001uh welcome to the uh special um reminder on cell phones right thank you general ben all right um so welcome uh the hotel community to our special meeting agenda our special meeting for august 12th uh 2021 um can i get a motion to uh to open this meeting trustee mccracken second place trustee musafra all in favor aye aye thank you very much okay um i see that we have a well i see that we have a nice uh a nice crowd a passionate crowd in the back of the uh yeah okay please please join me stand for the pledge 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 what is those boys always
002get crazy when we have people passionate people in the room thank you very much so um that's what i'd like to do is so i want to i want to acknowledge the passionate group of people in the back of the room uh this is a special meeting so most of the time well actually all the time we don't uh we don't usually have public you know at a at a special meeting or public comments or anything like that um with that said what i would like to do is entertain a motion to move a public component up so uh so the group can be uh can be heard in the in the back of the room so i'd like to make that motion simultaneously at the same time with my dad all in favor so
003um so obviously what i'm gonna do if it's okay so what i'm going to do is i'm going to read a statement right now okay obviously we have a uh we've got a little change going on up at uh up in albany um so what i'd like to do right now is uh because we had a couple of we had an item on for tonight that we're going to be discussing later so uh persuade to the letter that went out from mr dicarlo yesterday indicating guidance would be forthcoming and sed guidance came out today i would like to make a motion to table the discussion on guidance to allow for the superintendent and his team to ascertain this guidance and impact it uh have on our student staff and community lieutenant governor stated that upon
004upon entering her office she will be making a determination uh uh obviously within the next uh two weeks regarding masks so just what that's that's that's the that's the position that's the statement that we have for this evening but again what i'd like to do is open it up to to the group and the public over there i don't know if um i don't know if you have a specific uh person that's going to speak for you if you'd like to speak uh individually so um so please uh if you could limit it to three minutes we have a very aggressive uh we have a very aggressive uh personnel agenda where we'll be where we'll be uh uh we'll be uh hiring teachers and also uh approving coaches so uh if you would come if
005you could just stand up just state your name and where you and yeah so can i get a motion uh first to table the uh the guidance discussion please thank you michael second uh adam and and uh all in favor okay here we go well i think that's kind of i apologize no no don't worry danielle toljak how are you all thank you for letting us actually speak and crash your party um i think what we all really were expecting and kind of hoping was a little bit of guidance um it is the middle of the month a lot of us do have to make arrangements with our children too just to see how to prepare them for september and i know you guys can't talk about masks that's totally fine i get it um
006but know that everybody is different everybody's household is different everybody's been impacted differently whether it was from the illness or impacting from just the environment of what's going on we all different age children um so i just want to let you guys know it's not a one size fit fits all things that happened in the last 18 months in my house might have been different than what happened in somebody else's house some people excelled some people depressed coming from somebody that their daughter started in kindergarten during this and then had a first grader that had a lot of troubles now i have another kindergartner about to start and the change in the schedule actually was heartbreaking for her she was looking forward to starting school with her sister going on the bus the first day
007and then i had to explain she was like well she's gonna be home one more day for the summer so it was kind of hard to explain that um so i don't know where that came from i just last year was a different circumstance so this year was a little different and it was kind of done right at the end of the school year so that was one thing and the transparency i know you guys are trying i get it there's a lot of moving parts so we just more surveys or just more openness would be appreciated um i'm just i'm just we're passionate there's a group of families that we are banding together and it's just because we get it everybody's different again like i said and we just want to be heard so
008thank you that's it well i appreciate i appreciate that sweating this board and this administration is going to do everything uh you know everything possible to keep kids in school and keep everybody safe so please always always keep that in your heart that we're always going to make we're always going to you know think about think about the family and the safety of everybody in our staff yes so i really appreciate you guys coming down coming down tonight please know and have the trust that will uh you know we'll be able to get through this and we're going to get everybody back inside okay yes thank you appreciate that and it's just again i don't want to go back to it because i know you can't talk about the masking but that's also just a
009big part of it and i i watched a little bit of the spotlight i didn't have time to watch the whole thing and i know mr dicarlo mentioned that if there were matt like all hypothetical at this point if there was masks then there was no need for quarantine and i didn't know if that was vaccinated versus unvaccinated there was a little unclear statement so if you do say okay next month we got to go back with masks but if there was an exposure there's no quarantine so then school won't close and my kid will have to be home for 10 more days because there was a again i reiterate last year was tough it was really rough so if masking and quarantine still apply again just food for thought thank you i'm sorry now
010i'm really good so as i'm sure as you can be aware i agree with you i don't want to do what i did last year okay i agree the problem is that there's so many just like you're saying families have different points of views and different circumstances well the government's not helping us out our state companies are helping us out right so what happens is that here we think there's going to be a press release today which there was from the commissioner rosa who basically took the cbc audience and cut facebook but now the next change is that lieutenant governor made a statement today stating that as far as she's concerned if you would ask her as of now she's going to mandate miss so we now just have a conversation and put something out
011there right and we got to change in two weeks here we go again all i can really explain to is the following okay i agree with the fact that there should be a mechanism and a trigger that lets us know when we start if we have to administer what's the trigger that that we can go to option right i am and i will tell you straight up the district clerk was on a poll on monday with the department of health right i asked i said that's the problem you have parents thinking here we go again for the whole year because it's going to be the delta variant then it'll be another barrier and we're back to the same thing i don't want that but i'm not an epidemiologist i'm not a doctor right we get
012advice from our our physicians we get advice from the cdc we get advice from the american pediatric association and that's one of the things really like every parent has to have that conversation with their pediatrician right regardless of what your stance may or may not be you have to say listen pediatrician what do you think you know my son and daughter or should they not wear a mess because whether we like it or not here's part of the quandary the american pediatric association has said they should be mascot so that's like the going back to what i'm saying because i want to make you clearly understand that there should be a trigger both ways so let's say if hypothetical like i said we have to start with mass after a month or whatever and every
013week we should be updating you what our numbers are here's the problem in partner right we have a hundred thousand people but our people don't stay at partner hospital they go to danbury and they go to vassar so we really can't get a good number number one number two we shouldn't be penalized if there's an outbreak in garrison or pot valley that's the whole county i'm asking them how can we look at our students and staff can we look at our zip code numbers right and can you help me ascertain what that number is so i saved the parents listen we start off but if we hit this number it's back to optional and god willing like last fall we could be optional for a couple of months then if it ticks back up and
014you know what the number is then we go because there's going to be this i agree with you all i can tell you is i hear you i'm fighting hard my conversation today with the department of health with shanna siegel she's going to have a meeting with myself and i've mentioned this to all the superintendents and partners to see what we can do to try to ascertain what that number is because that's only fair i i hear you i get you i want the kids to be in every day right i want five days a week i don't want to have where right now what they're saying and things can change this variant can change right we hear it's europe and england well england right now supposedly is here on their way down so if
015you follow what's been said over the last 18 months by the next two and a half weeks we should be going so to make a decision now who knows come september night maybe you know it's a whole different discussion by that but all i can say is i hear you're what we're talking about i'm working hard to get that trigger because i think if we can say to the public this is the number and you know it and then it goes a long way like i said we want to do all the same things for kids to have fun we want to have field trips we want to have extra curricular programs for every after school we want the ptos to run it but we may i don't know we may have to start it
016that way hopefully you wouldn't have to start but you're right i hear you i'm listening i you know a lot of times what happens is i have to take the stance of protecting at all right and sometimes that's difficult it really really is but i can tell you i do hear you and like i said i'm fighting to get that so that you and everybody else has a clear understanding so you will and i thank you i get it wait can i say something i live in town look at we all know this is a politicized issue wearing masks for kids in in florida santa said you cannot wear masks in school in new york it's going to be masks let's all we all know what's going to happen you know what's going to happen
017we all know it the truth of the matter is masks don't work they're not n95 masks so they're useless we all know that there's many epidemiologists and neurologists that say that so this is a politicized issue we as a small community man pack combine together and say listen don't mask our kids it's not safe for kids especially small kids like like we're talking about kindergartners first graders second graders and it's just not necessary now if the teachers want to wear masks let them wear masks there's not going to be a lot of infection from kids to to the to well maybe to the teachers but the teachers to the kids maybe but it's not going to be a lot we know that so you bring up a great point it's all politicized here's and here's
018the the issue right if we were just dealing with the covert bearing hypothesis just stay with me i agree with you 100 it wouldn't be an issue right because at that time all the data and everything showed it really was an adult virus it wasn't affecting the case right i think we can all say that the curb right now is just delta variant whether we like it or not and it it's different in different states or whatever it is starting to impact kids right so what happens is this if at the end of the day and ultimately i have to be very honest with you the board based on getting all the information that data we see what the governor says we'll gather all that we'll have another meeting they'll be presented there'll be and
019then the board will decide what we should or shouldn't do based on where we're at but to your point that's the difference is the variant if it were covered like you very much it doesn't matter we know that varian is more contagious no questions so variant is less is less deadly we do know that as well but however right but the point is that for children i don't know what the number is but i think it's under 400 now any child that dies is horrendous but my point is it's you're you're more likely to hit lip get hit by lightning in all honesty so the point is why i couldn't hear your last name oh it's caden right so and and we do just like you're saying we know that we understand that so we
020have to i have to have conversations and we with our legal counsel stay with me our insurance companies just like you would have to if you own a business right that would be my next point right i know but so because that's what we're worried about worried about lawsuits i know but but you have to understand something sir we can't expose stay with me in addition because what you said what happens if there are groups of people who are and i'm not and again i i understand the political aspect of what you're saying please i do understand that but if these entities who are right wrong or indifferent in charge of public health make these recommendations right and the board of education decides not to go with those you know recommendations our insurance company says
021you could be liable because god forbid that one kid stay with me i agree does get get severely ill or gotham because you didn't go what what those recommendations are you can open yourself up that's really sir part of the dynamic and that's why it said it's different because of colby that's my point we want we want openness tell tell the truth i know that's the reason you don't want to get sued i get that but the truth of the matter is we're not masking kids because it's safety for kids we're masking kids because we don't want to get sued that's the truth so i'm trying to but i'm trying to be honest and transparent with you to explain what all the parameters have to be right but that's the point and if it was
022true medical science why would desantis put all that on his millions of people in florida you can't mask your kids because he knows scientifically it's unsafe i mean it's not necessary to mass kids but politically here it's more of a democratic state so they're going to mask our kids there's nothing we're going to mask our kids probably for the next five years so you're saying it's more so just so you guys cannot sue my kid to have anxiety without wearing a mask exactly so there's always give and think i get it i'm not mad at you one of the ways to do that is to get that trigger right i'm working hard on that that because if we can do that that gives us that place that we could say okay no burgers go down
023we can do that that's and i'll say this and i'll keep my shot the point is look if we're going to wear masks because you're going to say that because that's what our governor is going to say now you got no choice but saying you got to wear masks but the point is you don't have to enforce you just don't okay i mean i i work i'm a d.a agent i bus people solving drugs i don't i don't enforce marijuana law you know it's a law if i see a guy smoking a joint i don't go down hey you're under arrest and it's not a big deal it's a marijuana joy i get that but my point is we have to have discretion we don't use discretion we're legalism legal it's legalized but you've got
024to wear your masks but an executive law is no it's not it's demanding it's not law it's a mandate there's difference between mandated law again i i respect it i got it is there another question sure um my name is lisa savino i actually emailed you today but you probably didn't get the opportunity to respond yet hopefully you will soon um i have three children in the school district two in the high school and one in elementary school he's seven he's going into second grade he'll be eight next month um i want to know if if there's no masking option that's going to be offered to parents whether we make the choice why are we not being given the option of remote learning you guys boast about you know no child left behind if my
025son is so petrified to put a mask on his face to go to school then where is my option he's being left behind because he's not going to be allowed the option of doing online schooling because he's he's too afraid to come into school with the mask on he's if he's forced to he's going to have major psychological problems he's already building up anxiety about september and school starting so i want to know why we won't be offered the option of remote learning like we were last year if you're not going to offer mask options so every case is individual and what will happen is that if you get a doctor's note for it we fill it out we have a conversation with our pediatrician every case is individual so i'm not gonna i'm not
026gonna blanket every specific group it's individual so each individual depending on what the circumstances we would have to take a look at but if my son's allowed in school without a mess and it's defeating the purpose of everybody that has to wear a mask then right that's still optional he could still be spreading the variant to everybody like you just stated and you could have a lawsuit on your hands because he didn't have a mask on so my question is going back to my question why is remote uh learning not an option this year for parents that don't want to master children i'm sorry yeah yeah but i think i think what mr carlos said was that it's on a case-by-case basis so that's you know that would be that's a case-by-case basis so what
027you do is you would follow the protocols that you just mentioned and organize a uh organize a uh it's gonna be a medical communications [Music] you know all three commas that were made right here and i think most parents feel the same way at this point i think at the heart of the issue by the way my name is james scarangelo i live in the district as well i'm also on the tax assessors board so i can appreciate the board all right and my comments are directed at the board more than anything else because you guys are here to represent us you're a stop gap and this what we feel more than anything else is that the choice has been ripped from us young kids older kids middle kids everybody's developing anxiety issues over this
028stuff for one reason or another braces no braces teeth complexion you name it it's out there okay now you have to get to the science as you say there isn't a clear message out there okay you listen to fouchy things all over the place you listen to the cdc they're all over the place so let's take this under consideration ourselves here let's be logical here this has always been a logical community we've always had people that kicked in here don't remove the choice from us give parents the choice that's the key that's the crux of this more than anything else as i walked in here half of you guys were wearing the mask half you weren't all of a sudden the meeting started boom the mask went on it's your choice there's delta fair and
029sneaky sometimes it comes at you sometimes you don't know where it's going to come from right no you have no idea so fine if you feel comfortable wearing a mask wear the mask but give parents the choice don't rip it from us that's what this community is about and we do the same thing on the accessories before on the tax side of things when people have issues and they come to us it's our job to help them to really look at their case and help them do the same thing for us thank you [Applause] but back on july 7th i sent the email to all the board members and mr carlo uh the only one that had the courtesy the answer moves mr mcdonough i don't know who you are mrs mcdonald's not here he's
030not here he was the only one that had the courtesy to answer me and i waited until the 18th and i reached i resent the email to everyone and the email was very uh just a question i had and when i didn't get answers it kind of bothered me because i don't know if you guys are ducking the question and i like to read the email too he says i've been a mayor pack resident for 21 years currently have three children in the maypack school system do you meaning you personally support critical race theory 1619 project black lives matter or any of the white guilt policies or concepts that are going around these that we're hearing all over the news is that something you personally believe in and will it be taught here at the
031school and i have not got an answer i got an answer from mr mcdonough who was kind of ambiguous and i i told him it's an ambiguous answer and he tried to re-answer me and it was still a little ambiguous so but i haven't received any answers from any of you i just want to know if people would you answer me tonight are you for any of that stuff would you like to answer me tonight i'm for going in i'm for going into my i didn't get it i didn't get your email i'm going to my spam a lot of stuff because it's angelo sabino it was sent out on the that's an easy question you know either you're forward or you're not and if you know it's going to be taught here well as
032a citizens none of us want it i'm pretty confident of that there isn't a person in town that no matter what race they're from so because that only divides i will address it i will address it because i know because i'm working on a diversion again you know it's it's uh it's you know it's an issue that there's a lot of mis understanding and representation of it what it is that isn't as far as what the school district is or isn't doing we are not or we would never because i would i would be in this position going to tell any child that they're racist because of this color of their skin that's not gonna happen if that was ever dictated to me to do it then i'm out that's not happening however however we
033need to look at like and and i think as a school district we're kind of a little bit we're ahead of the perfect number of years ago because if you remember we were out of compliance with our our middle school and high school hours and we ended the ninth period and what we did is we added a mayor pack life and middle school success program where we started to talk about civics we started to talk about responsibility and and how you look at media how you look at social media how you navigate navigate research how you learn to other people's points of view how you have to listen that's some of the equity work that we've kind of started to do we want to continue to just stay with me we're not looking to get
034a canned you know program we're not looking to do that not everyone we're looking to make sure that everybody feels it safe and equitable reliable why don't we why don't we fall for this equitable awareness all of a sudden this equity equity equity well because being that it's meaning that when there's somebody else's point of view that we just have to make sure we're all able to be heard that's what people have but that's not what's happening in our schools there's an indoctrination in our schools in our colleges and i'm not saying in this school i'm not saying but across america it's happening and i'm telling you it's not helping anything i am in law enforcement that's what i do i've been doing it for 29 years and i work with black people hispanic people
035asian people white people every every and i work in the d.a we're super diverse and let me tell you critical race theory is going to do nothing but destroy this nation it's all nonsense it's it's crazy so if we do any any even inkling of talking about equity we are destroying our children literally destroying them 100 percent what's your name again angela and your last name okay i sometimes it blocks it but i will tell you i have been asked about the 1619 project before via email and i've and again like mr carl said it's a very complex issue depending on where you read what you read same with critical race theory nonsense really it's not complex level not something that is adopted as truth it is a theory and that's what all theories are
036so so what i said was to the 1619 project which has been debunked by many historians that it is dangerous to teach history a certain way history is written by the winners and you can't teach one string of history and the most important thing and this is the beauty of america is you should teach the goods and the bads because the beautiful part about it is we've overcome so much of the bad and that's what makes our country so good so i i told the gentleman it wasn't you must be someone else that i don't believe in the 16-19 project and sticking to that strict teaching of it because i think it's important for kids to grow up loving this country that's the most important part of this country knowing that we have overcome so
037much and we're trying to create a more perfect union to fix the things we haven't fixed so that's to answer your question and i'm more than happy to send you more more detailed response so i just want to make that clear i i do need to follow that up i'm sorry um you're very incorrect in one point when you say history is written by the winners no history is written by the people in power always the people in power and right now the bureaucratic machine is in power and that's what's writing history but in general you're writing this right what in general that's the winners how the uh [Applause] that's also incorrect because that's opening the door to marxism and socialism a system that has been debunked and over and over and over again but
038yet it keeps coming back over and over and over again letting it in is a disaster you know the greatest mass murderers in history all started off with the right idea you know and you go through it i mean mao saytong stalin through lenin i mean uh obviously hitler when he did you go through that that he's he's like fourth on the list you know paul potter's ahead of him i mean so when you go through and all these guys started off with nice socialist theories okay and it ended up in fascism and death all right now are we getting there no we're starting that's what i just want to let you know that my belief is how children in school should learn reading writing math and actual history and also just so that you
039know because you mentioned about a representative government this board and our policy has to adopt all curriculum so we wouldn't make any change in our curriculum that has to go through it girl okay i gotta tell you i've been on this board this is my sixth year and i think our curriculum is the best curriculum in the damn area and i'll go right out and say that and do i don't see i don't see any reason to change what we've done we've got we've got a great curriculum we've got great administrators that to administer the curriculum we've got great leadership i don't see a damn damn way that we're going to change anything anytime soon so i appreciate everybody coming here this evening thank you very much thank you for your comments they haven't fallen
040on deaf ears uh mr sabino i i think trustee uh said that he did pull your email out of spam okay oh i'm sorry i just want to say quickly it really wasn't like a special comment for miss masafra i did um email you also three times before the election of your seat and i didn't i never got a response from you i'd be sitting in spam because any outside emails that we get to spam three my email gets hacked we appreciate your passion and your uh uh and coming here this evening and uh and thank you and again all right hasn't fallen on deaf ears so thank you and uh so what we're gonna do now is i'm gonna motion to go into executive sessions so we can get some new teachers and some
041and some coaches so thank you very much stay tuned stay tuned thank you thank you back my hope community to our special meeting uh for august 12 2021 what we have right now is so yeah so what i'd like to do right now is i'd like to get a motion uh to uh to approve our consent agenda uh of personnel for this evening and get a motion please trustee sabino vice president you know second please second trustee mccracken all in favor all right um so the uh so this information will be will be uh put up on the website that they just voted on that'll be up yes i just i just updated it right now okay terrific so uh so community look at uh please go to the website and you'll be able to
042see uh the wonderful people that we have uh that we've hired for this evening and the coaches that we've appointed and uh of course we thank you all for your before your continued support and patience as we continue to navigate through this uh this very uh very difficult very difficult uh very difficult year very difficult pandemic so uh with that could i get a motion to close our meeting please so moved trustee mccracken second trustee simone all in favor aye aye community stay safe thank you and welcome aboard for you yes absolutely