001welcome the whole pack community uh welcome to our uh our tuesday uh uncharacteristically but it's a tuesday december 31st regular meeting agenda welcome one and all i'd like to entertain right now motion to open this meeting trustee simone second second trustee mccracken all in favor aye aye please join me in standing inside the play i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much well it's a nice packed house tonight really appreciate everybody coming out tonight as we celebrate our as we celebrate our athletes and athletic achievement for this evening we also have a nice uh a nice presentation uh from uh from project uh project leadway so looking forward
002to uh to this evening um what i'd like to do right now is i'd like to uh introduce and turn it over to our superintendent of schools mr anthony dicarlo to take us through our exciting awards presentation for this evening anthony thank you very much president and uh thank you all for coming out and celebrating the great things that are happening in the man pack central school district it's nice to be able to finally have our students in front of us celebrating with the board of education so thank you all very much for coming without further ado i'm going to turn it over to our assistant superintendent for instruction mr michael trombley who will introduce our lead program presentation give us an overview the kind of work that was done this summer and then acknowledge
003our teachers and some of our students this is trauma thank you mr carlos [Music] this is carlos in our community who gathered here most importantly our students who get joined it's a pleasure to be speaking about the success of our students and not something related to coding so it's my pleasure to be able to walk you through some of those successes that our students had this past summer among the core values of our district is that we hope our students become collaborative lifelong persistent problem solvers this evening we have a special opportunity to recognize some students who lived out those core values this past summer tonight we celebrate the success of all students who participated in the leap summer program and i'll have my colleagues mr jay's eyes miss chris youth miss trish eustis explain
004a little bit about what that is in the second year but we celebrate all of our students who participate in that program and especially tonight we celebrate some students who participate in the sixth through eighth grade leap program whose video that they created documenting their journey in completing a challenge that embodied the spirit of persistence in overcoming government we also especially recognize students in the k-5 program who took it on themselves to participate in optional virtual challenge and complete all of those challenges so i'd like to call my colleagues as i said mr schuster's mr jason's eyes who were integral in the design and implementation of this program that our students and staff in explaining a little bit about what program good evening over the summer students participated in the lms future program they found
005themselves on an adventure to practice academic skills while discovering how to overcome challenges they may face as they completed the learning activities they discovered that the theme olympics means so much more than just an athletic competition it's about friendship teamwork excellence having courage and perseverance these were the themes that guided our self-paced and in-person league programs through literature and math-based activities students had a fun and engaging learning experience now mr jason's eyes will talk about our sixth new way thank you uh our secondary lead students were tasked with the challenge of learning how to skill they would fill themselves learning this new skill from day one minute zero and record their progress as they improved initially failure was all the guaranteed but the reassurance that practice yields progress kept the students going the activity was
006designed to allow our students to explore areas of interest while resetting their comfort and routine overcoming fears of failure and realizing that they are capable of navigating obstacles with focus and faith in themselves sparked an emotional growth and renewed the student confidence in themselves we are going to honor some of you tonight who both completed the in-person program and a self-paced online program we are very proud of what they accomplished and uh so right now what we'll do is ask mr carlo to come up and we will ask your your children to come up to be recognized you're going to present them with a certificate we'd ask that all applause is held before the last name is called so that every student's name can be heard and then that we can also recognize everybody at
007the end so we'll present our students when you remain please come up shake mr carla's hand you'll be presenting the certificate for an award and then we'll have you stand right over here so that everybody can recognize [Applause] christiana [Music] theresa rosner catalina alvarado joe ash salmon gabriella munoz sofia timothy kennedy thomas van bong timmy [Music] titus cnbone jonathan fernandez adriana polanco cartmil and michaela [Applause] every challenge that just use this and your team designs well done [Applause] so this time mr james i will honor our secondary program for their excellence in video production and documentation thank you uh so like you said before students had to come up with a skill something that they'd never done before start from scratch and fearlessly document the entire process on film and their progress and celebrate little
008victories and these videos were incredible and we'd like to congratulate following students we held almost like a film festival so first place for that would be [Applause] second place third place ryan tedesco [Applause] and uh third place honorable mention andrew [Applause] so at this time congratulations with this fun we have to recognize two special people who brought this program to life programs such as this and the feedback we received about the lead program across the board was positive was extremely positive from staff and families and students themselves and programs like these don't just fall off of trees they don't just appear you can't buy programs such as these the work on this program started back in the winter of 2020 when the district realized that we needed to support our students who were impacted by
009the loss of the person instructional time we gathered numerous staff members together to help provide us input into what a program that truly meant the needs of the students that they saw that they were lacking would provide and our teachers were fantastic in coming up with not only the logistics but the reasons behind what we need to do finding the materials and finding the curriculum that we need to do however the people who took the vision of those teachers and brought back to fruition to an actual program are standing here with me tonight mr jesus sat down we're here with us tonight and we want to take a moment to recognize them jane trish put in countless hours on this program whether it was working on the curriculum identifying materials putting all the materials together
010so that our teachers can walk into the classroom day one for a program they never taught before and be there for our students in a way that supported their needs trish and jay if you went into their their office space they repurposed any materials we may have had into packaging hand crafted materials and supplies that were ready for day one so teacher without ever seeing the curriculum before to deliver to our students it was truly a work of passion of a lot of cardboard and a lot of materials on the place and i cannot thank them as teammates and colleagues enough and it was a pleasure to work through this with them so we'd like to recognize both of you [Applause] and it's a pleasure to get to work [Applause] to celebrate some success of
011our students and thank you to all the parents for their support of the program and your students who participate and mr trump a special thank you to you for all your dedication hard work being the person behind the scenes that makes this happen if the board remembers we went into that room and we took a look at all the work that was going into it what was happening so also mr trump i thank you for all your time and dedication to the program and uh this is what happens when you think outside the box this is what happens when you're you're making and developing programs that are best for kids and allowing them to think critically and to really be passionate about learning so a tribute to you our teachers and ultimately the students who
012are participating so thank you very very much and thank you so now we continue our celebration it's my pleasure to introduce our athletic director mr stephen luciano who will take us through our fall athletic awards recognition mr luciano thank you good evening everyone thank you thank you very much for having me tonight um anytime we get to honor our student athletes for the hard work and dedication that they put into the program is a good night and it's great for our program so i thank you for the opportunity tonight to honor our athletes um most of the awards tonight are for what they have done on the field this year i'd like to start by just saying um every single one of our fall varsity teams made the new york state scholar athlete team award
013and that's not easy to do so the fact that i believe all 11 of our varsity programs earned that award this year um it just shows how much they excel on the field and they also put the time in the classroom and makes them true student athletes so for our teams to be able to you know achieve that it's just remarkable i'm very proud of what they're able to do like you said and off the field and they pack on their teachers and their coaches stress the importance of education and it's great that we have that here so thank you very much for that i'm going to start off real quick um honoring our athletes who might not be in attendance tonight if they did come i want to make sure that they are honored
014first we have lauren bieberman who is all league in law conference in volleyball i don't believe she is here mia calderella who was all leading cheerleading isabella coyote all league at all conference at the whole section in cheerleading audrey calucci with all leak in volleyball melanie demeo was all league in cross country she had a game tonight the girls varsity won by 30 and had a great great game so they might not be able to make it [Applause] jenna duffy who is all league in cheerleading max gomes who's all league of football gabriella gonzalez who is all leading all section in field hockey giuliana greco all league and ball section and cheerleading cecilia heberlin was all league in cross country ava jennings all league and field hockey john kelly ball league and cross country i
015believe this gentleman is here joey koch was all league of all conference in football [Applause] uh keira mcdowell is paulie cheerleading tyler maliewski with all league in football [Applause] robert robert margiota was all league in cross country alexa felucinovic was all lead to cheerleading matteo perillo was all leading cross country greg perry all leading football steve perot steve perrone all lead all conference for football [Applause] avery trusmilski was all league in field hockey ryan reilly ryan was all lead for football and juliana stephan was all league in cross country these athletes responded that they were awareness brett morganson [Applause] paul booth paul booth was all league insider [Applause] michael callahan all league football maureen camastro was all leading field hockey alyssa cataldo all lincoln swimming maddie nicola league in all sections [Applause] um anthony dematio
016all lead in hall section piper clever who is all leaking all section on dimensions alexis lavon who is all league in all conference regenerating liam mcguire liam was all lead for cross country maggie mcgarney thank you we've got another report volleyball [Applause] patrick mcmahon i got you patrick with multiple football [Applause] football [Applause] you obviously played the line mario o'keeffe [Applause] maggie morsini she single-handedly kept us in the playoff game against guys our goalie i mean absolutely amazing emily crosstalk ryan rondo quality all confidence it's stellar [Applause] other award that i like that i did mention when anthony was called he won um the con-ed athlete of the week which is actually a very prestigious award um that's not easy to get um and the funny thing about that award so what i've been told
017is the first time in history he is the third generation the matteo is without water his grandfather won it his dad won it and this year anthony won it so all three demarios were reconnect athletes of the week and in june he'll be honored at a dinner and he'll have the opportunity to win with more scholarships through the con ed and in the last two years that i've been here we have three co-ed winners and from what i've been told my impact hasn't had any in the last previous eight to ten years so we've got three in the last few years and i'm hoping to get more this year as well and that's just a testament to what they do on the field in the classroom so keep back and the last awards i would
018like to give out our volleyball team i don't think there are a lot of them here to have um they have practice tonight but um our volleyball team won their league title this year which in a very difficult league with with arlington and judge ace fish gilmore highly ranked in the section so for them to go through their schedule and win their league is a testament to the hard work they put in and it was a great announcement so i'd like to congratulate our volleyball team on winning their league championship um we have lauren bieberman jacqueline borgel caroline carey audrey [Applause] [Music] francesca [Applause] hi to the casimus caitlin kelly natalie mikaj shannon mcguire emma moretta nicole patty allison rondo sophia scarama olivia lay ava van norwich [Applause] our volleyball team our field hockey team
019and our football team all made a great month in the playoffs and had some really successful seasons and i think our all of our programs moving forward are in very good shape in the fall i'm excited to see what the future brings um and i want to congratulate once again all you guys on a terrific and excellent fall season congratulations [Music] the last thing i want to say before i let you guys get down to your business um we finally get caught off guard on this before i came to the meeting i just found out that we have our section one um awards that we give out section one is the body that governs us for athletics is part of northern it's westchester dutchess county robin county punton county and and we do an eight
020of the year award and a few other awards but one of the awards is a distinguished service award and i'd like to say that mr carlo has been nominated [Applause] tonight when i got that information you know mr carlo is one of the few superintendents you'll find that supports athletics the way he does and you know as an ap i know he understands my job he actually was an av at one point in his career he coached he so he very much understands i thought it has been very supportive of in the two years that i've been here it is um i can't i couldn't have asked for more support from that from this gentleman and what he's done for section one allowing championships to be held here at maypac um he served on numerous
021committees throughout throughout the section so he is very deserving of this award and i just wanted to give him the good news tonight congratulations thank you very much and listen it's not an award it's not my awards this community's award because uh this is a great place to have kids grow up and be a part of what goes on with athletics and extracurriculars and that but i think what's really important before we bring coach devaney well to say a couple of words is these student athletes this year had to do something they never did before one of them played just in the spring and their bodies did not get a lot of down time to be able to wrestle before you know when they're playing again that's because they have a love and a passion
022for their game every single team was honored here tonight with all lead that's exceptional not every school has somebody that places all league in a sport and that's a tribute to our student athletes but your parents out there your dedication your time your energy from the time they probably started at five went into tonight and and sometimes we really don't realize what that's all about there's always parents behind these kids and it's just a tribute to what we're talking about and you mentioned about scholar athletes and i'm glad you did that because one of the charges that we've all like taken is about our student athletes and to be able to give students who are getting condo to work letters and i think you're going to see as our seniors are starting to get recognized
023and accepted to schools we're going to actually show they tell the community you're going to be looking at millions of millions of dollars in scholarship money at this senior class this year as well as last year i think many more are going to get because of the quality of education that goes on so the award isn't about anthony de carl the award is about mega pack and all of you that are in the audience here tonight and out there i couldn't have done it without anyone thank you so much god bless you all for what you do and i'm going to ask coach the man just to quickly come up and just say a couple words on behalf of what football was like this year because this gentleman coming up has been instrumental in allowing
024a lot of sports especially to be played after his uh and the work that he did last year and advocating for sports to get back on so supposed to matty i know you want to say a couple words it was a special year for football as for all our teams but especially for football so you wouldn't mind a couple of words that'll be great thank you i would like to thank thank uh superintendent of schools mr anthony de carlo our maypac central school district board of education president mr mike mangan and all the members of our board of education for inviting all of our student athletes to this meeting to be recognized for their accomplishments this past fall with regards to team postseason honors within our football program we often speak about the relationship between
025team success and individual honors it is simple team success determines individual honors whether it relates to the section 1 football coaches association lohud the new york state sports writers association or any other agency or group individual honors will and in my humble opinion should reflect team success with that being said i'd like to briefly mention some of the team honors awarded to our manufacturing football team this past fall we finished the regular season five and two and ranked number two in the class a north lead section one earning a first round home playoff game we won our first playoff game in 11 years versus clarkstown north 34-7 we finished the 2021 season ranked number six in the low hud top 10 overall bowl and number three in the low hud class a poll which includes
026all westchester putnam rocklin and dutchess public and private schools recently we earned the 25th spot in the new york state sportswriters association poll for class a finally most importantly as mr luciano mentioned we along with all the other sports teams this fall during the new york state public high school team scholar athlete award which i'm most proud of a brief comment about individual postseason honors and i do believe this carries over to all the sports teams the sexual football coaches association and any coaching association determines a team's allotment for individual postseason offers by utilizing a formula of enrollment numbers and final team rankings again team success determines these individual objects coaches select all-league all-conference and all section as you heard mr luciano mentioned before all league of the teams in your geographic league all conferences
027to class at large based on enrollment numbers all section encompasses four counties westchester platinum duchess and rocklin and then coaches nominate outstanding players which are typically within league and players of the year for the class for the entire section and one note i'd like to make at least with the section one football coaches association the opposing coaches vote for the players of the year and the outstanding players so i think that makes it a bit more prestigious when your opponents are the ones voting for these kids so i'd just like to mention collectively we had a low hud player of the week winner which was uh joey koch week seven so if we could give him a round of applause [Applause] recipients and the class a north league outstanding offensive back of the year which
028was anthony demario the class a north league outstanding defensive back of the year which was ryan rondo and anthony also received the class a co-offensive player of the year again these awards were recognized by the opposing coaches which i think is great in closing you know i just like to say i love it here it was my honor to leave the charge with our advocacy movement to get these kids back on the playing field keep them there we want to keep them there moving forward the fight's never done but it's a special place with wonderful leadership we cannot be more appreciative and i hope everybody has a wonderful holiday thank you coach of that chris luciano and thank you all the student athletes for coming i'm now going to turn it back over to our
029president mr bonding who will lead us through the rest of the meeting okay thank you too many mics obviously thank you again one and all wow congratulations okay so we will continue we'll continue with our meeting we did not have any uh any comments on our consent agenda items for this evening but what we do have is we do have some some board business that we have to take care of and we'll do that right now can i get board members can i get a motion to accept our treasurer's report for october 2021 motion please vice president cedino second second trustee mcdonough all in favor aye can i have a motion please for uh to accept our warrants for october 2021 motion please second was vice president savino and we'll also get ben in there
030that's the tie all in favor aye we have we have our revenue status report for 2021 a motion to accept please trustee mcdonough second second ben delulo trustee all in favor we have our budget transfers for october 2021 i need a motion to accept please vice president savino second second trustee simone all in favor and finally our regular meeting minutes of november 18 2021 a motion to accept please trustee martin second thank you second trustee uh vice president uh sabino all in favor aye aye and we now turn it over to our distinguished service section one distinguished service award winner and superintendent of schools thank you very much president [Music] so i also want to take some time to recognize our orchestra uh tonight we're going to actually play out the the the foyer before
031the meeting but so happens that mr uh already could make it but we'll be doing something and then maybe next month in the following month but i want to recognize those individuals who have been here all state orchestra rachel berger ariel state orchestra uh christopher park and then chanette olivia savage so congratulations to those great honors for those online i'd like to read a letter as we have received today um from christian huego with regards to toys for tots and this just kind of echoes what this community is all about hi paul i want to take this opportunity to let you know the outcome of the hard work and our 2020 2021 toys for tots campaign this year we collected just over toys were getting first given directly to the team to the manipac central
032school district and remaining tours were picked up by the toys for tots to be provided to local organizations for their holiday needs i was told that st john's food pantry was this year's beneficiary of the vast majority of the remainder of toys we could all wake up on christmas morning knowing that there are many children living amongst us who will have toys because of your generosity of both time and gifts they say it takes a village and it was community effort that pulled us together in this end we started out as fairly slow triple notorious then fairly exploded after thanksgiving thanks to all your efforts our school and district administration approvals custodians and students will pack up bags and bags sros monitors will help direct pickups teachers and school staff will encourage donations and donated
033everyone together made this happen i would like to give a special shout out to the volunteers who organize the campaigns within each of the schools who who fielded a steady stream of emails for me almost a quarter of the year carol garcia narrowly tompkins joanne of crm jen boris stan ricci melanie walaka and melanie murray thanks also atomic man for organization and dress down they raised funds for the campaign and to crystal home and battle training for organizations of student needs and the toys are still piling up in the schools instead of heading into santa sleigh if not to help my father rich wagon family and friends kathy and joe hickey will help pick up the toys from the schools and to john schneider the marine who runs the whole shebang in the area the
034guy who gets no credit but deserves to come as i stated earlier a village i wanted to end with a comment i received from a recent post i made on facebook about the campaign fellow marine when i was asked we literally had no money as a sibling with four other brothers and sisters my parents looked at toys for tots for many years until they got back on their feet i remember running outside to santa on his fire truck each year he'd hand me my gift it was so magical for me as tears filled his eyes i understand that had to be real when finding out years later that it was toys for tots that helped give me those gifts each year he knew he had joined the greatest fighting force on earth he served for
035two tours until this day continues to donate to the toys for tots i speak on behalf of myself my mom when i say a million thanks for all you do mayor pat community god bless you all and have a merry christmas merry christmas kristen legal so that's what this community is all about i thought it was very pointed to share that little letter from kristen and i know her mom is looking down on us and smiling and how pride she would have been for this collection this year so thank you once again for the whole pack community and in closing i would like to take a moment to thank all of our staff and ptos as well as our volunteers who make who helped make the may impact central school district at vibrant care and
036learning inspired school community i also want to thank you our parents and the community for all your constant support and involvement in the education of our of our children here at the mayo pack central school district now more than ever our partnership is more important as we educate our students in a rapidly changing world your support and encouragement is deeply appreciated as we enter the 2020 and 2022 we look forward to the continued growth of our students in and out of the classroom actually grateful to our teachers and to the staff for the work that you provide and a safe and nurturing learning environment for all our students to our teachers more than ever and the ability to keep our schools open i know it's not easy i know as the new omnipot variant is
037spreading you are taking your time to help pitch in to cover classes so that our schools can stay open from the bottom of my heart i thank you teachers staff everybody in the mailpad community for allowing our kids to stay in school each and every day your unwavering support as a community staff and educators providers students and families you are the key to our success with all we do here on behalf of myself in the board of education i wish all our families and merry christmas happy new year happy plaza we wish you god speed peace health and happiness in a new year thank you all very much have a great holiday season back to you president [Music] okay thank you thank you very much mr dicarlo and again thank you for all that you
038do for us and our community um again to finish up with some more housekeeping we have very active uh committees so we have a few committee reports for you this evening we have an hr committee report a finance committee in our ad hoc committee our new committee for this uh uh for this year so um so i'll start off with the uh with the hr committee uh the hr committee met on uh on december 9th um the fruits of the labor of that meeting or on tonight's consent agenda it's actually very exciting what i'd like to do right now is i'd like to thank our our assistant superintendent deborah logato our superintendent of schools uh who are on the committee are also our other committee members are mike simone dave ferfaro adam savino and myself
039um and again uh so that was on 12 9 and again thank you so much for everybody that uh makes uh makes that committee work so well thank you turn it right over to uh trustee misafra is not in attendance tonight she is uh taking care of some some personal uh issues and uh and regrets uh not being able to be here this evening uh so adam savino will fill in and give the finance report for tonight adam good evening everyone the finance committee met on december 6th myself trustee mcdonald as well as assistant superintendent for business senator cohesi and our district treasurer we discussed the um appropriation status report from october of this year we had some discussions regarding the stimulus funds which are up at the state for uh state education department for
040uh their approvals which is uh which is still in progress uh we discussed the um covert expenses uh at this time it looks like most will be immersed through the stimulus money um that's also work in progress we discussed the uh the budget calendar and we had some preliminary discussions regarding the um upcoming uh tax cut for next year's life thank you very much thank you adam and we'll go over to our ad hoc committee uh for advocacy uh ben delulo ben so the education reform advocacy ad hoc [Music] is also on on this committee the bulk of the meeting was spent discussing the issues that we had brought up in the prior date and i'm very proud to say that we've come up with a statement that will be actually approved tonight so i'm
041going to take the time here to read it it's kind of lengthy but i'm going to try to go through it as clearly and quickly as possible so here we go advocacy committee statement our schools our voice our choice the man by central school district believes in local control for our school districts we believe in the health and safety of our students and staff in addition to providing the highest quality education possible we believe school districts from all areas of the state with their own diverse needs and context should have the choice to make local decisions regarding protocols state mandates and other restrictive regulations related to coven 19 the cover 19 pandemic that impact the quality of our children's education and their social and emotional well-being this includes but is not limited to mandates and
042rules related to masks and quarantine policy for students and staff we demand answers to important questions that impact the future of state cova 19 mandates we want to know what metrics are being used and what metrics will be used to achieve our desired local control on mass orienting policy etc some of the metrics we are requesting information are about are percentage of positive cases of quarantined students infection rates like counting zip code and school districts infection rates like age within these areas and any other related data the state department of health can provide to establish a rubric for local school districts to help guide their students and the community so now what's going to happen is this state is going to be sent on behalf of the school district local local politicians on behalf of
043the school and it's going to be officially voted on tonight i want to thank the committee i think the fact that we met two meetings about five and a half six hours at work to come up with this is amazing the enthusiasm and the energy in that room was valuable and i really appreciate the fact that we were able to do this work so that's my report president i can concur on the energy uh in that room uh i will tell you that first and foremost and i really appreciated uh uh how uh trustee mccracken uh got up there on the computer and was able to begin just taking us into this whirlwind of just this creation of this document and it's really a really tribute to the uh to the committee and as well
044as to uh as to uh ben and to tanner so my you know and and mike as well and uh but thank you thank you very much this is exciting stuff and we're looking forward to uh more good work and we're just gonna keep the pedal to the metal on this one so thank you guys thank you very much um what i'd like to do right now is we have a we have a donation uh from the rochester institute of technology uh vice president uh would you mind reading the donation please we resolve on the recommendation the superintendent of schools board of education hereby accepts a mini grant from the rochester institute of technology being allocated to enhance support to project leader with the project lead the way program the amount of eight hundred and
045forty dollars okay can i get a motion to accept vice president safino second please second second ben delulo all in favor aye aye aye okay thank you very much uh earlier in the meeting i misspoke i was i was had my my head fixed on project lead the way and forgot to and you know forgot to uh point out that we were really going into mike trombley's lead program so i the for the confusion work so to lead there's just a lot of leading going on and we certainly can't be more excited as a school board so thank you for everyone um so what i'd like to do right now is i'd like to um can i get a motion please to accept tonight's uh uh consent agenda can i get a motion please trustee
046mcdonough can i get a second second oh who's down now was that michael martin trustee martin okay all in favor aye okay open it up right now to our uh exciting uh area of resident comments what i'd like to do as we start uh our resident comment uh before we start in fact is what i'd like to do is i'd like to read we had a question uh at last month's uh board meeting about uh uh about uh library books so uh this would be the uh so i would like to read this statement um so everybody can so everybody just knows exactly what goes into this the following procedures shall apply to the handling of complaints concerning any textbook library book or materials and any other instructional material used in district schools districts response
047to any complaints about curricula instructional materials are governed by policies number eight three three zero and eight three two zero point complaints should be brought to the building principle the principal may hold an informal meeting with the person making the complaint an appropriate staff point in the complaint if the complaint is not resolved informally the complainant may file a formal complaint with the superintendent who will present the complaint to the board of education point the board of education may request that the superintendent convey convene excuse me a committee to re-evaluate the materials point the committee will review the complaint and the challenged materials and issue a report to the superintendent containing the committee's recommendations point the board of education will make a final determination based on the report of the committee and the recommendation of
048the superintendent point the superintendent will communicate the board's decision to the complainant our policies are available via our web-based policy manual questions about the policy manual can be sent to our district clerk's office melody loraca so i just wanted to wanted to get that out and get out in front of that and uh and then what i'd like to do right now is invite our our first resident comment melody maggie trainer come on i get down fire miles for hanging around this place um good evening um i'm gonna hold this because it just makes me feel more comfortable um thanks tonight for recognizing the athletes two of them were mine would really appreciate it i thought it was pretty cool that one of them was only a seventh grader so that's pretty neat um congratulations
049the football team and bill cockey and volleyball and all the other sports um so uh anyhow and the ad hoc stuff i'm i'm a member of the ad hoc committee and uh really proud of it and hope to push through our agenda there's a lot of mentioning about quarantining in that agenda i i'm definitely the advocate behind that um so i this is just just so important um you know the president said today test this day let the kids stay in school um there's been a studies going on all over the country about this and my big argument has been no one's testing the metric of how many people are testing positive that are in quarantine healthy kids missing education based um i said which i repeated data that was collected for me last school
050year alone there was over 1800 cases of quarantine la county in california the month of october did an experiment they tested all the people stoops that were putting quarantine there was 92 missed days of education in the month of october in la county school district that's insane do you know that less than 2.2 percent of those students ended up testing positive while under 14. now that's nuts we heard what the president said today on the news we can't wait for this ad hoc committee and i agree we have to push this through january they're going to come back from christmas we know their numbers are going to spike i have a lot of friends i'm in the medical field mental health but i have a lot of friends you know pediatric pediatric practices or busting
051with cases we know the numbers are going to spike i do not want my kids now you know in full disclosure my kids are vaccinated i don't want them being quarantined that's why i went through getting vaccinated i'm fighting for the people that aren't and with all the breakthrough cases what the heck is the difference so why should my mother who's vaccinated get to stay home and she was contact trace and they asked me if she's uh you know been vaccinated okay she's fine but her good friend and swim teammate dylan esposito parents got a call this morning come pick him up from school he's not vaccinated so he got nailed for contact tracing so now he can't go to school the rest of this week besides that vad who's been harassed by me quite
052a bit uh went through the effort of getting him to swim to represent mayor pack on his own with lakeland school district missed his first varsity swim meet tonight he's not sick he's home sitting home can't swim for manhattan tonight great that's you know great that we made the effort he's a team of one it'd be great if he actually was a team for aopa can compete with the real event but he can't but besides that the kid's not sick he's home why can't he test and stay in school we have to move asap to the test to stay program we can't wait on this mr carlo we can't it's not fair and with the breakthrough cases whether you're vaccinated or not you know really we just can't do that we have to move to
053this and and something has to be done because we know what's going to happen we're going to get caught flat-footed like we did in september right after christmas break and everything's going to hit the fan and more education days are going to be missed 92 000 and a half days of missed education already that's a big school district but still that's nuts and let's track the metric if we're going to keep doing this crap [Applause] we actually myself mr dr stollow um we've had a conversation this week with the county because the original county was a gas test to stay and [Music] right so originally they answered they were they didn't want to do it however just based on what you said we're looking at something over the break and probably comes the amount and
054the volume of testing materials that you need right now that's part because you have to test every single day before x amount of days so that's what they're working on but we're looking at what we may be able to do so to your point it's being updated the new york [Music] yeah it's times yeah so we're we're looking at it she's looking at it with the county because of just what you said i mean again this just exploded the last week a week and a half more or less but it is being something we're looking into so do we have an answer like come back christmas yeah again you know literally monday she had a conversation that they're looking into the materials if we can't work and get something out we will over the break
055yep thanks thanks maggie melody hi kate welcome um okay my name ago you were is that i came to the meeting and spoke of my curiosity about this grand process of library books mr trumly was very helpful and transparent in explaining that at the elementary level the principal gets the books and at the middle and high school level the districts employed the library media specialist he also provided a list of each school's online cart catalog amongst looking through a catalog there were a handful that stood out within a few simple minute search i went ahead and printed these books along with some past years for your review they are either pornographic anti-police or inappropriate in nature and before i go on i want to make it clear i am not approved nor do i care
056what one would like to identify as or who anyone wants to date i am not a racist and i don't care what your political affiliation is when i posted on social media that i was coming here to discuss this i received a lot of backlash from keyboard warriors calling me awful things and implying that i was on a book banning train i am not there are many great books in the library that discuss sensitive topics then there are books that bring these topics to an inappropriate level for a child to read these are the ones that i am referencing tonight a book titled beyond magenta currently in the high school in one chapter a young boy who now identifies as a female is figuring out their sexual identity all good but then they speak about
057giving oral sex at the age of six and how it is just a normal thing to do i have an almost six-year-old in no way is this appropriate in no way do i want a potential high school babysitter for my child reading this and thinking this is normal for self-explanatory reasons i would hope you would all agree i do believe there should be books in the library by exploring one's gender but i do not believe this book is good fit i am also not going to stand up here and depend on some type of bookworm that has read every single book on this list i am not some of these books were passed along to me by other concerned parents who couldn't be here tonight i did read a handful though in the very short
058time frame i was working with since you all suggested i dive into this myself however i have a full-time job and i'm a mother to three young kids i appreciate you having me touch base with mr tremblay who again was very helpful thank you but this is not my job it is yours so i am asking the following three things one pull the list of books that i am providing to you from the library shelves i am not demanding they be banned i am asking that your library media specialists review them again and see if perhaps other books on the topic would be a better fit for our school library i understand this may take time but it has to be informed on what the end result is two i can't scan the entire library
059top down but clearly the vetting process is not working and we pay enough in school taxes for someone else to there are books in the middle school where the publisher's recommended age is 14 and above how does this make sense why does an 11 year old have access to books that are not recommended for their age and one book there is one book that thankfully i did not see in the card catalog called gender queer but it is in many surrounding districts kate just real quick just with regards to we're we're seeing the the subject matter over there but please do don't don't use profanity on because this is on on television so just if you if you wouldn't mind thank you thank you i understand as i understand that let's just you know we
060have the stuff's right in front of us over here so thanks kate so as you can see this format is a comic book gender spirit format comic book with cartoon drawings and speech balloons and the author includes several sexual scenes in which a child gives oral sex to an older man and exclusively shows how to use sex toys i ask the library media specialist inform you if this book is ever placed in the library and then brought to the public's attention i've become very passionate about this i am not here in an attacking manner but as someone who started off just being curious how the books get in our library and now i'm genuinely concerned our schools are meant to enrich our children's lives and teach valuable lessons not introduce them to graphic sexual behaviors
061or violence and make them fear law enforcement in my research i came across one scholar who put it perfectly they stated that by using just the smallest amount of common sense we can presume that if a book cannot be read aloud in class could not be viewable if it was a movie and couldn't be played on the stereo if it was a cd then why is it okay for it to be offered to children in good form in school of all places further an attorney went on to state that if the incidents in some current books were a movie provided at school there'd be a very clear-cut case for prosecution of child pornography okay kate thank you thank you very much for bringing this to our attention thank you for bringing this to our attention
062really diana um i wanted to quickly talk about one or two things i promise i'll be quick um the first thing i wanted to talk about um there are some really scary bills that are looking to be passed to new york state as it relates to vaccines and parental consent that will directly affect our schools not limited to force koga night chain shots to attend school forcing back c records into a state database forced pokemon shots for college for flu shots to attend school and daycare eliminating religious exemptions eliminating parents consent to shock when your child reaches 14 eliminates parent consent to std shots for children of any age and they just took one off the list today which said they can imprison you without trial for um if the government voted or a public
063health risk they removed that today um [Music] and i'm saying this is scary you know i'm in for a reference to the coconut tea shop for young children it's not fully approved yet they're already talking about a booster for the young kids because the first two isn't providing their immuno response that they can hope for um so i'm just saying when something only emergency approved how can we mandate this for our kids but what i'm here today is to tell you what you can do um you can go to nysena.gov and make a login once you make a login you can put these bills in by number and vote yeah or not i'm happy to provide anyone with a list of them if they would like them um and what it does is it takes
064your address and when you like go yay or negative it prompts you to um grab local uh representatives so you don't even have to figure out who they are people gay or rank and then you can write your local representative so i encourage you all to do that but whether you're former or against it um just you know let your voice be heard because some of these are kind of scary and it's taking away our um our rights as parents to deal with the health care of our children so that was one thing i wanted to say it doesn't really prompt feedback but i just want to let everyone in the community communities out if you don't think you can voice your opinion on these things you can i don't know how much it will
065help but we can sure try the other thing i wanted to quickly touch on was test to say which to address the first school i saw it's been locally doing in the summers i know they were testing it they started testing it i think it would pull up a state like buffalo rochester up there they were they were trying tests to say quite a few months ago but the first school that i heard locally that was doing it his um uh things started and i think about a week or so ago so you're saying it it's on the table and i don't know how i'm like on the bench about test this day you know testing healthy kids but if we can keep their butts in the seats i think it's a good thing and
066just to have our own data and not rely on what the state is saying and see the patterns in our school might be something good i know it's a big expense and a lot of planning on how to execute it but i wanted to get your thoughts on it but you already kind of gave them and the third thing i just wanted to ask is are your parameters for us to go promote um because you know [Music] i i some schools uh might remote like a little before or after holiday and in theory that's a good idea we should always get nervous that it's not going to be that and i got an email the other day that said oh we're sending home your kids chromebook so they can practice over a break and i'm
067like practice over a prank i'm not sure what that what that means so i just was wondering if you had any parameters yes so we do not want to go to vote unless these things happen we're directed by the doh or the governor do that or we just don't have enough staff and we have super spreaders that we have to do so we have no intention of doing that however you know and i know right i can't predict what the future's going to be so like i've said before you need to look at a plan b just in case again you don't want to do it and i mentioned before my super attacks comments everybody's really working hard to keep everybody in because we haven't had in the last two weeks a number of students
068and faculty and those you know faculty members have stepped up we want to keep our kids in they're covering classes and that's what we want to continue to do so you know be very like you said over the holiday get together just to those you know circumstances where you may not know somebody or you're not whatever just make sure you wear the nest and we want to keep going that's our goal that's definitely our goal i'm not going to say that we're looking to do it or not there's no plan but however as i just mentioned those would be the only reasons why okay you're welcome thank you [Applause] could you uh ben could you get that information over to uh trustee uh trustee um delulo trustee mccracken and trustee thank you very much for
069that thank you okay melody [Music] kim okay dawn come on up dawn welcome hi um my name is ron kelly and i'm the mom of an 11th grader um on another board of education meeting that i attended um sister de carlos stated that he was hoping that we were moving to an endemic and that this pandemic would be over i don't want to speak for everyone but i would venture to guess that the majority of those in attendance as well as those listening would like to see that as well i wanted to speak today to encourage the board that you have the opportunity to play a major role in this endemic you can be the leaders that the students and the parents need to pull out of this when we receive the superintendent's update each
070week on coven numbers that information can be taken in different ways depending on the person who is reading it on 12-3 it stated that there were 36 positive cases on 12-10 it was stated that statewide numbers are increasing and then on 12 17 it was stated that the number of code infections in our schools continues to increase and 48 students tested positive now if i'm thinking that 36 sounds like a lot of you and 48 has me panicking and all i'm hearing is it's increasing it's increasing and it's increasing but are we taking these numbers into perspective of those 36 how many were hospitalized and were there any deaths are these students asymptomatic or do they just have mild symptoms 36 students out of 4013 represents less than one percent less than one percent of
071our student body and 48 students represents 1.19 of our student body now i am the glass half full kind of person can we screen can we scream from the top of the rooftops that 98.8 percent of our student body does not have copics you also told us that we have 98.6 graduation um rate from the high school that's a number to be proud of you chose to write it in that way because it's more positive rather than focusing on those that do not graduate right every single person in this room has dealt with covet in different ways and everyone will have different opinions but i think the one thing we can all agree on is that we care about the future of our students and our children these children need leaders these children need a
072board of education that will stand up and fight for them now is the time i she was just telling you about bills that are going to be passing now is the time for not passing but being voted on now is the time to show them the positive perspective during a very negative time you have the power to do so much to help the students as well as us parents parents need your help too with fightings fighting the quarantines fighting the mass mandates fighting the vaccine mandates we can't do it on our own but as a community we can all do it and if we're coming up here and speaking or asking you guys to take a stand as well and take those risks sometimes you have to take a risk in order to get the
073outcome that we're looking for for our students thank you very much for those comments and and if you recall and you're spot on five months ago i talked about the metrics five months ago today right we're getting releases from others to say now we need it i've been on the phone over and over again with senator harper explaining that very point but i was one voice a lot of people didn't want to step up it was me that i said now everybody's coming around because of what you just said but in this very room i talked about matrix so believe me i clearly understand what you're saying i do okay but at the end of the day you're right but here's the issue everybody and i'm probably gonna touch the third rail and that's fine
074nothing matters i can tell you as an elected official that's what i'm going to do but then how many people really check to see how they vote how many people truly check to see how they voted because ultimately you have to vote for that individual come november of next year or in a primary beforehand that's the other piece it's nice to say i'm going to do something but then to really check to see what they did and that's just that's just something that's just widespread right i'm being honest i give you a sound bite but do we then to your point i think you're spot on take it to the next level and check to see how it really gets your vote because that's work right you've got to really go check and see how
075somebody voted but to your point i can let you know i have had conversations over and over again i hate just as much as you do but i'm in a situation where i have to obey the laws of what happens by the doh and the governor but we can't separate elected officials right to explain that to them and you're right those bills are up there right but we at the end of the day there's got to be that accountability piece so i i i commend you for that but we also have to understand what's that follow-up right did you really vote yes yay or nay and then ultimately that's discussion afterwards because you know those people are going to be running for either a primary you know come june or up four everybody's up right
076everybody just stays up so it's a very it's a very valid point very valuable yeah and um things get done so a lot of us spoke up to marielle and odell when the mass mandate was coming from putnam county and thankfully they were standing up to governor vogel to say that she's not enforcing it i called her office to thank them because i said a lot of us parents feel like we are alone in this fight and they were so taken aback by the fact that we called to say thank you and we don't have that you know as a parent we're that's trying to fight some of the stuff that's going on and you know as a lot of the parents you know we work full-time all of us we're working full-time but we're
077also trying to do all this stuff to help our kids and we're staying up late we're researching we're seek researching all the bills we're talking to lawyers we're trying to figure out what we can do for our kids so we do appreciate what you guys were talking about earlier as far as sending that information out i we do appreciate the things that are being done but i also think just the tiny little things that we're doing and switching it around and taking a stand and just like some of the um there's some um schools in long island that are sending up letters to governor hopkins saying that they're you know their school districts are not on board with the bandits [Applause] frank there you go come on up son before there's uh especially what maggie
078didn't mention is that both his girls and my son are running elites 15. they've been national champions six years in a row my son and aggies girls wanted to represent the high school and the community and it was due to maggie my wife and mr luciano getting together that you now have a winning swim team my son had to go through a process and he finished it by going to two workouts every day one for the high school team and one for the marlins he was supposed to represent the high school tonight in his first varsity swim but having to take him out of school today because he was contact raised he's sitting at home now i was amazed when they told me that on the 21st they were asking him to go home and
079the contact person was on the 16th if he was so dangerous why did it take so long to react to it if he was so dangerous to everybody around him why wasn't everybody that had a contact with this potential carrier peddled to the same standards why aren't the teachers sent home the children sent home it's a double stack this is flawed and arbitrary recently contact tracing was done away with our school buses but we believe that the close quarters and iffy ventilation on the school bus is somehow a less likely venue for the spreading of infection is it less likely that a school isn't safer than a school bus when you apply the same standards now that was an accommodation you have only to go online to see the disadvantages of remote learning these are
080from experts of the tent that they put out i think the six that were constantly repeated staying motivated lack of contact with teachers no peer interaction not being connected at all times no immediate feedback and difficulty completing assignments and testing i saw for myself how remote writing learning adversely affected my son he became frustrated and depressed by the lack of structure children as you know need structure excuse me now i'm told that the rules have changed for the remote learning and not for the better the new system is like a lottery you get 10 hours a week maybe with his teachers maybe not this is unacceptable most of us here appreciate the cost of education we don't buck when the school taxes go up but this is not what we signed off for and not
081what we're paying for i know that i have two two very close friends that are teachers not in this system but in adjacent business and they were totally frustrated by this remote learning they weren't being allowed to have contact with the children that they know and love it was really a bad decision as maggie said the cdc the white house and state of new york have all come out in favors test and stay you'd really be doing a great service for us to accelerate the acceptance of this we know that your hearts are in the right place uh especially you mr dicarlo who i know personally really would like you to step on thank you very much thank you frank melissa good evening um i actually am here on behalf um my son had a
082message that he was not able to be here today but he wrote it out for me so i'd like to actually read that and i'm speaking on just saying his piece so um my son is part of this um community here and he has a so he wanted to have his voice vertically and he states first and foremost i am an american i am also part of what society has outcasted me for me to be by labeling me as part of the lgbt community all i ever wanted in my high school years was to be recognized by society as being sorry i'm sorry hold on one in my high school years was to be recognized as being part of everyday society and not to be segregated for it from it with that being said i
083feel that an anti-bullying program should be reinstated for all children i do not want any member of the lgbt lgbt's community to be segregated but to be part of the community and it starts by inclusion and not segregation the anti-bully program would be for all whether you be gay straight black white a childhood specialties and so on he also comes back to what kate brought up he wrote that as for the books that are in the school library they do not represent what the lgbt community wants they are borderline pornography with explicit sexual language and content children of school age should not have access to this material these books are taken are these books are taking away the innocence of children he says as part of a member of society that he's awake but not
084bold and i feel that his words are very important because everyone that's coming forward with the library books think oh they're anti this is that and they're not you have someone who's actually in the community or as he says you know the lgbt that he's outcasted like he's not part of regular society he looked at some of these things i showed it to him he was appalled okay he went to a school you know never never was that place in a school harvard book high school i don't even think has that in the city and that's an lgbt school for children so i'm standing very firmly behind what kate was saying that these books have to be monitored very very closely and somebody right there comes to argument maybe oh the kids see stuff on
085the internet right they see it all the time oh check their phones or do this what i have to say is as a school we have to remind we that's one place that we send our children to be safe to be educated not indoctrinated and that's what's most important and then i also wanted to um go back with um what mr esposito was saying with quarantining my daughter had a miss about last week a total of eight days so now she has to enroll in the step program for german because there's no german tutor so she had no german this whole time you know it's a language it's not i mean it's not easy just to study it on your own because prague wildline does a great she does excellent work with them with playing
086games and activities and learning and she missed out on all of it so now she has to go you know on tuesdays you know when the new year starts to catch up she i bought those silly home tests she was negative the whole time negative and she got it from the back person you know i mean like the vast person in the family right you know that's why she was home so if she was vaccinated and she could have been positive right if she was vaccinated she could have been positive and would have and went back to school and spread it all because she had no symptoms so you know we know it's all hypocritical you know we know that it's nicely it's hypocritical right because we know that a vaccinated person can get the
087virus and can't spread it so but they can go to school yeah it's like never like a nightmare that we're living in right now yeah absolutely it is it's truly like a never ending nightmare you know and like and dawn i think it was she also stated something like the reports that come from mr de carla about the increase you know in numbers instead of or like she said or 90 how about hey this is great we have only less than one percent that are testing pod like show it in more i don't want to say positive it's just not scary people you know 36 out of 4 000 and change you know 48 out of 4 000 and change is less than or whatever i think it's you know people are easily where you
088watch this be honest that's how we got here so i mean i'm just speaking the truth because that's how we got it you easily can brainwash someone by you know the way that you that it's written you know it's the strong ones here that are standing here saying okay she took down the number she did the percentage you know she was able to say oh that's not so bad how many kids she looked it up for four thousand kids not so bad you know where somebody may think only 48 and we don't have a stroke in their house and we label this hope thank you melissa melody okay thank you very thank you very much uh thank you to maggie kate diane dawn frank and melissa for uh for having the courage again to to
089come up and stand up and uh and advocate uh uh it's not an easy time i think we've you know we've we've touched on all these things i am certainly uh hopeful and uh and really excited about the ad hoc committee uh that uh that we'll again we'll mobilize and i guess diane you're gonna touch base with tanner mike and and uh ben after the meeting so uh thank you once again and uh uh for your comments and uh they will not fall on deaf ears thank you um thank you okay okay back to our back to our superintendent yes thank you sorry back to our superintendent right quick um as a part of the content agenda this is an update uh i'll be sending something out to the austin road community both parents as
090well as staff um i'm sure you're aware of uh mr gilligan will be leaving us at the end of january um what we are doing is tonight the board appointed uh mr robert manuel who was the principal there going back eight nine ten years ago he was there for a very long time till the interim from the beginning of february to the end of june our assistant superintendent for uh hr mr donald um towards the end of january february we'll be starting a process looking for a replacement of mr gilligan where there will be committees set up with parents as well as staff uh to really uh make sure that we vet those candidates i'm sure we're gonna get some internal candidates that may need to be interested uh as well as possibly external and
091so we will be doing that work over the end of the winter beginning of the spring and have an appointment to the board to have somebody start july 1st of next year so mr robert mayer will be stepping in beginning of february following through june again those of you who are at austin road um this gentleman is there for decades and decades he knows the building knows the majority of the staff and i'm sure he'll do a great job so i just want to update the public tonight and i'll be sending something out in the morning to the austin road community council as well as a teacher so thank you mike sorry mr jacob i just want to say also someone who had apologies about principal myers someone who is in second grade the news
092principal fantastic principal excited to bring it back for 10 months so just wanted to test that thank you thank you very much okay so what would like to do right now is i want to on behalf of the board of education to all our schools community superintendent our assistant superintendents our teachers our administrators our safety resource officers our custodians and transportation teams our teaching assistants our technology support staff our monitors and clerical team and to all of you listening tonight a very merry christmas a happy kwanzaa and a very happy and safe new year the lord knows we all need it what i'd like to do right now is make a motion to adjourn vice president cedino can i get a second second trustee mccracken all in favor aye thank you all good night