Monroe-Woodbury Board of Education Regular Meeting - July 28, 2021

001[Music] good evening call to order the regular meeting of the board of education for july 28 2021 will everyone please rise for the pledge to the flag 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 [Music] mrs tauber is not with us this evening she's joining us remotely she is located at 22 ford court in monroe new york so she will be joining us via online with mr villas also mr cahill is out this evening so he will not be joining us a reading of our mission statement we are committed to academic achievement and success for all students in a safe environment in partnership with families and our community our mission is to

002promote 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 questions and comments this evening from interested citizens we do have a few i will just remind everyone to go ahead and come up to the podium you're entitled to three minutes to speak um we will not respond to what you're stating tonight however at our next meeting which i believe is august 25th um is when you will get a response so let's start with um janet stealth who will be speaking about critical race theory hi thank you very much i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you um so i don't have a lot of time so i'm going to jump into it

003uh critical race theory not doing too well in a lot of areas across the country and um the bottom line is that critical race theory is about division and tearing apart it teaches racism and demands discrimination based on a false narrative pushed by those who capitalize on conjuring up negative emotions triggering mental illness and self-loathing using psychological grooming techniques such as trauma-informed culturally responsive training more like trauma induced by design it serves as a trojan horse to usher in marxist ideology using communist propaganda in language books media and culture they claim they are so oppressed by an inherently racist capitalist irredeemable white america it reminds me of what hitler said about the jews and we know how that turned out they don't want to eradicate racism because they revel in it they deliberately vilify an

004entire group of people based on their skin color hurling false generalized accusations in a sadistic attempt to justify their own racist and tyrannical behavior their anti-god anti-nuclear family and anti-american my question to you is why what does it solve how does it help our children learn how does it improve our 8th graders whose reading proficiency is currently at 29 how does it prepare our children for personal responsibility the workforce financial literacy does it teach them to value human life or respect each other or encourage hard work or build character the propaganda that is being woven into school culture i realized listen there are some wonderful teachers and i know a lot of you are really good people working hard for a lot of things so please know this is not a blanket you know accusation

005here but there are books assigned student clubs and third-party organizations and yes i'm talking about eye-opening enterprises who are pushing this stuff from various angles it makes me wonder why we don't ever see any conservative speakers student club opportunities or classical literature at mw anymore and certainly nothing for faith-based or students who are faith while we do have some wonderful teachers as i said we have some radical activists pushing communist propaganda in the classroom for example here you see an example of a reading and writing assignment given to my daughter's ela class where they were told to choose from one of these books and they are marxist books okay i read through them and to write a children's story based on what they read and then shared it with first graders at smith clove this

006is an activist she's not teaching legitimate academia she's breeding soldiers for antifa this is not an isolated incident she's exploiting our high school children and using them to indoctrinate first graders i don't take this slightly i want something done about this please please tell me you don't condone this we all believe that there are issues that need to be discussed that need you know resolution solutions not reveling in the pain and living there and staying there thank you that was time thank you i actually just one last sentence please could i just so please tell your teachers to stop teaching things that teach them to hate god hate their parents hate the police hate america our flag and our national anthem and each other children should learn that they're all made in the image and

007likeness of god do you really want this happening on your watch i don't think you do remember hitler's fallen and mao this is how they started education and there's no such thing as a little bit of communism thank you thank you thank you [Applause] um the next speaker and forgive me if i mispronounce your name anthony latinosits yes okay i'm sorry thank you i apologize okay in the christmas system when i used to work for the last 15 years they used to call me mr l and that's never a problem go ahead sir you have three minutes okay um very brief um just want to tell about my background okay i was born in communist poland i was educated in communist poland went to elementary coming school for high school with a college i got

008my degree in history i was a institution in poland then 40 years ago i defected to united states again it was not just sneaking through the border but yeah it was this was a risk involved it was defection um and in poland of course here i got my master's degree in history and i was teaching history actually this is my hobby of in the us i got my master's degree in at the drexel university influential science and business administration regarding my educational and professional background i was a destroying poet i was also a teacher here in the us i was a teacher a religion teacher in catholic school i'm also currently a teacher of polish language at the polish language school in a manner of sacred heart parish so i have basically a good understanding

009of educational system in communist country and in the united states of america i chose the country because here this country because yeah i knew that i would have freedom of expression and freedom to raise the family the way i wanted in christian values yet because my i remember my parents being persecuted my grandparents being persecuted by communist system fighting and again for many of the members of my family if were basically killed or imprisoned my issue with the race relations okay you focus on two um groups who are the victims of prejudice and racism i would say if um i guess there are some teachers here i would like to ask a quick question um what's the origin of word slave nobody knows very good oh yes and actually since i'm a polish i'm a

010sloth as you heard about islamic tribes okay this slave comes origin comes from the slav during roman empire millions of slavic people were brought to roman empire to become slaves and because there was there was so many millions of slavs again poles russians ukrainians whatever this love became a latin word slavus for slave and this is the origin of this word okay so that's uh something here um we focus on the black slavery which i understand yeah that's an issue but yeah you are forgetting the roots of the slavery you really don't teach because yeah i'm comparing the textbooks and i'm interested in what they teach in different schools you forgetting about the whole picture excuse me i'm sorry i don't want to be disrespectful but the time has rang so i don't know if

011there's a last thought that you'd like to give but your three minutes has expired okay um regarding world war ii um we are talking about a jewish holocaust um over 40 million of slavs were slaughtered in during world war two all the girls 60 million people died during world war two out of this number is six million joes so it's ten percent okay software between 30 40 million people yeah how much history time teachers spend on teaching about the slaughter and murder of the slavic people because hitler and nazi system wanted to basically totally destroy the slavs as a a race which was basically sub-human okay i'm going to encourage you at this point that if you have anything further you can send us an email or reach out to the superintendent our emails are

012all on the website for the sake of time and policy that we have there's quite a few others that are going to speak the curriculum and the textbooks they don't mention these things and yeah i feel it's it's really the service to the past generations to to the martyrs and of the world to again the slavery i mentioned to you that yeah if there's something specific feel free to put in an email to us and somebody will definitely get back to you okay okay thank you so much thank you thank you okay thank you [Applause] um the next speaker is sarah ruggier also on critical race theory that's okay everyone gets it wrong it's no problem um i just want to start out by saying i actually went to monroe wilbury and i love this

013school district so so all you know um so let me start out by saying that i do believe that racial injustice and racism is a true and real concern i want that to be clear so that we can come to an understanding that where we differ is in the way we should address it as a catholic i think it's important also to mention that jesus's physical appearance was never mentioned in the gospels why because it's irrelevant i don't like the idea of putting people into tiny boxes and categories how will this be beneficial in fighting racism the concept that a colorblind education system will do nothing to prevent racial injustices is false if anything our children should be raised up in a system where they're raised and sex is considered simply they're filed sorry their

014biology and nothing to do with how we should be treated this will go further in helping people to teach children to be more considerate and inclusive but by saying that because a child is of a certain race for sex they are either oppressed or the oppressor we are creating a turn an antagonism between the two children before a relationship has ever even occurred we are making these relationships more challenging to start and in turn are creating a divisive environment for them to try and socialize in not to mention the harmful impact this will have on the way they view themselves critical race theory is just that a theory there is no evidence to prove that this theory will actually have a good impact on the way our children think we're sorry where can you show

015evidence that this type of theory was used in a school district and had a beneficial impact on preventing racism deacon harold harold burke sivers author of behold the man stated that once he began looking into critical race theory he found that most of the ideas in critical race theory stemmed from critical legal theory in the 1980s which was primarily primarily stemmed out of marxist political philosophy well i think it's safe to say that at any other time in history that marxist ideas were accepted and taught it thus followed by ushering in terrifying communist dictatorships and consequent murders of millions of people all under the guise of the greater good i think this is a dangerous school of thought while i respect the right to share these ideas with children that is as long as they

016are being presented as ideas and not fact i also believe wholeheartedly in the necessity to share the conservative alternatives there are two sides sometimes more to everything and in order for our children to become well-rounded citizens we need to ensure that they are being taught all sides of the issues i understand that there are teachers unions members such as randy weingarten who state that you should fight back again fight parents about what should be taught in schools quote unquote so unfortunately that leaves us with no other choice than to fight back we parents hope that monroe-woodbury will hear us out and allow for more conservative clubs discussions and speakers to ensure our kids are being shaped into balanced critical thinkers thank you for your time [Applause] the next speakers are jeff and claudia cortez and

017they are speaking about eye-opening enterprises [Music] good afternoon um the very important question that i would like to ask superintendent rodriguez and the rest of the board um i've known some of you for many years and uh i i know the hard work that's that's done here in our schools i know that our teachers work very hard that everybody is trying their best i understand that but uh in light of the question of what evidence do you have or and what accountability will there be to show that hiring eye-opening enterprises and implementing their program to our entire k-12 district at the cost of thousands of dollars to the taxpayer how will this affect a so-called culture of love and acceptance to make more productive learners of our kids are we going to have access to

018actual data are the students going to be able to have yearly reviews of the program and get feedback or give you feedback we've been parents in this district for 20 years we have three children that have completed k-12 and graduated over this time i can remember when you were an administrator at the middle school when my son was there and um you so we've you know we've been here a while we've been around the block and now this is our fourth child and we've never in all these years felt the need to come and speak before you obviously were very dispersed disturbed about the the issues that are that are coming to the board that are being approved by the board and one of them is this i ilearning we've seen tons of money over

019the years that we've been parents spent on uh trying to create an environment of healthy relationships and social emotional learning monroe was woodbury as you know has had poster contests kindness awards special speaker assemblies multicultural and diversity events acceptance and inclusion clubs student reps monroe woodbury cares day which promotes compassion acceptance respect empowerment and success we've had school climate surveys zero tolerance policies and not to mention we have laws such as the new york state dignity for all students act which seeks to provide students with safe and supportive environment free from discrimination intimidation taunting harassment bullying on school property or on a school bus or school function we've tried the very expensive always program that has run for years in our schools with big giant signs posted across our hallways and classrooms hoping to improve

020peer relations make schools safer and educate kids on anti-bullying in my son's word i had the always program implemented from about fourth grade to eighth grade and it was useless that was his words the only thing it was good for was for the amusement for the kids to make fun of in the end it did nothing where was the data for that did we run data was there a decrease in fights at the high school because we had that program for so many years did kids experience a notable change in the dignity in their dignity or value as a human person do we have data that supports that do you really believe that after all these years of throwing so much money time and energy at programs like this eye-opening enterprises that this time will

021be any different i think not another question why was it not a pilot program first at one of the schools who's overseeing it and who's going to be accountable for it how are kids supposed to feel safe when this organization clearly has a political agenda did you see the blog on their website entitled schools what are you doing to protect your students it says and i quote fueled by fear and poor leadership with president trump calling kovid the chinese virus despite quickly backtracking afterwards these incidents are making an already terrible situation even worse for asian-american children who experience unprecedented levels of harassment intimidation and bullying this is the propaganda they promote right out of the crt playbook how as a school are you going to prevent them from discriminating against students who question what they

022teach will our children begin to receive disciplinary action if they disagree or if they can't comply with their thinking because it completely conflicts with their personal beliefs have you listened to the dark video on your website that eye-opening enterprises uses entitled we transform it does not provide coping mechanisms but what it does is instill fear and paranoia in our kids with that really creepy music and and dark masks and whispering subliminal messages did you hear during the chess game what has been said in that in that video they say that the government uses you like pawns for their use listen to it for yourself and hear it during the chess match these are dark dangerous things to say to our kids especially at such a vulnerable stage and such a vulnerable time in our society

023we're living in a time where personal values and beliefs are strongly opposed this is the society we live in so thank you i just want to make you aware that the time has expired thank you you don't don't you see this as dangerous territory to be treading in a school district it's not the place of a public school to try to teach children moral truths and values either about race sexual orientation or political affiliation this program has the potential to pitch students against each other classmate against classmate and possibly create more division fighting and hatred than ever before please let the parents be the parents and the school be the school could i just add a few one real quick thing we would just like to ask if you can let us know how much

024is being spent in these programs the crt programs how much is being spent um is there anything can i just say one thing we do not have a crt program we have eye openings so if you want to know the price of that we can get you that information how much is being spent and also i'm interested in knowing is there any vetting due diligence on these vendors before you bring them on board is there any vetting due diligence on what they will have all that information for you um and also the third is how will you measure how would you measure the success of this program awesome thank you we will thank you thank you [Applause] the next speaker is jack collins on policy well that's some pretty tough stuff to follow so i'll

025uh uh maybe i'll be able to give them back some of their time uh good evening madam president board members at superintendent and administrators uh i'm jack collins from monroe i have a question for either the superintendent or the president of the board please tell me about one example of systemic racism that exists in the district today that remains unresolved okay we will respond yeah we'll respond at our next moment excellent i i uh and uh you're uh uh on your agenda items 12 that 14 12.15 and 12.16 are three resolutions that you're planning to approve tonight the new york open meetings law i think it's subsection six but i could be mistaken on that uh requires you to furnish a copy to the public of these documents that you're planning to approve are they

026available to us tonight or will or can they be sent to us i believe everything should be on on the website already for public viewing and if not then it will be up there once we post we're going to be able to find these three documents you they may they have to be approved first and then they're on and then they get very good if not tonight tomorrow morning okay so that should make up for everybody else's awesome thank you thank you next speaker is michelle hironomi on curriculum heronomy excuse me you guys are really giving me a run for my money here tonight with the names good evening first i strongly suggest this board read the 5 000 year leap teachers too it contains 28 principles of freedom which our founding fathers said must

027be understood by all people who desire peace prosperity and freedom principle 23 states quote a free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of education unquote there is a strong relationship between universal education and the preservation of freedom such must always be the case critical race theory gender theory shaming inappropriate sexualization etc have no place in this or any school district whatever happened to the basic curriculum of english math and actual history which includes the constitution although it's been many years since i've been involved in keeping tabs on the education community there were signs back then that the alternative agenda was in the works now monroe woodbury school district opens openly embraces a forced progressive ideology from the unions to the school board to the education administrator to the educators from my

028perspective this district seems to be proudly supporting a brainwashing curriculum and teachers who don't support the liberal trajectory have no place in the system i have two questions number one does the board agree with my statements number two is this board familiar with the constitution and our god-given rights which it secures thank you thank you thank you [Applause] i have the 28 principles here oh thank you okay thank you very much [Applause] um the last speaker is eileen and craig collopy in regards to crt [Music] you want to start okay i thought my wife was going to speak first i was going to finish i was going to be clean up but now here i am um so i i mine's a little bit different than what she's going to talk about mine is more

029of a suggestion i'm reading uh statute 3204 the education law the state of new york the courses of study and of specialized training beyond the first eight years of full-time public day schools shall provide for instruction in at least the english language and its uses in civics hygiene physical training in american history including the principles of government proclaimed in the declaration of independence and established by the constitution of the united states the courses of study beyond the first eight years of full-time public day school may provide a program for a course in communism and its methods and its destructive effects yes so i guess i would just suggest or promote that if we're going to have all these programs some of them which a lot of people disagree with that maybe we we look into

030programs that teach the detriment of communism and it's threat to our free society good evening um so my husband i have been monroe woodbury taxpayers since 2002. we've had children in the system since 2004. a lot of you have known as teachers and administrators and we've had great relationships with you and meetings with you over the years and i'm just beyond disturbed of all this information that's come out that we've learned about and i can't knowing you personally i can't understand how you're letting this happen i have to wonder are your hands tied are your jobs on the line i don't know i don't know if you just weren't aware what's going on in the classrooms but this is not okay i have to believe you all got involved and went into your profession because

031you love children how are you doing this to them how are you going home and sleeping at night if you've hired eye-opening enterprises and and all of these uh people to come in and destroy the children maybe you don't realize what that's what it's doing but that is what it's doing it's destroying their lives it's destroying the next generation so we come before you tonight to just actually bring up a an old topic um discrimination that word's been getting thrown around a lot and honestly we tried to speak up a couple times in the past and about our religious beliefs in monroe would vary and we were hate mail was sent to our house a holy statue was stolen from our front walkway right in front of our house we were attacked online when we

032tried to say please your public school to stay neutral don't get involved in moral territory we were attacked our son doesn't even want us here tonight because he's afraid he's going to be attacked if mom and dad speak up it's not okay you cannot just go with one section be neutral be fair to everyone and that is all we are asking so i'll tell one more thing and these flies that she's holding up here i know you're probably thinking well we're not doing any of those things and maybe you're not doing any of those things maybe there's activist teachers that are doing this on their own which is probably what's going on because the teachers we believe are very it's a noble profession and i believe that some teachers though they're getting so comfortable that

033they're starting to push their own beliefs this flyer was handed out i don't know if you know that's the marcus marx's socialist fest that this one teacher was handing out to her class um my son the last day of school said the teacher was like well it's the last day of school let me tell you what i think of trump because you can't get me out like these things are we're concentrating on our children we don't want to come out and say something all the time but this stuff is going on with some teachers so and that's what we're trying to get across we're calling it critical race theory i know you don't probably have a program called critical race theory but there are things that are associated with it that are going on with

034some teachers in the classroom thank you and a quick last thing our daughters um she brought a bible to school one day she just wanted to read it it was thrown on the ground by another student again we're not going to come out about everything our same day that's but that's part of the bullying you know what what happened there um same daughter's ela teacher told her the bible was a fairy tale so again there's been discrimination going on for years and we're not screaming hollering about everything but this is just too much and we are begging and pleading for you to do something to stop this please thank you thank you [Applause] um thank you for all of the speakers and we will be approving this evening that there is a change for our

035next board meeting so we will be adding that this evening and approving it so our next meeting is going to be for wednesday august 25th so that is when we will have responses for you you're more than welcome to come and sign up with miss futucci to hear the response and or watch the video once it gets posted um we did not have any comments at last month's meeting so there are no updates for that so with that i'm going to take a five minute break before we continue with the agenda thank you good evening we're returning back after a short break no board business was conducted during that time we're going to move on with the agenda item number six is an update on district goals yes i just wanted to give everybody context

036so in on june 16th the last board meeting of the last school year the cabinet and i presented to the board of education our goals for 2021-2022 and so um part of what we're doing is we're going to be updating the goals so i have mr dr vias and mr kravitz who are going to talk about goals number one and two goals number three we will not talk about because they have to do with uh financial and um mr cahill is not here so when he comes back we'll make sure that he updates his goals we could try to answer those questions you might just not like our answer so as thank you mrs rodriguez we should let me just go through that so these are the three goals just in case you haven't heard

037them goal number one is using data and organizational processes to identify opportunities to improve student outcome goal number two is strengthening community engagement and parent support to enhance relationships between parents families school and community and the third is mr cahills it's a pre-referendum planning reserve plan update and long-range financial plan so we'll talk just solely on goal number one and goal number two thank you mr rodriguez uh board members so today as mrs mr rodriguez mentioned about the first goal the using data and organizational processes uh to identify opportunities to improve the student outcome in last few months we have done some homework on looking at the various systems in in terms of central repository system and and what does that that looks like for our schools for our school district this allows us to

038talk a little bit about the predictive analytics to identify the students at risk or of graduating in order to get them back to the track improve the student growth and consolidate the disparate data that we have across the different systems in looking at the various system initially we identified we shortlisted the three systems um and ultimately the central repository system that we picked was hannuit that is now owned by powerschool the other two were educational vista and and and renaissance learning and the key factor to picking in this content in this in this product or the central depository system was basically how the interoperability of the data works um where are the data silos and then how as a district can leverage the system that will benefit to benefits to our students and staff to

039improve the instructional outcomes and and looking at this this this uh basically a circle um if you notice that this system allows our powers power school is our student management system this this platform will allow us to kind of bring all the various data from the different system um our student management system hosts a tons of data whether it's the attendance demographic discipline test test in in a different uh state state assessment we also use renaissance star product as our math and ela testing that a lot this will allow this platform will allow us to integrate all the data that are currently in the different silos and ultimately work through the interoperabilities platform and ultimately into the one platform this gives us administrators and teachers an important aspect of instead of taking the manual data

040and updating that this will actually help us to identify the students very early and then help them to improve the student outcome a perfect example would be if a high school if the senior is at the risk at the high school in the beginning of the school year instead of looking at the google or excel spreadsheets time to time this will help us to improve to keep a constant eye on how the student is progressing and how can we help the student to basically prepare for for making sure the students are on track the cost of the system is we're looking at the two two two different uh two different uh packages in this system uh one is the base package which is the new platform and student essential and the advanced suite and including

041the deployment training the year one cost would be seventy thousand dollars the second year would be basically the cost of the platform usage so the cost goes down from seventy thousand to forty two thousand and and four and and the same thing with the third year as the forty two thousand dollar the key here is we are looking to first year to identify the key systems that we can pull the data and then year two and three we will eventually add the various data systems like our hr systems and ultimately our financial system so that's kind of the process that we are planning to follow the the central depository rollout plan this is just this base timeline based on on the approval of the board of education approval of the goal in june we have

042started working on some of these this this bullet points but ultimately we are hoping to roll out this starting this month all the way to the march this will include the the deployment of connection of the various system that part will be mostly done with the back in the in behind the scene process once the system is ready we'll bring the administrators on board and ultimately the key stakeholders from a teacher's perspective to give them the access and and work with them in terms of providing the training and help them to utilize this platform to make the the better decision based on the various datas any questions i have two questions so my first is when you mention for the three years is that because it's just a time frame of a three-year period for

043each or would and then it'll be added on in the fourth year if we continue with it so if we continue the way the platform works is the first year is the cost of um platform then training and deployment our goal is to to ultimately at the end of the first year we should have an internal expertise to provide the training to the various stakeholders so then from second year on it would be just the cost of accessing the platform so if we go to year four it should keep still be forty two thousand dollars it would keep with that same amount okay and has this been budgeted for already for this coming year so uh the answer is yes however it's a little bit different in if you remember we were looking at the

044learning management system last year and ultimately google came out with the lms like feature so we as a district decided to stay with the google workspace as our platform so that cost was very similar to the first year cost and then we will be using that funding to basically ultimately uh purchase this tool okay anybody else yeah um and and to be just to clarify so if if you get through the first year and you find out that the system you know because it's it's a gradual thing where you're integrating doesn't provide all the features i assume it also provides for switch you might switch systems if if it's appropriate uh yes but we would hopefully not because that the pre-work has to be done a lot of um behind the scene work so we're

045not hoping for it but we will come back to the board with our findings and then ultimately take the lead from the board which direction board wants us to go great thank you thank you all right so i'm going to be focusing on goal number two which revolves around family and community engagement and one of the things that both goal one and two and subsequently goal three are doing is they allow us to to ask questions what are we doing well where or what or how do we need to improve so four years ago just so everybody understands four years ago we crafted a strategic plan in this district with support from plc associates to help guide our district we did that we created a core team of um a core team which included over

04680 people um staff members community members family members parents students were all a part of of the core team and with that we came up with things like our vision and our our mission statement those were really important pieces of of that meeting or that work in february of 2018 we administered a survey and you may remember taking the survey we had over 6 000 people take it and we we had students take it we had our staff we had our community we had our families um take it as well what we did is after we administered that survey we then looked at our results and said you know there's these are four areas that need to be focused on and the four areas that we broke it down to were curriculum communication throughout the

047district social emotional learning and student engagement and then we created objectives based on those four areas we then uh got to work rolled up our sleeves got to work created some objectives to to go along with that that we could try to meet um and our objectives were based on a five-year plan because that was how the the whole strategic plan was created we administer a survey in feb late february of 2020 and just as we were getting the results in very early march march 13th we shut down because of covid and our focus shifted our focus shifted a lot as soon as that that happened so here we are now what we've done now is we've met just last week with a woman by the name betsy smith from plc associates betsy is a

048retired superintendent and school educator and she's a consultant with this group and we reviewed a comparison of the 2017-18 data with the 1920 data it was a small group of it was um myself dr bias and dr hassler and ms spendley met with um with betsy and as we looked at everything we identified general areas of strength and then also areas of opportunity or areas for growth what we'll now do is we'll work closely with our district administrators beginning on august 18th where we'll present to them all of our our information across the district both at the middle school high school level the elementary level and that will also include our district-wide directors once we review that we'll then look at our areas that you know again what are we doing well what can we

049improve and we'll call back that core team together in october and then we will reconvene our task force meetings um some of the information that we get from you know the something 1920 information may or may not be the same as you know hopefully it's better than the first administration survey so we'll do a deeper dive into that reform our task forces and then engage in them and then we give our survey again and our next survey is scheduled for the february of 2022. our goal again is to pound the pavement get as many people as we can to to respond because it's important it's important for us we're we you know want to be open and we want to understand what the results are and then we kind of go from there all right

050any questions about that piece will you be using the data that's collected from goal one to influence the final outcome of what you focus on we'll be using so i mean most of our data is going to be driven from the actual survey um is that not to to inform so so there is a value of keeping the data consistency in check so we will use the same survey so then we can see the areas of growth or areas of opportunity did these the gold one data may tell the similar story or it may tell the different story the part i'm looking at is the action that you take to say here's an opportunity um are if if it's only based on the survey um i hear what you're saying i i hear what you're

051saying right because so the survey will give us to the people that are here it's like we were told no we don't do critical race theory but someone got up and showed it to us so if we need actual data to follow through with it to say hey if the data shows us something a little different than what the survey says because we you know people might say hey i think this they may be right or wrong i think for the family and community engagement piece a lot of that will be the focus will be the actual survey for the for goal number one which will focus on more of the curriculum piece that obviously you may not garner everything from that survey that makes sense and it may also point to some of the

052results of the survey may point to other areas that we have to dig further into student achievement data um you know we have various surveys regarding professional development standards-based pd and things like that that we we have other data on that we gather from the staff i think the surveys are really critical because it's the public's feedback and our feedback i just want to make sure we keep it in perspective right that says like to to dr hassler's point if the data shows something on the curriculum side right and everybody thinks it's something else that we can help help get that back right i mean an example is after the first round of surveys um we had a curriculum group but there were there were sort of sub-committees within that group one of them was

053professional development and we learned that we didn't even have an effective tool to garner feedback about professional development that we provided to the staff so part of the process was actually developing an updated evaluation tool to make sure that we were collecting the proper data on after we send a person to some form of professional development either a conference or pd being offered through boces or something like that that they provide us with proper evaluation and feedback so that we know did it garner enough information for us about the effectiveness of that should we continue using that resource and so great thank you thank you i have two one can you send us the presentation slideshow so that we all have it and two who do you anticipate that's going to make up the core

054team for the task force meetings is that the high school and administrators and middle school and elementary administrators or is that no the core team will use the same formula that we used the first time which would be a cross-section of district you know members so same groups students faculty staff parents community members board members we had elected officials um on our last core team it was a um there were a lot of a lot of folks it's about 80 people yeah a little bit more than eight it's great okay good anybody else have any questions no one has a question oh i'm sorry does dawn have a question eric can you just say technology okay all right thank you guys okay thank you next we will have an update on the universal pre-k program

055given by uh mrs rodriguez and dr hasta and dr hassler excuse me so i wanted to give both the board and the community an update on universal pre-k program and so i always feel like it's important to sort of to give a historical perspective um in april of 2021 the governor issued his budget and in the budget he added uh additional 232 school districts that would be receiving upk money we were very excited but it was a daunting task and so monroe woodbury received uh 462 seats um and part of the requirement was that we would have to collaborate with what they call eligible agencies and the determination to be an eligible agency was something that the state took over in other words there were certain criteria for you to be considered an eligible agency

056and so with local preschools to increase the capacity we do not currently have room for 462 students in our district but we certainly wanted to do this but we felt this was a a monumental task most programs like this take about a year to complete but we felt it was important so what we did was we worked with one of our building principals and mrs caldwell and she was able to identify three classrooms so at this point what we know is the following the upk grant that we get the allocation is fifty seven hundred dollars per student and the districts are required to use some of their own money to fund the program so um one of the things that we're looking to do is and i'll talk later about essa grants we did receive

0578.6 million dollars and we'll use some of that money um to offset the cost so if if you go back and look at the communication that we did on may 14 to kind of reiterate what mrs rodriguez was saying that communication that went out from from mrs rodriguez was it she kind of expressed that we weren't 100 confident that we were going to be able to pull this off we we believed at at that time that the only way that we were going to be able to successfully do this was if we partnered with outside groups the the ability for us to be able to pull this together um in a four-month span we were we were sort of hesitant between may 14th and june 18th we realized that we had enough space at sapphire

058to be able to offer a few classrooms worth we we actually brought in a retired a retired administrator who worked for another school district who implemented a upk program in that school district who was able to bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to help us kind of get some of this off the ground so much so that by the end of june we were able to send out a a request for proposals and an rfp asking for proposals from local preschools on their capacity to be able to provide classrooms also for students to attend their programs um we started in july early earlier this month we posted four teachers for the internal program at sapphire the the communication that we did in mid-june we asked parents to notify the school district if they were

059interested in having their child attend the preschool program um we're still in the process of gathering that feedback from um from the community in addition in working with carrie anne we're in the process of developing the curriculum creating the professional development looking at the assessment tools looking at the screening tools that are necessary and requirements for us to be able to um to develop the program so what are the next steps so we close our rfp and we will be awarding little pals 24 upk seats so i'm excited about that we actually made a site visit uh last week to look at the actual place where our children will be and then we are able to offer 40 54 seats with a total of 78 seats this year so i i am really excited that

060we can actually do that um dr hauser mentioned that there's going to be did you mention that there was a lottery uh i wasn't i haven't mentioned it yet but i was going to um so in order because we're able to offer only the 78 seats we're going to have to conduct a random lottery for the people that have expressed interest in participating in the program we wanted to release the final model which is the 24 seat sets that are going to be at little pals and the 54 seats that are going to be at sapphire um there's going to be a random lottery based upon the people who have expressed interest on um on the program we'll be collecting interest through monday if there are still people who want to be able to participate

061they they should send us an email um the information is on the on the district website uh we'll be holding the lottery next week where all of the names of the the children that parents would like to enroll in the program will um you know will be randomly selected and and put into the into the lottery and then we'll gradually go through and notify people whether they were selected and what their what their placement will be as well as anybody that's going to be placed on the um on a waitlist following that notification starting the week of august 9th we will have to begin the screening and registration process that's mandated where people have to come in and they have to go through the registration process to demonstrate that they're residents of the school district

062and that their kids are of compulsory age to attend the universal pre-k program um and then we'll continue the communication from there notifying those individuals about what the structure and the design of the program is going to be like what the curriculum will be as well as those that are going to be participating in little pals we have to maintain a collaborative relationship with them where they need to implement the curriculum that we design also because we are providing the support for that program that curriculum that's going to be at little pals has to mirror the the program that's being offered within the school district as well so we'll continue that collaboration and continuing to release that information as it's developed and just for full transparency the cost for people that are attending upk is

063six thousand three hundred and fifty seven dollars and twenty cents um that of course the rest we we will give them about fifty six hundred dollars so it'll cost us uh around fourteen thousand dollars to fund the upk at little pals and i think again a universal pre-k is is uh has been proven to be very successful i think the other piece that's very important to note is that these students it's universal so it's it's across the board it doesn't target a specific group of people so that all socioeconomic status can students can can actually attend this program and i think we're going to have a really good collaboration with angelinardo she was very helpful we met with her she was excited so we're both really excited about starting this new program and having four-year-olds

064in our sapphire building and i think i don't know miss caldwell around here she is she is also very excited we kept her all the way back there because she's too excited [Laughter] but we we truly are excited and i encourage the board members to come and visit when you see four-year-olds in the building it's uh it's it's going to be very unique and and again early intervention is the key so i just wanted to share that and the program the program is is because we previously have not qualified for upk money prior to this um it's considered new money which means that there's a whole set of regulations right new rules that we have to follow one of them being the program will be a five hour five day a week program it will

065not be a part of 80 days right so oh we have a couple questions yes were you ready for questions yeah yeah sure yeah always ready um number one transportation there is no transportation correct correct number two are you planning to increase the numbers will response to continue to come from the state on a year-to-year basis well this is something that the school district is going to have to carry on so we were informed that this money is ongoing in perpetuity but of course that's what the state education that's what the state told us and that's what our plan is however we do think that if at some point this program is not continued we want to make a commitment to it so that's why we began slow as i said 74 slots is is

066slow um is is a low number rather and i think it's important for us to take this one step at a time um and we only receive the funding for the number of students that we service so we're saying that we're servicing 78 seats we only receive 70 times 57.60 as hopefully we're able to expand the program down the line and you know this is sort of the initial cohort as we're hopefully able to develop the program certainly there's a possibility about putting another rfp out at the following of this following school year to see if there are any additional community partners that want to maybe offer a similar opportunity are we able to expand and offer additional classes within the school district as we hopefully expand the program down the line the funding will

067increase proportionately to the number of kids that we service thank you don um does the state currently fund kindergarten yes it does okay i know for a while thought it yep thank you i think did it yeah you essentially answered my question i wanted to know what's ongoing hold on a second i'm sorry you asked me a question does the state education department fund kindergarten no they don't we pay for kindergarten right you mean is there an alternate source of funding specifically for kindergarten no no that's why i asked the question because i just wanted to put it in perspective right that you know it's so important that that the state funds pre-k but as soon as she gets out of pre-k and you go into k they don't fund it right there's a portion

068out you know i was like right right and that should kind of indicate what they're going to do to us financially down the road right i mean that if it's any occasion they're they're telling us to start educating students a year earlier and they've already not funded the following year or whenever right but they don't fund first grade or second grade so i i think and monroe woodbury has been unique in other school districts that we have had full day kindergarten for a long time where neighboring school districts only have kindergarten for half a day i think what i totally support this i'm just saying you know when when you look at what the state is doing it's like i think it's great that the school district is putting the effort into educating students at

069pre-k i do think it's very important i just want to point out from a political standpoint that you know let's give them let's get them started and then and this is certainly something that will we we would have loved the opportunity years ago to be able to offer that but we have never qualified i mean again that's the reason why this money sort of falls under the category of new money for us because sure we have not been able to you know hold money some school districts that previously qualified were able to have they they could grandfather in a part-time program because they previously offered that program because they already received funding for it and we don't have that much great that you guys did the rfp and you have a third party as well

070so that we can help additional students right and i think it's it's it's you know the parents are excited about it as i said before we're excited about bringing in four-year-olds into our building it'll be unique but um early intervention is is really the key right because it can eventually offset the cost in third and fourth grade maybe reduce the number of students that get classified because you have early intervention so all those things are are um [Music] are good full support yeah did you have an um essentially uh you answered if if we decided next year to expand it would we still be eligible to receive great money and i guess since we're talking about funding any idea how long the grand program will be there i've asked that question and we've um gone

071on a couple of uh um conferences they're saying the money is there it's in perpetuity that they guarantee it it comes in so it's not special money it's part of our budget so you'll see it it's a budget line item so that's a good thing because then we'll see that every year but again it's not like we're going to get 2.6 million dollars we have to spend the money to get to get reimbursed for it right so you want to go all right you said that uh it was about sixty three hundred dollars and change for the uh per student and was that just for the 24 that are attending correct what is the cost for the 54 that are going to be housed at sapphire so it it will cost us more because we

072have to hire teachers right we have to have higher certified teachers and they'll be on we haven't necessarily costed it all out because we haven't hired anybody right so the cost really depends the cost will be dependent upon the teachers that we hire so once we hire the teachers then we can tell you the cost and those teachers will be part of the uh yes they will and the model the model that we'll have at sapphire the 54 seats is three classes 18 students per class that model according to state regulation is required to have a certified teacher and a teaching assistant in the classroom so all of the factors that that mrs rodriguez mentioned will fall into play once we finalize the staffing and everything else to go home so that that'll be a

073significantly different number yes the 14 000 was only for the 24 students but we'll have uh if you want i'll have an update we'll give you the number please yes so how will the early intervention be applied to the outside seats because so they'll be doing the exact same curriculum that we are and we'll be partnering with them so assessments you know uh looking at the the student needs it's all going to be the same and and just to give you an example of that i mentioned that following notification of selection and placement everyone has to come in for screening and registration in order to be able to qualify for this you have to be a district resident your child has to be a compulsory age we have to screen just like anybody who has

074a student who's attending monterey very from kindergarten the kids go through case screening when they when they come into the program every student whether they're at little pals or at monterey woodbury starts out with that initial screening process any assessments that we do along the way you know we we go through benchmark assessments winter fall uh winter uh fall winter spring the same series of assessments have to take place both within the monterey berry program as well as the little pals program curriculum has to be the same we have to maintain the same level of of uh program on both so that was just the possibility the child may not qualify based on the developmental milestones uh no this the screening proc the screening process is more for the screening process that you do in

075the beginning will it that i think what you're talking about is something a little bit different that there there's also i mean one of the things that's on every single board of education agenda is cpsc where there are students who qualify for services that's something that's completely separate from this program that's something that's run by the county not by the schools when you're running a lottery how do you know that the children are applying don't actually have special needs they right now the lottery does not apply to that the lottery is and that's no different than kindergarten when when a parent registers for kindergarten you have the you you have if the district offers that program you have the ability to be able to be given access to that program the same thing is for

076the upk service if there's a student that is in need of additional services they fall under the cpsc um at the age of four some parents may not know that their kids are supposed to use right which is which is important right so if you have parents who um know that their child needs has special needs and they go through cps but we won't know that until they're in kindergarten so this actually addresses that in free condition correct right so i think that's that's the important piece it's identifying the needs of the students early on to provide them with the early intervention okay i have a couple i just can't one of them is from dawn she just wants you to clarify in regards to the little miracles program sure that we currently have at

077the high school and the differentiation with the upk yep so the little miracles program is sort of our our preschool program that we've had historically that runs in conjunction with our early childhood class that's up at the high school right now the model of that program does not align with the pre-k program that we're required to implement to receive funding for this that's something that we are certainly considering down the line but we weren't prepared to make that shift in the high school little miracle program for the 21 22 school year that is when we talk about the expansion that's one of the areas that we would potentially be looking at and one of the reasons why is that program is run on a part day basis on a semester basis so basically there are

078four different cohorts of kids there's the spring group am spring group pm uh fall group am fall group pm we would have to shrink down the number of kids to only 18 kids that that program will be able to service so there would have to be a lot of modification in that program to have it aligned with the requirements of this grant that we're just not ready to make so that program is going to exist for one at least one more year the way that it previously existed being collaborated with by the early childhood high school kids that are in that course the the goal would be down the line to certainly make that align with what we're talking about here we're just we just weren't prepared to be able to make that shift yet

079and again this is year one so we really are looking at you know how this this program rolls out what are the needs what are the cost what are the the costs that we may not have be prepared for so that'll that'll be a determining factor as we move forward to year two what we do i think that was one of the questions that i don't know if any other board members have gotten but it's a question that i've gotten is in regards to can you talk a little bit about the rfp and the fact that if my child went to st paul's i am not eligible to use these monies to go and use it towards saint paul's can you just clarify that because i think there's a little confusion in regards so the

080rfp process it puts out um a request for a proposal and it allows local agencies that are that qualify to put in an rfp we did not receive anything from any of those schools they did not put in an rfp so therefore they cannot be eligible for it i'm not sure if they're waiting to see what this is like in a year and and potentially do you know put it up again uh the following year and i think a lot of them had a similar challenges that we had we were notified in april we basically had four months to put the program together we we were not able to you know it took us a while to sift through all of the regulations identify what criteria had to be put into the rfp that they

081need to be able to demonstrate i mean there are many many factors ranging from types of insurance that they need to carry certain regulations about physical space within the rooms that there's a lot of considerations that they have to consider the rfp came out in june it takes a lot of work to make sure that you have the capacity to be able to meet that need certainly because of the timing other programs may have a year to be able to get you know they have a copy of the rfp so they know what the criteria are they may have the the time now over the next year to get the necessary things that they need in place to be able to put forth uh a competitive proposal that could go to sergey's question then for

082future years we could potentially have other community preschools that would then be eligible to have sure there are there are a lot of school districts out there who have previously offered upk programs or that are using this money where they're not establishing anything within the school district and they may be partnering with half a dozen different preschools within their school community so that that that opportunity certainly will exist in the future but i don't know just just to add something is that i i think we felt as though it was really important for us to develop the program internal in-house as well because that way we have a better understanding of what the needs are and what we want to see in the programs that we visit do you we want to provide the program

083for as many kids so so certainly we believe within our own capacity to be able to provide that also you know there's a benefit to having some of the program within the school district because some of the kids that are going to be in the program at sapphire are going to be kindergarteners and safari schools they're going to be our students but that leads me to my other question was and i don't know if you have this because i think it says on here that they have until august 2nd but do you have a rough idea as to the interest as of now i do okay would you like to share i i can't give the exact amount because we're still shifting through what we did was anybody that sent us initial email we created

084a google form for them to give us information um child's name child's day address and things like that there are some kids that are on the list that don't meet the age requirement there are some families that are on the exit because some of the local preschools for example emailed it out to their school community but they may be attending little pals when they may be attending kids corner and the parents may work in modern woodbury but they reside in a in a different school district you have to be a resident so so i can't give you the exact amount yet until we fully sift through the full list and we have to kind of go through with the fine-tooth comb to make sure that the students that are entering into the lottery qualify based

085upon the criteria that has been he doesn't have a rough idea so he does have a rough idea so by next my reasoning is i'm curious to see what the actual interest is from the community for this program i'll say that it exceeds 78. that's the reason why we have not how many people wanted i can give you the number okay it's it's it's around 100 people so far okay because he didn't want to give the number but i think it's important we have about a hundred people who have we have a dedicated uh page email address that people have been sending requests to so it's around 100 um which is which i'm excited about because we have 78 secrets so that's good i just hate to disappoint families as well right eventually we'll create

086a waiting list i'm hoping that the the many people that watch this video will send out information to their friends to if they're interested to send an email so that way they can get on the list yes just to get an idea of percentage voice what is our normal kindergarten class uh we're usually in the 400 to 500 range one quarter of the kids would be coming in correct follow me right in the garden and there there are many implications some you know the the for example the sapphire program there are elements of this that may not necessarily apply to people where um you know sometimes people have their child enrolled in programs outside of the school district for child care purposes it's not just about preschool so so there are elements of this that

087may be limiting for people's interests so and who knows it's it's brand new so you know people may sort of wait and see to what the program will look like before they're willing to commit all of which makes perfect sense correct dawn has a follow-up question i don't know if her microphone's working now can you hear me yes yes if not bargoff will repeat it maureen can you hear me dr houser i think i i just want some further clarification on the little miracles versus this program and i i think what was more important for me was just now when you're talking about they may not get into the lottery for this well then we refer them to little miracles or what are the similarities do they still do they do screening for the little

088miracles program the the little the little miracles program is is quite different than this program again largely because it's only a part of the day so it's it's an am group and a pm group and it's only for half a year so it the scope of of the curriculum that's being covered in that program in comparison to this program is is quite different um the the in fact we've already started there's if anybody's interested in the little miracles program there's information there's information on the district website that they have to go through a process also for the little miracles program um the the little miracles program is is something that is is taught by the early childhood students and the high school staff that teach that program as well so so the the the scope

089of the curriculum of that program is is quite different from this so i mean one of the things that we've considered was um because there would be a limiting number of kids if we had to go to the model that would qualify us for for funding that program do we have the capacity to be able to expand it to two classes rather than just one class because right now it's one morning class one afternoon class fall and spring so we're able to you know it's it's basically uh 72 i think-ish kids that are able to to participate in that program but it's only for half a day for half the year i also think that that the goal of the little miracles program is twofold one is to obviously impact the the younger students the

090second one is to allow the high school students who are taking the course to explore you know education as a career so that's obviously a little bit different focus than the upk right i understand the differences but thank you both and eric i'm just trying to i guess say that a lot of the members in the community might not be aware of the differences and you know that they're completely different programs so are we going to communicate something to the community about their options for the upk or our little miracle program sure yeah i could certainly do that i i think one of the one of the one of the concerns or issues that we have is that when we're talking about families that we don't know it's hard to communicate that to them right

091so for example if you have a four-year-old we don't necessarily know that you have a four-year-old right we we don't send out that information we know once you've registered your child that you have a child that lives in the district so that's an important piece unless you have a sibling right the only way we know that is if you have a sibling so a lot of the communication that we've had has been either through our website you know emails posting things it's a little bit more challenging for us to get that information out that's why that's one of the reasons why we decided that we felt it was important to talk about this at a board meeting because more people watch the board meetings and they'll have access to more information shaking your head you

092don't think people watch our board i think they do um and and again i think that unfortunately another factor of time has been our capacity to be able to communicate it i think i think i i think once people have their children participate in the program they'll know to be on the lookout for it for their younger kids and i think over time certainly word will spread um and you know but i think another important point is that the 24 seats are going to be within the sapphire school in the future no the 54 is the sapphire 24 hours yes so if god forbid next year the state decides to pull the money the kids that are housed here may be able to continue correct whereas children for a house with the partners in the

093community may not be well they will come into kindergarten they will i'm an optimist i believe that they will continue to fund that for a an extended period of time i've actually reached out to the senator who wrote the grant um because i needed to know what is the possibility of this grant going away why begin something that i would end you know end up not continuing with and we've been told over and over again and we've gone to several of these um workshops regarding this that this money will either come from the state or the federal government either way we're going to continue to get this funding and so i've reached out to my colleagues who have had the old money i call it and they've had this money for over 10 years so

094i don't foresee that happening but again with the pandemic i've learned that you never count on anything 100 so again part of the reason why we went small especially since we don't have the space is start small and see where that goes and the rules for the old money as you said before it's different so some districts upk is a half day program not a full day five hour program like it comes with with this like this exactly this new money is we have to the students have to have the same 180 days just like our students so it's very much tied to our own you know uh school days which is part of the reason why it made sense for us to really want to create at least a portion of the program within

095sapphire thank you why do we qualify now but not before um i think the senator who who sponsored the bill is a graduate of monroe woodbury i mean he lowered the borrower this is it's a major statewide initiative i mean it's not just modern wood barrier or a handful of school districts it's 230 plus new school districts that are qualifying for money so i think that this is really something that the state is looking at investing in um when you say qualify like what how did we qualify i guess my question i i think to be honest with you i think everybody qualified i think every school district in orange county qualified because originally when the grant was first written it was written only for new york city and so what happened was the senators

096from the city and the senators from upstate said wait a minute you know you have this pool of money but it's only going for new york city you know the suburbs want it as well so there's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of years to say well why can't the suburbs get the same kind of money that people get in new york city and so that's that's part of the you know that was part of the negotiation for the new budget from the governor's office thank you okay thank you very much you're welcome we are here you know oh sorry so i i wanted to kind of give you know this i'm still going so this is um this year the district not only got 2.6 million dollars for upk but we

097also got what we call our money and that's 8.6 million dollars and so our money and i and i use the acronym esser it's the elementary and secondary school emergency release fund and that has specific purposes and i just wanted to share that with people it's to continue the safe return of students to in-person instruction while addressing the academic and the social emotional needs of students impacted by remote learning and the covet 19 pandemic so when that money was given to us it has it's over three years and of course money comes with rules and so they gave us sort of the playbook you can use the money for the following things and so as we look at this money we we we've determined that there's certain things that we have to do for example

098part of it has to be used for learning loss and so i'm going to have dr hauser talk a little bit about our summer bridges so going into the the conclusion of the school year and we looked at all of the pivoting that we did and the shifting between that word live live in person instruction and remote instruction and students having the ability to be able to be remote we we decided that we wanted to offer some sort of summer program and before we found out that we were getting this grant we were looking at a very a very a much smaller scale program where basically it was going to be a reading writing and math half a day program for students to come in they get additional support in reading writing and math it

099was going to be very targeted and they would go home um can i just interrupt sure i think what what needs to be noted is that prior to getting this money school districts are told that we were going to be short money this year we were told that we were going to have our budgets cut so i think that when when we received this money it was it was a surprise um we had not anticipated and i'm not saying that i'm not grateful for the money i really am um but it was a surprise so so that's important to know prior to this we were told that we were our budgets would be cut dramatically and so between offering a limited program we were also looking at offering a program to a very targeted group

100of students that were identified for academic intervention when we found out that we were getting this money it offered us the opportunity to be able to ultimately construct the summer bridges program the way that it exists now which is a full day program that is split between uh portion of the day being core instruction and reading writing and math and a portion of the day being enrichment in art music and physical education we have the ability because the school lunch program has continued uh the free school lunch program is continuing to the summer we offer uh breakfast every day to the kids we offer lunch every single day for the kids the program is is a month long currently we have uh approximately 800 to 850 students every single day grades k through a coming

101in for the summer bridges program which is great uh about 500 or so lunches are being served every single day to kids um so you know when you when you talk about the the safe return to in-person instruction while uh you know addressing academic needs of students this has been a great opportunity to be able to offer to our kids plus oh i was gonna say that go ahead you should go ahead i'm gonna give that to you plus go ahead plus we were able to um hire some of our own students either they're you have to be 16 and older we have approximately 50 students that are participating in this program and what this does for us you should all know that is a teacher shortage and so it allows our students to look

102into the profession of teaching and i will tell you that i've heard nothing but wonderful things from our students who are excited about coming to work and and are working with our young students so that has been a real plus for us we have the benefit has been rather than having it being targeted at you know a specific group of students that require academic intervention it's something that's open to anybody we designed the program so that way it's not sequential where a student could go come in for week one go away on vacation for week two and return back into the program because they don't have to feel like they missed a week worth of instruction um we have quite a few of our remote only students who did not step foot in our schools

103during the school year who you know we're hoping for a more traditional opening for the school year it's an opportunity for them to reassimilate to back to school for hopefully a september return to in-person instruction so on many levels certainly on the academic side but also on the social emotional side um i think it's been a positive it has and so these are some of the things just just to go back to the requirements i said there's guidelines one of the guidelines is that the districts would have to post on their website what they were using their money so of course i wanted to just put this slide up again it was not only posted on our website but i believe photo news took our posting and posted in their in their paper and shared

104with the community so i felt it would be appropriate to sort of talk again about some of the things we chromebooks and ipads obviously we use them a lot during our remote time infrastructure technology work one of the things that we're looking to do is also which is an allowable expenditure is enhance our air filtration as we talk about students coming back to school making sure the air is purified and then i i put in their universal pre-k because there is going to be a cost and we believe that this cost we could um use it through our era money so when we received this money and we knew what it was for we started thinking about so what can we do obviously dr hauser talked about summer bridges and all the other things but

105what can we do long term and i found this quote from the american academy of pediatrics that read that the covet 19 pandemic has created profound challenges for our communities families and individuals leading to a range of emotional and behavioral responses there are many factors unique to this pandemic grief loss uncertainty rapidly changing and conflicting messages duration of the crisis and need for quarantine which many of our students and teachers had to endure this past year that increased its effect on emotional and behavior health so as we talk about returning our students to school we started to think about what are some of the things that we can do as a district to support those needs and we took a look at our guidance counselors in specific i want to share with you our guidance

106counselors at the high school so if you take a look at that chart um monroe woodbury has a ratio of 290 students to each counselor that is extremely extremely high when you look at the other school districts they range from 280 to 200. and i think that when you talk about the needs of our students as they return it's going to be incredibly important to have that social emotional support have those school psychologists have those cool counselors so i will be recommending that we have an additional 1.0 guidance counselor at the high school if in fact you know when we do that our ratio will be anywhere between 240 and 250 which i think is is manageable so they'll have a significant decrease again as we bring these students back to school so what we're

107going to have is we're going to have a high school guidance counselor we're going to have two school psychologists and we went back and forth do we get a social worker or do we get a psychologist we also just to to interrupt the two people that we're going to be recommending for the psychologist's position are here tonight so no questions so instead of waiting for the personnel section we do have kristin chiriani who's going to be at the middle school secondary and mary eberling who's going to be at the elementary [Applause] well thank you um so again um these the reason we went with a psychologist is because psychologists are able to assess and and do specific testing and so that's why we made the recommendation the last recommendation is a director of guidance we

108have um a premier high school and a premier high school should have a director of guidance and the director of guidance can be able to manage and really shepherd our guidance department into an era where we're going to support our students and make sure that they get into the colleges and pathways that they choose to make sure that we update our naviance program to make sure that uh college-ready students you know are met with on an on a week on i'm sorry on a at least monthly to two monthly basis and so by increasing our guidance counselors and having a director of guidance we can make that move in our guidance department any questions anybody questions when you're referring to the guidance counselors and that approach with college are there other proactive kind of actions

109that they take everything from everything we've gotten covered and come back to school is there like a proactive plan in place or is it really based on a student going to them when they have an issue so so there is a proactive plan one of the things that we have is we have um and i have miss ricker is here and so is uh karen jordan so we talk about what are the things that we can do to outreach because i think the big thing is how do you outreach to these to these students and we've we've done a lot of that we've made house visits we've reached out to families we've provided them with resources that's part of the plan but i i believe so i believe that when we bring our students back

110that's only going to increase remember we didn't have our full 2 400 students at the high school our goal and our hope is that our students will be back in our building and so when they come back to the building we all need to be prepared so there is there is a plan and i think that um part of that will be the outreach making sure that we touch base with students we work with them um we find out what's going on at home uh and those are the things that we really need to be more proactive looking at student i think one of the things that that mr v dr v has talked about is data right looking at the data and telling us what's the story what's his data telling us what's the

111story with the student and what do we need to look at because sometimes students are in crisis and you don't know it right they're very they're quiet and we have students like that but what you do see is a dip in their academics and so there has to be systems in place that say when a student drops or when we're seeing that a student is not performing to their ability that we reach out to them and find out why so these are some of the things that we we will do um and and we have been doing but i think with an additional counselor we have more outreach and i think one of the things that we're doing now is sort of reviewing what has taken what has transpired over the last 16 18 months

112and what are some of our takeaways of what we've done i think one of the challenges has been finding ways to be able to engage kids particularly the kids that are remote and how do we you know we realized that we were very reliant on in-person strategies student walking into the guidance office guidance counselor not being available leaving a note and putting it in an envelope and you know waiting a couple of days for the guidance counselor to reach out to them i think that we've found a lot of non-traditional ways for kids to be able to remotely get in contact and communicate with their guidance counselor and not necessarily be reliant on some of that in-person connectivity and and so i think one of the steps that we're looking to take is to continue

113to build on that you know how can we increase communication between the counselors and the students in some of those non-traditional ways rather than just i gotta make you know walking into the guidance office trying to find time on the counselor's schedule from the secretary that's there that might be a week or two down the road for them to be able to connect um yeah i think we have a saying putting eyes on our children which is hard to do when they're on a on a screen and and i think that when we welcome them back we have to have a lot of eyes on them and make sure that they're okay right and and that relationship between our counselors and our parents and our families to give us a heads up is also going

114to be important so building those relationships with families and we have we've had some students that haven't been in our building for over a year so this is going to be a big transition for them so preparing for that transition as you said we have to prepare for the transition and the anxiety that comes with going back into a building that you haven't been in for over a year all right and the expectations that the director guidance is going to own that and correct yeah i mean what can that get done next you can have well-performing kids who are over-stressed and are hiding it is there a system of maybe some kind of screening questionnaire or validated questions that could be just disseminated amongst kids i mean they may not want to talk early on

115but if reached out in such a way and this could be three four questions where you could ask hey how do you feel right i think we do there are surveys but i think one of the most important takeaways is the relationship between our students and our and our staff right there has to be that relationship i was a high school teacher for before i became an administrator and it's building that relationship with students so that you know sometimes as a parent i can tell you when my kids were came in through the door i could say it was a good day or a bad day and they didn't say one word so i think it's building that relationship to know your students well enough to say i'm concerned about sergey he he has not

116been himself he's been awfully quiet and maybe having a counselor reach out to those are the things that are really important but teachers are also stressed you're that you are 100 hiatus where they have to work overtime and change what they have done for years and years and years and they may not have that their own coping mechanisms in place so that is the work that we've been doing as well i mean um what what we've heard and what what has been said is that this pandemic has been a trauma that 99.9 of the people have suffered whether and so we have to be prepared to bring back right because schools have to be a safe place and so how do we create that not just for our students but for our staff as well

117and one of the time one of the terms that i used earlier was academic intervention and the traditional model of academic intervention is essentially if if the staff member notices a decline in student performance i mean we have a whole process about referring them to a team that looks at the student performance and things like that and it's very academically driven you know you're you're waiting to see some sort of like you know shift in student performance and we're moving to a uh a an mtss model a multi assist a multi-tier system of of support service and and and that's more behaviorally driven where um you know it may not necessarily be something where uh you know the student has to demonstrate that there's a dip it may be the change in the demeanor of

118a student the you know the appearance of a student that that something that a a a a peer may be reporting to a staff member um so it's kind of that shift of purely moving away from an academic perspective to be inclusive of the behavioral aspect as well and just so that you know we call that an ist an instructional support team so every building has an ist team that sits and talks about so this mtss is going to be a change because normally the ist team would run solely on the academics you know how is sergey doing you know what are his grades he's doing well and you move on this is not this is how is sergey doing what are his behaviors what are your concern attendance is another piece that we see

119students who normally come to school regularly are not now coming disciplinary you know discipline a student who never had a discipline all of a sudden we see the discipline and so there's lots of factors that really um is it easy for a teacher to to um highlight that to communicate that or is it complicated we're in the process of shifting like right now we have a very specific procedure with forms about i'm i'm referring a student to the ist team and they complete a form and it's largely data-driven based upon academics and we're we're in the process right now of shifting those forms and training the staff on here are some of the things that you might look for here's the procedure that you should be using and what the buildings are doing who is

120you know there's an expansion of the individuals that are on the team you know it might not just be purely academically driven it's also going to be a counselor a psychologist speech otp that might be there a nurse um that that is going to be participating in these these teams to be able to provide support to the staff that are identifying some of the the issues that have been identified in some in the kids but i want to go back to two years ago two years ago the district made a commitment to helping our school psychologists our counselors um and our teachers to look for those signs and symptoms but you're right everybody is taxed and we're hoping that this summer break will help people kind of regain but but that doesn't change it right

121people have been away from school and coming back into the buildings and there is a sense of anxiety our role is to create an environment people a feel comfortable and b have the support systems in in in place and that's why i think these additional staff members will help us do that um the student after-school activities where kids are usually the best monitors of what happens to my buddy or 100 yeah so a feedback from that that would probably be very instrumental in this as well right and and coaches right so when our students leave our buildings and go to to an activity let's just say it's a sport or an after-school activity these people are also in contact so it's i go back to the saying eyes on our children the more eyes on

122our children the better you can tell that something may not be right yeah also kids who were previously very involved or had a social group now are isolating that that's another flag i do have another question though and it's um from something survey brought up are we doing anything for the emotional support of our staff yes we we we started that last year right we talked about what are your needs and we we did some professional development with them um we're we're reminding them that it's important for them to take time even this the beginning of this year i met with um the the teachers to say how are we going to start this year let's start this year slow let's not put a lot on our teachers because of course we want them to

123be ready to support our students so it's really important to take this one step at a time so we're looking at what are the first two days of school because remember we're starting school august 30th um the children come back in september but our teachers will be back two days so looking at what those days will look like um and then speaking to the teachers their one thing was please don't pack my day in with lots of other things because i want to be able to come in and prepare my my room and my my my work for my students and that was part of the logic at the beginning of last school year where we started the school year off with four superintendent conference days we started the school year off remote with the

124abbreviated schedule where um you know we had so many different factors that were contributing to what's online instruction going to look like we started the remote synchronous schedule the live synchronous streaming schedule there were so many different factors that were contributing to that and i think that a lot of those elements were part of the decision-making behind that schedule at the beginning of the school year and that mindset was also evident over the well just a couple weeks ago with the administrative team so typically we have our administrative retreat we bring in an outside speaker or and this year we focused just on well it was really just us and it was an opportunity for us to say okay let's you know dig a little deeper into how your experience was this past year and

125almost almost kind of honor the experience so that we could then you know not move past it but um you know craft our goals and vision for for this coming year well thank you thank you okay thank you thank you very much questions okay anybody else i'm sorry everybody's good thank you [Music] number nine on the agenda may have a motion to approve the minutes of the july 6 2021 annual organizational meeting second all those in favor approval of the revised 2021-2022 board of education meeting schedule i referenced this earlier we will be altering our meeting date in the month of august we will now be meeting on wednesday august 25th instead of the august 18th so that is what the motion is for to approve that adjustment motion second second all those in favor

126um committee reports i'm not sure that there's been too much going on but don anything for facilities and um audit nope okay um i'll do for policy i i think the only update that i will share and i haven't checked honestly but i have to double check with donna is we did meet at the end of the year all of the committees and we put together a rough draft of meeting dates so if those are not up on the website yet hopefully they will be so all of our audit meetings policy meetings visitation and facilities meetings have been pre-scheduled we're hoping to kind of do that not only for our schedules but also for administrators and the other staff that have to attend those meetings are always open to the public if you wish to

127attend please reach out to ms vittucci but i think they might be posted if not yet then they will they they are okay so those are up there um so other than that we will have our next policy meeting coming up accordingly um i don't think there was anything else from visitation dawn correct i think we just have our schedule i don't think there's anything specific the summer british program but you can please do so you know when you speak absolutely okay thank you okay so that's it for committee reports um matt for personnel so i was going to introduce kristen and mary at this part it's already done it's already done so awesome um no there are a couple things listed including um memorandums of agreement for between the district and the mwaa which

128is the administrators association the csca which are our bus drivers and our buildings and maintenance staff members and our non-bargaining staff as well so with that i respectfully request approval for the items listed under personnel second all those in favor all right i'm gonna i'm gonna keep it with matt since patrick is out right now that's how we roll um he'll give us an update for financial respect no i respectfully request approval for the items listed under uh under business um i can't answer any of your questions about them but uh if you could approve them that'd be great all those in favor may i have a motion to adopt the recommendations on the committee on special education 14.1 through i believe 14. 14.4 mostly motion second all those in uh favor by board and

129central office sergei um i'd like to thank the administration for your continued efforts in improving this district it's summertime everybody is relaxed and wearing their shorts but you guys are working thank you for that and i would like to thank people who came out here today to voice their opinions about the science thank you thank you um i'll i'll speak on behalf of dawn when i go around don uh the same i'd like to thank the people that got up and spoke today who really appreciate it that's it for me thank you suzanne yeah i'd like to thank people who got up and enforced their opinions and also thank everyone who presented especially the update on the universal pre-k i think that's going to be an awesome program and enjoy the rest of the summer

130thank you donna um just wanted to thank everyone for coming out tonight and wish a certain superintendent of schools a very happy birthday yeah happy birthday another year older not today so believe it or not we are getting ready for september uh one of the things one of the tasks that we will we are doing it in next four days starting tomorrow is distribution of the devices so if you are incoming k or second grade parents you should have received the communication from the district please sign up on a pick a time slot we will be distributing close to 650 devices in next four years thank you eric um just a quick congratulations to everybody who was appointed this evening you're you're joining uh an outstanding school district uh it's definitely it's it's been a

131busy summer i spoke at the july 6 meeting about you know the starting of summer school the starting of summer crusaders and still speaking abstractly about summer bridges because it hadn't started yet but um the fact that our schools have over a thousand kids still in the buildings every single day between the three programs is is truly remarkable um you know i've spent quite a bit of time bouncing around between the programs and i can't tell you how proud i am of everybody the building administration all of the staff everybody that has been involved in the development i'm sorry if i'm taking away from here it's it's um it's it's a very very impressive impressive thing and hopefully everybody feels similarly about you know the experiences that they've they've had in the program so thank

132you i'm also elated to be able to develop this upk program it is something i think that is going to have tremendous positive effects for our kids entering our school district if you look at the research about providing early intervention for kids in a upk program to have kids coming into kindergarten k ready with the word recognition and and all the things that go along with it i think is a huge opportunity for our kids and i'm really really excited about the opportunity to be able to develop it so um looking forward to it thanks thank you matt and i think one of the best things about for me with the summer programs was just the opportunity to sit with so many young people who are excited and willing to work with our younger kids

133um what i should have done under the business section is to say thank you to a couple of people uh the high school and smith clover are the recipients of some donations uh high school is receiving a donation of 750 from the special olympics of new york for the unified champion school program for inclusive sports as well as 16 from new york life for mw cares and smith clove is receiving 191 dollars and 47 cents from the stop and shop a plus school rewards program so thank you to all of them that's it thank you jamal uh first i'll say when it comes to the upk um i'm actually kind of really proud to hear that little palace got in there my both my daughters went there uh and my second one's just sleeping this

134year it's a little sad uh but they're a great organization there's great people great great teachers uh angela has given us a lot of support over the years and um anyone that does get the opportunity to get your child in there um i'm sorry i say they're blessed it's a great place and i look forward to seeing more from the summer bridges uh organization starting tomorrow yeah okay great dan have a good night anthony uh welcome to the new members of our district uh thanks to the community members that came out to bring up and talk about a very important subject and of course i know people are watching you know that's why i shave my head everywhere a beautiful version of me so have a happy uh summer rest of the summer and good

135evening thank you michael i want to thank the administration for all the work and the goals and the effort that went in there i want to also reiterate that i really love the presentation on the upk um very excited about that and i also really want to thank the community members that got up and spoke tonight we appreciate you taking the time to sit here and provide your feedback and i wish everyone the rest of a safe and healthy summer thank you um i also want to thank the speakers um that got up to speak oh i'm sorry do that you should go last time it's your birthday [Laughter] yeah you go go ahead yeah i'll go laugh i'll you go last um i too want to thank the speakers and we do appreciate their

136feedback i know that sometimes getting up here and speaking isn't always conducive for time purposes i do encourage you to send emails all of our email addresses are listed on the website along with the superintendents we do respond um so i please encourage you if you felt that there was something that you didn't get the opportunity to say i apologize for cutting anybody off the three minutes is the three minutes but please feel free to reach out via email and somebody will respond to you so i do appreciate that um i want to thank for the presentations i know there's a lot of work that went into that and it was very last minute because as with typical new york state we found out and that we're going to implement this program but i'm excited

137for it i know mrs caldwell is very excited for it so it should be it should be a great undertaking i appreciate it dawn and i were able to attend a few of the schools last week to witness some of the summer bridges program in action and it's phenomenal i mean again for something that was thrown together at the very last minute with the resources that we had it was amazing the kids were the first question that i asked all the kids was where they were happy and everybody was i thought one kid said that they weren't but i misunderstood and everybody is so happy to be there so everybody they're doing great things there they have what dr hassler mentioned earlier it's not just academics they also get to go outside for recess they

138have art class they have pe so they have music it's wonderful and one of the best parts that mrs rodriguez mentioned was we got to see some of our kids in action and upon talking to some of these teachers that are in this classroom now that are our students it's phenomenal some of them are seniors that just recently graduated in june they're going to school to become an art major or to study music and now here they are teaching our younger kids in the summer program and they have mentors our staff is their mentor so i just thought that was amazing i encourage that for next year because i i'm understanding correctly that we'll be doing the same program next year so hopefully more students will even apply um tomorrow jamelle and i will be

139going for those schools that we didn't get to be prepared will come tomorrow to i think north maine north main the middle school and the high school so we'll we'll be over there to see you guys tomorrow thanks to all the new hires i welcome everybody and wish you all the best i want to wish uh mrs rodriguez a very wonderful birthday thank you and um thank you so much thank you i want to pass it to you thank you so i want to i want to take a moment to say that i'm [Music] one of the things that's great about this country is democracy and democracy allows people to get up and speak and voice their opinion and so i want to thank you for getting up and doing that because um that's what

140this country is founded on i'm an ex-social studies teacher i shouldn't say x i'm a former social studies teacher so so i understand the importance of voicing your opinion and and we are always looking to hear from our community so i hear you i understand your concerns um we will follow up i i can tell you that at our next board meeting we will have responses i know some of you had questions we wrote it down everything is videotaped so i go back and i look at it so i just want to i just want to tell you that we will follow up on on your concerns and and what you shared with us um but i also want to say that everything that we do is always in the best interest of our students

141and so um i'm concerned about some of the things that you shared and i will i will look into it but but we will always do what's best for our students and we have a wonderful i mean we have almost 7 000 students and and each one is important and so that's that's something that resonates with me all the time um i also want to say thank you to all the administrators and teachers who have been working this summer uh it's been a rough year and to see people back in the buildings doing this work i applaud you because um it takes a lot of tenacity and a lot of resilience to do what you do so i thank you for doing that and i also want to welcome our two new psychologists is it

142just the two psychologists that are here yes you're going to have a lot of work do it well um no pressure we have high expectations but but you will be serving our children and our children deserve nothing but the best from our school district so with that i wish everyone a nice summer and uh have a good night okay so our next meeting will be for august 25th and may i have a motion to adjourn the public portion of the meeting and convene into an executive session for the purpose of discussing a pending litigation matter high motion second all those in favor