001my breath I enjoyed it sure wasn't it so good evening everybody welcome so nice to see all of you it's our pleasure to call this meeting to order um it is Thursday September 22nd and we're very much looking forward to not only hearing an update regarding professional learning in the school district and an opportunity to resume conversation related to board goals but we're joined tonight by student performers and we're very much looking forward to opening with student music and welcome also to Amy Geiger thank you for being with us but everybody please join us as is our custom for the Pledge of Allegiance first thank you for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and I walked over a few minutes ago just to introduce myself
002to our seniors our current students and I'm going to apologize for the embarrassment I'm experiencing because I've known one of you since you were in kindergarten I think and didn't recognize you but in reading your names I'm now realizing wow time has flown and what a pleasure and you're all grown up and welcome and we really look forward to hearing your music so I'm not sure if there's an introduction first can I invite you Andrew Neil yeah thank you I'm going to introduce Amy Geiger I'm going to thank Neil for helping to set this up Miss Geiger it's always a pleasure to walk into her classroom during the school day it's always a busy place with students learning amazing things on electronic devices that those of us of a certain age don't really understand uh
003but the students do incredible things and we're thrilled that you're bringing some of your students here to us tonight thank you thank you thank you so much for the opportunity to present our work burden thank you and especially to Neil for approaching our K-12 Department to say if you'd like to Showcase your work we'd love to have you and so we like to jump on bandwagon so I'm here to present a collaborative project that took place last year it was rather organic in nature because Zoe is not part of the class she was for a few years but wasn't able to take it due to scheduling but she did have a lunch period that she willingly gave up to come in and collaborate with Maya and with Tyler so I'm going to introduce them to
004you and let them talk a little bit about their project thank you um hello my Nelson and I participated in the guitar Melody and was part of the production in our song uh I'm Zoe maneral and I was The Lyricist and um singer for our song um my name is Tyler miritello and I helped produce the song as well as the electric guitar part and bass guitar bark for the song um yeah so um basically this all started with us we're just wanting to make a collaborative project together um we all just got in um the booth that we have in Miss Geiger's tech room and we just started playing Melodies using kind of any type of a past uh lyrics that we had and we came together with this one song that we were
005like oh wow this sounds pretty cool so um we started getting more into it and developing it more and more um and we decided to make it into a full produce production song um I've always had a great Passion For You Know music and just generally like the you know the entertainment industry and um when I heard about Miss Geiger's class in ninth grade I or I guess before ninth grade I thought this was my opportunity I was so excited and it went beyond my expectations um she has so many resources that you know we were able to explore which I think was just really great for me so even though I couldn't take the class that's really why I came back because I just had such a passion for it um and for me
006I I've been in Geiger's class for all three years of high school and the reason why I joined in the first place was um I had a brother who was a former student and he kind of inspired me to join and I also had the passion for it um and when it came to making this song it was you know after a period of inactivity for all of us for school and we all kind of came back together um I mean we really weren't doing anything before junior year and then junior year came along and we all found that we really had a passion for music making and we all wanted to come together um the idea actually was from Zoe Zoe created the song and just me and Maya kind of added on to
007it and we all made this very I mean at the time was really cool but of course we could probably make an even better song um but it was it was all a lot of fun and we really hope you enjoy it because back then it was a big thing for us and it's still pretty um big crowning achievement for all of us so great unspoken thank you [Music] meaningful goodbyes seems like some things are unsavable my dear you know he tried never needs a hurry never need to panic all I ever spoken are like vows we've broken and sometimes the silence isn't something more [Music] please [Music] Burning Bridges empty wishes someone's always Gotta Lose it's never now never later never any time at all [Music] how's that any bodies [Music] the silence isn't
008something [Music] foreign [Music] words unspoken like vowels [Music] foreign [Applause] wow that is beautiful absolutely beautiful thank you for sharing that with us it is truly inspiring to know that in the walls of John Day High School students are creating music of that nature and honestly it has a transformative effect if we could start every Board of Education meeting with a beautiful Melody and lyrics this really extraordinary really beautiful and I I don't think we would have ever known that was amazing thank you really appreciate you sharing that with us what a gift thank you congratulations thank you please you're welcome to stay it might go uphill from here but we really appreciate that thank you so much thank you thank you thank you great wow what a pleasure thank you so much for inviting
009them to perform please bring us more students and more devotion that was beautiful really inspirational thank you start to follow you know from here we go to board announcements and I will just simply start while people are collecting their thoughts by mentioning that some of the school buildings not all have had the opportunity for back to school night and you know really talk about transformation you know just being back in person and the opportunity to reconnect with teachers with our administrative staff with all staff in the building who are there late at night and with our fellow Community really has been so meaningful and for those who haven't yet had the chance because your children are going to have their back to school night after this short break um you know I really hope people
010will take advantage of the opportunity to come back into the buildings and meet in person with teachers and reconnect with fellow Community it really was great and we are thankful to all of you and to our building leaders and to all of our teachers and staff because it's no small thing to pull that off and really carefully coordinated and it is a late night for everybody but we really appreciate it and it was um truly awesome to be back so thank you so much I'm sure other board members have some things they want to speak about there's a lot going on I know it's Homecoming this weekend we have so much to be thankful for and to talk about but I thought I would at least start there I would like to go next I
011always want to build on what you were saying I think that um I didn't realize how much I missed it until I came back and it was so wonderful to see all of the teachers and specifically the ones you know the classes that um my children are in it was wonderful I was late to a few classes and I did not do very well on Ms Tong's quiz um but it was wonderful and you know to see the teachers and their enthusiasm about their subjects and everything like that is just such a great reminder of why we're here and how important it is thank you so much Liz and yeah you remind me that I think some of the messages that we are hearing from our staff and that really are so appreciated by all
012of us include not only you know A love for teaching but a love for teaching in Katona lewisboro which is just so great to hear and to experience and very moving really beautiful so thank you anything else I just wanted to um recognize there was different faculty involved in different parts of the lewisboro library fair over the weekend and um some of it were courageous than others but in the dunk tank but um there were some student performers there and it just really it was again another really just festive Community Day it was a beautiful day and people were out and I think we're sort of starting to really come out um and see people more and it was really a lot of fun and just wanted to recognize them for taking time on the
013weekend to be a part of something in the community it was very much appreciated wonderful thank you so much I just I want to also say thank you to the guidance Department I have a senior this year I did a senior meeting with her guidance counselor and I just I've talked to a couple of other senior parents and they just seem really on it and there and very prepared and really caught like accommodating and my senior had a question and you know couldn't make it an appointment to the next day but he seen by her like just in the hallway just she said I knew that you needed me and so I just really appreciate the time they're giving to our seniors especially this year thank you I'll just say um thanks to all the
014elementary school principals and ptos that held their first meetings over the last couple weeks and principal coffees and it was great to be back in the school and see all the parents coming a lot of new parents um and and old and returning parents and the ptos have already also thrown up at the elementary level already done a couple of Welcome Back events well for welcoming new people and for everybody so it's been really great to attend those as well thank you Ilana thank you and before we do turn it over to Andrew I want to take a moment to formally welcome Jake Spurling our student trustee thank you so much for being here we're thrilled to have you join our board for the year I don't want to put you on the spot but
015now that we've warmed up a little bit comfortable just taking a moment to introduce yourself to us we'd love that thank you um hi I'm Jake Sperling I'm a senior here um I never really expected to step into this position I was in campus Congress as an executive advisor to our board and they told me that they had an opening for this board and I thought that because I moved here I used to go to Fox Lane where I was on a board there that worked with the student reps to the Board of Ed and they were telling me during my when I was a freshman how meaningful that experience was and how valuable it was to them and I thought that when the opportunity arose it was such a I couldn't miss it so
016now I'm here great welcome thank you so much for sharing that and welcome we look forward to hearing from you periodically and hope that you'll feel comfortable participating and asking questions and providing student Insight thank you there are no further forward announcements then happy to turn it over to you Andrew please thanks marjories some very similar themes uh from me tonight as I've already been stated um this is the 13th day of school I think we learned earlier today so coming coming towards the end of our third not quite full week but third week tomorrow we'll have a newsletter going home to all of our families that's going to highlight some of the themes you've heard tonight about Connections being made in our schools and in classrooms and that's clearly a theme in all the
017schools across the district as we as we come back this year which is terrific as you mentioned we've actually had open houses in all of our schools or ages not every grade so the high school was open house on Monday night and then K2 curriculum nights were on Tuesday and sixth grade at the middle school on Wednesday the number of us had opportunities to thank my colleagues for being present there it was really nice to see some of our new colleagues standing up in front of parents and introducing themselves and getting to know our community and as you mentioned next week after the holiday it'll be three five curriculum nights on Wednesday and seventh and 8th grade on Thursday night and as somebody mentioned this weekend is homecoming so Friday evening Saturday there will be
018lots and lots of games uh throughout the day here at John Jay High School as well as other events going on I know that the high school tomorrow is taking time out of its regular school day scheduled to do a lot of community type events also so there'll be lots of celebrations in advance of and lots of community building in advance of the homecoming weekend it's been Spirit Week here at the high school today any of us who managed to walk through the building it was very much in evidence today the seniors who were here tonight were all wearing red earlier in the day maybe Jake you were a two uh there's a lot of red on the floors at the end of the day today and a lot of spirit throughout the day it
019was nice to see all the students involved in that quick reminder we've been giving out as many reminders as we can including at the open house events this week that the vote is on October 18th for our Capital Improvement project we'll be speaking to our board again about that project on October 6th that's the required hearing for the Improvement project in advance of the vote and a reminder to our community that we'll have two open houses one on the evening of October 3rd and one of the morning of October 4th here at the high school and middle school those are open to anybody who would like to attend and We wish all who are celebrating a sweet New Year if you're celebrating Rosh Hashanah this weekend and a reminder how schools will be closed on
020Monday and Tuesday wonderful thank you so much make questions or comments before we move on okay and I think this brings us to our first presentation for the evening we're really looking forward to hearing from our professional learning team and we invite you to join us and thank you for being here so we have a few representatives of our professional learning team here with us this evening my colleague Chris Nelson our director of technology and Allison Porcelli and Selena head again um two of our two members of public professional learning team wonderful welcome everyone thank you they'll be singing for us I think yeah I fulfill the role as the audience you do it so well so thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening about professional learning so we thought two
021things one we'd give you a bit of an update on some recent professional learning opportunities some things that are coming up but also to reintroduce you to our team so we've had some changes in membership and so I wanted to introduce you to everyone as well so there we go okay so there are all the members of our professional learning team so we're very fortunate thanks to all of you to have five staff developer positions um and Chris and I are part of that team as well so we meet regularly usually twice a month this year as a full team but then we always are meeting and discussing and working together and collaborating as well so just I've introduced Allison Selena candy Wilmot is another one of our staff developers she's mostly at the high
022school Mike San martano is a new member of our team he just joined our team this fall so we're very excited to have Mike and Steven zoller is also another member of the team so candy and Steve have been in the district for quite a few years they've been high school teachers Steve's taught robotics engineering candy was an English teacher here and our other members including myself have joined in more recent times but through this team there's expertise in terms of literacy math science technology we have lots of you know different teaching backgrounds different sets of expertise we even have an MBA here at the table so it kind of helps to have lots of different backgrounds and there are some things that we do that are more generic when we think about teaching and
023learning and just what good practice is and other things that are more specific to the different disciplines so we'll talk a little bit about that this evening as well so one of the things as we started to you know think about our team and kind of reimagining after covid and as you might imagine this group was so helpful um during their our remote learning during hybrid times in so many ways I can't even count you know offering professional learning sessions for teachers when we were on zoom and we were at home but also working with our quarantine teachers coaching actually working with remote students Allison and Selena were working with the temporarily remote students when we went through that period so they'd have temporary classes um so they're just a variety of roles to get
024through this very difficult time and we really could not have done it without them but it prompted us to really think about our purpose or rethink our purpose I should say so it's really about partnering with faculty as they design experiences that really bring that learning commitment alive that are relevant engaging and that are an active learning environments and also in more recent years to bring those Focus areas to life as well to integrate diversity equity and inclusion social emotional learning and sustainability into the other disciplines and just there are some new standards for professional learning that were recently published actually in April of this year and that organization is learning forward so it was formerly known as the national Staff Development Council and periodically through the years they have based on the research published
025different sets of Standards around effective professional learning experiences what that means what that looks like and they develop standards around the practice of these are the most updated version and just to give you a sense there's a very much of an overview sorry the clicker is difficulty um some of those conditions for Success so and you'll notice that in each one of those categories you'll see Equity mentioned so a lot of discussion about Equitable practices and when we think about bringing high quality teaching and learning environments to every student in every course that's a big foundational underpinning of everything we do and so that's something that's very explicitly mentioned in all of the standards but this the piece in terms of conditions the culture of collaborative inquiry right so this culture of professionalism teachers are
026always learning growing um always improving but then their leadership is very important having the resources and we feel very fortunate to work in a district where we're well resourced so that's very helpful um but thinking about content obviously the curriculum is some of the content instructional different ways we assess and having that professional expertise in terms of pedagogy and then when we think what about what's transformational in terms of equity obviously that's a big part of it but also thinking about evidence when we think about evidence we think about teacher practices and then we think about student outcomes as well and sometimes it's difficult to draw a very straight line between what the teacher does and what the student learns but we do see through the research that there are some highly effective practices that
027do lead to Stronger learning outcomes for students and so those are the things that we're always working on so with that I will turn it over to Chris to talk a little bit about what team members do thank you Mary um so Mary I think outlined the purpose of our team and some of the underlying goals and foundations that that bring us into that partnership with Educators throughout the district this is a slide that that is more you know demonstrating more the the execution what do we do in terms of being able what are some activities that that we focus on so all our team members are district wise we have the opportunity to work with Educators across all of our five campuses and Allison and Selena will will be able to reinforce kind of
028what the the day in the life of of professional developer is and in just a moment so I'll highlight some of some of the global activities and then we'll we'll dive into each of these uh over the next few slides or so so one of the things that we do is we engage in a coaching cycle with teachers that's a a piece that's been very active recently and we'll expand on that a little bit we do a lot of a collaboration in terms of implementing and developing the curriculum whether it's reviewing and unpacking some of the new standards that might exist out there or looking at you know strategies and instructional design in terms of being able to roll out different elements of the curriculum much as a partnership as a component as I always
029kind of the OS is kind of cross-pollinators being able to understand and learn what departments are doing and and whether it's from building to building or between departments and departments being able to understand the needs of all Educators enough to maximize their efforts so that's something that a lot of collaboration around um we work with administrators and teachers uh related to both district and building goals some great District goals that we keep reinforcing and work with but all of our campuses have unique needs and things that they want to address at a building level so we try to communicate and work with the curriculum leaders and Liaisons and you know our department uh folks in such a way that we can be a support and be able to bring resources to those teams as they
030meet those goals um regular basis we also uh bring to the table an opportunity to to know the greater field so as we look at the Learning Community outside of the organization we've developed Partnerships not just with our internal folks but we reach out to all sorts of professional organizations Consultants even Masters teachers in other districts a great deal of work to be able to to make it broader than just our our needs and put it into context in terms of what the greater field is doing so we do a lot of work on being that liaison in terms of external resources and then the last piece in terms of supporting building and District goals is being able to bring in other reasons whether the purchase you know books for libraries we're being able to
031uh you know science kits in terms of some of the things that we're working out with the new science standards of course my role is technology being able to get the right technology in the right places it's it's complements the work that we're learning about and then bringing in the appropriate to be able to support how those changes are additional that we work with uh in a more specific support models uh the Innovative team is the cohort I think is near two this year so it's a great team of Educators that we've been working with and I think it's our second full cycle this is our third cohort cohort is in its last year yeah so so as as those uh teachers continue to innovate and work at ways of of uh expanding their understanding
032of what they want to do with their goals um again we're a resource we're an opportunity to connect the dots to be able to help be there as they take you know risks in terms of bringing some new things together so um so in a nutshell you know we provide opportunities uh professional learning opportunities coaching workshops and facilitated discussions uh that's uh what we do in terms of activities so I'll pass it to my colleagues here in terms of talking about more specifically the day-to-day type work and we'll start with some coaching seconds okay thanks Chris and thank you for the opportunity for us to talk about our work um so I'm going to talk a little bit about the impact cycle that's Jim Knight there in the photo um coaching's been around for 20
033or more years and he's one of the experts in the field nationally and internationally and so since we've been coaching for for 20 years he's done a lot of research across the world about what the most effective practices are for improving student learning and teachers learning so we're all studying him he calls it the impact cycle it's also called student-centered coaching which is the name that tells you what it is so he has three parts um the identify phase and that's based on teachers identifying a goal so it's very personal it's not that I would come in as a staff developer and say I think you need to work on this it's more about teachers really knowing here's my students this year every year my class is different what do these students need at this
034time and helping a teacher see the reality of their classroom and so then they pick their own goal and then the next phase is learning so so we are Partners in that work um and we would help them if they want to work on something we might have some resources or some strategies that we would present to them and see where they want to go with the work um and then that might involve us modeling or co-teaching and then the idea is that it's imp that you improve right that student learning improves so that's the third part of the cycle that what I like about it is as a math teacher it's it's measurable there's data you know you had a goal you imp you tried a few things and then you say well did
035I meet the goals did the students learn what I wanted them to learn if they did right you can move on to another cycle and if they didn't you reflect on okay why not what do we need to do next what do we need to change so it's called the impact cycle but it's also known as student-centered coaching and just to say a little more about student-centered um it so this idea of moving from teacher Center to student centered Selena really brought it to us last year because she was experimenting and learning about this model on her own and so um now we're all we're taking a um a course with Jim Knight an Institute and so every week from August through December we get on Zoom with coaches from all around the country and
036around the world and we learn about different ways that we can be going through this cycle with teachers we role play together talk to people in all different areas problem solve and then there's things for us to go up and do and try in our settings so it's it's been really helpful but I think for me the biggest shift with this teacher Center to coaching or to Student Center coaching is it went from teachers saying so I you know you know reaching out to us and saying I wanna I wanna work on my small group worker I want to learn how to do this kind of teaching model better instead to so this year I have this group of students and this is what I'm noticing these students need can you help me think about
037how how we can help these students meet this need and so it's sort of this continuous cycle of improvement because every single year you're going to have different students and so every year it it's a need for this idea of coaching whereas if it's like I'm learning this structure that could feel like a one and done cycle so that's something that's been really powerful and then as Selena said the measurement part I think is really big because we're then looking at we're helping to collect data and looking at that student Improvement foreign coach exciting um so after my coffee so in the morning I might meet with curriculum leaders like there's a K-2 math curriculum leader and there's a three through five curriculum leader and there's a middle school curriculum leader um so I might
038meet with them and the principal and talk about upcoming teacher professional learning like grade level meetings or other building goals I might also later in the morning have a meeting just with the principal to talk about building goals and curriculum and and student learning are um specific math is my focus so specifically around math um then I might be with teacher so we talked about the impact cycle so I would have a meeting with the teacher it could be either we're meeting to talk about the lesson that we were together for last week and debriefing that and thinking about how it went and next steps or we could be planning a lesson that we might do later that day all around the teacher's goal for the students um and then in the afternoon we might
039be actually enacting that lesson so if I'm in the classroom with the teacher working on a goal I could be modeling a strategy I could be co-teaching I might be collecting data you know I could be writing down questions that they're asking or you know how many students are answering questions um I could be interviewing students or doing surveys um so that kind of data collection work in the afternoon and then um or I could be meeting with a teacher who just as wants a resource like Selena you know I need to I wanted to incorporate the number line more in my day how could I do that or Selena I heard that like you've got these math interviews like can you tell me about them so it could be something that's a specific like
040they've heard something or they want to try something and they might ask me about it um I also might do a training so like last spring um fifth grade we had a half day training in the afternoon with small groups of teachers from all the elementary schools came to the Middle School to watch it's called 360 degree math the idea is that it's the students are like the center they're on whiteboards around the room and they're doing math publicly on white boards with peers and it's taken so instead of the teacher delivering a traditional math lesson that you might have had when you were younger um it's more focused on hey here's a problem let's go solve it go to your board solve it talk and then as a math student from I was it
041was a terrible math student for me it would be helpful because you can look around and see other other students work so it's almost like there are a lot of teachers in the room because children learn from each other so in an afternoon like last year I trained teachers on that model they got to see colleagues at the middle school do it and then we would meet to talk about it and so this year it's being implemented so that's like something I do in the afternoon um or I might follow up on summer learning we have the workshops in the summer and we know people who are like interested in something we learned in the summer so in the fall I might say how's it going and do you need help or a teacher might
042reach out and say hey let's get started with that thing that we learned in the summer um and then after school um often there's a committee meeting so for example I'm part of the RTI committee and the intervention teachers have said they would like some more math resources so some of the work that I'm doing there is organizing um what they need talking to sales reps and finding reputable programs that are research based and then trying to organize them to come and zoom or visit us and send us samples and make it to you know look at it and say you know will this meet what our students needs um so that's like some committee work I do um I also might be at like the math department meeting in the middle school or a
043grade level meeting that's my day in a nutshell yeah um so similarly um so day in the life of a literacy coach so typically first thing in the morning I go around and I support a lot of teachers with resources that they might they might need um for example just this morning I was working with a fifth grade special ed teacher who reached out because she had she has some students in her class that are reading well below grade level and they were feeling really self-conscious about the books that they could read and so she said can you find help me find some books that they won't feel so self-conscious and so we went and we found some high interest low level books and lots of graphic novels and helped her set up some baskets
044in her classroom that they could feel really proud of going to um and then like Selena I'll spend some time doing some cycle work typically that involves two periods with a teacher so last year I was working with a teacher um we spent a decent amount of time um working on small group work and so we'd meet one period in the classroom and I would model a small group or you know eventually you know we'd co-teach it together or she would teach it and I'd provide her feedback right then and there and then we'd have a period where we would debrief that look at student work plan for the next week as an example um usually I'll also meet with a principal sometimes if we're in the building on the same day we'll do it
045together um but other times I might meet with a principal to work on building goals or support them with faculty meeting planning um afternoons I could be working with a grade level team um so for example um I worked with um the second grade team just this week and we were looking at the curriculum the new TC units of study and they were asking we were looking at it together and thinking about you know the kind of resources that they needed to be successful with that um I also today met with the curriculum leader lots of times in meeting with the curriculum leaders like Selena does today met with a social studies curriculum leader we were helping to set up a schoology page so she could collate some social studies resources and send them out
046to the K-5 teachers um I might spend some time co-teaching in the afternoon with a teacher or today A lot of times I'm supporting teachers with their assessments um right now as a big Ela assessment time so I was working with a teacher and she wanted my feedback or my take on some assessments that she had given and then we were giving some together side by side and then of course like Chris mentioned we are a liaison as well so an afternoon I'll usually have a little a little time project time where um I'll either like connect with the outside Consultants work on speaking with the vendors making sure the materials are coming in creating materials it created lots of different collated lots of padlets and things like that for teachers curriculum resources and then
047after school in addition so we do the committee meetings we'll we'll we're part of like I love that word you said cross-pollinate because that's exactly how I feel because we we do touch you know Innovation cohort curriculum leaders committee meetings we'll also facilitate workshops after school as well which we're going to talk about in a little bit so on the next slide you'll see some of the recent and upcoming uh professional learning opportunities well these are all the recent ones that just happened back in the spring um one you'll notice and you may have heard about restorative practices training um for all of our High School faculty and staff so back in June when it was a time when lots of Assessments were being given we took the opportunity to have some Consultants come in
048and all of our teachers administrators and many staff members were also trained in restorative practices so part of restorative practices is restorative circles there are also different kinds of circles some of the circles are focused on just connecting and getting to know one another which is you know at the beginning of the year obviously something everyone wants to do eventually some become more academic that's one of the options as well and you've probably heard the term restorative justice right so the whole restorative piece which is not yet a focus for us but the idea is that it would be when someone in the group kind of breaks the Norms that have been established the focus is on bringing them back in right and it doesn't mean that there might not be some consequences for a
049behavior for example that was um not in line with the Norms but the focus is on always sitting looking at one another not thinking about a power differential right we're all getting to know one another and the goal is for all of us to be the included part of the community right so when we think about our Dei work and our SEL work I feel like this is a structure that's really helpful in terms of fostering connections having everyone feel very much included and making sure that when there's a break in that feeling of inclusion that it we always kind of Bring It Back Together so that's been exciting work um Allison certainly did a lot as Selena as well with um some unit planning back in the spring so back in April May June
050getting ready for this year bringing teachers together um in this case we were doing a lot of ela unit planning with our TC staff developers with Allison it was so nice we were able to have all of the teachers in the room on a grade level um planning for this year which really helped us to feel like we were in a good place and the 360 degree classroom which you heard Selena speak about that was starting last spring continued some over the summer and now we're seeing implementation of classrooms I guess you want to talk a little bit about summer sure um Summer's a busy time for the technology department we acquire a lot of resources but we try to be intentional in terms of supporting uh our faculty in terms of understanding those changes
051and and and reflecting on some of the work that they've done uh from this year to next year and those types of things so we we adopted a strategy about three summers ago um to instead of just trying to do workshops all summer long and try to catch people when we can we were more intentional in terms of defining what we call Summits which are our three-day Windows where we are able to bring in um you know specialist content specials with its software vendors and things like that bringing in some of outside trainers or BOCES their model schools program and such um and and we kind of package it in such a way that we we do three days in June because we have that last week that usually the kids are done so we
052can kind of capture teachers before they leave for the summer we have a mid-summer which it gives people a chance that that that they've had a couple weeks off they've kind of come back they're kind of refreshed and such and then we um do three days in August which is usually anchored against new teacher orientation uh as well as some of the leaders coming back so that we can have conversations around goals for the years and stuff so so it's nine days over the summer which gives us an opportunity to you know focus on a new software new hardware skill development and such so it's been real successful and we think we'll continue that model we've also kind of dabbled on whether or not teachers are going to maintain a demand for online versus in
053person so we had a good blending of activities this year so um so we did probably 40 of our classes virtually and about 60 of our classes in person and it kind of you know fit the needs that we had people that were actually not on vacation necessarily but maybe they relocated the Adirondacks for the summer and they wanted to take some classes or something like that that they could chime in and still participate so so we're trying to fit the needs of our Learners adult Learners in this particular case uh and the Summits are there uh one new thing that we did this summer and and I think it aligns with a lot of our um uh the bond and trying to create new spaces for stem activities or steam activities we conducted a
054boot camp um which included uh participation from um a team of Educators that did some site searching last spring so we actually visited eight school districts in the community that already have created steam labs and and I have maybe a few years ahead of us in terms of curriculum design and those types of things so so we um took the work that we did last spring and we brought the team back together so we had intentional time to kind of unpack what we learned give us a chance to kind of think about what are our next steps we did bring in some uh different vendors that gave us examples of stem activities and maybe some resources that maybe we want to purchase in the future so we did do that and then we brought in
055some Consultants so we had Apple learning Specialists there that kind of talked about the iPads and some of the tools we already have but we've partnered with uh Dr Dylan who you may or may not know is a national speaker in terms of intentional design is what he kind of focuses on so we could take a look at if we're going to create these new spaces how might we envision using it and so it's it kind of takes it further than just build it and they will come type approach to it oh you need to have the space to go to but once you're there how can we help our teachers understand how to leverage and maximize and create unique opportunities for kids so so it was a good three-day experience and and we're hoping
056to repeat that again and especially if the bond passes or when the bond passes we'll be excited to be able to to Really jump in with with a corporate group of teachers that will you know get the ground running um I'm going to talk a little bit about three act math tests so in the summer we had teachers from three different elementary schools who were interested in learning about them they've been around in the math world for maybe like 10 years but they're new in the envisions curriculum so teachers have seen them and they're curious about them um so a three act math test briefly is a type of math lesson where the First Act is you're given a problem out in the real world it's usually a video so it's quite engaging for students
057so for example last week I was in a third grade classroom with a teacher who came in the summer and video was very impeach-picking right so you see kids running down a lane and you see a basket full of peaches that's act one and it's trying to teach children that that you can solve real world problems with math like math is out there to help you figure things out in the world and that mathematicians ask questions so the First Act you just notice and you wonder um and usually then they come up up with the wondering that you're hoping to explore like how many peaches are in that basket right and then act two is um teaching them that like okay you're going to solve a problem so what what more information do you need
058so the children were great they were like well I can't tell how many peaches are in the basket so like can I see the bottom layer or could you lay them all out for me or you know I need some more information so then they saw the peaches organized into well baskets of four and then suddenly you know the moment you show the second act they're all like a buzz trying to figure out how to how to solve the problem so then that's then you solve it um and of course there are all sorts of different strategies and ways to solve it which is great to see them working together and figuring out and third Act is the big reveal or there's a video that shows you how many peaches there were in the bags
059you know so um so those are like a very um it's just a very interesting way to teach a math lesson that connects it to real world you know when you're always saying when am I going to use this right um so it's connecting it to real world and it's very engaging so the teachers in the summer were curious about it and it's exciting now to see that um that they're often running with that um and in this summer um the three through five curricular leader for ELA Emily Cantor and I we facilitated a workshop on interactive read aloud for K-5 teachers and basically we were teaching them about how and getting them to do lots of planning um so they're ready for September um but basically how you could use the read aloud time
060as a way to really boost vocabulary skills high level comprehension skills and then how to integrate Dei and SEL right into your read aloud as a really important part of the day so that was really well received and so they asked it would be great if we could do that during the year and meet together so we are offering across the year uh Workshop Series where teachers are going to come together and plan their read-alouds together and then on opening day we had um Paul Forbes an equity consultant with us who did sessions for all our faculty and staff on implicit bias awareness um so it was very well received and kind of the foundation we've been thinking for a long time what can we do for everyone so that we all have some foundational
061knowledge um and so Paul was able to do that he worked with our administrative team in July and was very well received there and then we actually were wondering how can he do that with such large groups even though we did try to break them up into three smaller groups but somehow he manages to do that he's very focused on connections and knowing each other well and then thinking about differences and how our brain works and takes shortcuts right so we can kind of make assumptions about people and it's just the way our brains happen to work but in doing so we can make some inaccurate assumptions about people or perhaps think or in a way that's detrimental to others so heightening awareness about that was really helpful and then just to think about some
062of the things that are coming up um as Chris mentioned Dr Dylan will be joining us again right he's hopefully going to be with us on November 8th we're planning as well as some other points throughout the year Paul Forbes will be joining us again continuing work on restorative practices our elementary science pilot continues so that is some ongoing work which requires lots and lots of learning um in some of the different coaching models there and if collegial coaching at the high school so it's a slightly different variation on the coaching theme so similarly teachers set their own goals but all of the untenured teachers attend a class that happens after school a few times a year and they engage in classroom visitation so they visit each other and give each other feedback on those
063goals and then come together to do some debriefing as well so it's a different way of looking at coaching um but also it's very helpful to have so many people involved in something a little more formal leaving anything out the math assessments oh yeah sorry yeah um so um some of the work that's coming up is in the Middle School we're developing common math assessments you know the Middle School's goal is to get to know their students um even better so we're looking at how assessments can help us do that and we're thinking we're moving towards some using some common Performance Based assessments some more open-ended tasks and we're also using an RTI one of the tools that teachers have to get to know students is it's called a diagnostic interview and it's when like
064a teacher slides up next to you and asks you a few math questions that you know there's there's so much you can get off of like a paper and pencil piece of work from a student but if you're asking them you know how'd you figure that out and what were you thinking and what was your first step you can really learn a lot more about the child and make a make a connection with them and see what their goals are and what the next steps are um we are going to continue the ELA unit planning work like Mary said um and it's been really powerful to take the Dei the social justice standards the SEL from Castle and the sustainability standards and this year we're also hoping to integrate the New York State computer science
065and digital fluency standards um all into our unit planning to see for ELA to look at where where do these things already happen but that we can be more intentional about and just pop them out more and then where do we need to add them into our curriculum yeah I think something that we haven't really listed on any of the slides is the summer curriculum work so in the spring teachers apply for summer curriculum work which has to be done collaboratively and there get X number of hours you know depending on the topic and how many people are involved but we've asked them this year we had a unit design template and so even if you're teaching for example a math unit and you're redesigning that unit we've asked them to consider as Allison mentioned
066social justice standards there are so some education for sustainability standards and the castle SEL competencies so it's not that they're separate lessons but if you look at those standards you can think about how am I during this unit working towards those standards right so um for example one of the social justice strands is identity and so there are ways to build that in whether it's your math identity who am I as a math learner I know our math Department's very focused on that K-12 as well as who am I you know in terms of my ethnicity as well in terms of my race who I am my gender there are so many ways to think about identity you can bring that in as a focus so it's not that we're designing specific units around these
067things but bringing them into everything else that we teach and I think it's kind of not an exhaustive list but it's a lot of good work yeah a brief description of some of what's been happening and where we're going but um we're always trying to think about what we can do better what we can do more but in service of supporting our teachers which the ultimate goal is supporting our students so thank you we really appreciate the insight into your work in a day in the life and just the opportunity to reflect on how our professional learning team has grown and the um the work has evolved over time this was really helpful I'm sure people have some comments and questions and I'll turn the floor over to my colleagues thank you so much for
068the overview so far anybody want to go first I'm happy to start if you please please go ahead thank you for the presentation I when people ask me about the district I always talk about the investment that the district makes in professional learning because I think it speaks so highly um of of the vision of the district and the way that it does and it's really helpful to hear that and I am always really excited about the innovators cohort and it's so exciting that in his third cycle um I was curious about when you talked about coaching the teachers is that for all teachers or is it like how does that work um what we're actually learning in our course is about um how to approach teachers to get a variety of teachers involved um
069so usually what we're planning is we're taking our show on the road in a week or two and we're gonna go to all the schools um just to sort of say okay we're learning this impact cycle in student-centered coaching plus there's new members of our team right so so we're going to go in and reintroduce ourselves to everybody but part of that is explaining our work and then saying so are you know are you interested and so teachers might say yes I'm interested I want to do this now or no I'd like to do this in a few months it's September I you know I can't do this right now um so that's one way to to get teachers involved from all the research it's about teachers need to want to do it um you
070know what you know about adult learning it's about I if I don't want to learn it um then if I don't to do it I'm not going to learn it so it's really about people who are interested in this type of you know there's so many ways to improve your teaching and this is a particular way so it's people who are interested in learning this way yeah it's it's in it's also a way to respect the the path the career path that teachers are on right so so this summer for example we just brought on 20 new teachers and we had a onboarding of new teachers that their needs might be much different than someone who's been in a classroom for 10 years versus somebody that's been in the classroom for 25 years so so
071as we speak to kind of these strategies and support models that we've tried to develop um it's offered to all but depending on the needs of the individual teachers they might be in different stages of their career that might yield a better support model versus that so so for example we're very intentional with our new teachers we meet throughout the first couple years where they meet as a cohort we might provide them a different level of support and I don't even level but just the needs are different than somebody that might be mid-career and then want to be coached a little bit to kind of say Hey listen I've been doing this for years what are some things that we can work with so that's a piece that that we try to honor at least
072in terms of where teachers are at yep my follow-up to Alana's question do you get a lot of positive feedback from teachers I would you know I would assume a lot of the young or the newer teachers are probably really excited to do this and then you know people have been in the classroom for a long time might feel a little vulnerable putting themselves out there um you know when you take it on the road I mean you you know you go to the schools do you get a lot of Futures excited to participate and we get involved in this kind of coaching yes I mean do you want to talk about that yeah I mean I think we the teachers who who have been working with us they it's it's not just new definitely
073not I mean I've we've worked with lots of Veteran teachers too who are that is a credit a big credit to this District that I've noticed from being in previous districts teachers here really want to learn and outgrow themselves all the time and so there's definitely a professional a feeling of professional learning ongoing professional learning um so everyone who has signed up they they sign up because they want to sign up so they are they are excited about it um those who haven't like you said of course there's always people who aren't going to other you know they're not because they don't want to learn but because they have maybe other different ways of learning um one thing we have learned in this course is the focus on student-centered coaching changes that a little bit
074because everybody wants their students to grow so it ends up opening up the doors to coaching to more people than you may have reached before when it was like hey you know what's something you want to get better at everybody wants their students to get better at something thank you that's a great answer any other thoughts comments listen thank you for being here and it's um I know we say like complex a lot but the complexities of thinking about a classroom and its students and it's professionals and who supports them and how they're supported it there's a lot to think about and um I just appreciate that your presence I think really helps our features to be thinking about their students in a really thoughtful way so thank you for what you're doing and you
075know I hope as you share what you're doing with more people that it really creates even a stronger sense of interest and engagement I come back for a minute to this um notion of student identity and specifically with regard to math because I think we heard a really interesting comment around this feeling of not being a good math student I think it's really important to talk about that and I wonder if you can speak with us a little bit about how we are measuring how students feel about their abilities in math when you mentioned you know what is my identity as a math learner what are some of the strategies or you know how do we focus on that and how do we collect evidence of how students are improving their confidence or their um
076sense of their own abilities you know I'm interested to know that there's data being collected and I think that's great but you know are we also measuring or monitoring the impact of some of the work that we're hearing about on student growth with respect to growth mindset about their abilities because we know that that's such an important component to Student Success in math and I suspect that many students probably would but I'd actually be curious to know your thoughts because I don't I don't speak to nearly as many students as you do you know do our students think of themselves as great math students or do you think this is actually a relatively almond feeling and coming out of the pandemic has it been different for students you know I think it would be great
077to hear a little bit about that from your perspective um I think historically not just here but everywhere um as adults we might say I'm not really good at math right and we don't usually say I'm not really good at reading so as a society there is this acceptance that it's okay to think that you're not a math person um so I think we're we're working we're pushing back against that especially since the work of Carol dweck and growth mindset that there is no such thing as a math person um so as adults we should never say I'm not a math person especially in front of children um so so we're working on that with growth mindset where you know children are I know across the district they're learning in different ages about um that
078there is no such thing as a math person that everybody can do math to the highest ability that there's our brain is a muscle and it grows you know um and that and like bringing that science to them so they know that it's that it's true um that's one thing um for men in terms of measuring there's different ways I've seen teachers do it in the district some teachers have exit tickets at the end of the lesson and they might have a small little thing at the top that you check off like how did you feel about this math that we learned today or how are you confident not so confident um so they might have a self-reflection piece like that that can also be a technology like they have a quick um Microsoft form
079at the end of a lesson or at the end of a topic with you know the happy face sad face straight face about how was math today some chill some teachers have like math autobiographies which is a fun thing as an adult to do you go home tonight and write your own book your math um your math life so that's one thing for children to write down like their math experiences so far and if they're willing to share that with the teacher so they unders teacher understands where they're where they're coming from and then there's just a daily everyday instruction you know if the teacher is excited about math um seems that that teacher loves math even if it might not be their favorite subject right but but the passion that a teacher has um
080it's you know infectious for children um so so those are ways but I think it's it's it is a societal thing that and that that math is a very hard subject to teach and because it's cumulative um if you have some gaps in your math learning it get it gets harder and harder you know um so I think we're working on that and I think um as a as a country we're trying to you know we're looking at other countries and how they teach math and thinking about like how do we sort of modernize our American classroom to make it student-centered um and to make it um where everyone feels like they're capable or if they're having trouble they know how to get get support so district-wide the goals in the different buildings is to
081make math engaging and fun less stressful as you get older you know in high school it can be quite stressful but you know it's also stressful for a for a second grader if they're not feeling confident so district-wide we're really thinking about how can we make get on and engaging and having them feel capable thank you those were great examples you provided many examples of strategies that was really helpful thank you I think the focus on process rather than just the product of an answer is really important too right because it a few things one is the student may be doing many things right and then there may be that point of confusion yeah right so it helps them to know it's not that I'm doing it all wrong but there was this one place
082where kind of my I went astray and similarly for the teacher to be able to see that like I've watched Selena do math interviews right so she it's almost like we do the Running Records and listen to a child read and sit alongside them we sit alongside students to do math problems but through that there's a greater understanding of what they're doing well and where those points of confusion might be so we can Target it but it's interesting you bring it up because we had curriculum Council meetings we had a retreat at the very end of June and then we had a meeting just uh last week I believe it was but all the math leaders elementary middle and high got together for a common goal and that's exactly what they wanted to work on
083like how to help our students feel more confident and confident about their abilities in Mass so great to hear thank you that's really wonderful I'd have one other question completely different question and it's based on the looking ahead slide and it's not exactly essential that it be for tonight but I can't help but leave with a little bit of an a question around the subject areas that we're not hearing about tonight and I completely understand we just have a partial team here and it's representative but can you help us understand how the work of the professional learning team touches World Language or social studies and I'm trying to connect the dots with some of what you said about areas that we're trying to infuse into all disciplines SEL for example but but then because it's
084harder for some of us to move away from traditional content categories than others what about social studies what about world language can you just help to illuminate a little bit of how this work touches those areas too well I think it's learning alongside so we don't happen to have any world language teachers on our team right and yet when you think about pedagogy there's so many similarities to how you learn to read write listen and speak in English right so there are these parallels but it's you know our team although wonderful and expansive we're not the only way to get some of that learning right so there are other outside Consultants um there are groups through BOCES so I know like some of our world language teachers belongs to a collegial circle through BOCES so
085they're talking to teachers from other districts similar for social studies and like the Civic seal so and I know we haven't mentioned social studies as specifically we're fortunate um we've just filled the science and social studies positions for elementary leaders so we do have now one leader at those levels to help with that and kind of reignite some passion around that but also to be sitting so it's so nice when we have curriculum Council meetings if that person's sitting with the Middle School social studies leader and the high school social studies leader and thinking about this common threads right and so so it's not that I think there's some commonalities across every subject area but then there are areas where we don't have that content expertise and we have to look for outside sources to
086do that as well totally understand thank you very helpful okay this is completely off topic and hopefully it's not inappropriate but I have to tell you that I worked in a psychiatric hospital and I spent a lot of time actually in the Adolescent psychiatric unit with one of the psychiatrists and he had and so I'm very um encouraged to hear about what you're saying about math because one of the things we talked about was in some of his analysis of kids with very high anxiety disorders he started to look at patterns of them to be feeling challenged by math and he really felt like if we could figure out how to teach math better and differently that we could actually reduce anxiety like that there was something about that feeling of I can't learn this
087and I'm not capable that extended into other parts of their childhood and so it's really interesting to hear Marjorie you were saying and then Selena what you were saying and I think there's a lot to that and um I think it's really wonderful to think about how we help all students realize that they're capable and able to you know conquer math and and learn into that point I'm going to stop telling myself that I'm not a math I always tell people I'm just out of that math person of course my math person right you calculate that tip when you're in there grab the bill and say I'll do this in my head thank you I was curious if there were any other or explicit student outcomes that you're looking for because it sounds like with
088math you're looking for every student to feel like they're a math learner or and other other things and from the professional development team that you have for student outcomes certainly want them to love reading I think it's that General love of learning right and that's what the learning commitment is really all about you know engaging instruction that lends itself to students being really engaged in whatever it is they're learning and thinking about um and I think there's a lot of opportunity to think about interdisciplinary work and problem-based learning where we bring you know different disciplines together to think about solving some of the most challenging problems in our world and we feel like our three Focus areas are a really great way to do that so when you think about all the issues around inclusion
089for example and diversity all the issues around sustainability climate change social emotional Wellness mental health those are the big authentic problems in the world and the hope is that our students will help to be part of the solution and then just on a more local level is there any um I don't know Focus or looking at kind of classes where you have traditionally different division perhaps of gender of students and classes like in higher level computer science or math and trying to kind of equalize that is that something that is on the table or we haven't talked I'd say lots of informal discussions around things like that but I wouldn't say you know we've had a formal goal but as we dig into Data more and more you know we can start to look at
090some of those things like are there any inequities whether it's in enrollment or outcomes those are really important things to look at thanks thank you any further discussion did you know that all the homework that your teachers have we have all this learning that teachers have to do it I actually do have a question please um you said it like earlier in the presentation about like the community circles I know that's something that's been going on at the high school and I feel like a lot of the students that I've been talking to have like mixed feelings on them because a lot of classes it seems like they waste a little bit of time if it's not taken seriously by either party the student or the teacher and um it's just within the circles sometimes
091a lot of people have said that they prevent collaboration especially in the form of like diamond as a talking piece and like by the way we're sitting now if I had something to add on to what you said I'd have to wait for the thing to come all the way around whereas I'm in like traditional like Socratic seminar formats they felt more collaborative in a way because you were just like we're doing right now speaking whenever you had something to add but then in another way the circles are more inclusive to people who are Shyer or like it allows I don't know really but it allows for people to step forward who don't usually have a voice so like that's what I've been saying it's a lot of like mixed feelings yeah and what there
092are different types of suru are our future orientation um Candy who isn't with us this evening she's done leading a lot of that work she led us through two different kinds just exactly what you described one where we had a talking piece we went around to ensure that everybody was participating but another with a soft taunting piece right and I could throw it to you and so it could be more of that back and forth that maybe it makes more sense like you have something to add on to what I have to say or um somebody else just wants to chime in at a certain point so I do think it's a work in progress and we're at the very early stages so it's helpful to hear you know what's working well and maybe what's
093not working as well is there is it envisioned that at some juncture students would be invited to provide feedback more formally on their experience because it's super helpful to hear you know how it's going so far and presumably it'll evolve and people's thoughts will change and yeah thank you I would I would say the goal is to elevate student voices through these circles so I think it's great to hear your voice and I hope we we hope that all students will find ways to speak up and share their thoughts about the practice as well as other things that are happening in school thank you Jake any other comments or questions thank you very much this was a great discussion and a wonderful presentation we really appreciate your time we know this is such a busy
094time of year so thank you for taking time to be with us and for sharing with us some elements of your work it's great thank you thank you thank you thank you for your support of our students and our staff foreign just a couple of other items of business on the agenda tonight the first is item 8.02 which is an opportunity to revisit some preliminary discussion that we had at the last board meeting where we started to discuss Board of Education goals for the upcoming school year um in an effort just to make good use of our meeting time I tried to watch our last meeting and think a little bit about the conversation and about [Music] um sort of where we are with respect to um how we hope to conduct the work of
095the school district and the work of the Board of Education in the upcoming school year I provided a little bit of preliminary language for everybody to consider um whereby just as a starting point with regard to our leadership goal um I thought we would consider thinking about the environment that we're creating and the shared sense of purpose strengthened by listening to multiple perspectives and being a presence within our community I think this back maybe to where we opened the meeting tonight which was a brief recognition of how um terrific and different it is now to be back in person and to be able to be present in our capacity as parents and then also thinking about our role as board members to be able to be present within the community and to really redouble our
096efforts to do that so I'm seeing some heads nodding and we can kind of continue to reflect on that and then also thinking a little bit about our decision making and the importance of incorporating focused feedback I think we are thinking a little bit more strategically about incorporating things like student feedback and other feedback mechanisms it's just an effort to acknowledge that potentially and I'll pause there because maybe we can agree to some shared language for the leadership goal if anybody has something in mind that they'd like to see Amplified or changed you know maybe we can come to pretty quick consensus and then looking ahead we have an opportunity to adopt goals tonight if we can get that far so I will invite thoughts and comments about the leadership goal first I like the
097changes that you've made uh I think that um what I've learned in the past couple of weeks and particularly with going through curriculum night was that being a presence within the community is so important and I think um learned that a little bit last year going to some of the different school fundraisers and just really reminding myself what a great Community we have here um that we benefit from hearing all of these voices and and you know from parents and and members of the community that we really did kind of miss out um for a couple of years there while we were dealing with covid so I think this is a really good update for us for this particular goal and you know I think that does feed into the second modification which is focused
098feedback because it does put us in a position where we're going to hear a lot more things and and and interact with a lot more people and I think that's always good wonderful well thank you all for the discussion last week that informed the suggestions so I think we're in pretty good shape there we can always come back to it but just looking ahead then to fiscal stewardship where we also had brief discussion you know I started with last year's goal and then just attempted to revise um both to acknowledge that we are in the process of strategically planning for improvement of our infrastructure to meet the needs of current and future students through our efforts both with regard to last year's facilities committee work resulting in this year's opportunity to ask our community to
099support a bond on October 18th and then all of the work that would flow thereafter so that's I think a big important focus and you know I welcome your thoughts on whether we would want to mention this by way of a sub goal to our our goal related to fiscal stewardship and then thinking also about adopting a budget that not only doesn't exceed the tax Gap but is also responsive to demographic Trends and then Financial conditions uh which I know we're going to be hearing more about this winter as we always do and these are challenging times for our community and for all communities so this would be an effort to ensure that we're you know really being attentive and mindful of conditions in our community and more regionally around the state and how that
100might impact the budget that we would want to adopt and then thinking about the oversight that we want to provide to ensure that we're working towards strengthened Partnerships and sustainable contracts management of resources in an equitable responsible safe sustainable manner that again considers demographic Trends and financial analysis that's a lot to think about there but actually much of it is relatively familiar I hope from goals that we've had in recent years you know again just with some small adjustments uh to acknowledge some of what I just mentioned so I'll try not to repeat myself and I'll pause there to invite any feedback and please know this was Andrew Julius and my best effort to go back and think about the board meeting and what people said and so please don't feel the need to say
101a lot right now because hopefully we heard the board and we are in a pretty good place but also this would be a great time to suggest any modifications if you see any they're important to share can you just clarify under the fiscal stewardship I know this is from last year but what you mean by the strength in part Partnerships yeah in part it's a little bit of a Prelude to the sustainable contracts you know we think of ourselves in partnership with each of our associations but also strengthen Partnerships with council with vendors you know we've got in our consent agenda so many Partners in our work our architect so you know thinking about we as a board don't really have much of an opportunity to actually engage in strengthening the partnership but we provide
102the oversight as a governance team to create an environment that's conducive to strengthening Partnerships and where it will be our expectation that we're always striving to do that I think that's kind of what's meant there and I think our municipalities as well yes thank you our municipalities yeah which I know you know Andrew had the meeting last week or two weeks ago now next week thank you question yeah it's important that we add the infrastructure piece this year given that the bond is is part of our work this year and trying to successfully Steward that in the community so I think it's important to have that in this year's goal I do I might even think about keeping it there regularly just because it's you know such a big important piece of of being able
103to deliver the education that we want to deliver yeah it's a great point so if there isn't further discussion on the goals I think our next item and let me just go back to the agenda would be the opportunity to adopt I'm sorry I said one more one more thought just in the in the second goal sure um in the first Preamble like in the leadership one we have more description if it makes sense in the first part of that to sort of name fiscal stewardship not just in the title but in like in there somehow I think I do understand what you're asking the Board of Education shall fulfill its role of fiscal stewardship while you know ensuring Insurance yeah or after that I mean after that that physical stewardship is the way that
104we ensure academic Excellence but they just like it should be spelled out but maybe even something like um the Board of Education shall Endeavor to ensure excellence in academic and extracurricular programming through might have thoughtful is the right word or whatever um fiscal stewardship and then the bullets yeah something like that something like that I'm so sorry I didn't quite hear what you said because I was thinking about how to address it too so I want to hear what you just said and I want to share with you that I thought of looking up at the leadership goal and trying to think about a parallel structure I came up with something like the Board of Education will prioritize its fiscal responsibility to the klsd community or its fiscal yeah it's it's fiscal it's fiscal oversight
105the Board of Education shall prioritize its fiscal oversight and shall Endeavor to or something like that because up above we say we will Foster so it occurred to me the Board of Education will Board of Education will prioritize its fiscal overs School responsibility and shall Endeavor to ensure but then please say what you just said before we can think about that as well I didn't really hear can we roll back the video I think you had said um Julia in academic and extracurricular programming through physical stewardship by and then so like the the part of ensuring the academic and extracurricular programming is prioritizing those things in our management and fiscal you know like when we think about the budget um you know we're not just saying like you know the budget must X we're saying
106the budget must really be thoughtful about what are our goals for academic and student programming and then deliver them in the most fiscally responsible ways yeah and then the bullets are sort of like what is the way to deliver them in the most fiscally responsible way and so that's to be mindful of the constraints and conditions to be thoughtful about the tax cap and to make sure that we're keeping an eye on infrastructure right I completely agree with everything that you just said but I didn't quite capture the edit um there's something in that it's something in the header piece that along the lines of what you said like it's a will statement I think [Music] um will work to ensure shall end I mean shell Endeavor is fine it's just a little softer language
107through thoughtful fiscal stewardship i instead of while instead of while right so the Board of Education will um whatever will strive to ensure excellence in academic and extracurricular programming through thoughtful fiscal management or thoughtful fiscal stewardship by strategically planning adopting a budget and providing oversight that we could do that I mean do you guys think that what we're doing here you know I don't know if you if this will resonate but does it feel comfortable to say the Board of Education will safeguard the communities resources or will safeguard klsd resources and shell Endeavor I mean is that sort of what we're doing we're safeguarding the resources it's more that we're prioritizing the resources for academic and extracurricular programming um that's really like that you know it kind of goes back to like sort of its
108arbitrary to just say like we want the fiscal goal to be x what we want is that the budget prioritizes excellent our academic particulars that's the goal and that you know when the administration creates their budget and presents it to us we're reading about that with our eye on you know is this meeting the academic needs of our students and providing them the best education that we can with the resources that we have and we're listening for those threads of investment in things that are going to ensure that too long to fail that sounds good I'm not sure I think you're still thinking and I think she hasn't can you say it one more time the Board of Education will in the first goal you don't say it all in one sentence I do have
109one sentence and then you start again with the border and maybe it's easier hello mm-hmm I know I need to write it well I thought it was the Board of Education shall Endeavor to ensure excellence in academic and extracurricular programming through responsible fiscal stewardship by planning these strategic improvements adopting a budget that doesn't exceed the tasks happen is responsive to demographic Trends and financial conditions and providing oversight to support good Partnerships that are fiscally beneficial okay great so then I'm hearing the Board of Ed shell Endeavor to ensure excellence in academic and extracurricular programming through responsible fiscal stewardship bye and then the enumerate that it took me so long to hear it sounds great and were you able to capture that also thank you do you feel comfortable with us moving forward to adopt the
110goals as amended there okay wonderful does everybody else feel good about that yeah horrific sorry I was really trying to prevent us from having to revisit this again at a future meeting because it'd be great to finish this in September so thank you for working through that and for the suggestion so I think now we are ready for 8.03 to adopt the two Board of Education goals that we just discussed would somebody like to make a motion thank you Ilana seconded by Catherine any further discussion comments well we can vote all in favor please say aye aye 5-0 terrific thank you similarly we have an opportunity to discuss the charge for the finance subcommittee this year and I'm happy to turn it over to Danelle and Liz thank you similar to your approach with uh
111board goals Liz and I met and we looked at the charge from the prior year and um there were some items that because of the scope of last year's charge um that the committee just didn't have the time to look delve into so we looked at last year's charge and um the last two items we decided to make that this year's charge we made some slight tweaks in the language of the charge Liz was there anything to add to that um I I think that uh what we did last year um because I do want to defend the finance committee for not finishing both charges is we really uh did some foundational work in how we analyze um how we're budgeting and I think have um really kind of set the stage for a more
112robust analysis on how we do things and um so this year we will be able to really look at our peer districts and evaluate um where we can make improvements if possible um and I think that this the foundational work that we did last year that was reasonably taxing and um it's going to serve us well for years to come so I'm proud of the work that we did last year and I think that this year we will have a really um an appropriate amount of time to really get into the analysis um that are these remaining items wonderful thank you any questions or comments I think it looks really good I'm very excited to see kind of what comes out of it and where there are opportunities okay thank you very much if there's
113no further discussion then we can move ahead to 8.05 if somebody would like to move the resolution to adopt thank you Julia second bit by Liz there's no further discussion we can vote all in favor please say aye aye aye terrific five zero I don't think we have any public comment well I will suggest that we move on to the consent agenda and we're going to make use of the consent agenda to take care of a number of business items I'm not aware of any items that need to be voted on separately tonight so if somebody would like to move the consent agenda please thank you Liz seconded by Catherine and then I'll pause in case there were any clarifying questions or comments about particular items not we can vote all in favor please say
114aye aye 5-0 great this brings us to 15.01 which is an opportunity to acknowledge and to vote on a resolution to accept a generous donation from the John Jay middle school PTO in the amount of 725.35 cents for a storage cabinet for the John Jay Middle School store which sounds excellent would somebody like to move the resolution thank you Julia seconded by Liz thank you so much to the John Jay middle school PTO all in favor please say hi hi zero and we can look ahead to Future meetings so let's see um audit is scheduled to meet Thursday September 29th seven o'clock in the district office conference room policy committee will meet Friday morning September 30th at 9 A.M in the conference room the Board of Ed is next scheduled to meet on Thursday October
1156th here in the library at 7 30 and thank you so much Kim will be helping with a special voter registration day 9 A.M to 3 P.M in the district office for anybody who has any questions or needs to register in order to be able to vote in the bond referendum on October 18th did I miss anything if not would somebody like to make a motion to adjourn moved by Liz seconded by Catherine all in favor please say aye aye great thank you so much everybody have a great night thank you