001good evening welcome to the july 1st reorganizational meeting of the katona lewisboro school district may i have a motion to return to public session catherine thank you may have a second phil thank you all in favor aye aye thank you um please stand for the pledge of allegiance thank you in order to save some time i'll administer the oaths within 30 days to our superintendent and our assistant superintendent and our newly elected board trustee alana and re-elected trustee ms chef so the next order of business is the nomination of our president and vice president for the school district for the 21-22 school year may i have a nomination for board president for the school year mr rivkin i nominate marjorie chef okay are there any other nominations may i have a second for mischief as
002board president rory fall in favor okay bye thank you now the next order of business is our nomination of vice president for the 21 22 school year may i have a nomination for yes mrs scaredy i'd like to nominate julia hadlock are there any other nominations may have a second for ms hadlock as vice president catherine all in favor aye aye thank you and then i'll administer the oath of office to mischief and this hadlock within 30 days and at this time i'd like to turn the meeting over to our board president mischief thank you so much kim good evening everybody thank you for your patience we're sorry that we were running just a few minutes late this evening welcome to members of our community who've joined us tonight welcome to the start of the
0032021-2022 school year um and i think we'll just pause briefly for board announcements and i just would like to begin by expressing our thanks to our administrators and our students and families for their joyous participation in moving up and graduation exercises which have occurred in between our last board meeting and this evening's meeting so we congratulate the class of 2021 on their successful graduation from john jay high school and we were delighted to be able to celebrate them in style in person with a very special ceremony and thanks so much to everybody who was able to be there in person who's here with us tonight and i'll pause in case there are any other board announcements welcome to abigail our student board member and tonight is our opportunity to meet you we're so glad that
004you could be with us this evening thank you for joining us we'd love it if you wanted to take a moment to introduce yourself but no pressure we can pause is there any other additional announcements people can collect their thoughts hi i'm abigail stobin i'll be a senior at john jay in the fall and yeah i'm excited to be the student trustee great wonderful welcome welcome thank you for being here if i could just also um in addition to the administration and everyone who was involved in graduation just recognized the ptos i know that they were helpful in a lot of the kind of ancillary activities that i think help to really enhance the experiences of the students and families and just thank you to all the parents who on top of their parent hat
005are wearing pto hats and helping with that i really think they just really helped to make those celebrations really special for everyone wonderful thank you very much and welcome to ilana also usually by now we would have all taken our oats and whatnot but we're accelerating the meeting but still we don't want to miss an opportunity to say we're glad you're here we're looking forward to working with you welcome to the board thank you margaret can i just please embark on one thing yeah so we just very very quickly went through nominations of the president and the vice president of the board and it seems like so easy and so sort of inconsequential but i think we'd be remiss if we didn't recognize all the great work that you and julia both do for us
006um it's it's no small task to act as a president and a vice president and we on the board and the community are super appreciative of all of the hard work and the commitment and the time that you guys put into everything it really is much appreciated so well done and congratulations on your new appointments and commiserations at the same time all the hard work you have coming up thank you thank you they do a wonderful job and it's lucky that they keep wanting to do it my nightmare is they'll say they don't want to do it anymore each year when we get past this part thank you very much for the support and we will do our best to ensure that board members have access to all the information that they need and um
007to facilitate our meetings etc so thank you it's our pleasure and we appreciate the kind words can i just say what we're thinking can you i and i'm sorry that i'm asking this because i've already asked you like three times and i can't get it in my head elena it's ilana so my parents thought they were spelling my name phonetically and everyone was saying right but i just want to make sure thank you i appreciate that okay announcements i i wanted to comment on graduation and prom again thanks to all of the parents and committees and everyone who was involved with all of the changing requirements and regulations it was not easy and it was so appreciated by my particular senior because this year i now have a john jay graduate but still too here
008um and it was just it was wonderful it was a kind of return to what school felt like before for my senior and it was really important and the efforts are so appreciated and i just wanted to let people know that because occasionally sometimes you hear complaints louder than compliments and i just wanted to make sure the compliments were loud too thank you liz we really appreciate that and although we've warmly welcomed abigail and ilana i know andrew when we turn it over to you but please allow me also to welcome neil to our board table and to our governance team and um i will turn it over to you now for announcements and perhaps if you wanted to say a few words also about neil we're delighted that you're here and welcome um i'd
009say it's a delight to be here and to serve the katonah louisboro school community and to be here with all of you i think i'm coming up on my my 10th day and it's just been tomorrow's day 10 but i know it's been it's been a lovely and wonderful first couple weeks here and i look forward to continuing to serve thank you thank you thank you welcome i'll be i'll be very brief tonight really um i think it's worth noting that we're back in this room uh for the first time in more than a year and a half which is wonderful we're thrilled to be back i should say we've been in the room but on zoom it's our first time with a live audience we're happy to have community members with us obviously we've
010come through the most remarkable year we've ever experienced in schools and all i can do is continue to say thanks to our community our staff our students it took an enormous collaborative effort on everybody's part to bring us through the year that we've just come through and uh there were lots and lots of good things that happened lots of lessons to be learned we meet uh with our administrators starting on tuesday of next week we'll be reflecting uh significantly on this experience that we've just come through to think about what we if there are things we want to hold on to what those things are if there are things that we would rather move away from how quickly we move away from those things we don't we don't take anything for granted but we do
011we really have come to count on our community being partners with us and this past year and a half have certainly shown us uh what can be achieved sometimes in a very rapid fashion much more rapidly than we typically make change in schools but again we don't want to take those things for granted am i being heard i'm just yeah okay good but really that's that's all that i have other than to wish everybody a very happy fourth of july weekend holiday weekend coming up thank you sure there aren't any further announcements at this time then we can move forward to i think item 10.01 which is our opportunity to discuss this district safety plan i'll turn it over to danelle great thank you i think somebody has the clicker there for the presentation that
012see if i remember how to use it then are you ready to move forward uh sure well tonight we're just uh presenting once again some amendments to the district-wide safety plan um you can go to the next slide andrew so you may remember um back in april or uh prior to april we did an amendment to the plan to include a plan of operation this was a law that governor cuomo signed into and we had to incorporate it into our district-wide safety plan in the event that the governor would declare a health emergency since we presented the plan back in may um there's been more guidance from the state on what those like what uh some legislative changes that we needed so you can click to the next one andrew the language just changed the
013state disaster emergency involving public health language in there we removed where we had to provide ppe for contractors and then there was also a deletion of the plan had specified two ppe per day per certain emergency employees so the state now requires us to take that out of the plan normally we do approve the district safety plan here at the reorg meeting but since the state has required us to make these small small changes we're just doing a re-issue or revisiting this and we'll have a 30-day public comment period on the new changes so very minimal changes if you go to the next question our next slide is just questions about these changes and these are all in in um in accordance with the legislation and we've reviewed this with um our different uh with
014boces who helps us with our district-wide safety plan the board just as a reminder in october will will approve our building level safety plans and we will send those up to the state great thank you so much for apprising us of the changes we really appreciate that are there any questions thank you and i think we're going to move on to a discussion of a facilities committee i'll just take a brief moment to mention that of course the board has subcommittees and perhaps in between this meeting and the next meeting board members can be thinking a little bit about which subcommittees are of interest and where they feel most comfortable serving we have our audit facilities policy board subcommittees the sustainability subcommittee and then a liaison to parent council and in addition to that i
015think tonight andrew is going to talk with us about the possibility of convening a facilities committee in light of our building and conditions survey and the five-year capital plan that we just adopted at a recent meeting thank you thank you very much marjorie so as marjorie just said i want to raise the concept tonight we don't need to make decisions tonight i just wanted to give the board some food for thought and perhaps we'll come back at a future meeting after having had some time to think about it and decide if this is something you'd be interested in moving forward with as margaret just said we do have a board policy that defines the board subcommittees currently policy finance and audit are defined as subcommittees of the board in a separate policy the sustainability committee
016is also defined that same policy that same board subcommittee policy allows for the formation of ad hoc committees when necessary or other the addition of additional committees when the board sees fit and as marjorie just pointed out earlier this spring our architect was here to present the five-year building condition survey happening in districts all around the state in a staggered way at different times and we learned through that survey that while our buildings are still in good condition there's quite a bit of work that may need to be done in the coming years and we are thinking that it would be good to have some additional input and voices perhaps board members we would want to perhaps think about other community members with expertise as we have for example in the sustainability committee or on
017the finance committee to help us think about the prioritization of different work that might be upcoming i think about the scope of work that might be necessary as we look around at other districts in the region you often will see facilities committees sometimes they're standing committees in the district that are always in existence sometimes they come together on more of an ad hoc nature when there seems to be a particular need so it's it seems to be a worthwhile uh endeavor it's something i'd like the board to think about um in the i should also note if when you when you do look at policy uh 2250 and you read about our finance committee you'll see that they actually have some mention of facilities under their charge and it's not uncommon understandably for a finance
018subcommittee and a facility subcommittee either to be linked or to work with one another for reasons that are probably obvious so i think those i think it's a good time for us to be thinking about that uh because we do see some work uh in the near future i think it would be good to have uh the input of board members and other expertise uh along with obviously our own administrative expertise in the form of paul christensen i would imagine danelle would be very much involved i would be involved in that work but it seems to be in line with the work that other subcommittees do in our district so i don't think there's too much more but i did want to see if there were any questions that board members might have tonight that
019would help us all then think about this for a future date if there's any other information you might need from me or just any other things you would want us to consider or perhaps other learning a little bit more about what other districts do i've spoken to some superintendents and other districts who've had success with these sorts of committees let me ask what is this an advice committee is it a sift through options is it like what do you see this committee taking on that's a great question bill i'd see both of those things i think probably a good first step would be to carefully study the recently completed bcs report along with the five-year plan that our architect has since submitted that the board has adopted and start to think about uh the work
020that's described in there what seems to be a higher priority what seems to be in line with districts mission educationally because that's that's a big piece of this workers we don't we don't want to just be maintaining buildings we want to be enhancing them in ways educationally for our students that are in line with all the work that we're trying to do as a district so i think that initially be that review and then um who knows possibly consultation with other people who have expertise in the field other questions uh question and an observation maybe the observation first it i just wonder if we agree that this makes sense and it feels like a good idea to me if we could have a common board member across finance and facilities it really does feel like
021they're almost uh certainly overlapping but maybe even interlocked some extent the building conditions survey right had some some some substantial investment proposals in there which i think the finance committee might be able to bring to light and as you guys will recall last year we spent some time looking at certain buildings in the district on the finance committee and there really is quite a bit of overlap so just just a thought and then you had said uh that other districts um have a facilities committee and you mentioned that in some cases they're standing and in some cases they're ad hoc would you propose that we stand this up as a standing ongoing meeting or is that something we can tackle down the road where we to approve it i think it's something we should think
022about and then perhaps tackle you know if we're ready to make a decision at the next meeting perhaps at that time we decide is this going to be a standing committee or is it an ad hoc fair enough that's helpful and ad hoc i think we could also look into you know how long could an ad how committee stand for you know it could be something that we foresee for a year or two but not needing to be there forever yeah well the building condition survey i think kind of warrants it right and if we say well we'll tackle these issues over the next two to three years yeah or five years i think is really what the proposal was then maybe we say can we disband it after that period of time but okay
023i like the idea thank you any other questions thoughts okay thank you very much thank you thank you so i think this brings us to our opportunity for public forum and for any community members who might be interested in speaking during public forum who haven't yet had a chance to sign up there is a computer at the circulation desk um just behind where community members are seated and we invite you to please sign up and i know already we have a couple of people who are waiting um and i think we're ready to invite our first speaker i'll just mention that since this is the public forum portion of our meeting we really are in listening mode and it's your opportunity to speak with us to share your thoughts and concerns but please don't be
024disappointed we're not going to engage in a back and forth we will however be listening very carefully and then after we move through the consent agenda the board will have an opportunity for board dialogue and discussion just a little bit later on in the meeting so for the time being we invite you to please come forward and introduce yourself and as i mentioned we'll be listening very carefully and i think our first community member is don camerman and we request that you please limit your remarks to approximately three minutes thank you hey i'm going to be heading out after i speak because of the allergies in this building with the chemicals um martin luther king said years ago i have a dream that my four little children one day will live in a nation where
025they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character i grew up in what's maybe known as some people as the ghetto of yonkers and i'll tell you one thing color was never something that i visibly saw um to hear that this district when i moved my kids into it in 2007 we asked them about the um common core and we were told that they didn't teach to the common core but beyond the common core which i was great because i felt the district was standing up for the people but now with this whole crt critical race theory whatever name you want to give it i feel that you are no longer representing us the people and you are representing the government because the only thing that
026can come from this whole critical race theory is nothing but division i myself have friends who are and i don't like to use the word you know of color but i'll say darker complexions and i look at them knowing that i still give a lot about them but i question do they think because of the color of my skin that i held them back or something or that i'm evil or something that's the only sage you're planting a seed of hatred and i hope that i don't expect you to solve it tonight but when before september and all that you literally decide to just give up this whole crt because there's no good that could come out of it you guys are elected to serve our children to serve us as the parents don't serve
027the state serve the kids do not hurt the kids by planting that kind of hatred in their heart because my children will never be ashamed the fact that they were born white i was never given any special grants and privileges because of the color of my skin in fact i was denied things because of the color of my skin from where i came from so i just want to say please you know represent us like we voted for you guys instead of the dish you know instead of the um state do what you got to do for us and represent thank you thank you i think the next speaker is mark abrams good evening and thank you for providing me this opportunity to speak here today my name is mark abrams i moved into this
028community in 1993 and had all four of my children go through this public school system three and a half to be honest one child who i jokingly said was the failure to thrive child had some issues and we had put him in a private high school because of his own emotional issues and misuse of drugs my ex-wife and i were fortunate to be in a position to pay for his care and schooling we did not ask the school district for anything in return i am a practicing psychologist who used to do psychological evaluations on children and then help the parents negotiate with school districts for special educational services that the schools could best provide while in turn have the parents cover for some more targeted services that private providers typically did better than what was
029available from the schools the last couple of decades i have served as a consulting psychologist conducting mostly custody evaluations for the court system for the state of new york my other professional life has been spent in traditional martial arts my training began in 1973 and i continue to train and teach privately i have taught children all the way up through consulting with one martial arts friend who ran the army combatives program at bagram air force base in afghanistan as part of his assignment for special operations command africa needless to say i am educated and relate issues related to continuum of force and obviously in the use of physical restraints i am speaking tonight still in a sense of disbelief first as it relates to my fiancee's experience dealing with special education department with her son
030those experiences have been paled in comparison to what has been shared with me from some parents of children who have significant special needs a good number of their children are non-verbal some of my fondest memories of this school district was around the time my youngest graduated in 2013. there was an incredibly talented young man with special needs who performed for the all-male a cappella group in high school our school district was so humanely inclusive that he was allowed to continue to perform with the school group the year after he graduated families moved into this district because of its stellar reputation for humane and comprehensive services provided for children who genuinely needed them my high school friend michael gordon who served on the sport for many years talked about how he made it a point to
031try and educate this district that providing comprehensive services on the front end ultimately ended up saving the district money on the long end when dealing with special needs children he talked about problems with staff even back then that had to be addressed so clearly what this school district and parents are now dealing with is not the first rodeo for the school district this school district has been cutting the special education budget for a number of years now you have been telling us the cuts mirror the reduction in children and services required the facts on the ground simply do not support what have you been telling us even worse there has been a pattern of not informing the community of very disturbing facts the recently published local newspaper talked about a school official explaining that providing
032the community with this information was protecting the privacy of students and staff i will note that the same concern regarding privacy is not shown when the school district openly communicates about the accomplishments in students and staff when it shines a positive light on the school district when a teacher is no longer allowed to teach because of allegations that a child was manhandled our community should have been informed instead one school official allegedly told the parents that it was no big deal the local police department allegedly informed the parents that the child was not hurt enough to warrant charges please place yourself in those parents shoes and imagine if that was told to you in one classroom a non-verbal child new to this district who had never before required physical restraints was restrained on almost a
033daily basis for over a two month period of time when in-class learning resumed the parents were not notified until after all these incidents occurred i would frankly like to subject the adults who employ those restraints the same type of restraints with the same amount of frequency and explore the psychological trauma they experience at the end of that period just having to place those or slams on someone can frequently traumatize the person employing those restraints from what i was told the children and the child in question all show signs that indicate to me these children were traumatized i can't even comprehend how a contained environment is so mismanaged that a child needs to be restrained that often how is it that a continuous monitoring and modification of the environment did not occur to better understand this
034child negating the need for physical restraints just pardon me while you're coming up fair i'm just going to mention that we do request remarks be kept to approximately three minutes are you approaching the end of your remarks yes thank you clearly the special education and regular education staff need regular and better training so that the entire teaching team can work seamlessly in providing a safe and humane atmosphere i implore this board to immediately begin working with everyone in our community to make immediate changes during the summer break so that this fall can remark a return to our district becoming a leader in humane and competent learning environments for special needs kids this may not be glamorous as our sports and academic achievements but raising the bar in this area approved improves our ability to better
035educate all students as my friend michael gordon pointed out this approach will save this school district a lot of money down the road you have the opportunity to work with us myself included so that our school district returns to a place of humanity and sanity and how we care for the most fragile and vulnerable members of our community all of us want this done in a collaborative manner these parents are traumatized hurt and are experiencing a growing sense of indignation as the scope of this problem begins to see the light of day i hope that you choose to work with us so that real healing and growth can occur in pursuit of educational excellence i know our school district can do better it's done so in the past and i genuinely hope that we work
036toward that goal thank you thank you our next speaker is oksana aaronov good evening i'm here today to give all of you an opportunity to look in the eyes of a mother who has not slept for six months because of the mistreatment my son endured in the hands of quote unquote educators in this district the very educators with whom you have locked arms in choosing not to address this mistreatment as well as many others in choosing not to address the trauma that my son endured the trauma that all the kids in his class endured watching the restraints that he would suggest subjected to my son walked into the self-contained class at the middle school on february the 16th and was restrained the same day twice the educators that apply these restraints to him did not
037think it was important to notify his parents of this fact they didn't think it was important to notify his parents of this fact for 33 more times of restraints applied to him daily sometimes more than once a day sometimes for up to 20 minutes sometimes with nine educators present sometimes he fell asleep after receiving this treatment which leads us to believe which leads us to question whether this was sleep or syncope we do not know i do not understand and i will never understand the complicity of the principal the assistant principles the special education administrators mr superintendent there the aides the teacher the nurse who came to examine my son i will never understand the silence and the complicity all of these people showed by putting my son repeatedly into a dangerous and harmful situation
038the school claims that all of this personnel was trained in crisis prevention management as such they must know that physical restraints are controversial because they are injurious and because they lead to death 10 to 12 children every year die in physical restraints so if they were so well trained but did not follow best practices who can possibly assure any parent that any of these educators follow safety as it should be followed what do you call a situation where you knowingly and repeatedly put a child in harm's way the parents in this district have called it abuse and it's not the only instance of abuse that's came to be known in the subsequent conversations there has been very ugly there have been very ugly situations prior to this with children locked in bathrooms and these are
039again remember our both our most vulnerable children the minimally and nonverbal ones but this is these instances are not limited to them children locked in bathrooms children thrown against the wall as parents alleged children threatened and finally several children assaulted these things need to be addressed with the community and the community in increasingly large numbers has been communicating that to you that they want to have a very concrete and specific conversation about restructuring this special education program it is not working for our children they are not safe how many more instances do we need to see what needs to happen for this body here to understand that this special education program is not working i could tell you that my son never required physical restraints in the past i could tell you that he spent
040almost eight years in the district thriving never being referred out but that's really not the point when a child's educational experience becomes a string of emergencies someone somewhere has to say this is a complete failure and that did not occur this program is broken you are well aware of the requests that the parent community has put to you time and time again over a number of weeks this spring the ball is now in your court it is time to act on the diversity and inclusion initiatives as opposed to paying lip service to them it's uncomfortable and it requires pushing yourselves out of the comfort zone and not clinging to the fig leaf of we didn't break the law you promised to deliver something that exceeds new york state standards for our students here so deliver
041it for all students standards that exceed give our students the example they need that they should do the right thing in life as opposed to the easy thing this is really simple this program is not working and it needs to be restructured the ball is in your court and we hope you cooperate with us thank you thank you was anybody else waiting to speak with us this evening who didn't have an opportunity to sign up okay thank you if not i'm going to suggest that we close the public forum and we will move on then to the adoption of annual resolutions and kim i'll just check in with you to ask would you like that we move the resolutions first and then move to the consent agenda yeah i think do with all the annual
042resolutions okay thank you so this will bring us to 13.47 i'm not aware of any resolutions that would need to be voted on separately in which case would somebody like to move all of these resolutions thank you bill and seconded by liz any comment or discussion questions okay if not we can vote on the annual resolutions all in favor please say aye aye aye great seven and this now brings us to the consent agenda which contains many items this evening again i'm not aware of anything that needs to be voted on separately but i'll pause just to be sure and if not would somebody like to move the consent agenda thank you catherine and seconded by rory any question or discussion okay if not we can vote on the consent agenda all in favor please
043say aye and that brings us bear with me to i think we have an opportunity for recognition of donations and gifts would somebody like to move the resolution in 19.01 moved by liz thank you seconded by rory and this is um two donations the first from brooke christian in the amount of 175 dollars this is going to the special class at increased miller and then from the metal pawn pto in the amount of 1359.34 to meadow pond elementary school the middle pond donation is a bench and then from brook christian we have two ball chairs sensory integration weighted vest there's no further discussion then we can vote to accept these generous gifts all in favor please say aye terrific thank you 7-0 and this brings us to an opportunity for board dialogue and discussion not
044sure whether board members had any independent items for this evening or anybody wish to make a comment we do appreciate community members sharing their perspectives i think we can all agree that we are dedicated to providing excellence in every classroom to every child and a compassionate humane educational environment um and if there's no further comment then we can look ahead to future meetings please i think it's important that we recognize that the community members came and they spoke it's a it's a recurring theme that we have heard at each of the last two board meetings i believe the district is taking steps to certainly adjust the policy as well as to address the issues at hand to the extent that they're accurate there's lots of research and analysis going on into the various allegations it's
045important that we don't just ignore our community members who have come here but it's also important to state that there is ongoing uh work in this area it's very difficult to sort of speak to specific instances of alleged abuse and so forth and so it's very hard for the board to make comments although we are all acutely aware of the underlying issues and i believe that we are taking the appropriate i steps think any anybody in the audience anybody hearing this has to bear in mind that the school district is not allowed to reply we're not allowed to blow by blow respond to things like that various rules about privacy and just what's the right thing to do so in situations like this we're at a disadvantage and everybody should bear in mind whether some
046of the things are likely to be true or not but that you know because we're not immediately jumping up and down i think doesn't mean that we're not paying attention and not doing things but i think it's hard to look at the tip of the iceberg and make a judgment thank you i would just like to acknowledge it is difficult i think to come and speak to a meeting and then feel that you're not getting a response and and i you know i do understand that and i want to acknowledge you know everybody who comes in and takes the time and gives shares with us their thoughts um and it is it is difficult to then wait until board dialogue and maybe it gets discussed and maybe it doesn't so um just again you know
047i would like to thank the community for showing up and um and sharing with us your thoughts and concerns so we can work toward i don't disagree best possible educational outcome for all students i absolutely agree with that i don't disagree but just in terms of structure this is a board's meeting yeah yeah i know it's just something that's our business in public and we have a public forum for people to bring issues it doesn't mean that necessarily those issues become part of our agenda that night sure i wasn't trying to indicate that i was just saying it's a difficult thing to do um it can feel like a bit of a disconnect and i just wanted to acknowledge that that you know it can be difficult and it doesn't mean that we're not engaged
048and that we're not thinking about these things thank you i would just want to reiterate the message that we always try to stand that any family that has any concern about their children we would ask that they bring that concern directly to us we would always want to hear it and we will always work our hardest to address it thank you i think this brings us to our opportunity to look ahead to the next meeting of the board of education which is scheduled for thursday july 29th here in the library at 7 30 and then the board is also scheduled to meet once in august here in the library at 7 30. and this brings us to an opportunity to adjourn i'm going to make a motion to adjourn back into a board development session
049if i could ask for a second please thank you julia all in favor please say aye aye 7-0 thank you so much have a good evening everybody and thank you see you next time