November 4, 2021 KLSD BOE Meeting

001good evening everyone good evening welcome thank you so much for joining us here tonight and thank you for your patience it's thursday november 4th welcome to this meeting of the board of education and it's my pleasure to make a motion for the board to return to public session thank you rory seconded by liv thank you so much all in favor please say aye aye terrific and would everybody please join us as is our custom uh by rising for the pledge of allegiance and the flag is in the rear of our library tonight i pledge allegiance thank you so much it's great to see you thank you for joining us members of the communities nice to see everyone tonight we're very much looking forward to an opportunity to revisit activity of the tri-state consortium tri-state was

002last here in 2018 fall of 2018 and we're thrilled that they are back in action and we're able to have an update on their visit to kotona lewisboro we'll pause briefly for some board announcements and tonight we have our board committee reports on the agenda we're looking forward to hearing from our student board member and in fact abigail if you're ready we would love if you would lead off thank you um over the month of october all schools have been having fun celebrating fall and halloween many events were held across the district from donation drives to halloween fairs learning is in full spring as we approach the end of quarter one and the majority of seniors are in the process of applying to college or have already done so in campus congress we last met

003october 27th and this week meeting was focused on creating committees which we decided we would focus on building committee and then several school events committees as well as physical education and within these we passed several proposals that we are waiting for administration to hear um another proposal that i mentioned in my last board report is the winter pep rally and that we are still working towards figuring out all of the details and overall campus congress has been making a lot of progress in our meetings and we have a lot that we hope to accomplish this month in john jay high school on october 27th the national honor society held their annual blood drive for students and staff to donate blood for the red cross nhs members could donate blood or volunteer at the drive by

004giving out snacks and drinks to those who donated blood and this was very successful physics students are learning about the law of pendulum motion by creating pendulum waves out of ordinary items and this was a great way to get back into hands-on learning after over a year of virtual labs and projects over the past month all fall varsity sports held their senior nights and they're at the end of their season so winter sports will begin november 15th and lastly halloween was celebrated on october 29th with the orchestra performing in the hallway and everybody wore their costumes at john jay middle school we had a picture day which was held for grade six through eight on october 19th and the middle schoolers also dressed up for halloween on the 29th at meadow pond soup day was

005held october 8th which was a fun opportunity for students to have soup for lunch made with the vegetables that they the pre harvested the previous day the halloween spooktacular was held in two sessions on friday october 29th and the book fair was held this monday wednesday and thursday at kes students read and learned about columbus and celebrated indigenous people's day as a part of diversity equity and inclusion program the annual kes halloween fair was held october 23rd the holiday food share drive began collecting items this past monday and lastly the ks book book fair will begin this following week and lastly at increase miller the increase miller pto gifted a bunny buddy bench for students so this was placed on the playground and kids could sit on it and make friends with others just to

006encourage like making new friends and playing with others and the annual increase miller spooktacular was held on october 23rd and the book fair started today and will run through november 12th wonderful thank you so much abigail we really appreciate your insight into all that's happening across the district at every level did board members have comments or questions if you don't mind i just want to make sure i heard you correctly when you were speaking about campus congress did you mention a building committee as in facilities the high school building yes can you say a word or two about what that is um yeah just like small things around the building that we think we could like improve upon like in the classroom environment so like one idea was like flexible seating and stuff like that

007wonderful interesting thank you we look forward to hearing about that that's great thank you hey if there are no further comments or questions then next up is board committee reports this is item 7.01 i know we heard from audit recently i'm not sure whether there's anything new to report thank you um and our facilities committee has convened and liz has graciously agreed to chair that committee i don't know liz whether there's a word or two that you want to say at this point about the work of the committee uh well so we had a meeting last night and um we continued to really look at the building condition survey from 2020 um and have begun the process of really going through it with fine tooth comb prioritizing things and i look forward to hearing more

008from abigail about what campus congress comes up with as well thank you great thank you so much and parent counsel has parent counsel met since the last meeting we're meeting tomorrow okay great thank you uh policy committee no policies are up for third read um we were looking at um policy about non-resident students and how and when they could come to the district in terms of houses being sold or apartments being leased and a few others and we are probably going to be instituting a more vigorous um intermediate homework plan for all members so we could make the most of our meetings so i just spring that on people great thank you and i don't believe sustainability has met since the last board meeting but we are scheduled to meet tomorrow morning and then just

009with regard to westchester putnam county school board association i wanted to mention that somebody who previously served as what's referred to as the area 10 which is our area for nisba the new york state school board association she actually recently has become the president of nisba leaving a vacancy in the area 10 directorship and school boards are being asked to support nominations of other board members in the region who are interested in filling that vacancy and i just wanted to mention this tonight in anticipation that perhaps at the next board meeting i might suggest that we adopt a resolution to nominate one or two individuals who have expressed interest in the position it doesn't mean that we're supporting them and voting them into the directorship but that we would support their candidacy on the ballot

010does that make sense um so i'll try to get some more information together and you know let everybody know who who is interested in the position and then perhaps at the next board meeting we would have an opportunity to help these folks get on the ballot we have to have the nominations to the folks who coordinate this by december 6th so the next board meeting would be our opportunity to do it thank you and if there are no further committee reports i'll just pause for board announcements before we turn our attention to our featured discussion tonight and on behalf of several of us who were able to attend a learning walk of john j middle school i'm sure several board members would like to say a few words please allow me just to say thank

011you to members of the district office team andrew mary for your time and to mr sweyadowitz for generously spending the morning with us it was such a pleasure to be able to spend time in the middle school to walk through some classrooms thank you to teachers for opening their classrooms to us wonderful to see students back in the building we really appreciate the time and coordination and the opportunity and with that i'll invite any other board colleagues who wish to say a few words to please do so or if there are other board announcements um you know i'll just pause here i think i think the school walk was really tremendous and i'm not sure if it was just sort of a hint of longing to get back inside the schools or if it actually

012was really as magical as it was we had the opportunity to visit with many many different classrooms including the special ed classroom at the middle school uh we met some of the students and all of the teachers um i i was most impressed by the upgrading that we've recently done to the tech labs that were there i when my children were in the middle school i had some experience in those labs and they've been completely revamped and if anybody has the opportunity to go in there you should really take a look they were spectacular um the enthusiasm of the teachers as well as just the the way in which they have been relayed out and reconfigured and new technology and and um the teachers actually told us they did some of the painting themselves they

013can actually like paint to the lockers and so it was just it was a wonderful opportunity to take a look and to understand more about how that building operates is great opportunity thank you so i wanted to just again echo our thanks and um i do think you know after having that be like really a consistent activity that we always do um throughout the year and to not be able to do it during cover it was was hard and so it's really nice to be able to be in the buildings and i look forward to learning walks in our other schools um and i just want to make one board announcement um an abigail i don't you may this may be something that you're aware of but i was at a booster club meeting earlier

014this week and we did institute a female only open fitness center session um it's something that had come up with some of the female students and female athletes and there were 22 young women who came to work out in the fitness center on the first female only night and actually some staff members came as well who you know were able to come and join the students so they're going to try to institute a minimum i think of two days a week for that but maybe more but it seemed that it really was very successful so i think that's great thank you any other board announcements andrew please we're sure you have announcements for us tonight thank you just a couple um i also want to echo a lot of abigail's words thank you and a

015lot of a lot of the fall activities that abigail mentioned including the book fairs and some of the halloween events um we saw pumpkin patches at some of the elementary schools there's a lot of support from our parents for those activities so we want to say thank you for all of that involvement we really really appreciate it it has been a very celebratory time in school and it's really nice to see these in-person events coming back and then on tuesday of this week of course was election day and our students were not in school i want to thank mary and her team our staff developers our building leaders and others for leading a great deal of professional learning that was going on in the buildings here while our staff were here in school throughout that

016day a very worthwhile day and and very much needed that's our last personal learning day for this year and so now we go through uh to the end and we still have other opportunities after school and faculty meetings and things like that that's the last of the full day opportunities for that kind of work and then the final announcement just late this afternoon um westchester county uh department of health reached out i've had a few not many but i've had a few emails from community about uh vaccinations so it's been in the news a lot the opportunity for five to 11 year olds now to be vaccinated and the county has reached out to schools to ask if we would get a sense from our community of the level of interest in having five to

01711 year olds be vaccinated at school so we will be reaching out to the community to ask about that and i will be as clear as i can possibly be in the communication that this is not a commitment we don't know if it will actually happen or not the county is simply trying to gather information from around all the districts in the county to see where there might be more interest where there might be less so that if in fact they do have the ability to place a vaccine clinic somewhere and again even that's uncertain but if they do they would probably place it where there seems to be the greatest interest so that's why they're asking us just to inquire and i also i've had a few a few questions about people wondering about

018a mandate for the vaccine i'm aware of no discussion of a mandate and i'm very much aware that schools certainly are not in a position to mandate vaccinations that has to come to us from new york state department of health so as far as i'm aware if there's to be a clinic and again it's very much an if it would certainly be optional for families to to choose to have their children be vaccinated it's good just a heads up that you may see that coming possibly as soon as tomorrow if we can get that survey developed in time that's it for announcements today great thank you so much any questions alana please i wanted to just on that topic of the westchester department of health i think it's really exciting that the county is trying

019to find the best ways to distribute vaccines to children who are now eligible to receive that so i would encourage all parents to fill out that survey and just let us know if it was something that you know you'd be interested and the question is just would you be interested in having it at the school and i think it's just sort of trying to understand where is the best place for students that want it which i hope are many um to get vaccinated um would kids the idea being that it would be maybe kids are more comfortable coming into a school setting versus like the county center or some other place or you know or um doctor's office is just that it's it's easier to mass distribute at a larger site than at individual doctors

020offices just to get it out quicker so i i think and i'm sure i'm i'm sure i thank you for saying all that i'm sure there'll be questions the community members would have about exactly how it's going to work i don't know any of the answers to those questions at this point we've just been asked to solicit what sort of interest would there be and again if someone's not interested they simply don't return the survey that's fine we're just looking to see where there is interest right and then just uh we have run some vaccine clinics or within with adjacent school districts right and those have been pretty successful there was a clinic last year uh we did it together with bedford it was hosted in the bedford school but a number of our community

021did take advantage and but just to be clear like we meaning like the county like it was a westchester county but it was at fox lane high school so it was convenient to be able and it was you know in the afternoon and early evening so you could you know grab your kid and run to fox lane at 5 30 or 6 o'clock at night which was was certainly quite helpful right yeah yeah just using public sites to do public health which is like a great idea yeah great thank you so i think we're about to turn our attention then to 9.01 which is a discussion of tri-state and where we are with respect to that visit i'll just mention because i know some folks have signed up for a public forum but for anybody

022who's with us tonight who wishes to speak but hasn't yet had an opportunity to sign up this would be a great time there's a laptop in the back by the circulation desk please feel free to sign up and shortly after this discussion we will turn our attention to public forum and with that i think we are ready to hear about tri-state i'll turn it over to you thank you andrew so um as marjorie mentioned tri-state consortium visited us just last week i want to say i imagine some of us are not familiar with what his tri-state consortium so i want to say a little bit about that and then talk about the visits and what they do for schools tri-state started back in the early 90s with a group of superintendents from relatively high performing

023districts around the tri-state area so across new jersey new york connecticut the superintendents came together primarily from from my understanding of the history i wasn't obviously there at the time out of out of a feeling that the traditional uh assessments and feedback tools that districts these types of districts had were not felt to be serving them well in terms of trying to continue to make continual improvement in their schools so that the assessments and some of the other standardized assessments tend to be very consistent from one year to the next in high achieving school districts and to show very similar measures from one year to the next and this group of superintendents came together with the idea that are there ways that together we can form a consortium and help one another find other ways

024in which to push ourselves to always be improving which was the goal of that group then and is still the goal today by the year 2000 tri-state had grown to include 48 districts in the tri-state region and they they they serve the districts who are their members in a variety of different ways one way are these visits that they'll i'll describe in more detail in a moment another way they actually uh have support groups for various different positions in districts so there's a superintendent study group there's a principal study group and assistant principal study group curriculum study group so the people from around the region from uh comparably performing districts can come together and talk about latest thinking uh latest ideas uh and work across district in that way so that's one of the ways

025they support they hold conferences i think there was a conference today actually and because of the size of the group they're able to bring in nationally known speakers sometimes internationally known speakers who come and speak to all the members of tri-state and they hold seminars and other things so they in a variety of different ways they support districts but one of the most fundamental ways in the way they began is by doing these visits and they've done over 200 school visits in their time they average about 13 a year they actually when when new when teachers or administrators who are in the member schools feel they have an interest in participating in one in a visit to another district they go through a training process to learn how the visit visit's going to work to

026learn what they're looking for to learn various protocols by which they'll make observations and have discussion together and then they can become part of a visiting team so back in the fall of 2018 which feels like a very long time ago now we had a visit from 18 tri-state consortium colleagues the visit lasted for three days representatives of that visit came from the bedford school district trumbull connecticut new canaan connecticut scarsdale westport connecticut somers along with members of the is now a sort of an executive committee of the tri-state board and they come along also they spend three days in the schools they visit classrooms they spend time in classrooms they interview teachers they interview students and they interview parents we made a presentation back in december of 2018 about that visit to the board

027so anybody's interested in i'll summarize a little bit now but i'm sure that presentation is also still on board docs if anybody wanted to go and look at it and we we developed with them a focus for the visit the focus at that time was around our learning commitment which was newer then it's still with us today and we wanted to ask them some key questions to about about our learning commitment the questions that we ask them to consider on the visit for the following to what degree do individual staff members believe the learning commitment is important and relevant to their work with students how are students and parents experiencing the learning commitment and in what ways is the learning commitment being utilized in our classrooms then they came they did the visit they spent

028all that time together looking and talking independent of us so they went out on their own to gather data and think about those questions that we asked at the end of the visit they come back they meet again with representatives of the district they debrief in front of us quite extensively on a three-day visit and then we have an opportunity to ask them questions i'll share a little bit of the feedback from back in 2018 in response to that first question to what degree individual staff members believe the learning commitment is important and relevant to their work they found universal awareness among the faculty of the learning commitment and widespread understanding of it the degree to which faculty saw it as important and relevant varied and one of the nice things about this tri-state group

029is that they're very honest in their feedback with us which is what we want obviously it makes it makes for a constructive visit uh they they found that in the elementary schools the learning commitment was perceived to be aligned with curriculum and and and in a number of places and initiatives and and at the secondary level they found more challenge quite honestly in that uh secondary level kant is more content driven more traditionally content and assessment driven so they encountered a little bit more challenge there in terms of embracing some of the themes and ideas of our learning commitment but across all the schools they found a very positive uh thoughtful environment receptive to thoughtful innovation and improvement i'm reading from some of their feedback to us and they also found that the faculty had

030worked diligently to define the what and seeing the how of the learning commitment but had some question about whether people really understood the why behind it why is it this initiative in schools that'll be echoed again later in response then so that was the question about staff then we had a question about students and parents experiencing commitment and there they found that both groups spoke very positively about school experience and they said of students i think in particular they couldn't name the learning commitment but were able to speak about why the themes of the learning commitment engagement relevance and an active environment are important and and useful for moving work work forward they found that parents commended the quality of instruction across all the schools and that students spoke eloquently about engagement making connections collaborating

031and self-confidence and that students indicated the importance of this is a very very nice one to hear and think about in response to the pandemic and other themes students indicated the importance of having teachers who cared about them as persons and not just about the work they produce and then in that final question uh in what ways with the learning commitment being used utilized in our classrooms again they found utilization varied understandably they observed lessons that in their language contained hints of broader implication in the future so they saw the beginnings of movement in that direction they saw lots of examples of student-to-student interaction considerable amount of group work collaborative projects the kinds of activities that can contribute to an active learning environment and that students enjoy and then the the constructive feedback there was

032that these things will become even more meaningful when connected more clearly to problem solving learner choice and authentic inquiry and then trying to move along at a reasonable pace they gave us a significant number of thoughts for consideration and next steps to contemplate they suggested that we think about a more concrete description of classroom activities and perhaps rubrics that would describe them more concretely for faculty they talked about refining administrative learning walks uh around uh the learning commitment they they stressed even at that time more conversations around that question of why why is this so important that comes back again recently they talked about the evolution of instructional technology through the lens of the learning commitment uh the impact of instructional spaces that was an interesting one for us on the commitment especially with roy's

033just recent reference to the new newly designed tech lab now thinking about space there they talked about budget for professional learning uh and they also talked about an innovation cohort which at that time was just in its first iteration they had some suggestions for how it might be revised moving forward but that was all back in the fall of 2018. so they returned again last week it's now a smaller team i think largely in part due to covid rather than 18 there's now six members from the consortium and from again uh neighboring districts it's the same members come back to return the purpose of the return visit is to ask what has happened since how helpful were some of the suggestions that we made how helpful was the feedback and are there any new questions

034that we might think about together of course a lot has happened since the fall of 2018. not all of it much of it things that we wouldn't have wanted to happen in schools however there was about a year before we were shut down by the pandemic from the time of their first visit so we described to them some of the things that have happened in that year we talked about some new planning and visioning for technology that had already been put into place in that year before covid we had newly designed technology spaces in all of our classrooms along with devices being distributed to all teachers in that year as we were thinking about new ways to use that tech the innovation cohort was redesigned for its second iteration prior to covid around what we

035call an action research model and a requirement that all work for people who were in the innovation beta in the innovation cohort would be tied to the learning commitment we had we first developed and designed a graphic uh description of what the what we think the learning commitment is in order to show the faculty you know here are our focus points it's a circular uh graphic that the board has seen before and that we've used at opening days with our faculty we had its first iteration in the fall of 2000 the innocent days of the fall of 2019 and we and that was in part our attempt to get at the y to give us opportunities to talk about it and we've also grew some of our external partnerships with other organizations some existing some

036new such as challenge success the organization out of stanford that we continue to do work with today and then of course covet arrived and things shifted dramatically but we still uh we spoke with the visitors last week about the impact of covid uh both the challenges and then how we tried to take advantage of some opportunities where we could so we spoke to them about some of the professional learning that continued um through and how we tried to maintain focus where we could on engagement and active learning we talked about the asynchronous wednesdays and their impact on professional learning uh again we were very candid about the challenges uh we also talked about now the much more accelerated rollout of technology which they had sort of hinted at as something to be thinking about down

037the road it all happened very rapidly under covid and then we and then we moved towards this year we spoke about some of the work that's happening on our superintendence conference days that i just mentioned we have some new teacher leadership positions that we've put into place to support some of the focus points around the learning commitment new committees that we have in place as well as the growth of our staff developers to numbers to support ongoing learning with staff and some new curriculum design templates for designing units connected to the learning commitment and then we also shared with them some of the feedback we heard from our recent learning cafe which brought them really right up to where we had been a few weeks ago and some of the thoughts we were hearing there

038from community members related to lessons to be learned from the from the pandemic so they listened to us again this visit i should mention is much shorter it's not another three-day visit this was a morning that we get to spend and now of course it was on zoom because that's how a lot of the world is still functioning but then they still listen to us and they give us feedback again they were very uh positive in their feedback to us about the perseverance with this commitment and having visited lots of districts in our region they were impressed that we stayed with our commitment uh that we continue talking to faculty and providing supports for their learning as we try to grow the level of engagement with the learning commitment they were constructive in seeking out

039opportunities for more collaboration between staff staff and students they saw they they still see more opportunity for that um they would they were quite taken by the alignment between the themes of the learning commitment and a lot of the thinking that's emerged both during and post pandemic a lot of the thinking around social emotional learning more meaningful engagement for students more focused on less or more i should say more depth rather than more breadth again themes that we heard in our recent learning learning cafe from community members they saw a lot of overlap but we're impressed again that we were kind of staying the course with these themes that have really emerged nationally and internationally now they continued to stress communication about that question of why and that we keep going back and trying to

040help people and i think this is something they see in a lot of districts that initiatives begin they may go on for a while people may lose sight of why we why are we doing this what's the importance behind this and they pushed us on thinking more about that um and they and they acknowledged and they said again from other visits that they've done in the region but there is a certain exhaustion from the pandemic and all that it is required uh and that there's that there's been as much focus on survival and getting through as there's been on innovation and that building leaders and instructional leaders have been pulled away from work they would be typically doing to be doing covert related tasks uh that take up a great deal of time so they

041were understanding of in that context uh they were they were encouraging and supportive of the work that's still been happening in our district around the world so it was a very um again positive visit the the nature of these visits is they give us they give us feedback uh they're constructive they want to be supportive and they want to push our thinking and we appreciate that and in return we go we visit other districts and we we try to provide the same uh in the same land so we really i we thank them a lot because they continue also to provide those study groups that i mentioned earlier and it has been very easy through kobit to get stuck on doing nothing but covert can be very all-consuming so it continues i think now to

042be particularly important that we push ourselves to get back to the kinds of things that keep us innovating moving forward um giving our students the experiences we want them to have so i really it's important that we express our appreciation to them for their dedication and their their continued work so i hope that gives our board a sense of who tri-state is and the kind of work they do um they're a really valuable and much appreciated group in our region and they do bring together a lot of very like-minded school districts which is helpful thank you very much very helpful thank you we really appreciate that update i'm glad that you had the opportunity to bring them back do we have a sense of whether we will continue to engage with tri-state you know moving

043forward do we have another round of topics i'm thinking about this sort of in the way that we have our auditors come and then they do a risk assessment and that determines the next audit is there a discussion at this stage of where we would go from here it doesn't happen that quickly okay now that there are 48 districts i said they can do about 13 visits a year so it takes them a while to get through the cycle and be able to visit everyone so it'll probably be a couple years at least before they return on a different topic the next time around thank you and will we have staff members who are participating as visiting tri-state representatives going to other school districts and participating in their site visits yeah i think we've actually

044had staff recently expressed interest in being trained we have a few of our administrators and staff developers have been trained so it's nice to have that cadre of people who are involved i also think it's worth mentioning that the process of preparing for these visits is so helpful because you know especially with covid you become so focused on the day today that it forced us to look back and think about you know what the recommendations of that initial report were and think about what we have done what we haven't done you know why we haven't done it what we might do better so i think the process of reflecting on our work and then thinking about how we move forward was really helpful thank you comments or follow-up questions i guess i mean it sounds

045really useful for them to look almost like at our mission statement that our and our learning commitment and as a board we've spent a lot of time with the learning commitment and we've evaluated whether the words were right or we needed to update it and i remember that circular diagram with all of the inputs and i think we added six or seven of them uh recently and then for them to come back three years later and to give us an update on where they thought we were about that in a single day it's really useful but other maybe to marjorie's point are there other areas of running of the district other than the learning commitment where their input would be welcomed is are there emotions like do they sell in just sort of learning commitments

046across the school districts or did they do they they approach a district when it's time for a visit they approach the district and then collaboratively we decide what's an area that we're particularly interested in learning and growing from so that it could be any area okay and we've had tri-state here for other areas this was just the most recent visit even though 2018 feels like a long time ago but they had also been here in 2015 and prior to that so they have done other areas and this was just the area that at the time felt really appropriate because the learning commitment was getting traction but was still um new enough that this seemed valuable but they don't give a they don't give a grade and what the auditors do like they say satisfactory and

047they're supposed to be delighted do they come do they say like yeah we're making great progress or they don't the sense is from what you just said that they felt confident that we're making good progress towards that goal continuing to ask the question why are we doing it i think that's healthy in a lot of cases um but they they don't and culminate in it they're not a grading institution but they are you know they are constructive feedback institutions so if they if the concerns were more significant we would hear more about the concerns we heard we heard some areas where there's room for and we know that there's room for growth and we're interested in how they see that um but that's that's more the model that they're interested in yeah right thank you

048is there um i just didn't this is more of a logistical tri-state question so um if let's say there was a specific content area that we knew someone who was in tri-state was really excelling and can we request like hey can we have a few of our can we have a principal come to your school and observe for a day like is there is it like kind of an open door policy between the 48 districts that's cool i mean that's one of the you know so i go to the superintendent study group so you know i build relationships with people through there and then it becomes very easy to reach out to somebody and say would we come on a visit and see a more informal kind of visit and make a connection that way

049yeah great yeah that's one of the big benefits of having this kind of partnership awesome ilana um it sounds really the shared learning across different staff members seems like a wonderful resource to have um i was just wondering if there were other you sort of said that there we could identify new questions so were there additional things they looked at or was it again just solely focused kind of on looking back at the learning commitment a couple years later yeah that's that's the structure when they've done one of their big visits they do a follow-up on the same topic and then the next time around it'll be a new topic and then just i know it just happened but with with the why question since it came up last time and this time do you

050have some preliminary thoughts on how that might be how you might approach that i mean it actually influenced our thinking very quickly because they came back the end of last week we had our staff development day tuesday we added a very short session on that day where we spoke to the entire we sort of said to us you know we need to put this back in front of people again and at least be talking to people about why we're doing this work so we change that a little bit and then we'll keep thinking as we move forward where are other places where we can put this in front of people and think about it together i mean i love that point just around the y because it's so much about what the learning commitment is

051about relevancy and making it you know experiential and stuff so it's it's great that it got reinforced among the staff on tuesday look forward to seeing more of that roger it's slightly off topic but maybe it's on the same learning commitment topic if i if i may um we have a benchmark do we have some way to know that we are you know intellectually engaging and relevant and there is an active learning environment we have some scale by which we can measure that and establish a bench line and then and we probably talked a little bit about this when we had that meeting but is there some way for us to sort of evaluate how are we doing against that learning commitment given that we've stuck with it for quite a number of years now

052yeah so that that that's a part of what this visit was about you know was to ask this group to come in and take a look and see for us because you know we we're gonna we we do this all the time our administrators are walking through buildings on a regular basis we're talking we're in meetings with our teachers they're visiting each other's classrooms etc we had this outside group come and we asked them you know this is where we think we might be but we want you to come and take a look and give us feedback on how you think we're doing um and again the reason i stressed the emphasis on um why how tri-states got started the traditional assessments that schools have don't necessarily particularly measure those things well they they measure

053um content knowledge retention to a degree uh they they measure a certain amount of compliance and how well students are doing what's been asked of them but over time as we've realized there's a lot there's a lot more in the way of skills that we want our students to be thinking about in terms of their growing curiosity their understanding of the world around them their connection to the world around them they're interested in making change in the world around them that those traditional benchmarks don't measure we do well on most of those traditional benchmarks so we're looking for ways um and it's it's not it's quite honestly it's not as easy to numerically measure those things which is why observation the narrative is very helpful just related to looking for evidence of the learning commitment

054and its traction are you able to participate in learning walks throughout the buildings in a manner similar to the manner in which you were able to participate pre-covered you know oh yeah now okay yeah those have returned great yeah any other comments or questions before we move on well thank you very much we really appreciate the update and thank you for um persevering with with tri-state and making sure that we had the opportunity for some closure on the experience that we had embarked on back in 2018 we appreciate that okay i think this brings us to our opportunity for public forum so now we're at 10.01 and thank you again to community members for joining us tonight and for your patients for those who maybe haven't participated in public forum previously i'll just mention that

055this is our portion of the meeting reserved entirely to hear from you so please don't be surprised when we are just in listening mode and we're not going to engage in any back and forth we do ask that you please introduce yourself and let us know where in the district you live or if you have children in one of our school buildings we appreciate knowing that if you're not a resident of the district please tell us where you're from we re we request that you please try to limit your remarks to approximately three minutes we do have quite a few people who are waiting to speak tonight so we we do appreciate your uh willingness to keep your remarks to about three minutes and we'll try to help you with that as best we can

056um and i think we're ready to invite the first speaker and it's my pleasure to welcome jake kempen thank you insects sorry okay um hi my name is jake kempen i'm in 11th grade i go to john jay i'm part of the saga club which is kind of like a lgbtq based club um and i'm bringing to the table a potential policy to be adapted that we've been calling the srb policy so a large percentage of our stu of the school students identify as either transgender non-binary in an attempt to be as inclusive as possible in the school on behalf of saga i'm proposing a bill which will be referred to as the srb policy or the students rights to bathrooms policy and that being said it will allow i'm sorry would you just mind

057to say that again students rights too bathrooms policy thank you i just didn't hear you thank you yep um so uh it will allow students to use the bathroom corresponded to the gender they may identify as regardless of their assigned gender or sex at birth it's to be noted that at the moment there's no firm policy set in place allowing transgender students rights in regards to the usage of bathrooms and today i stand before you requesting your support for this policy um the other part of this is in regards to gender-neutral bathrooms uh there's about three or four gender-neutral bathrooms in the school uh however the gender-neutral bathroom in queue hall is really the only um bathroom that's handicap accessible for our peers who are in who have physical disabilities and are using wheelchairs or

058whatnot which kind of makes it unreliable to use if you feel most comfortable using that bathroom the other issue is there's one in the nurse's office but it's also the only one close in proximity to the nurse which is difficult because there's a lot of sick and ill kids and so that's also not such a reliable place to go oh wow i only have 40 seconds okay um basically to get to the point um we formally request that at the minimum both bathrooms in the library because one of them is usually locked um that both be unlocked to be able to use through the school day and that students will be able to have the right to use the bathroom of their choosing based on their gender orientation or identity as whereas as well as

059where they feel the safest because after all our number one priority is safety thank you that's it thank you jay our next speaker is beth um sure please really really quick um just into addition to that um i was petitioning around the school and i have over uh 85 signatures from students in favor of them would you like to leave those with us you don't have to i don't mean to put you on the spot but you're welcome i kind of have to make some photocopies of it no problem thank you thank you our next speaker is beth yaretzky my name is beth uretsky i live in cross river i have a son that graduated john jay high school in 2019 and his son that's currently in the middle school in eighth grade when one

060situation happens you say okay things can happen when multiple things happen over the years last five years you start to see a pattern and it's a pattern that i'm not happy about first of all five years ago we had a situation here in town about swastikas there was one meeting there was nothing really was accomplished there was really no follow-up my husband and i at that meeting were yelled at and it was allowed which should never have happened my children felt discriminated against and it was not acceptable luckily the situation kind of resolved itself and it stopped happening so we said okay we just moved here things happened could happen any town one thing we let it go then parkland florida happened next quarterback meeting my husband i came to the meeting we spoke about

061how the middle school and the high school especially had so many open doors why can't we just close them i even said at that meeting i don't want our next conversation to be shoulda coulda woulda and didn't we've learned through the last five six years especially that this could happen in communities that would you would never expect it to happen if it happened there it can happen here two and a half years ago my son at the time was my younger son time was in fifth increased miller he was assaulted on the bus by a fellow student he is also a special needs kid and while yes he is verbal he did not want to get he has such a good heart that he did not want to get the other kid in trouble even

062though approximately 8 out of 10 other kids jumped in to help him out that day it happened at 8 o'clock in the morning on the way to school i didn't get a phone call until 4 30 that afternoon with the excuse that there was an investigation to be done the investigation still wasn't complete but i still got a phone call at 4 30 as opposed to by 8 30 in the morning by not getting that phone call lack of communication it took away my right as a parent to have my son examined by our own pediatrician he was not examined at all by anybody medical and at the time the principal and the assistant principal had to be out of the building for a meeting which is fine it happened school psychologist at the time

063was the one who evaluated my son no medical background but he thought he had the right to do so according as he said according to policy the next meeting i did have a meeting the next day i did have a meeting with the assistant principal and him and i told him that it was totally unacceptable the process in which it happened so i asked the board of ed and mr celesnek to please reevaluate how that policy is written and to please go back to the drawing board and rewrite that policy a parent should have been included from the get-go especially when there was a physical altercation that shouldn't again never have happened now we come to this last year with special ed i don't have to reiterate everything that's happened everything you guys have gone

064through but these parents come to meeting after meeting to speak about and pardon me please pardon me but i'm just going to observe that we're past the three ministries thank you parents feel they're being ignored there's really not much communication if the board didn't know what was happening or mr celesnek didn't know what was happening that's bad enough but now that the board and mr celesnek has been aware of this for months and we're still here discussing it is a problem again leads to a pattern and last but not least the board has a responsibility not the lewis borough police department to put an sro at the high school i don't want to hear about budget because you find a budget for anything else you want to put into that budget an sro needs to

065be put in a full timer right away you need to find the money that is why you're elected and hired to do that job the bottom line is we need more accountability more communication and more inclusivity we need to get back to being one town as one team and i beg you to please go back to the drawing board and do so if you need help from the community i know there are many parents here including myself plus others who are not here tonight who are willing to help out it's not like you don't have the support of will people willing to do please do what's right thank you thank you i think the next speaker is jacqueline klein novik hello my name is jacqueline klein novik i'm a community member like many others who

066have been standing by watching and waiting these last months watching and waiting to see how our board of ed and our superintendent mr celesnek resolved the profoundly serious issues uncovered in our special education program and discussed here by parents and concerned community members repeatedly a growing number of us are watching and waiting for recognition communication and a path forward it has been months and the response has been dismal it's been cold and it's been inadequate as a community member and a parent of three children who have gone through this school district from beginning till end i can tell you that this is not a good look nor is it a good feel i wear two caps in this community one is a resident and parent and the other as a professional 30 years in practice

067as a special educator speech-language pathologist evaluator and child advocate i have learned many things over the years including one there are always reasons behind a child's behavior be proactive not necessarily reactive two continuing education and supervision are beyond important three most parents are knowledgeable and helpful regarding their children what they don't know they will seek out four communication is key i am urging this board and the superintendent to reconsider their approach come together communicate and work with parents build back trust with patience and respect needed changes can happen for a minute or two i will shift to an address a related issue the reading program in our district with my professional cap on i will tell you that i'm an orton gillingham trained therapist providing evidence-based instruction to dyslexic children for the past 30 plus

068years it is more than discouraging to hear that klsd has reinvested for more lucy calkins tc program with the plethora of articles out there containing research about its ineffectiveness for children who do not learn to read and spell with ease i could go on and on and tell you the facts as to why this program is an extremely poor choice but time does not permit but the information is out there in abundance accessible to anyone while i'm glad that klsd has invested in some foundations in wilson reading programs which are evidence-based i can tell you that there are huge cracks in the system and that kl kids are failing how do i know this because for years now these katona lewisborough kids have been landing on my doorstep for appropriate reading instruction these are kl

069kids our kids that are really struggling to read because they aren't getting the instruction they need in school mr celesnek ms ford and other board of ed members it's not enough to offer some foundations in wilson it's how it is implemented as someone who specializes in evidence-based reading instruction and dyslexia i recognize the issues one proper identification not just in k-2 intensity of the program fidelity to the program supervision and review of the program this is something we can do it's fixable it's doable all kids should be able to learn to read in district i urge you to be open to a literacy committee open to the research be open to making changes to benefit all children going back to the alarming events of last spring and the lack of appropriate response to some extremely

070serious issues i'm urging all of you to work together with us the community that you are here to serve we are a tight community of people that care deeply and are supporting each other and growing numbers i'm sorry to interrupt you i'm just going to observe that the time has passed thank you we are all watching and waiting intently to see the next steps of how these educational issues are handled by all of you just yesterday i was talking to the mom of one of my clients just from a little bit further north district further north trying to reschedule a session i told her i was leaving the office early today to speak at a boe meeting and she said oh i know what's going on in your district katona lewisborough she said we love

071downtown katona and had been looking at houses there but now it's off the list i didn't know what to say and i always know what to say lovely family this is a shame please give these issues the attention that our children and our community deserve we need you to be responsive thank you elio moshetta hello machete south salem been a resident since 92 my kids have come through john jay and graduated i'm here to support the sro or the lack of an sro here are some thoughts about the safety and security of our john jay students the teaching staff other employees and all who pass through the halls of the school there is little doubt that everyone involved wants a safe and secure teaching environment the difficult part is how to accomplish the task what

072occurred in sandy hook just about 17 miles away as well as other incidents in schools across the country was a game changer the best way to prevent crime is by having a sworn uniformed police officer present in the event of incident that officer can immediately radio for assistance where other officers as well as state troopers can respond today because of the aforementioned school shootings police departments are trained to quickly respond and handle the situation in order to preserve lives there's nothing better than have having a lousbro police officer assigned to the school of course it's easier said than done who will pay for it i feel strongly that the school district should pick up the course i have several reasons as well as questions perhaps perhaps there are ways to grants to help offset the

073cost in addition i will put my money where my mouth is by knowing that at some point the cost could be a part of my school tax the bottom line for me is what price can we put on one or several lives another thought is the greeters throughout the rest of the schools in the district could establish a rapport and a direct line of communication with the school resource officer any suspicious incidents can be reported directly to the sro our police department should be left with the task at hand policing the town with the new state mandates such as body karmas which are not simply strapping a camera on to an officer but rather other logistics involved it has to be difficult for our police department to do it all with a limited budget also

074an aspect of police reform is for our officers to be involved with the community what better way to accomplish this i believe a school resource officer present is necessary for all one officer who has the responsibility and develops the expertise in working with the school staff and students and maintaining a safe environment for those that are unaware on october 21st a gun threat was called in at kotona lewisboro elementary it became public knowledge on october 24th i received a call from the bedford police department uh embarrassed during that call in front of my family and friends the result the purpose of that call was the superintendent thought that i was the person that made the gun threat this is happening here not just in virginia this is what's going on i got 30 years worth

075of time banked up everybody get on that case let's get it done they're putting lives at stake because of dollars they want to save you want my letter it was in the kale times today thank you robin fields i'm robin fields i've lived in in lewisborough for 33 years i raised three children in this school district they're all grown now two of those children had special needs i'm a speech-language pathologist in this community and uh i've worked with many of the special needs families i'm here tonight to show my support for these families for the parents and for the children i implore you for the sake of the children and for our entire community to listen to the parents respond to these parents meet with them and make a sincere honest effort to address their

076concerns you need to fix the broken special education department mr superintendent you're just talking about striving for improvement we don't need a tri-state committee to know this is where it has to start thank you adam wiles all right i'm taking up time i didn't when i put my name on there it wasn't actually to make a comment i thought i was just supposed to put my name thank you meredith black good evening i'm here tonight to continue to express my concerns and frustration with the reading programs being used in the general education classroom and let you know that i'm not alone in these concerns during the pandemic i submitted a parent petition to the district with over 170 signatures but you advised that that was an appropriate matter to raise the concerns so i asked

077if you'd consider putting together a panel the district has also not proceeded with that type of involvement of the parents to date so i'm going to go about this a different way the district seems willing to do surveys on all kinds of things so i'd ask the district to do a survey of its own population of parents and students and ask the question whether parents and students have concerns with their reading instruction whether they are paying for tutoring or private school with regard to reading instruction to ask whether they believe their student needs additional help in this area and ask if there are ways that they believe the district could improve those services to the students i think that this the district can do its own homework in addition to talking to parents and maybe

078this is the first way to open that door to communication with the district seems hesitant to to go into so i hope that you consider it thank you erica glick good evening my name is erica glick and i'm here again to speak about the literacy issues facing our district to respond to some inaccuracies presented in an email so that they can be publicly corrected and i'm going to again request that our district our district reconsiders the refusal to establish a literacy committee i'm again asking this board and this administration to engage with the community and our concerns first i'd like to remind you that my daughter was here two months ago a young lady of just 10 years old speaking so eloquently about how you failed her how you discriminated against her how you denied

079her of her basic right to read following her public comments she was told that she was courageous she was told that she did a great job and mr celesnek you quoted her and her classmate when you said we can do better we need to do better last week i shared a very recent scathing independent study of the lucy calkins teachers college units of study the program we utilize in district i will not go into the embarrassing details of the study as i also shared this with the board as well as the administration i will however correct misinformation this study was not from 2018 as was stated by mr celesmic and miss ford this was the copyright date of the program they were reviewing the review was from october 2021 critical reading is an important skill

080for our children and for us as adults so i feel compelled to correct this error of note i also shared a scathing review from 2020 by another independent organization back in 2020 um student achievement partners this review was also embarrassing and was shared with the board and the administration the response from the board president ms schiff was simply thanking me for sharing my concerns and my perspective my overall feeling to the administrative response to my emails are buzzwords and lip service while i'm happy to hear you feel teachers college is meeting several essential pillars of literacy i obviously disagree but would be happy to engage i'm happy to hear we have allegedly introduced integrity into our classrooms i'd like to hear more about this it was mentioned once previously as a screening tool but now

081we've indicated it's in the classrooms if this is in fact true that's wonderful i obviously have many more questions how are we using it is it in the teacher's hands has there been training have we purchased it and it's sitting in a supply closet somewhere are we measuring the progress since it's been introduced if so how you mentioned foundations in your email reply for our word study program but in a previous board of ed meeting it was presented that we were using teachers college phonics further several years ago i was told by my child's teacher that they were piloting teachers college phonics when i brought this up to administration it was vehemently denied as you can see lots of conflicting information to the public here i've been dismissed with comments such as my side has

082research and your site has research comments such as this will never close the circle if we're ever to improve we must look critically at what we're doing simply saying that you have a different opinion on the matter is not enough what does the latest research say please provide me with the research that you reference in support of teachers college as i've been asking for it for years since our initial meeting several years ago as you've said mr celesnek both things can be true you can feel that teachers college is meeting the needs of our students i including lucy calkins and many others disagree lucy cawkins herself says her program is not effective for teaching dyslexic students and current statistics tell us that dyslexia affects 15 to 20 percent of all students so we are essentially

083discriminating against a rather large segment of our population i'm sorry to interrupt you i'm just going to observe that the time has passed yes i'll be finishing up i get it to look critically at what we are doing is a huge ask i understand that we're potentially looking at our systems our policies our programs our procedures and saying we could do better that is not easy to do to look critically and potentially say what we did wasn't enough or could be improved upon teachers go into the field to help it's a huge pill to swallow to believe what they're doing isn't helping same could be said for administration we must be willing to loosen our grip on a method that doesn't work for all and begin our own journey towards evidence-based instructional methods that help

084all and harm none when we lay down our weapons and choose to see the kids like my daughter who have the most loss in this fight over balanced versus structured literacy it changes how we see everything because what's true is that our children are the casualties of the adults who hold on to methods that science tells us fail well i'd like to go on line by line to your responses over the years with a laundry list of additional questions this is not the appropriate way to do it and this is what i've been trying to say there needs to be a committee or there needs to be a forum i write you right i speak you speak we get nowhere fast and even more disturbing it seems the board has been instructed to no longer

085respond during public comment whether this is a directive from our legal team or our administration is unclear but it speaks volumes and it's not a good look for our district thank thank you billy terbert hi my name is billy turber i live in katona and i am a parent of a non-speaking autistic kindergarten boy in increased miller he does not speak he cannot communicate and is extremely resourceful but he gets very frustrated because he is not speaking like the boe he will not tell us what's going on unlike the boe it's not because he cannot no it's not because he won't it's because he cannot he cannot sit without he cannot sit down with us and have an open dialogue this is heartbreaking for us as parents because he is such a happy boy who

086uses every tool possible to regulate himself yet he cannot express how he feels so simply you all have the tools at your disposal and you're not using them in the public's best interest that is heartbreaking eli is non-speaking the boe certainly has this tool that my son does not have but don't use it we are in the dark about certain processes that we need to be a part of this is a public school are we not the public are you not hearing us i hate hate that i compared my son or used him in an analogy to this system but he deserves better and our community deserves deserves better as well thank you for hearing me i i hope you listened thank you thank you sarah pulizzato good evening my name is sarah pallazado my

087husband lansing catrella and i have three children in the school district one is at the high school and two at increase miller i appreciate the opportunity to address you tonight this is our first year in the district in our prior district i was fortunate to be very involved in the pta council and particularly in candidate debates between prospective school board members prior to the elections last year which gave me a chance to better educate myself about the roles and responsibilities of school boards i want to acknowledge the complexity of the work and the many competing priorities that need to be balanced in that district unfortunately during the run-up to the election and during the debates themselves the conversation devolved from problem solving and discussion of how to allocate resources to an all-out war of opinions

088and even personal vilification of the candidates and their respective supporters in that divisive environment we lost sight of the long-term goals of the district ultimately outcomes for children in that district will not be as good as they could have been if that energy and effort could have been directed instead towards collaboration on shared goals i'm aware even though we're new that a similarly polarized dynamic is at play here as well particularly relating to several incredibly upsetting incidents which occurred in the recent past as a newcomer i don't think that it's my place to comment on those events other than to say that parents who have spoken to me just in the short time we've been here feel a deep hurt and a loss of trust and they're seeking both an acknowledgement of their pain and

089a collaborative approach to ensuring that nothing of the kind could ever happen again i recognize that members of the board may not feel that they can speak freely and may even feel that it puts them at risk if they express regret or condolences for what happened to these children or engage in dialogue with parents or other representatives of the special education community but as a result the divide between parents and administration is growing escalation of ill feelings will drive us further apart and further reduce our capacity to accomplish shared goals shutting down communication leads to greater misunderstandings as people inevitably fill in the gaps with their worst assumptions about another's intent i know that there are complicated legal and ethical concerns here i'm convinced and i hope i'm not being naive to be convinced that

090it's still possible to resolve these issues in a way that will make our school community stronger more resilient more comprehensive and more sympathetic if we approach one another as human beings first with compassion empathy and vulnerability on the topic of communication my son several weeks ago who has severe food allergies multiple food allergies happened to eat something that no one had any idea whether it was safe for him and i discovered that when he came home from school and hadn't eaten his lunch and i asked him why and i had to go first to the nurse the nurse had nothing to say she referred me to the principal the principal took a full day i assumed to consult with whoever he needed to consult with and then it was just sort of a the curtain

091came down i got minimal information i still don't know whether he the person who discovered it didn't tell anyone or whether she told someone and no one told me but that kind of thing can't happen it simply can't happen his life was at risk and no one knew for hours or i didn't know anyway and i wasn't able to give any input on what should have happened next fortunately he was fine we might not be that lucky another time in conclusion i want to focus here on how the central task of a school board as i understand it which is to oversee the activities of the school system so that all students can have the best possible experience and outcomes relates to how we approach inclusion and equity specifically for students with particular needs that

092place them in one way or another out of the mainstream and why that is so critical not only for these students but for all students and my husband's going to continue our remarks in his a lot of time thank you thank you lance and gatrell thank you um so sarah mentioned i'm the uh inadequate co-pilot of the three kids in the school district we had one other that graduated in the previous school district further down south um what i wanted to mention was about um when the news broke about elijah mclean's death in 2019 we had a very strong visceral reaction to that both because it was so tragic because like many we could see how his neurodiversity factored into the events as they played out we also have a son named elijah who sarah

093described before he's our third grader um he also sings and talks to himself he skips along the street he uses scripted phrases to express himself he can struggle to process instructions and questions he gets lost in his thoughts misses social cues avoids eye contact avoids conflict he too is gentle loving generous and peaceful if you ask him about his friends he will name every child in his class and he genuinely means it elijah's iep has dozens of goals targeting the acquisition of skills including social skills he works hard and his therapists work hard and his teachers work hard too as he tries to learn the language and behavior of community and social belonging but belonging is a two-way street as sarah was saying do those outside the disability community expend equal effort teaching kids to

094meet hours halfway to model and measure inclusion and empathy elijah mclean died because those who encountered him that night did not understand and value him as a member of the community school is the primary place children experience community and experience diversity to whatever degree it exists if we value diversity and inclusion the single most unique um the single most important thing our schools can do is to model community to teach children to see one another as loved valuable and welcome whatever their differences for children on the spectrum are who otherwise are neurodiverse and or disabled true inclusion is more than simply being present in the classroom equitable inclusive communities where everyone can thrive require long-term well-funded consistent efforts following best practice even if it means adjusting our educational approaches and priorities some of elijah mclean's

095last words were i'm just different that's all i'm so sorry kids in the disability community are working hard to achieve their goals in a system that wasn't designed with them in mind can we all work just as hard to build communities where their path will be a little easier our questions to you tonight are first what goals has the board set in regard to continuing to build a school community where children are taught to connect with understand and value one another as equals and second do the superintendent and the school board hold themselves to the same standards of empathy respect understanding and inclusion both in their approach to addressing the concerns of parents in the disability community regarding the serious incidents in which children were harmed and also going forward and working with parents on

096other issues that arise thank you thank you debra golia according to your police 1900 the board of education believes that positive parent and family engagement is essential to student achievement this engagement refers to the participation of parents in regular two-way and meaningful communication with the board and superintendent the reality is very different since us parents have not been able to have meaningful two-way communication and the president of this board sees as a small group disconnected with the majority how hard is is it to give us the parents an update about what have you done since these two abuses were reported what has been done since these events happen to avoid future abuses it is common in a scenario like this that schools hire an independent cons consultant to audit the entire department because we all

097know that this is just the tip of the iceberg and in most cases it will reveal areas that need improvement i know it's easy to believe that abuse does not happen but mr celestin well knows that sexual abuse and mistreatment can happen even under his own oversight crisis presents opportunities for new approaches to be considered cameras in self-contained classrooms are already a reality for states like georgia texas and west virginia because families should not have to worry whether or not our children are safe at school trust can only be achieved by creating a culture of transparency what could be more important than safety perhaps the learning from the pandemic experience is more relevant to discuss in a learning cafe unfortunately i could not come to the cafe event but would like to remind the board

098that the students who need special education services were the most affected during the pandemic while all students face the challenges of the health crisis economic disruption and use of new technology students with disabilities were often unable to receive iep mandate services or receive them remotely potentially limiting the quality of the services or effectiveness particularly for the therapies that require hands-on face-to-face interaction or specialized equipment thomas dinopoly the new york state controller recently said an essential part of this year's school reopening plans should be determining how to compensate for the learning losses students suffered and to ensure they succeed in their educational goals state education aid will increase by 8.4 billion over the next few years in addition new york was allocated over 15 billion in federal emergency dinapoli also says schools districts should prioritize expanding

099states and federal aid on special education programs and related services to help address short-term setbacks and long-standing inequities for students with disabilities meanwhile this district cuts seven full-time special education assistants and aids so what are your plans for compensating the learning losses suffered by special education students as a result of the pandemic what are your plans for the additional funding received pd is part of your job mr celesnek to establish and maintain communication with community groups which are interested or involved in the educational programs of the district thank you matthew golia uh matthew golia reading for shoshanna baron i'm sorry pardon me we're having speakers speak for themselves and then at the end i'll call individuals up who are reading on behalf of others thank you i'm going to read for myself first yes please

100thank you okay this is my speech um in the katona-lewisboro times today i read that there was a 9-1-1 hang-up call made from a pay phone inside of john jay middle school surveillance cameras inside the school helped police identify the caller why can we have cameras monitoring our pay phones but not in our self-contained classrooms where our most vulnerable students have been physically assaulted physically restrained and secluded i've noticed that even though members of the public have spoken at the past two board of education meetings on critical issues in our school district related to special education and the reading program the board of education's recent tactic has been to remain silent and stonewall the public during board dialogue if you think that tactic will cause us to give up i can promise you that we

101will not well i agree that this is a great strategy for this board considering that with the exception of trustee schneier your responses are often insensitive and dismissive i will remind you of the first sentence of your own policy one two three zero that says quote the board recognizes its responsible ability to listen and respond to public comment once again the board is demonstrating its unwillingness to hold itself accountable to even its own policies on august 19th the superintendent sent out a message the community saying amongst other things there would be additional training to support students with autism the escalation strategies and ongoing additional autism training for staff throughout the year that evening at the board of education meeting trustee schneier asked the superintendent about this additional autism training the superintendent's response was quote i

102don't want to give the wrong answer and i don't have the answer tonight so three months later i would like to ask the superintendent and the board of education if you could now please elaborate on this additional training that you promised to the public trustee schneier also asked the superintendent about the superintendent's claim of outside consultants coming in asking can you elaborate more the superintendent's response was quote not at this time how about at this time finally on august 19th trusty schneider stated to her fellow board members it's time to have the meeting this meeting should have happened and i don't understand why we haven't well it still hasn't happened we would like to invite you to a town hall style discussion on december 5th in katona where we can all discuss it together finally

103on october 18th the superintendent wrote to our group saying at the moment i'm prioritizing work and finding an appropriate consultant cannot commit at this time to ongoing meetings i will keep you informed of our progress and look for forward to future opportunities for collaboration we'd like to know what work has been done since october 18th and when will we be kept informed and when will these future opportunities for collaboration be thank you hope turber good evening my name is hope turber i have a child at increase miller he's in the self-contained class he's autistic and non-speaking it is not easy having a child who cannot speak we face challenges every single day sometimes the challenges feel insurmountable and we do not know how to go on but we always do when people ask us how

104we do it we shrug and say we just do as hard as it is for us i can only imagine how hard it is for our child we are his voice his protectors and his advocates i think some of the parents in this room behind me know how heartbreaking it is when your child cannot call you mommy or daddy say i love you or tell you when something hurts watching your child in pain or upset and having no idea why has to be one of the most helpless feelings a person can possibly experience as a parent and when our kids come home with mysterious bruises and scratches and we are forced to wonder what happened we do not have the privilege of knowing anyone who knows my son will tell you he is smart resourceful

105and sweet he faces many challenges but he never lets that stop him he loves to jump take hot showers and be tickled his favorite food is waffles and he loves mickey mouse he likes watching music videos with his dad and wrestling with his brother you might be asking why am i telling you this the answer i am trying to humanize him how absurd is it that i feel the need to stand up here and convince you all that my son is in fact a person mr seleznick and members of the board you may be feeling defensive right now you might think it is incredibly unfair of me to imply that you do not view my child as a person maybe you feel i am being unnecessarily combative but i am curious if any of you

106have ever attempted to get to know a non-verbal autistic person i mean really get to know them as a person and i want to know if a speaking neurotypical child had been choked shoved against a wall locked in a bathroom or physically restrained every single day for two months straight by a teacher or other school staff member and parents demanded accountability and change for these incidents would you still be sitting here calling those parents combative i read the lewisboro police blotter the other day i learned that on october 15 2021 middle school students used a pay phone inside the middle school to place a prank phone call police were called and they used surveillance cameras to discover who placed the prank calls and aside from being very shocked that there are actual pay phones in

107the middle school i felt angry reading this there is no way of finding out how many autistic children were abused at increased miller because there are no cameras in that classroom but at least surveillance cameras helped us catch the dangerous middle school prank callers mr seleznick about a month ago i sat in a meeting with you and we told you what we envisioned for an independent audit of the special education program and you dutifully listened and you took notes on your laptop and then abruptly you shut your laptop and you told us you cannot continue working with us if we keep coming to the boe meetings and being combative i have obviously had plenty of time to think things over since it has now been a month and i am truly struck by how advocating

108for our children to be treated like human beings has somehow become combative these are our kids we will crawl to the ends of this earth for our children we will never stop advocating for our children call us combative if you wish we are simply being parents and doing what any loving parent would do and we will not stop advocating i know i'm out of time mischief you don't have to observe it but i do have a few questions mr seleznik on october 19 2021 you send an email to the entire district saying that on september 1st and september 2nd appropriate staff would receive additional training to support students with autism and further training on de-escalation strategies you also said you are working to provide additional autism specific training for staff at other times during the

109school year my question to you tonight what autism specific training has been provided and to whom on september 1st and 2nd and what other autism specific training do you have planned for this year my second question in the same email you said i am going into a test how many questions are there uh three okay thank you are you almost done then after that is that the end yes thank you um so in the same email you stated you were vetting outside consultants with expertise in autism neurodiversity and communication and i'm quoting now who will visit this fall and provide feedback mr seleznik today is november 4th we are well into the fall what updates you have for us question three this one's for you mischief i have sat at enough of these meetings to

110know by now that prior to each public comment portion of the meeting you say we will now go into active listening mode please do not be disappointed if we do not respond to you i also know that at the past two meetings parents have gotten up here during the public comments portion of the meeting to express grave concerns regarding special education in the district i sat in the audience through the adjournment of these two meetings when it came time for board dialogue all members of the board were silent as was mr slesnik and i would like to remind you and your board colleagues of policy one two three zero public participation at board meetings as mr goliath pointed out states that it is the board's responsibility to listen and respond to public comments so mischief

111my question for you why have you and your colleagues refuse to respond to us for the past two meetings we have asked for open dialogue over and over and now it seems we're be given the silent treatment those are my questions and speaking of open dialogue i hope to see you all on december 5th at the gatona presbyterian church 4 pm where we will have an open dialogue on special education in goodwin lewisbury thank you thank you alison biddle hi allison biddle cross river so i'm allison biddle and i'm here with you again because not much has changed and it has only gotten worse as there is no longer a school resource officer on staff the school district can say what they want and make small gestures and overtures but we want an outside independent

112consultant with no links or connections to the school district or its members to evaluate this entire special education program and we want it now as a mother whose son and daughter will be starting school in the next few years it is flabbergasting that any education professional would allow employees to put their hands on our children and to wait days or weeks if ever to notify parents is unacceptable we also need autism training for the entire school staff during the school year from teachers and administrators to the janitorial staff and everyone who comes into contact with our autistic children need to know how to handle the challenge of a child on the spectrum it is very concerning to hear about the issues with our literacy program and that there are so many children who aren't able

113to learn to read in our schools reading is a fundamental skill that all children have a right to learn in the public schools that our taxes pay for it is unacceptable that not all students can learn to read in our district a literacy committee is a simple first step to fixing this program why won't you implement this i'm also upset that there is no longer a school resource officer present at the school this was in the budget for last year and if the cost has increased then the school should be able to adjust the budget accordingly the town of lewisboro should not be expected to take on the burden of this increase as katona parts of north salem and parts of palm ridge are also part of our school district the expectation of the school

114in this board that one town should take on this burden when in fact you already received 78 percent of our taxes is not acceptable you need to take a harder look at your budget your finances and find the money for the resource officer this officer provides a safe and secure teaching environment for the students and staff with the tragic school shootings including sandy hook nearby in 2012 and the recent threats here the increase in violence in schools throughout the country it is more important than ever to have an officer who has the training to deal with any emergency direct access to the local and state police to get them on-site asap and a relationship with the student body so they trust the officer and know that they have their back i'll keep fighting until all

115of our children are safe at school thank you for your time thank you rachel massa thank you yes please mark abrams good evening my name is mark abrams thanks to the persistence of the families in the klsd community this board and this superintendent can no longer hide the far too frequent incidents of neglectful and abusive acts against our children from within the special education department this board has consistently refused to work collaboratively with the community to address these serious problems instead you've chosen to listen to our stated concerns and later talks amongst yourself about those concerns with us present given the frequency in which your comments were later used to point out your glaring disconnect and utter lack of concern you appear to now have chosen a tactic to not speak amongst yourselves at all

116during the meeting do you really believe this tactic will be a benefit to you of course this runs counter to your own stated obligation to discuss concerns raised by members of the community your own silence is a deafening acknowledgement of your failures to live up to your responsibility as board members a group of concerned parents tried to work with the superintendent who allegedly was willing to hear us and try and work collaboratively with us this farcical endeavor consisted of us being presented with a tight agenda set by the superintendent who just wanted to only listen to us we made it very clear to him that his definition of collaboration defied any dictionary definition of that word we wanted to be involved with every step of the process toward having the entire special education department audited

117by an outside group specializing in the understanding and implementation of best practices in special education during our second meeting the superintendent had mentioned the tri-state group we responded that we strongly preferred a much more independent and specialized group he wanted a very limited scope for the audit and was not happy that we wanted a comprehensive audit of the special education department at the end of this meeting the superintendent went off on a die drive about how he could not trust us to work collaboratively with him because we have been holding this board and this administration to task which of course got us to this point in the first place since that meeting we have had no further communications from the superintendent given that the klsd teacher was abusing students in the fall of 2019 you

118have to wonder why nothing of substance has been done to audit this broken department to date to say that this board and superintendent have failed us is quite the understatement the issue of trust raised by the superintendent is quite ironic in reality it's the families of the neglected and abused children or the relevant parties who should mistrust you and do mistrust you since the board and superintendents steadfastly refused to work in a transparent and collaborative manner with this community which they serve we will begin to set an example for how this process is supposed to work we will be holding a public moderated town hall meeting on december 5th this entire board and our superintendent are invited to partake in a truly open and collaborative exploration of all identified problem areas this will be an

119open to the public live streamed and covered by the media your attendance or lack of attendance will be newly noted thank you katie case hi i'm katie case and i'm a mother of a fourth grader at meadow pond elementary as you read in my letters i sent last week i am beyond disappointed with the district's lack of preparedness for quarantine learning my son was quarantined for 10 days because of a potential exposure to a child three rows ahead of him on a 15-minute bus ride with everyone wearing masks not only did he physically miss school but he missed out on 36 hours of learning due to the lack of a viable learning plan for quarantine how is it that there is no quarantine learning plan in place when we're heading into the third year of

120cobid what we experienced last week was not remote learning it was more like an academic suspension there was little to no communication from the school in regards to assignments and the two 20-minute zoom sessions each day were pointless busy work completely unrelated to his classwork the provision of a district-wide remote teacher is a complete waste of funding she was teaching sections the students from kes were doing and not the sections my son was assigned he essentially learned nothing last week i'm aware that a second teacher has been hired to help with quarantine learning but it's not enough we kept our son home fully remote last year due partly to our health concerns but mostly because of the hybrid schedule couldn't provide the day-to-day structure and consistency my son needs to thrive and remain engaged we

121know that the classrooms have the ability to zoom with quarantine children keeping them at pace with their classmates yet we're not doing it why additionally students receiving special services are at even greater risk of falling behind by being cut off from their teachers schedules classmates for these extended periods of time the way i see it video cameras in the classroom would help on two major fronts right now one being zoom for quarantine learning and the other providing safety and transparency to the parents of children in self-contained classrooms quite frankly the unwillingness to have cameras for zoom or child safety in the classroom is if not fishy then at least negligent i implore you to revisit zoom learning for quarantine students otherwise you need to revisit the quarantine protocols entirely and decide whether masks work or

122not if they do then let's stop quarantining kids for no reason and if they don't then why are we wearing them in the first place governor lamont just ruled in connecticut that children wearing masks when exposed do not have to quarantine unless they exhibit symptoms that makes sense he's changing protocols to keep kids in school if we can't change our protocols regarding quarantine then let's at least get a proper learning plan in place thank you for your time thank you marissa beattie you're reading on behalf of her gia miller i'm bringing a stool next time well here i am again i'm sure you're sick of seeing me by now i know i'm sick of spending my thursday evenings attending meeting after meeting and paying for a babysitter but until change occurs this will be my

123new normal and i'm not the only one there are about 35 letters being read here tonight many of us are here once again to talk about the special education department while we may have different messages to give there's one general theme present throughout very little has been done since we first began attending boe meetings about almost six months ago many of us have poured our hearts out to you publicly or privately we've shared personal stories about the physical mental and or emotional harm inflicted on our children at the hands of klsd staff and yet you still haven't taken us our concerns seriously instead you frequently appeared combative toward us the very people who were who elected i'm sorry the very people you were elected to represent what's worse at the last two board meetings you've

124chosen to give us the silent treatment while it may be one of the most effective ways to change a child's behavior we're adults the silent treatment won't work on us especially when it comes to the safety of our children what are you trying to avoid what are you trying to hide from where i sit what little information that has been communicated to us demonstrates that this group views themselves as a group who puts their needs above those of the community and it's not just at board meetings it's in other things related to the board i'll give you a recent example a month ago i requested the boe's annual superintendent evaluations from the past six years these are records i'm legally allowed to request under the freedom of information law three and a half weeks later

125i received the records but all of the comments and ratings were redacted it was page after page of large black boxes the only things i could see were the categories that were ranked the number of pages used for a summary in the signature lines of the boe president and mr celesney however of the six reports i received only two were actually signed and those signatures were blacked out as well so i inquired about the missing signatures and why everything was redacted i explained that i had called the new york state council of superintendents and was told that at a minimum the final rating must be provided five days later i received a response from the district's records access officer she wrote that the board's attorney had advised her that the boe only needs to release

126their ratings if they've given the superintendent an overall rating but because their evaluated evaluation instrument doesn't call for an overall rating there's nothing to provide in regards to the missing signatures she spoke to the boe president and the superintendent and she was assured that the completely redacted pages she sent me were the actual evaluations and quote the originals on file do not bear the subject signatures unfortunately the information from your attorney is in contrast with the new york state school board association their website clearly states that the final ratings are actually ratings and comments that are approved by the entire board not accumulative rating so either the board didn't approve the ratings and comments or you're attempting to hide the reviews it leaves me wondering about the evaluation process does the board do it together

127as required by law or is it only done by the president and i'm supposed to believe that the board president and superintendent simply forgot to sign these legal documents for the past six years for four out of the past six years as usual something doesn't add up this is one reason example of a microcosm of a much larger problem we have a board who chooses to bend the rules to their liking isn't transparent doesn't demonstrate accountability and is too close to the superintendent to do their job properly why won't you speak to us why won't you share your ratings of the superintendent's evaluations why won't you conduct an independent comprehensive evaluation of the special education department what is it that you're working so hard to try to hide this isn't a good look for you

128you don't come across as a group who is listening to the community and doing what's best for their constituents instead you come across as an exclusive group who simply doesn't care about children it's time to have a conversation with us so that we can begin to move forward and create an educational environment where all students are safe and able to reach their full potential i hope you'll join us for a real conversation at our town hall on december 5th at 4 o'clock at the katona presbyterian church there will be a free taco bar we've reserved a seat for each of you thank you serge munits victoria de voucage oksana arena good evening i always say i never write anything for these things because the material is always here and it's always enlightening to hear community

129members because when we formed this advocacy around the issues that we were aware of of course as someone said before we realized very soon that was just the tip of the iceberg and it was our hope and our impression that that's what the board was there for as a governing body as someone who holds the superintendent accountable however our board chose to be silent they chose to immediately side with the superintendent and it is really not clear whether the board is refusing to acknowledge that anything is wrong or doesn't know how to deal with it but neither one of those is a particularly good look it's also very telling you know when we see the growing number of people in our advocacy that only one board member suggested additional avenues for community members to communicate

130with the board and that was vehemently shut down when the discussion around zoom happened a few months ago in this forum and um that's also very telling i think we're hearing a lot of themes about parents being disconnected feeling disconnected from the board parents feeling that the board is too close to the superintendent and i will tell you that i think we're coming off of a very interesting week where a governor contended lost an election he probably should have won in no small part due to quotes like parents shouldn't tell districts how to teach and you're coming across as incredibly detached elitist and people who are just stuck and don't know what to do and just want this problem to go away but it can't we didn't create the problem the problem existed and when

131you have wrongdoing and someone shines a light on it it's up to you to actually do something about it because frankly the source of wealth for this community is its schools and to the extent that we now have adjacent communities and other and people you know potentially around the county and maybe even farther not moving to this community because of events that occurred here it says directly in our wallets and that is on you folks this job has changed it's not enough to have a little gray hairs to be on a board you have to actually want to bring change roll up your sleeves get uncomfortable get dirty get in there ask the uncomfortable questions and get things done it's not the same it's not about just adding it to your linkedin profile anymore this

132is real hard work i said that to you the first time i came here and no we are not satisfied with what has been done thus far because as was stated before we were hopeful we were heading for a dialogue with the superintendent he said he will speak to us and he said he's not sure then he said he will and then finally he said that he just doesn't feel safe speaking to us because we come here and we present and shine light on on a lot of these things that he's uncomfortable about i don't know should a superintendent who's watched a lot of bad things happen have the con comfort to step away from uncomfortable discussions i'll let you be the judge of that but to the point of being transparent with your community

133and not being elitist and actually doing something and engaging in productive dialogue as was said before we hope you join us on december 5th at the presbyterian church in kachona thank you thank you kevin yaretzky good evening kevin you're actually cross river i have a son who already graduated the high school and an eighth grader and you heard from my much better half earlier and that's uh lowballing it when i say much better half now you can start the clock by praising my wife doesn't come out of my time all right rhetorical question for all of you have you noticed a theme yet i've watched from afar over the last few months where a lot of these people have gotten involved in discussion of special education did my own research found out my own facts

134because that's what i do for a living and quite frankly i'm rather disgusted at the fact that students were improperly handled physically okay makes me sick to my stomach it's i believe a violation of their civil rights it's criminal in nature and i believe the reckoning for that action is coming for both this board and the people involved that said over and above and beyond that the reaction from the board since and what i've watched from afar over the last several months is an unfortunate repetitive pattern of behavior of being reactive instead of proactive you have a problem solve it and with all due respect to you mr slesnik you've been down this road before you've been involved in the leadership of a district where students were abused and whether you like it or not

135that means you have to be doing it more cleanly and better than the next guy that may not be fair but it is what it is and it doesn't change the fact you guys are reactive instead of proactive my wife talked about several issues the fact that there were a pattern of swastikas several years ago there was one meeting everybody was told to sing kumbaya and act like a community and no proactive measures were taken you had a chance to stand up in front of this community and say we as a community being led by the school district will not put up with this but you were reactive you were not proactive you didn't do enough a lot of people including my wife have talked about school security we stood the front of the board

136after parkland and said you need to make changes not enough changes have been made at all the schools are still too wide open you were reactive instead of proactive now you no longer have an sro because you were gifted a lot of unpaid hours by frank secret who was willing just to be around because that's what he wanted to do well your trial subscription is over and it's time to pay stop arguing with the police department and get it done because your first job is to make sure our kids come home safely at the end of the day get it done i'll tell you reactive instead of proactive this is my personal opinion this board has been proactive in the last several years about two issues one is coveted because you had no chain you

137had no choice the other was the changing of the school mascot because it was a personal agenda of some of the people on the board in the district leadership not to care less what the mascot of the high school is the fact of the matter is you have to be proactive instead of reactive and i will say this and i think i speak for everybody else here if you're not willing to be proactive and you're not willing to fix the special education and you're not willing to ensure the safety of the kids and you're not willing to do the things that i and a lot of these other people have talked about then just step down there's no shame in that there is no shame in that almost not margin there's no shame in that

138if you're not going to act step aside it's not an easy job i wouldn't want it i'd much rather stand here and sit over there thank you are you almost finished you are i just told you i was almost great please sit down which means that you weren't listening thank you i just told you i was almost done which means you weren't listening which is exactly what these people have been telling you so if you're not going to act step aside and let somebody else take a shot at it they may do better than you they may not but you're in the seats you ran for the positions you were hired for the job do the job that's all thank you susan polos hi so unlike almost everybody here i haven't been here for a

139long time last time i was here was 15 years ago when i was advocating for music teachers when my kids were here at school i'm feeling a little post-traumatic stress um but i've done my best to keep up with the district's issues and i'm concerned about the special education um situation so i just wanted to say that i'm here because i expect at a minimum for our children to be safe and protected within our schools and i understand that it's been six months since members of the community began speaking at board meetings so i think that it's appropriate for everyone in the community to be aware i'm a senior and you know i pay the taxes and i also just like to have a voice i don't agree with everything that's been said i think

140we all care about the most vulnerable students among us we all care about students who can't speak for themselves and that's why i'm here i personally think that safety doesn't have anything to do with having a policeman with a gun i worked in a neighboring district and i was scared every single day when i went to school and there was a policeman with a gun i now work in a small school where there is no policeman with a gun and i am not scared i think what makes a school safe is an atmosphere and environment of inclusivity and the feeling of welcoming diversity and equity and i'm sure you're working towards that and i just hope that that you'll understand that this is something that's a broader community now that people know about it that

141i care about it i also don't like lucy calkins as long as i'm up here but you know but we all have different opinions right and you do need to hear them because we we all should have a voice in this community whether we're you know very little or big and i'm here because i understand that the very little ones here don't really have a voice and have been hurt and i'm just here to try to support them thank you thank you i think everybody who wanted to speak on their own behalf has spoken have i missed anybody okay thank you then it's my pleasure to invite hope turbert up to speak on behalf of several individuals and please just go ahead and speak on behalf of all of those whom you plan to speak

142for okay um my first letter is from cheryl bogey she says i am a grandmother of a very sweet five-year-old boy who is autistic and unable to express himself in words i have been taking care of him while his mom and dad are at work since he was an infant he means the world to me and i am horrified to hear of children like my grandson who have been abused by their teacher to a child who is autistic and without a voice this is very traumatizing and they cannot tell their parents if there was abuse done to them at school i am advocating for cameras in the classroom so there is accountability and transparency also i believe teachers who are working with autistic children and those without a voice need to go through special training

143when working with these children thank you this is from sybil patri hi my name is sybil patri i am a mother of two children three and five years old one of whom attends increase miller elementary school i am new here our family is diverse we are people of color we have had to make some interesting choices including leaving a more highly ranked and more diverse school system i know that as someone from a marginalized community that we will face hurdles microaggressions racism and difficult conversations and we will have to advocate for ourselves and our kids anywhere we go i am a fierce advocate of diversity inclusion and belonging and with this type of work you need to focus on the most underserved and most marginalized communities first typically this includes lgbt plus people of color

144especially black brown and indigenous and of course those with disabilities and special needs today i am writing in support of the klsd special education advocacy group a group that also has to advocate on behalf of themselves i believe in this mission statement and goals of this group and think it would be really harmful not just to these students and parents but to the entire community if this group is not addressed directly marginalized voices are the ones that need to be centered they are the ones to listen to and understand if they continue to be silenced we are all silenced true inclusion and belonging take a very long time to accomplish we need to get the baseline needs of physical safety and security before we can even begin to talk about psychological safety acceptance and inclusion

145let's all work together on this thank you and last but certainly not least is alexa ferreira good evening my name is alexa ferreira and i'm the mother of two children at jjms i'm writing tonight because i'm a member of the kosd special education advocacy group i would like to ask the board to use the events that have occasioned our advocacy as an opportunity to learn and to make changes to klsd policy i would like to share a few thoughts lately i have been thinking about us as a traumatized community the thing about trauma is that it is made of waves the waves flow out from the center first there is the victim then there is the victim's family then the witnesses then the witnesses families and then there is the greater community waves of harm

146wash over us all and we shield ourselves in a few recognizable ways mainly we deny we retreat we wish to return to our old selves to be again the person who didn't know such things were possible and that is a dynamic here i think who wants to believe that what happened to the disabled children at increase miller is not just horrible but also commonplace the only thing worse than knowing that it happened is knowing that it happens all the times in schools all around us in schools all over the country that is almost unbearable to know it evokes a sort of existential nausea and yet it is our responsibility to know it there is a great deal of discussion in the public discourse these days about what is called privilege and i think one of

147the most useful observations i have heard is that innocence in the sense of naivete is a luxury of privilege the board has presented its commitment to equity and inclusion that is to the deconstruction of privilege let's start then by acknowledging that what has happened at klsd is not an insulated event isolated event i'm sorry it was not one errant monster loose amongst us the abuse of disabled students is a phenomenon that is endemic to special education common and yes tolerated by institutions and ultimately by communities disabled children can be protected they can be protected if we enact and enforce the right policies this won't happen if we seek the shelter of our old innocence or if we insist on believing we have excised an aberrant monster abuse of the vulnerable is possible because we do

148not put the structures in place to prevent or minimize it we prioritize other concerns employee privacy for example in the case of cameras and classrooms or professional reputations in the case of the policies surrounding the reporting of abuse we look away we look away until we absolutely cannot anymore and then we blame an individual what is known cannot be unknown now you know as we do about the abuse of disabled students i hope you have taken the opportunity to learn that is it is indeed endemic to the world of special education that it is commonplace that it is the result of protections that could be built into policy being deprioritized in favor of other concerns that it is the result not merely of the actions of one monster but of a collective failure to act

149and that the waves of hurt subsume us all as a final observation trauma shatters communities the perpetrator passes through our community and leaves us broken and disconnected from each other as we are tonight but we have something on our side and that something is our essential mission the thing that made us a community in the first place our commitment to learning and that can be what brings us healing ultimately it's time we made this a subject of study it is time to learn about the problem together and together craft policy that will protect disabled students at kosd and provide a model to other districts klsd prides itself on excellence and this is one more area in which we can excel in which we can lead let's do this together thank you matt golia on behalf

150of several others um mischief i don't mean to be combative but if we're gonna change how the speeches go can you just let us know in advance um because believe it or not in my mind i actually have a structure and in order for all these speeches so um please feel free to read them in whatever order you wish okay well you made me read mine first so that's not how it's really working but if we're going to change it just let us know in advance please thank you hello my name is shoshana baran i am the mother of two children who attend kes i am a local clinical psychologist and a member of the klsd special education advocacy group while i am unable to attend this meeting in person tonight i am eager to

151hear an update about what steps the district is taking to address the concerns about special education at klsd parents in our community have attended numerous board meetings to speak about horrific incidents involving students in self-contained classrooms the larger special education program and the resulting lack of trust and fear among parents and students children have suffered physical mental and emotional harm at the hands of klsd staff i hope that the board has learned from these tragic events and is working to create policies so that children are safe and protected within our schools i am aware that you've updated the notification policy for restraints so the parents must be notified no later than the end of the same day that restraint is used but i'm not aware of any other policy changes are you working on any

152policies to address the other abuse situations that have occurred can you please share what else you've done or are planning to do and if policy change cannot happen shouldn't we be directing our efforts into identifying appropriate placement for students and supporting families and obtaining these placements i cannot imagine that earnestly evaluating our special education program will be easy or quick but our community needs needs transparency about what is done in order to begin building trust thank you signed dr shoshanna baran my name is fanny ville i am a parent of two john jay high school graduates and one high school student for as long as i've been in the district i have been shocked by bias towards different groups of students john jay school is known to be a highly regarded school which is the

153main reason why i chose to move into this district however it is not a district that is all-inclusive and my family has experienced firsthand the lack of interest from the school administration and a few teachers in assisting my children succeed in their education to start off my two youngest daughters both have learning disabilities my youngest child has adhd and my middle child has apd in the interest of time i will focus on my middle child my middle child recently graduated from high school she was diagnosed with apd auditory processing disorder in the third grade this disability affects the way a person processes verbal communication people with this condition interpret what they hear differently from what is actually being said i asked for accommodations for her but the school disregarded my concerns for her needs because

154she wasn't failing she would spend 3-4 hours doing homework while in elementary school homework that took other kids between 30 minutes and an hour to complete no accommodations were provided it wasn't until she started failing that they listened my daughter's needs were neglected all throughout elementary school and most of middle school the school had no empathy towards my daughter's well-being or her needs any time she did poorly in a class they put the blame on her instead of taking action on things that could be done to help her be successful in school it was emotionally draining and a frustrating process after having all these experiences i can't imagine what it's like for parents of non-verbal children abuse neglect and physical restraints which are some of the things non-verbal children have endured are not acceptable methods

155for dealing with children we can do better we need a district that is all-inclusive where everyone is equal where everyone is given an equal opportunity to succeed i am writing this to support policies that will protect the children in our community especially non-verbal children who are at a much higher risk my name is samantha's of zafiro i am a mother of four a special educator and most importantly a resident concerned with the safety and well-being of our most vulnerable population our special needs children as every trained educator should be aware students cannot learn unless they feel safe both physically and emotionally psychologists and educators and educators often refer to maslow's hierarchy of needs in which at the bottom of the pair of a pyramid the basic most fundamental needs are built upon toward the top

156of the pyramid in which more elusive needs such as self-esteem are obtained our school district boasts of its commitment to intellectual intellectually stimulating engaging and active learning environments for its students yet it has failed in securing the most basic needs safety and security from which these intellectual goals grow many have already spoken to the tragedy of special needs children being physically restrained without parental notification and even abusive and isolationist tactics implemented by a teacher no longer employed by the district as a parent and special educator these incidents are deeply disturbing but perhaps more so is the district's apparent lack of communication with parents and community members regarding how to change policy and procedure moving forward to prevent these incidents from occurring again aside from a change in the time period within which to notify parents

157parents of restraints used on their children what other serious policy changes have been made i believe the board communicated that they would be hiring consultants with expertise in the fields of autism neurodiversity and communication to visit the district this fall and provide feedback have these experts been selective selected and scheduled to visit our schools if so how were they selected and by what methods will they observe evaluate and provide feedback on our teachers and support staff how many special education and regular staff members have received training in supporting autistic students what are the credentials of those leading the training and how are how are the staff supported in the implementation of such training for example are they provided with regular opportunities to reflect on their experiences with expert staff regarding supportive teaching environmental accommodations and

158communication strategies what is the status of obtaining cameras for self-contained classrooms what are the possible hindrances to securing cameras i.e are there budget restrictions or parental permission which could be overcome with additional educational outreach from the school to the greater community the katona lewisboro school district's reputation for being a welcoming and supportive environment for special needs students is rapidly and rightly deteriorating as a board it is your responsibility to take seriously the needs of our students and to provide the community with concrete measurable evidence of creating a safer more engaging education for all our children months of dismissing or diminishing parental concerns and requests from the klsd special education advocacy group are eroding our confidence in your commitment to our children but there is still time to rectify your poor performance in this regard i

159look forward to hearing your answers to each of these questions and i'm happy to communicate further regarding the safety and well-being of our children at any time before the next meeting at which time i am certain you will provide thoughtful and thorough responses to all of the concerns detailed tonight sincerely samantha's a fearow masters of education just one more from me from simone o'connor good evening my name is simone i am the mother of four children who all attended klsd schools from meadow pond through john jay high school i'm a member of the klsd special education advocacy group because my career has always been about fighting for the voiceless whether it is for people who are ignorant of the rights or in this case children who cannot speak on their own behalf i am a

160parent and a concerned resident and taxpayer i've made it a point to keep up with the district's ongoing special education issues to the best of my ability and i am shocked baffled and disheartened to hear communication between our group and the superintendent and board has eroded has ended although initially happy to hear that superintendent zeleznick stated he would work collaboratively with our group it ended after two meetings why why not work with the parents of the actual children impacted by and desperately needed changes why shut the door on that much needed path forward and to the board of education what exactly is your part in this your role is to work with and supervise the superintendent who reports directly to you have you forgotten to advocate for the parents and children of this district this

161is personal to me in my own life i have fought i have fought for two members two family members in different districts they viewed both boys as throw away kids more trouble than they were worth they were treated terribly thankfully not as bad as what happened in this district but terribly just the same i watched as those parents fought and cried for their children and i got involved and fought with them side by side and we won one just became an attorney and the other supports himself with a great job in another state and is preparing for his wedding these children who are sadly voiceless speak through us and we will not stop or go away until we are heard really heard it is incomprehensible and unacceptable that we are being dismissed parents matter and

162if you don't understand that open today's newspaper and see what happened in virginia this week no one understands positive praise more than the parents of these children but watching you praise each other with so much work yet to be done is truly tone deaf let's get it done together why are you sitting silent as communications between this group the superintendent and yourselves has simultaneously ceased i am left with one final question and this is a question that keeps me up at night why is it that you are all more comfortable behind closed doors thank you gia miller i only have two um this is on behalf of violetta mardon dear school board members my name is violetta mardone and i am the mother of four children who attend three of the district schools meadow pond

163elementary school john jay middle school and john jay high school my oldest is in 10th grade and has been receiving special education services within the district since he was in third grade my son's experience has been a good one and i have spoken highly of klsd and their department of special education to many people both within the district and outside of it over the years i am writing because i have heard about families who have not had a good experience that my family has had and i am concerned parents in our community have attended numerous board meetings to speak out about the non-verbal autistic student at jj ms who is physically restrained more than 30 times over a period of two months before his parents were even notified they've also spoken about several non-verbal and

164minimally verbal autistic and disabled elementary school students who were choked pushed into a wall and locked in bathrooms as punishment by a klsd special education teacher who retired in early 2020 i am shocked and appalled that these incidents have occurred in our school district i am a speech pathologist and work at a special education preschool in westchester county i work with students who have severe and profound delays and are non-verbal the majority of our students will start kindergarten back in their home districts if you had asked me about a year ago if i would say klsd was a safe place for these children i would have said absolutely today i am not so sure i would hope that the board has learned from these tragic events and is working to create policies so that children

165are safe and protected within our schools i understand that effective change takes time and does not happen overnight for some reason it seems as if the dialogue between concerned parents and the district has come to a halt why is that transparency and dialogue are essential we should all be on the same side the side of our children i am aware that you've updated the notification policy for restraint so that parents must be notified no later than the end of the same day that restraint is used the fact that it needed to be updated in the first place shows how much more needs to be done what else is being done are you working on any policies to address the other abuse situations that have occurred are you discussing how cameras can be installed in self-contained

166classrooms please share what else you have done or are planning to do thank you i am reading this on behalf of cat schreier she is a south salem resident with two elementary school children in the district and another one coming up in a few years dear superintendent superintendent zeleznick and the board of education at the october 21 board of education meeting mr seleznick mentioned chris deedy a professor at harvard school of education and justin reek a professor at mit's comparative media studies program he explained that these are top researchers who are imagining how we might innovate innovate school and reimagine education he wondered aloud how we might bring those innovations to our school district i agree we should be innovating our school and i should know because i am also one of those top professors

167i am a leading expert on education innovation and technology i studied with christy d and i went to the mit that mit graduate program chris didi and i even co-authored a paper on learning together and i can share with you some findings from my 20 years in this field first innovation is not just about the technology it's about human beings it's about building connections we need to ensure that all students are able to connect that they are included cared for and supported this means designing not just for the majority but designing for the most vulnerable innovation means overturning our outdated systems it means really thinking first and foremost about making systems that ensure equity justice and inclusion for all students especially those students who are disabled have special needs or who are i never know

168how to pronounce this bipop b-i-p-o-c you may be questioning why we should spend extra time designing for such a so-called small population but designing for the most vulnerable helps all of us better access learning all of us benefit when the most vulnerable among us are cared for innovation requires valuing different perspectives if you want to design better learning experiences it starts with and this is in bold really listening it means listening even when it's hard and it means listening even if it means you may have to completely reinvent your systems it means listening to the voices of those who are most marginalized finally innovation requires the understanding that again in bold matters it means that no members of the community should ever be dismissed ignored or devalued it means realizing that we are a we

169and we are here to serve and support each other rather than just ourselves so yes we should reimagine education and innovate but this means cultivating a culture of care a culture of transparency and a culture of ethics we need to value our students our people in our community true innovation innovation emerges from us with love and care dr karen kat schreier the author editor of seven books and over 100 publications on learning an associate professor and director of the games and emerging media program at marist college and she's also a con consultant for the world health organization thank you aksana aranoff on behalf of others i have four letters tonight the first one is from victoria de bukai my name is victoria devakai and i am a parent of two children who attend the katona

170lewisburg school district at the last boe meeting you heard parents say that the special education department needs transparency and an overhaul you claim that you listened listen to those who confronted you challenged you stretched you and hopefully formed an opinion you said you needed time for action have you hired an independent evaluation of the damaged special education department have you given any thought to installing cameras in the classrooms have you become more transparent and communicative with parents i expected you to launch an independent thorough investigation of the special education program so that you could make meaningful change to properly support these students i expected you to work collaboratively with this advocacy group my expectations have been shattered what progress have you made when will you share any information about your plans with the community this

171is not only disheartening but dire parents still holding to hoping to hear the responses to the questions in this letter and the proposed plan moving forward thank you this letter is from marissa bigley and it opens with the dignity for all students act policy which i will not read in its entirety but it essentially states the school district is committed to providing a positive safe and supportive learning environment where students are free from bullying harassment and discrimination hi my name is marissa beady i am the mother of three children who currently attend klsd one at the high school one at the middle school who has an iep and a child at meadow pond elementary i'm speaking up here tonight because i'm a member of the klsd special education advocacy group as well as a concerned

172parent and citizen i'd like to know why the board isn't representing the community it's been close to six months since members of the community began speaking at board meetings to express their concerns regarding numerous events that resulted in physical mental and emotional harm to children to children at the hands of klsd staff throughout that time we have yet to see the board take these parents or their concerns seriously instead the board has appeared combative with very with the very people they were elected to represent the board hasn't created an opportunity for a dialogue about these issues between themselves and community members you've simply spoken at them during your board dialogue often defending yourselves and the administration for a complete lack of effort and or transparency what's worse at the last two board meetings it appears

173that all board members and administration agreed not to speak at all during board dialogue it appears that you find these issues unworthy of your time during the past six months you failed to put this item on your agenda and now you're giving your constituents the silent treatment you ran for office to serve your community and advocate for all students yet it looks like you're only interested in advocating for and serving yourself not the community you were elected to represent why aren't you representing the concerns of the people who elected you these children have suffered physical mental and emotional harm at the hands of klsd staff i hope that the board has learned from these tragic events and is working to create policies so that children are safe and protected within our schools i am aware

174that you've updated the notification policy for restraints so that parents must be notified no later than the end of the same day that a restraint has occurred but i'm not aware of any other policy changes are you working on any policies to address the other abuse situations that have occurred are you discussing how cameras can be installed in self-contained classrooms since they already exist all over the schools and in the hallways to date klsd special education advocacy group has been ignored by the board of education and the superintendent when will there be transparency and when will you share what else you've done or are planning to do by sitting quietly and not answering is just as terrible as the actual abuse that took place on your grounds by your staff we all look forward to

175hearing back from you regarding these safety and policy issues thank you for your time this letter is from rachel massa uh hi my name is rachel massa i'm the mother of three sons who attend john j middle school and contour elementary i'm speaking up tonight because i'm concerned parent and citizen and a member of this and supporter of the klsd special education advocacy group and i'd like to know what the board has learned from the recent events involving special education students at klsd parents in our community have attended numerous board meetings to speak about the nonverbal autistic student at jjms who was physically restrained more than 30 times over a period of two months before his parents were even notified and you've also spoken about several non and minimally verbal autistic and disabled elementary school

176students who were choked pushed into a wall and locked in bathrooms as punishment by a klsd special education teacher who quote unquote retired in early 2020 these stories are horrifying and should never have occurred but sadly they did these children have suffered physical mental and emotional harm at the hands of klsd staff i hope that the board has learned from these tragic events and is working to create policies so the children are safe and protected within our schools i'm aware that you're you've updated the notification policy for restraints but i'm not aware of any other policy changes are you working on any policies to address the other abuse situations are you discussing how cameras can be installed installed in self-contained classrooms can you please share what else have you done or are planning to do

177i look forward to hearing more from your perspective on the progress moving forward and the last letter is from serge munitz good evening my name is serge muniz and i'm writing this letter for two reasons one is i want to refirm my support for all initiatives put forward by the klsd special education advocacy group i understand from my personal experience how important it is to know what's happening to your nonverbal child in school more specifically the two most critical ones in my opinion are to drastically reform the policy on user restraints and installation of cameras in a self-contained classrooms i understand the opposition may be plenty including from the teachers union it may even be a strong one i also understand that all of you our esteemed board members were not appointed to your seats

178by teachers union and therefore you should answer to your constituents not business partners the second reason is my discontent with the lack of action of any kind from the board of education and recently ignoring the issue completely disregarding the voices of concerned parents and not engaging in any dialogue with the special ed advocacy group i understand that the board and the superintendent are trying to make small rearrangements to create an illusion of change and some progress under no serious scrutiny anything you have done to date can be considered adequate or remotely impactful i hold it self-evident that all of you are i hold it self-evident that all of you are completely aware of all incidents that happened over the last few years in the school district in self-contained special ed classes and elsewhere and i

179do not need to explain to you why those changes are absolutely necessary and inevitable in conclusion i want to tell you i want to share with you a saying my father shared with me at one point we all learned from mistakes only wise men learn from someone else's mistakes and fools learn from their own our beloved board members i appeal to your common sense your sense of civil duty and your passion for education to implement the long overdue changes be wise do not wait for a child to be harmed or even die in one of those quote unquote protective holds to justify the reactive actions learn from other people's mistakes do not wait to own one thank you mark abrams mr celestnick and the boe members my name is nancy o'reilly i have lived in

180south salem for over 23 years my husband and i have raised our five children in this town having had all of them go through the katonas lewisboro school system i write this letter as a parent deeply concerned over the reports of mental and physical abuse that our town's most vulnerable children have suffered at the hands of some of our special education teachers and aides i read the accounts with disbelief that this can go on unchecked in our schools and worse that these types of people are caring for our kids who have no voice until now so tonight i would like to know why you folks who have been duly elected by this community have still not fully addressed these issues with the families involved it has been six months and now the tax seems to

181be that you're giving everyone the silent treatment for months you spoke at people defending the indefensible offering excuse after excuse and being combative and yet the community won't let this go it must be very frustrating for people clearly used to doing whatever they want i really want to understand where is your humanity how can any of you sit there and defend this behavior disgusts me your silence makes you complicit in the crime because make no mistake what happened to these children was a crime if this treatment had happened to a child of mine you would all be facing charges but because it happened to children who cannot speak for themselves you get to sit here and treat these poor parents like dirt under your shoes how dare you sully the position you were elected by

182these very families by treating them with such disdain mr celestnick are you in the sport going to stop being cowards and answer the questions of these families here are some for you to consider what is the status of the promised collaboration with the advocacy group what is the status of getting an outside audit of our special education program what is the status of your own internal audit and what are the learnings to date what types of additional training have been done above and beyond what is done normally are all staff who work with the children mandated to attend this training is this training done solely through video with no role play or hands-on elements who are the experts you spoke about bringing in how many times have they visited what were their findings aside from

183the new restraint notification policy what other policy changes have happened in the wake of this disastrous handling of this criminal behavior and finally if everyone is doing their jobs the way they should why wouldn't cameras be welcomed in self-contained classrooms you have all been woefully inept in the handling of this incredibly important issue you have treated these parents shamefully but you should know there is groundswell of support for these families in this community and we will stand with them for as long as it takes for you to do your jobs and right this wrong nancy o'reilly thank you i believe that's everybody who signed up but please if anybody's waiting to speak or didn't have an opportunity to sign up you're welcome to let us know and if not then i think i'm going to

184close the public forum thank you very much to members of the community thank you for your feedback and for your patience and as has been mentioned in other board meetings we'll have an opportunity for some dialogue later in the meeting um and at this point i'm going to move us on to the consent agenda okay so this brings us to um 11.01 where to make effective use of meeting time we have many items together in the consent agenda um the board's permission i'm going to suggest that we pull out one item which is 14.12 and we can vote on that separately in a moment are there any other items to be pulled out this evening if not then would somebody like to move the consent agenda without that one item thank you bill seconded by

185julia any discussion or clarifying questions okay if not then we can vote all in favor please say aye hi hi terrific thank you and would somebody like to move item 14.12 please moved by julia seconded by bill thank you any discussion or comment if not then we can vote all in favor please say i i well opposed please say nay thank you 4-2 [Music] and this brings us to 16.01 which is an opportunity for a resolution regarding a generous gift um this is from jeremy meswari it's for power rack valued in the amount of 500 earmarked for the john jay high school fitness center would somebody please move this resolution to accept this generous gift thank you liz seconded by julia thank you all in favor please say aye aye thank you six six zero

186and this brings us to 17.01 which is an opportunity for some board dialogue discussion and it's my pleasure to turn the floor over to my board colleagues for thoughts or comments or new topics for that matter i i do want to um address uh a few things um i am concerned about you know the the health of our community and how we're speaking to one another and trying to work through problems together um and it does seem that we're in kind of a strange place and so many of the um revelations by the facebook whistleblower really kind of um resonate with me today in that you know you get so much more engagement with um things that make people angry or you know um provoke outrage regardless of of you know how many of the

187facts are shared or if anything is factual and um i think that it has made communities across the nation suffer um in feeling that the way to come to a collaborative place is is not by asking questions and you know um approaching things in a way that that is collaborative and helpful and productive um i i do want to say that i do listen to all of the people that come and speak at public forum i have great empathy for the difficulties you know that parents have really across the board um and i know that you know it's it's not easy parenting is hard for for anyone um but i don't think that we're benefited by the way these conversations or or just the the meetings have gone um i'm speaking if you could just

188give me a minute please okay you i think that we've heard a lot about the board giving you the silent treatment but there's not much to say when when so many things have been said already and then just keep getting repeated i think that there is a way we can move forward but we need to calm the rhetoric we need to stop calling people names or launching personal attacks from that podium and then assuming that we can then all just get together and have a really productive conversation because i'm going to i'm going to make a motion excuse me excuse me i listen to you and i expect you to listen i'm going to call for a recess i'd like to make a motion for a recess seconded by rory thank you so much all

189in favor please say aye aye aye 6-0 thank you very much mr michelle you've said things that are not true tonight a number of things that are not true i asked for a motion to come back into public session kim yes please thank you thank you julia and seconded by rory thank you all in favor please say aye aye aye aye thank you six zero um okay so we're at board dialogue and discussion and just a reminder that we are engaging in dialogue as a governance team and um liz i think you had the floor and i'm not sure whether you were mid thought or um wish to continue speaking i i just want to finish my thought um i i believe one of the parents tonight said um we cannot dismiss or ignore or

190devalue anyone in the community and i i do fully agree with that and i apologize because i did lose my temper because i felt that i was attempting to advocate for civility and um was interrupted and and it's frustrating it is frustrating um but i did want to just really reiterate that we are listening and that we do care and i think that we could get a lot more done and be a lot more productive if we treated each other with respect and the acknowledgement that everybody here that i know personally at these purple tables is somebody who cares deeply about education about students about you know providing the best education we can i know that for a fact and um i just you know i i feel like that needs to be said and

191i you know it's important to to acknowledge that part too thank you other comments thoughts yeah i mean unless i was kept out of the loop there was no orchestrated effort to remain silent i think the reason the reason i remain silent last time and the time before that was because the comments we were hearing from the podium were somewhat repetitive and we felt that we had addressed them to the extent we could in the timing that was available to us we nobody should construe that as we're not doing anything we're all very active in trying to figure out what is the right way to address the issue what were the issues are they pervasive issues or not i think we still need to come to terms as a board with that to some extent

192we need to understand exactly what is going on i personally would like to know a little bit more about the training of staff and whether we have sort of engaged i understand the concerns uh related to cameras in the classroom and perhaps we just need a little bit more insights on that um you know we've tried to meet with this group one-on-one or even in smaller groups and in some cases the conversations have gone well in other cases not so well i don't think that means that we're not being collaborative i certainly don't think that we've ended dialogue and i certainly hope that that's not the case on the part of the administration i think we need to keep the dialogue going in whatever form we can find that works um we have made some

193policy changes there may or may not i'm not on the policy committee but there may or may not be other policy changes that we can implement and i think that that is something that we do need to look into um you know i think i just remind everybody that right at the beginning of this dialogue uh and and bill tried to express it and got shot down for it but there are sensitive privacy issues at play here that preclude the board from talking about certain things there are legal requirements that we must adhere to that prohibit us frankly from talking about specific things and so while um people at the podium may speak about whatever they they wish it's quite difficult for us to address in public certain specific items i can't say much more

194about it than that but that is the reality and that's that's the the um restriction we're working under and it's not comfortable um i would echo what liz said we i think we're accused tonight of being criminals i think uh which i take offense to um i think we are all working very very uh intently to try to resolve this situation and other situations such as the sro issue which i don't think uh comes anywhere near the same level but i know that that's also of concern to the community and i don't think we in my opinion we will bring in an sro when we can find somebody who fits the budget that we have available that's not that complicated in my opinion um so you know if we can get some more um open

195dialogue with the advocacy group i think that that would be worthwhile however i think we should all refrain from name calling accusations um you know when when i don't think anybody knows me personally or knows my opinions personally i don't think anybody really understands uh how deeply engaged this entire board is and how caring this entire board is and how much we care for the very most vulnerable students in our community and it's very difficult to sit here and be told that we don't care when it's clear that we absolutely do care and we are taking steps and actions sometimes it's difficult to talk from [Music] this side of the podium but all i can say is rest assured we are and i think perhaps we need to talk a little bit more about how

196to communicate that back to not just the advocacy group but also the community at large thank you yeah i agree i think there's a difference between um disappointment or impatience with us and then calling us let's see what i got here elitist just as bad as any alleged abusers implicit cowards did resign um that's not gonna help that's just not gonna help the situation um i've been called worse so you know personally for me it's okay but i just as a strategy um getting angry and angry at us and um i don't think that's that's going to be a strategy i i it's my understanding that have been meetings the answer might not always be what everybody wants it to be the format might not always be what everybody wants it to be what i

197have noticed and i think this would be something for everybody to think about is much of the discussion and and the examples is not their child it's i heard that or if my kid was here and did fine but i'm very concerned that i hear about all this terrible stuff and it just becomes this cycle and cycling cycle and you know it can get louder and louder but it doesn't make it the problem any bigger it just means it's just being repeated over and over and over again so i think what would be most helpful is people to speak of their personal experience if they have an experience where they think something untoward is happening i've heard andrew say it many times in these meetings and privately and in executive session that every single time

198there's any sort of accusation of abuse or mis um something going on uh inappropriate it's looked into uh it has to be legally ethically duty-bound everything but it has to be my kid here's what i think happened or hears what's happening today right now or last week not over and over and over again about things that are impossible for every for for all of us to lay all the facts on the table and discuss them because they were just not allowed to and it's not appropriate if it's not your kid so i i think some of the frustration is a desire for an answer that's not going to come i think i think asking about cameras is perfectly reasonable i think that's something to be looked into i think you could um you know ask

199about the training ask about the evaluation ask about all that but you know that's different from saying that um you know that we i don't care about kids uh we're elitist we're it's just it it cheapens the argument it makes it too easy for this to become just personal tit for tat as opposed to let's actually focus on here here are three things i'm really worried about let's talk about it and it doesn't get into this righteous rage thank you i think i think tonight was really complicated um i think we heard some i felt i heard tonight some statements that were moving and beautiful and compelling i'm going to ask kim for copies of some of the comments that we heard tonight to read again because they were very moving and compelling we also

200heard from a parent earlier tonight who spoke about her experience in a previous district where meetings devolved and she was upset about that and tonight we had some moments where our own meeting evolved in ways we've seen at other board meetings around the country and that's upsetting but it does come from a place of passion and i understand that for people as has already been said we all have a desire for improvement getting there is awfully complicated in some cases there are some there are some things policy changes are relatively easy which is why we were able to make some policy changes last year there aren't policies to address every challenge um we also we it's interesting that we heard a number of references to virginia tonight um where board meetings became used as a

201political device and their strategy around how that should happen i don't i don't think that's what's happening here i hope it's not um and i hope that our meetings can continue to be places that are thoughtful i know people are frustrated by the setup and we've we've spoken about that before these these board meetings are set up for the board to conduct its business in view of the public and they do naturally frustrate people when people want to get into a dialogue and we're not able to get into that dialogue in this setting and we have instead this structure that we're doing now where we talk to each other after we've heard a lot of comments um i think i think i think these people understandably who as we heard tonight care very deeply about

202their children want answers the very complicated questions the meetings that i was having with parents recently which i welcomed and wanted to have those meetings i ended and so and and this is you know a little bit upsetting to me also we hear we hear there among some of the very beautiful and eloquent and moving statements that we heard tonight i feel some of my own words were distorted at times that's difficult to hear back i understand again the motivation where it comes from it comes from a place of wanting to get what's best for our children ultimately though we have to find a way to be able to work together uh the invitations to this meeting on december 5th are interesting it's an interesting approach to take uh we we haven't been given any

203notice of a meeting on december 5th we may or may not be able to attend or be at a meeting on december 5th feels a little bit like it doesn't feel like it was said tonight our absence will be noted so that feels like it's already been set up and determined for for how that will play in the public view and again that if we want to have collaborative dialogue that's not feeling like the way towards it i hope we can work through that somehow because that is ultimately what we want i will have i'm excited to have news soon about uh a consultant who will work with us who i think will be very very helpful to us and i will share that news very soon and i look forward to sharing that um

204i was i found myself in a in an exchange tonight with an individual who was talking about a phone call that i was a party to without police so i feel that i do know what was said in that conversation that i was one of two parties in uh and it's upsetting to hear it misrepresented in view of the public and still in all the the comments that i will walk away with tonight were the ones that were really beautifully compelling about the need to be a more inclusive community that's what we strive for all the time it's not achieved easily in any place it's not achieved by a checklist of fixes our country wants to be a beautiful community of people and yet we seem to be moving in the opposite direction at the

205moment and i'm not thinking about our community i'm speaking about our country as much as i believe everybody wants this to be a more unified caring national community there's no easy fix to that but we will keep working at it as hard as we can there's no doubt about that so i do thank the community members for coming tonight and for talking to us uh how we move forward it's it's it's i don't have an answer tonight it's complicated um but we will certainly keep thinking about it and i hope that we will engage with each other in ways that are caring and compassionate and collaborative all the things that were described tonight about the kind of community that we would want for our children in schools i can say one more thing it just

206in terms of fostering a dialogue i think one of the reasons that past more recent meetings i've been hesitant to say anything is that the things i've said before in other meetings are are shot right back at me you know misinterpreted and just shot like so i'm like well you know i'm not going to give them yet more ammunition so i think one of the things is to [Music] um not make it detrimental for us to speak to say what we think and what we feel that's not going to become get mis twisted and fired right back at us i think that will that will make dialogue very difficult thank you merci lana were you waiting to speak yeah um i i think i'm trying to sort of put my thoughts together because it feels

207pretty charged just after you know there are a lot of people sharing a lot of things there's a lot of emotion in the room there's a lot of hurt there's a lot of anger and i'm hearing it both from my board colleagues but also a lot from the community of feeling not heard and not responded to and i know that that's a very frustrating feeling and i know that's nobody's intention and i think we need to do better to make sure that people feel heard and responded to so a couple points i don't know if it will all come together coherently but i'll try um i think this is really a hard conversation to have when we're not in direct dialogue with people who keep coming to us and saying they want to be in

208direct dialogue so i i tonight i i heard frustration in the comments but i didn't take it personally and i you know i would encourage my colleagues not to take it personally that it's coming from a place of feeling not heard and it's coming from multiple attempts to make requests in different ways that are not being responded to and i don't i don't think i i i mean i just i'll go back to that point that i think we need to find another way to be in direct dialogue because this format doesn't work and the board meeting maybe isn't the place i mean i hear i hear the ask for can there be an agenda item so we can have more discussion can there be a forum so we can have more discussion can there

209you know and then the parents are proposing or this advocacy group is proposed is holding a forum because we haven't provided a forum for that so you know i i don't you know i think they're sort of modeling another way to do this and i know there are some meetings that happen but i i think that it i'm a little bit troubled to hear there were i mean what i took away from hearing all the comments tonight and there were numerous comments from many different people some same some knew but that what i heard was a ton of expertise in our community on a number of issues and it is a missed opportunity when we're not harnessing that with everybody that wants to work together i also heard or what came to me as i

210was listening also is that we're all one community it is not the community versus the board it is not the superintendent versus the community we are all working toward the same thing and so that has been breached in some way and i was particularly struck by the comment around how trauma creates separation and so that experiencing that when there has been a hurt in the community when there has been something that's wrong the thing that we need to look to especially as a learning community is what can we learn from that how do we heal from that and i i i think we're all on the same page about doing that we want to do that but there's not a clear path that has been communicated about the process that we are going to go

211through to do that and i have heard suggestions from the community i've heard some suggestions here but i think we need to really put out some more affirmative communication around what that's going to be because i think this keeps getting brought up because there is some sense and it is being perceived that this is not being taken seriously enough by us by the administration and the board which i know is not true but that perception exists and so it is true you know so like that because like so i just i i i think that's important um and my question is like what for us to think about we don't answer right now but what would allow for useful dialogue and i think parameters around how we talk to each other ground rules are always

212important and i i think you know we do we do a good job in other schools and you know we haven't we've done that a little bit at the board and i think taking a recess is always a good idea to sort of cool temperatures and i've learned that and there's also something to like being able to sit with the fire that's in the room sometimes and that's okay too right so i think both are okay and that we have some rules for allowing for safe dialogue and how we talk to net one another and maybe that needs to be more you know we spend a little time in our meetings again figuring out what that is or figuring that out when we start a forum um because yes we should all speak respectfully to

213one another not only because that's a better way to communicate but also because that's what we want to model for our students and for how we do things right so i think all those things are true um i think yeah i mean i i just i i was also struck some of the i was struck by so much expertise in the community and i agree with you andrew that so many beautiful statements but i also don't need beautiful statements to hear the emotion and to hear what's going on and we've heard it from many meetings and i think we need to map out kind of what our process is as the board and as the superintendent and you know and maybe those are different maybe the administration has one approach and maybe the board as

214a board does something i don't know um and i do have another question on another topic once we kind of move first any other comments or thoughts before we move off the reform were you waiting to say something before julie i don't want to put you on the spot but i also thought perhaps you were waiting for an opportunity and i was actually going to talk about something different that's fine and i you know and again i'm not i think that um you know i hope that we can find a way to successfully communicate i think that we have collectively been able to express lots of challenging things um and you know we've had challenging conversations we've listened to challenging feedback from the community and and we work through it and you know i think

215that i fully appreciate the intensity of the love and caring that people feel for their children and i respect that and i think that if we can get to a place where [Music] level of trust increases that would be really helpful i think that the mistrust has become really problematic and i'm not fully clear how we got there and i think that knowing what we're capable of as a district i think you know we'll find our way and there'll be nights that are challenging and we'll move through them so tomorrow's another day and we will continue to move forward in as productive way as possible thank you um i think you want to just if i could are you going to move to another item if i could just say something briefly and then i'm

216happy to move it sounds like there at least a couple of other items but i think in addition to what's been said i i also um i hear fear more so even than the anger i do i do hear you know some anger i think however that you know the anger is sort of directed at us out of a frustration with how we've interacted how we've communicated how problems have been solved or not solved but i i think from my perspective the underlying layer to that or the precursor to that is at some level some fear that that some individuals you legitimately have have come to experience and then that perhaps other individuals have started to also feel even individuals who don't have kids in the schools anymore which is interesting you know in part

217because certain things are being repeated certain things that have been addressed and investigated fully etc parties you know informed but then i think separate from that you know we do have some families and we heard some new things tonight where i think also fear can be engendered by just less less access to our schools less direct communication or direct involvement in classrooms and you know this is just something kind of tying back to where we are in the pandemic and i guess a question i have is you know do our families um understand and are our families taking advantage of the resources and the steps that can best help every family advocate for their own child and make sure that their own child's needs are being met um because you know to a certain extent

218um speaking with us is is is one avenue but then to a larger extent in terms of the you know some of the families from whom we heard tonight like their kids are going to wake up and go to school tomorrow and i'm actually a little bit confused on whether some of these families are having a good experience in our classrooms or if they're not are they also in active conversation we know a couple of people are actively in conversation with their classroom teachers their administrators their cse committees etc but that is something you know i'm i'm wondering if because of the pandemic perhaps you know our families feeling somehow less connected to their classroom teachers less connected to the resources here in our schools who can best support every child's needs you know i

219because we heard from some families who again don't have kids in the school at all and so their fear may be coming from a place of hearing things and then other families who do have kids in the schools who are talking with us who who may also be experiencing a different level of concern or fear because their access to [Music] teachers resources classrooms the school buildings is different than it has been in the past you know i just i just assume that some of the intensity of the emotion that we're hearing tonight is some form of fear unclear where exactly all of it's coming from some of it i think we can easily map on um and anyway so i just wanted to share that other perspective [Music] and yes absolutely a lot of um

220very articulate and um helpful things to reflect on for the future in terms of you know our next steps and how we communicate and i i think it is worth stating that you know we are all here to represent all of you and your children and the entire community and that we do not feel um disdain or disrespect um you know quite to the contrary we feel uh an onus of responsibility to get it right for every child every day um every single one of us and i think alana you're waiting to say something else i just i just wanted to sort of ask a little bit about that because i heard some a little bit of similar comments from bill to just now about that i i mean i think what i'm hearing is

221i'm hearing stories of individuals and frustrations and i'm also hearing a question about is this a systemic problem and so i i think that's where we need to provide an answer and you know is this is there a systemic issue here because i i think people are sharing personal stories that might relate to a larger thing or not but that's where we that is that's the question that's being asked and so i think when we sort of talk about well they are people working through their own systems yeah i i hear a lot of advocacy in here in the room i'm not concerned that parents are not advocating for their children to get what they need in the classroom what they're asking is is the district is there something happening and the questions that are

222being asked are if there if something went wrong what have we learned from it and what are we doing different and i we have not we've provided some answers to that but i think we need to provide more communication around that and i totally agree that covet has made things more complicated and has distanced us but then if that's the case we need to be more proactive about communicating and and you know do that better i agree i agree with that marjorie i think the fear is stemming from the two events that are that are most widely discussed in these forms are clearly our other other concerns that some people have raised even tonight i heard one or two new ones but i think that's what that's where the fear is and i don't share

223that fear because maybe i have an inside track um but i think we're not doing the best job we could do to communicate why parents shouldn't be fearful and what we have done and are doing to address the concerns of not just the advocacy group but but parents in general who have children in oh i shouldn't just say that not just the special education classes but but all students because i think that now there's becoming a frenzy like oh my god things are so badly broken don't share that opinion but i think that we have to do a better job i want one other comment i think i sort of said this but just i with the expertise in the community is i think there's sometimes a missed opportunity when we don't have ways for

224people for parents to plug in more i mean i know there's this student you know there's the every school has a pto we have parent council which is the representatives every school we have these learning cafes but if parents are asking to be involved in certain discussions i i think it's it's i mean just i was blown away by how many specialists we had just tonight and how many i was how many speech pathologists we happen to have in the community um how many you know people that kind of that think about this and not only think about it but they care and they wanna they wanna help the school that we all wanna work in the same direction so let's harness that energy and use that um and and i heard some specific suggestions

225and i look forward to sort of discussing how we could use those or why we might not want to use those specific models but i think we should discuss that further i think we're ready to move on to other topics ilana you want to go first um i i wanted to just one of the comments around the quarantine learning plan just i was curious where we are with that from the last board meeting um there was talk we were going to hire some teachers what that kind of looks like now um and i was particularly just wanted to also um if we i don't know if we have but do we have numbers of like how many students are everyone are quarantining on average for how long you know like what what is it looking

226like um we can speak to that a little bit um so as you heard tonight we have now have two full-time quarantine teachers uh the answer on the numbers is that it varies wildly i mean i was in one of our language schools today talking to a principal one of the quarantine teachers was able to work as a sub in the building because there are no students on quarantine at the moment last week 63 on a given day but that's how much and very so i can't tell you the average but now that we have two people in place we think we're in good shape we think you know things can shift as we've learned um but it was it was a little bit tricky to determine what's the right level of staffing for something

227that shifts so wildly from one day to the next one week to the next but you think this is a good level for now and we'll monitor it we've also um the second person just began um this week so you know that's kind of new but we're splitting up k2 and 35 thinking that that will provide more time for students and then depending on the numbers we could either you know grades together have individual grade level work especially for math i think that's very important but um more contact time during the day but as anderson it's tricky it really depends on the numbers and it fluctuates day by day we're working on yeah i mean i think about the opportunity of like it's a virtual one-room school house for us to run days when we

228have students in that um and then just to clarify that we're not required to provide that but we are going above and beyond to provide quarantine learning it's not a recurrent state requirement i believe that's correct yeah um and that everybody's we're still in that difficult space of figuring out how to do this in a different way we're at a different place when we were ahead of you know then last year where we had a fully remote option that people could we really in in response to community feedback from last year and guidance from the state and other places we wanted to prioritize in-person learning this year for all children making that the priority makes it more challenging to provide the remote experience when it happens yeah and then just the last point i think

229you addressed this in a communication over email to everybody but just that we don't it's not that klsd sets the quarantine rules right that's set by the state and county the county and then we follow that and we'd have no there is no flexibility within that no superintendents have advocated for some changes in certain places with things that we're frustrated with and we don't necessarily get the changes that we might but again we're not the medical experts we're leaving it to the health experts to come up with the rules around how we keep everybody safe am i correct in saying that though if if the student is vaccinated the quarantine rules are less restrictive they're significantly different for those students who have been of the age now that the vaccine is available to five to

23011 year olds part of the answer to this problem is to get the child vaccinated so that their quarantine needs go way down yeah i think that that should be you know step one that will be helpful julia would it be possible at a future meeting just to kind of outline the there was like very specific bathroom references and i i think that we have some gender neutral i just wanted i don't know all the wing names and numbers but i would just be curious just to get kind of um the administration's perspective on um the current availability of gender-neutral bathrooms and um you know what would adequately meet the needs of the community in the school in all the schools you know i don't know whether the i think we oftentimes [Music] focus on

231the children who are in the high school but they're transgender children in elementary school as well so i'm just i don't know whether and i apologize because i probably should know if there's a policy but i'm not really sure what that is so just at a future meeting would it be possible to to give us that information that'd be great thanks for reminding me about that conversation and i thought that young man was wonderful and very brave to get up and talk that way jake uh if i remember his name correctly um it did sort of he spoke about a club called the saga club and it reminded me that we have an earthrise club and a sustainability club and we have other clubs that we've talked a bit about before about how do we

232engage with those clubs a little more tightly to sort of understand what is going on at the within the student body and i know we have some avenues to help that but it's just it's maybe something we want to talk about at some point about there's really good work going on in the schools amongst these clubs and i really think they're very thoughtful and they're very well led and it would be good to figure out a way to absorb the good ideas that are coming out of those forums and find a way for us to sort of have a little more dialogue a little more insight um i really did i was really happy to hear what jake had to say i think i think some of that again is like a little related like

233i feel like saga has always hosted like annually something that's a that's open to the community that the board has been able to attend like so i think you know i was thinking the other day that that really um in terms of just thinking about sort of the some of the interactions we've been able to have as a community um like i i personally have had the benefit of three and a half years as a school board member and a community member prior to the pandemic like you guys got here and five months later we were in shut down you know elon has been in this spot i don't think you did anything no ilana's been in like this quasi-covid mode catherine came on in 2020 and has you know been in so i think

234i'm hopeful that as the vaccination rates increase as the numbers continue to come down that there will be opportunities for us to re-engage in some of those community-based interactions both with our student community and attending you know concerts and events and and you know science fairs and athletic things and also just some of the normalcy of our you know again we went on our first school tour in almost two years and that's been always something that we've been able to have the opportunity as a board to be in buildings and and see what's happening so you know i think that you know i hope that there are opportunities for exactly what you're talking about which exist and and have always been a part of our opportunity to know the community and um be engaged with

235them yeah and you know so i think that that will happen those informal contacts are super important and maybe even go further than formal contacts but i do also think that there are some genuine good ideas that you know if you're at the saga uh event you might not pick up on the fact that hey you know we should have gender neutral bathrooms in high school so there's some real facts that somehow we should be able to absorb or i don't know what for format that might take but i think yeah thanks for that we can can i just one last thing so on the reading topic so we've heard about this for time and time again and i understand that there's a holy war out there around the two sides of the reading issue

236and my understanding is at a very high level that while we do subscribe to teachers college we also supplement it with foundations and other uh phonic based and and um other other types of reading how are we still stuck in this sort of like what can we do to express what i believe is to be a very sort of balanced reading program in our school that seems to meet the needs of most children which i think is our goal we would love to get every child to their very very top of of their capability but that that probably just isn't realistic in a public school system i'm not trying to punish anybody i'm we probably don't do the best for our very best kids and we probably don't do the best for our kids who

237struggle but what how can we bring this thing to rest i mean and mary i'm kind of looking at you but i and maybe we never can maybe it truly is a holy war and we just have to sort of agree but it feels to me like there is sort of a misunderstanding maybe on both sides or is there no misunderstanding i don't i don't think there's a misunderstanding i think there are some some differences of i don't i don't want to say opinion because that'll be i know that'll be not well received but there are differences uh there are there are you know this is an area where we do get measurable feedback on tests that we have mixed opinions about i've expressed some of that earlier today and those tests are sometimes held

238against us and then we might hold them up in our favor so talking about the ela tests in grades three through eight we've heard them referred to we've heard the percentage of students refer to when you look at the 700 or so districts in new york state we fare well relative to the other 700 districts in the state i don't think anyone can argue that point and then when we've actually asked are there districts that fare better than we do that use very different strategies than we do we haven't been able to find and we've invited people to share with us if they know of we've invited people to share with us if they know of public school districts in new york state and we we receive emails we're happy to receive emails who use

239very different strategies we would look at those districts and we would visit those districts the districts you know we we obviously we know the districts closest to us the best there are districts that perform a little better than us locally they use the very similar reading approaches as we do as do most of the districts in our region um so it's you know that's that's where this is a struggle we do saying that we have measurable metrics and that we believe that our district performs well based on measurable metrics i think the approach we're taking is the best approach for all students we're always trying to improve it and you've heard i mean mary has spoken to changes you heard some of them referenced tonight some of some of them were referenced somewhat accurately some

240of them weren't referenced entirely accurately but we've made adjustments sometimes what's happening in the world at the moment is that people who are making adjustments now being accused of having done it wrong all along but not being quite willing to admit as opposed to learning and growing and and making adjustments as a result it's a difficult a difficult environment in which that's the approach but we are always open to making improvements um you don't uh you don't well i think i'll leave it there perhaps it's also been my understanding am i correct that it's a flexible situation if a particular student is not learning in one style venue system that others are trying and that it you know it depends so it's not one just one the square hole you're going to try to fit

241every peg in the same square hole there's different blended approaches done when necessary so our general education approach which is the workshop model and we use teachers college units of study teach in the reading workshop one of the things that we value about that is it does allow for differentiation so you know students who are perhaps reading below grade level at grade level or above could be accommodated in that model but separately we do have this word study piece um and just to clear up confusion you know foundations is our word study program that we're using teacher we have not officially piloted uh teachers college phonics program we have not adopted it some teachers have it some in some cases teachers were curious about it principles bought a set for the grade level to review

242but we have not replaced fundations as a matter of fact we retrained every k1 and 2 teacher back in june with fundations and even our new hires who are k1 and 2 primary teachers um they're attending trainings this fall um even our quarantine teachers we're sending for fundations training because that's part of what they'll have to do so that has not changed the extent to which you know teachers might look at a new resource want to learn about it one of the things i've heard teachers find helpful about it in some cases those who've tried it out is that they it's helping them to think about ways to kind of transfer what students learn in foundations beyond foundations lessons right so it's a more authentic reading and writing experiences and we also have worked with

243the hegerty resources so those are phonemic awareness and phonemic awareness is one of those building blocks of early reading and necessary for reading and writing so we've purchased those resources for all kindergarten and first grade teachers and for our interventionists as well and so we're we're using the hegerty assessments but we're also using the teaching resources in those grades and we plan to give all of our kindergartners the hegerty assessment mid-year to get a baseline and then from there it's a lengthier assessment use that assessment for any student who you know we may feel has difficulty it's actually been very revealing we started using it last year for students who you know are students that may not always qualify for that additional support and teachers will say you're just making it but there's something that's

244maybe getting in the way maybe they're reading more slowly or they're very poor spellers and it doesn't make sense they're having difficulty reading unfamiliar words and so it's been helpful to say oh there's actually a phonemic awareness weakness there and it's helped us to uncover that so i mean i think it's important for for all of you as board members and for the community to know we're always looking at how to do this better um but i think with regard to students who need an intervention so foundations which is a norton gillingham-based approach is our primary word study resource and that is used in classrooms um and as the general ed piece but then the the interventions for students who need that kind of support so we use wilson and just words they're actually authored

245by the same person primarily barbara wilson they have the same approach so if you're a student who needs that word study longer or more in a more intensive way you don't have to relearn you know a different approach and a new set of keywords and things like that we're continually using um the same methodology there but not all students who struggle with reading struggle for the same reason right right so there are different interventions as well that's really helpful to know that i think you know i am someone who has learned about different approaches to reading just with my kids learning to read and somebody i tutored reading in college but um i'm wondering because i still again repeat this but heard a lot of expertise in the community and people wanting to be in

246dialogue around this and so i could bring forward what i've heard but i think it might be more useful to have some direct dialogue with community members who are interested in talking about this and sort of and then from there coming up with some solutions um or or clarifying kind of you know asking these questions because that would be better but but i think there has been meetings i mean i i don't i don't know i wasn't here but i heard people asking for meetings tonight so um the other thing that i wanted to ask about was just this is a this is a you know the answer now but just what is the appro when we think about curriculum we think about who we're designing curriculum for who we're doing it are you are

247we aiming for the middle are we aiming to make sure it kind of brings all students how do we take into account different learners and i think this is a larger philosophical question but i'm just i'm curious about that what about the people that are sort of excelling and how do you how do you design curriculum that that meets all those needs and and where where are you kind of maybe you're aiming multiple places but it's about that and so obviously a very complicated question guys fits all but you've probably heard us speak about universal design for learning as one way to think about it so in that design students might have multiple means of expressing their understanding for example multiple ways of representing their understanding it's designing to the edges they call it right

248so david rose who's one of the founders i believe of universal design for learning he talks about a jagged profile and no human being being you know all at one end or the other and because we all have strengths and weaknesses so in a classroom this is why we keep stressing too knowing our students really well and we look for approaches that help our teachers to know students really well and then try to design to those edges right so that you can meet the needs of a very proficient reader who also may be a student who struggles with some basic math skills um so you know an approach like the workshop model is very helpful in that way in a general sense but it's also important to provide direct targeted instruction that you know meets

249the needs of students whether it's to play on their strengths or to address some i i think i just when we were um at the middle school on monday um you know jeff sweatwood spoke about that you know some of the goals of the building with the first goal to be know the students and by knowing them and understanding them and knowing their strengths it allows a classroom teacher to you know target and think about what does that student need and then he talked about um i can't remember the word he used it wasn't thoughtful but it was something groupings but it was purposeful grouping so in a classroom setting like in a certain lesson is it appropriate that this lesson would be taught to everyone at the same time if you're going to have

250groupings thinking about things like oh these are some students who often verbally participate maybe i should either have them all be together or have them spread one in each of five groups and for teachers to really be purposeful about how they group students to do the work so that there are opportunities for everyone to excel or you know for a teacher to be able to focus on a group that has some weaknesses that need to be addressed and i think that's i guess maybe more pedagogy than it is curriculum but i think that is part of the thinking around how do we design pedagogy was that is that would that be pedagogy i don't know like to address the curriculum you know i mean so the curriculum might exist over here but then thinking about

251how do we know our students and then purposely group them when we're teaching and working with them and helping them to obtain knowledge so that we're allowing students to have opportunities to really do their best work and i thought that was very interesting um those are sort of two of the things they're really trying to think about as a building as they're doing their work any other comments or topics what okay then we can look ahead to future meetings tomorrow morning sustainability is meeting at 8 15. tuesday um actually not until tuesday november 16th finance committee is meeting at 7 p.m the next board meeting is thursday november 18th 7 30 p.m here in the library and policy is scheduled to meet friday the next morning the 19th at 9 did i miss anything okay

252then i'm actually going to make a motion to adjourn into executive session to discuss the employment history of an individual if i could please have a second thank you julia all in favor please stay out all right all right 6-0 great thank you good night everybody thank you i