M-W Board of Education Regular Meeting - February 9, 2022

001good evening call to order the regular meeting of the board of education will everyone please rise 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 a few housekeeping notes um mr ceriello was unable to be here this evening um and i think that is it for the speakers that we have that will come up just to note that the podium will be sprayed after you are done for those of us that are sitting on the dais that don't have our mask up we have barriers that are still up here for the plexi glass a reading of our mission statement we are committed to academic achievement and success for all students

002in a safe environment in partnership with families and our community our mission is to promote confidence inspire a passion for learning and to prepare our students to become responsible global citizens may i have a motion to approve the revised agenda motion second all those in favor aye aye i'd like to point out this evening for february that it is american heart month on monday february 14th which is rescheduled date due to snow day the monroe woodbury community will wear red in support of cardiovascular health and to help raise awareness about heart disease february is american heart month a wonderful opportunity to focus on ways to promote and maintain heart health during february we are also celebrating black history month black history month is an annual celebration of achievements by african americans and a time for

003recognizing their role in u.s history since 1976 every u.s president has officially designated the month of february as black history month monroe woodbury will be featuring student projects related to black history month on its website and social media also this week is national counseling week we shared appreciation for our guidance teams on our website and social media and we'll be featuring the high school and middle school guidance departments before the week's end so i encourage all of you to visit that on our website comments and questions from citizens mrs steltz she will be speaking on regards to important information update correction clarification a reminder that each speaker is allotted for the three minutes of time to speak and as i just stated when you're finished the custodial staff will come up and go ahead and

004spray the podium before the next speaker comes up so last i think the meeting prior we had brought up back up the new york state grades and data that we presented to the one prior to that and that data includes new york state schools monroe woodbury is a new york state school now when we did that we were talking about concerns for literacy we're talking about reading and math proficiency well monroe woodbury's specific data scores are about the same some are in the single digits so we said for national or new york state average and monroe woodbury is about 15 and in some cases in the single digits of proficiency for math for black children i bring that up because all this concern and all this crt and all the pushing of the narrative of

005oppressing and all this other stuff that we're really concerned that not enough academia is being addressed and too much mental health which is not your wheelhouse you know we're educators i want you to stick to the academics so we know that you are new york state we know those new york state scores we'll do that to be nice we're trying to be merciful um you don't want to go too specific at that point but since you wanted to bring it out to the specifically decided to go ahead and do that um what concern that is your only response was to deflect well that's not us new york state we're talking about abysmal grades for reading and math proficiency in new york state and monroe woodbury is right there in those low numbers way below the

006national average then the teachers who got up and spoke and after hearing that information all anybody was concerned with was more masks more mandates more social distancing more support for themselves and more talking about slavery so after all this after seven months of talking with you over and over let's talk about slavery slave owners did not allow slaves to get an education they kept the slaves dependent on them and at the mercy of the slave owners they used fear tactics to keep them afraid of losing these resources now what's going on in monroe woodbury schools new york state and specifically monroe woodbury report cards are far below the national average averaging 15 proficiency for math monroe would vary in the same range for black and hispanic students and some as low as single digits in

007some grades ela black students vero was blank for monroe woodbury just blank they didn't even place so that brings me to sr3 funding covert relief packages for schools you took this funding under the conditions that you would push masks and vax narratives and mandates crt social emotional learning choose love eye opening enterprises and now we've added erica's lighthouse no more math tutors no more math teachers nothing academia no more critical ace theory it also allowed you to give yourselves pay increases so we noticed the thirty thousand dollar pay increases you gave yourselves um during covet when the schools were closed and parents were scrambling the ones who pay your salary parents were scrambling to figure out what to do with our children and so we could go out and earn a living too but on

008top of our already quarter million dollar salary a 30 000 pay increase really all your virtual signaling okay about a systemic racism and you sold our children to the highest bidder for this so3 funding for 30 pieces of silver thank you mrs stoutz that's time right last thing denying a children in a legitimate education which only perpetuates a cycle of dependence claiming to stand against or used with fear tactics basically there's the same the thing that these uh slave owners did back then so you're not doing anything different if you want to break the cycle break the cycle spend more money on education and stop with all the mental health stuff that's parents job not yours thank you thank you our next speaker is sash silvera and she will be speaking in regards to board

009of education engagement good evening we we do hear a lot about equity and inclusion usually in the context of race or gender however equity in basic humanity must be added to this focus masks have literally become tools for discrimination if there is any symbol for disastrous policy it is the mask not only does it stifle breathing it stifles communication it divides americans by being a visible mark of compliance and therefore a tool for manufactured discrimination and divisiveness it is no secret that children are suffering more under covet policy than they do from the virus and are experiencing fear anxiety depression and loneliness like never before mental health issues and pediatric suicides are at an all-time high schools have become an unhealthy place even asking that children perform rigorous physical activity with a mass covering their

010noses and mouths if indoors government officials school administrators and many educators have created an environment that is simply not safe for children the people they are entrusted to protect these forced measures have convinced children that human interaction is dangerous and in some instances that they themselves are dangerous vectors of disease and the only saving grace is to just wear a mask for 40 plus hours a week going on two years breathing breaks limited bathroom breaks faceless touchless classrooms are not healthy environments for children what we're doing to our kids is unacceptable it's time for the adults who are charged with caring for our children not government bureaucrats to make decisions on children's behalf parents not schools are the health authority for children and many across the globe are waking up to the fact that the

011benefits of mass were oversold and the risks too high one of the biggest hurdles parents are facing is the response from the school boards that they cannot do anything about mask requirements give yourselves permission to put the kids first and to break the fear of non-compliance of guidance dressed up as law there are too many physical and psychological harms associated with prolonged mask use school boards are giving away their power to protect our children many school districts and entire states have eliminated mask orders leaving a patchwork of mass requirements to navigate with no rhyme or reason lawyering up can be effective it's an important tool that can prevent future harms by putting precedence in place letting schools and bureaucrats know what they cannot do however courts are the last step in law making the judgment

012of whether the law is right it's a slow and expensive process and people are already hurt because the rule is in effect the fastest way to help our children is to be proactive and address issues at the source families require the support and action of our most locally elected officials our school boards we did not vote you in to be told that you will only follow state endorsements because your funding is tied to compliance the state is disconnected from our local and immediate community and our needs and sometimes governments get it wrong we are not their priority but we should be yours you never told us when you were campaigning for our votes that you'd have no voice once elected stand with your families and find solutions that support all there are various lawsuits happening

013around the country in state and federal courts over mass there are too many to list we're all following the news we're all affected um and most are still making their way through the legal process just to name a few of course new york is dealing with an on-again off-again mass litigation missouri's attorney attorney general has sued 45 school districts with mass mandates pennsylvania supreme court threw out the school mass mandate in december south carolina governor issued an executive order that included banned mass mandates in may kansas revoked mass wide statewide mass in april wisconsin struck down the state white mass mandate there you know there's conflicting advice from different health agencies and within health agencies and it's created a very confusing environment for us all right um that that was time yeah there there's if

014there's two people speaking we have 30 30 minutes for public speaking you have three minutes per speaker can you vote to give me 30 more seconds i think that i read that in your handbook i can give you 30 more seconds thank you conflicting advice from different health agencies and within health agencies has created in confusion environment indeed i'm going to send you all 36 abstracts with face mask research as well as additional analysis of why maths are ineffective but what i'd like from you because i could be misguided in what you stand for our elected board of education members if i could know in our next meeting or sooner by email what position you take in mask as a choice for our students i'd ask that of my elected officials my assemblymen my senators

015and i'm asking that of you what is each of your position if you were polled where do you stand on the choice to wear mass or not thank you thank you our next speaker is eric angeloro and he will be speaking in regards to the high school special education good evening board of education administration superintendent rodriguez and the monroe woodbury community my name is eric angeloro i'm a monroe woodbury alum i hope my kids will be too i'm a community member and most importantly a special education parent so i wanted to speak tonight because monroe woodbury needs to do a better job for their special education students and their families over the course of my family's monroe woodbury experience with the special education department we've had many trials and tribulations this year was no exception

016as a parent the csc process it's an intimidating one you go in good faith thinking that all parties have your child's best interest in mind having gone through the process year after year though there are several things that i feel need to be examined so number one all information needs to be presented not just the information that's advantageous to the district or the district's budget programming information is withheld from parents and quite honestly when you withhold information it's the same as lying a clear understanding of how special education programming is articulated across the buildings must be incorporated into these meetings for the benefit of everyone involved the parents the educators administration number two when children transition from the middle school to the high school and a continuation program is being recommended you must present to

017families what that program entails skills classes for example at the middle school and the high school are vastly different and those differences are not communicated to parents like myself why is it that the high school skills class has a curriculum why is the district choosing to use the word skills to describe a continuation program when that class is not the same and the program has changed number three co-teach classes at the high school level have only been approved for those that require a regents to graduate now in all classes that have a final that exam is factored in as 10 of the final grade you and i know that is more than enough difference to change a passing grade to a failing grade in classes where there's no regents exam students are left with no

018support and why has the district made the choice to only support our special education students when there's a regents examined number four our high school skills classes no longer have a teaching assistant are special education teachers they can't divide and conquer even to address multiple subject matters during their skill class it's extremely difficult i was even told that they're weaning students off of the support of teaching assistants it is a huge presumption that students are ready to work with less support given the circumstances of our current pandemic and learning loss situation why does the district feel that this is a great time to provide our most needy students with less support why are you running a skeleton crew and finally number five and honestly most detrimental to our students is that our special education department

019continues to push the limits of iep compliances by not providing a skills or resource room for support for our ninth and tenth grade students we do for 11th and 12th grade but not 9th and 10th these students need the added support we all know this need review reteaching and extra practice but they're not receiving it and if we're pushing boundaries of compliance in these areas where else is monroe woodbury making compromises for compliance i hope you recognize the important work you have before you the children are not the distraction from more important budget meetings and things like this they are your most important work they are the goal and please listen to your teachers they can help fix this thank you for your time thank you [Applause] do we have any update on questions or

020comments from previous no no we had no one the last time okay thank you update on district goals hopefully i can read this that's a part of it that's special education thank you so this evening i'm going to go i'm going to we're going to talk about the district goals update and one of the major focuses that we've had which is data so i want to start with goal number one which reads using data and organizational processes to identify opportunities to improve student outcomes this past month i met with the district y data team to talk about how are we going to move forward the gentleman who just got up and spoke and said you know for the past two years we've had students go through this pandemic and how do we measure their growth

021how do we measure their learning loss and so it's really important for us as a school district to focus on data and so we met with k-12 the data teams every building in our school district has a data team and they're required to look at the data and make some assumptions so it was a really interesting meeting because we had teachers from kindergarten all the way through high school to talk about what data is available i think the other someone else who just got up and spoke mrs steltz talked about our state assessment well we haven't had a state assessment in two years so again what data do we look at how do we assess our students growth and how do we say here is where there is a loss and here is where we

022need to focus here's where we need to put our resources so part of the conversation that we had with the team was really getting them focused to go back and look at the information and and so we focused on three things how can reliable data help support student learning what is reliable data that's the other question not all data is the same some data is has more value than other some data isn't really necessary or important to us and then the third question is um essential questions for the individual school data teams because what we want to do is we want to effectuate some change and make sure that as this data team begins this process that it becomes ensconced in what we do right it has to be become part of the fabric of

023the school district to make sure that this is cyclical right we don't you don't look at data once and say okay we're great you look at data continuously and then you make recommendations and so that is part of this goal and so this meeting was really important to put every to make sure that everybody was on the same page um i'm going to jump forward mr bhagav because you you have central repository but i i wanted to just focus on what i was doing so i'm just going to move forward and then go back so that the next step is so what do we do so um i had a meeting with multiple stakeholders throughout the district dr hassler was there so was mr villa dr villas and so was mr kravitz and really it's

024the next part is going to be dr hassler's requirement to implement it and so i just wanted to share with the community what we're going to be doing right there's four items that we're going to be focused on focusing on what data we currently use that is considered reliable data i go back to for a long time we use state assessments unfortunately they're not two things we haven't had them in two years and when we did have them students in monroe woodbury approximately half of them didn't take it so does it become reliable data the answer is it's questionable um the second thing is how should student achievement be measured what are we going to be looking at in in the particular in the elementary and the secondary to say you know we're doing well

025or we're doing poorly so that's the other piece and then are the assessments aligned to the state standards so conversation about here is what the state tells us we need to do do our um exams or assessments that we use align to those state stat standards and if so when we give this test what can we learn from that and you know i'm going to go back to my building principal days we used to have our our math uh assessments were aligned to the state standards so we would be able to go back and say you know what students aren't doing well in standard number two or they're the conference the professional conversation would be you know as a sixth grade teacher i did my kids did really well on this standard but that teacher

026didn't so let's have a professional conversation about how to what is it that you did that really helped your students so i what we're really pushing for and planning for is this important conversation professional development and a focus on the academic piece because we know that we've had two years of of this pandemic that has really had um a negative impact for some of our students and then lastly what indicators of students achievement are collected regularly throughout the year so informed decisions can be made so what data do we have number one and the second question we talked about is where does that data live because it's great to have data but if it doesn't live somewhere that we can all have access to and be able to go back and forth and be able

027to track a student for lack of a better word i know for a long time that word was not a good word but to be able to tell the story of a student right and i think that that's really what we're looking to do so this is for me it's great work i'm excited about this work that we're going to be focusing on i'm excited about the work that dr hassler is going to be working with our teams but i think that this is really going to help us to understand where we are where we need to go and what resources we really need to allocate so now i'm going to go back to mr villas who's going to talk a little bit about i talked about where does it live i think he's whoops

028i went too far ah i'm hitting it too hard am i is it there can you see it okay thank you mrs rodriguez so as mrs rodriguez mentioned about how do we tell the story about the students one of the important tasks that the board asks us is send do the centralized data repository system and i as i mentioned earlier in my previous uh meetings we choose a tool called and and the beauty of that tool is it allows us to see the student data with a single pan what we are doing currently is we are able to successfully bring the star assessment data star assessment data is our local benchmark assessment that we observe in math uh reading and early literacy generally from k to eight students and this is a consistent reliable data

029for last five years so we are able to bring that data from renaissance learning which is the star product from their system to actually to to a honeywead system so we have loaded so far last five years of star assessment data including this year for star reading and last two years of data including this year for star math again it's just the one data point but that's a great starting point because it is a consistent data benchmarking for us we're also in a process of looking at to see how can we bring the new york state assessment data even though we didn't have the last two years but we had the previous years of data that will serve us as the another benchmark tool and another data point to tell a story about a student

030and the most important is the third task is validate the data analysis chart as as the data flow from one system to the another one most important part for us is to make sure we actually test the validity of the data and then understanding that how reliable this data before we open the system for many other users so that's that's a that's a really tricky and important task that that that we are doing currently thanks to my colleague christian render and one of the teammate mary grace pouya we are three involved in looking at this and working with anew it which is a power school company to make sure that all the dashboards that we are looking with the different charts they are telling us the correct uh and accurate data analysis before we open

031up for the end users thank you mr dr veos i think the other thing i wanted to share with the community was that the board of regents is changing how you get to um graduate right so there's going to be multiple pathways to graduation and one of them is going to be i mean there's multiple but the focus is going to be not just for students to regurgitate information what we've learned is that you can google almost anything and get the answer and what we're what what the regents is saying we need to find of different pathways for our students to show that they've mastered the information that has been taught so you'll see at our high school right now what some of the things that they're doing in science is rather than take a

032test it's do it's complete a lab actually do a scientific project so that you can show your understanding of the material because um the regents is going to be moving away so i'm not sure when this was work that they started before the pandemic and i was a part of it they obviously during the pandemic they stopped but it is back up again and they are going to make sure that there are very pas multiple pathways for students not just taking a regions exam to be able to graduate with a high school diploma so this is exciting news and and i think it's really going to be good for the school district but i think that we are moving in the right direction i'm going to move forward and if this works i did that

033and now we're going to move on to goal number two i'm hitting this too hard i apologize and that would be good i'm sorry i'm not good with this i apologize no no we'll we'll get there so for me i get to focus on goal number two which involves family and community engagement throughout the school district and obviously as a school district we want our families involved we want our community involved we want all of our stakeholders to have a voice one of the best ways we're doing that this year is by literally seeking the answers to certain questions through our strategic plan survey so as of right now i just want to update everybody as to where we are we have a survey um that's open until february 18th there are links on on

034the state uh on the state on the school district website under the strategic plan survey section we to date our students in grades four through 12 have started to take the the survey that's geared just to them we have mailed out physical letters to all district residents through our post office and then there are our website links for our families our employees and our community members to date as of this morning we had over 2 800 responses thus far our goal is obviously to double or triple that when we did this the first time we had about 6 600 so we're not quite there yet but we are on our way so we're hopeful that that number will continue to rise for as far as next steps once we have all those results we'll have

035those by next friday well survey will close we'll then get that compiled and we will work with our plc associates who we've been working with from the very beginning with our strategic plan we'll work with them at the end of the month and then we will analyze the data review the data because it's not just the numbers and the percentages there are also opportunities for for people to voice concerns or tell us how wonderful things are going in through the use of comments so you have access not only to answering questions but then giving your feedback in terms of comments and it does take time to read through all those comments and we do read through all of those comments so we will take some time to do that and then we will sit down

036with our administrative team and then share all our results moving forward by may with the board of ed and with the greater community as far as the next steps in addition to that one of we talked about this early in the school year one of the areas that we focused on in our schools especially through our blc's our building leadership committees and our ptas was increased parent and community engagement so i just wanted to update people with some examples one of the things that some of our principals have noticed has been an increase in the number of participants at our pta meetings and what we had to do during kovid you know we used to have pta meetings somewhere at night somewhere during the day and it was hard sometimes to get people physically present

037to go to those meetings once kovid hit all that moved remotely so we have parents now who can sign in maybe in the morning from from you know off-site if the meeting is held at night they've noticed just more participants in in each meeting which is a which is a positive thing we've had events geared towards parents smith clove hosted a in conjunction with the cornell cooperative extension they hosted a workshop in in january called setting the limit and that was just for parents because sometimes you know what parenting is hard um and sometimes parents have reached out to us to say hey can you help us more can can you help us figure this out and that was one of the ways that smith clove sought to help them um and then with the

038continued focus of our building leadership committees one of the things our teachers have had to do is also adjust to not having parents come into class it used to be really easy we'd have a writing celebration a poetry celebration and all the parents could come in um what they've done what many of them have done is they've moved that remote as well so you have parents who during the course of their day can take a couple of minutes perhaps during their lunch hour or um throughout the morning and they can come in and they can watch their student or watch their child online and you know obviously it's not the same as them being in school but given all the circumstances those are some of the things that we've been doing so as far as

039next steps we will continue that through all the buildings and hopefully as you know things start to open up even more we can get our parents physically back into some of these events thank you did i miss a slide should i move it over mr kravitz uh oh yeah no no no you're good i'm good you are so i just wanted to reiterate something which is i know i've said this multiple times in the beginning of the year this is a really important um survey because when we did this survey oh god how long ago was it 2020 in 20 but before 2020 2018 ice carol must be somewhere in there telling me twenty so in 2018 we did the survey and what was really interesting that's how we got our task force the focus

040from that survey from parents students and staff was really about sel and that's where the focus came from so that to me is really important that if what parents are saying now is we want to focus on academics this is this is your opportunity to share that information with us because that drives what we do as a committee and that was a very very large committee we it was not just staff and we had a board of ed member but we had community members as well so it's really going to be important that you share that information with us because that really you know drives us and the last time i think mr kravitz mentioned we had about 6 000 responses which was really impressive um and we're hoping that we would get 6 000

041responses again and it's it's an opportunity for you to share that with us because then we would go back and reopen our committee um and and if you choose if you're interested in being in that committee you can always email me and tell me uh that you'd like to be a part of it but it's really where we sit down and we kind of um uh what's the word i want to use we unpack the information that we received from our community members from our students from our staff and from our our parents so i'm going to move on now to to goal number three okay and that would be mr cahill great thank you mrs rodriguez um so goal number three really has three components it's pre-referendum planning and that's capital project planning reserve

042plan update and long-range financial plan and the long-range financial plan really concerns establishing a model for long-range financial planning and projections that sort of thing and i would say the lion's share of the work associated with goal 3 is in the first component the pre-referendum capital project planning so you know just in terms of where we stand with this now we're we've gone through the process i've talked about this before with a request for proposal to uh choose an architectural firm an engineering firm we've done that we we selected cpl which was formerly clark patterson lee as the firm and we've we've established with our attorneys that we would need two agreements contracts with cpl one for the bond work associated with the pre-referendum planning and and the work that would occur after that the

043design work and the other to uh to be our architect of record if you will so things come up periodically and we need the opinion or work of an architect so we were working with our attorneys working with their attorneys we were hoping to have that on the agenda for this evening and we were not able to work through all the issues uh between their attorney and our attorney so uh the next meeting i think we'll be able to resolve that it's unfortunate but it's really not that big of a setback we're still on on the appropriate timeline to get everything accomplished so the next big task will be conducting an rfp for construction management services so the construction manager uh helps the architect they do cost estimation they do scheduling for construction so they

044are experts in the construction process almost more so than the architect to some degree and you want to engage them early in the process because they can they can help us with timeline scheduling cost estimation all that sort of thing so we've had an internal planning meeting we've reviewed some some template rfps for construction management services we've sought input from our architect because it's important and i had mentioned this in a board gram to the board last week to sort of coordinate those two contracts so that there's uh no duplication or less duplication between what the architect does what the construction manager does you want it to be clear on where one set of responsibilities ends and the other begins and that's what we're trying to do with our attorney and their attorney um so

045we have a target date for that rfp awarding that rfp for our march 23rd meeting so next slide please i'm trying okay it doesn't want to work that's okay the next slide is questions questions um did i cut your slide out yeah there was one more that's okay so the the other thing i was just going to mention is that it there you go yeah that's the one thank you i don't have my glasses on so the other thing i was going to mention and this is sort of overlaps with facilities a little bit is the building conditions survey is complete we're going to use some of that information um to inform making you know inform our our decision making regarding the capital plan and decision making that sort of thing um so that's the

046update in the pre-referendum planning the reserve plan update we've uh reviewing some existing reserves and legal framework with that for the reserve plan i anticipate that will be done a little bit later in the fiscal year we're also focusing on the budget now in terms of the business office and then the the third component with the long-range financial plan we reviewed various models and instruments and will likely use the office of state controller that's what the osce is their model it's fairly simple and it's uh it was developed by the osc so it's uh there's you know some i don't know stamp of of good approval because it is a uh developed and used by the controller's office so that's it thank you do we have any questions i actually have a couple okay uh

047bargo if you referred to uh the data i think you said you have two years of uh star math one year of uh star reading in there yes five years of start reading okay and two years um we we administer that in cycles throughout the year so it's we're not just talking about one scorpio each year we'll have how many how many cycles do we do we do for each of the exams three how many three cycles three cycles it's full good it's it's fall like as soon as they come into the school year winter and spring okay so it's a little bit more than just a few years it's it's technically 15 data sets okay and then i guess we build on that year after year as the yes we continue with the exam

048all right uh elsie you would refer to 6000 responses for uh the survey that was given out what what percentage of a response rate is that of the entire district of how many how many surveys are sent out versus how many you said we got six thousand back i think carol maybe if carol is in the audience seventeen thousand but believe it or not when we got 6 000 responses plc thought that that was unbelievable because it's usually such a low rate of response so 6 000 was a big deal for us okay and and any indications as to what we were doing right to get that kind of response or what we could do better today we we did a lot of work in other words we went to um our senior citizens and

049we we took them to them we there was a lot of pr we're sort of doing the same thing this year the only difference is obviously we don't we're not going into uh senior centers because they're not congregating so we're not able to do that but believe it or not we're getting a lot of phone calls from people who said you know i'm retired but i haven't received it i just want to make sure and we also keep um on file we have um what do you call that alumni who live here you know so we we have a database that's expanding and as soon as we find out someone who didn't receive it we sent it to them all right excellent thank you can i piggyback on that question also because aside from something

050similar that dan asked the other follow-up to that was because i knew that we weren't able to go into those places are we offering an avenue for those that need help with the computer to actually take the survey so is there an opportunity for these individuals to perhaps come to the education center sit down with a member of dr vice's team um in order for them to actually be able to complete this without being intimidated by the computer i just i know that last time that was a big push that you guys were able to actually go into those centers and that doesn't exist this time yes please where is shipped i don't know where you are she's over there [Music] um okay and again i think in addition like a lot of things during

051the the pandemic even the the use of of technology for some people who may not have used it as often or as um prior to the pandemic that's increased as well according to conversations we've had with the with the centers we also have uh in a different language as well we have in the spanish as well we just put the link on the the form that was sent home right i mean they would have to manually enter that you know perhaps we should have included like a qr code that they could just scan it and it would pop up right that might have been the easier to know email was blasted out i think the email that you're talking about was blasted out to parents in the school district but mrs rodriguez had mentioned the

052email to the community where on the district website people can actually enter in their email address if they don't have children within the school district to get on the email blast for the community-based survey rather than the parent-based survey i'm talking about what i got at home in the mail was kind of yes it listed a bunch of links but you know to enter 50 60 characters might be a little difficult for some i was just thinking maybe a qr code to bring them right to the correct all right use your phone and i'm sorry i have one more question i know that you did mention it but i couldn't hear you uh mr kravitz when will the results come to us so we'll have everything to you um in april and may we'll digest

053everything we'll review everything in march we'll meet with our admin team once we have those results in in april and as you know april's kind of a a nutty time with with budgets and that whole cycle but we'll have it to you by may okay but remember we get back from those surveys the surveys are done district-wide and then they're done the individual buildings will get their results too so there's specific questions for specific buildings and the students are doing them as well right in school they were emailed this year they are our students right now and i'll just as of this morning just for the middle school and high school alone we've had over 2000 kids at those two buildings alone and that's what they're focusing on this week i know our phys ed

054department has been instrumental in helping our students you know get those those done this week and the whole high school and middle school in high school middle school okay i i will note that as a parent i did i only have students this year in the high school building so it was only one survey for me this year but it took 11 minutes for me i did it today specifically so that i could see how long it would take most of it is a multiple choice um option and then i did write in some suggestions so that probably is what took it a little bit longer but it really isn't very lengthy and it is anonymous so we don't know and what you wrote just right so okay any other questions no okay thank you

055so much um now we have an update on school safety which will be led by our director of security and emergency management mr joseph trupoto okay good evening thank you well since my hiring i am happy to say that i have been able to visit every school and i have met every principal everything that i have seen in the district thus far has been extremely positive the superintendent the assistant superintendents administration and safety are all working side by side on the same page and with the same mission they are wholeheartedly striving to provide student achievement the safest learning environment possible i have recently reviewed the safety orders from the town of woodbury and the monroe monroe police departments and myself along with mr cahill are documenting and evaluating the safety department processes some of these

056processes include sign in timesheet vouchers scheduling and staffing district safety there is a school resource officer in every school with two assigned to the high school on occasion we have 11 permanent safety officers with 32 subs we are in the process of hiring five new permanent safety officers and the process to hire additional suitable subs is ongoing we have posted the position and are presently in the process of hiring an administrative assistant for the safety department and the district is in the process of transitioning from the analog handheld radios to digital we expect to purchase and receive approximately 200 radios this spring or early summer in the high school interim principal lori hawk in her administration has made some policy changes and have advised the students of their expectations students are now required to have

057visible ids there's no sunglasses or hoodies permitted passes are now required there is no going between cafeterias or eating in the upper track during lunch there is a return to saturday detention passes are now required for all late buses and students are no longer permitted to exit the school building at the closure of school and then re-enter without reason or prior approval the high school has recently hired four new monitors and they are a focused presence in the stairwells halls and bathrooms all of these recent changes have had a significant positive effect on high school with regards to fights from what i've seen there has not been an inordinate number of fights in fact very few at any school any physical altercation at the high school or middle school is well documented and thoroughly investigated

058by the administration they're all subject to out-of-school suspension regarding the closure of bathrooms with the exception of closure due to custodial cleanup or articulated reason i have directed safety to keep all the bathrooms in the high school and middle school open the access wrote evaluation of the access road and the review of the safest process by which parents can drop off and pick up students is ongoing the lower lot has an average of approximately 110 cars dropping off in the morning and 65 cars pick up in the afternoon each day the safest solution is to prohibit student pedestrians on the access road until after the buses have departed and all parents have completed the pickup from the lower parking lot which would be at approximately 2 15 in the afternoon moving forward some future considerations

059structurally the high school middle school and north main elementary school have separate vestibules with building and grounds we are evaluating the possibilities to expand that safety feature to other schools i have spoken to brian foley of foley security solutions i'm asking for some additional specialized training for our safety officers and he is drawing up proposals we are evaluating the locks on all of the doors to the rooms inside of our schools ideally they should all be able to be locked from the inside of that room we are reconvening discussions regarding the installation of bullet resistant security film such as armored ones 23 mill we would be doing that to the district's schools windows and class doors we are also revisiting the installation of vape detection units and the high school and middle school bathrooms would

060need approximately 14 for each school and lastly i have spoken to chief watson about having the school used by our local area police departments for some after-school active shooter training thank you thank you questions thank you i'm sorry are you leaving already i didn't know i know this is your first time but um okay so i have the first question as long as everybody is okay with that just because i have it fresh in my mind for you is and i i appreciate all of the work that you put into it i'm sure the community will as well i know this has been a hot topic here at board meetings of parents getting up and speaking so we appreciate the update i'm going to ask the question specifically for the access road i did hear

061you say that it is ongoing and you are assessing it can you just repeat that you're you're suggesting at this point to prohibit pedestrian access to that road what i'm suggesting is when school is released you have approximately 65 cars on the access road coming from central valley elementary to go into the lower lot there is also seniors in that lower lot exiting and making a right correct the buses leave the parking lot from the main and they come down having the students on that access road with no shoulder particularly now when there's snow and they can't walk on the grass is extremely precarious the buses have to slow down cars stop you also have students walking down the access road jumping into a vehicle midway in line and the parent then decides to make

062a k which again holds up the buses and holds up other traffic so for a safety reason i think prohibiting the students as pedestrians until after the buses depart and after all of the traffic from the lower lot that's the parents picking up their students is prohibited there's the best way of action okay so when do you anticipate that that will be an effect well that that's something that we've been discussing on doing and that would have you know obviously by team myself uh principal lori hawk and mr cahill that decision would be made and has there been any discussion about going back and again i know that you're new so pre-covered this was not the arrangement that was that was made for pick up and drop off so this has been a since covid

063thing has there been any discussion to going back to the system that was in place pre-covered there's there's been two couple discussions uh one to go back to pre-covet and as as i believe again that was before my time but the vehicles would come up the access road drive in go through the lower lot and then come up and stop at the uh at the entrance to where the buses release we actually used to enter from the main entrance of the high school similar to what you're saying come down the ramp circle through the through the parking lot and then we would line up on the hill going going straight out you're correct and then whatever stragglers were then circled into the lower lot occasionally there was security down there just to make sure that

064if a senior had to leave the parking lot the parent would leave enough room to get out but the best part about that in in my opinion and we worked you know with mrs tauber with the visitation committee was the installation of the faux sidewalk that is on that area now on that hill so we couldn't put in a permanent sidewalk so the addition of the painted lines was at least something that gave the students and those drivers notice please walk in this area it made it a lot safer than what it had been prior i unfortunately pick my child up quite a bit from the high school i am at my wit's end with that pickup i mean 65 cars i think honestly is a slow day um i witness everything that you're saying

065as far as k turns kids walking down the other day i actually got stuck there because i don't know what happened with the dismissal time but my daughter i and i i have been paying attention to this because i know it's been an issue and that we've it's been brought to us by parents 13 minutes so i did not get my daughter until 2 13. so she gets dismissed it's winter she's standing outside now in the lower lot before they can actually get into the car because for that reason whatever day they dismissed all the buses before they let some of us parents get in so that's an issue in previous times what used to happen was if my student got out of the building by 202 and they managed to get into my car

066we safely exited the parking lot by 207 roughly and security would know this better than me but roughly by 207 they shut the lot this is pre-covered they would shut the lot by 207 and then you'd have to wait for the buses to leave and as a parent you knew that if you didn't get out of here by 207 you were waiting until probably at least you know 212 to 13. never were parents allowed on the access road it was our understanding as a board that that was never the intention it was only to be used for in-district personnel that's what i was going to say right i think the term is not pre-covered it's pre-access road because that seems like the system was working for pickup and drop off pre-access road and it was

067the board's understanding that the access road was going to be for internal use only for buses we we pivoted because of covid to allow parent pick up and drop off but now it seems to be that that's now considered the new norm and it's creating a lot of chaos and with regards to the middle school we stage all of the vehicles that are picking up students from the middle school at the high school parking lot after the buses are dismissed we allow the middle school parents to come pick up their students that works out perfectly yeah could be pains about that that could be another scenario for the high school where we would stage the high school parents at the middle school the buses not are not returned yet staged all the vehicles at the

068middle school right there and then when it's safe and the buses have left then have the parents from the middle stage vehicles come and pick up the students at the high school i think my concern is that it just seems to be a mixed message for the community that it's no trespassing except when we say you can trespass you can pick up you could drop off you can come during the day to pick up your child if it's midday but you can't trespass so i think we need to make a decision as to are we going back to the original intention of that access road or are we going to continue in this way because the drop off in the morning is amazing the pickup is atrocious it's a pickup i again i haven't had

069any issues or had any complaints from parents in regards to the middle school drop off or pick up or the high school drop off in the morning that seems to work very seamlessly i think the real struggle and again for me aside from as a parent i mean my daughter you know they're old enough to know not to walk into but it is it is a hazard i mean today i picked up again there's parents that were not going all the way around the circle you're getting into the car you're parking i try to park to say okay maybe that's easier for her to walk across but you've got kids all over the lower lot plus you now have them using that access road and i've been saying this for months that i knew that

070once the snow came what were the kids going to do they walk in the road so now you have kids walking in the access road cars lined up on the access road and here comes the bus down the access road i mean that it's just i i just don't think it's acceptable at this point so i'm hopeful that it's going to be rectified sooner rather than later because i think it's been ongoing now for several months so okay yeah the only thing i would add at this point is is joe and i have had a lot of discussions about the various scenarios that being one of the scenarios a return to the you know the old method um we've talked about the pros and cons of each and it's it's one of those things where

071um i think the community has got accustomed to to using the access road so there'll be some unhappiness probably in some growing pains if we revert back to the old way but that was certainly on the table and it's something we're certainly going to you know consider when we make the final decision which will be soon i think ultimately it comes down to the safety i mean i don't disagree and that it's going to be a change especially if you are a new parent to the high school you have no idea what i'm even talking about my description that i probably gave you means nothing because you've never experienced it so i can certainly appreciate that but i think it genuinely comes down to the safety aspect years ago when the faux sidewalk was put

072in that was because we were getting complaints in regards to safety on the hill so buildings and grounds and the visitation committee was able to come up with that because we couldn't install a permanent sidewalk for the students again based out of safety so i just think at this point that should be the number one issue safety health and safety is always the number one issue so any other questions i just got a question about the um i think i heard you say the middle school bathrooms and the high school bathrooms you guys are reconsidering getting vaping instruments to i guess detect vaping i'm just wondering uh when you think that the process may be completed um there was a somewhat of a study done i read it that they were looking at the halo

073fly sense and then eventually we were conferring with ils and they had spoken about honeywell having the latest and greatest technology which was going to far surpass them i believe i wasn't here for the final decision of why it was put on hold but i spoke today with mr cahill and i did get an email from mr hashler about revisiting it and that's what we'll be doing okay great something we need we initially didn't go because the the the technology was not mature now we are hearing that that the technology has a little bit mature so we will not go full blown will deem as a pilot test it first make sure that that meeting the expectation maybe in one or two location um but i don't have exact timeline to say then we will

074do it we'll try to probably do it between now and summer but that will be a small pilot to see what is the feasibility of technology first and then also what process we need to put it in place so when we go on a little bit more scale then we are ready to do that are these vaping sensors networked in some sort of way where it goes off silently alert security and then they would attend to the to the restroom to investigate what would be going on i i would mr barger technology so that the technology is now there so then then if the kids try to to temper the device um it will alert the uh the security uh but again it's we need to make sure i mean i don't mean tamper i

075mean it kids in there vaping is you know my goal would be for them to essentially get caught and realize not to vape anymore all right we all know the the issue is that yeah and i think i think it depends on what processes we put it in so so that's why i'm saying that we will try first the pilot understand the technology a little bit better there are technologies available now to do that and it's certainly it's it's better than two three four years before but there are always once we put it in our network make sure that how it behaves within our network just because another school has doesn't mean that it might work better in our school district as well so it's more to come um i would just deem as a

076small scale very small scale pilot so that we it allows us to understand a little bit more and if it's successful then we'll be happy to expand it a quick question so the technology is uh detection of vaping in the bathroom what is the response time of the security to that second again i think it's it's developing those processes right um so i don't want to to say more because we are not there in terms of sharing that i would rather just do some more homework and then study a little bit and then come as a pilot because we don't want to set up a false expectation and i think that's right that way the pilot will allow you to develop what those procedures are going to be rather than having i mean i don't

077know how many bathrooms are in middle school in the high school having sensors in every single bathroom and then you know not having a full system in place to be able to effectively respond one of the major issue that the schools implemented three four years before was exactly what you're saying um dr koifman is they the alarm goes on they don't have anybody monitoring to go there so we just want to make sure that before we do anything at bigger scale let's test it first on a small scale set up the procedure in place first and set the expectation for all the stakeholders including the students administrators the security department and then we'll open it up for a little bit bigger scale i have another question you mentioned the vestibules um so that that was

078born out of a visitation with the high school and i just wanted to know if there's any feedback that you're getting regarding the efficacy of changing over to the man trap at the high school how is that going that they my observations of having the vestibule there and then additionally with the booth they both have the computers with the cameras from the school in the vestibule anybody that comes in with the visitors they can't get through the second shed of doors until they they've already already signed in they've already been run through the raptor system which is the safest way to do it and then we call when the visitors come in they stay in that vest they stay between the doors and then the their stud the student or their child whatever comes to

079meet them and then they leave they never actually enter the school itself so that's the safest way and if they do enter there they're run through the raptor and there's a record of them exiting as well what is what's in place what mechanism exists to if they enter there's a we escort if they when they're in between the doors if they do enter the school they're escorted to the guidance suite or something wherever they were having to go into the schools how do they how do you know when they leave most schools that i visited they take a form of id when you enter and then you're forced to stop to get it we have discussed going to a credential exchanged which would uh basically mean instead of putting the uh you would take the

080raptor comes out that got a slip of paper there's an adhesive you would put it on your jacket or whatever uh we would at that point stop taking the plait the paper off the stickiness off put it into a badge like this would say a fluorescent color that person would have their visitor patch in the in this in the lanyard the rip away lanyard and we would take their license and put it in the lob lock box in that little vestibule there when they would leave they would obviously want their license back they would come get their license back and then we would take the visitor pass that would be a potential exchange are you considering that at this time yeah we we spoke about i mentioned to mr cahill it was one of the

081things that we were looking at i didn't put it on my list but we were looking at it do that okay thank you so much thank you next we have an overview of special education and pupil personnel services which is going to be presented by um eric yulau and miss karen jordan oh excuse me and miss christine ricker she is nightly okay i'm sorry mrs ricker is not here so just mr yulao and mrs jordan and dr hassler and dr hassler thank you i'm joined by eric you low and karen jordan there are directors of special education unfortunately mrs ricker is home ill however she is she's watching us live streaming i had to leave my cell phone at my at the table because she's going to text me about all the mistakes that i'm

082going to be making during this presentation so say this don't say that so i had to leave my cell phone over there so thank you very much to the board of ed for the opportunity to be able to speak to you this evening it's been a few years since we've had the opportunity to be able to speak to the board we call this updates on special education and people personnel services however it's really going to be an overview tonight just to kind of explain to you the organization of the departments the roles that each of the staff members have the services that they they provide within their their specific areas so we're we're going to start with just a general kind of overview first of our directors of special education where their responsibilities basically are

083the oversight of in-district students with response responsibilities but i'm sorry students with disabilities what we mean by in district are students who have been diagnosed with a disability who have an iep an individual education program and that program based upon that iep places them to receive services within the boundaries of our school district within our seven schools the responsibilities include chairing meetings which are initial csc meetings annual reviews and special csc meetings they also oversee classified new entrants when a new entrant comes into the school district and they have an iep they're responsible for the placement of the school district again if they receive in-district services the director of people personnel overseas classified new entrants who receive placements outside of the school district which i'll talk more about in a minute they also conduct manifestation

084determination meetings manifestation determination meetings are the result of if a student is suspended for a certain period of time they're required to have a meeting to determine if um some of the challenges the student is experiencing are manifestations of their disabilities they also oversee the management of section 504 is actually not covered by the individual with disabilities education act idea it's actually a civil right law which basically says that if a student has some sort of condition or disability that impacts them that's not necessarily covered by idea they do have the ability to be able to receive some services and we have students in the school district who have planned they're called 504 plans within the school district they receive receipt thank you they receive reasonable accommodations correct um they also oversee staffing and evaluations

085in the case of the directors of special education that's typically in the form of the special education teachers within the school district so in the event that a a special ed teacher position opens up they're involved in the hiring process they're also involved in the evaluation process of those staff and conducting observations they oversee professional development for example you know many many of our special ed teachers are trained in orton gillingham so they would oversee and facilitate the training in orton gillingham reading training the oversee curriculum and program development for example last year the board of education approved a program for our 812 and 1212 classes which was the mcgraw-hill science research associates program and they facilitated the review process of that program and ultimately the recommendation to the board of education along with myself

086they oversee the budgeting of their various departments and the the allocation of various grant funding they also oversee the extended school year services that some of our students receive it's it's commonly referred to as summer crusaders the summer crusaders program and they also see state reporting and and data collection that is sent up to the state education department beyond that those are sort of responsibilities that the two of them sort of share collectively pre-k through grade 12 plus however they each also have certain nuances within their roles within the school district and they're going to talk a little bit about that now so i'll start with the committee on preschool special education the interesting thing about preschool is while we hold the meetings and the district makes the recommendations for students in preschool orange county

087department of health handles the fiscal responsibilities the ultimate responsibility for implementing those ieps does fall on the district so there are times where monroe-woodbury will have to provide a staff person for a preschool student i'll i'll give one example we have a student who needed a nurse on a bus this year and orange county department of health was unable to find a nurse to be with that student ultimately we used a monroe woodberry nurse to ride the bus with the student so that's just one example we have a cpsc chairperson who chairs meetings and writes ieps monroe-woodbury staff observe and evaluate entering kindergartners with ieps our staff write reports for these students they sit on the transition meetings for these students as we develop ieps for their kindergarten year for school age we oversee all

088students with ieps grades k through five and i'd say the majority of this involves classified students new entrants so students coming into this district with ieps as they move in recommending and arranging for evaluations of students and whether that's students who we think need ieps or who currently have ieps chairing meetings and then developing ieps similar similar to what mr yulaw has shared we do do all those processes at the secondary level in addition to what happens at the elementary level at the secondary level we are also responsible for transition planning so through the office of special education and through the office uh from the director of pupil personnel we oversee transition planning for our students who will be taking level one and level two assessments and these assessments are really strength based assessments for

089post-secondary outcomes for our students with disabilities we also oversee the process of access vr which is adult career and continuing education services vocational rehabilitation and opwdd with which is office of people with developmental disability so our roles and responsibilities is getting all this information out to the appropriate families in terms of which services would be appropriate for post-secondary planning from the office of secondary special education in the office of pupil personnel we track student completion with the graduation pathways which may include the cdos which is career development occupational studies certificate along with either a local regents or advanced regions diploma and students who matriculate at age 21 with a skills achievement commencement credential so similar to the directors of special education the the director of people personnel services also oversees a variety of items however

090her caseload of students are students with disabilities that are in out of district placements sometimes we have students who have a disability where the programs and services that we provide within the school district don't meet the needs of that particular student and the committee on special education makes a recommendation for them to attend and out of district placement so all of the students that attend out of district placements as recommended by the csc are overseen by the director of of pps however a lot of her responsibilities are similar to the directors of special education she chairs their annual reviews their initial reviews and all of their special csc meetings she also facilitates the placement of students in and out of district placements if they come in with an iep if their new entrant and they

091come in with an iep that recommends and out of district placement she facilitates that she oversees the evaluations of those students as well as any manifestation meetings that the students might might need because of things that may happen in their placements she also oversees staffing and evaluations however the the staff that the director of pps oversees are predominantly the related service providers as i have listed in a later bullet basically the the related service providers include the occupational therapists the physical therapists the speech staff social workers school psychologists the counseling staff the reason why the director of pps oversees those individuals is because not only even though many of them have building assignments within the school district they also have out of district responsibilities as well for example conducting evaluations um case management of out

092of district students so in addition to you know a school psychologist having a caseload of students within the school district they also have a certain number of students that that they track in and out of district settings the director of pps also oversees budgeting again grants the system to track and account for children you may have heard in in various budget presentations stacking that's the state reporting system for tracking student aid the the director of pps oversees tuition because you know that the school district has to pay tuition costs for students that attend out of district settings we also have the ability to be able to for staff that are capable of building for medicaid and medicare they they the director of pps also oversees that direct the director of pps also oversees district of

093location students where basically students who reside in other school districts but attend various non-public schools within the school district are also entitled to special education services and i'll talk a little bit more about that in a later slide the director pps also oversees home instruction home instruction is a service that students receive for a variety of different reasons if a student is on a long-term suspension they're entitled to continue to receive instruction they get home instruction if a student for medical reasons um you know is has a surgery or some sort of condition that that prevents them from coming to school they they are entitled to home instruction students that are awaiting and out of disreplacement sometimes a student you know because of a special meeting or an annual review has a changes in program

094placement and you know that we have to send out their packet of information and evaluations to various programs the student is still entitled to uh instruction so the time from when they're in the in-district placement to when they go to the out of district placement they're entitled to home instruction students that also are in temporary settings outside of the school district for various types of of either behavioral or emotional issues and might be transitioning back into the school district may be going on home instruction at times the the director of ppl pps also oversees the submission and certification of state reporting finally the the director pps also oversees something called iesp's or individualized education service programs basically what that means is we also have a number of students in the school district who who are

095being home schooled which is different than home instruction meaning they actually receive their education not by the school district but by the parent at home however if the student has a disability they are still entitled to certain services and the school district is still responsible for maintaining what's called an individualized education service program so that way in the event that the parent decides that they're going to re-enroll their child back into the school district there is an iesp that would then transition back into an iep if the student re-enrolled within the school district and again the director of pps oversees those as well so the next thing that we want to talk to you a little bit about is is sort of the the basic process of either students that get referred to the csc

096or the the the tracking and the annual uh evaluation of students who are currently identified as having a disability so mr ula is going to start with that oh sir so the referral process really begins with our child find obligations where we are tasked with identifying locating and evaluating students in need of special education students are referred to us in writing typically by the parent or guardian or the building principal we then begin an initial evaluation by a multi-disciplinary team we recommend additional evals as needed or warranted parents are welcome to submit reports from their specialists for consideration by the committee cse meetings are held to review all the data and to make determinations as to eligibility and if eligible to develop an iep for eligibility a child must have a disability that adversely interferes

097with the education with their educational progress as a result of the disability the child must be in need of special edu special education instruction and or related services um and and lastly they must fit into one of the 13 eligibility categories as defined by new york state i'm not going to read them all but they're they're there for you to see and basically every student within iep is categorized into one of these 13 areas on their iep they they either are autistic deaf and blind so on and so forth and some are obviously more common than others some are considered low incident classifications so as we mentioned there are a number of different types of csc meetings that happen in the school district um and so mr jordan is going to speak a little bit

098about the various types of csc meetings and and what that entails there are numerous types of cse meetings that take place during the course of the year what i think is important is that our offices do work 12 months a year every single day to hold these meetings to get these meetings ready and to keep within the compliance of the mandates from new york state and the federal government when we speak about the initial transfer meetings these are for students who are classified that have moved into monroe woodbury with an existing iep there is a distinct difference between ieps that come in from new york state that use the front line management system from the new york city ieps or out of out of state ieps even though new york city is a new york

099state school district unfortunately because they don't use the same system when we receive their ieps we have to manually enter in every single word that comes in from their iep from the student's iep in addition the same process takes place for the out-of-state ieps students that enter monroe-woodbury from out of state all need to we need to review all of their records and from new york state we review all the records all of the iep that came in and all the evaluations so this um takes us to initial referrals the principal or parent request for a referral to the committee on special education to the directors at their respective levels it is incumbent for each director to speak with the parent and or team as to their concerns and where whether and where either the

100parent or the school-based team suspects a disability each director reviews information pertaining to the referral and recommends evaluations for the requested review and reevaluation process requested reviews happen for a multitude of reasons a student is doing really well in their classes and we want to consider the least restrictive environment so we come together to discuss what the next program will be or a student is struggling academically or socially emotionally and we come together to discuss how to best support that student all requested reviews are chaired by the three directors the reevaluation reviews every three years students are reevaluated to determine continued eligibility or to consider declassification in many instances additional evaluations are recommended throughout the year to students that need changing for example a student may have met all their speech and language goals and

101the speech and language pathologist wants to reassess how the student is doing through a standardized assessment this is part of the reevaluation process many of these meetings are chaired by the three directors and many are reviewed during the annual review time annual review the purpose of the annual reviews is to discuss students yearly progress update their present levels of functioning and to discuss progress as soon as annual reviews are completed in june the planning for annual reviews for the following year starts taking place during july annual reviews begin in january and run through june the directors school psychologists all chair these annual review meetings and then ultimately the iep is a draft iep that is recommended to the board of education and every single board of education meeting at the usually it's at the tail

102end of the meeting there is a request for board of education approval by the committee on special education preschool special education or the committee on medical education for the board to ultimately and all of those all of those approvals are from these various meetings whether it's transitioning in a new iep an initial referral of a student being initially classified or a requested review that or an annual review for a student who was previously classified within the school district so this next slide is is something that on an annual basis we have conversations about because typically when we do our budget presentation there are conversations about um tuition costs and and what is the responsibility of the school district and what is the responsibility of the school district that ultimately we bill other um we built

103outside agencies for so i'm going to do my best to try to kind of unpack this sort of nebulous situation basically we have students that reside within the boundaries of monterey berry who are referred to as district of residence students they are students who are basically enrolled within monitor woodbury everybody who lives within the boundaries of the school district that includes students that are placed by the committee of special education in district and students that are placed in by the committee of special education outside of the school district it is our responsibility to provide special education to those students however there is there are also districts of resident students who attend non-public schools both inside and out of mono woodbury for example we have non-public schools uh there are there's st paul's there's tevine there's

104sherry torre there's banaya well within the boundaries of the school district where students from monar woodbury attend those schools we also have students that are district of resident students who attend non-public schools outside of the school district that even though they attend a school district outside the boundaries of monterey woodbury it's still the responsibility of monitor woodbury to be able to provide services to those students those students are considered district of location students outside of the school district similarly the non-public schools that may have modern woodbury students within our boundaries also have students from outside the school district that may come into the school district and are educated in those non-public schools those are called district of location students at those same schools saint paul's tavernay sherry torre bonnie well a student may attend st

105paul's but live in the washingtonville washingtonville school district because those schools are within the boundaries of the school district it's the school district's responsibility to provide services to students who have an iep who attend those schools however the difference with district of location students are if they are not residents of monar woodbury but we provide services within the school district we then build back the district of residence that those students come to monterey woodbury from how did i deal with that okay um and and again the benefit is that typically these conversations happen when we do our budget presentation because of the complexity and inevitably the the special education portion of the budget presentation kind of becomes questions about special education not necessarily related to the budget so we wanted to make sure that we

106included that in the presentation to give the board the opportunity to ask questions that you may be wondering or about this certainly or or anything else not having it linked to you know presentations that we would do later on thank you questions i'll start okay i always start so i'm going back to when we talked about the preschool special education piece yup i'm sorry mr eula can you just repeat that when the student has so orange county will pay for that provider or we pay for that provider because it's our student orange county fiscal responsibility the recommendations that we make up until kindergarten up until kindergarten okay however when orange county is unable to provide like that example i gave with the nurse there correct in times where we've had to step up and do

107it because okay complying with that iep is our responsibility okay so then in that situation for instance the school nurse the person that's on the bus is that then considered our employee that we are then paying for that individual it is okay we are looking now it was never really a problem the way it's becoming now with staffing shortages but one of the things we're looking at now is applying to orange county to be one of their vendors so when we're in a situation like this we would only do it when we need to but then we could at least build them back okay right get some reimbursement for this nurse okay um so we actually there's an application sitting on my desk for us to move in that direction okay and for i'm sorry

108one more and for those preschool children because again now i know we have an in-house upk program albeit one of them is located at little pals if you if we have a student that is in one of those classes are they then eligible to have in-district services for instance if they receive speech is that something that they would then receive at that location or no right now at this time there's actually regulations about having it occurring within the boundaries of the school day so it does not happen within the the nine to two day that the students receive it's outside the boundaries of the school day so then it could be at their home let's say correct okay okay i have a question best practice is that it be done during the school day correct

109so so that's the first attempt for us it was our first year doing it correct right over here we were nervous about having county providers coming into our buildings okay so i think for year one we wanted to sort of get our toes wet first and i i do um recall elsie saying that toward the end of year one we're all gonna sort of reflect on how it went what can we do differently going into year two and this was definitely one of the pieces that caitlin and i wanted to discuss okay all right thank you i have a question yeah and i totally understand if you don't have this information readily available but just in case you do and a try uh what percentage of our special needs students who are coming to school

110in district not not being sent to boces or somewhere else would um our ict versus self-contained i'm going to have to get that back to you okay thank you i i didn't think i i i didn't i i was confident and then and then you added a couple of other letters and i'm gonna have to get i'm gonna i'm gonna have to get you that okay if you count all of them yep then could you still need time yeah i i would i would need to do that yes um the data that you're collecting for the special um special ed students is that being also put into the central or some of it being put into the central data repository 100 yes good any other questions okay so how often are the services we offer

111revisited to either add evolve or remove something we offer based on new information that comes out in the academic community i need and i need to repeat that please so how often are services that we offer revisited to either add remove or evolve what we're doing okay so at a minimum they're revisited annually they they get they they have an annual review every single year sometimes um i mean there's many different scenarios that can exist but sometimes if a student is changing a program from program a to program b within the school district they might call for a requested review so they might say okay the student is you know doing well and in the in the program that they're in we're going to try them in a lesser restrictive setting they would place them

112in that setting and they might have a requested review for that student in say october to kind of revisit how's it going are things going well do we need to tweak things and and everything else i'm sorry i don't think i don't mean at the child level but at the at the district level like regarding what we offer what kind of services we offer how often the services that we offer within the school district yes annually ev every single every single year i i get the child may change for yeah okay okay yeah absolutely we we examine our programs annually are we able to make decisions or does it have to happen at the state level passed down to us like can we do things that are specific to our districts we we have the

113ability to be able to do that within the school district yep thank um excuse me um piggyback on yours um if if a child needs a service that we don't have and it comes up let's say a kid moves into our district who needs it we have to provide it sure and and it kind of depends again that there's i mean there's many many many different layers to that whether it's something that can even potentially be offered within the school district or is that one of the considerations that we have to outsource correct right yep yep yep thank you any other questions okay thank you so much thank you and we're sorry we missed you miss ricker yeah i'm gonna go back to 50 text messages of you should have said this yeah i know

114i'm sorry are we going to leave this on you want me to turn this off i don't think we need it any longer i don't leave it on minimizing i'll just minimize it no no presentation oh man okay moving on we are going to get a motion to approve our 2022-2023 student calendar i have a motion motion second all those in favor hi hi can i just say a couple of things about this year's calendar coming up is a little bit different normally we usually have um about 187 days that we plan if you look at the calendar this year there's there's only 184 days i'm correct there's only 184 days and the reason that we did that was because there's certain holidays that we have to give and so it sort of shortened our

115schedule but what we did note on our calendar is if we use the four days that we have technically allotted for snow we would then go to remote instruction so it's going to be really important next year that we continue to use our chromebooks because if we need to we will then go to remote instruction which is allowable by the state now okay thank you very much approval of the minutes may i have a motion to approve the minutes from the january 12 2022 board meeting second all those in favor hi appointment of the annual art purchase committee this is a committee that is put together every year and works in collaboration with the high school art department this year the members that will be part of this committee are mrs suzanne donahue mr jamal

116evans and mrs dawn tower so may i have a motion to appoint them for the art purchase committee second all those in favor aye aye aye thank you second reading of the policy manual update this is the second reading this evening of policy number 5630 facilities inspection operation and maintenance may i have a motion promotion second second all those in favor aye aye update on committee reports um i'll go first for policy we have not yet met we actually had to reschedule a meeting that we have so our next meeting is scheduled for march 1st i believe correct um dawn for visitation our visitation was at pine tree a few weeks ago and everything looks good over there other than obviously some of the capital projects that mr cahill has been speaking about but we

117did get a chance to see the beautiful new library and uh looks great so thank you for having us and the oxford update is uh so typically this time of year we are away at a conference mrs mccleary and myself usually attend as the representatives the first day is the conference with nisba and the second day is a lobby day so this year it's virtual we had some online conference webinars and then tomorrow starts our meetings with our uh assemblymen and and senators so it will go this week and next week so we'll give an update and i think mr cahill gave us some some good talking points of things that we're looking and hoping for from our local government officials so we'll keep you posted thank you don for facilities and audit um so

118for facilities um patrick mentioned in his earlier presentation the building condition report which will be uploaded shortly and for audit i think under under business we're going to be approving the internal auditors tonight um well compliment what i was really surprised at the quality of uh of companies that bid on the internal audit the uh the company that he selected is the same company that went in and did all of the audit on the roslyn issue and they came up from long island so it's his team did a really good job i thought all three were excellent the the three finalists but it was really really good uh very impressive thank you very much um reports by student board representative omer thank you um as most of you might know we have the new interim

119principal at the high school miss hawk um i just wanted to say that as i've noticed that the school is adjusting well progress is coming in slowly but surely and i'm actually very happy to see all the how the school is changing for the better i'm sure that all the students and staff can see that as well the hallways also have been getting a lot less crowded during lunch periods and i know how miss hawk implemented the having what's called like the bathroom like the hallways in between where the gym shut down and having students go to their respected lunchrooms um bathrooms bathroom situation has also improved immensely since since everything's been brought back together i also had a note about the the service exit but i guess we did mention that earlier but about

120the k turns and everything with the students i did i spoke with the middle school i spoke with the the student council and they addressed some concerns that i would just like to mention um i did have concern about the um the bathrooms and monitors in the middle school bathrooms what i'm what i've been told is that there are no monitors or anyone checking the bathrooms and by the end of the day they usually get closed because of destruction of property or just paper towels just all over the floor i was also found out that there's also concern with feminine products in both the middle school and the high school bathroom that they are not receiving enough and sometimes they're just out of out of use but we also had a concern the bullying concern

121in the middle school which i also will like to address and bring up in another meeting with the middle school and i just wanted to encourage all the students to please wear their ids and their masks throughout the hallway because it just makes everything a lot easier to identify you and i know it seems like a struggle but everyone has their id and it'll just make this school a lot safer yeah thank you thank you very much uh matt for personnel uh good evening there are a number of items listed under per it's a long agenda for personnel tonight i just want to point out a few things before i ask for approval um we have nine people who are retiring on this list tonight they have a combined total of 225 years of service

122just to the monroe woodbury central school district which is a lot of years and they are people who we will try to replace but are irreplaceable at the same time so jenn decker's been an elementary teacher at north main um for for years and years and is awesome marianne vandermark is not just a math teacher but also the middle school math department chair as many of you know pat o'keefe was a change of career teacher came to us you know after he had already started a different career and we are incredibly fortunate to have had him nancy flanagan is not just a bio teacher she also oversees our science research program and our mentor program for our new teachers marianne castelnik is a facts teacher and is really the epitome of everything that we hope

123for in all of our teachers she's somebody who connects incredibly well with kids she's very active in a number of different clubs and activities and she's she's wonderful mrs ackerman wendy ackerman is on our teacher who is really specialized in terms of graphic design and she has a niche talent that is is going to be hard to replace and we will do our best mrs kolajeski is a spanish teacher and as you know spanish is always a hard subject to to find a new teacher but she's been here for over 20 years susan hughes is a teaching assistant who's been a really important part of our middle school special education department and those teachers there are happy for her but very sad and then just today we got notice for gino iozino who is a

124long time not just if he's a teacher at the middle school he was a student here i don't want to say how many years ago because he might be a little embarrassed but a good number of years ago and so you're talking about trying to not just replace teachers but you know really pillars of of of schools that they've been a part of i also want to just welcome a number of people who will be appointed as far as classified appointments and certified appointments and we also have one special appointment who is a new technology teacher who will be located at the at the middle school um and that's really it so with that i ask for approval for the items listed under personnel motion second all those in favor hi hi thank you very

125much thank you um patrick for business and financial yes so i would respectfully request the approval of the items listed under the business and financial section of the agenda and i just wanted to point point thank um uh the olsen family for a donation of two musical instruments uh trombone and bundy clearance thank you may have a motion check close in favor bye they have a motion to approve the committees on special education 17.1 through 17.4 motion second all those in favor aye aye reports by board and central office sergei um just wanted to wish everybody a happy week and hope that we are in a decline of the pandemic and hopefully we can resolve all of our differences in regards to approaching this pandemic i also would like to congratulate monroewoodbury swim and diving

126team on winning six consecutive counties which is pretty impressive and have a great day thank you dawn i just want to thank you know the present for the presentations from mrs rodriquez and dr houser and mrs jordan and mr yulo and mrs ricker who couldn't be here i knew a lot of work went into that and i appreciate all the details uh welcome to the new hires good luck to the retirees thank you to all the speakers from the community that came out to address us we appreciate your feedback and hope everyone has a good night thank you don yeah i'm i'm really impressed with how the goals are lining up i think the adjustments that are being made are going to benefit our students i think they also overlay on some of the um

127the people who spoke i think it addresses a lot of the issues that they brought up so it's it's very impressive the way that's coming together thank you suzanne i'd like to thank everyone for their updates and presentations i'd also like to congratulate the newly retired wealthy future retirees and the newly appointed staff and as always thank you to the high school for hosting us again especially to the custodial staff and have a good evening thank you omar um i just want to say that i'm happy to see how much progress we've made in the past couple weeks and looking forward to rest good school year thank you thank you lisa i just want to wish the retirees uh good luck in the next chapter and everybody have a good evening thank you berghof so

128today i want to share some feedback on the website updates that way that we have sent out the survey so as mrs rodriguez mentioned earlier in 2018 when we first administer our strategic plan survey based on the feedback of the all the stakeholders who took the survey we formed four four task forces one of the task force was the communication task force and based on the various members involved in the communication task force came the recommendation of looking into how do we actually create a little bit better website and not just the website but create a platform that allows us to update the information very quickly but very effectively and that came from that conversation came the the thought process of let's look into the different vendors and then let's create a new website so

129really thank you to the three chairs uh carol prudence and ms tauber who were cheering basically this process uh in the early stage on december 3rd 2021 we went live on our new website and as the new as anything new initiative comes up with some adjustment some changes in the process and the goal to create this survey was seeking a feedback from the community to tell us like what do you think about the website what do you think about the web app so and and and we have about close to 600 folks who took the survey so thank you to them to take a time and some of the the comments that we received is some of the main events that some of the main reasons that people go and and look at our websites

130calendars or events school closing school specific information some of the best thing that we folks like about our website is the navigation site menu and events calendar not all is rosy and good some of the constructive criticism we received or some of the staff resource staff directory breakfast menu or lunch menu adjustment student requests some of the kids some of the students requested the google classroom link to be adjusted the student resourcing resources links to be adjusted high school had some changes in the letter day some of the site navigation menu but i'm happy to say that all you just spent thanks to mainly prudence and carol to do that part and then that has been updated some of our next steps that we are looking is continuously tweaking the website again this is a

131work in progress it's every day it's something new that not only we learn but also we get better into doing that process updating the social media i'm sure you have noticed some of the stories it's been incredibly easier now instead of updating every single platform one at a time now they have a power at their fingertips to update this various platforms within one or two clicks we are expanding we are planning to expand the how-to video section to provide some instructional tools and additional issues that are identified um ongoing promotion of the mobile app so far we have about 1131 folks downloaded the mobile app um 194 android um app and uh 937 ipad ios app that's another interesting data point for us some of the follow-up survey will be shared with the student staff

132and families in the upcoming months but again thank you big thank you to the communication task for members but special thank you to carol and prudence thank you very much eric so certainly what everybody else said welcome to the new staff congratulations to all of our retirees i wish you all the best um specifically i'd like to congratulate mrs kolajeski the spanish teacher that's retiring she was my spanish teacher and i wish her all the best in her retirement because that was probably not a very easy year for her so um i wish her the best uh i agree with dr kueffman congratulations to the swim and diving team for um winning oc the ocia championship i i believe that we have a member of that team sitting up here on the stage congratulations to

133omer because i think he played second right at the diving competition so congratulations to omer yay i should know i i i believe modern woodbury took first second and third in that tournament so in diving specifically so congratulations that was awesome thank you very much to eric you loud to karen jordan to christine ricker for their guidance support and information and putting together that presentation um it's as you can see it's a a very very nebulous um field within the school district and departments within the school district and their oversight is very much appreciated so thank you finally i i sent an update to the board of ed about uh our english nine honors and our global nine honors courses um and they asked that i share the the update to the community so this

134this year the the 21 22 school year we began open enrollment in our english 9h and global 9 age courses previously students needed to have at least a 92 average in order to be considered for those courses however this year students were given the opportunity through open enrollment who had even below a 92 average the ability to challenge themselves within these courses however one of the requirements was also that students needed to have to maintain an 85 average that 85 average is still in place however rather than just simply taking students out what we've instituted is a review process where if a student is is carrying an average that's below that 85 threshold a review process will sit down with the student and and examine you know what's going on in terms of why they're

135below why they're below that mark and determine um you know additional steps that may be needed in order to be able to support that student and and make a determination of whether or not that student is going to remain in the class and we also are planning to continue to roll forward that open enrollment initiative and it's going to be moving forward into the english 10h and english and global 10h classes as well so the open enrollment model is going to be continuing to roll forward into the 22-23 school year have a good night thank you thank you patrick yes so i'd also like to congratulate the new staff on tonight's agenda and thank you to our presenters i thought it was all very clear and uh informative and have a nice evening everyone thank

136you matt uh same thing congrats to everybody i also want to thank the presenters um including joe trupoto who you know it's not easy to say hey look we just hired you six weeks ago now you're going to present in front of the board go so so thank you for that presentation one thing i do want to point out is we are sticking to mrs rodriguez's timeline for the hiring of our our high school principal um this morning all uh parents and students associated with the high school received a survey it's shorter than 11 minutes it should take about two to three minutes but we asked parents to um and and subsequently staff members and students to basically list their their their top three characteristics that they're searching for or looking for in a new

137principle um and then we ask them to highlight the greatest strengths of the of the school and then concerns they have and then if they could ask two questions of the candidate what would they be so i would do encourage people to please please take that um and with that have a wonderful evening thank you very much jamal um thank you for the review of our special education and pps updates i'm proud to see the thorough processes that are actually already in place also thank you for the school safety update i don't think any of us expected to have everything completed by today but i do hope that by exploring all these initiatives in parallel that parents will feel like you know their their children's safety is our number one priority so thank you for

138that and have a good night thank you dan everybody have a good night thank you anthony uh have a good night and uh disregard what the groundhog said a couple of weeks ago i believe we're gonna have an early spring thank you elsie i wanted to just say uh thank you to the presenters to mr chipotle i know that was hard so i i do appreciate you getting up and you know the words of students matter the most and to have a student say that things are moving in the right direction so thank you thank you also to miss hawk because it's a collaborative effort i'm happy to see that because we want to make sure that our students can learn and they can only learn in a safe environment so so thank you again

139i do want to thank miss jordan mr ulau dr hassler christine ricker who couldn't be here i know that this was a lot of work to put this presentation together because what you wanted to do was really to share with the board and the community the extensive work that we do um under the auspices of special education so so thank you um and with that i turn it to you okay madam president thank you so much i i too want to say thank you to the presenters um especially to mr trupoto because i know it was my request that you that you present in such short notice but it was perfect so i appreciate it i know it's been a hot topic for all of us as board members from the community and it's great

140to share good news and i think there are some positive changes that are happening so i think it's really important for us to be able to share that with the community so i appreciate you being willing to sit and take questions so thank you thank you to uh mr yulow and ms jordan and dr hassler and ms ricker who couldn't be here i understand same that it's a lot of work that goes into the presentations same with the goals presentation i agree with don there's been a lot happening behind that and i appreciate all of the updates that we get as board members and i hope the public is appreciating that they're able to actually see what is taking place so thank you for that i wish all of our new hires good luck and

141our retirees the same i also wanted to just make a little announcement i didn't get an opportunity to talk with omar about this otherwise i would have given him to advocate for this but he'll he'll do this in the future but we are going to publicize for our next student board of ed representative by march 1st so omar please share that in your visit to the high school next with the rising seniors um because we are going to go ahead and publicize that for march 1st so they can look for that on our website i do believe there's going to be other initiatives both through you and through ms hawk at the high school that that word will get spread out there i will add that i think one thing that the board were kind

142of coming into this new role as we've had several board representatives which has been fabulous that one of the new things that we had wanted to add last year but unfortunately weren't able to because of timing with covet and things like that is an interview process so we will be instituting that this year as well that hopefully some of the applicants will have an opportunity to actually meet with some of us and be interviewed so that look for that coming up mrs tauber i know mentioned in regards to some of the stuff that we had recently with oxbow which is our orange county school boards association i attended the new york state capitol conference albeit it was virtual but i did attend that conference where there was a lot of information coming out in regards

143to foundation aid equity student and teacher social emotional needs so those are all going to still continue to be a focus coming out of albany school safety is also another big initiative that is happening through that we do have our meetings that will be starting tomorrow with our representatives so dwan will meet as the oxford representative and i will be there as the board president patrick was able to give us some talking points specific to monroe woodbury but we meet with everybody else from the orange county district so they also have some things but we will be bringing forth a good deal of things to our assemblymen which we have um uh mr scufas schmidt and brabanac are the ones that fall within our monroe woodbury district so those are the three people that we

144will be meeting with over the next couple of weeks and with that i think that's it so may i have a motion to adjourn the meeting a second check all those in favor meeting adjourned