001good evening everybody welcome thank you so much for joining us tonight we are really looking forward to this evening's meeting it's my pleasure to make a motion to return to public session if i could have a second please thank you catherine all in favor please say aye 5-0 wonderful and would everybody please join us as is our custom in the pledge of allegiance thank republic you which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice wonderful thank you so much is the microphone on i'm sorry i'm having a hard time you can here okay so wonderful thank you so much for confirming it's hard to tell so it's thursday april 7th we are really looking forward to a couple of great presentations this evening we're delighted to welcome our curriculum leaders for social
002studies thank you so much for being here and we're also going to have an opportunity to be updated on the work of our facilities committee which we're looking forward to and i think um perhaps would you like to do board announcements and then pull an item from the consent agenda okay let's do that so um before we turn our attention to all of the above um let's postpone board subcommittee reports to the end of the meeting if that's okay and let's just pause for some board announcements if we have any tonight please bill my wife and i saw the musical uh wedding singer yeah and as as as always it was wonderful and not wonderful for a high school production but just wonderful period it's just amazing how not only the talent but they always
003seem to pick the right musical for this year's group you know there was a group that you know did rent there's a group that did this it always seems to be a perfect fit and the other thing that strikes me is i'm sort of proud to live in a community and have a school where they can have a play that has you know some touchy subjects and and it's just it's fine you know no one is offended and it's just it's and and they all embrace it it's just it was very uplifting it was very good so well said and thank you so much yes congratulations to all of our students and thank you so much to amy geiger and to mrs urban now with a new name i'm sorry thank you mrs adamo and
004all of the um teachers and staff and community members who supported the kids in that production it was when they experienced thank you we usually go to the last performance and they do the thank yous i mean every teacher must aim to have that type of influence and to get that type of uh praise and just admiration from their students it just was remarkable thank you phil wonderful yes they had the opportunity to go to the grand opening for the john jay um 5k trail yes which was a lot of fun on saturday and i um ran in the race on on sunday and i um i finished it so i consider that winning and it was a lot of fun there were a lot of people great energy lots of students lots of kids
005um i think our student max whose last name escapes me right now yes ran like sub 5 or 6 minute miles it was kind of amazing yeah and um just a really nice event all around wonderful thank you so much seeing a lot of nodding and yes that trail has been a long time in coming i think since 2015 many many volunteer hours and generous donations from community members and businesses in the local area and um it is wonderful to be able to officially celebrate the grand opening which of course like so many things was postponed because of the pandemic and thank you for running and participating and congratulations on your race and thank you for mentioning that i just wanted to echo that sentiment and to remind liz that in every race there's a
006volunteer world called the sweeper and that's what i volunteer for you have to come in last because you're making sure that no one got hurt along the way so you've sweeped the course thank you thank you for sweeping thank you and thank you so much to our administration for supporting all of these events we saw you at all of them and you've been out and about on weekends in addition to weeknights so we really appreciate your ongoing support for all of the above thank you other announcements just briefly we want to thank you for all of the tours we have been on many tours recently not only for the facilities committee thank you but also learning tours thank you to ashlynn field who's with us tonight who opened her building and her classrooms and to
007all of the teachers at meadow pond we learned so much and it was wonderful to be back in the building and we know that it takes a lot of planning and thought and time away from other things to work with us and help us to understand your initiatives and what's happening in the building and it really is so important and worthwhile and we appreciate it very much so thank you for that and are there any other announcements not then we would love to hear your announcements andrew thank you thanks marjorie uh some of the very same ones echoing the congratulations to the cast and crew of the wedding singer it was amazing as we've heard um i also want to echo the thanks to the community for the partnership around the creation of that trail
008really great testament to the partnership between school and community and we really really appreciate it spring sports are off to a somewhat rainy start but still very enthusiastic in fact there was a game going on if you noticed this evening in the pouring rain going on unbelievable just a very quick update and i'll be sending this one out in the mail tomorrow we did a meeting back in january for our increased miller families about some enrollment challenges and we'll be putting out an update tomorrow so i just want to quickly summarize we've been watching the enrollment we're tracking it very closely at increased miller and at the moment the actual enrollment that we see for next year is running much closer to the this year's enrollment than it is to the projected number which i
009think current enrollment is 482 projected for next year was 513 so a big jump projected right now we're not seeing that we will continue to watch to see if things should change in the coming months in addition the the new development that folks have been watching the lewisburg commons go up on route 22 we are in the process of zoning that for cotona elementary school rather than increase miller so that future students if and when they arrive will be going to kotona rather than increase we're also looking carefully at boundary lines between increased miller and meadow pond and we'll we will make every effort there if we do make any adjustments and this was feedback that we heard very clearly at the meeting with increased middle families we will work very hard to maintain any
010families that have begun their increased miller experience we'll try to keep them at increased miller so we don't don't anticipate any changes there for next year we'll hear from the facilities committee in a moment but that group also is looking at potential space adjustments in the building that could help with enrollment challenges a little bit further down the road so with all of that we are comfortable saying that at this moment we don't foresee the need for any programmatic changes that increase middle next year which i think will come as a relief to members of that community and we don't see other dramatic changes at this point so we'll keep obviously watching and if anything should change we'll send out another update i want to put in a plug for our next learning cafe which
011is on april 26th which is a week from the tuesday when we return this will be our second in-person learning cafe of this year the the learning cafe is for those who may not have attended are conversational opportunities they're not presentational and styling if you come which we hope you will come join us in the middle school dining room it's a chance to be in conversation with friends and neighbors and members of our staff around topics that we think are well suited to conversation rather than presentation the topic that night will be inclusion the whats and whys and the aspirations around inclusion as well as some of the challenges so we for now we're just asking people to save the date i'll put a note out about that tomorrow and then there'll be more formal
012invitation coming right after the break and that just leads us to the fact that it's spring break next week so we wish everybody uh happy holidays whether you're celebrating easter or passover and a reminder that monday the 18th is no longer a weather reserve day it's a day of school so we'll all be back on monday the 18th that's it that's great thank you so much thank you for that update i'll pause briefly if there are any questions for andrew before we move on or any thoughts okay thank you so much welcome abigail so nice to see you hope you're looking forward to spring recess and if in the meantime you could share a student update we would love to hear from you i think so march was a very busy month as elementary school
013students celebrated harp and the school musicals and science fairs took place students are more than three quarters of the way done with the 2021-2022 school year and are looking forward to the spring weather and spring break in campus congress we met yesterday april 6 and voted on the new executive board for the next school year so candidates were able to present their speeches on what what they wanted to change in our school and why they would be a good fit for this role and the new executive board will run our next meeting on april 20th alongside the current board in the high school jv and varsity sports began on march 14th and all the teams have been doing very well in their games the rite of spring art show opened march 31st where art students
014had the opportunity to present their work the musical the wedding singer was presented march 31st through april 2nd by an extremely talented cast and crew and community members of all ages came to see this production after a year without any live performances and the red cross came to hold a blood drive with national honor society on april 1st and invited students faculty and community members to donate blood in order to offset the national blood shortage in the middle school the science fair was held march 2nd and many students presented their findings on topics such as noise pollution seed germination and the science of running the 6th grade game show night was held march 4th and the musical back to the 80s was presented march 10th through 12th featuring 45 students who celebrated through the biggest
015hits of that decade the 8th grade dance was march 18th and modified sports began march 29th at increase miller the fourth annual stream convention was held march 15th and 16th and students in the high school science research program came to help and interview the participants on march 23rd reading under the stars took place as a part of parp which is celebrated throughout the month of march and the annual spelling bee was held last night at meadow pond the fifth grade play shrek the musical was presented march 25th and the science fair info session was april 5th and their fair will be held april 21st and lastly at ketona elementary school starry story night took place march 23rd also as a part of parp and first graders dressed up as rock stars on march 23rd to
016celebrate that they're 120 days smarter they did activities and eight snacks all involving the number 120. wonderful thank you so much it's wonderful to hear your report and it's great to see you smile throughout your report wonderful to hear how many terrific events are happening at every building and we thank you for representing them so thoughtfully and comprehensively is this a new tradition or has this always been the practice that your new exec board and your current exec board will run this next meeting of the year yes that usually happens but it wasn't able to happen last year just because of kovid but there'll be a new board of ed rep in a few meetings wonderful thank you for sharing that with us any questions for abigail before we move on no thank you so
017much we appreciate all that you shared so with the board's permission i just want to suggest that we go briefly out of order and look ahead to one item in the consent agenda and i'm going to turn it over to andrew for some remarks if i could have a motion to pull out 14.02 from the consent agenda so moved by bill and seconded by catherine and we'll turn it over to you thanks marjorie thank you as as the board knows from a prior meeting uh ms dawn pomeroy announced her resignation to take effect at the end of this school year i want to just take a moment and congratulate dawn and thank her again for a terrific career in our schools and wish her all the best as she moves on and tonight we're here
018to recommend uh mr david bornes nay who has come through a lengthy and rigorous search process at meadow pond led by ashland field with support from neil oliva and lots and lots of involvement from staff and parents and we appreciate all of that support and help in this process i think david's had an opportunity to meet a lot of people david is currently a first grade teacher at george davis elementary school in new rochelle prior to that he was a teacher at two different schools in brooklyn he's been a mentor teacher and he believe he's been a math coach in his time and now is very excited to be joining us here as the new assistant principal effective july 1 at meadow pond elementary school so we are very excited to recommend david bournessnay who
019was kind enough to join us here tonight with ashland and some of their colleagues from meadow pond to be here tonight wonderful thank you so much for that introduction and thank you so much for joining us this evening we're thrilled to have an opportunity to meet you in person thank you ashlynn for joining us and to your colleagues for coming to support this really lovely announcement um is there any further comment or is anybody else going to say anything did you want me to pause further are we ready to move on wonderful thank you so much and if there's no further comment we can vote all in favor please say aye aye aye 6-0 terrific thank you so much it's wonderful to meet you congratulations welcome welcome welcome okay so now if we can please
020go back up to our presentations for this evening we are looking forward to our social studies presentation first social studies update i should say and it's my pleasure to turn it over to you mary thank you so much thank you and good evening everyone so i'm joined by three of my esteemed colleagues this evening and i will as they're transitioning i will introduce them so these are three of our curriculum leaders so guyander is our social studies curriculum leader from john jay middle school lauren carrigan is our library media specialist leader from the high school but she represents her colleagues across the district and charles morales thomason also social studies here at john jay high school so welcome to all of you and thank you for being here thank you for joining us so this
021evening um we wanted to give you an overview of some of the standards and similar to the way we did the science presentation a few weeks ago we wanted to update you on some of the new frameworks and what they mean and what they mean for other subject areas as well and you will definitely see some similarities so this is this inquiry arc that's part of the new york state social studies framework and you'll see that there are many parallels to the science presentation the way the science standards are organized so those unifying themes and we'll talk more in depth about each one of the parts of that arc that you see they are much like the cross-cutting concepts that we spoke about in the science presentation and then there are the common core literacy
022skills and social studies practices so you remember there were science and engineering practices as well but it also looks at some of the standards for reading writing listening and speaking and how they relate to the social studies curriculum as well there are key ideas and conceptual understandings which were part of the nislis units that we shared with you as well and the disciplinary core ideas are much like the content specifications that you see here in this arc so there are lots of parallels to the way new york state is organizing their curriculum documents which are really helpful to us and when we think about inquiry that's something that we think about in every subject area so it's really helpful that it is part of social studies as well and that it's named in this framework
023and you can see on the slide there that that's based on the college career and civic life framework for state standards and social studies published by the national council for the social studies in 2013 in 2014 the the new framework was initially published and then there were revisions in 2016 and 2017 and that's where we are today so the inquiry arc as mentioned inquiry is a part of everything we do so developing those questions applying the disciplinary concepts and tools you'll hear a lot more this evening about how we evaluate sources and use evidence which is not specific just to social studies but very important in social studies and thinking about how we communicate our conclusions and take action so relates to our focus areas relates to other subject areas as well and then we
024have these 10 unifying themes i won't read through them all but you can see there that you know when you think about our work with diversity equity and inclusion there are certainly themes that relate to that there are themes that relate to civic participation which is another big part of the social studies standards and just kind of systems and how they work and even the science technology and innovation pieces so it's really helpful when we're trying to make connections for students and do interdisciplinary work across different concepts that they're learning and different classes so it really provides lots of opportunity for us to do that but i will turn it over to lauren to speak a little bit about the the standards in ela specific to these are 612 standards specific to the disciplinary subject
025areas right and you know of course i'm coming at this from the library perspective but librarians of course also consider this a shared responsibility that we're working collaboratively with the teachers one-on-one with students in their development of literacy um you know of course the library provides a wide range of informational texts to supplement the textbooks in the readings in the classroom we have biographies and memoirs speeches essays of course we have non-fiction in history and social sciences and all this is available in both print and digital formats we also have a number of databases to support literacy and that provides students and faculty access to articles primary sources scholarly journals newspapers magazines and all of all of these materials are chosen so that they meet the needs of students wherever they are so from ninth
026grade global all the way up through the ap level courses and the same in the elementary and the middle schools we're very aware of making sure that we have enough materials to support all of the students where they are the databases in particular are also really good to support visual literacy they include maps and surveys tables and charts which provides a whole different kind of skill to interpret all of those so you know we do as much supplementation as we can students that want to go beyond what they're learning in the classroom or if it sparks an interest sometimes there's a graphic novel or maybe there's just a ya novel that kind of can continue with the topic or a theme that they're interested in we find that happens a lot like after they read
027mouse they're like right here they want mouse 2 and why i didn't know graphic novels were like this what else do you have so it's often a springboard for just individual work with students to help them find reading for their own personal interests and i'll say that with regard to the standards you see that it is a wide range there obviously we the history is what many of us think of as social studies but it's much more it's much broader in terms of the social science that it is really emphasizing economics economic systems geography as well as world history and its evolution over time and civic engagement as mary already alluded to the idea that these are all just as critical each one's equally as critical it's not the idea that we are just focused
028on looking at linear history and a lot of times some students come with that conception are we going to learn about this we're going to learn about that it tends to be compartmentalized in terms of periodic episodes so i think this gives you a general sense the lenses through which we look through as social scientists and then here you can see the progression i don't think you can see it up there but you can see that we you know the natural progression like if you have children you know that it goes from me my who am i who am i in my community and what's the role of community and where do i fit in here right on to the state and what the state's function is to look you know local and state government
029right on up to federal government and the progression leads us to sixth grade where there's an eastern hemisphere thrust after they've had a great amount of study of the western hemisphere and then they returned back to coming off the um colombian exchange and everything else and and settling here and then looking at that for seventh and eighth grade right up through global and through high school as well so the progression it makes a lot of sense um and then to get more global and interactive parts of the world um that tends to be more of the emphasis of the upper grades let's see global connections among in between them and it's exciting when i was listening to a guy just now what you started kindergarten with about me and then it just broadens and builds
030and builds and by the time they get to be seniors there they have such a knowledge base it you can really go in a lot of different directions and you know as we've seen in the in the past couple months with so many past couple years with the changes in american politics and the presidential election everything that we've seen and what happened in the capital a year ago and then the past two months with what's happening in ukraine um it got to a point with ukraine not that i was fighting against let's not talk about it but it got to a point when i i had to talk about they were coming in the doors it was just on there it was on their minds it was on their you know on their conversations so
031once we started uh trying to give an overview and explained a few things all the questions were coming out because they've learned so many different things and they know about american history they know about the cold war they know about europe and in north america so in that sense from a teacher of 12th graders that made it that much easier because i already knew they had a good knowledge base already for sure and then when we were looking at this here guy and i were talking about it before i you know every one of these practices can be used in just about every classroom we had a department meeting the other day and i was mentioning to some of my colleagues uh what are some things that we you know you'd like me to mention
032what can we talk about here uh in every course whether it's global nine or u.s history and there's so much um you know uh uh dei the the the diversity and equity and the inclusion and that in the multi different perspectives and guy and i were just talking before about uh the middle school assessments and the high school assessments and clearly there's a shift as we all know from like rote memorization who's the person that signed this and what was the date it's more about um you know the skills or if they do give you a document that was written by jefferson it's more about what do we know about jefferson and and the the time that which it was written and who's the audience and how might it be biased so for example the
033the global regents exam is shifting now and it's becoming more of of that that that skills there and so rather than just say write a thematic essay about a conflict and the causes and effects of world war one you have to do more of of analysis of the situation which is kind of exciting so it just becomes a force of habit now whether it's in a global 10 regions class or whether it's an ap class it's become standard practice every time we'll read the document who wrote this and why do you think they wrote it how might the audience perceive it and and all sorts of things when we looked at you know when putin was talking about why he's invading ukraine or whatever it might be so those habits that they that they've developed
034in the middle school years have now just become standard in the high school years and we're always asking ourselves those kinds of questions um the other thing so that would be kind of like gathering interpreting using evidence there and the other thing that we see a lot is um the idea of multiple perspectives we have to do it for example in in the ap class because it's one of the criteria for the essays but um it's interesting because you you get it everywhere there's a course in high school called sports and american society so we do a unit there and we talk about uh gender and how gender impacts sports and that sort of thing and then at the end of the unit we might have a panel discussion and we'll assign each student a
035different role there so we'll get that when we talked about there's another course for the seniors in juniors called world at war we began the year in the fall by looking at the us and afghanistan because it was last august that the u.s forces were pulling out and there was articles and stories in the paper about uh the crowds at the airport and all the refugees essentially saying don't leave without me take take me with you so we were talking about the responsibility that the u.s might have towards the refugees and we looked at that and then we also looked at refugees that were coming out of syria in recent years and refugees leaving libya and getting on these boats and trying to make it across the mediterranean sea and the dangers that go along
036with that and then uh unexpectedly of course we have now four million refugees leaving ukraine so it gave us a chance to to go back to that topic of of refugees and then we also looked at why um poland and europe seems to be embracing all of these refugees from ukraine and not that there's anything wrong with that for sure but then the question was well how come refugees by and large aren't always accepted how come refugees from central and south america have a difficult time to get into the u.s so it was an interesting way for us to look at why some refugees are welcome some are not some nations welcome them some don't so the idea that there's different perspectives whether it's analyzing the document or analyzing you know like i said the
037the war refugees that's always evident there and i think the to dovetail with what charles is saying the idea that um we've we've laid a foundation for these kinds of conversations to happen where there's multiple perspectives and everybody gets to have their perspective different perspectives raised and voices raised from all different parts of society and that we listen attentively and we comment thoughtfully and we question it thoughtfully as well and i think that is some a thread that you'll see goes through the entire social sciences especially in social studies everybody does understand multiple points of view and that being right isn't necessarily the out the desire here that these views that are rooted in history and rooted in reason and rooted in cause causal thinking and other things like that so as they explore all
038these multiple sources and we're showing them primary and secondary sources being made daily we have a secondhand source we had somebody i was able to tell them about a ukrainian friend of mine who actually has first-hand accounts of somebody who witnessed something um in her inner village and wrote about it it becomes a primary document so it's not just dusting off um you know the or the you know pericles funeral oration so it's the idea that they are understanding and appreciating sourcing documents and understanding that these documents have to be carefully and thoughtfully contextualized to fully appreciate their value and meaning we've talked about uh we're in the european history class we were talking about the events that led to world war ii and the growth of uh the popularity of mussolini the population of
039hitler we talked about the munich conference and and his justification for why the people in sudetenland had to come back to germany and the kids were listening and and i said it's the same thing it's the same thing with putin putin says i have to go in there and save the ukrainians from the growth of nazism so i said you just changed the words a little bit here and there and it's the same thing and then you could see you know more the heads nodding and like you said it's um it's not just you know let's not just again go back to the munich conference and dust that off let's make those connections and as we all know the more things change the more they seem to stay the same so we've seen that a
040lot a couple months yes and i'm not sure even what slides coming up next but so i may be jumping ahead to my but you know my my part of this as charles and guy keeps saying multiple viewpoints and and analyzing it and contextualizing it and you know big part of what i'm constantly reminding the students of is you know what is your source right how do you know where this is coming from did you read that on twitter was it something on instagram um if if you're not sure where that's coming from then you need to research the source that you found you know which is called lateral reading so everything that you're looking at you can't take it for face value that includes all kinds of images and charts you know people see
041a picture on instagram and they just automatically think like oh my gosh look at this this is unbelievable and then they share it right so i'm always saying to them especially when you have that real emotional reaction to something that you see or you hear or you read or it's being forwarded and passed on and liked by everybody in your social media environment you really got to stop and and and figure out where that came from and if it's something that you should be believing something that you should be sharing or something that you should be asking about in the in the global ten regents class of the year the students read in the spring they write a research paper five ten pages or so and they don't just have to list a list of
042their sources of bibliography to annotate a bibliography so it's exactly what lauren's talking about we give them a prompt and talk about each source and who wrote it and who might they be writing it for and how might it be biased uh they're not thrilled about it because more often than not students will say i got the whole paper done i just have to go home tonight and just pop in my easy bib and make it and then they'll come back and say the annotated bibliography took me longer than the whole paper and it turned out to be three or four pages because you have to write like a whole paragraph for each of their sources right but it it gets them different and at first they don't like to go to the databases it
043feels like more work than just using google but usually once we get them in there and and show them how the databases work and how easy they are to search now and that they are designed for student end users and they really learn how to work with the interface so that they you know sources are identified it will tell you right there if this is an opinion piece if this is from an encyclopedia if this is from a newspaper if this was from a scholarly journal so you know they're they're kind of absorbing all of that and recognizing oh these are categorized into different sources so that i know what i'm looking at and i know by going into the database that this is a reliable source so you know we steer them as much
044as we can towards towards that end result and that relates to that progression there of the practices so that that was just one example right right yeah yeah and you can see grades 9 to 12 down there at the bottom just what lauren was saying identify describe and evaluate evidence about events from diverse sources you know so that that evaluation piece that you were mentioning is such an important piece for students to consider yeah and the other thing i've been trying to stress a lot too and this was sort of news to me that the search engines well i mean we sort of know that cert you know in the back of our heads that search engines have these algorithms that they use to give us results um but it's become more and more clear
045that those results are very biased and if you want to make sure that you are getting voices and opinions and information about all people different people wide variety of voices you need to actively use language that's going to give you a return on that search and i'm i'm looking forward to a workshop tomorrow actually the title is how how search engine algorithms reinforce racism and interactive demonstration and discussion to promote more equitable searches so i should learn more there to bring back to the students and then this right here gives you a little bit of how it's presented for us as the road map and how we pull this apart and make this into meaningful lessons and how we structured around this idea but really everything starts with a question it's a student question it's
046organic it's it's a teacher question it's a stimulating question and it's usually a very provocative question of some sort that we have to kind of get to the root of and there's no easy clear-cut answer and that's where the research comes in and that's where evaluation and looking at all these multiple sources and then learning how to identify the types of sources text structures and then also how to craft some writing around that as well and understanding fully what they've had in their ela experiences and english experiences and building on that and making sure that we're using all those skills as well to give them that form so we thought we'd just speak a little bit about some of the work that's happening at each level currently and this kind of meshes as well with
047the next slide to talk about how the focus areas that we have are impacting the work also at each level we don't have a leader currently for social studies at the elementary level so i'll speak to that so right before i arrived actually i remember it was my first meeting i ever attended officially here we were adopting some new elementary social studies resources called tci so our teachers had been working on units at that time so that was just after the framework was introduced so they had those new resources and we also have a set of kindergarten through eighth grade social studies ela resources that are online resources from our pnw boces so those there are some digital resources there that we can use so teachers can use a variety of those things but as
048you heard at the upper levels and is true at elementary too they often supplement and they're often thinking about how things go together so actually tomorrow we have a big curriculum day planned at elementary for our third fourth and fifth grade teachers we have one representative from each building coming together with two of our teachers college consultants with our three principals allison porcelli staff developer and me as well and we're going to look at the units thinking about our ela units for next year and how we might embed many of the social studies standards and practices into them as well as some of the work with dei sel so thinking about the social justice standards very big picture but where did they fit into units social emotional competencies and even education for sustainability there are
049now some standards from the cloud institute that help us think about those as well so we're looking for places where we can embed this meaningfully in the work so we're really excited about doing that tomorrow i see the social emotional learning and it's not so much content but some of the things that we we talk about in the classroom like responsible decision making for example in the i teach a 10th grade ap class so the ap exam is coming up soon so we've talked all year especially now about time management and avoiding procrastination and and trying to you know chunk out your work and do a little bit each night and of course all year we talk about try not to get too frustrated with a couple of low scores and try to focus on
050the bigger picture and in the growth over the years and then with the seniors i have a couple of senior elective classes so a lot of our focus my focus is on saying that let's use this year to get ready for next year and and next year of course you'll be away from home and more independent and that sort of thing so again go to office hours meet with your professors but then also uh you know tommy put away the phone you know put the laptop down put the phone away and let's focus on on being here um so we try to work on on some of those decisions um so again it's more about the the relationships that kids can have with each other versus uh you know just with their devices and at
051the middle level i mean we clearly it's a transition year to sixth grade and we have the added advantage that the sixth grade teachers are ela and social studies teachers so in the team configuration that's ideal because we know and what we're controlling in terms of what they're getting in exposure to the types of literacy skills and development and we can dovetail beautifully with the social studies being the social studies teachers as well so it's wonderful because we get to mesh them almost seamlessly great outgrowth you might have heard about recently was the basketball game to raise water for south sudan and you know sixth graders entering and then reading about a long walk to water and becoming aware of the struggles of sudan and it's breaking away and division ethnic and also religious issues
052that have faced the country and then reading this narrative which many sixth graders year after year say it's their favorite read of all time and so we just keep doing it because they tell us to do it for the next year it's from their recommendation but from there came the idea of the civic engagement where do we how do we help these people and then that formulated from a sixth grade desire to raise money and get our school on the roadmap of saying we're helping to fund some water um irrigation system to get that you know clear water clear safe drinking water for south sudan and were able to raise a good amount of money but had tremendous buy-in imagine sixth seventh and eighth graders at the middle school and even i dare say ninth
053tenth eleventh and twelfth graders who all read this book and all understood where this came from this was not some foreign concept so in terms of community awareness in terms of engagement and getting the word out there and buy-in it was just a wonderful experience that illustrates how this dovetailed with and the idea that we were back in a gym together and without we were in a place gathering once again where students had watched cohort a and b last year we have students in sixth grade this year that haven't been in a building prior years um you know they didn't they and some are joining us now so it's a very big reintegration and so we're always delicately dealing with that and at the same time with a variety of resources we consult with um
054ela social studies resources through boces it has a wonderful variety of ways of meshing all this together and giving us grade level appropriate work that's very carefully vetted and well executed we also have facing history as a resource for our eighth and ninth grade where we'll use protocols and we'll use various lessons that come from there to help elevate the voices of those people in terms of racial in terms of equity in terms of inclusion helping to see multiple perspectives throughout history and honoring the voices of those that might not have been stated explicitly over the years and helping to see and relocate source material and build that up and that's why we have such a wide variety of sources and now or you aren't necessarily locked into a textbook per se but have one
055as a main focus and that they can go back to a lot of times you'll see that the social studies textbooks become compilations of primary and secondary source materials on the topics so they kind of do it that way and sell it for a hefty price and we know that too but at the same time we as active educators in the field and social scientists are always calling the latest and getting the latest and being able to incorporate that and with um you know but just touching on all those areas that becomes again the lenses through which all of our instruction is seen through okay so um i'll just um read off a list of a couple of things that we're all doing you know we like to think that our print collections are always
056well-rounded but we have done diversity audits of our collection it's the service that's provided by fala that provides our library software and it really gives us information very nitty gritty information about our collections it will tell us exactly how many biographies we have that are about or by men or women or people of color or indigenous people and it will even break down genres and categorize those and give us information on where our collections really need to be developed so that it is as complete as we think it is in our heads because of course we all have our own biases as we're making those decisions um we like to think that coming into the library may provide some bibliotherapy for some students as opposed to retail therapy or video therapy or whatever else they
057might spend their free time doing but you know really reading can support positive mental health maybe they need an escape or a laugh or a good cry and the right book will kind of provide that for them and children's and young adult literature also really does help students to understand social emotional issues diversity biases and it can help to relieve stress and increase in their coping skills we know of course that reading allows our students to step into others shoes we're hoping that these experiences reading about events and experiences from other perspectives helps them in turn empathize and may challenge assumptions or biases or misconceptions or stereotypes that they have um not new it's you know one thing that we always do is to curate and share special collections with teachers so that students have
058titles from diverse authors that include characters from a variety of cultural backgrounds and socio socioeconomic statuses um we have audio books and ebooks and those also have special accessibility features so that it will support our diverse learners i am very excited to tell you that we have started a new book club at the high school and this is a chapter of a national book club called project lit and the mission of project lit is to put books that um represent a wide variety of people of opinions religions ethnicities you know the whole gamut um so the students can see themselves in literature and part of their mission is also to put an end to book deserts so we will be doing some drives to collect books and fundraisers so that we can purchase books we're
059going to collaborate with the lakota club and send books out to the reservation so yeah it's a really great group of kids and that's been a wonderful experience getting that going with them and i just want to add that you brought up the accessibility which is a very big feature where it's no longer the days where well if you can't interact with the textbook you can't learn social studies so um if you didn't read 73 to 84 tonight and you didn't understand that you you're not privy to that information so they are getting up a wide accessibility there's a lot of resources available today that weren't years prior and we also can call from different ones and we can take into account our knowledge of where they are as readers and we can use that
060to tailor certain instruction as well so that's ideal in the middle school and everybody is well aware of where students are in terms of their reader understanding what they could manage and handle would it be an unreasonable expectation to say go read this level textbook and we expect you to have the same understanding and grasp as that child who might not be in the same place or or have the same context to in which this occurred so we're constantly looking at sources through those lenses as well so i just wanted to bring that up you remind me of it so we thought we'd now turn it over to all of you to see if you had any questions and thank you to my colleagues for renting so beautifully thank you we really appreciate the update
061um and your um insight into how the standards have evolved since we've last had an opportunity to talk about social studies and i think i i i have to think we all experienced it this way that more than anything just your immersion in your content areas and your connectedness to students and your prioritization of reading and all of these important skills that transcend as you said earlier like a linear teleology of time or something it's it's really amazing the things that we've covered in this short period of time that you've talked with us about i i think really model for us your dedication to teaching and to helping our students evolve as readers and social scientists and i'm not really sure what more we could ask for so that all sounded really great and thank
062you i mean that was very helpful really appreciated and it's just a pleasure to hear you speak about your vision it really is somewhat visionary for what you're trying to do with our kids as learners and to help them stay connected to learning and to reading i was going to ask like is the library open after school you know because just hearing the way you're speaking about and inspiring kids to stay connected to reading and then there it was you know project lit you're doing something after school with these kids and um it's just really terrific i'm hearing about the panel that you facilitate we're talking about different spaces you know on the facilities committee and opportunities like with the step labs becoming something else and my mind just sort of went to like oh
063wouldn't it be great to have an amazing space for that kind of an activity um so there's a lot to think about tonight thank you it was really really enjoyable and i'll pause there and turn the floor over to my board colleagues if you have questions or comments please i'll echo marjorie um your enthusiasm is contagious i wish we could pause the meeting and just have a big social discussion i also want to thank lauren specifically i've read recently the john jay high school curriculum no it was the weekly update or whatever it is about bi-weekly i read about the project lit and my husband and i were taking two of our children up to buffalo for a hockey tournament and i'm like well it's six and a half hours in the car and what
064are we gonna do with mine i want their phone on the phone the whole time and i just read about project lit so i emailed lauren and she got right back to me with some audio book um suggestions we read well we listened to internment it was great so thank you so much i have a couple of avid readers and all of them have been so the librarians in the middle school and the high school have been so accessible and have been so great that they go in and they they just are so good about giving them books that they want to read so i appreciate your enthusiasm all of you thank you i enjoyed this this discussion thank you i think i said some of the same things last time but hopefully people have
065a short memory i'm always struck and i remember that i went into a field of science but i learned how to assemble evidence or the importance of evaluating your source supporting your argument i learned that from my high school social studies courses some it's i'm very happy to hear i remember you made my younger son especially a much better art arguer he won many more arguments after this um one thing that comes to mind is you know i always find like the social studies stuff is so inherently interesting maybe it's just my bias but it's just so inherently interesting it's it's can include current events and things that are on your mind today um sort of two questions one is when you have some of these discussions that you were talking about whether it's about
066ukraine or ethics actually a very interesting question about the different handling of refugees from different areas of the country that's occurred to me one question is it's wonderful if most if not all the students are comfortable talking about this sort of thing um and or can speak about any of this with you know knowledge and not just what they saw their friends say on twitter yesterday so you know do you get the sense that they're either because of your efforts um or around your efforts they're really learning what to say that's one thing and then the other question is maybe for some of the other topics do you get a diversity of opinion because one of the things that i i do remember from my kids was they loved especially the younger one uh would
067take the opposite argument just to take the opposite argument and just like play devil's advocate and to go on the other side of things even there was some ridiculous things um do you see a diversity of opinion like as fascinating when you said that people are assigned roles you know you're gonna play the role of the you know slave owner and you have to discuss that role um so you get the sense that they're absorbing they're speaking knowledgeable and then you get a diversity of opinions or at least people willing to i know a sign of intelligence is you can hold two arguments in your head at the same time you know it's funny you know you say that i had a class i don't know years ago and it was a bit of a
068quiet period four class and so i we were talking something related to world war ii and hitler and i wasn't sure if we were going to really get into it so i had a student who walked in i pulled him aside i said listen if class is going flat i'm going to point you and i need you to take an unpopular stance just to stir it up he's like i'm just as i expected you know i was pushing all my buttons nothing seemed to work and i said so johnny what do you think and he said something that was you know bold and probably a little bit inappropriate but it worked because it got everybody fired he was he was taking a stance that something that hitler might have uh approved of and said i
069think this is what our policy should be and so he took it and then it lit a fire in everybody and then we had a good conversation as he walked out he winked at me and i gave him and it worked um but you know i had i went out to dinner the other day and i was talking to somebody and he said what do you do and i told him that i teach and this and that and and he very politely and delicately asked me well how do you talk about politics in your school and i said well you know there's uh kids that come in and they lean one way and kids come in to lean the other way and like we've we've heard from dr siciliano these past couple years you know
070our job is just to allow everybody to feel comfortable and have an open exchange and and so i try to make the classroom comfortable so that everybody you know nobody is castigated for feel in one way and we also try to understand why people might feel a certain way so when we're talking about the capital right a year ago we're trying to understand what would what would cause certain people to act in a certain feeling what is how do they view the nation you know some people view it this way they view it that way so by by me not taking a stand and just trying to guide them to to learn how to think versus what to think and by you know by therefore allowing people to have these points of view and sometimes
071assigning them right you're this role you're that role um hopefully over time that allows a sense of comfort and allows you know them to understand different perspectives and like i said before with the ap when you write an essay in order to get uh the highest possible credit you have to show the opposing viewpoint so it's built in we always need to have a thesis you always have to make your point and then at some point you have to address the other side so not only is it encouraged but in certain circumstances it's required yeah so hopefully over time that makes them feel better and i i think you bring up a very good point um we can't underestimate the fact that third fourth fifth graders with cell phones are not getting cell flashes of
072every piece of information it's not uncommon for an eighth period social studies student in sixth grade to say are we are we going to help them bomb um ukraine today and then you say well wait let's back that up then another person saying yeah we're going to have world war three and that's how the class starts so it's back up so should i talk about ahsoka's achievements um during you know the indian rule that we're talking about or should should we address this so you have kids who are coming ready with a great many things that probably popped up as the popular news feed on an already biased calculus and algorithm yeah but this is really and where they're getting their information and how we are doing it and helping students realize um where we've
073looked at everything from uh you know what should our role be where some one student said well we shouldn't even be liv you know getting involved right and what you know and i and you could see that it's a sixth grader coming in and it clearly shaped by his experiences and lifestyle and everything else and understanding that and yet somebody in the same class said well my grandmother is half ukrainian and she lives in queens and you know so you hear this other piece and that kind of becomes very real and immediate so who would not get involved and so that becomes a discussion right there so i would say the necessity for being ready for the discussions and to honor the discussions has become more necessary and essential for every educator you really have
074to come with what's being presented if there's a current event happening when george floyd what's taking place that's what took place in our classroom and those kinds of things when we see the slap that was heard around the world at the uh oscars that's what sixth graders came in and talked about right and the idea um and one student came in and said well if that was a woman he never would have hit her and that set off a whole different set of things so then that becomes a whole topic a rich conversation where we have to then cleverly and tactically walk them back to curriculum right and at the same time honor that it must be this tension we saw a movie a few years ago that there's this tension about i have to
075cover this amount of stuff in order to get you ready for the ap test so we're going to plow through it and ignore the you know the reality happening outside the building or i'm going to go into these things with you and you know what we might not learn as much about the you know spanish-american war as i thought exactly and i think that's what we're tr we've learned over the past couple decades is the idea that less is more in some cases and depth is more and understanding the big ideas and being able to interpret synthesize and see relationships among in between um so that really has been a movement where it's no longer that purely linear right progression and i think when you look at the standards you know and the focus on
076different practices and skills and yes there's content too but it's not about content delivery but developing those skills and you know sometimes through the content but on a given day the content might have to shift right but you're still working on critical thinking and those practices and those skills um very artfully it sounds thanks i had um two questions one sort of building on that around what opportunities exist in school but maybe outside of the classroom for integration of these social science or social studies practices like abigail was talking about earlier of sort of campus congress and the exchange of power and sort of modeling what different democratic processes look like um i'm curious what other places that where people might sort of practice that at school i know that uh you know we have
077two popular clubs at the school one is jsa and then the other would be model u.n so right off the bat those are uh clubs that the students can partake in where there's the the debate and multiple perspectives and all sorts of things like that and i would throw in the school newspaper also right and lgbtq groups and then we also have as well um students um they are able to uh you know in addition to what charles is saying um the student government in the middle school so they have that as well and they do speeches and they have a congress and they you know they they have elections they they understand the process that's involved as well and anybody can run and it's really their first exposure in middle school to seeing different
078types of people different you know all the schools are coming together and how they um who when we listen to the speech what are we looking for and and certain students who emerge in some ways as leaders here maybe not there or some students who never anticipated this in sixth grade are now in right in the throes of it in eighth grade and have found themselves in a whole different position so it's always that those are good avenues and outlets and then i guess this is more for mary but i'm curious what social studies looks like at the elementary i mean you sort of outline the the five or six years of it but um in terms of where it fits in to like kind of classroom time with other things is it sort of
079a set thing or how is it integrated across um yeah the rest of the day time is a challenge at elementary um it really is so that's why we're doing some of this work tomorrow to think about ways we can integrate um on the one hand it can be more meaningful when it's integrated in that way and on the the other concern is efficiency because there's you know we heard about all the new science standards and piloting new things and teachers are learning uh new curriculum phenomenon based which is wonderful but it takes more time and similarly with social studies we want to make sure we have enough time to explore those practices and skills but it is a challenge for sure so we're looking at those opportunities to integrate more especially ela and as
080we heard at sixth grade that kind of happens naturally because of the configuration that we have right now but also looking for those opportunities in elementary as well with some of our ela units and some really lend themselves quite easily you know research-based units where you can think about the social studies content and use the research you know the reading writing skills that you're trying to teach so those can come together pretty naturally just sort of in that same way i know that in my children's classroom there are some democratic practices or that they're sort of civic tools that they're using have our elementary schools ever had like a student government in the element at the elementary school level we have student leaders like at meadow pond they have fifth grade ambassadors i think they
081have leaders actually at each of the elementary schools in some way um i don't know that it's a formal student government but it is interesting having more and more conversations about including students i know abigail was part of the conversation we had the other day we're looking at our district's code of conduct right and we want to make sure we have student voices in the room as well we had a sustainability in our schools meeting today we have student members on that committee too so getting more student voice in everything we do which i think is really helpful other comments or questions no thank you so much thank you very much we really appreciate your time and thoughtfulness thank you that's great thank you thank you thank you great thank you so much mary and
082thank you to our curriculum leaders have a great evening thank you have a nice spring recess thank you wonderful thank you so much i think we're ready now to transition to our conversation related to the work of our facilities committee it's my pleasure to welcome russ davidson our architect who's joined us tonight and i will turn it over to danelle and liz please thank you i'm actually looking for some um forward to some bibliotherapy over spring break before we get there the facilities committee has continued to meet uh we have such a great cross-section of people from throughout the district and with different expertise we are making a lot of progress we are um we're nearly finished with our um tour of all of the buildings and danella is going to walk you through uh
083the timeline for the overall project and so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to danelle but i just did want to thank all of the um building leadership administrators paul christensen in particular for the wonderful building tours we've had they've led to a lot of great questions and understanding about the work that we are doing thank you terrific thanks liz um so tonight i just want to give the board and our community an update and start with a little history of where we are with our facilities and our facilities committee so back in march of 2021 so a full year ago kg d came to our board meeting and presented our five-year building condition survey building condition survey is required every five years by new york state education department uh once we
084have a building condition survey um the architect then converts that into what's known as a five-year capital improvement plan and we use this as a tool to manage the district's capital needs the plan includes necessary work to maintain each facility in good working order and also prioritizes that work the requirement of the five-year plan does not necessitate that all projects in that plan need to be completed it's rather just an outline of how we can improve our schools and things that may need to be worked on um so we use that as a guide um and also the five year plan doesn't preclude us from adding different projects to help with our facilities it's just strictly um a guide so on june 3rd of 2021 the board approved the five-year capital improvement plan this plan
085opened doors for a great opportunity for the board to input into our facilities and also an opportunity to create our facilities committee the facility committee continues to look at the at the plan in depth and uses it as a guide for future improvements and look for renovations enhancements and anything that will help our instructional spaces at our schools in october the board approved a facilities committee charge the facilities committee charge was for us to look at the five-year capital plan in conjunction with other facility and learning needs and opportunities identified by the administration to consider options for future facility maintenance and enhancements and also the committee was charged with a study to study the feasibility of various financing options to support the needs and opportunities defined through the course of its review so in november
086and december the facilities committee began to have preliminary discussions and then in the beginning of 2022 we outreached to the community and we created what is now known as our full facilities committee now and i believe it's about 17 people on the committee and that's including administration and having russ uh join us for our meetings so throughout the months of january and february we began what we call our focus groups we met at the individual schools with the administration with community members uh with teachers students when age appropriate joined us as well and then we also began what we called our our walk throughs of the buildings and all of our not all of our community members we met in different bunches but most of our community members on our facility committee were able to
087join us and walk the buildings we will continue to finalize that in april we have one more building that we need to walk through and we had our final focus group this afternoon and so that will bring us through april and we have quite a quite a busy schedule until june so the facilities committee will continue to meet and look over the five year capital plan discuss our our tours of the building discuss the focus groups and then hopefully in june we will come to the board with a more detailed report of where we're at and the facilities committee may recommend a capital project at that point we do have some significant debt falling off in a future year so it's a good opportunity that for kl schools to have a bigger project at that
088time and that bigger project may be tax neutral to the community or just a slight increase that's something that the facility committee will recommend to the board so if that is the case if we do decide to move forward with this project we would not move forward without a community vote and that would look like october of this of 2022 vervo so that's our 30-second overview and liz or russ if you had something else to add please feel free i think i'm off that press well uh we work together with the administration to design a process and um uh i would say it's working really well so we've learned a lot including from students um about how they felt in good science labs and bad science labs and you know it's been a lot of
089great insight today's focus group with the special needs and the septa group was also very insightful so our firm has this slogan listen imagine build and uh we're we're finishing up with the listening last night we started to talk about the imagining a new high school and renewed portions of the high school and it's going to be a tough job for your committee and ultimately the board because you do have significant needs and you know we we talk about the capital projects that have happened here and the last significant one was 2003 and somebody reminded me today that the iphone wasn't even invented then um and so it was a different time and also circulating by email today was the the cover article of architectural record from 1957 when this high school was a state-of-the-art
090high school in 1957 on the cover of an architectural the architectural magazine and um you know the 1998 projects also were award-winning in 2003 but that's 20 years ago and there's still actually some 1955 buildings relatively untouched at the high school and we all know uh i love hearing your social studies presentation reminds me that great stuff goes on here and i'm proud that my kids graduated here but the um there's still a lot that needs to be done at some of the elementaries in in stem education uh outdoor classrooms and then some basic infrastructure that we all learned about in covet how important ventilation is um so it's going to be challenging but i'd say the process is working and stay tuned thank you very much ross thanks danelle i think that's uh where
091we are from facilities perspective and um we will get back to you soon great we really appreciate the overview of the timeline thank you for the high level overview of the challenge that we will be facing in some of our deliberations um and i'll just pause in case anybody has a comment or question if not stay tuned and it sounds like the committee will be back in june with a more extensive um overview or a deeper dive yeah thank you so much for joining us russ really appreciate it thank you thank you thank you liz thank you terrific okay um why don't we go back and do board subcommittee reports since we're already kind of mid-stream with our facilities committee um did you have anything else to add from the facilities committee liz or no
092you know i think you you just said um so i guess yes um you had said that there are challenges but i just want to take a minute to remind everyone here that challenges are always also you know opportunities to reimagine how we do things and and to do them better so i think it's very exciting work that we're doing absolutely well said very much agree anything else from facilities or we're all no good there okay thank you and i know we have some um audit news this evening on our consent agenda did you want to just take a minute to talk about that the audit committee met with a potential external auditors and thank you to danelle for organizing that and helping us to think about what questions we wanted to ask them and
093thank you to the committee members who um it was a it was a lengthy evening because we spent a lot of time with both of them and we were able to make a decision which is in 1502 tonight um so we're happy to be recommending our external auditor who will be with us for the next five years so that's on the consent agenda this evening and again thank you to danelle and to our committee for really helping us to really spend some time and and ask thoughtful questions and have good discussion about what the best direction would go for that and just to kind of um pick back off that five years so uh we put out a request for a proposal for a five-year time frame but that does not commit us to the
094five years so after a year if we can always go back out and seek a different audit firm terrific great thank you so much let's see finance committee danelle do you mind just updating us has finance met we have not met since the last update uh our meeting is monday april uh the daily the 17th so that yeah be our next meeting and we will continue to look at um the charge perfect thank you well parent counsel ilana has parents counseling and matt at the middle school in person wonderful that's great um i'm trying to think of what the the parent questions we sort of i can't even i they were sort of asking for some updates on um what was happening at increase miller and i think to tonight provided more of those answers
095um and there was a little discussion of course about covid and um but it was it was sort of it was a lot of update i feel like the majority was kind of updates in the meeting great thank you no new questions for us to be thinking about tonight or anything it sounds like um okay and sustainability met i think twice we had the opportunity to really take a deep dive into the most recent cameron coal report which is i guess an audit essentially of our greenhouse gas emissions and to ask some questions of cameron cole and to improve on the report and then really to celebrate what is very good news with respect to our school district's ability to meet some targets that have been set by new york state through the climate leadership
096and community protection act this clcpa that became law in july 2019 so essentially we're being asked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030 and no less than 85 percent by 2050 from our 1990 levels and katona lewisboro is really uniquely in a great position to be aware and to perform these measurements because of some amazing work that's been ongoing since i mean at least since 2012 and actually even since prior to that that was just like when this subcommittee came into existence but um so we have excellent data and we are really on track to meet that first target that 40 percent by 2030 like definitely going to meet it and now the conversation is really shifting to the very heavy lifting ahead but this is not unique to katona lewisboro and again
097we are in as good a position as any school district that i'm aware of in new york um to to achieve this goal but the question is going to be how to get to that 85 by 2050 and to a certain extent that conversation is informing some of the conversations that we're having on the facilities committee as well that's probably you know the best overview i can provide of what's happening in sustainability and westchester putnam county school boards association hosted a panel on monday night for prospective school board members in the region it was very well attended a lot of people thinking about school board service and i think that's it out of westchester putnam county school board association any other updates for committees okay if not let me just find where we are i
098think this means we are at public comment i'm not aware that we have any public comment tonight and if we don't then we can move on to the consent agenda and we've already passed resolution 14.02 would somebody like to move the rest of the consent agenda moved by liz and perhaps seconded by julia and thank you for the comments related to the external auditor any further discussion or comment if not then we can vote all in favor the consent agenda please say aye aye 6-0 thank you and this brings us to our opportunity to recognize some very generous gifts tonight we're at 16.01 and it's my pleasure to move this resolution if somebody would please second it thank you julia thank you we have a donation from the kes pto in the amount of 7
099284 and 80 cents um you're marked for a gaga pit and the playing surface over at kes very exciting please julia would like to speak to this yes gaga is a wonderful uh it's a frame basically it's a wooden frame that allows students to go inside of it and it's an octagon shape and it's about 12 feet across depending on you can do them different sizes and you use a sort of a softish ball and you have to flap it with your hand and try to hit people below their knees and so what's nice about it is really like most kids are able to participate it's um you know if you you're not allowed to throw it at people um and when uh lewisburg elementary school closed um the ptos wanted to sort of bring
100a housewarming gift to the two schools that we went to so we actually built the gaga pits at meadow pond and increased miller several years ago so i'm excited for katona to now have one as well and it's just a really nice fun active thing that the kids can participate in and really like kids smaller and taller kids can all participate in it because it's all about keeping people below their knees and even in sort of a range of heights that seems to stay somewhat simple sort of like a mini dodge ball it originated in israel in like the 70s became super popular really and then about under a rock somewhere like five six years ago it became very popular in the united states and here in catona lewis bro and some of the other
101elementary schools do have gag up here so it's really nice that now there's going to be one over at kes too so we're really happy to hear this thank you very much to the pto and thank you to the meadow pond faculty association for a generous donation in the amount of 500 which will probably be earmarked for john jay senior for the meadow pond spirit award which is great so if there's no further discussion we can vote on this generous set of gifts all in favor please say aye aye thank you and that brings us to an opportunity for some board dialogue or discussion going on nine o'clock we're doing really well with time and turn the floor over to everybody any topics now we can make our way toward adjournment so that some of
102us can get over to the pto fundraiser at le chateau um okay so looking ahead to future meetings let's see tuesday april 19th so the board is next scheduled to meet on a tuesday because it's the boces annual budget vote on election and they've got i think a reserve that they're going to ask us to take a look at and facilities is scheduled to meet wednesday 7 pm um we're back to meeting in person so maybe here in the library and on zoom maybe um finance committee meeting 7 pm tuesday april 26th it's monday sorry monday the 25th okay so finance meeting monday the 25th 7 pm and policy meeting on friday april 29th at 9 am did i miss anything okay then would somebody like to make a motion to adjourn moved by liz
103seconded by bill all in favor please say aye aye aye thank you so much everyone have a great spring recess thank you