001yes thank you good evening everybody thank you so much for your patience sorry that we were running a little bit late this evening welcome to this meeting of the board of education it's thursday december 9th 2021 our last meeting of the 2021 calendar year and it's my pleasure to make a motion to return to public session if i could please have a second thank you julia all in favor please say hi bye thank you 6-0 and would everybody please join us in the pledge of allegiance united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] thank you so much and welcome to members of our community who have joined us for this board meeting tonight we have a few conversations that
002lie ahead but first we will pause for uh board committee reports which we have on the agenda this evening and then for some board announcements with respect to board committee reports i'm not sure whether audit has anything new okay thank you and how about our facilities committee i don't we're meeting next week thank you thank you finance committee i don't recall whether finance we're meeting next week as well okay thank you parent counsel um we had a great meeting the other week uh where they were interested to give an update again of what had happened at the board meeting i spoke about that and then there were a lot of really great questions mom asked of particular interests which i'm sure we'll hear more about tonight it was kind of what's going on with covet
003um you know what and some clarifying questions on the policies and quarantining was it like a particular interest um there was some discussion around field trips and the possibility of that um and andrew also was asked about the february break which is always interesting and i really appreciate the answer i wish i had a pre-recorded answer maybe sort of think about like maybe we should have some more faqs kind of up for things that do come up a lot that are common um and it was it was a it was a great i think a long but very good discussion wonderful thank you very much about policy committee is no third reading on today's uh agenda but there is a first reading of a tweaked policy around how we handle um people people who don't
004currently live in the district are going to live in the district it's not all tucked in in time for the school year how is that process handled and we clarified some of the language we also wrote it to be a little bit more inclusive including for example language more clear around renters and how and when they're in the process great and let us know what you think thank you very much and sustainability did meet last week we met last friday december 3rd and i wanted to bring the board up to date on a couple of things we had an opportunity at that meeting to talk with danelle and with paul christensen and nora beltran our directors of facilities and transportation regarding where we are with respect to moving forward with electric vehicle infrastructure and this
005is really exciting because we are really underway with our project to dot the eyes and cross the t's so that we can install some electric vehicle charging stations for commuters and small transportation vehicles on the john jay campus so these will be at the middle school and the high school we've been working with our vendor on all of the applicable rebates and grants and you'll be hearing more about this in 2022 and we're really excited about it we're also awaiting results from our cameron coal greenhouse gas study where we were looking back to the 2018-19 school year because that was the last school year when our buildings were sort of fully in use and at capacity with our normal practices and student population and that's going to help us benchmark for emissions in the future
006and then we just continue to discuss opportunities for advocacy in the region and to celebrate and recognize the great work that's happening in part through a committee that mary is chairing related to sustainability across our schools and we ran out of time so didn't get to that this past time but we'll do that next time that's where we are and putnam westchester pardon me putnam uh school board association several of us had the opportunity today to participate in a terrific training relating to conflict resolution and uh it was really well executed webinar and there are a couple of other nice events coming up legislative advocacy committee meeting in a week or so um and stay tuned i think that's it for committee updates um with that we can turn to board announcements i'm happy to
007pause if board members want to celebrate some happy student events from the past week or uh report out well please i mean i think i don't know who else went but and i was actually had to leave before the very end but i did attend the middle school production of clue and it was just really wonderful to see all of the students who are involved and the support of the staff to make it possible and you know i think just between the stage crew and the and the actors and how many students were actually there watching it which i thought was so fun i went on saturday night and there was a lot of young people there to see their peers and i just think it's so nice for them to have those opportunities i
008think people did a great job of staying socially distanced all the actors were in maths and it was really fun to be out at a school production and so thank you to everyone who made that possible to anyone on the staff and congratulations to the students for just a really great job thank you julia so nicely said and um i know several of us were there and i would only just add that the performance that i saw um one of the staff members who was integrally involved went out of his way to express what can only be described as like exuberance and gratitude for the opportunity to be able to work with students in person on stage and so just really most sincere thank you to our staff members and congratulations to everybody involved in
009the production it it really is great to be able to do these things again um really terrific and so thank you um i just wanted to say i had the opportunity to attend the kes holiday boutique um which was outside in the commuter lot in katona and um the highlight was you know there were a number of students who had their own booths which was fantastic and and just um it was uh such a nice feeling event with music and performances and everything like that um other than the fact that it made me feel terribly terribly old in the district um it's just nice to see so many young kids and so many young entrepreneurs it was a lovely event thank you no several of us also attended the attended the national honor society induction
010which was made possible also by video and so congratulations to all of our students who were inducted into the national honor society in between the last meeting and this meeting and uh thank you again to staff for supporting that project and that organization as well are there any other announcements then andrew we would love to hear your announcements please thanks marjorie i think also tonight's uh our first meeting since thanksgiving and our last meeting before the winter break so it's our opportunity to say to wish happy holidays i'm going to feeling a little bit of the impact of the thanksgiving break unfortunately in some other ways i'll touch on that in a few more moments um second or third the points that have been made about clue it was a wonderful production and lovely to
011be there as others have said but also to mention that uh next weekend at the high school here we'll have a production of two gentlemen verona uh i think there are three performances that people could attend so again a really nice opportunity for people to come out and see our students and the staff supporting them to support one another and similarly winter sports are now underway i had the opportunity to attend our girls varsity basketball game the other night so similarly they're really nice to be back in person for events and to see people in the stands and cheering our students on which is great i want to give an update the last time we met it was november 18th and the next day we were having a visit from dr fred volkmar from yale
012university i had introduced him that night as the irving b harris professor of child psychiatry psychiatry pediatrics and psychology at yale university and the director of the autism program at yale's child study center he's really a world renowned figure in the field of study of autism and working with children with autism and we really feel honored that he would come and spend time with us and has spent time with us since we asked him to come be with us in our efforts always to be working to improve uh it was a fairly open-ended invitation with allowing him to guide us in other words to say to him if you were going to come and take a look at a program what would make sense so he proposed the nature of this visit he spent about
013four hours with us on the 19th uh at the three classrooms at the middle school and the elementary and the elementary school one of the middle school two of the elementary school and had time to have a debriefing with our some of our administrative staff on that day uh it was it was a very positive visit he had a lot of positive things to say i don't want to say too much about it tonight because he's going to have his own opportunity pretty soon and i'm happy to announce a date shortly to speak directly with our community about about his visit uh it was a pleasure to be with him that day he he has um obviously great um wisdom and experience in this field and again we feel fortunate to benefit from that he
014has additionally since spent an hour just about an hour with our staff just the beginning of this week that was via zoom he was on with about 35 members of our staff all of those who are connected to the self-contained classrooms that i just mentioned and in addition staff from the high school as well as from meadowpond because we also have programs there that support children with autism so they wanted we wanted those colleagues also have an opportunity to benefit from being with him and he spoke a little bit about his observations of the program that he had seen he shared some of his wisdom from his research and his study and his work and he had an opportunity to take questions and to answer some of the questions from staff again a really nice
015really really nice opportunity i can't say enough about how fortunate we feel to be working with him he's also shared additionally resources with us for some ongoing learning for our staff so we're thrilled about that and as i said he's made very positive comments about what he saw and he said before coming in he didn't want to reach conclusions before coming about what his work with or should look like he wanted to come and spend time first and then have a chance to see what he thought made sense so um you know we're still having those conversations but but by and large he's been extremely positive about the program has a few constructive suggestions um about space and also about working with siblings of students as well as with our families and how to provide
016support with lots of positives about the staff the way the staff work with our students the setup of the rooms again he'll share he'll share more of that detail himself so the upcoming event i'm happy to announce tonight and we'll put it out in an email tomorrow he's going to be with us again on zoom on december 21st from 5 30 to 7. so we'll send an invitation out tomorrow uh it'll i think it'll open it up to everybody because we don't want to presume who might be interested in who might benefit and we'll ask people to let us know whether they're able to join us at that time um and again he'll probably follow a similar format as he did with teachers share some of his observations share some of the expertise take some
017questions and and then we go from there as to as to what develops from that but it's been a very positive relationship so far and we're thrilled to be engaging with him so that's uh all good news and now i want to share a little bit of sobering news uh in the area of covid alana was mentioning earlier we've had uh and there's a report i think i think my report this evening has gone out now just today we reported nine new cases of covet and in the week from before thanksgiving until now that's 36 cases which is a very significant uptick from the rate at which we had been reporting cases previously that also translates into significantly more quarantines unfortunately as a result particularly at the elementary schools even a little bit more now
018at the secondary schools also in terms of quarantine so we continue to monitor that of course um and uh it's it's an enormous um obviously in addition to an enormous impact on our students and our families it's an enormous impact and undertaking on the part of the district uh this is as in today there was contact tracing going on in all five of our schools and as reflected in the email that went out tonight so we continue to encourage our community and all of our staff and all our students to be mindful of all the health and safety protocols and procedures we encourage vaccination where it's appropriate uh now available for all five to eleven year olds the greatest impact or obviously the greatest impact being to community health and individual health but a very
019significant school impact being when fully vaccinated you're not subject to quarantine from a school-based exposure so um for for those looking to be sure that kids can continue to have as much time in school as possible the vaccination is the is the most obvious route to get there so you know there are different reports on why this is happening obviously the omicron there's been a lot of discussion about that in the media whether it's an uptick because of the thanksgiving holiday and all the travel et cetera we'll continue to watch it we don't we don't have any plans to change course in how we're providing instruction or any anything like that at the moment although we are you know always thinking about how we uh provide for those who are on quarantine and as the
020numbers increase those those challenges increase but we will continue monitoring through the winter break and then immediately after winter we'll see what comes of that too so not not the most positive update on which to end unfortunately but excuse me but important to keep the community informed on that well thank you that's the end of my update thank you andrew we really appreciate that we're thrilled to hear about dr volkmar returning this week to talk to staff and thank you so much for sending a note out to the community tomorrow it's really exciting that he'll be back on the 21st um i do want to pause in case board members have questions related to the coved uptick or you know any other aspects of um the impact of the district if not that's fine but
021i just wanted to briefly pause yeah please clarify if you're vaccinated and you're sitting next to somebody who tests positive they don't have to quarantine can you just remind me yeah the the rules are my colleagues correct me if i don't so i don't get it quite right but because we maintain the distance in schools and because we're fully masked um that those who are fully vaccinated do not are not subject to quarantine by department of health we will still report that there are if there are close contact which which in school means being within three feet or on the bus within six feet they still get reported to doh on a quarantine list however they're immediately at the same time told if we have proof of vaccination they can continue coming to school however
022if they're tested and that's a pool because my son had this happen to him last week if you're tested and in your pool somebody test positive you need to go you need to leave school until they know who that's a positive sure a positive test or the chance of a you know a positive test is reason to always reason to isolate and and if in a pool test it's initially if it's initially thought to be positive then you'll be quarantined until it's confirmed that you either you are the positive case or you're not on the positive case the turnaround time has been very quick on that i admitted my son was told to go home in the morning time he was worried because it was during hockey tryouts it was found out that he was
023negative by two o'clock this afternoon that afternoon and they allowed him to go to hockey tryouts so it was very quick thank you but i wasn't i wasn't allowed to bring him to the doctor myself to get tested i was told it's just good to know because i said i know he really wants to go to hockey trials can we test him at the pediatrician and they said no we'll get in touch as fast as fast as we can yeah and they do they turn it around very quickly because it's the same sample that's taken initially it's just tested again exactly yeah thank you anything else on that i just wanted to i think it's helpful to sort of enumerate a little bit what the mitigation strategies that we're using in the district again just
024i mean it's been a while and i know you send it out in the emails but i think it's really helpful that story um catherine is helpful of just that sort of a multi-layered process and i was just talking to my kids this morning of like remember last year when we were all hoping that we had a vaccine and that we all wish that there was testing available and like wow we're in a different place now like it's getting a little bit scary again with the numbers going up it was sort of alarming to hear how many kids were quarantined but we're in a different place where we have these tools and now it's a question of like how do we get everybody to use those tools like vaccination like getting signed up for our
025free testing program in the schools that clearly has a quick turnaround like masking which is required but all these things together to help make sure that we can keep every kid in school which has the best health outcomes you know both in terms of the health of the community but also the student mental health which i know is a big concern for all of us so i think just kind of i don't know reminding us of like what the rules are but and then like is there an opportunity if parents have questions or like where might they go to find out so that they feel they know what to do and can kind of participate in all these efforts like getting their kids vaccinated like getting them signed up for the testing program which thank
026you for making that easier to sign up for i also just said on a professional level not a board level i want to make crystal clear because i wasn't at the last meeting that's my understanding that there was some discussion around vaccines and their role and their safety and their utility it is a undebatable undeniable scientific fact that vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalization or death in all of the age groups tested including 5-11 and 12 to 17. um nothing is risk-free the drive over here to come to the meeting is not risk-free for me the benefit the weight of the benefits outweighs the risks several fold if anybody has any doubt about the utility is is getting vaccinated a good idea it's absolutely evident some of it is this less quarantining it's also good
027to not go to the hospital or die and not part of these variants are happening because there's unvaccinated people that serve as breeding grounds for these variants thank you paul i fell off my chest are there any further comments before we move on to our next discussion if not i'd actually like to uh suggest that we pause for a brief recess if i could ask for a second please thank you catherine um and i'd like to suggest that we'll come back at 8 25 three minutes from now all in favor please say hi bye thank you so much for your patience everybody i think we were just about to turn our attention to item 8.01 and we are thrilled tonight that we have an opportunity to recognize a boces student of distinction i'm sorry are
028you oh pardon me we're going to i'm going to make a motion to go back into executive into public session seconded by bill thank you all in favor all right okay thank you thank you kim so we're at 8.01 which is our opportunity tonight to recognize a bose student of distinction and we are thrilled to be able to do so i want to just um mentioned the board will remember that it was actually at one of our very last in-person meetings february 6th of 2020 that we last had an opportunity to celebrate a boces student of distinction and at that time dr ryan and the principal of that program and other staff members huddled around our student and we were able to celebrate we're in different times but it is my goal to try to
029channel some of that positivity that jim ryan and matt tucker the principal of this program um would have brought to us this evening i had the opportunity to speak with them and they could not have been more excited about mia louie o'keefe and we're going to be able to watch a short video in just a moment they emphasized that this placement has been fantastic they spoke glowingly of ms mccarthy the incredible teacher who is providing an environment in which louie is able to really open up and be available for learning and to social interactions and to a whole new experience that has been created in a minute we're going to see her smile which she brings to school every day while learning and while enjoying social engagement with her peers both dr ryan and dr
030tucker were extremely um grateful for the partnership with catona lewisborough and enormously proud and happy to be able to celebrate louie with us tonight and i believe in hope that cassandra mccarthy her teacher is watching with us and i know the o'keeffe family is watching and so we congratulate louie and we are thrilled to be able to present this video and i turn it over to rich to help us with that thank you so much [Music] good evening it's a great pleasure that i join you to announce this month's recipient of the northern westchester boast this significant achievement is for students recognized by our staff for outstanding performance i also want to take a moment to thank you for your continued support we value our relationship with your school district look forward to continuing to
031serve your needs now for the student of distinction award hi thanks for joining us my pleasure to recognize who is a student here at our walton learning center mia likes to be referred to as louis louis is a dedicated and hardworking student who has made significant gains since school began louie has consistently been coming to school with a smile on her face louie lights up with excitement when it's time to learn and is truly an inspiration to us all she works diligently on her academic tasks and completing her assignments while working on her social skills and emotional growth helping her become more open while sharing with her peers with the support of our amazing teacher and classroom staff related service providers and our behavior support team louie has worked to develop her own pathways to
032success for all these reasons and more we have chosen mia louis o'keeffe receive the student of distinction award congratulations louis [Music] thank you and thank you again to dr ryan dr car tucker and to ms mccarthy congratulations to louie and we feel very grateful to be able to honor you and your family congratulations thank you thank you to the board for allowing that moment for us to have that celebration it really is a very special moment and we appreciate it thank you and congratulations louie thank you and without further ado uh then i think we're going to move on to 8.02 which is an opportunity to learn more about our elementary school enrollment full capacity um and to hear where things are holding thank you thank you marjorie um so uh we're just tonight gonna
033really begin a conversation this will be a complex conversation and tonight is just the start of it but we want a community to know where things stand at the moment in terms of enrollment among our three elementary schools and as you will see there are some challenges that we'll work together as a community uh to sort through so the first slide you see shows current elementary enrollment in this in this school year and you can see the total of 12 25 and you see right away increase miller with 482 students whereas kes has 396 and meadow pond has 347. so you see right away some discrepancy among the enrollment in the three schools as we continue to go forward this slide is showing our projections for next school year and also showing the projections that
034were made back in 2013 for the same school year and it's it's not a surprise that projections from that long ago would be quite different than they are today when when uh demographers are projecting out they're not going to uh predict uh accuracy for such an extended period of time but we think it's important for the community to see not just that there's a discrepancy in the overall enrollment but the discrepancy has grown significantly more it's grown more significant at increased miller where you see a difference of 159 students from what was projected whereas in the other two schools you see differences of 57 and 63. and you see that projected number for next year of 513 students at increased miller school and again that's widening the distance between increase miller and the two other
035schools and just to bring that point home in the next slide we point out the difference so with those projected numbers uh katona elementary next year would be 109 students smaller than increase miller but a pond would be 169 students smaller than increase miller and also 60 students more smaller than dona and in the next slide if the enrollment next year were divided evenly and that's not to say that it necessarily could be divided evenly depending on the capacity of each school but just hypothetically if it were we would be at about 420 students per school bill with the projected enrollment increase miller is 93 students larger than that that evenly balanced number katona is 16 smaller and meadowpond would be 76 smaller than that average moving on here you see the sections that we're
036projecting at this time it's it's it's early obviously in the year but we already start to project out um our needs for classroom space in the schools and what you see here again a significant difference with a projection of either 25 or 26 sections depending on how things break and what certain needs are at increase miller whereas only 18 and 17 sections classroom sections needed in the other two schools moving on now you start to see some of the very significant challenges and some of these challenges we would say are already in place at increased middle so the first bullet point mentions again the projection of 25 26 sections next year this year we have 24 sections at increase miller and this and the and that's already filling all of the classroom spaces in the
037school so you can imagine with 24 uh and that filling capacity the 25 or 26 next year becomes a significant concern in addition to the increased miller already small group instructional spaces and offices are being shared and common areas are being used by service providers not to say that that doesn't happen at all in the other schools it's happening more so at increased miller special area programs stream a space for a stream room is something that we've been looking at in recent years in elementary school we have capacity for it at the other two schools because of available space we don't have capacity for it at increased miller additionally uh no stage access for instance uh instrumental music performances and grade level performances and and increasingly challenging to schedule the gym because of uh when
038you're building the master schedule the more sections you have the more complicated it becomes to fit all of the things in our cafeteria space is already at capacity at increased miller now that's in part due to social distancing and the way we have individual chairs set up and they are extending onto the stage but we can't know at this time whether social distancing will continue to be a factor next year and if it is the concerns become that much more significant about how we provide for lunch at increased miller versus at the other two schools additionally enrichment programs after school programs are made more challenging by the space excuse me by the space issues as well as professional meeting spaces in the building because we're truly maxing out all of the available space we have
039and so as a result uh things like important professional meetings professional learning becomes more challenging to do those things at the school also so that takes us to the things we need to consider and there's a lot oops all right a slide too far things to consider do it again a very light touch on this remote things to consider uh there are many of them this is just the beginning there is a new housing development that is currently under construction on route 22. i believe it has 40 something units when it's to be completed it's a combination of one two and three bedroom um units in that construction we anticipate uh additional children coming to the district as a result currently though no one is yet living there and the construction isn't yet complete uh
040we have been in truck in touch with the developers so that we have a sense of their timeline if it goes according to plan it is in time for the next school year that's an if if it goes a coin plan some of the units will be online for next school year and currently that space is zoned for increase miller and the projected numbers that we showed earlier do not yet factor in additional children that might come from that development so we have to consider that we have to consider whether there are any alternative space options that we could employ at increased miller itself that's been done in the past could it be done again we would have to consider things such as the tolerance for increased class size at one school versus the other
041schools because one way to mitigate the number of sections is potentially to collapse in a situation where we might normally make a decision to break it into more sections right we stay at fewer sections in order to remain with all those students that increase miller similarly what's the tolerance for variation in programming in one of our elementary schools versus the other two we've for many years worked to maintain very consistent levels of programming across the three schools so that we can always say the experience no matter which of our schools you go to is very very comparable as space becomes tighter it becomes a little bit harder to say those things the one that's perhaps most complex of all is the idea of rezoning or some people will refer to it as redistricting in order
042to move some children currently at increased miller into one of the other schools and there might well be other considerations this is intended just to be an introduction of this topic tonight to make our community aware of the challenge that we face so some of the bullets there are the things that we're considering already and we anticipate that as we bring more people into the conversation we'll we'll uncover other considerations that have to be made also so the next slide is the final one in the presentation tonight which is to say that our next step will be to invite stakeholders into this conversation a conversation like this one which is a conversation that communities have to have from time to time is one that involves the community it's a complex conversation there isn't one predetermined
043outcome to a conversation like this there are a number of different scenarios that could result uh but the challenge is there and in front of us so our intention is very soon uh in fact tomorrow we'll send out a communication to inform all of our elementary school uh families of this challenge since it has the potential to impact all and then we'll we'll look for a date to have a first uh stakeholder discussion in which as you see there we'll work to better understand the challenges consider options discuss mechanisms for maximizing stakeholder input because this is the kind of conversation where you really want as much input and ownership over the decision as possible and then consider next steps at that first meeting so a complex conversation a relatively short presentation to begin it because
044it's just a question of putting the facts out there to begin and letting the community be aware this is a conversation that needs to be happening in the near future in our community so there are questions i'm happy to take them i don't think we put up a slide to say questions on this one but happy to field any questions thank you comments questions we really appreciate you bringing this information to us and to our community and helping us to think through it in a preliminary manner tonight um please alana just a quick question do you have a sense of the timeline of how long you think that the stakeholder engagement and when you might hope to have potential approaches yeah well there's the hope and there's the reality right so so the hope with
045budget season looming and decisions to be made the hope would be that it's a relatively condensed timeline whether that's possible remains to be seen because it'll depend you know what options we end up putting on the table what the reception is like what what the thinking is in the community is this just i think it's not possible for me to say at this time just a quick question um with the other schools that aren't as crowded there's capacity there yes okay i don't i as i said earlier i don't know that there's i don't want to misrepresent i don't know that there's capacity for the schools to be divided absolutely evenly we still have further study that we'd have to do but there is capacity in both the schools for additional students yes i think
046it is important to clarify what you just said a minute ago and it brings us back to the last board conversation we had about budget conditions where we did hear that you know enrollment in the elementary schools were [Music] uneven i think is the term that in an ideal world this is something you know again ideas not reality that could have implications as soon as this budget season potentially and therefore the next school year okay thank you other comments or questions at this time okay thank you thank you very much thank you and this brings us to 8.03 which is our last presentation for the evening i imagine we'll spend quite a bit of time on it but i'll just mention for members of the community who maybe haven't had a chance if you're thinking
047about signing up for public forum as soon as we're finished with this presentation we will make our way to public forum and we invite you to sign up again if you haven't had a chance i think there's a laptop in the back by the circulation desk and in the meantime i'm happy to turn it back to you andrew thank you thank you the next presentation to come up on the screen there we're going to switch to the report card presentation you can i heard him say one second okay so just by way of introduction this next presentation is the annually required school report card presentation we generally do it around this time of year we wait for certain assessment data come to us as we're going to say the beginning of this one it's a
048very different environment in which to be making this presentation in light of the last two years i will lay that out on the slides and explain some some differences in the format of the presentation you will still be sharing the data there we go thank you rich so uh we call this student feedback outcomes and experiences because um we are going to be looking at survey data that shares a lot of student feedback with us as well as outcomes as well as we always like to include a variety of different experiences that students have in our district because we think uh the real picture of how our students are doing is more complex uh and and more layered than any uh particular assessment outcomes but we also as i mentioned we're going to spend some
049time here on the context because the context for the past two years obviously has been different than anything we've previously encountered so again you see i need some i need oh there we go okay thank you oh somebody else is better at this i'm happy to hand it off okay so this shows us a little bit of what the last two years have looked like uh it may or may not be uh very clear in our memories but we've come through a lot uh in the 1920 school year schools were open and life seemed relatively normal from september through march very very abruptly march 13th was the date schools shut down and remain shut down through june of that year we made a transition as did the rest of the nation and the rest of
050the world to a fully virtual environment that none of us had ever really encountered before uh in the 2020 school year in july and august we were fortunate that the state gave permission at the last minute first districts to open uh the extended school year program in person we did that while at the same time offering a hybrid option for those who prefer to remain remote so we had both in that environment and then when the school year it's when the when the traditional school year began in september we were in hybrid mode initially with two days per week of instruction for the majority of students and a commitment to bring our youngest students and those with greatest needs into school four days per week and that happened progressively throughout the year at every moment
051that we could we brought more students in but still for a very large number it was that two days a week in school two days a week online and then the asynchronous wednesdays that we remember and that continued through into april and then in april may and june we were able to bring really the majority of students back in five days a week although a significant number continued in a fully remote option so we still had both experiences going on and so this is what the last two years of school have been and we have to factor that in when thinking about things like assessment outcomes in an extremely different environment and new york state is telling us to factor that in as we'll see more about in just a moment okay so now we
052think about uh how our goals and our focus shifted in these two years as a result obviously an emphasis on health and safety protocols like we've never experienced before in schools that that was last year and continues through to this year which which changes the way schools operate we also put an increased focus on social emotional learning and wellness all around for our students a significant focus on how to bring students back to school as frequently as possible starting with youngest and those with greatest need and an increased focus on diversity equity and inclusion creating a welcoming and infer firming environment for all these are all things that were significant for logistical reasons throughout the last two years for the taxing of capacity of school districts that we've read a lot about in the national
053news throughout the last two years for the changing nature of what instruction and what learning looks like in schools in the last two years next slide there we go as a result the emphases also that we place on certain things shift so we put an increased emphasis on asking our students uh particularly during the shutdown but it continued into the hybrid model of asking students and then in some cases families also what was working well and what they needed more we surveyed students during the shutdown and again during the fall of 2020 our messaging to staff throughout this period was an emphasis on knowing your students well and staying alert for signs of distress it continues to be the fact that mental health issues are significant in school-age populations across the country and i'm sure
054throughout the world we want to remain mindful of that we've asked all of our staff to remain mindful of that and that puts an emphasis on some things that may change in emphasis somewhere else during the shutdown there was a reduced emphasis on grading that was true in our district true in many districts regionally here which has again has impact on how you think about outcomes at the end of the 2020s the 1920 school year and we'll see more about this in a minute all the state tests and standardized tests were canceled in that year there were no assessments to be reported on and in 2021 as you'll again you'll see more about in the numbers themselves significantly reduce participation in the state tests and that's statewide as well as in our district and and
055even more significantly reduced position participation in regents exams because the state's decision there was that they would no longer be graduation requirements at the end of last year simply passing the course became the graduation requirement so so taking the exam was uh much more optional and as you'll see that resulted in far far fewer students participating in those exams and now we're going to start with some survey results and mary i'll i'll be happy to hand over to you at this moment if that's okay i'll keep trying my best with the slides here hey thank you good evening everyone good evening so our survey results for our senior survey um it was conducted after the ap exams so we do have and if andre wouldn't mind going to the next slide the response rate was
056significantly lower but we really did not want to prevent students from participating fully in instructional classes prior to the ap exam so you know we did give continual reminders but obviously they're involved in internships and some other things but some patterns did seem to be consistent throughout and that was about 35 of the class so this first question the percent of students who agree or strongly agree with the following statements and you can see some of the things there my classes give me useful preparation for what i plan to do in life what we learn in class is necessary high school teaches me valuable skills an adult helped me plan for life after high school the the results are very similar um to the last year there are some drops and i think you'll see
057this kind of pattern throughout in many of the surveys and even some of our assessment data there are some ups and downs i think you know to andrew's point these results all raise more questions for us in terms of what else does this mean what other questions might we ask of the data so we don't necessarily think that every time we see an increase it's very good news or we see an increase it's very bad news we just need more context so you'll see some ups and downs there but it is nice to see that final number i'm getting a good education at klsd and the next slide so the question is during your high school years how involved were you in the following activities at john jay high school not outside of school so
058you see lots of participation in athletics um music was down a bit but there were fewer opportunities when you think of all the social distancing restrictions that we had so again you see some of the patterns kind of stay very similar across all of the different activities um but there are those are places the next question is please rate the quality of your instruction and then level of intellectual engagement specifically at john jay high school in the following areas so this is you know an interesting question when you think about high school seniors or their level of intellectual engagement are they interpreting that as more difficult are they interpreting that as really being fully engaged and passionate and in that state of flow um so again asking lots and lots of questions um you know
059some of the thing areas were down some subjects were up but again we you know we look for trends over time so a smaller sample size knowing all the parameters and restrictions around covid i think we just need to look at this in light of several years and continue to ask some questions get more data on this next slide it's the percent of students who said most teachers i had for class at john jay high school and then some of the stems make school interesting for me pay attention to all students really care about me explain things in a way i can understand tell me how i do on classwork tests and homework assignments so that feedback piece and the last two numbers again you know when we think about social emotional wellness it's nice
060to see they know who i am and treat me with those are our numbers that hopefully will continue to stay strong we did add a few new questions so this would be baseline data there's nothing to compare it to but thinking about our work on diversity equity and inclusion we thought it was important to ask some of these questions these are things that came up in conversations throughout the year so we also asked these questions on our graduate survey as well so this first question did you experience a welcoming and affirming environment that felt safe during your time at klsd you can see the numbers there again you know reading comments and things like that is very important and getting a little more context around this hopefully in the future we can even have some
061focus groups around these questions the next one is did you find yourself represented and reflected treated with respect and dignity in and out of classes i went to again i'm sorry did it go back i can just read those numbers if you'd like um oh there it oh i think on this there's is first one that's it so where we had 80 saying yes sometimes and then the final new question that we asked did you feel the environment ensured that all cultural identities were affirmed valued and as used as vehicles for teaching and learning and then we specified those identities were defined as race ethnicity age gender sexual orientation disability language religion socioeconomic background and you can see the numbers there so a little more variation in those numbers yeah which can be helpful to
062us into knowing you know where there's room for growth and when we see some new questions okay now we go into our graduate survey so each year we in the spring usually in may we send out a request to our recent graduates so after their freshman year in college we're asking them to now reflect after having been in college for a year on their experience here at ketone lewisboro and how well it prepared them so we had 58 respondents which is only 24 of the class that's not very unusual like the year before we hit 65. we do send out reminders over the summer but as you might imagine it's hard to ensure that we're reaching all students so on this slide you can see the results for 2018 2019 and 2020 and we asked
063students my high school did a good or excellent job at and asked them to check all that applied um some of the things were actually conflicting messages confidence to set high goals went down but encouragement of independent thinking was kind of steady writing research papers and oral communication skills was higher mary sorry i'm sorry i think i'm on the wrong slide again are you reading from this one now or the next one oh i was on the next i apologize that's all right did you touch on this one no okay should i else i'll go back to this one then sorry about that okay sorry uh the question here was how prepared were you to do the following in your academic work at college and these are students who answered prepared or very prepared they've
064in this slide it seems they were best prepared for working effectively with others although that went down a bit from 2019 but again you wonder about the experience that these students had as freshmen in college and what were the opportunities to work collaboratively and were those opportunities in person or were they remotely so just really interesting to think about learning effectively on your own about steady at seventy-five percent that's interesting nope you wanted to okay and this is the slide i was starting to speak about before sorry about that and i was mentioning some of the the messages that seem a little bit conflicting there about writing um understanding of the college process was down yet ensuring that the right high school courses were taken was up so it's interesting so we have to look
065at this you know in conjunction with other information that we have other questions on the same survey looking back at when these students you know answer their senior survey questions as well and again always looking for patterns and trends the next one so how satisfied with you with where your height with your high school experience again it's you know upsetting to see that number decline um and yet we don't know you know the impact of ovid on that as well the end of their senior year certainly was very very different and then some of those new new questions were asked again the one about the welcoming and affirming environment that felt safe during the time at klsd so a little different than our seniors i'd say not as positive and then finding yourself represented and
066reflected with respect and dignity in and out of classes also a little more variable there and that third new question we did ask but we had a technical glitch in their responses yes so we're not able to unfortunately to present that data yes so the last data will speak about the seeming as challenge success survey data so last april you'll remember uh right before we shut down it was actually the week of march 9th we did challenge success surveys with our middle and high school students and with middle and high school parents as well and we just finished and i think parents actually were answering through the first few weeks of shutdown so we looked at those results we reviewed them last year with the board but we wondered how different they might be and
067continue our conversations and partnerships with challenge success and they offered this updated mini survey so it was kind of a condensed version just some of the questions that they had asked before in april so we had about 66 of our middle school students and it was just for students by the way and uh 44 of our high school students participating in this survey so you may remember this they ask these questions they ask students to rank their major sources of stress and they were very similar from year to year and they're also very similar middle to high school but the major source continues to be all times at all grade levels grades tests quizzes finals and other assessments so that that is a big stressor um overall workload and homework continue to be big stresses
068and it starts to vary a bit depending on the grade and the survey that we gave things like a lack of time to play relax or be with friends lack of sleep procrastination uh for our high school students college and university a little bit higher in sometimes a lack of specific class or classes was another piece it's worth noting that the number seven source of stress this time around in numbers for middle school and number six for high school was mental health concerns so anything to do with anxiety or depression that was also another source of stress for our students and then this question was about the percent of students who feel they have an adult at school that they can go to if they have a personal problem so the numbers are fairly similar
069from year to year um you know and they identified who they would go to first so the first person they would go to is a teacher then followed by guidance counselors psychologists or social workers athletic coaches or assistant coaches and other staff so overall for our survey data that really helps us to know a lot more about the social emotional well-being of our students um and as i said before it really raises questions for us you know what things do we really need to look out for when we think about all those stressors grading tests homework um these are things we want to think about more and i think that you know even worldwide the conversations around covid have been around these values right what's really important in the learning process and what do we
070perhaps need to reconsider so now we'll take a look at some of our assessment data and just to speak a little bit about how we use it and the goals of using assessment data we want to better understand the student experience in order to improve instruction and improve learning so the kind of reports range from this kind of reporting to all of you to also the individual student reports that many of our parents receive in terms of state tests or even local tests students who might be considered for additional supports um and these some questions there that you can see questions that teachers and administrators might ask um so you know these assessments and we have to look at all of them and look at it holistically but they do influence our thinking about resources
071about curriculum about strategies about professional learning even when it comes to budget it starts to influence some of our thinking about what's needed and where we need to invest there are some of the actions that we take around the data listed there i think it's really important to note the first one using multiple measures to assess student understanding especially in a year like this where there are changes in many of the assessments they look very different so we need to think about multiple measures so that we can get that accurate picture of student performance so this slide just summarizes some of the pandemic's impact especially on the state assessments so you know during the shutdown there were no tests given in grades three through eight that year and no regents exam last year the year
072were reporting on this evening the participation rate across the state was 40 percent and the estate really asked us to look for 95 percent for accountability which is very high that's not typically what we have here but we were much lower this year but we'll talk about that on the next slide participation rate was significantly higher in some districts and significantly lower in others so there were some districts where just a few students took tests and others where many or most of the students took the test i think most significantly they were shortened from two days which had been a change from two years prior from three days they went down to two and last year they were just one and the one day was all multiple choice um whereas in the previous year there
073was one day that was extended responses so students could explain their thinking for some students that actually helped they might find it easier especially if writing is a challenge and for some students it appears it made it more difficult regents exams also were removed as a graduation requirement so the participation was much lower in regents exams and nicer has warned us about making comparisons year to year because it really is not comparing apples with apples it's very very different and on the next slide you'll see the participation rate so you can see that you know we're usually around 85 percent of students participating and that dropped significantly last year we were more in the range of 64 65 percent the next slide we'll show you the regions so when you think about numbers of students
074who participated you can see this is a very drastic difference um and we will report on the two that had the participation over 20 students that is a very very different number so we want to show you some other measures as well so we use aims web plus that is a standardized norm referenced assessment that we give in reading and mathematics it's one indicator of academic performance but it helps us you know have a big picture view of students in relationship to peers when we think about you know how they relate to peers across the nation those national norms are really helpful to us but when they are identified by aims web plus we take a closer look with other assessments so you can see that over and last year we presented this data for
075the first time in absence we didn't have any 3 8 data to present to you last year so we thought that this might be the most helpful um so we looked at students who are in the average above average or well above average ranges according to those national norms and so you can see it's not very very different from year to year it looks fairly similar i would say those aren't significant changes but there's something that we always look at obviously when you look at individual student data or even in a class or a grade level you look more closely for patterns and trends um it is interesting there was a national study nwea which is a similar assessment that's given in many schools and they've we're doing a study on covid slide and they
076found that nationally and this was last fall students fill about five percentage points in math but generally in the aggregate at least held steady in reading so it's interesting when you think about math instruction and how sequential it is it does make some sense right so if there was something that you did not learn or learn as well it could be a real gap for you so it's sometimes very difficult to assess and identify those gaps whereas in general you're reading and writing and listening and speaking all of the time in all subject areas so there's more opportunity for those gaps to be filled but now we'll take a look at some of the results of our new york state assessments and as we've mentioned before and this isn't different the state gives us four
077levels levels one two three and four three being where we consider it proficient level four is excelling level two they consider partially proficient in the common core learning standards and on track still but we generally only look at levels three and four as proficient this is our 3 8 ela data and you can see those participation rates there and then the percent of students receiving a 3 or a four in grades three through eight and so there's some oh i went on to math sorry mary were you going to speak to the ela yes well i'm visiting your life okay so yeah obviously you know you see some variation in grades there but again it's very hard to say that we can compare even from year to year and the state is actually asking us
078not to do that we'll look at the math that's it i got it um so the math you know as you can see those middle school grades are lower you know in particular the eighth grade it is of note that many of the students um in eighth grade take algebra and many of them took the algebra regents instead of this so there's a portion of the population that's actually not or presumably chose not to take this they do have the option of taking both but many of them took the algebra regions which we'll show you in a minute that's the next slide there so of the ones who chose to take the regents obviously very high those were the only two tests where more than 20 students were tested algebra and earth science so looking
079to some other ways that we monitor student progress at high school one is the graduation rate which has remained very strong over time and you'll see some pictures there from palisades park last june um jonathan franz was our valedictorian and remington sandel was our salutatorian and we have our national merit scholarship semi-finalists uh liliana cara and jonathan france yeah thank you so these are advanced placement a summary of the ap exams from may of 2021 so it's interesting to note that they were administered somewhere online and some were administered here at school that was difficult with social distancing quite honestly so some of the smaller ones were administered here at school where some where there was more participation were administered at home we had 470 students taking 1022 exams so you can see the results
080there mary this is actually an area where participation went up from the prior year the prior year the aps were given but they were entirely online yes and numbers went down quite a bit this year the numbers participating came back up a little bit close to where they typically are yes there were i think 391 prior year and now we have 470 so many more students taking them again and so these are the the threes fours and fives um broken down as well as the percent of klsd students who got threes fours or fives and as compared to the national average in the right hand column so you'll see that many in this slide are higher than the national average last year i think but the lower participation these were optional so right in the
081midst of covid many more students took the test this time around so you know you could ask a lot of questions about that as well it was optional i think students who felt really good about taking them once who took the test on the next slide oops some others the ones with the asterisk are the ones that were given here at john jay high school the others were taken online at home so again lots of you know variation ups and downs from the some higher than the national average some lower obviously that's of concern um when it's lower but we always want to ask the good questions about that and think about the overall experience you can't see the slide is chemistry at the top yes yeah okay that's the one yeah the vision test
082is given at home yeah i'm sorry i can't i can't see this from there are we moving on man yes thank you so some other aspects of the school experience that we want to showcase as well athletics arts some of our internships and showcases and competitions here are some pictures from our athletics program this year or last year rather we had 26 scholar athlete team awards and that means that there was a gpa of 90 or higher for 75 percent of the team so it's quite an accomplishment especially with the strong commitment that being on an athletic team brings along with it go to the next one so then we have some stream highlights so just reminding everyone stream is science technology research engineering arts and mathematics so some of our showcases and competitions you
083can see there the bedford green light there were virtual science fairs the ftc robotics competition math counts science olympiad so we had uh on the slide there grace mango and eliza wein two of the students whose work was recognized in the [Music] it's westchester rockland junior senior high school research symposium in 2021 the virtual bedford green light competition we took second place um you see a student from kes there their virtual science fair he was um showing how sea salt moved to ice and then two medalists in the science olympiad we also had this year as well so lots of things happened virtually some things happened in person but it's good to see that they were all happening the next slide is about performing arts at high school we had the laramie project in january
084that was on zoom um then changes which was an ethno drama that had in-person rehearsals but the performance was on zoom in june and then rumors uh was student-directed spring comedy and that was in person also in june of 2021 so we had a real mixture there and this is just a slide that shows many of our senior internships so you see the participation in senior internships is very very strong so most students do participate in some form of senior internship uh last year was about 94 of the class and the year before we had projects instead of traditional internships when most of them were not possible um and the prior year in 2018 i'm sorry in 2018 19 rather we had 97 percent of the class participating it has been going up steadily and
085moving on to middle school performing arts we had pump boys and dinettes uh recorded live streamed and in person for parents in june of 2021. and our music program in performing arts so it was difficult to have the kinds of concerts and performances that we typically have um nisma had a virtual solo festival there was a winter conference but there was a john jay middle school rock the halls concert back in june and then finally for visual arts the young artists show at the catona museum of art in february so there you see some seventh grade social justice comic books that our students were working on um in the middle you see students learning how to properly photograph their art for their digital portfolios and then some of our visual arts club doing some sharing
086so although it was challenging to think about how we share all of that wonderful work people were coming together and sharing it so it was really nice to see thank you mary yeah thank you we really um appreciate all of the work to coordinate this overview and also thank you for your dedication to interviewing our students and graduates and for continuing to engage them in reflection around their experiences in our school district i think that's something relatively unique that we do and understandably participation rates are different but really important to keep up the effort and so thank you for that piece as well and you know really important to think back over all of the shifts that have occurred in the past couple of years and the impact on our opportunity to collect assessment information
087um helpful to get a look at it and i really appreciate the opportunity to engage in some conversation so thank you and i'll turn the floor open to board colleagues please bill um as always i think we shouldn't gloss over in any way that i applaud the dedication and approach in doing this surveying your high school students asking them questions so how we're doing is no mean feat um ditto with going more than the bare minimum you have to in terms of data uh and various outcomes i applaud that i think it's a great model of how continuous improvement is supposed to be and so in terms of teaching by you know modeling behavior i think that's exemplary um i just have some quick points and i do have two questions but they're extended answer
088not multiple choice um i i think it's absolutely true that because of the response rate and so many other things being different this year it is i think inappropriate to compare year to year um other than i think if there are certain patterns that continue and you know this is the fifth year in a row of then that might be more of a true signal um and then as you said you know then reacting to the signals is the key uh in some ways it was remarkable there wasn't more change so many other things were fairly in the same ballpark uh i guess if less people take it but it's the same slice of people maybe you'll get similar answers um i do at some level at least for some of the numbers um if
089you're going to talk about things going up or down you do have to get into statistical significance because otherwise 77 might look different from 74 but it's not a real difference and it depends on the sample size and other things so at least to some degree that i think that would help isolate the numbers that are different differences are changing but also watch the compound questions i think some of the new questions are great but they asked was a b c d and e good or bad and suppose c was good and a was fine you know either break it up into several questions or somehow make it that it's a answer one answer one answers the others in the same direction and then i i would uh encourage us to um present the data
090as you did here but also slice out the higher achieving so percentage who got a three and a four is nice how many got a four uh you know who was average above average well above average and the ames web is nice also want to see who's above average and well above average it's a it's a center cone you know especially for our district i think it'll be a more um sensitive measure of how things are going and then the two questions i have one is just very mundane is that um for the graduation rate what's the denominator is it within four years of like isn't there an official thing like it's the percentage of high school um students who start in ninth grade who graduate within four or five years yeah i think it's
091it's within cohort i believe yeah on a cohort model okay cohort yeah um but i know there are different there are some variations in how that is reported and looked upon so okay we'll try to clarify that i'm fairly certain ours is a four-year graduation rate really certainly yes all the more impressive then and then um in addition to following the ups and downs as always i think you guys are very good at pursuing that my final question would be do you have a sense of what the story is going to be for this spring how much back to normal versus the same as last year versus some new we don't know yet in terms of state testing we don't know i think we're making the assumption that we're going back to the way things
092were um it's really interesting with the ela and math tests in particular so next year is supposed to be the last year that the states will the tests will be based on common core state standards and now move to next generation standards in the following year so the presumption is that those tests will change so they'll have this year the 22 tests and then the 23 tests will be something different so that's interesting and more they're pushing us more and more to do computer-based testing and there were so many problems with that in the past so we'll do whatever pilot testing but our overall testing will not be computer-based testing all the big stakes testing now you know college and you know sats and mcats and other tests a lot of them are on online
093right so it's interesting you know we didn't have to make that leap right now and we felt like with all the changes you really couldn't compare it would be another reason not to compare but we will be moving in that way and we do we are doing some research to prepare because we know it's coming but that is interesting too when you think about especially in math um students really feel that need to kind of draw the problem there is some research around that um so it it will be interesting to see how that goes mary i think it's i think it's also true though that new york state has applied for a waiver to the federal government again for the uh accountability factor on the state test so whether that happens and whether it
094has any meaning for us not clear at this point it may not have any meaning for us and the regions i was struck by how reduced it was i know it wasn't required but yeah it's like a lot of people just mentioned it very quickly i wonder if that's going to be reintroduced more this year yeah yeah i'm not sure and and the rule was if you were passing the course then you didn't have to take the regents exam yeah so i think if students felt assured that they were passing the course but i also think that students who knew they could do really well obviously those numbers were so strong so i think those were the students who chose to take it absolutely but one wonderful stuff great job thank you thank you bill
095other comments questions um i really appreciate both the qualitative and quantitative sort of assessment tools that you're using and particularly the focus at this moment on knowing students and that sort of that refocus at this moment and time on the relationship between a teacher and student and that being so important to learning um my question i i notice a lot of the data the way that it's presented is sort of where we're at that level at expectation and above and i was just curious how what our approach is to sort of students that are falling below and kind of not meeting those standards and how do we direct resources or how do you sort of read into that so in academic areas if they're falling below um generally what happens is we will look at
096them with with this part of our rti plan so we have some assessments that are given to all students and then others that are given to students if you're say below on aims web then we'll follow up with an independent reading inventory or a writing sample you know and looking at classwork and so that will determine services typically and that usually happens kind of in a big picture way in the fall usually at early october it happens again mid-year and then there's some meetings again at the end of the year when we do those end-of-year assessments but in between there are always at each school there are rti meetings so if a student comes up in between those testing periods and say they really weren't showing up in the fall but now that i've had
097the opportunity as a teacher to be in class with this student i'm now getting more and more concerned and i need to bring them to the rti teams that's usually some clinicians are on that team an administrator the classroom teacher and the interventionist but we also have so part of that is also social emotional interventions which we also you know worry about a lot and think about more we had a meeting of our social emotional wellness committee last week and we were talking about those kind of tier one intervention so not necessarily when a student has to go out of the classroom to see a clinician but what can the teacher do in the classroom to help students regulate emotions to work through frustrations things like that so it's there are things in place and
098i think our faculty are really great at thinking about coming together and talking through you know what's happening with the student trying to really understand and know the student well but also looking at multiple data points and multiple sources of information did you have other questions ilana okay thank you mary if i heard you correctly when you were speaking about the nwea you mentioned that that's given in many schools and i just wondered if you could comment on whether do any schools use aims web plus in addition to nwea typically it's one or the other or some other tool like that that gives that kind of um standardized norm referenced information okay yes and um is there a reason that we use one or the other are there are there preferences do people have reasons
099when a district uses one or the other is there some reputation or something that one of these tools i'm just trying to understand how a district yeah it's interesting we've been using aims web and then aims web plus for quite a few years i believe about 10 years in this district um and so they both give a similar type of information i'm not as familiar i have not given nwea or i'm not as familiar with it um so it's interesting some colleagues have been bringing it i think that study kind of highlighted it but i think they're similar in the type of tool they are okay um but each has strengths and weaknesses thinking about like subtests and things like that and what they can hopefully provide okay thank you yeah i've heard about ames
100web plus for a while but you know the nwea was new and i i think i'm just interested in that because the n value for the aims plus testing was so high and i'm not even sure how did we get that level of participation i remember that with the state tests they were only offered to students who were in person in school so like out of the gate the test taking population excluded anybody who was home for 100 of the time how did we get the same level of participation for our ames web data compared to previous years and and it feels like um such a great opportunity to have data with a good end value i imagine and that's why i was asking about nwea like this feels like a treasure trove compared to
101i mean to the extent that we're interested in these measures we've got a much healthier end value here than anywhere else except for one other place that i'll get to in a second if you can comment and i think part of it is that we were able to give it on the computers and you know push it out remotely to ipads okay so we were able to kids could take each more soon so students who were remote students um were able to take that and there's a whole testing app that shuts down other apps on the ipad um so it's a little complicated in a technical way but it did allow us um to reach more students that's great you're lucky um and the other end value that i just wanted to comment on or
102really participation rate is more i guess what it's about is the number and the percentage of students who are doing the senior internships that is such a high number and it has been high now for a few years but especially to think about what's gone on in recent times and that we're able to provide internship opportunities for 240 students and also to point out that over five years we basically doubled the number of internships and i think i bring that up because from my perspective that really creates hopefulness around cultural change that can be affected if we really set our mind to it and it raises the question and the possibility like what other cultural changes might we try to affect in our elementary schools in our middle school in high school but this really
103was a very dedicated conversation about what used to be called but nobody even talks about it anymore senior slump where after the ap exams you know students checked out and to look back five years ago and i don't have it up but the number was like 100 and i don't know something 40. and um you know we basically doubled it in five years that's really amazing that's a testament to just you know somebody or a variety of people really keeping their eye on the ball and trying to think about what's best for students and it's exciting that we're doing that and very hopeful to think about other ways in which we can affect cultural change if we read the signals and pay attention to the data and figure out what our community values and where
104we're trying to go such a credit to so many local businesses yes different aspects of the community when i look at the list of all the different places our students intern yes it's really impressive and so varied yes so you know it's it's a credit to the whole community that we were able to do that yeah i think i remember it wasn't so many years ago that we had some of those students come back and talk about the experience right you spoke so glowingly about it maybe we could do that again that that was terrific i remember yeah specifically like uh someone who was um became an em did emt training yeah that was very human yeah and it is it's such a healthy sign of the partnership with our community and the variety of
105enterprises that are represented in our community industries so that was really great to see and then the last thing i just wanted to touch on if you have an update at all is the regents exams because that came up in conversation and obviously last year the participation rate was really low and the state didn't even require them but my sense is that there's an even bigger conversation happening around the future of regents exams and the state at one point before the pandemic i thought was looking to alternative pathways to graduation and i'm really not sure whether that's stalled or whether that's very active right now um but i feel as if you know once you experience a real disruption in your practice like two years running the likelihood that it's gonna fully come back online
106seems diminished so i wondered if you have a sense of what's happening and your colleagues talking about that i don't think we do i think i think it might be fair to characterize the current board of regents as being a group that's not particularly pro those assessments but i also control regions [Music] not for regents exams and um and at the same time i think as in so many other places i think capacity is such that i don't know that that's a focus at the moment you know i don't know that they're able to carry that initiative forward and then just while we're on the regions it was confusing to me that the algebra and earth science data which was you know great but why is it characterized as three four five i thought that
107was on a scale of zero to a hundred percent so i was not understanding that that's a that's a change just in how we were able to gather and capture the data so that the tests do still result in that numerical number okay but new york state translates that into a three four five we don't typically report it that way but this year was all we had access to i believe okay thank you i just i wasn't aware and on that same note that has the state even released statewide uh three to eight data if you go on the their website data.nyc.gov and they have um you can see all the breakdowns but they are not comparing students or you know districts to other districts or you know districts to state um and that's on
108purpose interesting thank you wonderful really i mean that's such a deep dive we understand how resource intensive this presentation is we really appreciate that you were able to pull this together i'm sure this was a team effort absolutely and it's really important and helpful for us to see so thank you so much thank you we really appreciate it thank you thank you thanks mary okay we'll be back in i think this brings us to public forum so we're at 9.01 and um it's my pleasure and just a moment to invite community members to speak with us again we request that you please try to keep your remarks to about three minutes and please introduce yourselves and let us know who you are and where you live in the community and if you have children in
109our schools we won't be engaging in back and forth because we really do view this as our opportunity to listen to public comment and um so thank you for your patience and i think we're ready to start and the first person is michael novak please hello my name is michael novik and i'm a resident of katona and i've had three children go through kl schools from beginning to end i'm upset to hear about the problems within the special education system and confused as to why review and change has not occurred i'm also an occupational therapist working at southern westchester boces and a member of the crisis intervention team i thought i would be helpful to hear how behavior management and restraints when needed occur i'm just having trouble breathing this mask on and talking at
110the same time so i'm sorry so we we utilize tcis at southern westchester boces and it's a team approach where five to six uh team members are trained with um a week-long inter intervention and then they come back and they um yeah i know i'm fine it's just so we can hear you just fine please feel free to continue thank you so uh every summer they go every other summer they go and they get retrained on a crisis intervention they come back and they train uh staff members who desire to be part of the team it's all voluntary and those members uh go for um a week-long intensive about 30 hours of training and then every year they redo the training um the core element of the approach is de-escalation and the the techniques include
111listening and validating feelings giving choices to give give time to process and decide give the individual an opportunity to redirect and give positive activities and then if needed removing the classroom from the environment rather than the student also in tcis we work with classroom teachers to be proactive in order to educate and avoid problem behaviors and again it's a collaborative approach and it helps with the demands of the teachers in the classrooms and we give knowledgeable support within the classrooms important to note is that restraint is a last resort and it happens only if the child is a danger to himself or others restraints don't occur for people throwing things or being disruptive and loud in class and only if we have s only if we have exhausted the de-escalation process is a restraint used
112again only if they're danger to themselves or others um restraints when they're used the child is examined by the school nurse after every event the parent is informed after every event the restraint is documented and tcis members will meet and they'll go over the fba the vip and anything that could have been done differently during that that occasion so the tcis model is emphasized with support and teaching coping skills most importantly it's been effective within sw boces and i've seen a significant reduction in the number of times we've had to use restraints so thank you for letting me speak about this thank you thank you jacqueline klein please hello my name is jacqueline klein i'm a long-time resident and speech language pathologist and special educator i spoke at the november 4th meeting i'm here again
113tonight to address the comments during the board dialogue after the public forum had ended that evening i have listened to the board's dialogue on youtube several times now first of all thank you to mrs schneier for your ability to read the room and understand how parents are feeling so grateful for that in terms of the comments of the other board members it seems that you could not understand why parents were angry or afraid you were not sure of why parents were getting up here to speak and relating upset repetitively it really is apparent and has been quite clear for many months the incidents that have occurred have been quite serious for eight months now there has been little if any response can you imagine if you were concerned about the welfare of your child you
114spoke to your concern but had no response over and over again would that build confidence would it build trust or faith no it would understandably cause further distress anger growing mistrust and fear it's understandable i know it's cliche but put yourself in these parents shoes imagine putting your child on the bus each day a child that cannot tell you in any way about what happens during that day put yourself in their shoes i bet you would feel some nerves at the very least now imagine needing to put your child on the bus to school knowing about these issues that have occurred in our special ed classrooms of course there is anger fear mistrust all normal and all exacerbated exacerbated by the lack of response and communication from this board response and communication would sound like
115here are the steps we are planning to take here is the scope and depth of our plan here is how we will communicate with parents and parents may be involved besides the inability to read the room and understand the upset on november 4th there are certain comments made by dr rifkin during the board's dialogue that were hurtful to me personally as a community member and i believed to us as a community i listened to it several times to be sure of what i was hearing he conveyed that only the parent of the child who was involved in the issue should speak up and he seemed to say that others speaking were more that others speaking up were more representative of hearsay he said about listening to all the parents speak at the last meeting that
116quote much of the discussion and the examples is not their child it's i heard that or my kid was here and did fine and i am very concerned that i heard all this horrible stuff it would be most helpful to speak of their own personal experience he continued quote it has to be my kid here's what i think happened he said quote it's not appropriate to talk about it if it's not your kid that was unreal to hear from a board member are we supposed to care only about ourselves and our own in this world of course not we as human beings support each other and stand up for what we believe is right standing up for one another is what we teach our children from the beginning and from a historical perspective it is
117what has changed our world for the better it shouldn't have to happen to you for it to matter to you i repeat it shouldn't have to happen to you for it to matter to you the issue of behavior management as well as the literacy concerns brought up for years both matter please don't just tell us that you are engaged and caring about these issues show us respond with the seriousness that these issues warrant communicate with the people of your community it was nice to hear some bits about dr volkmar's visit tonight but it was the first time i think that details of any sort were given in for the last eight months um it i still have questions and i'm sure some of the parents do um what was the scope and depth of dr
118volkmar's involvement what records has he been provided to review when did he or will he meet with concerned parents what steps are being taken right now to review the special education programs what steps are being taken right now to improve behavior management thank you pia miller [Music] i was going to bring a stool and i totally forgot the first time i met oksana sun lev a 13 year old boy who is non-verbal was this past september a group of us were sitting outside when love came out and sat across from me i introduced myself and asked him if he liked to swim in response he got up out of his chair walked over to me put his hand on my face and gently turned it toward the pool then he pointed to himself pointed to
119the pool and touched his heart he could have just nodded his head yes or ignored me but instead he chose to connect with me and communicate he answered me in a complete sentence as we teach our children to do and yet i've come to your proverbial house eight or nine times recently i've asked you questions much more important than if you like to swim i've offered you the opportunity to engage in dialogue via a town hall and with the exception of ms schneier you have yet to communicate with me or other parents in the same way a thirteen-year-old boy without spoken words did the very first time that he met me so tonight i'm going to try something a bit different i'm going to spend the remainder of my time simply asking you questions you
120don't have to take notes because i've printed out several copies of my questions and i will hand them over to ms monzone and you can have them available to reference during board dialogue i'll begin why haven't you reached out to ask us about our concerns and what policies we'd like to see changed or created that's what elected officials do if u.s senators can reach out to their constituents so can you why haven't you put our issues on your agenda anytime during the last eight months what are you doing to determine if there is a systemic issue in the special education department what is actually preventing you from beginning or authorizing an independent audit of the special education department do you ever reach out to the teachers both special ed and gen ed individually to ask
121them what kind of support and training they want or need do you ask them for their feedback i'm not talking about their principles or the administration i'm asking you regarding the teachers themselves on tuesday the u.s surgeon general issued a public health advisory on the mental health challenges confronting youth saying that symptoms of depression and anxiety have doubled during the pandemic and special needs children by the way were in that increased category he called for a broad-based and rapid response from government social media companies community groups schools teachers parents and even students have any of you read the report is this district planning to follow any of the recommendations provided if so which ones mr seleznick telling teachers to stay mindful for signs of distress is severely inadequate mischief i read your editorial in today's
122katona lewisboro times and you wrote that the board was unable to attend our town hall due to open meeting laws not only was this reason not provided in your rsvp to us on behalf of the board but if you had truly wanted to attend you could have reached out to us to ensure all those rules were followed because to my knowledge they actually were we held the event in a facility that provided barrier-free physical access to the physically handicapped provided video conferencing for those who were unable to attend in person allowed our meeting to be open to the press and followed all of the requirements for public notice so what part of the open meeting law prohibited you and the entire board from attending and mr celesnek while i'm glad you're consulting with an expert
123on autism what about all the rest of the kids with ieps do you plan to bring in other experts like russ barkley or ned hallowell and have them observe children with adhd what about children with other disabilities who receive services how will those issues be addressed i have so many more questions but i know i'm already out of time so i'll leave you with this it's a quote from u.s senator dianne feinstein no child left behind requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and reaching their highest potential special education students should not be left out of this accountability thank you and one more quick thing on behalf of my daughter who was mrs white in clue at the john jay middle school play thank you to all of you who
124attended i know they're very grateful they loved performing for really a full house the nights i was there thank you thank you good evening um my name is hope herbert i am the parent of a student and one of the self-contained classes at increased miller i first want to thank jackie for acknowledging the board comments on november 4th i think it's important that we all pause for a second and appreciate the fact that this is a civil rights issue and if everybody had kept quiet when george floyd was murdered by police there wouldn't be the justice that he received so to ask us to keep quiet when another autistic child was abused is unfair anyway as time goes on and our group continues advocating for special education students in the district it seems that rather
125than obtaining any concrete answers our list of questions just keeps growing so tonight i would like to begin by asking a few questions i hope that during board dialogue some answers will be provided regarding cameras in special education classes can you please explain the reasons why it is such a complicated issue moving on now to legal fees why does klsd employ two law firms one is general counsel and one a special ed council i happen to know that our general counsel firm in german smith provides special education services to many school districts similarly mr pettigrew's firm provides general counsel services to many school districts how much is kosd's retainer with ingerman smith how much is klsd's retainer with thomas drohan waxman pettigrew and maylie what do each of these retainers cover how do we as
126taxpayers pay out of pocket for each attorney and how long has the district worked with these attorneys now i have some questions for superintendent celeznick although i have to edit some of them because he did provide some information on dr volkmar's visit um he mentioned that dr volkmar spent four hours um but i've heard and i will admit this is hearsay that he only spent 20 minutes in my son's special ed class at increase miller what feedback did dr volkmer provide specifically regarding the k-2 special class at increase miller when will i have an opportunity to speak with dr volkmer about his feedback i understand the parent meeting but it sounds to me as though the entire parent community will be invited and i don't see in the meeting with potentially hundreds of people how
127i one of the few parents of autistic children in the self-contained classes will have time to receive the feedback that i deserve when will my teachers my son's teachers therapists and aides have an opportunity to receive feedback and ask questions and i specifically reference aids one-to-one aids because our children work with one-to-one age all day long and i'm entirely unclear the level of training that they receive they should be included in this process with dr volkmar and i hope that they are i'm going to stick around until board dialogue tonight even though it's very late in hopes of receiving answers to my questions before my three minutes are up um i wanted to address one other issue last night i or last month i emailed trustee burke who was not here tonight to follow up
128on his comments at the november 4th boe meeting regarding cameras and self-contained classrooms because he said it was an issue he would like more insight into but also mention that it's complicated so i wanted to know what those complications are mr burke replied that miss schiff would respond to me as boe president on behalf of the entire board and although i'm still unclear why mischief has to speak on behalf of trustees and they cannot speak for themselves i waited for her email and when i received it i was perplexed rather than address anything i had asked in my email to trustee burke miss schiff wrote extensively about klsd's extended school year program there was no mention of cameras and self-contained classrooms rather she told me the district's commitment to providing extended school year service to
129special education students is evidence that quote klsd has taken great pride and care in providing the very best educational opportunities possible for all students and especially our special education students i happened to catch mischief's letter in the klsd times today and has saw that you again chose to wrote about the extended school year program claiming that the boe advocated to safeguard extended school year by calling on state assembly and senate to vote against a special education reduction in the 2018-19 state executive budget so for those who are not aware a federal law called the individuals with disabilities education act entitles all students in this country to a free and appropriate public education if it is demonstrated that a child would experience regression over summer break the law entitles that child to a 12-month school year
130which is commonly known as extended school year or esy miss schiff students like my son who we regress on weekends during school breaks and in fact overnight are entitled to esy as a civil right klsd and all public school districts in this country have an obligation under federal law to provide education to these students over the summer regardless of how much funding the state budget provides to these programs it is insincere to claim that your self-serving actions and safeguarding funding for this program is somehow advocacy on behalf of special needs children this district's obligation to provide esy to eligible students would have continued in 2018-19 no matter how much funding new york state allocated for it the only thing that was at stake in fact was the district's bottom line it shows a severe lack
131of understanding empathy and sincerity to claim that advocating for public funding for a program you were required by law to provide was done for the purpose of helping our students when the only thing you are trying to help is your budget in fact although many school districts in this state and even this county provide a full six-hour day to extended school year students over the summer this district provides a mere three hours once again this district provides the bare minimum it is obligated to under the law and gives itself a pat on the back thank you matthew golia mischief may i read for um alexa first or no thank you we're going to do the i'm going to do mine first yes thank you hey guys happy holidays um thank you for recognizing a boce
132student congratulations to louie i want to thank all the parents who waited for two hours for their chance to speak um [Music] superintendent zeleznick you don't have an easy job we got to see some of that a couple hours ago thank you for your information on the opportunity for parents to meet with dr v i'm looking forward to it um but please please keep the parents and the community involved um you know i i just heard you speak about um a stakeholder meeting you were going to have to discuss the elementary schools i feel like that's something that we've been asking for so i was kind of confused by that i don't know why we haven't had that over this issue i'm going to switch gears now since the year 2000 the cdc has been
133tracking the prevalence of children with autism in the u.s last week they issued a new report and the numbers have increased from 1 in 54 to 1 in 44 over the span of two years ten years ago that number was one in 88 and now we're at 144 so the the numbers of um autistic kids have have doubled in 10 years at least the diagnosis has um overall prevalence in boys is one in 27. so if you do some quick math we have 3 000 kids that's about 70 diagnosed autistic kids um more more than 50 of them are going to be boys um when they do this study the nearest geographic area to us that was surveyed was new jersey and they had a prevalence of one in 35 so it's likely that new
134york state is also higher than the national average now these increases may not mean that there are actually more autistic kids it probably reflects um improvements in in diagnosis and identification that being said more diagnoses mean uh more services required so this latest report i'm not sure if you're aware of it or if you've seen it but it says quote this is critical information to providers particularly public schools of future service needs this information should be used to plan for future resource and service needs so i'm not sure if you're aware of this new report but i'd like to know what the board of education and administration are doing you know you talked about a master plan earlier but what are you guys doing to prepare for the continuously increasing number of autistic students and
135the resulting special services requirements or if you're not doing anything please be aware of the study and and you know um take heed um switching gears again um i'm i i don't know if trustee burke has personal issues or not but i'm a little disappointed that he's not here considering there's only one boe meeting this month and the next one is not for a month away um but you know he made comments on november 4th he said um he doesn't think anyone really understands how much you guys care for the vulnerable students he said it's difficult to sit there and be told that you don't care when it's clear that you absolutely do care he said you guys are taking steps and actions he said sometimes it's difficult to talk about but rest assured we
136are so i emailed him um and i asked him to elaborate on those steps and actions um specifically what's been done since these issues first came up in may um when i emailed him i again applauded the visit by dr volkmore i applauded uh the revision to the restraint policy but i said those are two things that i'm aware of that have happened since may is there more um and i guess similar to hope he i got a response saying that that president schiff would reply on his behalf it's also similar to to hope i don't understand why he can't explain his own words i don't know why miss schiff has to do that for him so i think in today's opinion piece um mischief i believe you tried to you know communicate this response
137um you brought up some esy events that happened in 2018 through 2020 um of course this was before the may event or when we brought these issues up in may um but it does seem like you were the board was taking credit for safeguarding esy which is a federally mandated program under the individuals with disabilities act so it's unclear to me what the board is claiming it safeguarded also our esy program is only three hours a day and many districts in new york and boces have up to six hours a day so by you bringing up i you know i counter with our esy program is weak as far as hours provided um what are you gonna do if your kid goes to school nine to twelve he can't go to a camp after that
138so put yourself in those parent situations i don't know what i'm going to do this summer my son's going to be home after 12 and there's no camp i can put him in ms schiff you then said that the boe fully funds services agreed to by the committee on special education again i understand that under federal law kids are entitled to a free and appropriate public education and this is a guaranteed civil right for students with identified disabilities so are there any grounds where the board of education could deny the agreed-upon services or are you guys really thinking that you're going above and beyond by approving what the cse recommends you mentioned a recent hire of a psychologist but you failed to mention the corresponding reduction of three special education teaching assistants and five full-time
139special education teaching aides uh you mentioned the revised policy you mentioned a visit by dr volkmar great um but again i respectfully ask i want to ask trustee burke but i'll ask the whole board please clarify the steps and actions the boe has specifically taken since these issues were brought up in may um dr rifkin earlier you gave your medical opinion on vaccines i personally agree with that opinion in your medical opinion are restraints dangerous how about 30 of them what is the view of your medical practice the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry and the american academy of pediatrics supports the keeping all students safe act which as you know prohibits seclusion and and severely limits physical restraints dr rifkin do you support the keeping all students say fact finally you guys are
140all educators and boe members here i'd like to know how would you honestly grade yourself on your overall handling and response to the issues brought to your attention in 2021 here we are at the end of the year would you give yourself an a or do you recognize that some things could have been done a little better on your end have you ever thought in retrospect you could have you should have simply apologized to the family for the mistakes made regarding the use of restraints do you think that could have avoided some of what's happened i think so um i also think you guys missed out on a really good opportunity at the town hall i think it would have been we had a good discussion those who attended i think it would have been
141a respectful discussion i think you would have gotten something out of it we would have gotten something out of it and i think it it would have been a step forward and i think um i think you guys missed out on that okay thank you for your time have a good new year you ashley lamonic lemonade and i apologize for pronunciation if you please tell me how to pronunciate pronounce it i'll i'll pronunciate it correctly the next time it's ashley lamonic thank you sure okay wow okay uh let's see here so my name is ashley lamonic i'm a resident of katona and i also spoke at uh the november 18th meeting so while i have a number of concerns i also have some prepared comments that i want to make sure i get to um
142but i will start with some responses to what i heard um earlier so one kids in schools um having every kid in school yields the best health outcomes to that i wonder what about the psychological impacts of masks and distancing um on developing minds and kind of connected the mental health impact that we're all obviously concerned about um another comment was made about the fact that vaccines reduced the risk of hospitalization and death um while i won't argue that i will say according to um actually let me start with it's worth noting that for kids the rate of hospitalization and death is extremely low as it is as of a few months ago it was point zero zero zero seven percent was the current fatality rate for children under 18 in the united states that's
143uh data from the cdc so just keeping that in mind as we push incentivize and coerce around children getting this vaccine also if we talk about community transmission even uh rachel walinski of the cdc herself a few months ago stated that due to the delta variant the vaccine does not prevent transmission i'm happy to play a clip um or email sources for anything that i share let's see here um also worth noting just um earlier actually i heard that i saw an article that a an oklahoma judge excuse me been a long night an oklahoma judge blocks the school district from quarantining unbacks needed students who are healthy um due to discrimination i believe which leads me to my prepared comments um so as um as i believe was mentioned at the end of the
144november eighth board meeting i do understand um and recognize this difficult position that the board is in as i'm sure you wouldn't have expected to be dealing with large-scale medical choices being in the education field um that said i'll say the thanksgiving letter on the klsd website was a lovely update with the exception of the coercive push and praise for families to vaccinate their children in order to avoid avoid quarantining mr slesnik wrote thanks to vaccinations quarantining has been almost eradicated at middle and high school hopefully the same will soon be true at our elementary schools the guidelines in place are discriminatory and coercive the covered vaccines do not even offer 100 protection and while the while per the cdc no vaccines do covet vaccines are new still being studied in clinical trials and what
145we've seen is that protect protection fluctuates the guidelines read more like a carrot to incentivize vaccination what's next for kids and families that don't bite the stick or if you do think vaccines offer suitable protection perhaps it's time to drop some or all of the covid protocols within the schools especially as vaccination is now available for families who choose it why not drop so masking and social distancing especially given the mental and psychological impact how many um children in the district or otherwise have had serious complications from povet how many hospitalizations any worse well kovid has no doubt been deadly and devastating around the world the response to culvet is creating its own issues especially for children it's been interesting to learn and see how the processes around guidelines work a few of you made
146comments during the november 18th board meeting about local control and where the state chooses to allocate local control it got me thinking the control absolutely should be local new york is a big diverse state and maybe it shouldn't be the local community waiting for the state to give control rather the board representing the community should advocate for their own local control the schools are here to serve students not to serve the governor or anyone else in albany or anywhere else the longwood central school district on long island understands this their board has written a series of letters to the governors to push for more local control over when to unmask and to express the importance for their fam this isn't there for them for their families to make medical decisions for their children in consultation
147with their family doctor based upon their own circumstances medical history and beliefs i'll add i realize from the things i've heard from this board you might not uh agree but i would still argue for local control um i implore you as well as your fellow superintendents and boards to push back for more local control and i'm happy to help draft communications to albany in order to do so i also have copies of the letters that were written by the longwood central school district if you'd like i'm thankful to have a voice as a future parent within the district i leave you with this question what is the first step parents and board members need to take in order to start this process thank you erica glyph good evening i'm erica glick and i have several
148questions tonight that i'm hoping can be addressed during board dialogue um i too have brought copies of these questions to share so that um the board will have them at the ready first i'd like to say kudos for adding hegerty to our literacy program i think it's important to give credit for finally making an improvement where it was needed phonemic awareness is an area where units of study has been lacking so i appreciate that we finally recognized it and attempted to rectify it but this leads me to additional questions i'd imagine a literacy committee would have addressed many of these questions but alas as we don't have one i'll pose those questions here first why did we decide to patch the broken teachers college units of study program instead of implementing one that worked what
149other programs were considered before hegerty and why was hegarty chosen what do you hope the effect will be an implementation how will that effect be defined how will it be measured with what frequency how is hegarty being implemented into current practice is it replacing something else we know that our teachers barely have any time in the classroom as it is are we putting another ask on them during the day which will be unrealistic is hegerty also considered a tier one tool have we talked with other entities who have integrated hegarty successfully and if so what did we glean from those conversations who is being trained and how is it all teachers is it k-2 only is it just rti teachers special education teachers are we training a trainer what is our goal for the number
150of staff trained how does hegerty fit into the toolbox of programs resources and assessments that we currently use if we're currently also using it as an assessment how often are we collecting this data and what are we doing with it so those were my questions specific to this change and the addition of hegerty but i do have others first why the lack of transparency surrounding this change i feel like there were many ways that you could have announced this and the way that it was done was odd there was a facebook post and a response from miss ford to a direct question posed during board dialogue if if that question was never posed by the board member would we have ever learned of this and even on the website you have to dig a bit
151to even find it on the katona lewisboro curriculum pages um a question about tonight's presentation i just happened to notice um there was a lot of information missing from the data um but my eyes tended to go to the fact that the participation rate uh for the ela component of the testing kept decreasing for the older students the older grades rather than the younger grades and i'm just wondering if we have any information as to why that might be another question why haven't we formed a literacy committee um moving on what percentage of students do you think deserve to read in our district is this percentage different for our students with disabilities are you the board okay with 29 percent what research has the board done to understand the challenges and the shortcomings of the
152teachers college workshop program or if you are the of the belief that this is a solid program what research have you done to support this idea do you research any of the programs suggested by our superintendent of curriculum and instruction or do you just trust her blindly what criteria do you use when approving curriculum why do we use multiple literacy programs instead of just one or two well-researched successful ones what are the terms of our contract with teachers college units of study what steps would the board need in order to get rid of a failing program such as teachers college units of study as ms ford suggested a couple of weeks ago individual teachers and or principals may have purchased the teacher's college phonics program a program currently under more scrutiny scrutiny than the reading
153and writing program for its lack of research if they are using that instead of foundation's integrity that the district approved i find that curious that they were offered so much liberty and if is there no oversight here can teachers just ignore the science and do as they wish i'd imagine that's a slippery slope and also curious are there other areas in patona lewisboro that we're okay denying science and finally are you comfortable supporting inequality because until we can teach every child in our district to read and not just those who can afford private tutoring how can we possibly say we support equity and inclusion thank you oksana arena good evening so clearly people are taking stock tonight we're taking stock of all the questions we have asked you over the past eight months and received
154no substantive answers to although i do want to acknowledge a fresh and an important voice on the board that does consistently try to push this dialogue beyond platitudes and again want to thank msnair for for doing that because i think real dialogue is incredibly important i won't hand you a list of questions i really only have one just listening to and reading all the proclamations of how much the board cares about our children i think there was a very easy way to show that when you could have instructed your employee the superintendent to work with us collaboratively to work out issues to create committees whatever it takes you have elected not to do that and it is very difficult to believe that there is actual care behind that because that seems like a really thoughtful
155and frankly simple way to move forward so my question to you is why did you elect to not do that because you do have the power to compel him to collaborate with parents schiff i thank you for writing the opinion piece that was referred to several times tonight because i think we now have a perfect compilation of the half-truths and omissions and outright misinformation that this district consistently uses to gaslight parents and i won't address the things that have already been addressed and debunked but i do want to talk about one specific part of that opinion piece and i will quote you wrote that the district was delighted to learn that assemblyman burdick and state senator harkim are working to enact a notice bill that would essentially help state education law to catch up to
156the policy changes kayla's d adopted in response to concerns from our community so let's be clear this board did absolutely nothing having learned that a child was restrained routinely with no notification to parents while you would like to flip the script so you can run victory laps because of a policy change with respect to parent notification the reality is you made this change only after community members rebuked you in droves for taking no action because of the trauma that occurred on the watch of this administration and this board klsd is the poster child for why this legislation is urged at the state level currently that is the reputation this board's incompetence has attached to us when this administration repeatedly failed to notify my family of its traumatizing my non-speaking son be a routine use of
157restraint on him over weeks and months and the superintendent concluded there his quote unquote investigation that this was not abusive we appealed to the board mischief contrary to her proclamations that the boe welcomes parents concerns turned us away and sent us instead to complain to the new york department of education we went back to her again clarifying that she had no interest in hearing from us it was made clear that she and the board did not the vorden mischief as its communication communicator in chief could have taken that dialogue in a variety of directions they could have expressed concern or curiosity they could have chosen to be the eyes and ears they claimed to be for my family for this family and their community instead their preference was to kick us to the lawyers their
158preference was to waste this community's tax dollars on a legal confrontation headed by the special education attorney as opposed to try to avoid illegal confrontation via the human approach of dialogue with my family in spite of mischief's overly solicitous and saccharine overtures to various members of this community since then she and the board had zero interest in what my family had to say about our experience they had already heard everything they believed they needed to know from the administration and their attorneys it wasn't until our work as an advocacy group got going that ms schiff and the board responded to my third request for a meeting but subsequently denied it again because we wanted to meet as an advocacy group with some board members i'm walking the community through this so that there is a
159clear understanding that families when they encounter a lack of desire off on the part of the district to support them and their children are forced into legal recourse by this indifference by the indifference we encounter at the administration and the board level legal recourse which only enriches the district attorneys who continue to endlessly appeal any decision made in the parents favor the attorneys who get paid more the more adversarial the relationship between the district and and the parents and i hope our community will consider if this is really the best stewardship of our tax dollars i think this community deserves a board that does not believe they are owed a debt of gratitude and derive no status satisfaction from sitting on this body i believe that in the midst of so many challenges that our
160children face we need to engage our community you need to engage your community i think that anyone who doesn't really believe in that kind of real dialogue shouldn't really consider themselves the eyes and ears of our community thank you there's quite a few people still looking like they need to speak could we put a timer on this i i feel like unfortunately yeah the timer's broken would somebody be able to serve in the capacity as timekeeper for me sure that'd be great liz thank you sarah pulled his auto good evening at the last board meeting i attended uh a member of the board during the their um question and answer period after posed a question as to whether parents of disabled children are availing themselves of opportunities to work with their children's teachers with therapists
161and with school staff and although i was pretty taken aback by that the questions seemed genuine so i'd like to try to provide a genuine answer based on the many parents i know with disabled children i feel pretty comfortable asserting that the amount of time we spend accessing or attempting to access school and community resources amounts basically to another full-time job on top of the usual work of parenting maintaining a household holding many of us holding down a paying job i can tell you that while my children's challenges might be considered relatively mild in comparison to the full spectrum of disabilities i personally spend between 10 and 20 hours per week on paperwork meetings appointments phone calls and research related to their care and that doesn't include the extra time that i need to spend
162working with my children one-on-one um during the pandemic i was essentially my autistic son's one-to-one full-time aide because he was in school a total of 20 days between september and december of 20 of 2020 this was in another district um i've spent the past 18 months petitioning new york state via the opwdd for the disability benefits for which he qualifies due to his autism diagnosis and we've now arrived after 18 months at the point where they have determined that he is qualified to apply for those benefits not to receive them now qualified to apply for those benefits i've submitted hundreds of pages of evaluations data paperwork to them which represents hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of our family's time and resources and i fully expect that it will be another 18 months minimum
163before we actually are able to access any of those benefits which will mean that he can access therapies and treatments that are not otherwise available i've spent hundreds of hours cumulatively preparing for iep meetings teacher meetings therapist meetings parent parent trainings and the like and i'm not in any way unique and many parents must and do do a lot more parents in the disability community are experts at leveraging opportunities to create a safe appropriate enriching experience for their children and our time is at a premium so we don't come here lightly we wouldn't come here to waste time or cause trouble or create conflict because we have enough battles late nights are difficult for us as i'm sure they are for you and i can't speak for anyone but myself but i'm here because i
164genuinely believe that as a school board you play a vital role in helping to create the kind of environment that will keep all children safe that will enable them to you know access the education to which they're entitled um while the circumstances were tragic i think that the focus on the on on special education and klsd could be an opportunity for us to decide that we want to create a gold standard uh special education program in this district i'm sorry are you almost finished yes i have one last thing and as part of that um to develop a social social emotional learning program that could be state of the art um i believe that is among the most vital roles of a school district and i don't know if you're familiar with the social emotional
165learning benchmarks that new york state put out and the accompanying guidance document but if you are if you're not you know obviously it's out there and i can email my printer was having an extended moment so i didn't print any copies but my question is whether you are willing to consider using those documents as a framework to set clear and specific goals to make that a priority in this school district i was encouraged to see that you're gathering data through those surveys however as my husband pointed out while it may sound very good to say that 90 of children feel safe and supported it is actually a devastating tragedy if 10 of children feel unsafe and unsupported at school so i would urge you to make this an urgent urgent priority not just for children
166in the special education community but for all of our children thank you thank you is anybody else waiting to speak for themselves or wishing to sign up okay thank you if not matt golia on behalf of ferreira please uh this is for alexa ferreira good evening good evening at the last meeting i spoke about the effect of trauma on a community tonight i wanted to add another observation about trauma trauma is silencing it splits you off from the rest of the world it seems like one day you're a part of society of a community and the next day you are on the outside looking in part of you wants to knock on the window and be seen and part of you wants to hide out of some irrational shame it is like a secret unspoken
167contract between all parties perpetrator victim and bystander everyone becomes afraid of speaking so tonight i have some questions and as they relate to district policies i thought i should address them to the board i hope you understand that i have chosen to ask these questions here publicly instead of in a private email both because i believe these are matters of general interest and precisely because i too feel the weight of the contract the contract of silence but i have had enough unfortunate experience in this area to know that silence serves only the perpetrator it does not protect me though i may fear to disturb it it does not protect you the board or the administrators or the staff and it certainly does not protect the students it serves only the perpetrator so it is essential
168that we have these uncomfortable conversations and that we have them publicly i would like to ask tonight about the district policies on the training of staff for the identification and reporting of quote child abuse in an education setting educational setting would you please discuss in as much detail as you can what staff has trained and how does the district use an outside organization does the training happen on campus or off-site how often is the training what does the training consist of and how is it delivered would you consider allowing a parent perhaps an advocacy member to join these training sessions as a matter of course the perspective and participation of a parent especially a special needs parent could ensure that this timing is most effective this training is most effective i also want to ask
169about the district about how the district tracks reports of teacher or staff misconduct do all reports automatically go in the teacher or staff members file is there a central document where all events are recorded that would allow for the tracking of patterns i would not ima i would imagine not all events rise to the level of discipline but if they do not are they discarded or destroyed i am concerned that a pattern of small events that's that might serve as a red flag to an observant administrator be preserved in some way i understand it may be difficult to answer these questions without preparation or reference to your policies but please do respond with as much substance as you are able thank you thank you dia miller on behalf of peeler my name is paula i'm
170a resident of katona and have two children who attend kes and we have had a less than pleasant experience with klsd special education for months i have watched parents describe the experiences they and their children have had with special education within the district for months i have watched the board sit and do nothing i continue to be disgusted at the lack of appropriate response or any response that acknowledges the shortcomings of the special education department the board overseas today i read an opinion piece in the katona-lewisboro times by ms schiff the board president who stated quote klsd has taken great care in advocating responding to our community and providing the best possible education opportunities for all students and especially our special education students i speak from personal experience when i say that the great care
171klsd has provided involves denying children services writing ieps that leave out critical details and are grossly inaccurate additionally the district provides special needs students with poorly trained staff and has caused direct physical and emotional harm to disabled students i could go on countless parents have spoken describing this poor state of the special education department while you sit back and congratulate yourselves in public for the work that you do you all should be ashamed of yourselves thank you ashley on behalf of michelle my name is michelle du ravage a former educator and former parent of children in the district uh in reference to encouraging vaccines um sorry that was an extra question she had um by taking state aid and financial incentives what is required by you as a district um is there anything in reference
172to encouraging vaccines the rush to push emergency use vaccination especially for children within the 5 to 11 age group is wrong this is a new experimental vaccine that was fast tracked to be ready in 10 months when other inoculations would typically take 10 years to develop children are within the very low risk group for cobit independent doctors worldwide who are researching this vaccine are concerned that this vaccination could potentially do more harm than good to this very low risk group dr martin feely who is the former clinical director of the dublin midlands hospital group and is pro vaccination is one of the myriad of doctors throughout the world who's questioning whether young children should get the pfizer bioin tech or moderna vaccine he says my concern is that the vaccination could potentially do more harm
173than good to these very low risk people dr feely said there is a less than 1 in 10 000 chance of healthy people dying as a result of contracting copin 19. in the event that a child says positive for cobit 19 typically the children recover very quickly he also says quote people should be free to ask questions the debate comes back to the issue of informed consent what i'm saying is certainly for anyone over 70 and certainly everybody with high risk factors the vaccination would be a very good idea for very young people and children it's absolutely not i would say categorically without any hesitation children should not be vaccinated with this new vaccine other doctors who have researched a number of peer-reviewed studies include ucla geffen school of medicine dr joseph lopato and yale
174school of public health dr harvey reesh they warn that there are legitimate and serious concerns about the side effects of the coveted vaccine and point out that quote while you would never know it from listening to the public health officials not a single published study has demonstrated that patients with a prior ben prior infection benefit from copa19 vaccination but this isn't readily acknowledged by the cdc or anthony faufes an indication of how deeply entangled pandemic politics is in science the decision to vaccinate a child against covet or not is a parent's choice and should not be incentivized or coerced by the district in summary i urge you to i urge that you support parents in making their own decisions about whether or not to vaccinate their children and to advise parents to seek informed consent
175on risk versus health benefits of the emergency youth use of this vaccine thank you for listening to these deep concerns thank you and if you don't mind staying ashley i think that you perhaps have the last on behalf of yep uh on behalf of dawn cameron please sure oh i'm sorry and there might be another one so if i overlooked somebody thank you julia for helping me but please go ahead and finish her thanks okay let's see uh she says 59 plus children testing positive for a virus that they have no reliable test follow the science is all you people say can you please say who you're speaking oh i'm i'm so sorry yeah uh this is for don john cameron thank you thank you very much yep yeah she was going to speak but
176texted um and she does have children in the school i believe uh 59 plus children testing positive for a virus that they have no reliable test follow the science as all you people say yet that science said for almost two years children sorry uh oh yeah that that science said for almost two years children were the least affected from this virus yet they are the most affected from being denied the law to a free education for 10 days if someone takes a test and it comes back positive a test that waters that says water is positive soda goats other things the tests that the the tests the school did uh i'm sorry the tests the school did that get sent to a lab shows more accurate numbers because so far none tested positive yet the
177pcr tests found in clinics and such are not accurate science has masked our children and made them get sick more with bacteria follow the science where was that mask made where was the cloth made children all day are breathing in chemicals that are harming them washing that mask will never wash out the chemicals used most likely in china to grow that cotton pesticides inhaled the medical ones made with the same gasoline you put in your gas tank is a school a place of learning or a medical medical facility i never sign my children up for the ability to wear medical devices and i'm sure many other parents as well did not sign their children up for that either yet you violate our freedoms treat them as slaves because history shows slaves were more masks a
178mess a method to remind a person to shut their mouths the masks don't work if numbers are high either end the mask or shut the schools because this is a virus the science says the viruses don't go away stop following the political party and follow that which you claim to teach science gia miller on behalf of abrams please i'm speaking on behalf of mark abrams i'm sorry that i could not be here tonight in person and i'm glad that another parent advocate can read this letter on my behalf this has been a very informative year for me through my involvement as an advocate for special needs students in our district i learned that for the last several years staunch advocates for a science-based approach towards reading have repeatedly been stonewalled by this board and administration
179i learned that an experienced special education teacher apparently was not provided the kind of support necessary to function humanely and effectively and ended up engaging in a pattern of emotionally and physically abusive behaviors with students under her care i learned that our administration and this board have worked as hard as possible to prevent public disclosure to our community made this teacher disappear as quickly as possible and stonewalled any real exploration of all the factors that could have led our community to help provide the kind of supports that staff and students deserve all of this occurred while the families of students who were witness to this were also misled and a substantial number of students in that self-contained classroom should clear signs of psychological trauma i learned that in our middle school self-contained classroom a student
180was restrained over 30 times in the span of approximately two months without any parental notification once again this administration and board sought to stonewall any open exploration that could lead to the community wanting us to trust our school while developing safeguards that could prevent this pattern of abuse from ever happening again while this was happening the lack of communication with other families whose children witnessed these events resulted in yet more students showing signs of psychological trauma and i have personally experienced all little levels of inadequate delivery of services for my stepson who has an iep by the way i have his questions printed out for you also this board is an elected group of individuals whose responsibility is to oversee our school system in the past other districts paid around six figures to send their
181children to our schools now there is a busload of students going to and from windward school daily i'd like to know how much of our hard-earned taxpayer money is spent on our district's lawyers to fight families seeking appropriate services for their children and how much more money is spent to pay for students to attend other schools how many lawsuits is the district currently fighting regarding out-of-district placement and how much do each of these lawsuits cost in terms of attorney fees and eventual settlement had we actually continued to deliver superior special education services our school district could have a bus full of students attending our school district every day needless to say from a fiduciary perspective it appears as though this board has failed the taxpayers the superintendent is not a board member despite the appearance
182as such the board is supposed to hold him accountable for the kinds of egregious problems that have been consistently i am consistently identified by parents in our community instead this board has sought to obscure and misrepresent information rather than see to it that the superintendent actually lives up to his responsibilities and makes the necessary changes mr celeznick's often used expression it's complicated was used in chappaqua and is now being used here it appears that his this is his way of indicating he's complicit and attempting to cover up his wrongdoings in chappaqua the legal record of the egregious wrongdoings has been sealed makes you wonder what the outcome will be here the common component in both school districts mr seleznick finally i'd like to ask the board members whose terms are up this school year do
183you plan to run for re-election if you do i hope you know that we will run candidates against you and fill your seats with caring taxpayers who actually demand and work towards the board fulfilling its responsibilities thank you is anybody else waiting to speak okay if not i think i'm going to close the public forum and this brings us to 10.01 which is the consent agenda um i'm not aware of any items that are being pulled out to be voted on separately in which case would somebody like to move the consent agenda moved by julia seconded by bill is there any discussion about the consent agenda questions concerns if not then we can vote all in favor please say aye aye six zero and i think tonight we have a gift from claire aldrich donating
184paint to the john jay middle school for drama productions i could please have a motion for this resolution moved by julia seconded by catherine thank you so much to claire for the generous donation of materials all in favor please say aye bye bye thank you 6-0 and that brings us to board dialogue and discussion i'm not sure whether any board members had new topics or comments i'll pause while people are gathering their thoughts i would like to provide a couple of clarifications and invite my board colleagues into potentially some conversation um i think you know it has been said already at our meetings but it probably bears repeating that the board of education does have proscribed responsibilities and it is important that we um fulfill those responsibilities of course and also that we not um
185recklessly attempt to play a role that is not in the purview of a board of education and specifically i think it's critically important especially because i can see that it has caused great distress that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding whereby you know there's an assertion that the board has been forced into legal recourse where rather i would say this is an experienced board of education that fully understands the importance of acting in accordance with our role as fiduciaries to the community and that when there are certain disagreements between a superintendent of schools and a member of the community that cannot be adjudicated by a board of education it is our responsibility to advise community members of their appropriate recourse and this board of education has and always will continue to advise community members of
186that right i think that's a critically important clarification from my perspective i think we heard other comments tonight that also indicate to me that we have community members who appropriately why why would it be their responsibility to really know and understand the role of a board so for example the notion that we are all educators i feel a need to clarify that i don't think any of us are educators it is a board of education's responsibility to hire to hire a superintendent of schools who is our chief executive educator and officer and i would like to invite my board colleagues to share with me your perspective and to help me to reflect on a concern that i have with regard to our meetings you know as the board is aware i don't have any unique
187privileges as the board president i have a couple of responsibilities one of which by the way is not to write an opinion piece and i didn't as you know write an opinion piece i responded to a journalist who sought clarification on a board's decision and it sounds like it got turned into an opinion piece so apologies i think the board's aware that was not something i authored or intended to authorize an opinion piece that being said um it is my responsibility to preside over these meetings and to make sure that these are the meetings that you wish to have and that set you up to fulfill your role as fiduciaries as trustees of the school district and to conduct the business of the school district and as we plan for our board meetings in 2020
18822 2022 based on guidance from the state and our own experience of board meetings and because i think it's important to observe that we're actually seeing um an evolution um in a practice i i would like to invite some conversation around whether this would be a juncture where we should agree that we are no longer suspending normal practices and procedures for our meetings including public comment we the elected trustees working together as the board of ed have a mandate from our community we have a unique mandate and a responsibility on behalf of all katona-lewis pro school children maintain a working environment at our meetings that is conducive to performing the work of the school district discharging our obligation to conduct business and also to recruiting and retaining good volunteer board members an effective superintendent who
189attracts and retains other high quality administrators and staff members to katana lewisburg on all of whom we and all of our constituents depend daily to educate our children and i am concerned that we have approximately functional equivalent seven community members or so who um we welcome their feedback we welcome all community feedback we want to hear from our community in person but it is the responsibility of the board of education from my perspective to represent our community effectively here at the board meetings and i'm not sure this is a responsibility that we should delegate to a community member who potentially is in a dispute with the superintendent or really to any community members and this is really for you to help me to think through with respect to how we come back in 2022 but
190our core function as elected trustees is to conduct the business of the school district here in accordance with open meeting laws publicly noticed meetings whereas community members actually have many other forums available to them to participate in advocacy to engage without the restrictions of open meeting laws um this is our one opportunity and um you know i i i need help in determining whether this is how we best discharge that duty or whether returning to school after the break would be an opportunity to perhaps rededicate ourselves to our normal operating procedures prior to the pandemic when of course policies were suspended by executive order which is no longer the case so i'll pause there because i really don't want to um i don't want to overstep i merely wish to perhaps invite brief response or
191discussion and we can go from there please alana i mean i i love the idea of kind of returning to standard operating procedures uh sort of prior pre-pandemic but i'm not sure that we're there right now you know the the governor declared a state of emergency last week our county executive did the same uh covet we're about to have another rise in covid cases unfortunately so i mean i would love to have a time where everybody feels safe coming to our meeting in person and speaking for themselves and a time where our kids could go to school unmasked again and you know things feel normal unfortunately i don't think we're there yet i would love to talk about how we get there and what it means for all of us to get there and i
192wonder what would it be like if we set an ambitious goal to get ourselves there with the tools that we have in place so while it's not required and i don't think there's any coercive effort going on i think our district has been extremely clear on promoting the public health policies of the county and of the state and of the federal government and so what would it be like if we had some ambitious goal to get all our kids back in school and keep kids from being quarantined by having a large voluntary vaccination rate voluntary like 100 vaccination rates that we can make sure that everybody in the community is safe i think like i'm sort of interested in more of a discussion around getting ourselves back to normal before sort of adjusting tools that
193we have in place because i just unfortunately i don't think we're there yet and i think as we heard tonight in public discussion around you know there's a lot of misinformation still circulating and we have this interesting poster over here that says because fake news has real world consequences you know that we have to be really careful and you know so one thing i would be interested in discussing is like what's the process in our meeting when misinformation is being put out around the vex a deadly virus that's killing thousands of people a day what do we do in a meeting do we allow that to sit out here that's what i'm i'm interested in talking about that but i don't know that we should adjust the meetings and as i said in a prior
194you know our format of our meetings and as i said early on i hope we're not getting back to this but i i you know i'm always a proponent of allowing people to participate in the meetings in the way they can and as somebody who has young children before i was able to make the commitment and adjust my schedule to come to these meetings it was hard for me to come to meetings in person i love that we're streaming meetings i would be in you know probably on the other side of maybe maybe my colleagues i'd be a proponent of allowing people to participate remotely as much as we can and if we need to you know we need to limit time for a public comment maybe we think about that if we want to
195keep minute meetings to a certain amount of time that's something to think about but um i i you know for me when i think about yes our job is to conduct the business of the school district but to me the public's concerns are a part of our business so that's that's kind of where where i'm thinking on this thank you i agree with you about the importance of public participation and i just wanted to say to mr novik who spoke first um how fascinating i found what you had to say and very interesting and thank you for for coming in and speaking with us and sharing your point of view um my concern is though that tonight we had most people blow right on through the the three minute limit um and you know i
196mean it does feel a little arbitrary and if you have something that you want to say that takes a little bit over three minutes i'm sure you know we've all agreed that there's there's grace to be had there um but i do feel that we've had a problem fairly consistently about um the opportunity for the board to have a dialogue afterwards i think that i've heard a number of statements that were maybe not clear or kind of don't give the full picture of things in terms of policy and vaccinations and things like that a lot of the things that that people have come to speak with us about are regulations and requirements that we follow that are not even in the purview or decision-making area of the board we definitely should look at ways that
197we can encourage productive dialogue among the public and the board but i would also like to ask people to remember that the board are also parents in this district and it is our charge to think about the experience of every student in our district and um and do the business of the district and it does seem to be getting a little bit more difficult so i am definitely interested in in trying new things and and thinking about how we do it better how people can feel more satisfied with the conversations that we're having i think that i know a number of people wanted to speak about the um the town hall event that they had i i think that one of the things that concerns me is we couldn't go as a board because we
198can't really have smaller segments of the entire community dictating when we have a board meeting and just convening the school board to talk about the issues they want to talk about because then we become vulnerable to any special interest group deciding they can convene a school board meeting and then i just don't know how anything gets done and so i am concerned about that i am concerned about the number of misunderstandings or misstatements or just you know factually untrue things that we hear and that we don't have the opportunity to address them until afterwards and a lot of time people have either tuned out or left gone home and i don't blame them because we are going so very late these days i think that we have a wonderful community i think we are very
199fortunate to live in an amazing and supportive community that rallies around issues like this and the children they want to protect and make sure have the best experience but it is also extremely difficult then to to go through the comments that we hear and try to determine where there is room for action where there are things that need to be addressed and and separate that from the statements of support from other community members um it does become kind of difficult and we want to make sure we are doing the best we can for all of our students and so yeah i don't have a solution uh i think that we do need to look at it though because i think it is important especially with the presentations we heard tonight were so critical and they're
200so crucial to all the mission of of the district that i worry that a lot of that just didn't get heard and i think there were some very important things about the you know the elementary school population and then how we're doing and i i mean we're also still dealing with a pandemic and we've got staff and administration and so many people who have worked so hard for so long and i think that if we lose that context and start villainizing each other and saying that we're not doing the things that need to be done i worry that we won't make any progress thank you what processes were you really referring to you know i think it's um a good question thank you and i think it's um it's absolutely possible for the board of
201education either you know via the policy subcommittee or um you know at a future date to engage in a conversation about reviewing for example public comment in other school districts however that's not really what i'm getting at what i'm getting at is that we have a board policy related to public participation and it's pretty clear and in the transition from our zoom board meetings to our in-person meetings we had really faced a challenging situation whereby a couple of community members had reached out and had expressed very specific concerns about their inability to attend in person and from my perspective although i you know can only imagine how this will sound it it felt like an act of compassion to authorize a ferpa waiver and i see the workflow back and forth and this you know
202is really neither about workflow nor the extra 36 minutes last time or the extra 12 minutes this time or what have you it's from my perspective it's more about these are meetings of the board of education where we uniquely this seven of us have a mandate to represent all students and it's really for the board to decide whether we want to continue to um enable other community members to come and speak on behalf of the community members we represent without actually meeting them you know i i really fully support the notion that we need to hear from our community and we will always have a public comment i believe although it's not required i believe this is a board of education and a community that will always place a premium on an opportunity for public
203comment but the board of education meetings really won't involve dialogue and they aren't set up that way this is merely uniquely an opportunity for seven people to come together and to discharge the business of a school district while hearing critically important things from members of our community whom we wish to meet in person and whose comments i think it is counterproductive to have mediated through other community members from my perspective especially when we have community members who i believe appropriately do not understand the role of the board of education and do not um do not respect the way in which we have conducted business and are routinely critical of us and i can accept routine criticism really day in and day out i think probably everybody here knows that however i am concerned that we
204have one employee and we are representing the entire katona lewisboro community and all of the school children again on whom we depend daily on the efforts of the individuals here who are not volunteers and the entire staff and we support these individuals we hired them and we we we do many other things and we perform our responsibilities faithfully in good faith assiduously conscientiously morning noon and night on behalf of every child including your children absolutely every day but clearly that is not the belief held by some community members and that's absolutely fine and we always want to hear that criticism but i'm not sure it's appropriate to delegate the responsibility to represent the comments of other community members to those very community members and it just so happens there's you know at the moment about
205seven of them and the minute i say that maybe there will be 70 and they will come in person and they will share their feedback but from my perspective having lived through almost 10 years of public comment some of it constructive some of it painful on a variety of a variety of issues related to our vision for this school district our values as a community from my perspective it would be preferable to go back to normal practice so i'm simply suggesting not to foreclose conversation in the future about how we evolve as a board or create other forums or lean into existing forums as best we can in a pandemic i am actually more humbly suggesting that we return to policy 1230 public participation at board meetings which has been in a sense suspended and
206we've we've continued this practice up through december of 2021 and so i guess simply i'm i'm happy to call the question if nobody wants to speak or i'll make a motion and if somebody would second it that'd be great and if nobody seconds it that's the end of that and we can have future discussion and then we can vote so simply stated i'm going to make a motion to return to public participation as outlined in board policy 1230 public participation at board meetings which has been in place for quite some time and i think maybe last revised in 2018 somebody can check me on that um at the first meeting of the new year and again please i'll ask for a second and i leave it to you thank you liz and if there's further
207discussion let's discuss yes please so this often happens where in some situations some change is made that at the time seems natural you know and then it's hard to take things back uh it's hard to it's hard to it sort of happens in you know financial policy you know with some pile of money is given out and then it's hard to say well next year we're not budgeting for that because people will expect it so i i i do think it's worth investigating how other districts handle public comment period because they probably don't experience things the way we're experiencing them and it would be interesting to see what what is the you know usual practice uh it doesn't mean we have to follow necessarily but i would be curious what is the usual practice around
208those things and if if you are asking and perhaps you're not for tonight but i would be happy to share with you that i am regularly in contact with board presidents from many other districts in westchester as you know i serve on the board of the westchester putnam county school board association i have talked extensively with ward colleagues and with the executive director and the former executive director about this practice and i'm not aware that the practice of delegating representation or representativeness is in place at any other district in westchester now as to public comment and whether there are other practices or time limits or opportunities that we could build into our meeting agendas yes i mean i and i could speak to at least four comparisons right now but that's actually not what i'm
209suggesting for tonight for tonight i really am suggesting that we return to our policy which is consistent in this respect would would put us back in the company of our peers yes especially as people came out of the pandemic yes that that's that's that's the learning that i have and that i can bring from other districts that's reasonable i think i think from the perspective of how do we think about and pursue other avenues i think it would be helpful to return to the policy and then we can have more discussion at future meetings about how we might want to think about public comment and how to best use it to help us stay informed and allow the community opportunity to participate in our meetings um i think that makes sense is there any further
210discussion i just i i wonder if there might be something in between as sort of we're feeling more comfortable people coming back it's like as opposed to giving your i think there's some value if there's a situation where people aren't able to attend but they feel strongly that they want to participate in the meeting and if we're not going to offer a remote option for that if there's something in between where perhaps sort of the waving of ferpa but in a more neutral way that i've seen at like a town level where perhaps the clerk is able to read some of the ques some of the commentary because i think there's a value in your statement being read publicly versus obviously people are always here to email us and send information and that's certainly but
211that's kind of not the same as participating in the meeting and if you're prevented from coming in some way maybe that would be an option just to give you more work and actually i appreciate that and i i we don't need to engage in a whole lot of back and forth i don't want to you know i appreciate the board's indulgence but i look at it a little bit differently i think in a way we could say that public comment is an anachronism and it's been around since well before the advent of email or any kind of more immediate instantaneous communication and so from my perspective again just from my perspective you know of course community members are welcome to email us we encourage them to communicate with administrators and teachers and staff and with
212us on phone calls or over email or however it unfolds but that because we do maintain this charming routine of public comment whereby community members can come and introduce themselves to us it actually differentiates it from i mean i don't know dare i say social media and that's the point i want to meet these folks i want to hear their criticisms i'm not i'm not uncomfortable with the comment and i i welcome public participation at our meetings but i have a i have a concern which i really have tried to express as best i can um [Music] and you know i'll pause if there's future discussion and if not then we can vote all in favor please say aye aye aye all opposed please thank you the motion carries are there any other topics for
213board dialogue probably hope i would let it go but i can't um if a licensed physician said some of the things that were said about the vaccine in public there's some states that would pursue their license and there's some specialty boards that would seek to remove their board certification that um promulgating incorrect information is dangerous how dangerous nearly 800 000 americans have died over the past 636 days but 1 250 a day dying what's 1 250 2 3 jumbo jets going down every day if that happened and the fda faa found a way to reduce it how much challenge would we have for people saying the faa is being coercive they're forcing me they're forcing the pilots to fly a certain way i don't think that would get any traction for some reason this type
214of thing gets traction and maybe i shouldn't have mentioned vaccines it just stirs people up but um i can quote specific medical articles if they wish like if you want to quote the cdc let's quote the cdc the cdc is very clear uh cdc shows that people who are unvaccinated are much greater risk than those who are fully vaccinated to test positive or die from covidon 19. there you go that's the cdc it's not 100 protective no it's not neither is the flu shot um we're talking about a hundred percent i'm not even sure if the measles shot is a hundred percent um are there risks to vaccines there's risks vaccines um an interesting story is polio polio was a scourge in my mother's lifetime and a vaccine was discovered and it was of great
215help but it had some side effects rarely nobody back then nobody was questioning the need for vaccines people were very grateful they were vaccines then as polio in this country became very very very very rare it actually did become the situation where the vaccine posed more risk than the polio so they changed the vaccine from the oral one that you and i had to the inactivated injection if the math ever balanced like that i would join them in saying you shouldn't get a covert vaccine the math is not even close to that a central erroneous pillar of any argument around saying well kids won't get as sick first of all i'm sure there's a lot of parents out there who would like would beg to differ i'm sure if you went to the ed of
216a children's hospital and asked the staff there you think covid has any effect on children you get a fairly clear answer it's the central weakness of any of that argument though is that kids pass the virus to people who are more susceptible and it just all falls apart there's no such thing as saying my kid won't doesn't need a vaccine if your kid sees grandma or grandpa they can give grandma and grandpa why do we keep getting variants we keep getting variants because we don't have enough people being vaccinated so that it just it's it's a petri dish and we're going to keep getting variants until we have more people getting vaccinated so and then i don't then then we went from the um misinformed to um whatever's after that when i started talking about
217that ovid test would test water and it would come up positive i didn't follow that at all or i think somebody was saying something about masks being dangerous because they're somehow made with or similar to how gasoline is processed these are just ridiculous statements and are there downsides to masks absolutely um is every mass mandate completely evidence-based now there were times when the rules were a little bit behind the reality but then the reality changes and it's absolutely true that telling us you don't like quarantine rules a massive rule it does nothing we don't make those rules you're just talking to the wrong group of people so anyway i i don't want our forms to keep going into vaccine stuff i missed the last one so i felt like i had to have to weigh
218in this time around but it i do think i agree with alana i think we have to think about sort of like we we have policies around people staying up there can't you know criticize specific individuals you know we have rules about what the content of public content a public forum can be i think we ought to consider something about something that's considered um dangerous almost like espousing violence if somebody is suggesting something that is dangerous and unhealthful we should consider whether we want to provide a forum for people to see that although they have lots of other forms thank you bill any other comments topics and i think we can look ahead to future meetings um this is the last meeting of the board of education for 2021. i want to wish everybody at
219this table and in our community best wishes for a peaceful new year i'm looking forward to seeing you in january um in between now and the next board meeting it looks like finance committee is going to meet on tuesday december 14th 7 pm facilities committee is going to meet on wednesday december 15th at 7 pm policy committee friday december 17th at 9 00 a.m and then we will be back here on thursday january 13th 7 30 p.m for our next board meeting did i miss anything not then i think we're ready for a motion to adjourn would somebody like to make a motion moved by liz seconded by catherine thank you all in favor please say hi all right six zero back i didn't make a motion to do that um good uh can i
220undo the motion to adjourn kim thank you i'm gonna make a motion to go back into public session uh seconded somebody's got a second here at 11 30 a.m 30 p.m thank you ilana um okay all in favor go back into public session aye thank you and uh now i'm going to redo that motion to adjourn to go back into executive session for uh individual history of personnel history um i have a second for that thank you bill all in favor please say aye thank you you