classrooms that morning including a close friend of mine my resident adviser had to jump out of his classroom window as his teacher barricaded the door many others were seriously injured and all of us were traumatized and forever changed the safety of our children in school is a Paramount concern the necessity of robust school safety measures cannot be overstated as they protect the physical and emotional well-being of students and staff alike as we look

099to the Future the role of school resource officers will evolve adap in to new challenges and ensuring that their presence remains a Cornerstone of school safety by working together and investing in comprehensive safety measures we can ensure that our schools remain places of learning growth and security for our children my ask is that the board be open to a discussion around a dedicated school resource officer and any other measures to keep our children and School staff safe thank you thank you Barbara ass hello I'm Barbara assetta um I am an increase Miller mom I was at the last meeting uh wherein I also requested a dedicated SRO for increase Miller so I'm just here tonight with the same ask and um I'm just hopeful that you the board as fellow parents and fellow advocates for

100our children and our students will take take this request to heart and into deep consideration and acknowledge this request for a response in the near future thank you thank you Agnes petracelli good evening members of the board my name is Agnes petrielli I have two children at increase Miller and I am here to formula request a full-time SRO for increase me elementary school um about a few weeks ago our schools were in a lockout during which a man who had just shot three people two of them miners was on the loose about 25 minutes away from our school while I don't believe the school was in danger at the time the incident highlighted the lack of dedicated police presence at increase Miller I truly believe we're playing Russian roulette with our children's lives in this

101situation and I guess my question is which one of our schools was lucky enough to get our shared SRO that day Yorktown school has seven R Soros one for each School Brewster has four one for each School PQ Elementary in North Salem received a full-time SRO in 2023 in addition to a second SRO stationed at its middle school and high school sers has two campuses consisting of four schools and they each have an SRO in fact sters has bulletproof glass windows on its entire first floor and yet Kona UL Boro and we has one SRO covering five schools two schools which are about 20 minutes away from each other why don't we have a full-time SRO at increase Miller especially considering an SRO is welcomed on our campus our children have the right to the

102safest environment possible while receiving an education and our teachers have the right to the safest environment possible while providing that education I truly believe there's no good excuse enough to justify the lack of a dedic ated SRO for each one of our schools it's time for Katona lewisboro to figure out how to give its own schools their own full-time SRO and provide that safety to our students and make it its biggest priority thank you thank you Joseph stepanic sick thank you and good evening to the board board for providing us the time and form tonight I'm here to speak in favor of a dedicated SRO at increase increase Miller Elementary School I was here a couple of weeks ago supporting the same cause and I'm happy to see more faces this evening joining in I'm

103confident that this trend will continue I'm a father of a first grader at Imes and next year my middle child will be starting kindergarten Imes states that their vision is to create an inclusive collaborative and welcoming community of Learners who experience a kind responsible and safe environment without a dedicated SRO at Imes we have to call into question the level of responsibility of those that we as parents depend on to keep our children safe before we bring our children home from the hospital we are baby proofing everything from locks on C on kitchen cabinets to outlet covers we feed them the healthiest and safest Foods when a manufacturer issues a safety recall on a product we act accordingly when learning to ride a bike or participating in sports we make sure that we provide them

104with the SA safest equipment we make sure that we are shuttling them around in the safest cars we can own and when we they are learning to drive we provide them the same however if we aren't providing the safest learning environment to them I have to ask what's it all for what was the point I'll conclude by bringing it back to im's vision statement and say that we either need a dedicated SRO or a new statement thank you Olga liadis hi three kids at increase Miller currently um one going in 2026 um dear board the current SRO effort is emotional and it can become a slippery slope why not an SRO at every school in the district uh we as parents at increase Miller are asking you the board to consider the issue of an

105SRO Barbara Katie and Lindsay brought to you the why at our our last meeting and I did some research to assist them I found the safe schools against violence and education safe legislation laws of 2000 and the 2019 New York State School violence active shooter resource guide there that states that school safety plans can include uh prevention and facility protection which means that the school can conduct a facility risk assessment for any security gaps um I would like to ask if you could please provide us with the parents with that assessment and if you have any subsequent plans from that assessment to fix any of the security gaps and the district's current sro's log book um especially for October 29th the day of the lockouts due to a shooter thank you all thank you Lindsay

106curtain hi everybody my name is Lindsay carton I the parent of two children at increase Miller I just have a couple more points to add in favor of a dedicated school resource officer at our schools our District's expansive Geographic footprint makes it challenging for local law enforcement to respond quickly in emergencies underscoring the critical need for a dedicated SRO to ensure the safety and security of all five schools having an SRO onsite Fosters a proactive approach to school safety allowing for the development of strong relationships with student staff and families while addressing concerns before they escalate n SRO serves not only as a first responder but as a mentor and an educator helping to create a positive and secure environment that promotes learning and well-being by investing in a dedicated SRO our district demonstrates a

107firm commitment to the safety of our children's staff and ensuring that every school has a trusted and immediate presence to handle emergencies effectively and if it comes down to a budget issue the town of lewisboro has approximately 6,000 households that pay property taxes if the entire cost for an SRO needs to be added to the school budget we're talking about $83 per year increase per household this is less than $7 a month and I think that our children and our school staff safety is worth more than a coffee at Starbucks thank you thank you Danielle buron hi thank you for having us my name is Danielle burin I have three kids who are about to pass through the system at ime I have a first grade boy I have a five um a kindergarten girl

108and I have a 1 and 1/2-year-old um he'll be enter the school district eventually I do want to request a full-time SRO at our schools neighboring schools have them I don't see a reason why we shouldn't from what I hear it is built into the budget um and I don't think we need to hear any more firsthand experienced stories like Kristen has I think something hit home for all parents um even parents who have no experience you know with any of these school shootings or have friends or family who went through it but we all got the notification that our children were locked down all of our hearts as mothers fathers grandparents friends family sank we didn't really know what was going on I have an infant at home a 1 and a half-year-old so

109I wasn't really comprised of what was going on during the morning but when I got that message I thought school shootings that is insane I moved here 2 years ago because of the safety of the school district I was willing to pay anything at the end of a a peak Market in the real estate economy to get my kids into a safe school so hearing that two years after my decision to move here really Shook Me Up um I think it's important I think it needs to be a priority parents are worried about things like technology and other things that we discussed regularly at schools but since 2007 when Kristen went through that experience you know school shootings have skyrocketed it was here it's now way up here everybody knows that so I think we

110really need this to be a priority need to be part of the conversation and we have so many parents who are interested in the same thing with the same request Quest they're not here today but they're all texting us and we're all talking so we're trying to be here to table this discussion thank you thank you Andie orpo hello good evening good to be here again um my name is angre RPO and I'm the mom of a kinder fer and four grader at increas Miller I feel very strong about the perspectives shared by all the parents here today um I especially feel it now in the environment that we live in a very decisive um world and Country and well I could go on about what would be the policies that I would want to

111be enforcing in front of our politicians um I think this is the approach that I have control over and so this is why I'm here to to be able to speak with you um I think as someone who grew up having a SRO while attending school in Jackson Heist Queens um I remember them being one of the most memorable people in my school they Foster POS um positive relationships between the students staff and made law enforement law enforcement less scary for all of us by being consistent present in the school they became approachable figures who I felt comfortable and trusted to share concerns with with um which as a result obviously created a safer and more supportive environment I think our teachers have a lot on their plate um educate nurture keep up with technology

112Trends um and wealth safety will always be one of their responsibilities in the classroom um they shouldn't be a catch at all just like we have a school nurse a school psychologist why can't we um provide them with a dedicated SRO to help them in moments where the safety over our kids might be at stake um they're really trained to handle various typ type of Crisis including um those involved in Mental Health crisis family problems personal challenges um my 5-year-old knows her IMA um IMS values is kind responsible and safe and I would really like to put our money or our mou this thank you thank you ingred Ramos hi everyone my name is ingred Ramos and I'm a parent at increase uh of a student at increase Miller Elementary School it's nice to see

113so many other families here from increase Miller uh talking about a very important issue safety uh I'm actually here today to talk about something else just wanted to express my support uh for the diversity equity and inclusion uh and belonging initiatives throughout the district uh and in all of the buildings uh whether they're Administration Le or student Le um are supported by the families I really think belonging is an important issue in our district and simply wanted to come here and say that I support it and I'm grateful for it and I see the impact on a lot of the families uh and the community throughout our district so thank you thank you I think that everyone's spoken is here so I'm going to close public comment and thank you all very much for coming

114here to share your interest with us about the SRO and again we certainly are listening and um you know we'll have some conversations about it going forward so thank you I'm going to move to item 10.0 which is the consent agenda would someone like to move the consent agenda oh well hold on we have to no no that was last what there's a tri hope I don't think you would need to is it's just a field trip yeah I think you're good I'm good okay every way I mean that it's a good question but I think we're fine yeah okay okay good now what you're talking about I'll move the consent Troublemaker my margerie seconded by Rory all those in favor hi hi 70 I'm sorry that they didn't stay but um okay so um

115we are at 15 which is for dialogue and discussion um I know that there were some people at the last meeting requesting the SRO um certainly think that um you know we can talk about it or I can default to the administration to bring us whatever your recommendation is during budget season is there a way that we can get some actual data around the effectiveness of an SRO at stopping school shooting in schools and around the likelihood of Any Given student being shot in any given school it seems infanty small to me the likelihood it's like one in 600 million that a child will be shot in a school and the likelihood of an SRO actually preventing that in fact any evidence that I've read suggests that the likelihood the number of deaths in a

116building where there is an armed guard increases three fold over where there is nobody who's armed in that building so I'd love to get some real data I don't know if this is valid data or this is not validated but I think we should do some analysis around how likelyhood is it for a student to be involved in school shooting for a school to be involved in school shooting what's the benefit of an SRO do they help do they hurt you know it's all it's all this is all sort of hearsay and I'd love to get some evidence-based data that we can say hey you know what there is an argument here or there isn't I think it's I think it's important that this is a very emotional and um scary no doubt no doubt

117so I think that it's important when people have strong emotions about something that we are empathetic to that those feelings and then think there's an opportunity to share data there's there's a lot of data actually that um doesn't support that an SRO actually creates a safer environment there's what you're saying is is pretty well demonstrated in the data and so um I think that there is an opportunity to share that data with the community so that they understand that a decision to not or you know again I'm I look to the administration that that the data demonstrates that it's actually doesn't create more safety and like all things we do we should it should be data driven right and I don't know whether it supports it or it doesn't support it but we should get

118the data and then can decision but the data does show that it actually the data doesn't support that an SRO makes a school safer and I think we have a tremendous focus on Mental Health our students and have invested heavily in the presence of programs that support our students and our you know when we compare to other districts in terms of our number of psychologists in our district we've made a real investment in the wellness and mental health of our students which I think is a real um opportunity to prevent School violence both you know day-to-day School violence um think our work around diversity Equity inclusion and belonging prevents School violence so there are things we are doing that prevent School violence and then there's things that I think people perceive will protect their children

119and I think we can you know ask that if it continues to come up that the administration provides some of that feedback around um you know whether or not it actually is protective or not and and the data shows that it's not that prot I'm sure you can find data on either sides of the island I actually went on a whole Rabbit Hole after last week just trying to educate myself because I had exactly the same question and at the same time I also empathize with the parents because I too every time there's a new shooting you know I IM I put myself in those parents shoes and I go through the vast amount of sadness and frankly rage I I imagine the kind of Rage I would feel if that were to happen to

120one of my children um and and um and I went to look and you're absolutely right I was looking at Sandy Hook promise and some of the things that that they have the information that they have in terms of evidence based on what works and it all points to you know being able to identify because most of the time these are either current or former students and so being able to identify Kids in Distress to work on things like social isolation to work on things like you know our kids going through a tough time at home or in their life in general so you're 100% correct and I was able to find a study um that was in the Journal of American Medical Association uh in 2021 and it was funded by the Department of

121Justice around this issue and the study was titled presence of armed School officers in fatal and non-fatal gunshot injuries during mass shootings from 1980 to 2019 and the conclusion was Data suggests no association between having an armed officer and deterrence of violence in these cases an armed officer on the scene was the number one factor associated with increased casualties after perpetrator use of assault rifles and machine guns and then it says um prior research suggests that many School shooters um are actively suicidal so intending to die in the act and so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent and so and then it goes on to talk about the various things related to mental health and all of that um so but but you know I think that this is one

122study and I think that we can always is look at more but um completely 100% understand where parents are coming from and looking at a police officer gives you that feeling of security right um and and I think it's natural that they're thinking and it's good for us to have an SRO program for a number of different reasons the law enforcement relationship the sort of kids learning about all of that but um you know this is this is a tough one but I yeah so I also think an important part of the conversation we are currently investing a large amount of money in new security vules for our schools and that's going to provide I think a lot more than we have and we have some amazing greeters that have either um police backgrounds or

123military backgrounds that are at the front line and would do anything to protect our children so I think I I don't know if that's a known um entity out there but I think that we are doing and putting our best foot forward um you know we may not have somebody that looks you know like they're armed but we've we've got a lot of things in place and are putting a lot of things in place to protect our children yeah I want to Echo that lorine sorry um I don't know how well known it is that those individuals do have the backgrounds and and would be kind of the point person in case there was something like that albeit not armed um which the data shows doesn't help at all but I I think maybe more

124front-facing with that so people understand who these individuals are not only brings it a tighter Community but gives more faith in that process yeah I think it's important to know that that within our security contract you can choose different tiers of background and we specifically choose that our all of our greeters have either military or police background so and people may not be aware of that so again I think I think we should look to the administration to provide us with you know whatever information we need yeah we can certainly do that um what you spoke about tonight is exactly what you will find though is a mixed perspective on that and even where you lean into the idea about supporting strong mental health services absolutely as a key piece actually some conversation about restorative

125practices which the district has significantly invested in to again have those conversations in our schools within not just the schools like one once in a while it's like in our classrooms consistently so the investment of restorative practices has certainly been identified in there and so you will definitely find that combination of those pieces um and so what the district is doing now is certainly very well align with what uh the researchers say are other opportunities that we should be exploring to keep all kids and faculty you know as safe as possible and I think you described it very well Barbara that yes of of who doesn't want want to feel as safe and possible secure you can and then realizing then again unfortunately that um the research would say that um most often that um

126and we've seen when even SRO are on site and things like that if if anything is something happens to that level it's more about a containment piece than a and 100% absolute uh preventative part so I we can certainly look at some things you already found some research out there from obviously a highly credible piece there that is in general what you will find is it really does come up I would suggest with a very local decision local decision making and where the energy is there from the community and one of the uh speakers today mentioned a district I spent some time in that happened to be a piece that for that particular community at that particular time was something that that was that their decision and and that was a piece that was forwarded

127it really was not one piece to the other there's timing obviously that took place other things across the nation and stuff so um it really is that much of a I would believe again a localized control component that we would say does that make sense for us here um and again I do want to reiterate the things the district has put in place things like you know the restorative practice oh that doesn't actually that's exactly what we want to be doing at a at a consistent classroom basis level so I think you sp to again Barbara most often it comes from within the piece there so making sure there's mental Wellness supports are in place our school psychologists our counselors and all those ons with with classroom teachers delivering these conversations about when conflict does

128take place let's talk about how we address and support that so I commend the district for the strength that we have there without a doubt is this a story we need to put out there with all these different components that the security vestibules the the the military backgrounds the restorative practices the all the things that we are doing the state requirements to have planning and teams identif is that something we put a put a story line together and and push it out or is that or we not do that I don't know if there's a right or wrong piece to it I I do believe that in general most of our community see those elements and then even uh you know the team here we we partnership with our B&W Bose's team with our training

129we have building based committees that meet throughout the year we have districtwide you know State security committees we have the appropriate identified drills and procedures that we need to go through and that was kind of what our one speaker mentioned about the legislation from the state that required those things and so those are all in place and you know wasn't that long ago that it really didn't exist and and it really truly does now um and so even things like um some of the training that we need to provide to some of our teachers along the way and some of those abilities that we there's so many there's so many things you could push that out to the pto's or how we want to get that information out they're thinking we're you know maybe doing

130nothing when in reality we're there's there's a lot of things going on have we have we had a parent council meeting when this has come up yet no so I I think there's an opportunity to to see whether this kind of bubbles up into the parent Council and then they can have a conversation about it there and we'll see yeah I I I really like the idea of sort of pushing it to the community but I think we need to be cautious about security planning about the broader media and trying to trying to express that either we're weak or we're strong in security and safety in our schools I don't think that's something we want to put out into the ether yeah I think we should I think we can address it through parent counil

131is a I think parent council is a a good place to start and um I think you know to sort of let's see right if we need and when John and I have the next one we can certainly bring that up and have that conversation without a doubt great one thing people might not know about the security vestibules is that they're actually from a design perspective if you go to embassies if you go to other buildings that are considered to be targets for security incidents you're going to find security vest deal so that's actually a huge thing um that that we're able to put those in every school and I don't think people realize how much of a big deal the security vestile actually is very much so great thank you uh future meetings question

132for board dialogue just when I looked out at the calendar you're going to Future meetings if I'm not mistaken we're not meeting again until mid December and I just wondered because we we haven't really been talking about it but I know there was an article in lohud and it's a a regional conversation as I understand it around regionalization and I'm just wondering like are we um filling out a survey and submitting and that would need to happen between now and the next board meeting I didn't know I thought it was supposed to be December 6th and so it's probably not something the Board needs to see but could you justly provide reassurance of happening so um some folks around may recall the same term regionalization coming back in New York state a while ago and

133um the intent at that point in time was significantly different from what it is now the general piece that the understanding is how can we across our regions leverage the resources that we have to connect and work together um from my perspective my colleagues perspective that in particular in the region where we live with our partnership with p&w bosies we do that very well and so there is a uh State requirement piece that's going across the state of uh a whole plethora of information that we're pulling together and our team is doing that now amongst many other every school district in the state so that will go in place um don't know exactly when and how that report's going to come out and then what any requirements were going to be with that so right

134now it's really looking at the my understanding is the basic intent there is once that's coll uh connect Ed and collaborated with with what would the plan be and most recently we even talked about is there opportunity for once again every year is a uh partnership with pnw bosis we do identify um themes for each year that we're working on and connecting with and we've had a little conversation with our our group just uh earlier today and so the information that's going into the state to be honest is a little frustrating because we were asked to complete uh a rather lengthy document and thank you to Julie and the team and and Lisa there um and we have to go get the data to put into the state report by logging into another State website

135and getting the data out of that and putting it back in So to say frustrating it would be probably a little under under dat there but um so we're we're kind of waiting to hear our general understanding is to thinking about across areas of what uh we can support across School District uh where I were're partnering with possibly another uh you know boties up in olster County here because they have a particular lean they we're looking at the state already sets it up we can cross contract with them so we do those things so my limited understanding is that may not be happen across a larger state where we are now uh and I know I know it's our pnw boses but they are well regarded across the state uh and so um perhaps we

136can show some models of that so I don't I don't see uh really any significant changes it was disappointing just again to take so much like like not like a couple of hours but uh I I don't even want to estimate so dozens and dozens of hours and so um but we are in good Ste and we are in a great uh pnwb season so um once we get some more information out whenever that report comes back to us to what the request and ask are for we'll certainly uh let the board know on that one it's great question so thank you very much Mar thank you for all the time that it sounds like thank you Morin Jones thank you I have a couple of very quick things I know it's getting late but

137I just sort of wanted to to to get it out there so this is something that has been on my mind has been a little bit in the news and I suspect it's probably on the news of of other folks in the community um and I think just from a fiduciary sort of uh perspective and understanding risk and risk management you know we're hearing about what potentially might happen with education at the federal level and we're very lucky that our the percent of our budget that comes from federal funds is is actually quite small um so I think that that's from a risk management perspective a good thing um and I think just as the board goes into budget season it might be helpful for us to just really have um an understanding of for

138example is it just idea funds um that we get is there anything more so what is our risk exposure um in particular so for example we're expecting to receive about $4 million potentially from the Katona thermal project and so having an understanding of you know what is the the earliest possible that we could submit for that how is there anything that we should be doing now just there's nothing to do but just in terms of informing the board as we go into budget season in terms of what that potential risk exposure is so that we're informed that's I just wanted to sort of put that out there I don't know if that's something that's um on the minds of others but I think is that the risk it's not going to happen you're say the

139risk that it's not happen I'm hoping that it doesn't we all hope that it doesn't happen I think just understanding the exposure so for example if there were to be a cut or elimination how big like what does that mean for us in terms of like where would that affect us the most is there particular program and so just in terms of being aware of our risk exposure there's nothing to do hopefully you know it's not an issue we ever have to deal with but I think it's just a matter of you know thinking and being informed and sort of being as ahead of the game as we can be in terms of understanding risk exposure and I'm not saying there's anything to do um is just a matter of being informed yeah I certainly

140think as we go through the process at any of those meetings we can have those conversations there again we don't as of yet we don't have new leadership so we don't know exactly what that's going to be yet if there's going to be those level of changes uh but certainly along those pieces and what those projects come up we do know that also that just think at the state level with you know the rockfeller kind of work that's been going on there that's a big piece from our state funding that we need to look at and so we can start maybe um breaking down a little bit more we always talk about the pie how much is from local how much is from the state so we can look at that a little bit more

141and say the state revenue significant portion is then backfilled from the fed and so we can talk about that certainly at that point in time when we're looking at that work and and anything that comes along the way without a doubt yeah sounds good sounds good the last thing is I realized last month before you move on from that sure did so you're talking about geothermal implementation and maybe there are other projects that we have going on that are dependent on Ira funding right and I think what you're saying is that there's a risk given the I'm going to call it Bluster but given the political dialogue there's a risk that that may go away is that what you're saying and that you would like us to be aware of where any reduction in federal

142funding might impact the district is that is that your question that's correct I I would support that I mean I do think that there's a risk there I don't I mean it can't be that difficult for us to identify where we're allocating Federal funding like IAS and such it probably is yeah I think it would be fairly straightforward I just have no idea what level of risk we're at but we can say what the dollar amount is and what those numbers absolutely what what we're expecting to receive that we might not absolutely yep absolutely and anything that we can move faster along we probably should right the thing being is there anything we can do to reduce that by getting those things moved along quick those things as quickly we're not waiting on anything right

143right so that's yeah that's what we're trying to do is move everything we can along quickly and um focus on maybe areas that or more likely maybe to possibly go away certain whatever projects but um but I I mean I can go into specifics grants you know I mean federal flowthrough dollars we don't receive a whole lot of federal flowthrough dollars our largest grants are Ida or special education grants which I would have a hard time believing that that would be cut maybe I don't know but um but we do in that area we receive about $700,000 of supplemental funds for Ida um title one is maybe $70,000 and title 2A which is for PD is uh probably about $40,000 and then title four is um $115,000 so it's not we don't receive you know

144like I said the greatest uh amount is for a special education grant so and then the second piece and there like you were saying a little bit before about the state funding then is then relying Upon A lot of the federal local contct you know would kind of come back to us as just as form of State funding yes exactly they backfill their bud that's the piece there and then with these other pie like the IRA for the funds there and who knows what some of the anticipated uh support for sustainability projects and and and solar work and things like that uh that's just a piece we don't we're not committed to that fully right now we'd like to as we know go there there's supposed to be plans but that'll be the the unknown

145for sure yes yes and that is um so that is that it it's a direct pay it's reimbursement after you spend it so and we already authorized by the bond to spend those monies so if that money were to go away we already have the money's allocated for the for geothermal it just would allow for us to do some other projects on the back end so that project wouldn't go away it's just there are additional add alternates and our bids that we weren't able to award that we could go back and award if we were to receive those ID those um Ira monies so and and hopefully like you know that Ira some of that the geothermal is actually in IRS regulations which so it's all it's very there's a lot of intricacies in what

146comes from what pot and what's in what which leg legislation so yeah that's helpful reassurance just to know that you know that it's not going to affect that project so that's that's super help you and I would say I guess I think Beyond knowing what those those amounts are and and as we said like moving things along there's not really after that there's really not a lot we can do we just have to wait it out so I I don't don't know that there's like any extra work I that I would really want the administration to do I think we know what those things are and um and as we go through the different chunks of the budget is I think uh you know we talked about that a little bit as we move forward

147just trying to modify kind of our usage of those conversations with the budget so we've got kind of three heavy pieces that we'll be looking at and that it's at the time we'll be here using our tradition our our typical time here and really using this as a operating working session so we're going to try to have those be the topic so we can bring that up when that piece comes forward and so absolutely and that'll be a a conversation we'll have sure so thank you thank you Lisa very much last and final thing is I learned that last month was a national Farm to school month and that was pretty cool I saw it in the nisba clips that there were a number of activ I think that there's a first annual uh Farm

148to School Summit happening in Syracuse for the state of New York which is really neat um and a suggestion I wanted to make is you know as a as a new uh trustee and I don't know if others would be interested in this as well definitely not anything urgent but in the future I think um a talk about school lunch and nutrition would be really interesting to me and just trying to understand I know we work through Aramark but nutrition is such a big part of students ability to learn and play sports and I'd love to learn more about our approach to nutrition our school lunches you know for so many kids they get the majority of their calories and nutrition from school and so I think that's a really important issue and I'd love

149to learn more about it and you know have we looked into Farm to school programs do we participate if not why not um and just have a a a more robust understanding of of what we do in that space I'd love to just no more I think if there's interest we can Mo back on that maybe in a future board discussion and then add it into in the future if people are interested I I vaguely remember we did something on this like four or five years ago I remember our remark we were considering different V you might have been involved Lisa and we and they did present to us their thinking around student nutrition and I I I seem to remember that there was like a presentation around how they which foods they choose why

150they choose them the nutritional value of the foods that we that we offer and so on I mean I'm going back a good few years so I mean I'd love to know where our food comes from you know like where does the food that we start students comes from and um I thought it was great when I heard that the high school students were talking about meatless Mondays and how they got that implemented and so love to hear you know student perspectives and I I think it's an important issue and to the degree that there's interest in the board I think it'd be something worth having a conversation around every every student having lunch in the high school is going to be a great Head Start Right great thank you I'm going move to Future

151meetings so tomorrow morning policy committee will be here at 9:00 a.m. 1 oh at 1 at 1 p.m. yes uh and then two Fridays from now on December 6th there'll be a sustainability committee meeting at 8:15 in the district office uh Thursday December 19th there's our next Board of Education meeting at 7:30 here in the library and then the next morning there'll be a polic morning or is it always 1:00 now okay next morning there'll be a policy committee meeting at 9:00 a.m. and Ray if you want to things up oh yeah so thanks again for ening every board and and again I I will look to your feedback I appreciated the gentleman sitting here tonight again the conversation and the setup and things like that I think the only thing that throw me off

152is barbar was on my left this time and not on my right and then you again I want to thank you your leadership and the kids last week it was awesome I mean it was really great I've been kind of talking to a lot of people probably to naum uh but it's really great to talk to the students again they went through the same piece about their perspectives on our on our our why and how we want to look at and what their thoughts about some of our next steps to continue our being a great School District so so thank you thanks you thank you would anyone like to make a motion to adjourn motion by Rory second by John and Happy Thanksgiving yeah Happy Thanksgiving