October 20, 2022 KLSD BOE Meeting

001foreign so nice to see you thank you so much for joining us thank you for your patience it is my pleasure to make a motion to return to public session if I could have a second thank you Julia all in favor please say hi hi six zero we are so looking forward to our presentation this evening we are joined by many of our principals and staff developers and uh team members and we are very much looking forward to talking about belonging in our schools and before we turn our attention to that if everybody would please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance let's go pledge allegiance of the United States terrific thank you so much and before we turn our attention to our featured presentation we will just take a few moments for board announcements

002and I would love to begin by congratulating Katona lewisboro School District on having successfully passed a bond referendum for our Capital Improvement projects this is really exciting and we thank our community for coming out to vote we thank our community for this wonderful support and for investing in our schools and in the future of Katona lewisboro school children this is a really exciting time for our school district we very much need some of this work and it's going to position us to provide a learning environment that really best meets the needs of our Learners well into the 21st century so thank you very exciting times and also thank you so much to everybody around this table to everybody out in our audience this evening and to our facilities committee members and to Liz for chair

003sharing a terrific and enjoyable productive successful committee we really had a wonderful committee we were joined by about 17 representatives from across the community and you know we really appreciate their dedication over the course of many months and you know thank you so much it's really cause for celebration very much looking forward to our next steps and with that I am happy to turn it over to my board colleagues for other announcements while we're collecting our thoughts we can always come back and maybe in the meantime we can hear from Andrew so I'm going to interrupt these proceedings for a minute because this week all throughout New York state is Board of Education recognition week Governor hokel has so declared it so with a proclamation uh and for anyone who's never served as a board

004trustee on a board of education I don't I can't imagine that you would know how much work goes into this behind the scenes and meetings and readings and many many hours every week and so we are enormously appreciative of our board as as we are of boards and public school districts all across the state for the work that they do in support of public education so we certainly want to take a moment and say thank you to our board on behalf of the community and I'm happy also to introduce Veronica Australia who's here tonight representing our parent Council which is all about PTO leadership groups and who also has a few words for the board thanks Veronica hello I'm Veronica and I am parent council president this year I think everyone said that sound okay

005um I hope you all enjoyed the little treat from Farmer's grind they're one of my favorites um so this is from parent Council dear Board of Education members on behalf of the members of the 2022-2023 Katonah Lewis Borough School District Parent Council we joined the state of New York including local Board of Education members during school board week this commemorative week recognizes the tremendous contributions made by school board members across New York State including you as the Katonah lewisboro School District Board of Education members who are tasked with governing public education under New York law we are fortunate to have a dedicated group leading our school district and looking out for the best interest of our children we want to thank you for your leadership your commitment to our students and our community and your

006support and Mission to continually improve education for our children we appreciate your endless dedication to returning our schools to normal after the past two years thank you all for your hard work on the capital Improvement project referendum we are so excited it passed and look forward to the additions and upgrades in all our buildings we recognize the countless hours you spend serving our students faculty Administration and staff most importantly we appreciate every one of you who have stepped up to guide education in our community thank you thank you thank you not only for taking the time to be with us tonight and for the delicious treats which we very much appreciate and will continue to appreciate throughout the evening I I promise but also thank you for your leadership thank you to parent Council for

007all that you're doing to keep our students and our parents engaged and for partnering with building leaders to provide enriching programming we really could not do what we do without you and we are sincerely grateful to you for your partnership and thank you we're humbled by your words and we really really appreciate it thank you for recognizing us thank you very nice thank you well we have one other thing two other things but otherwise we can continue with any other board updates were there any other board announcements in the meantime I think the Bond was sort of the big event between last week and this week so I'll just say a few words about that too and it is it's nice to be celebrating our board in a in a celebratory week in which a

008lot of your hard work has paid off so nicely for the future of our schools and the district enough staff and our students uh it really is very exciting uh and we appreciate uh everyone that Marjorie just mentioned and all of those in the community who came out in support um I can't imagine there's ever been a bond vote that passed unanimously in any school district and I say that because we also want to acknowledge that it didn't have unanimous support and we want to remain mindful of those who didn't support the bond and we can pledge to continue uh being mindful of our entire community in the ways we move forward and we try very hard to be thoughtful about all the work that we do and all the projects we put forward with

009the entire community in mind but we really do think everybody who came out regardless of how you voted we appreciate the participation in the Democratic process always it's good modeling for Jake and for all of our other students so we appreciate all of that and thank you and thank you to Kim monzen who does an enormous amount of work to make any events such as these happen thank you very much Kim we really appreciate all that you do to make these uh events possible and then the only other thing is I wanted to put in a plug next week we have our first learning Cafe of this school year a notice went out yesterday the day before to community members the topic for next week very similar to the topic we're going to hear about

010tonight we were very focused on this topic of belonging and what it means and how we go about creating it what some of the obstacles are and we look forward to inviting our community to come join us for more of that conversation next week so tonight maybe serves as a teaser for that you'll hear quite a lot tonight from staff and if it's of Interest we hope even more folks will come out next week and join us in conversation as we continue thinking about this important topic we do ask community members to let us know by way of a form that's Linked In the invitation that went out if you do plan to join us it helps us plan for the evening if we know how many people are coming in who's coming to that

011event so that's all I had for tonight thanks great thank you it's wonderful I think if there are no further announcements please um I'll just started that uh last week or the week before after school activities resumed and before school over activities resumed in some of the elementary schools which was very exciting um I certainly for parents and I think for the kids as well have those extracurricular sending enrichments great thank you that's wonderful okay if there are no further announcements then we are really excited to think together about belonging in our schools and what that looks like and sounds like thank you thank you Marjorie and I'll turn over to Mary great thanks Mary thank you so good evening everyone and um so we're just going to transition our seating arrangement so we'll transition

012a few times this evening and um first we're going to be joined this evening let me get my clicker ready here um by our principals our wonderful principles at all levels and our SEL and Equity curriculum integration leaders so first we'll have our elementary principles and our Equity SEL and Equity curriculum integration leader join us so we have Ashlyn Fields principal of Meadow Pond Kerry Ford principal of increased Miller Christy Harris principal of Katona Elementary and Jocelyn livadini who's our SEL Equity curriculum integration leader welcome thank you coming with many prompts yes why so just as we're getting ready um we always have this reminder of our Focus areas and these Focus areas really Drive our work in many many ways but when we talk about belonging we feel that belonging is kind of the

013bridge between our Dei work and our SEL work so we want all students who come through our doors to feel welcomed and affirmed in our classrooms and on our fields and everywhere else so it's really important to us that everyone feels that strong sense of belonging and we just have a quote here which is a widely accepted definition in the research and literature of belonging what we mean by that belonging in schools the extent to which children feel individually welcomed respected included and supported by others within the school social environment and I think that really sets the stage for what you will hear this evening and just a few other quotes from the literature which you can see there but it really has you know it's been well researched that it has an impact on

014well-being identity development mental health which we know is very important in our next board meeting actually we'll be hearing much more about that but also on students academic motivation and sense of well-being in the classroom so it does have a significant impact on learning as well as overall well-being and of course as we all know last June our board policy was adopted the diversity equity and inclusion policy and belonging of course it plays a major role there so when we think about that welcoming environment for all students staff parents and community members that plays a major role there and this culturally responsive and affirming environment so in past board meetings we've discussed the culturally responsive and sustaining framework from New York state so that's a part of this work as well as well as the

015social emotional benchmarks that nysid has put out so that all of those things inform our work and help to guide us but I think the really important work exists within the walls of our schools and how our our faculty and administration make sense of all of that and create that environment for students so with that I will turn it over to my esteemed Elementary colleagues and we'll talk about belonging at elementary I can do the clicker for you for sure is that okay that's great thank you sure hi good evening everybody um it's good to see you in person um and uh just to say to start off with the fact that um you know the last couple of years everybody knows that we haven't had as many in-person opportunities with families specifically um you

016know when we return with students it was wonderful um but then to have those opportunities with families so I feel like there's like a refocusing on creating a sense of belonging because now we're shifting back to some of our typical activities and connections that we have so that's been just wonderful this year it feels more typical and more normal for sure so belonging as you know is is our Focus for this evening and it's still along the lines of mirrors and windows so we talk about children being able to see themselves in the school or through literature or through the curriculum and then we talk about uh Windows right seeing the world around them and different representations whether it be cultures or holidays um you know race identity different identities so um those are kind

017of that's like the lens that we're looking through um so we we really have to start with the staff and there's been a lot of professional learning to provide them with um you know a comfort level as well as creating a sense of belonging and talking about some of the work that we're doing so through faculty meetings professional learning opportunities celebrations and Communications those are some examples of like how we we help the staff kind of build that community and like we do it with each other to build relationships so for instance at the beginning of this school year week at our building we created a padlet and we had everybody post like what they're rules are in their personal information and you know you might be a teacher at school but you might be

018a mom or a parent you know at home and what are your identities and and who are you and so we build you know connections to the staff um and then that's a model um for when they go into the classroom and talk to the children about how to build community as well another example would be like the morning meeting book which is familiar to most of our staff at the elementary so it's been around for a number of years but we've gone back to like revisiting it especially you know post coven and about like what are the structures and we'll be talking about that this evening um kind of taking you through some of the components of a morning meeting but also sharing some of the work related to the larger topic of belonging

019um and then like there's other like resources that teachers use to help some of guides some of that work so opportunities with families as we mentioned before like having those in-person experiences through whether it's curriculum nights or conferences a lot of the parents have been coming in and being Volunteers in the art room or the library the book fair I mean I guess we can't um you know we learned a lot through covid that like not having those experiences really prevent us from like making those connections and and developing you know like relationships so that's been been wonderful and one of the new things here at each of the elementary buildings as we formed our compact teams have kind of morphed into a Dei committee and it would be a subcommittee like the ERJ committee

020we've had district-wide and so what we've developed at each of the building levels is having parents join us and teachers and administrators and we have conversations of how to you know support the Dei work as part of the policy and can make connections like through the morning meeting and other structures that we have so we'll talk a little bit more about that in one of the slides as well um and then also through newsletters and Communications um we're also trying to you know have a monthly like Dei focus in each of the buildings um or SEL Focus so that's another way in terms of families and then opportunities with students have mentioned the morning meeting structure that each of the classrooms have at the elementary level um through read-alouds celebrations classroom and school library identity

021work that we've all done this year at the elementary and again you'll hear more about classroom lessons related to the curriculum as well how do we Infuse like social studies and Eli to have some more of that work represented School assemblies and programs and also the physical environment so that was also a subgroup of the Dei so how can the children see themselves around the school and around the school building and then how can they learn about other cultures so like for instance like we might have like displease of greetings and hellos and different languages which you'll hear a little bit more this evening as well so that's Chad kind of give you like a little bit of like a framework about some of the belonging what has been going on I think Christie's next

022thank you Carrie um so this is the correct slide but before we dive into the greeting I want to just take a step back and speak to you more specifically about what is morning meeting and just give you a brief um overview because you've been hearing about it a lot through Carrie Justice this evening in the opening and hopefully if you have children in the elementary or no children in the elementary they've been talking about this with you at home so what is morning meeting um well it's a very deliberate way that we start our school day there is allocated time in each of our schedules at the three elementary schools dedicated to morning meeting it takes about 25 minutes to get through a morning meeting and the format is broken up into four sequential

023components and all of the classroom members students and the adults in the classroom you gather together usually in a circle formation and they're there to First greet each other listen and respond to each other during a share um practice SEL or academic skills during a group activity and then look forward to the day together through a written morning message so those are the four components and so what's the purpose why are we spending and dedicating all of this time in our academic day to do this while it sets the tone of respect and Trust where students can take risks um it builds connections among between the students and the adults in the classroom it merges academics with social emotional learning and it motivates students through a sense of significance and recognition and belonging which is

024the theme of the night and so um why are we investing all this time um we see morning meeting as an investment of time that repays itself over and over again during morning meeting students are practicing and developing the skills of attention listening actively actively expression problem solving cooperation and these are foundational skills that you'll see in every lesson during the day every transition that the children are taking during the day every interpersonal interaction that takes place all of the skills and and what's being developed during morning meeting extends itself through the remaining of the day remainder of the day so tonight we are going to actually practice um a morning meeting and we are going to begin with the greeting and tonight's greeting it's always very purposeful and intentional tonight we're going to um

025greet each other by name which is the most basic way of providing a sense of recognition and belonging and we are going to be honoring the language of Italy and the Philippine and we just finished with Hispanic Heritage Month so we figured those three languages were most relevant right now so we are going to introduce ourselves with either hola from Spain Mexico Hispanic countries kumusta from the Philippines or ciao from Italy so I'm going to start off we're going to model and then you'll just you'll you'll get the pattern and we'll just continue it around so kumusta I'm Christy Christy CAO I'm Ashlyn hola I'm Jocelyn ciao I'm Carrie ciao kumusta I'm Mary hola I'm Liz [Music] and hola I'm Julia oh hi Julia ciao I'm Marjorie I'm Andrew hola I'm Catherine ciao I'm Bill

026um ciao I'm Jake by now I know you all feel this great sense of belongings and we've said a tone of trust and respect and um we appreciate you engaging in that greeting just to get a little taste of what it feels like to enter a classroom each morning and I'm going to pass it on to my friend Jocelyn livadini who's going to pick up and talk about the share so good evening everyone so the share is the next part of our morning meeting and it's sometimes referred to as News and Views and this is a great opportunity for the students to learn about their classmates but obviously we just shared our names but this is a great opportunity for them to figure out some things that their classmates enjoy things that they are that's

027part of their culture and it really helps them getting to know one one another but also develop their communication skills that includes public speaking which can be very intimidating to an elementary school for some and then also it's active listening so being able to listen respond back did you hear what the person said do you have any questions about it and the teacher can choose different ways to have the students share so it could be a group share where everyone goes around and shares about something it could be a dialogue share where a few people share and then you can have like a question and answer session afterwards or it can also be another type of show where it's like a partner share where it's a more intimate chair and again like Christy said it's

028very purposeful so what does the teacher see that needs to be done in the classroom at that time and I think as I also teach fourth grade as a fourth grade teacher I think this is a great opportunity to have the students build relationships too you see that carry on afterwards very often um so for we're not going to ask you to share unfortunately please don't be disappointed but so for the share um I have four students that I asked them to share with you a little bit about their experiences with morning meeting and so they're just a few questions and we it just helps to kind of hear from the perspective of a fourth grader and the volume needs to be all the way up if we can they're very brief my favorite part

029about modern reading is my favorite part about learning meeting is when I get to learn about others my favorite part is doing the reading some different languages my favorite part about the morning we made is playing the games my favorite game in morning reading will be like to play seven and up my favorite game would be um playing Zoom and my favorite game is Fidget family and when you get caught on or when you hear your name or role that you get you spin it out and my favorite game is evolution it's basically a hard game of rock paper scissors when you can win you go up to chicken or dinosaur or you go down to chicken or eggs we feel excited to start the day it makes me feel Pleasant and high energized it

030makes me feel like I get to know more about myself morning meeting makes me feel happy I've been putting meaning is important because you get to know everybody more and you get and there's a part when you get to know about what they celebrate and my favorite part about learning meeting is that you can like learn about like people's strengths and what they don't like and stuff I think morning meetings important because you can learn more languages it is a good start to your day because you it makes me feel more confident about being in my class because I get to know more people and more people get to know about me I just wanted to share that because I feel like hearing from their perspective and what they're taking from it is the most

031important out of everything however just in case you're wondering some of us have morning kneading chips so these are just little things that we could take out so if you want to hear a couple of them um what is something that made you laugh recently another one is would you rather explore space for the ocean and why I hope everyone's thinking of their answers and the last one is what is something you enjoyed about a specific grade that you would like to repeat this year so they're just different ways some thought-provoking questions that the students can talk with each other but also learn about each other and there are different um so next we have Ashlyn who's going to talk about the next part of our morning meeting all right so it's activity time um

032but before we actually do our activity the activity is really about um creating this inclusive community experience about teaching social emotional skills as well um and really just about bringing joy and having fun you could hear the kids talk about that um on the on the previous slide so this year all the elementary schools have a scope and sequence um where a lot of SEL and Dei topics some of them include identity friendship gratitude is coming up and so in the elementary schools we have a common read and we have many common reads throughout the year the most recent common read has been this book uh what I am um so I'm going to read a little bit of this book tonight to you so what I am someone asked me what are you I

033didn't know what to say so I didn't answer and they left but I kept thinking about it what I am I am a girl I am human I am a human animal I am a daughter I am a granddaughter I am an Amma to my guys I am vegetarian I am dark I am pale in summer I'm different colors I like to look at animals ah but I am nervous around animals I don't win I love what I made I might be an artist I have so much I don't have enough I am selfish I am generous so I'm not going to continue on but I hope I keep your interest and you want to read the rest um but one of the reasons we love this book so much um is because it shows

034the complexity of to who um what everybody is right and you can be many different things sometimes you are brave sometimes you are nervous you can move up to public speak right um so tonight what we're going to do is we're going to do an activity that we actually had many of our students do so after reading this book many of our students created identity Maps but many of our students also created I am statements you can see some of them up there um our kindergarten artists I am energetic I am an artist so tonight what we're going to do is everybody here is going to create an I am statement something that shows us who you are and then we're going to share them all right so we also talk about materials in elementary

035school so we're sharing Sharpies tonight so please make sure you're done that you put the cap on and return them back thank you usually in class by now I'd be sent to the principles thank you good morning I am a lefty yeah I'll give her money so the statement should start with I am you can finish it however you like yes foreign just look up so that I know you're I remember these instructions before we share these are there any wrong answers no right it's very complex you can be very complex let's go all right is there somebody here who would like to start tonight yes yes Christy I have I am serious I'm also hilarious so we'll head this way to the back if you want to just no okay anybody who'd like to

036share thank you you're doing me too hey my mom Steven a friend didn't realize that I stole the one in elementary [Laughter] thank you I am an aunt well I'm very hard working and I'm also a student I'm a change maker I'm a father and I am a Met fan but you were related I'm a mom I'm a listener I'm upside down I'm grateful that you are here I'm ready for pumpkins and mums I am an optimist I'm occasionally a goofball I'm a mom I'm a parent I am a sister I am short so these are an example of a type of activity that we have done it's very purposeful um also goes along with our social emotional scope and sequence but also gives you a chance to get to know each other we saw

037here we have a lot of parents a lot of fathers a lot of mothers and you can see connections I don't love the Mets but some people might damage people so I'd like to pass it back to Cafe so the last portion of the morning meeting is message um and so that typically involves the teacher writes like a note whether it's you know on the Whiteboard or in the chart paper um to the students and it's basically like a note each day so each section of the morning meeting is each day so I don't know if you can read that I'm not even sure I can from far away but that's oh there it is it's a note from Mrs Lambert who's a second grade teacher at increased Miller and just so that you know

038the morning message too before I read it um can be very interactive so a teacher might say oh let's look at like the digraphs or the words that have digraphs or the sight words or they might talk specifically about something in particular have them edit it if there's no punctuation um so they also try to make it as interactive as possible and typically the morning message will have something about the academic day like what to expect during the academic day besides the schedule they'll have a typical schedule but it's just something maybe a couple of highlights about the day and maybe something that a little supportive note from the teacher about something I'm proud of so it's also the date it is October 14 2022 happy Friday our special day today is oh our special

039today is PE um today we'll be continuing to learn about different types of communities because that's part of our social studies curriculum um and practice making arrays in math it is also reward day so I'm so proud of everyone for handing in their homework without any reminders keep it up let's have a fantastic Friday let Mrs Lambert so that would be a classroom example and then that's our message to you the board I'm not going to read it to you um I'm not going to make you do a Coral read which would be all of us together believe it yet um so sometimes we do that with the children as well but it kind of just gives you a sense of we hope tonight you feel a sense of connection and belonging and we continue

040to focus on creating a welcoming affirming and joyful environment and you can see all the things that are connected and what you know the why behind much of the work that we're doing including the policy that you created last spring but also all the other you know things that we should kind of standards that we should touch on and the things that um are important in terms of creating a sensible longing um and so we just wanted to say we hope you enjoyed getting to know us better and we enjoyed getting to know you better this evening um so we hope you know you have a great evening as well and you're going to listen to the secondary in a few months thank you thank you so much thank you I'll be collecting Sharpies and

041and papers thank you yeah to keep the Sharpie okay and now it's not like props you might be disappointed so now we're joined by our wonderful secondary colleagues our secondary principals Jeff suyatowitz and Stephen triciliano and our curriculum integration leaders Kendra Collins and Candy wellner welcome card act to follow I know that we all we all do this to each other right we we follow each other at different points during the year and that's always a hard act to follow um so thank you very much for uh leading the way um and ciao everybody um our our really a lot of our goals this year and hopefully what you'll hear is some of the work that we've been doing um and some of the work that we continue to do and then Kendra will do

042a great job sharing some of the Fantastic work that she is leading in our building um with with some of the students in her classroom um as well a big part of our um process that we're going through this year in the middle school is kind of like re-establishing the middle school right um I know that I heard Carrie say when she first sat down it's nice to be here back in person and I think that we all feel that we all feel that connection and there's a lot of work that hasn't been happening over the last couple of years and so some of our work up here um our you'll notice that our school goal is getting to know students well with a focus on the whole student we want a new students academically

043that's an important part of secondary school but also behaviorally social emotionally and so those are really important parts almost equally as important this year so some of the work that we've been doing like the elementary school we've been doing some identity work in ela classes that's probably the largest focus with an academic area um I will tell you that Catherine grabos who's our new assistant principal did a lot of work as our former staff developer last year with Monica Burmese as well really working well with the ELA classes a lot of students make identity maps to find out who they are so connected with our school goal of getting to know students well finding out how a student identifies who what makes up their identity is an important piece of that we've done some work

044with Facing History we continue to do work in fact candy and I were talking today about how to get more people involved especially in our social studies department but also other members of our community of our teaching Community a big piece that we were really excited the first time we've had an open house in person in three years and our teachers as we walked around from classroom to classroom teachers were sharing who they were not just about the eight minutes about the curriculum and everything that they're going to cover over the course of the year but I'm the person who's going to be working with your children over the course of the Year and that was really important for us to kind of establish that sense of community home base I wish it was as

045great as it sounds like morning meeting is at the elementary schools um but it is a way for secondary students to feel connected with each other with the teacher and students in other grades so our home base is grade six seven and eight um so it's about our community not just how students spend most of the rest of their day um by grade level strands but you can have an older brother or sister's friend something like that and really um welcome students into the school that way and then in terms of libraries we've spent a lot of money in terms of our uh the investments in our classroom and school library but if you have been in our library it has changed significantly over the past couple of years to be in a warm and

046inviting place um for our students and our classroom libraries are following closely behind we've invested in book groups we've invested in making sure that students have just write books for themselves so that they match their reading like what we know about them as readers and what they're experiencing through our curriculum so just like the elementary school Windows mirrors and sliding glass doors we make we make sure that students are represented in um in the libraries in their classrooms and in our building um one thing that we didn't put up here and one thing that I really am proud of is the work that we do with our clubs um students we really want to make sure that they feel connected to our community and a lot of students do that through clubs and again a

047sixth seventh and eighth grade Club you can really connect and be part of the the larger Community I'm sure I didn't miss anything here which I usually do all right um for our next slide thank you um some of our newer work last year again with students being back after a pandemic every teacher in our building if they were teaching during a certain period taught an SEL lesson so teachers who taught first period last year taught an SEL lesson to the students who were in their first period class students who taught second period taught students in their second period class over the course of the Year this was really important to us last year because we knew students were coming back not having had those and established those connections so that was like our welcome

048back to middle school last year this year we are focusing more with our sixth grade students and really planning on building over the next couple of years with SEO lessons that are appropriate for each grade in the Middle School you see something up there called the sneaker activity you might think like we're trading shoes no um so that connects with the with the saying walking in someone else's shoes um so last year we noticed that our seventh grade students in particular uh were having a very difficult year and having some struggles with each other so we asked them to share information with the community they did not have to put their name on it but something that's hidden about them that they wanted to share with the rest of our community and then we did

049ask students to go around and notice things about their classmates knowing that behind a person there are things going on students shared some very personal things divorce loss grief positive things as well um but it was interesting for students to go around and read that um like the elementary school we did start the year with faculty getting to know each other a little bit better um so we did do a pad that we asked people who they are what they teach something fun they did over the summer and to post a picture of that and their birthday and we have uh for each faculty meeting so far celebrated um birthdays and recognition of whose birthday is coming up as a way to bring us together I'm going to pause and say that Kendra will be

050talking about the social justice hero projects and the bulletin boards which have really been over the course of the past year and even this year an amazing um support for the work that we're doing in the school of our field trips um there was a picture up there at the beginning of our field trips and sixth grade as our new community together so we work together we go to BOCES off-site um and each team from the three elementary schools and students new to our district they create team at our BOCES field trip so that's something local uh students are Outdoors at that time for seventh grade we do team building across teams we go up to Mountain Lakes and have a day together as a grade so again a local trip and for eighth grade

051we go to the adventure course we it's more of an individual challenge we go down to purchase for the um for the climbing course down there so those are some of the team building activities we do and our teams we have teams in sixth and seventh grade and we do have team breakfasts for our sixth and seventh grade students um welcoming them into the school year thank you and now I will turn it over to Kendra ciao Kendra I'm the eighth grade art teacher and the SEL the EI as I call it lady um at the middle school so I'm just going to talk a little bit about what I've done so far this year um I've been working to update the iconography in the Middle School to encourage feelings of belonging and inclusion while

052also celebrating our differences as students enter our building now we have five display cases that I have filled with some school pride wolves oriented messaging including some things from the Wolf Conservation Center locally um just to encourage the message of that we're all wolves together um outside of the guidance office we've posted boards that celebrate our children's great minds and their potential for growth um as you can see up there on the slide for Hispanic Heritage Month I've created a board that is joyful and educational and we also made a mini Museum out of our display case outside the office that is filled with artifacts that faculty members brought in from home to share with students from different uh Hispanic and Latino cultures uh in the art hallway it was important for the art Department

053to greet our students at the beginning of the school year with work from diverse artists so we've displayed the top right corner there uh work from artists that span the spectrums of gender culture sexuality ethnicity and ability and then finally in my own class I teach a lesson that I call the Social Justice superhero comic book so students will choose a real-life social justice hero somebody who risked it all to make change for others and they tell their story through a combination of words and images a comic book um in a superhero format so there's the origin story uh the action the Deeds that they did and then the change that was created through their work uh these heroes are defined as someone like as like I said that put themselves at extreme risk and

054some of the topics include abolitionism Environmental Protection animal rights lgbtq rights civil rights women's rights but they have the choice I have a huge resource that I've built for them and then some of them add to that it's beautiful there's an example up there Martin Luther King thank you thank you and so now I will turn it over to Stephen good evening good evening my uncle my colleagues thoughts about how wonderful it's been to be back together again so those of you who are there for campus night this year just a lot of Goodwill a lot of electricity it was just it was really fun so that's really what it should be so very very happy for that uh the impact of covid on mental health and the necessity of connection as well as being

055mindful of past feedback that we had received about students experiences including how stressful high school can be uh so we have maintained our Focus this year on on giving students opportunities to craft experiences that impact all students at the high school so we're all aware now of how jfest was redesigned as a community celebration last year and this year the pep rally underwent a similar transformation and you're seeing one of the pictures of it there we have our send off to our fall teams with certainly a staple of it but you know it was included for bonding experiences for students and some wrinkles were added so if you go back to actually have you seen the lower right hand corner we're used to doing a senior picture but this time we did an entire School

056body picture and symbolism matters and it was just wonderful to be on that field and again you feel the good will you feel the energy we also added a club Fair to this for the first time and normally we had kind of restricted that to the ninth graders actually just trying to onboard them but there was something about reopening it to the entire student body and all the club advisors and students who are connected with those clubs were just amazed and so thrilled about how many students signed up for clubs that I didn't know you were here so I think that was just a great thing that came out of that there's always the boosters came through with some great lunch Miss Gallagher thank you so much it really makes for for a festive atmosphere

057and it was just just a wonderful day grade level competitions between the staff and the students were a lot of fun seniors were a little vexed with cornhole but you know but it all evens out because we have some of our middle-aged staff who were giving themselves quite a workout and no cardiac events fortunately and of course a dunk tank on an absolutely beautiful but windy cool fall day was a lot of fun let's go back to that picture it is uh yeah tunnel left there is Stephen in the dungeon yes so it was always like a timeout I spent on time in 10 days the lewisboro library that was also a lot of fun but the water was much colder so but it's always a lot of fun so it says nothing says belonging

058then dunking your principal athletic director and teachers so you know and besides larger events we know that community in the high school starts in the classroom so we have focused the staff's attention on this piece in a very conscious and deliberate way and so you probably have heard the term circles quite a bit so I guess the origin of that and where we want to go with that in terms of restorative practices alternative hi everyone good evening um I'm candy Wilmot staff developer and SEL Equity person so when we talk about restorative practices we talk about how we want to be together in spaces and at the high school it's a little different it's a lot like morning meeting but um a little bit more serious in some cases so we do start with maybe

059what's your favorite color you know what do you enjoy doing and then what we try to do is move to how it is that we share the space together so it's really about fostering relationships I think one of the most important things to realize is that everybody in the high school has been trained our monitors our clerks our secretaries and so we try to comprehensively speak the same language so what we move to do is to make sure that everybody feels a part of what we're doing and so obviously restorative practices is about building relationships and creating a culture of care uh we then in terms of circles how we use them we use them in classrooms and one of the reasons why we're not going to do a circle today is because circles are

060inclusive but they're private so they say we are part of the community and what happens here stays here unless of course it's something that we have to report and kids need to feel like in the adults in the room as well need to feel like that's a a shared space what we're starting to see happen and ultimately this is a long-term goal is that the relationships are so valued that we move from when kids make mistakes or infractions we call them rather than looking at sort of punishment we look at how it is that we can restore the community and so rather than speaking to the person that has caused the harm we seek out the person that feels harmed and have them share that in the space so that we can restore that community

061it turns out that we started using circles and we committed to just community building so building relationships and quickly we started doing academic circles as well so a way to talk about what it feels like to do school we even use them in clubs and I'm looking across that Jake because we decided although we weren't sure about it at first in terms of Campus Congress we started using circles to come together to start our meetings um it's really important that we build this consistent language because in doing that what happens is kids start to ask for circles in resolving conflicts with each other um we've even gone to some visits in other schools to bring circles to the elementary school the sort of deepen the work that you do in morning meeting um I'm trying

062to think about there's so much that I want to tell you that's like you know a lot um we even had a circle with a team and a bus driver last week and a continued Circle so we're always talking about how it is that we can build how we see each other having everybody be heard in the space that's a number one thing the idea is that most of the time we when we get when we when there is a conflict we think about what you did to me versus how I felt about it so rather than saying the circle promotes rather than saying you are making a mess of my classroom I would more lead with I feel really disrespected when you eat and leave food in my classroom it changes the dynamic of

063the conversation and it allows some awareness between people so um I don't know I'm not forgetting anything Stephen I think it's long the ethic of calling people in as opposed to calling them out I think that's become a little more habitual um and we've also some teachers have been asking for you know what is what do the next steps look like if they feel that they've in a good place and they're ready to move on and sometimes it can be very humbling for teachers if they're going to do circles saying hey in this last unit of instruction tell me what really worked for you when did the light bulb go on and conversely tell me something we did that perhaps didn't work and that's good information for us to have too so I think that

064also deepens the relationship between teacher and student so it's very promising so thank you thank you thank you thank you so it's the end of our presentation but I will invite my elementary colleagues maybe to come forward a bit I know Kim has a microphone if the board would like to ask any questions or say we're all available for them thank you we really appreciate this opportunity um it's wonderful to hear how dedicated you all are to um being present in the process of welcoming kids back to school and being explicit about the reality that um although things are starting to feel more normal we are actually in a position of having to sort of reflect back on where we left off before this incredible or incredibly disruptive Myriad of time that we've been coming

065through um feels really important to aspects that to acknowledge that aspect of each student's Humanity and to be thinking carefully about what to do about it and how best to create a learning environment where students do feel that they belong and are seen and are encouraged to see one another it's terrific so we feel very grateful for the work that you're doing [Music] um I'll pause there in case anybody has comments or questions please Catherine um thank you I love when you guys come in and it just makes me feel good um I did want to say for the high school I have two high two high schoolers and my ninth grader actually said homecoming was the best day of her life so that was really amazing and at jfest last year so I'm so

066grateful Lorraine and to the booster is really so grateful for your participation and for the administration and the teachers for taking the time from your school day and important work and it was really interesting the other night we were sitting at dinner and the kids brought up this idea of circle time and I hadn't heard about it before and I kind of looked at them I'm like we're in ninth grade and 12th grade not in kindergarten and I you know it just took me a while to get there because I mean here they are like taking you know these classes and I'm like wait a minute what are you doing you're being Circle time they love it I can't tell you we spent the whole dinner it must have been 30 minutes talking about this

067idea of circle time and what they've learned from their peers and from the teachers that are also involved it's been such an amazing experience for them socially and emotionally can you share a little bit more I actually hope that you continue doing it throughout the year and are you doing it once a week and does it matter I know that um Jeff you talked about that it was just sort of during the Middle School it was kind of during home base what's the rhyme and reason in the high school because I would love to see it continue um so we have a schedule for Circle so there are different types of circle just for brevity we try to Circle up every day briefly to check in however once a week teachers run a longer Circle

068and we follow the extra help schedule so they may have a 40-minute Circle once a week and it can be an academic Circle or it can be a Social Circle but whatever the need is recently we had a stop everything Circle where we had an incident that happened in school that we needed to address and we use the principles letter as the prompt and it became a very you know serious and intimate Circle I only happened in English classes so that kids weren't dealing with it all through the day so there are lots of ways that we execute Circle becomes a little bit confusing sometimes so when they say Circle time it might feel like well what are you know when does this happen is this happening every day they might be doing some kind

069of circle activity every day but the longer circles are once a week I hope that answers thank you it's perfect I'd love to see it continue I think a number of you mentioned how important and good it felt to be back fully in person and to have some sense of normalcy I was wondering if you could just um expand on how that impacts the work and and what might have made this type of work particularly challenging over the last couple of years I mean I guess I was just thinking when you were asking the question but like I don't know if Zoom always felt like a barrier um you know and oftentimes like during those um you know curriculates or open houses or even parent-teacher conferences like you weren't able to have those individual conversations

070you're kind of more talking at people like in a presentation format um so but it's so different when people come in and you're able to like listen and have this like reciprocal conversation um whether it was even like you know parent conversations or you know for specific reasons or just even like when you're presenting the feedback that you get um you know even for teachers in the classroom like to see what the students are producing and then um so but I think like the families coming in the parents and the volunteers are so excited and like even the children like when they're walking around the building like oh my mom's in the library you know or my mom's like in art room and they're hanging up things in the hallway or I saw my parent

071like when we have our compact team meetings um once a month the parents are like oh okay they're arriving now because we do it early in the morning so the children are coming in off of the buses or you know and they're like oh I'm gonna find my child and it's just like a connection you know that was like lost during covid so um but it's also helpful for the staff and for all of us to you know in those those like hallway conversations or you know an arrival or dismissal like those are all missing um when we had covids and and there they seem minor but you know they mean a lot like those quick interactions and conversations um so that's just my experience thanks I was going to mention that um during the

072coveted years everything worked very much in isolation like in the classrooms and so now that we've sort of opened up the campus and the classrooms we're seeing things much more as like a school based um way of looking at things so like we're re-visiting and re-introducing just standard expectations for like how do we walk in the hallways and how do we um how do we use the bathrooms and how do we behave on on a bus and and in all the different areas across the day we've all three elementary schools have created a expectations Matrix that suited just for our schools and how we want or need things to be running and it's a school-wide effort and doesn't feel so isolated anymore and now we all are accountable to each other for walking quietly in

073the hallways so that we're not disruptive to classes there whereas during the years of covet for some reason I mean everyone had masks on nobody was talking they were moving in isolation very limited through the building but now that everyone's moving around and we're going here and there like it became it becomes a need again to be thinking about how are we walking in the hallways so that has just been um really really kind of exciting and to reset in that way and the other thing I wanted to mention was the um the we call it a sharing assembly but it's um what did you call it town hall and and community meeting at the school so we haven't had those for years and so the way we did it at Katona is we had

074to teach children how to behave in a sharing assembly they've never been to one before they had never been to an event that the whole school was at so we literally talked about and practiced with the kindergarten for second grade students how do you sit how do you respond to something that's funny when do you clap you know you know where do you look you know it was we had to teach them how to actually behave and and participate appropriately in a sharing assembly and then when we had our first sharing assembly it was just super super exciting to have everybody together in the school spirit that's just been lacking um because of the restraints and constraints that we've had was just all sort of coming alive at the at the assembly when everyone's all

075together and you hear people cheering you're hearing your school song and you're doing your school pledge and all of that's coming back so it makes a big it makes a big difference very quick but I also think like everyone's saying there's a lot of social cues and Norms that were lost so if you think about a zoom screen if someone's feeling uncomfortable what are you seeing on the zoom screen and so that's something I definitely see with students is like helping them look at body language helping them like analyze tone and voice if someone's screen was off you don't know what they were thinking or anything like that but now you're in person you're making eye contact you're using someone's name so a lot of the practices that we have like simple stuff of okay

076how are we sitting on a carpet but more importantly if someone's asking a question how do you respond and how can you respond respectfully so it's like a lot of things that have been yeah exactly things that were lost and that were Norms to us growing up they didn't have that experience so it's rebuilding everything and I think they really love that structure too it's almost like they were craving it and it helps them feel like say it's a safe space because they know what to expect so if they're going to an assembly I had one of my students our community our I call it community meeting to for a morning meeting our um sharing was what do you remember about assemblies and how can we like make ourselves feel welcome there so it's a

077lot of like rebuilding but they're very excited about it at the same time because it definitely brings a sense of safety in addition to the emotional pieces that we've been talking about we also have paid a lot of attention to uh how does this impact instruction and so meeting with curriculum leaders the other day just how important it is to formatively assess do not wait for the test you can't fall into the Trap of teach test hope for the best as it says so I think that just by Design or by default so really trying to do things deliberately and we watched a lot of social norms changed right the handoff from year to year even PTO events in this two years of a PTO event it's almost like you're starting from scratch um but

078you know students in the middle school they want to connect socially so how did they do that in the absence of being together they connected on their phones so you know re-establishing our Norms of you know a lack of cell phones in our community is important for us so that you can recommunicate with people around you and you know put the cell phone aside until you're with your parents in the car but those again a lot of norms changed Andrew anything from the classroom perspective I would say it's a lot like jassy was saying that they lost social skills that need to be relearned that are different when you're in person from when you're on a device far apart with that that barrier um it's also been nice to to to recreate routine which was

079sort of lost especially in the transitions back and forth and with quarantining there was so much stopping and trying to start again and it was just always starting over again so it's been really nice to see like just how quickly we can move when we're always there together it's really exciting the energy is much different I wanted to add what I love to see about the circles is how quickly kids um and their teacher become a community and so you have to ask permission to enter the circle and there's no way for you not to be seen or heard you may not choose to speak so we use a talking piece but if you don't want to speak that day you can pass and one of the things that when we started you know because

080of what has happened over you know covert period I'd had teachers kind of say I had kids that like past like every round and I said it's okay just stick with the process and those same teachers came back and said you know things are changing right because trust takes time and it takes time to build a community and a lot of times we feel like everything is okay but there's no real way to know that if we're not engaging to ask if we're okay and what the circle allows for is you're having a bad day now one of the famous questions we ask all the time is what's your temperature today and it's a good way to start because if there is something in the space we can address it please Phil this was wonderful

081um one thing struck me as interesting I'd like to hear a little bit more about it well I think it was in the Middle School the Facing History piece of it I think I know what that means but I'd like to hear more about it sure so um and candy can feel free to add onto this one as well um but it's really a new way to look at history right so I know I've probably said this before so stop me if I'm boring you with something we've said in a previous board meeting but you know for years history was the thing that was written down that you read from the book Etc so adding different perspectives adding different um lenses to things that we all you know remembered sequentially is a big is a

082big piece of that so uh they started working with 1975 but we started working them with them about seven years ago gosh it seems like a long time now but uh Facing History is more than just a resource in terms of what they provide what they want to do is they want to give kids they have there's a specific pedagogy that they use where we learn and then we give kids the opportunity and how to take responsibility so one choice for example might be giving to charity right that's the one we least encourage because it seems to be the easiest way out and so what Facing History says is we actually become a part of that history in our participation so we become aware of whatever the significant event is it could be you know

083uh it could be racial oppression it could be economic oppression but then after the study you make a choice about how it is that you want to engage in changing your the global you know community and so usually what happens is we ask kids to make some choices about how they want to honor certain groups or memorialize certain events etc etc but there's a specific pedagogy that deals with um how it is that we learned ethically and then how we participate in making change sounds sounds wonderful it doesn't work does that doesn't work but has there been resistance so I do remember when I was first you know seriously studying history it was very disillusioning you know if you really got into it a little bit you know it's not just as simple and easy

084as we thought it was um but do you you know it's a little bit of a hot button issue uh today too do you get pushback or do people really do you think people are really um trying to understand it from A New Perspective um I would say yes but I you know as with any anything you don't get complete buy-in uh one of the things that we look at first and the important work becomes this idea of critical Consciousness so this idea is do you do you want to do this work are you entering this work through the lens of I understand that there are some things that I thought were true that are not true right so that's the hardest part and uh then we move to sort of once we begin to

085understand this history how do we begin to look at upstanders you know bystanders uh you know one of the things is Facing History was grounded in Holocaust studies initially and they expanded over the years and so this idea of we would like to think that the monstrosities that happen in the world are something when we look at people we say well that they're not human but what we realize is that they're humans and often educated humans that commit the worst atrocities in the world so it's not enough to educate children but we really need to have them be critical thinkers as well because we can use the education and the knowledge that we have to be destructive and so it's important that peace about what is my responsibility to my community what am I supposed

086to do what does an upstander look like how do I respond to a world where there's Injustice do I have an obligation to stand out to stand up when there's something that's wrong and so those are all the tenets of Facing History and with as for kids kids are always interested we have a Facing History course and as a result of covid I think it's not running because there's all this competition we're not taking it off the uh program schedule however um we started with Native American history and then we moved to a bit of reconstruction not a lot because it's a it was a semester course but those are the big questions that come up in terms of how we look at history and then juxtaposing that with studying current history so yes and

087it's a structural limitation in that dealing with survey courses you know just we'd love to get the rich electives that you would see in a college program right that's not that's not it's always that tension of depth and breadth right but the pedagogy can impact you know we have English teachers who have taken a lot of the professional learning social studies teachers so still has an impact even if students aren't in that course that semester one course this year we're gonna uh we're inviting some of our middle middle school teachers it's late I'm sorry the words to join us in this uh critical Consciousness around uh equity and Justice through Facing History and uh and um link to BOCES as well but also the consultant that we've been working with for years is going to

088come to talk to us about how we want to expand the work for the 23-24 year that's exciting yeah very nice their questions or comments thoughts I think one thing that's interesting to me about the circles I think about a child's hat experience in school and in elementary school you sort of have that very sustained relationship with a group of kids who you see every day and then when you get to Middle School and High School Middle School obviously when you're teaming you still have that but um it I think it can be easy to get through an entire day without actually having a real connection with anyone when you're changing classes and I think it's great to have opportunities for kids to connect in some way and I can you know as you were

089talking about starting to get a better sense of what that looks like and I'm excited for our students to have that opportunity to know each other and to build a stronger Community within the within the school so thank you I was curious about with the restorative practices if it's going to kind of expand to the other schools and perhaps the board could do a training on it too at some point is there are other plans do you see it happening in the middle school at some point also like what you know it's it's hard to answer that but because it's not necessarily a decision I can make but what I can tell you is that I've been very just fascinated with how where circles kind of end up so you know it was sort of

090designed for us to engage as adults with each other and you know with our kids but uh everything that happens now and I I really feel comfortable saying everything Stephen will say do we need a circle is the idea is yes but you know I guess there needs to be some some plans in place for that but yeah it yeah it it has been one of the things that I just want to respond to what you just said about this idea of sort of how kids make you know sense of it all and I think there is when we when we think about circles and we think about just High School in general there's this sense of there's a lot that goes on right and some of it is conflict some of some of it

091is really fun stuff and what circles do is Like It prepares kids how to sort of talk about things that are good but also talk about things that are not so good but in the direction of resolving it moving forward not being stuck in this is how I feel harm oh sure hmm yes please Jake um I think like a really important piece of the circles like especially for myself and other students is that talking piece and it's as of right now it's the teacher that's bringing it in and I know teachers have opened it up for students to bring in talking pieces that means something to them and I'll give an example Mr mccalley my AP macro teacher his he has two of them and they're two squishmallows and he told us like this

092it's like they're cute like little stuffed animals he told us the whole story of like why they're important to him it's his kids picked them out and he was like what do I bring in and his kids brought him these two squishmallows who each have their own personalities and stories and as we're passing it around it's something soft to hold and it's comforting like you can squeeze it and that's like a big piece of the circles is not just connecting with the other students but connecting with the teacher like I feel like I know so much more about my teachers like on a personal level than I have for like years and also completely separate but to go back to um jfest and the pep rally I do want to like commend all the students

093who put in a lot of hard work because it wasn't just Administration and teachers it was a group I don't know how many of us there were who were 39 29. it was cool worked really hard to put both of those events together and pep rally we only had a few weeks to do and I think it came out pretty amazing we've gotten such good feedback from both events like I know so many students who are now like ninth graders like my sister were saying like we saw what was happening on the lawn during jfest we're so happy that we got to experience it and now we can't wait for jfest at the end of the year it was just two magical days so great to hear thank you that's great all of it really

094really lovely feedback thank you Jake thanks for mentioning her talking piece is like the most important thing and I forgot to mention thank you for bringing it up maybe that's a really lovely note to end on because it is late we want to be respectful of your time we really appreciate you staying with us and preparing these materials so that we could have a better sense of what's happening in the school buildings and classrooms and sounds terrific we really appreciate your efforts and your dedication to our kids thank you thank you good night everyone thank you so much good night thank you thank you foreign terrific and while our administrators are joining us back at the table um I'll just mention that now we're going to look ahead to discussion 7.02 which is an opportunity

095for the board to have some discussion about one of our board policies related to public participation at board meetings the board might remember that about a year ago the New York State School Board Association actually released an updated policy with some best practices and guiding principles that local school boards could take under advisement and attempt to sort of reconcile with their existing policies and tonight really is our first opportunity to hear from our policy committee and from Andrew about some thinking around how our policy has served our district well opportunities for us to think about some incremental changes in light of the nisbah resolution I'm sorry is the draft policy and best practices and and I'm happy to turn it over to you Andrew if you want to take us through that thank you or

096to bill for policy please maybe a little bit of an introduction the um this policy is sort of probably the policy that most exemplifies it's it's for all of us it's for the board as much as anything else to come to some understanding and it's sort of to lay some groundwork around the the element of the public input so you know the one thing is to reiterate that this is our meeting to conduct business in public as opposed to a meeting for the public on the other hand you want to be inclusive and let people Express themselves um but you know to sort of come up with some I don't know enforceable rubrics and ground ground rules if you will um I think there's sort of at least three maybe more specific points that I

097think the Board needs to sort of come to a decision this was the one policy I think in policy committee it was sort of reluctant to say well we'll come up with an answer and present it to the board and see what they say this was really more well I just have to find out what the others think about this because this is not right or wrong it's just what do you prefer so um I think the three General issues to discuss is the should there be an overall time limit to public comments okay just how long a period should it be um we have a three-minute um limit to speakers I don't think we've Universe universally enforced it so you know I think we have to just we have to sort of renew our

098commitment to some sort of limit if if we agree there should be a limit what should it be and you know what will be some of the mechanics we'll do if people go over the limit and then just the concept of for whatever rules we come up with um do other board members or does the board president have any leeway in making exceptions and you know I have views about all these things but I I think that would frame the you know what's on the table from this policy I think those are the issues I'm not sure if I've missed any no I don't just I just want to emphasize that that Marjorie pointed out nisba put out this guidance last year and it's not accidental that it came out last year they they were

099aware that all around New York State through the course of the pandemic um not necessarily because of the pandemic but perhaps just the timing um it was becoming increasingly difficult in lots of areas for schools boards to con both to conduct their necessary business that they have to do every two weeks in our case and to importantly listen to the voices of the community and doing both of those things on the same nights I think nisba was aware was becoming increasingly challenging and so it is as Bill said it's an effort to try to strike the right balance nisba does actually recommend putting in some pretty strict limits and we may or may not agree with those depending on you know what we what we think is right for our own Community um and importantly

100just also I think to clarify for the community so there isn't confusion around what is the purpose of the meeting and why are we here this board has always been clear that it's important to hear from the community and and to do it in ways that are productive and helpful and not unnecessarily frustrating to people but also that allow the board to conduct its necessary and important business uh in in effective and efficient ways so it's just trying to strike all those balances and and I think bill has correctly identified just just in terms of process as much for the for the community out there is because I know the boards are already aware of this typically the policy committee uh spends its meetings going through policies and refining them and then when it's ready

101it presents the board with a draft for what we call a first reading and there are three readings we're not even at the point of that first draft yet but felt that it was important to come here with just these few particular questions and then the plan is we'll go back into our committee once there's been some discussion here and use the responses that we hear tonight to form that first draft it'll come back to the Border delay to date so but but Bill has correctly identified the three questions we're wondering about do we want to take nisbah's recommendation of a very set overall time limit on public comment period um do we want to more seriously enforce the three-minute time for individual speakers and or do we want to give additional discretion to both

102president to manage the meetings in the way that person sees fit depending on what's Happening that night and what else might be on the agenda that kind of thing I don't know if we just want to open it up questions and thoughts Liz I feel pretty strongly that we should be enforcing the three-minute rule uh there is a lot that can be communicated in three minutes um and and I think that in the interest of allowing whomever arrives and has something to say it it will keep the meeting from stretching into the very next day um which is you know I think that everybody here probably is better for so um with that said depending and maybe this is recency bias right now um but putting an overall cap on the um on the public

103comment portion of the meeting I I could be convinced either way I don't feel very strongly about that my inclination would be not to do it if we would be um you know uh pretty stringent with the three minutes and I would be also inclined to um let Marjorie you know manage on the Fly depending on you know what the circumstances are that's where I am I'm just keeping track a little bit because I can't read what I write I have to type it does anybody want to weigh in on a different aspect or a different question or respond to what's on the table now with respect to an opinion I think it's also okay if board members don't have very strong feelings on some of these plus two questions then you know I think

104the message back to the policy committee is that we are then deferring to the policy committee to have continued discussion in the policy committee and to bring us back your best thinking so I don't want anybody to feel pressured to really weigh in on each and every one of the questions but I think it is a great opportunity to the extent that board members have some strong feelings or questions about how to move forward it'll be great to hear from everybody or anybody I should say no pressure so I think in terms of the setting the overall time limit uh I would feel uh it would be unfortunate perhaps if someone came to a meeting and wanted to present something and because they were the last one on the list and we had a certain

105amount set for time and we even kept it the three minutes let's say we set the time to one hour of public comment it would allow 20 people to speak and um I think the assumption is that all 20 of those people would be speaking about the same thing often but there might be different things and my concern would be that the 21st person might not have might not be repeating the sentiments of the first 20. um and so that's where I feel hesitant to yeah set a specific limit for the overall time of public comment with that being said I also feel that sometimes uh the additional time doesn't necessarily lend itself to us learning a lot more right so um I try to think about other ways that we can get feedback from

106the community you know I think we pay attention to other communication channels you know our emails tell us a lot of people email us I find that very helpful when there are things that we're working on that that we're looking for feedback I think we um you know I think we can create Andrew can create opportunities if it's something that the administration is working on to get feedback from the community that would be outside of our meeting and when I think about that I think maybe we should limit the the content the time because if it's going beyond that I don't know that maybe it's leading to the most productive outcome for us so I don't know it's very hard to decide I think if we were going to set a limit I would I

107would want it to be like a minimum of an hour I know that seems like a long time but I think a minimum of an hour um and maybe even 90 minutes um as our cap and um and I think in a meeting where there were many people here we would then to go to the third sort of question on the table which would be to perhaps request of the community of people who are here that they are aware of that cap that they think about um you know how they participate so that all you know all perspectives can be heard I don't know if that's an onus that we can put on the Community when they participate but it's something to think about I guess so but with that being said I also I

108kind of you know Marjorie sort of said like I'm also comfortable with it kind of feels like maybe just sometimes uh the hypothetical you could go back and forth forever so like there's a certain part of me that thinks you know a policy committee could create up a first read and we can react to it and if something about it feels like it would we would want it to be changed then that's a good point to to suggest the change but I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it so thank you for doing it this way I understand that I had a couple ideas that are a little bit outside the scope of this one is that I I know that Nisbet also sort of talked about other boards do this where there's two public

109comment periods so one that is I would say that before the consent agenda that's specifically for people to speak on the agenda so that we hear those comments before we vote on the consent agenda and then a second public comment period that would be for other matters and I think that that would sort of solve in some ways for the need to take care of our business even when there are many people present um and I I think probably like tonight there may not be anybody so that those periods would just kind of go away but it would give an opportunity to you know kind of have the Rel the comments that need to be heard at the beginning and taken into consideration um for the board um before and then afterwards perhaps longer public

110commentary and something else that's an issue in the community I mean I do want to just point out that we I think we had very orderly meetings despite that we did not have a lot of the conflict that other our adjacent districts did and I think that Marjorie has done a wonderful job kind of keeping order and pausing when it gets out of order and so um we've sort of modeled that through some challenging times too but having sort of the other business at the end also gives us the opportunity to perhaps pause if we think it's going too long and then we can come back to it at another time or find another Forum so I think that might solve for some of that without having to have put a time limit on it

111I'm certainly in favor of the three minute time thing and I think perhaps having some other tools so that it's not on one person to sort of show the time so like a timer that's up a bill that goes off a 30 second warning I mean I know people will talk over but just something to sort of make it the same treatment for each person are some tools that we could do with that um and then uh I mean I do I do think that I think my understanding is the president would always have discretion to change the public what I mean would you have the discussion to change the public comment period if something were going on or I think that um it's a really good question I think the board president always has

112any board member has the opportunity to make a motion for a recess however I think that we would all be best advised to anticipate that we wouldn't stray from the policy because I think it it would appear or could be perceived as discriminatory to allow discretion to cut it off at times and not at other times so I think generally speaking the answer is no the board president wouldn't really have discretion to cut it off and or to you know suggest that you know now we've gone on for so long and it's getting late and so for tonight let's wrap up I think this is where the board would need to decide are we going to have a say a defined time period after which now one thing about the defined time period that I

113can just share you know along the lines of thinking a little bit creatively about some of these options is that a board can have a defined time period and then somebody can make a motion to extend the time period and actually just that set through a very long nisba resolutions committee meeting where this was very much the common practice it was a 10 minute period for speaking on a resolution after which it was so refreshing everybody got to vote on whether we wanted to hear more discussion on this resolution and it's very empowering to say no I've heard enough and it was also wonderful to be given the opportunity to say yes I'd like to hear more so this is yet another option available however I just would also I think comment that in the

114same way that although I think we all agree that three minutes is our objective and it is in our policy our current policy states every speaker should speak you know please no longer than three minutes I think because at times it is it can be challenging to really enforce that when you have a speaker who's impassioned or where it just feels you know truly inhumane or uncomfortable to cut them off similarly I would say you know if if we went to the two comment periods which I really do see the benefits totally support that if we decide to go that route but similarly what I understand from boards who have that model is that oftentimes you might have a flash point issue where community members might try to use the agenda item period for a

115different purpose and then you also at that point put the board president in that position of trying to referee or adjudicate something in the same manner that sometimes it's just hard to referee the three minutes so I think I would maybe just suggest that as much as we might want to consider restructuring public comment and that might be something we really want to do I think we should also look at it through the lens of you know was what is what we have broken and would we potentially be inviting more obstacles or hurdles that it would would need to be kind of refereed at times and I'm not saying I have an answer to that it's just another way of of looking at any change that we might anticipate implementing um because I think sometimes

116even let's call it a um an aspect of our policy that is seemingly non-negotiable and quite straightforward you know speak for three minutes even that we all know can can be complicated at times so I think maybe less is more in terms of the policy might be my perspective um but I'm very open I understand the you know the the way in which possibly having the two comment period seems like it could help us organize Affairs and potentially improve our meetings so I just wanted to share all that and then I just wanted to mention one other thing because I think you know our public comment policy has served us very well for a long time um nisba has some good guiding principles and I think it's important to say that one change as I

117understand it that the policy committee is recommending is an important change something right that we're moving toward I believe whereby we are not going to permit discussion involving individual District Personnel or student matters so I think we're talking about this public comment policy because I think we actually do have one important need to bolster our policy and strengthen our our best practice here in this area and I think anything else we decide is sort of procedural and whatever is the board's pleasure that's that's my perspective on all of that I think you have that that's an important I should have mentioned that that um I mean again when we come up with a draft everything is Up For Debate so we can talk about anything but we we did want to much of its strengthen

118or reiterate but just restate that um the public comment period is there's many other venues if you if there's an issue with an individual teacher or student or something going on there's lots of other ways that you can and should be addressed not out not the board's public comment period so that would um like anything that that would you know changing moving that from a policy piece of paper to actual practice would would have to be something where the just becomes the norm for us to stop people if that's not being observed um in terms of so I think that's one thing in terms of um what do I come down on I agree that leeway in this situation wouldn't be useful because any anytime you exercise it somebody will say how come you didn't

119do it for me um and I think the more we're just like look I'm sorry this is this is our policy um and on the other hand I I do think that the three minutes um will have to come up with a mechanism but I do think that we really I understand people get very impassioned but again when we start making exceptions that's when it gets hard when you know we're cutting off somebody who says something you know critical of us but we don't interrupt the person who's saying something lovely you know that's that's not going to work um I I personally why I'm hard on the three minute uh limit if we do that well I'm not on uh I I wouldn't favor a overall limit I think the times it would end up

120being more than 60 or 90 minutes hopefully won't be very often and frankly if we're saying you have to come here to make a comment and if you wait online and you're here to make a comment you get to make your comment you might only get three minutes but you get to make your comment there's no question of I was stifled I came I wasn't allowed to speak and they're they're infringing on my uh Free Speech rights so I I think it's if there's a day where there's a lot of people that's just part of our gig is that we have to listen um so I guess that would be where I come every not on no long time no overall time limit yes on three minutes no one leeway and we should when we

121come up with a draft discuss some of the other aspects of it like the individual students like we said we sort of came up with something like we can't identify you can't speak about an individual teacher or something that could easily be identified you know the seventh grade social studies history class and third period or you know that's something that would be can be sort of like public like uh medical informations you can use it to get to an individual you shouldn't that's too much information um uh and along with that we there's a piece about um individual students unless it's your child or it's the student themselves you've had the students come up but then they should be speaking about their personal experience so I think there's other things that when we come up

122with a draft might people might want to discuss and you know see if we agree on it or not but this has been helpful in terms of taking the temperature and seeing you know at least where the where the edges might be for us to discuss yeah I wanted to ask a question also about um we often comment that there's other ways for people to contact the board and there's other forums to have discussions and I think that's certainly true and I think there's something about the public comment period in these meetings that's different so like if we get an email it's not something that the rest of the community is gonna going to see but when you come and you speak a public comment in a meeting it's seen by people here it's seen

123by people that are streaming it it's seen by somebody who watches a recording and so I agree I think sort of to that same point that if people are coming it's important that we allow them to speak um and then I think give the option when it's over the time if they still have stuff they want to tell us to remind them of the other opportunities for communicating with us or I guess invite them to come back next time and continue their comments if you'd want to um the other thing I want to bring up which is a little bit um like sort of expanding the policy is I think in our um board goals of being inclusive and welcoming um I think it would be worth considering allowing for remote comments we now you

124know technology has changed you know when I first came to the district the meetings were recorded and you could like watch it on TV afterwards but you couldn't it wasn't kind of live stream now now technology we've all kind of had to adopt the new technology and there I think there's an opportunity to really include some more voices of people that might not be able to come to a meeting at night for example two parent working households or single parent households where you have to do child care in the evening or somebody who is sick or disabled or and there's a number of I think situations in which people might want to participate and we now have the technology to allow more access to the meetings and I think it would like in the way

125that we really appreciate public comment I think opening it up to more participation and more people would get us better ideas you know just in that sort of the underlying principle I think of why we want public comment is to hear from our whole community and this would be another way to invite in more folks was there a specific issue with that with the remote the um whether a board member can participate remotely was it was that tied to having the public participate right so um yes and no or yes and we're not sure yet about all of it so uh there was recently um uh an allowance footboards went once the emergency orders that allowed for remote meetings to any place expired which they did relatively recently there was an allowance for boards to

126adopt something called emergency considerations came in my close on that so I think that was what it was circumstances extraordinary circumstances thank you which have to be defined which would allow both a board member to participate remotely if they fit those extraordinary circumstances and if that was allowed then it actually has requires the public comment be allowed um to happen remotely so that is allowable if the board adopted it's both of those things we're not sure and we're trying to research whether we can allow the public comment without the extraordinary circumstances provision in place what we do know from some of the research that we've done already is that it's quite complicated to allow the remote participation because one there's a number of other pieces that go along with it in terms of how that

127gets appropriately provided to the public technologically and in other ways So currently you know we stream these meetings um and the technology that we're currently using doesn't allow for necessarily for remote participation in the way we're considering it but it doesn't provide all of the pieces that are required to go along with it so we have to learn more about exactly what is required if we're going to do it yeah I think I struggle with remote participations maybe because we've really tried very hard to get our students to come back to school and it was extraordinary circumstances which are really have to be very extraordinary for students to remain remote so I feel like we're being inconsistent and when we started the meeting that was all about belonging and being back in person and how

128but that feels I guess I just would be concerned that students would look at us and say well how come you're allowed to be remote or my mom is or my dad is or whatever and I have to be here I struggle with that a little bit I think there's also an opportunity when people are here and present for us to meet them and to be in their company and there's something about I mean I think we've seen in the um sort of the um you know what the right word is like the analysis of things that occurred during uh the pandemic and even with meetings I have still now at work there there's a difference between being in a room with a person and being in a remote environment with a person and um

129I think being in a room with a person leads to a more um a richer exchange and an opportunity to hear the person and see them and understand that and I think that if that's something that the community is interested and I certainly think we could have a great partnership with our ptos and I know in my experience as a PTO leader I always tried to make sure people were aware of board meetings and when they were and you know maybe another opportunity to offer the community is support for people who want to attend a board meeting and can't and that could be a PTO resource in support of the school community and the parents in the community I think it's also an opportunity maybe for our our students you know our campus Congress to

130you know provide a resource so someone could come to a meeting I think it's just really important to be together and I think the level of Engagement and the level of discourse when people are present in person is much richer and more valuable and I think you know our our buildings are accessible and you know we serve students with disabilities in our buildings people with disabilities can can come in the buildings and be a part of the meeting so um I don't necessarily think it will enhance what we're hearing and I think we can look for other ways to help be more inclusive I am swayed by um hearing from the principals this tonight about the community building that they're doing in the classrooms and at all levels and it really did kind of drive

131home the point how important just body language and being in the same space to truly understand what people are saying um is to to the whole um community building and communication aspect of it I I think we had a meeting not long ago with um with the supervisors of Louis bro and Bedford and it was you know it it just had such a different feel to it and and um collaboration and understanding that I think really made a difference for me um I think also uh there were a few of us at Andrew's coffee and I mean I'll go almost anywhere for free coffee um even that but yeah [Music] um but it was uh it was a great opportunity also at that point to hear from a lot of um parents a lot of

132different perspectives I felt like a lot some of the comments that were made could have been made at the podium and so um you know I think that we should really commit to to attending as many of these events as we can because I think that there's an opportunity for maybe some less formal conversations that would potentially be a lot more productive and honest and you know and and something that would also be very you know I'm good for building Community after these past few years which feels like maybe some of our connections and our looser associations kind of broke thank you and your coffee was a PM coffee earlier this week but you do try to alternate so that in the event we have parents who can't come to an evening coffee you do

133offer those also in the morning yeah I mean I I agree I think there's something to being in person there's something that's different about being remote I think in The Proposal that I'm what I'm imagining is that most of us would be in person and there would be people coming to comment in person but there might be a couple people who aren't able to make it for whatever reason um and but they still want to participate and they have something you want to say publicly and so this would give them an opportunity to still be able to participate in the meeting at the relevant time on the topic that's relevant to perhaps whatever is being discussed um I mean a babysitting Coke would be like amazing if that were kind of coming out of the

134high school and that would offer I mean all those are beautiful Community ideas and I think the technology really offers a new way for us to participate that is not it's not the same as all of us being on the screen when just sort of one or two people come in common it really I mean I was at a meeting this morning where the county executive couldn't be there in person and he was on the phone and so it was like you know we're still able to hear from him but but it you know and then there are other people in the room and we continue the conversation and so not perfect not ideal but we still got to kind of have the full participation of all the anticipated people at the meeting and similarly

135it might be nice to have the participation of the whole Pub you know whoever really wants to but just cannot make it for whatever I think a myriad of reasons that people cannot come in person at a particular time but I guess we don't know if we're allowed to do that because at this moment but just I just want to put it on the table for consideration if that were to be something do you need any other feedback do you feel as if no no this is good we'll come with the first draft and we can rip it apart we really appreciate you thinking about it and inviting us to reflect on it before you brought the draft so thank you that's great um okay well appropriate Segway this brings us to 8.01 which is

136our opportunity for public comment I don't believe anybody has signed up this evening so I will suggest that we move on to the consent agenda um so I'm at 10.01 now and I'm happy to move the consent agenda I'm not sure whether anybody wants to pull anything Lana would you like to pull yeah 10.05 okay so I'm going to suggest first that we vote on the consent agenda without 10.05 if I could have a second for that thank you Julia and were there any questions or comments I do want to point out that this is our opportunity to accept the official results of our Capital Improvement project vote so thank you so very much again Kim for your dedication and the incredible amount of organization and work that has gone into facilitating our ability to

137vote on these results tonight we sincerely appreciate that thank you again to our community we're supporting the bond referendum and to all of our district leaders around this table for the enormous amount of work that has gone into this over the course of many months really is a very happy moment for our school district and we're very grateful if there are not any further comments on the consent agenda we can vote all in favor please say aye aye [Music] great uh 6-0 thank you took me a minute okay so that brings us to 10.05 which is an opportunity for the board to vote on a resolution um enabling us to continue some further conversation with Westchester County regarding school resource officer opportunities um would somebody move the resolution please moved by Bill and could I

138have a second for that thank you Julia anybody wants to ask any clarifying questions or offer any comments happy to pause before we vote not we can vote separately all in favor please say aye Ripley say nay nay both right pardon me opposed thank you Julia it's getting late all opposed please say nay one okay so five to one and that adds up to six okay that's very good all right moving right along to acceptance of donations and gifts we have a very generous and fairy generous donations unless you on the agenda tonight from the John Jay booster club can I ask somebody to please move this generous resolution thank you Liz and I see a second from Julia thank you this is we're a scorers table valued in the amount of twenty four thousand

139three hundred and thirty two dollars very exciting very generous thank you very much and if there is no further discussion yeah please is this scores um table go to multiple Sports and multiple games first of all if you ever have a chance Chris McCarthy so it's called the Donkey if you have a chance you have to ask him to say the donkey because he says that he channels Shrek so it's very funny the donkey but anyway so it's it's a donkey it is very light um weight you can put it we can pull it with the Polaris or so if we wanted to for some reason bring it across the street to the AP Farm we can do so um Lucy uh half anua Catherine's niece was the first student to be able to use

140it at the girls field hockey game and Chris has his uncanny ability I think to channel weather so we had a beautiful jfest we had a beautiful homecoming we had a beautiful first day of the use of it and then Thursday we had that Monsoon rain so Lucy was able to keep our field hockey book dry and unfortunately somebody forgot to tell coach Walsh that there's a huge store it's so large because there's a huge storage capability underneath I actually you could fit three people at least comfortably under there but somebody forgot to tell her that all of the girls gear could have gone under are in in the side of the thing to keep it dry instead of using the plastic bags that they sometimes have to so it is movable if necessary they've

141been moving around the field as needed they've used it so far at several soccer games several field hockey games they used it at our um first the cross country meet they were able to use it for that so um it's and also as part of that gift we were able to also negotiate a discount on two benches they're Dugout benches coaches Dugout benches one for softball and one for baseball Chris didn't have quite enough money for both of the benches in his budget but because we were buying this donkey um he was able to get both of the benches for the two programs as well so it had a added benefit to the community as as well and you know my husband flipped a lot of burgers as did Julia um and it was really

142a culmination of the community support we couldn't have done it without without all of our booster members and people showing up so thank you yeah it's very lightweight two people can move it thanks thank you so much for the overview that's great wonderful so it's nice [Laughter] terrific thank you so much that's great we appreciate that you're here to help us visualize the equipment and thank you for this very generous gift so it's my pleasure then to ask for a vote all in favor please say aye aye 6-0 terrific okay and this brings us to an opportunity for any uh new business or additional topics questions or comments from the board I'm at 15.01 yes Ilana I was just curious um how we communicate besides here the results of the election because I know people

143were sort of asking not the of the bond vote like is there going to be another communication out to the whole Community about the results of the bond vote uh they're on the website you mean more than that you know just like what have like people I think people didn't know I'm gonna send an email to say if like a path okay all the excitement thank you for the question there will be a communication now thank you thank you anything else before we look ahead okay then we're going to talk about future meetings but first i'm just going to remind everybody that tomorrow is international walk or bike to school day being celebrated at KES and we were all invited so I'm hoping that we might see one another to walk to school tomorrow and

144then after that it looks as if the policy committee is going to meet Friday October 28th at nine o'clock and just bear with me for one second I think sustainability is also meeting actually that's Friday November 4th at 8 15. so I'll come to that in a second a little bit out of order here uh the board is next scheduled to meet Thursday November 3rd 7 30 p.m in the high school library and then there we go okay sustainability Friday November 4th 8 15 and the board then again Thursday November 17th here in the library 7 30 p.m I miss anything um no okay great if not then I'm going to make a motion that the board adjourned back into executive session to discuss employment history of an individual I could please have a second

145for that thank you Catherine all in favor please say aye aye 6-0 thank you so much for a lovely presentation