001okay oh that was loud did that work yes awesome I would like to call to order the October 16th 2023 regular meeting of the Board of Education of the Phelps Clifton spring School District Crystal would you please lead us in the pledge I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands under God indivisible with liy and justice for all okay roll call Lynn Lee board member Lindsey Marino board member Mike door board member Heather Rockefeller board member Deb Gallaher board member Amber wils board member Carl dubash business administrator Nick Ganer superintendant Tracy Elman board member Crystal plant district clerk uh is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented so moved is there a second second any discussion all those in favor of
002the agenda as presented say I I I all those opposed motion carried on to consent agenda items is there a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented so moved is there a second second that any discussion all those in favor of the consent agenda items as presented say I I I all those opposed motion carried all right on to presentations Board of Education recognition Okay so tonight we just have um just a couple treats for the board so to speak um uh just as a small nod of our appreciation as a school Community for the work um that you all do as volunteers to uh help steer our community in the right direction as a school board so um in front of you there are some cards from uh students at elementary school
003and we have our instrumental music teachers from the secondary here to uh share some music so I don't know uh how you guys want to do this but take it away I'm just going to play some bles for you well first of all thank you to for doing all you do for our school district um you guys put in tireless hours and and you know you give so freely of your time so we appreciate that this is a this is my 31st year here at Mid lakes and I got to say it's been just a wonderful wonderful District to work in I feel supported as a teacher uh we have great students and uh we're just thankful for you as well though and all you guys do all the time so thank you this is
004Sydney Rodriguez and uh Sydney just got done with a concert on Saturday she play the Hawkin School of Music and Matt Cannon so she's got some extra ensembles on the outside and said he's just a wonderful Claret so we're going to play piece called the blues but we're going to retitle it and called the thank you Blues [Music] not all right the thank you blues for our [Applause] word [Music] [Applause] [Music] to [Music] the [Music] [Applause] [Music] w thank you and I'm sure we'll introduce himself but this is our new instrumental teacher Mr hope in high school and um Bo what a what a pleasure we hired the right person for this job here in the high school doing an amazing job personality plus the kids love them and he's super Talent so Mr welcome
005as well I hope you get 31 years out of this place hello thank you so much it's wonderful to be here we got uh two of our excellent foreign players here tonight uh Sharia carvalo and Nikki zle um it has been wonderful to work with them and it's been wonderful to be a part of this community it's it's a really special thing that these students have and it's a wonderful program to be a part of and just in the short amount of time that I've been here like Jo said all those things that are wonderful for these students to have such great experience and music is a great so without further Ado I'm stop talking I'll pass it over to them this is a Mozart horn duet we'll call it is actually call thank [Music]
006you [Music] oh [Music] oh thank you thank you so thank you so much for um Coming Out and thanking the board um I did leave one piece out uh we do have artwork on the wall from our eighth grade students as well so board members when we get a moment maybe later tonight you can check that out but uh the display was made for you and how exciting as well the new facilities for the music department it's GNA be just second a support [Applause] thank all right on to the student trip to Greece would you like us to present sounds good hi congratulations on your special recognition day let me know when you want me to advance slides sounds good I'm Angela Simmons I'm a teacher here at Midlakes uh social studies and this is
007I'm Heidi Gibson English yeah for years so we're excited to present to you our trip to Greece Athens and AR Lita two cities um 7 days this coming summer so yep so how EF works is you have to block a two week period off so they'll schedule us a 7day period within that two we period so we won't know the final dates until about 45 to 60 days out from our trip but our ideal dates what we've requested is July 3rd through 9th 4th through 10th something like that so that on the either side of things it can um they can book up from actually um I think June 29th ended up being graduation so we moved it to June 30th June 30th is the first date that they could book us so none of
008our students would have to miss you know obviously that would not be our intent so um here's the uh the agenda so day one's always travel then we'll uh fly from New York City to Athens there we'll meet our tour director they're really good about meeting us right at the airport um getting us through our luggage getting us on a bus that they'll have for us ready to go um and pretty much walking us through the whole thing we'll have a walking tour some of those tours are done by our tour director some are done by a local guide so it wouldn't be uncommon for a local guide to meet us there uh day three more time in Athens really on the historical side of things you know seeing the ruins the Olympic Stadium Acropolis
009parnon um that agenda day six is when we travel to argal uh day five we spend another day there and then we head back um to Athens to depart for Home on day seven okay so a lot of activity um usually we're up by 7:30 in the morning and we're not back till at least 9:00 at night um what's included is our roundtrip airfare from New York City to Greece all of our hotels breakfast will be at the hotel and then they'll have a dinner that will be um really authentic to the area so the students will get a chance to taste um different Greek food we will have a tour director that will be with us 247 like they stay at the hotel everything you know they're with us non-stop we have a nightly
010meeting with them we go over all the details of you know what's going to happen the next day you know we check in on the kids um they really want our opinion on you know the kinds of things that we do they'll even contact us before the trip to say is there anything else that's not on the agenda that you want to make sure that we get in um so the students will have a lot of say on that part of it um transportation while we're on tour so public transportation including the bus that will take us most places it's a coach bus um as well as uh some of the Metros or whatever that we happen to be on for public transportation um we have expert local guides they usually spend about 3 to
011four hours with us a day as well as through a lot of the sites seeing the guided sight seeeing um and also included is all the entrance fees for any place we go into so it really is a a real inclusive program um what the students get out of this is just amazing um they learn to embrace new challenges some of those challenges are printing a boarding pass at the airport you know they've never done that before on their own or figuring out what's good to eat right at lunch or um just living with a few roommates for a week you know so a lot of that growth growth happens with them um they will see the world in different cultures they'll comment about you know how friendly people are or how what's different you
012know the thing that we get a lot is we have to pay for the bathroom like they don't realize overseas that's how things work um they'll discover a lot of about themselves most mostly like just gaining confidence you know the quiet kids and what they come back like is just different it's exciting to watch them like go through that wouldn't you say oh definitely yeah it it's just awesome um and you know skills to make an impact that resilience that perseverance that you know everything that you would need to be independent um they'll gain a lot of cultural and historical knowledge especially in Greece you know the the heart of democracy and you know a lot of ancient um you know just different monuments and stuff to see and literature and the social emotional piece
013making new connections to with students with us and uh just watching them grow and we we sell this to them too on hey maybe this will give give you a topic to actually write something good in your college essay you know a new experience something that happened while you were there that you didn't realize about yourself so um Heidi and I will be chaperoning EF will provide one chaperon per six people traveling right now we have um 10 students seven family members and the two of us so and enr M will remain open you know until around um March they'll shut it off but we shouldn't have too much more maybe another one or two will trickle in at this point um why do we partner with ef well we like the 247 tour guide
014tour director um that's always good but they have a lot of experience doing this they have great um support like if anything uh gets delayed or or changes I know um there's there's a 24-hour line that you can actually call the tour director will all will give all of us the international number so if anyone gets separated or anything like that you know and and again you know that's probably not going to happen just because they they GL they're like glue to us you know we didn't lose anybody last right right and and you know really you're in a new place and they're not that confident you know so they that travel support team is really good though because they are available you know any time of day or night the other thing that we
015really like is they do background checks on all adult Travelers so you know any family member that decides to go that's they consider an adult anyone that's 20 or over um and then the price information so if they registered before October 1st there was a $200 discount if they were a repeat traveler they got another $100 off so it was a real opportunity for some kids to register early um because we will be leaving out of New York City we will need to coordinate Transportation at some point from here to there um but we don't have the dates yet so we can't do that yet um but all the parents and everyone is aware that that that that needs to happen um we decided that we wanted to do either bus or train just for
016the convenience of knowing it's probably a flight that's not going to get cancelled and we can rely on it a little bit more um the other things that wouldn't be included would be like if they still need to get a passport you know their lunches um tips we'll collect tips ahead of time so that money is our already set aside will tip the bus driver the tour director and any local guides a small fee um and they had until the 11th to get their money back if they change their mind the fee also does include a protection plan the entry level you know if something happens it'll cover transportation and hotel and items like that meals okay that's it any questions how many how many trips have this done well I okay so this is
017the first one that I'm leading but I've gone on two other EFS I went to France in 2015 with there were 29 so students and adults that was a little bit more like the bigger groups you know okay we're all going to get on the Metro now let's take a picture of where we are so if you don't get on um so you know a lot of contingency stuff as we're working with them but and then last year I fronted the trip last year but I have traveled extensively on my own and with friends so I have a good part of the world under my belt yeah and last year the tour director was just amazing and you know there were a lot of options all the time so like students could have during their
018free time which was usually around lunch right cuz that's when they're going to go off on their own and get lunch um there were you know you could shop if that was the thing you wanted to do or he's like let me know if they want to do this this and this and we would just offer it up as options you know a small group could have gone to to a particular we had one go on a boat ride we had a we had a medieval we had a medieval tour underground we had a ghost tour and took some to the Bader Art Museum yeah I went to a couple museums with a couple of the other ones so you know we just kind of look to see what their interests are and plan cool
019yeah and you said they provide chapon no so we will come up with the chapon okay so they just that's the ratio that they want okay y so right now we're at 17 we would need one more and we would get another chaperon so 17 without us 19 total right yeah good so with the two of us so and and I have a long list of teachers that are interested I can imagine I imagine so so all right any any other questions or no thank you for doing that yeah thank you thank you all right so on to the plan for excellence for the elementary oh there we go okay so the way that we've organized this presentation tonight sort of illustrates the whole idea behind the process so you're going to hear from a
020lot of different um Educators here in the district and um Mr hamlink is going to kick us off so take it away Jeff thanks thanks for having us tonight um I I hope what you see both in the presentation and also who presents that this is a pretty inclusive um process um and I actually would say Journey right it'll be a journey for us this year but a journey over multiple years as well um and so if you think about it from um sort of a 30,000 foot view um what a plan for excellence is is a road map right it's a road map for us um to accomplish the goals that we have this year and um that should be a a collaborative process right um it doesn't mean everything's going to go exactly
021the way that we plan for it to go there are going to be bumps in the road right um but it's also you know a journey over time while the focus today will be what we hope to accomplish this year to benefit our district and see improved student outcomes um improved pedagogy um improved practices across the district dist um but when you put together a series of years you also see growth growth over time as well so it's a journey in that way as well so how do we celebrate and recognize where we've come from where we are currently and where do we want to go right um many smart people um in a collaborative way um have developed a vision for the district around a community of Learners and leaders who demonstrate 21st century
022skills necessary to compete right in in a global Society um we've developed a mission as a district and those things have driven a strategic planning process and values that we want students who leave Midlakes to have in place solidly right and so our plan for excellence should reflect all of those things right it should be a driving force that that represents our vision it should be a driving force that represents the things we want to accomplish in our strategic plan over a period per of years and it certainly should represent what we want our students to leave Midlakes um at the end of their Ed education so um that's sort of the the 30,000 foot view um around the why behind it thanks Jeff um so now it's my turn uh we as an administrative
023team back in July we had um an administrative Retreat and we reviewed these very same things the mission the vision the Strategic plan our core values and part of the exercise was to put our eyes on it understand it as a team and also have conversations that lead us to you know um developing consensus about what some of these things mean what does it mean to um uh have strong moral character critical thinking uh skills career Readiness you know they're just phrases or words unless we have a common understanding of of what these things are and I think with the mission and vision filtering up into um the Strategic plan things begin to get a little more concrete right and uh from there it became really clear in a parent and it's actually pretty obvious
024that um it takes a village to raise a child so the work of um striving for excellence really doesn't live just with the administrative team we can talk about it all day long but the reality is is the rubber meets the road in the classroom in the hallways of the school on the athletic field on the stage all of these different places where um there's literally hundreds of Educators in this District working hard every day to do what's best for kids so it really became no-brainer for us that we had to engage um with as many people as we possibly could and we thought about that next layer of uh leadership and what we see is we have a team of uh grade level leaders at the elementary level and we have a team of
025edu uh teacher leaders or educational leaders at the secondary level in our department leaders and we wanted to engage as many of those people as humanly possible and we wanted to do it over the summer now that's not always the most popular choice right because summertime is a time where um people want to seek a little bit of Refuge from um the let's just call it the the arduous nature of being an educator right so but to to be able to meet at a time when we're actually at a lower stress level in terms of being an educator in the middle of summer makes a ton of sense because you can actually engage with this sort of uh thinking without those looming deadlines of being a teacher uh so we we really thrilled that our
026you know Mr Moyer and Mr melin were able to lead their teams uh in a collaboration uh to develop what we're calling plans for excellence and the next slide and I want to thank all of these people for dedicating that time without a doubt that's why all their names are on the slide so then it the the work really started back in I would say like the winter and late spring when we started looking at our summer calendars as an administrative team and we started putting those things together when are people going on vacation when are they available what's a natural time that that we can meet as an administrative team and those just for whatever reason became Tuesdays right so we had team Tuesdays over the summer uh and then we we had the
027principes engage with their um teacher leadership to develop or or to establish days where they could actually engage in this work uh and those teams got together they reviewed where they are as a school where our present levels of performance are academically social emotionally for our students culturally as a building um and began to write goals and that work you know pie in the sky that work would have been done by you know the end of August and we would have been rolling on with these plans for excellence from day one but the reality is is it takes a lot of collaboration and a lot of time to get it right so some of that work um bled into the fall and uh right up into our last conference day so we're already um thinking
028about how to make the process a little more predictable and efficient for our second go around next school year uh so we can hit the ground running a little bit sooner in the fall uh so that's really where we are uh in terms of process and we're always looking to improve uh but at this point I'm going to hand it off to uh Mr mcelin and he is going to tell us a little bit about how this proc process panned out at the secondary school um so I wanted to start by just saying um aside from the Strategic plan and um what we've done for the plan of plans for excellence I just wanted to say number one thank you to the board um for you know my appointment to the district um it's been
029it's been a wonderful start to the school year it's been a wonderful experience getting to know the people and the kids and um it's been a real pleasure so I just wanted to say thank you again if I didn't say it the first time um I was here for an appointment I really appreciate this opportunity it's been wonderful um so we started our plan for excellence over the summer and it was it was funny because um we're we're getting into the goals of of the middle and high school and I hadn't even really met the people that were that were present there yet so I was like hello my name is Dan it's nice to meet you what what should we be working on this year um which created a you know a nice Dynamic
030it it let me understand and learn a lot more about the district from the people who were living in um so really that's where it started was um understanding the past the present and the future of the middle and high school understanding the past where we've been what we've been working on uh the present what are our kids currently doing and then where do we want to go from there so really it started in the summer of 2023 with that review of our mission vision and values and really we honed in on the Strategic plan what were the things that the district has been working on in the past few years where are we with these um with these initiatives and where can we go what do we need to kind of focus on as
031we move forward um as we went into September and October um we ended up drafting a plan with a number of different goals and I'll review some of those as we kind of move on um but we drafted a number of goals we refined those goals and then we got very specific with each dep department and let departments work towards their individual Department goals and how that um how students would perform in their departments and their their goals were shaped around academic excellence and I'll go through that in a little bit too but uh before I do that we didn't want to put too much uh text on the slide so I have a copy of the plan for excellence I'll pass that around for you you can take a look at it and follow
032along as we go let go ahead so as I said before our strategic BL U our strategic plan is not Bland um our strategic plan is based on the um the Strategic plan from 2019 I believe is when it was first developed so we built our plan for excellence under those same categories strong empowered staff Student Life Midlakes community and academic excellence and uh we kind of went out of order in your packet so you're going to have to bounce around and follow along a little bit but that first cover page that you see right here that's really all of it in a nutshell those four areas the goals associated with those areas and the tasks are underneath it so we wanted to have something that was really clear and um legible and easy to
033communicate with a large group of people so that cover sheet is the first one but I'll go into each one of the goals as we move forward um go ahead there n so our first one we're going to flip to this is probably three or four pages in it's all about strong and empowered staff and we asked ourselves the question is how do we um number one use the data that we have about student performance um to create relevant appropriate PD for our staff how do we build community between staff members how do we build community between staff and students and how do we give staff a voice an agency so that they can be part of the decision-making within the building um so our our goals or our action steps all centered around those
034those ideas um using the department level goals which we'll talk about in a little bit to develop our PD plans what do we want teachers to be working on what do we want our staff members to be working on and how do we know that it has an impact on student performance um using student performance data for um PD um increasing awareness of restorative practices one of the things we talked about is building Community um so we've had some opportunities in uh both at the conference day and within the school building to start working through and having people exposed to community circles what does that look like um so we've started that approach and then also um again offering staff some different opportunities to express their voice and their choice so we'll be building in
035some opportunities for for teachers to go about doing that um and then we're we're also investigating mtss for adults so we we spend a lot of time talking about how do we support kids how do we make sure that kids get the interventions that they need but we also need to be mindful of how we're supporting adults too so what do we do to build positive psychology within our systems how do we make it uh not only a pleasant place for kids but how do we make it a pleasant place for the adults who are working there as well so I think that's really important go ahead Nick so now we're going to flip over to Midlakes Community which is our next goal area uh the goal is to increase parent community and student connection
036with the school community and it really focused in on how we communicate and celebrate the things things that we already are doing within the district um one of the things that was really important coming in was increasing the number of times that we communicated about things like academics and traditions and so we've already increased that with the early warning system and uh and and also the use of parent square like I mean if if you have uh kids in the district you probably get a parents Square message from me I don't know a few times a week maybe um so we really try to increase the amount of of communication that we're doing home both with celebrations and informative um just items that come up with within the school go ahead uh the next one
037is student life which is actually the last page and so for student life we again talk about um what what data are we collecting um to identify areas that we can best areas and ways that we can best support kids how do we support students to be happy engaged and grow one of the things that came out of our um our uh department chair meetings over the summer was this idea that like if we're if we really want to make sure that kids are doing well we need to make sure that they're happy that they're engaged in their education and they're growing and so that kind of became um another mantra for us as we as we kind of move forward and then how do we support students when they need support and how do
038we Pro provide additional opportunities so these goals identify and address areas uh regarding student conduct so what type of dis IPL data are we collecting and then how are we going about addressing it um data related to participation are kids engaged in athletics are they engaged in clubs and does that have an impact on their academic performance too um interventions for the school system when it comes to attendant our PSO or um pupil um pupil Support Office they're working their goal area is actually all around building the system for student attendance how do we intervene when kids aren't coming to school um then I identifying areas for partnership and internships like how do we get outs also outside of our building how do we get get and pro give kids opportunities um for Life Beyond
039um school and then mtss fully implement the student acknowledgement system which Margo's done a great job of getting going and then also refocusing Eagle Time by offering a suite of resources for teachers to use so another opportunity for building connection but also uh I I meet with each grade level once a week um I kind of split it a little bit so I'm now meeting with each grade level at least once every other week um but it gives us an opportunity to kind of review relevant things to um talk about things that are happening within our building um the other week I provided some data about like where the behaviors are happening and how can we address that um with one of the grade levels we also talked about academics and eligibility uh you know
040using some of the data look this many students in this grade level are ineligible right now so what do we need to do and we got some feedback from kids too which was really cool um and then the last one is academic excellence and the goal is to improve academic outcomes for all students and so we talked a little a lot about how do we ensure that our schools are um academically successful how do we make sure of that and so there's three areas really uh we're thinking about graduation like how do you know if our ultimate goal is to make sure that kids are well prepared for Life Beyond here how do we make sure that we can get them across the stage and prove that so we focus on um graduation rate and
041we also talk about uh tier 2 intervention so when kids are not successful what are we doing to intervene and then the last part and I'll have um some of the department chairs come and present is the development of Department level goals and you can switch this to the next one Nick U the development of Department level goals uh where they identify their resource needs and monitor student progress and it was really interesting to see the different approaches that the Departments had when they're coming up with their own academic goals and I'll let let them do kind of the explaining of it because each one of the people that are coming have taken a slightly different approach to how they're going to monitor student progress within their departments so do we I mean Angela you
042were just up here so okay hi Angela Simmons again social studies and um it was really interesting because I wanted data to drive you know a lot of where we were going with things but you know first I started looking at Region scores and then when I really reflected on social studies the fact that students have to pass every year of social studies I thought that that probably should be our our goal in some way and that everything else I was looking at would would just be secondary to that right I mean if we did if if people passed every year then they're getting the skills that they need and you know we're vertically aligning and you know some of the other things that we're looking at so um so it ended up going with
043increasing our passing rates as a department and we are looking we looked at data that was over a fiveyear period so I averaged the data taking out the coid years so if we start you know back in 2018 to present minus the coid years what were we talking for pass rate for 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th and 12th and then we started talking about okay where do we you know want our goal to be how are we going to grow this and what are some of our you know stumbling blocks to achieving those goals and what can we do about that so I am really excited about our goal because um you know with taking a look at this data and increasing our over overall passing rate for Social Studies by grade level then it
044does lead to student academic success so some of the action steps we're taking are um increasing our general parent communication via parent Square to notify parents of upcoming projects upcoming assignments and upcoming assessments to be proactive versus reactionary and um you know if we do need to increased communication on where they stand currently with grades we will still do that as well so that's in our plan too um we will also increase our communication on specifically what work is missing so you know the parents can check in with students um each teacher is going to set up you know a lot of our secondary teachers run clubs and whatever so we want to make sure that at least once a week you know there's availability for the students that you know it isn't all Club
045time that we do have that time after school with the students but we're also going to embed work days into our days as teaching um days just so that they can get help if they need help and can't stay after or if they're in you know bosies and and physically can't make it so um we're going to have uh work days as needed um and we had a lot of discussion around this one we think that sometimes students when they see a zero in the grade book might think that there's not an opportunity for recovery on that so we're actually going to look at school tool with the attributes to show that it's missing it'll still affect their grade but it won't say to the student or send the message that you can't do anything
046about that which I think is probably the one thing we're the most excited about um and we also want to work interdisciplinary so uh working with our colleagues in English or other content areas to talk about what students are not being successful for you is there anything that's working in your classroom that we might be able to try in our classroom um and of of course just continuing with those discussions on curriculum and vertical alignment so that's social studies can I ask a question I mean is that okay I just I just had a question so sorry Val um so your department chairs are presenting and then are they in charge of 7 through 12 is that how that works or like what's the organization so for it depends on the department um but for
047the most part it's 7 through 12 organizations so the department goals uh for the most part and you'll see there's some difference in in the goals but uh they cover the entire 7 through 12 um curriculum yep thank you right my name is Melanie Bowman and um I am co-chair with Rich Joan for the science department so our we we work together to try to come up with a goal that would kind of Encompass all grade levels uh 7 through 12 and we decided uh looking at data uh we needed to have it you know numbers based so we decided that we really want to work on our Regent pass rate and Mastery on increase that um or increase those results and have our higher level level Achievers increasing even higher and some of the
048students um that haven't been successful we want to boost um them up then we brainstormed some of the problems of practice what's going to get in the way of some of these students achieving um and some of our brainstorms we came up with were uh problems with attendance um maybe lacking support for students um uh where English is not necessarily their first language um maybe students are really just already super successful and there's not a lot of room for improvement uh we talked about some students being placed in classes who didn't necessarily have the prerequisite skills but they're there anyways um and and we need to work with those students um and we also talked quite a bit about um the fact that in science we have um Next Generation science standards so our curriculum
049is changing so how is that going to impact our goal because we've got a lot of variables here we don't have the same old test we have um different ways we're going to be uh are judged I guess um and we talked about the fact that we need time uh to analyze and to kind of put some of these new practices into place um and we talked as a department last week about you know some of these problems and we can't do a lot about attendance so we can't do a lot about um you know students who don't have a lot of room for improvement so we focused on two goals that we thought we could really work with that we was within the locus of our control um and so we decided that we're
050going to focus on how do we Implement um the Next Generation science standards and still increase our results um and we want we talked about how can we do this um so we said that we are going to look at what the new um kind of really dive deep into the new standards also take a look at some of the assessment questions um we're implementing new uh lab required labs in the uh Middle School level and um then we'll kind of meet throughout the year kind of talk about how that's going and cross our fingers when June comes so and look at that data [Laughter] soing sure I'm Erin erson I do math department with Denise Kelly and I'm Denise Kelly and I teach mostly middle school math so we started off uh looking at
051the algebra one data that was given to us over the summer because every student needs to pass the algebra one region but we felt like um one with the curriculum changing same as science that it wasn't going to be a new test was not really where we wanted to focus our data analysis and also that we really wanted something as a goal for the Department that would build on our collegiality and our collaboration and have more Buy in than just from the teachers of Algebra 1 so we brought it back to the department yep so as a department we often talk about um just making sure our students are prepared mathematically for whatever their goals are Beyond High School um but the state's current requirements is that they only need three credits of math in
052high school so all of our research has been more anecdotal about what students do go beyond that to take a fourth or sometimes even a f fifth Credit in math so what we came up up as a department something that all of us could work on together is that the math department would like to see and an increased enrollment in our math electives so for next year Y and so we thought that that really opened up the door for a lot of different uh case studies of what Pathways were available what Pathways students performed well in uh but really didn't give the empirical data um that we could do with performance data so we kind of cycled back to that Algebra 1 after all and realized it'd be better equipped to take the additional electives
053if they had passed algebra one the first time so we kind of have a twofold goal to increase the enrollment data at the higher level and also increase the passing data we'd also like to look even further back into Middle School data and think about um if we look at our students who are currently taking fourth or fifth credit maths um what was what did it look like for them as seventh graders eighth graders ninth graders and maybe use that to help predict who is taking our electives so we have a lot of ideas for action plans from here on out but we're still kind of developing those as we start to analyze the [Music] data so what was thank you very much I really appreciate everybody coming and presenting um what was really neat
054about kind of the process was that each department kind of took it um their own Direction all of it is around student performance all of it has um has has ties to to student outcomes um but really it meets the needs of each individual Department um but in addition to just meeting these um these student outcomes also there's all these other things that come with it and I think Angela you you kind of hit on it a little bit but but every group did um just by nature of focusing on student outcomes you think about parent communication you think about curriculum review you think about performance indicators you think about all these things as a result so the goals are great but also the work that's going to come from it is also a part
055of its value so um it it's been a really nice process we're we're on our way with it um these these folks here have done a wonderful job leading their departments and making sure that um we're headed in the right direction when it comes to student outcome so really appreciate it thank you guys and thank you everybody too [Applause] sorry it's my Mr Moyer follow that Mr and Company we will be much more efficient is that what we're going with I heard you hi everybody so I will thank Dan he did most much of the heavy lifting on like the process because the process is where like ditto when we practiced this he did that and I said ditto um it we did do it a little bit differently at the elementary school but one
056of the things I want to start off with was I think Tracy and I are the only two that were part of the actual writing of the strategic plan Oh Aaron was there I'm sorry Aaron I will say this is the first time since that week that I have felt truly connected to the Strategic plan because it was something that we did it set there we would be we would look at it once in a while but there was not a lot of there was no action we had a management plan and that's kind of where Nick hung his hat you know management plan what's a management plan and we needed action it needed to be actionable it needed to we needed skin in the game is the term I used with the staff and
057um Christy Corey is here and I'm actually going to bring her up eventually to speak with me um well with us and I know she loves it but um the the team that was there really had that same view how do we get a feel that we own this um and when we as we share our goals you'll see that they're very very specific k6 on how we're going to approach this and they're extremely measurable and we're hoping you know we're already seeing growth you'll hear from Bri um about some of the really positive data we're getting on one of our goals already so but other than that the process was very very similar um and how we met how we discussed how we we narrowed down our Focus areas and then just started really
058hammering out what do we want to do and using a template to do so feel awkward I'm not looking at Lynn at all um so you want to move forward so we do our goals are focused around attendance curriculum scheduling activities and social emotional learning not in any particular order that I said it actually the one that should have gone last was scheduling because we're going to end with that today because it will tie a bow on everything else because everything else we're going to talk about comes back to time then how do we do this in a a six and a half hour school day and you know efficiently do it so with no further Ado I think I'm going to bring Bri up I think the first goal just make sure because yes
059see I should I put my back to them so I I'll just look at you be a little bit different feels left out you know um so our first goal we've got our seal goal um give you a second to read that we're looking to decrease our number of disruptive offenses all right and it comes down to using common language okay our classroom teachers our lunch monitors our bus drivers the PSO office administ we're all using the same language now and it's really driving this goal forward and we've actually got a process that we're collecting the data so that we can utilize that with our mtss process to put in place the interventions needed so that the students are actually in the classroom learning instead of in trouble making silly choices you know if every
060kid would clean their room the first time you asked life would be great right but sometimes it takes hearing things more than once so that common language has definitely been developed and during our staff meetings we're talking about this data that we're coming up with which is one of our action steps is to explain and share with our whole building what data we're collecting so back in the 2022 23 school year there were 1,200 office support calls made and 383 office disciplinary reports now we are empowering and giving our teachers the opportunity to put in anything that they've handled in their classroom as a report as well as putting in the discipline reports that we can then respond to then we've got this data about where are the offenses happening do we need to put
061an intervention into place do we have to review the bus expectations again because we're seeing an increase in bus Behavior All right so we're utilizing that and that's the type of data that we're sharing out as well as what's happening so the expectations are always being repeated no matter who is dealing with the in inent if it's a classroom Incident That's handled in in the house they're saying the same exact thing reminding of the expectations in using the same language as we are when it becomes an office referral um the first opening day we as a entire staff um came up with a common definition of what disruptive behavior even means we had to start at the Baseline if we want to lower these numbers we all have to understand what disruptive means to Midlakes
062elementary school so we've taken that and we have ran with it we talked about it again our superintendent conference day at the beginning of the month um so far we have 115 office referrals that have been put in and 280 classroom referrals that means a lot more is happening within the classroom and not having to advance to the office because they're here in this common language the kids know what's expected and our our staff's doing an amazing job you know it's just another thing on the to-do list to to put in the the reports right but we're taking it and we're using it and we're seeing a positive outcome um with those things and now we have in place a system to have these things recorded and then we can do something with it um
063another action step that we have implemented um all core values are added to every single grade level's report cards for this school year so K through six is also going to be seeing the same language so that they understand that this is a schoolwide expectation no matter what grade level they're in um we've also increased our dedicated weekly PSO meetings so before it could be 30 to 40 minutes long whenever we could squeak it in there's a dozen it a day every single week for an hour and a half we take turns being on call for any crisises but we all sit together in one room and really look at what we're seeing we make action plans on what we can do right away to help and support our teachers and staff members and um
064that's been super effective and good for our culture um and like I said we've been sharing this data with every everybody um every single month we've got a slideshow that goes out we talk about at the tier one meetings staff meetings superintendent conferences the uh presentations are shared with all staff so they can look at it whenever they want and our doors are always open to uh continue to work on this mtss data to keep those kids in the classrooms and learning and and teaching them the skills that they need um so can you just give me an example of what um what does that mean like a teacher report like so like it's like documenting um an incident that might have happened and then what the response was to the incident So like um
065what strategies that they share with a student to be able to use for a coping skill for next time this happens or if it's an office referral usually the offense might be a little bit higher than what should be handled in a classroom so they need our support and then we're the ones talking to the students and then sharing out with the parents you know the teachers do a great job using par par Square to share out what's going on we're doing the same thing through phone calls so any report that needs to be handled by the PSO office or Administration that gets shared with us whereas the classroom incident is just a data collection point with what they're seeing so that we can then bring in members of the PSO to give tier one
066supports and strategies and lessons within a classroom that might be seeing a repeated um Behavior so is it kind of like I mean if you had to correct somebody to get in line that wouldn't be something you would have to like write yeah I'm not going to lay down the hammer on that yeah okay so like it's more like an incident a Hands-On incident or yep something like that so another important piece with that is you you have a teacher that finally reaches under their rope and they've finally reached out and told us ask for one of us to help with a certain situation and we hear the comment well this has been happening for three weeks and we know nothing about it because they've been handling it well but there's no documentation this provides
067that documentation so now we know what they've been doing we know that parents have been contacted and it gives us more teeth when we do take action and it's not a surprise when we make the phone call home that that's to me is one of the the biggest pieces of it fun fact fun fact you don't know what I'm going to say you're worried she's worried she's worried Bri's interview second interview was to present on all this information so when we brought in our finalists for the AP they all got the the information that we were putting together for the plan for excellence and we asked them to give us um suggestions on how they would move forward with these ideas so she's been living this since the very second week that she's been part
068of this this process sure which is kind of cool before I was even hired yes it was before you were H Mrs Corey it's already fixed we're so element the next the next goal is something that christe and I are going to talk to you about does everybody know Christy Corey I've been for yes and she she always comes when she's asked she always supports um she came to everything this summer so and here She is again and her husband had to take over the the viol lessons tonight but if you you can see up there we have two curriculum um goals one is to increase their percentage of students in grade in each grade at tier one for ELA now we discussed you know well let's reduce tier three oh let's reduce tier two
069well by doing both of those you're increasing tier one so we went with that positive approach we want to see our tier one students go up and and we have all that data and we weren't going to share all that tonight and then for math um we are going to make a formal decision building wide on the curriculum we're using um we are using two SE really three different math curriculums right now within the elementary school um mid year this year we are going to narrow it down and we're going to make that decision um I want to let chrisy if she's willing to talk about um the ELA and where we are with Ela and how we're going to do that because we she's using both curriculums that we have for ELA and she's
070also so using second year um math so first I wanted to say that the whole summer when we came in and we had all of this grade level representation was amazing to have everybody there who wanted to be there to have these hard conversations because we all think we're right I'm gonna say I'm gonna tell like I'm right no matter what until you prove me wrong right so and that's kind of how we all are as teachers we think we're right we want to do what's best for kids we research it and we try to implement that right so we had these really incredible conversations and I hear Jeff like take a deep breath like should I step in or not right like should I let this go but it was really good he let
071us go he let us talk he let us really argue respectfully Christy sometimes he'd be looking at me going like are you going to do something okay and if anybody knows me I'm pretty passionate about everything I teach you know cooking not so much but teaching everything is important to me so I just wanted to get that out there because it was so it was passionate and powerful and exciting to have these conversations that we really want our kids to be successful and what what are we going to do for it so if I start with math really quickly there are three programs out there and it's the one we've had for years it's illustrative math which is Al Imagine Learning which is I don't know it's like a million different things that's the one
072I'm doing and I love um the other one is yure squared which is similar to what we had but now it's better and it is better and we are collecting data I know Ashley swe who is a third grade teacher is working on the uh she worked on Eureka squar last year and now she's doing illustrative and so we can have this really great conversation and go to Jeff and say this is what we think and a final decision will be made because it's all about third grade I know it's not but I really like that um so that's where we are in when it comes time to math I'm more when I present I really like you guys to talk to me so you're doing great oh thank you see I'm better in class
073right in ela this is really where my heart is because we have so many struggling readers our kiddos in third grade that I can speak to they have trouble just reading so we've implemented reading Horizons which takes you and teaches phonics right and that's where our kids need to have the lessons so that they can read wonderful but that's 45 minutes of our time then we have Arc and we're trying to teach them how to comprehend and what story elements are and what character development is and that time has shrunk because we're trying to teach them to read so we you know talk K through six well it was K through 5th mostly what do we do you know how how do we make it better and we have the discussion about science of reading
074we have the discussion about comprehension we have the discussion about decodables versus authentic text and we just came up with our plan for what we're doing right now and that's hopefully going to increase all right here one so you're gonna have to stay up here because I'm gonna you okay thank you Christie so you can feel the passion and and that what she described as those the powerful conversations this summer and it was it was fun actually to watch people squirm a little you know and be a little uncomfortable it's okay to be uncomfortable that struggle is okay and it you know we got through it and we came out the other end better for it so I'm going to Jessica up to talk about attendance I just like to get out of my seat
075I'm not used to sitting um so first of all thank you I think this is the first time I've been front of the board here I was a CSC intern then I was ad Dina students and now in front of you as an assistant principal of the elementary so like danam I am very grateful for um you accepting me into the club because it's a prestigious Club um so what we're looking at as well as our attendance all of these amazing goals can't come to fruition if our kids aren't showing up to school um so a lofty goal of um decreasing chronic absenteeism by 25% um chronic absenteeism is U marked by 10% Like missing 10% of the day which you'd be amazed how quickly a kid can hit that um so our current focus
076is on both proactive and responsive practices so right now trying to streamline some of our policy into practice making sure that we're following the guidelines coid as we all know the big c-word messed up a lot of things and how people perceive importance of school possibly or how people receive illness and should I send my kid and there's that some of those factors that overhang for some of our um more chronically ill families and things that come to um that our families have to face every day so that is one of the things we're looking at like I said both proactively and responsively it's another thing that we're able to fit into that hour and a half in our PSO meeting so this is just we're just scratching the surface of that I think we've
077gotten a little further um with other goals so far but that's what's coming with our attendance stuff mine's short nothing wrong with that yeah just me not to talk so can you move it forward so another thing that came out of our summer discussions was connections to school and kids feeling connected to school and it's a it's a little bit more difficult at the elementary level to get kids actively engaged like we have a lot of kids that do you sports but they're not connected to school as much do you Sports I mean they're they're midle Eagles where they're doing that they they're in Scouts they're in lots of other things but the school connection so we spent some time talking about ways we could um get more kids involved in in clubs activities and
078really what that comes down to is that Equity piece two though when do you do it do you do it before school or do you do it after school so we're really working that right now I think Jess we've had two or three three um teachers present us with new ideas that we're pushing forward to get more kids kids and they're based on kid interests um one is an anime um type of art thing that one of our art teachers is talking about um one of them is um board games and the other one is like arts and crafts and just having kids getting into to do more things together at school and building that connection and we know that that that's a positive thing um last year just so you know how the elementary
079school looked we had a greenhouse club which we have again um with 12 students we had a running club that had 12 students in murals um had 65 um our student council has 30 had 33 chorus and bands the big leader was 75 and 80 and 87 um nehs are Honor Society had 30 kids and chess club had 20 so and we're looking to increase those those opportunities because not every student is doing sports after school or or doing those other things and a lot of them want to do this this stuff too to add that I'm sorry so the other one that's going to line up right with the mtss stuff is we already getting up and running our Eagle ambassadors which has to do with our Eagle um ticket acknowledgements what number are
080we up to for Eagle acknowledgements 8,000 some kind of crazy number yeah we're at 11,000 already so that's going to be actually students collecting that data putting together some of the eagle celebrations because they sure can do a snow cone I thought I was going to take a second career but you guys are keeping me as an AP we did did a good you you did a good job I just stood on the side watch with the snow with the snow cones it was it was fun and we our Mech kids um that are in the building would walk by the first day and they just kind of look and then I went over to Mech and asked if their kids could have snow cones so all the mech kids got snow cones too um
081they were they were very appreciative of that so our next goal is scheduling and as I said before this is why I I left Mrs Corey up here because she is passionate about this piece as well um it it ties a bow on it because you need time to do these things and there's not an infinite amount of it so how do you do this how do you put all this into one day and and get it done effectively efficiently that that's rhetorical at this point we don't know so the goal is that we're going to form a scheduling committee we're very close to putting out the initial request we're looking to make sure we have all stakeholders involved um everybody's represented throughout the school Community whether it be our AIS teachers our English to
082second language teachers um our our classroom teachers I don't know if we need a rep from every single grade level but we need a good cross-section from the bottom to the top and and to sit down and look at new scheduling options for an elementary school and how that looks in a building that has a traditional CL traditional classrooms K3 and departmentalized classrooms 456 that is a different challenge um I don't know I don't know if Christie wants to speak to scheduling it all or not um I'll give her the option if she wants to talk about some of the challenges a classroom teacher faces I can go with challenges well that's that you can speak directly to those challenges in time I can speak to the challenges in time when it comes time to
083a third grade teacher my kids are coming I have five kids on grade level in my class right so I have to spend 45 minutes teaching reading Horizons I should be taking about an hour and a half to two hours really teaching arc Arc the toolkit lessons all of I I have a half an hour I have science and social studies I do one unit in science one unit in social studies we have 25 minutes because that's the time I have allotted I used to have an hour and a half for math which I need desperately I'm down to about an hour because we also have Eagle time which is important just so that the kids are getting their social emotional needs met but that takes away from my Center time from math the reading
084Horizons because the kids are so far behind is taking away from the comprehension the vocabulary building that I need to do there is so much jam-packed in a day that I don't have enough time and our teachers are we're all coming together what are you doing how are you doing it differently because I can't fit it all in and then we all go home stressed so scheduling is huge and if we can figure that out it will be a huge relief on all of us when when we figure that out we will figure that out we will figure that out and then I'll change it again so well if you look if you think about it from the perspective though the the curriculum and once we have the curriculum nailed down this is what we're
085doing that makes that next step of making a schedule much easier because you know what you need to fit in into a certain amount of time right now we're we're not that consistent so we need to bring we're on the right Road this this is there's a lot of positivity around this if you can't feel there's a lot of things to fix a lot of things to work on but it's very positive and I I think we'd be remiss I mean I like to thank Nick for like giving us the opportunity to get our hands dirty again and get into the work but I also want to thank thank Jeff because Jeff brings it the lens of doing this and he came to every one of the meetings you know and he's been at all
086these meetings and supporting us so I'd like to thank Jeff too just for being there and kind of pointing Us in the right direction because this is new this is new stuff and we're and we're learning as we go and they come from a a place where this was practice which is helpful and can kind of make it fit what fits our people and and what we need so if I say one thing though so I've been around for a long time I've done lots and lots of initiatives lots and lots of oh we're going to do this now and it never we never took the next step right this we've started but steps are happening we can see that there's progress being made so I love that aspect Jeff gave us this template this
087we're working from here we can see where we're going we can have that hard discussion we can take our action steps and put it into practice that's gigantic that's what we've been missing for a long time and because the teachers were part of it with skin in the game they can hold us accountable too if we're not doing it so it's reciprocal is a very reciprocal um typee of relationship so I think that was the last slide so any questions from the board regarding plans for excellence thank you all right thank you everyone get the teachers this is exactly how you want to spend your money so I'm I'm going to Mark the time at 7:43 I think maybe we should is it okay if we take a pause and let our students our government
088student students head home because it is a school night after all um and and also our teachers because it's a a late night for them as well we pictures you know I know all right we can sign papers if anybody needs their paper signed can you turn off your mic okay all right so we are moving on to policy modifications policy updates why is this not okay so tonight we um are going to start what I would characterize as a multi-year process to actually review and update our entire policy manual uh it is a pretty ambitious Endeavor um and it's likely that uh our policy committee may turn over from year to year so it's going to be an ongoing um initiative and uh the work for this process so well let me actually use
089the slides I created so uh the the members of the policy committee are myself uh Mr door Miss Gallaher and Miss Altman and our um our job right is to review each of our policy policies and then bring them forward and the the work is actually starting with Crystal uh Crystal put in a significant amount of time actually cataloging all of our policies in an Excel spreadsheet and listing the dates of last review and um beginning to prepare policies for us to review as a committee by gathering up all of the uh recommended policy updates through our irie1 bosis policy subscription service so irie1 bosis has a team of lawyers who look at policy updates and put out recommended updates um as they recommend right so there's no Rhyme or Reason to how they do
090that they put them out when they are um meaningful so from that process uh a couple sets of policies um really Rose to the top and we'll get to those in a minute but I put this together real quick to just kind of help the board understand what we're going to be looking at so tonight I would say we're going to call meeting one and we're going to read our first group of policies just call it policy a right even though there's a number of them at our next meeting we will have a second read of the policy reads we're going to have tonight and we'll be introducing another set of policies for a first read if that makes sense so we'll have groups of policies at two different stages of completion and then in
091that third meeting which would be in our uh December meeting are the policies we look at tonight will be up for adoption revision or um possibly retirement based on how things go and you'll see some of those inner workings tonight with one of the policies we're going to talk about uh and at that December meeting the ones that were a first read in November would then be up for a second read and then we would introduce yet another set of policies for a first read so this is a cyclical process and in these Mee meetings in the uh the heart of the year we will always have a group of first reads A group of second reads and a group of adoptions revisions or retirements so it's going to be quite the process to keep
092track of um and what the policy committee um sort of brainstormed is that our first read would be more of an overarching read I've done some some policy updates in the past where we've gone line by line in our first read and then the second read has been more like are there any questions and then the third um is is the adoption so we're actually going to reverse that process do more of an overarching um description of the policy hit the highlights that provides the board with some time between now and our next meeting to review those those uh proposed first reads and then come back during the second read be a little more detailed and have some time for questions so that's the the process we wanted to build out so we're basically looking
093at two um well one group of policies is the best way to describe it so it's a group that really governs our adoption of inclusion of and then objection to our instructional materials which would include any textbooks or electronic instruction materials that are used in the classrooms or any um instructional materials that may be included in our libraries all right so that's that group of policies and then we're going to take a look at a Standalone policy uh policy 7552 um which governs student gender identity and how we accommodate um that in our district so we're going to start with the um policy group that has to do with our instructional materials so these policies or policies like these they've existed for a long long time um they do require periodic review due to evolving
094educational technology including the types of hardware software and Network Technology that we have in addition um you know local and National political discourse surrounding instructional materials really compels us to make sure that um what policies we have and what practices are behind them are as up toate as they could possibly be in order to um put into action if necessary all right so I had to put this on a chart because since these were last updated uh the policies have actually undergone um I would say not massive change in terms of content but they've been reorganized so our current policy 8320 selection of library and multimedia materials that policy is actually going to grow significantly and it's going to become textbooks Library materials and other instructional materials and it's going to grow in terms of
095what it covers and it becomes the main policy governing the selection of instructional materials that we have across the entire District so the reason it's going to grow is because of policy 8340 8340 is currently entitled textbooks workbooks calculators instructional computer hardware it's going to um morph into a policy entitled instructional materials and non-public school students so here's what's going to happen the portions of 8340 that around instructional materials for students in our district who attend our public institution Phelps Clifton Springs Central School District all of that content actually just pulled out of there and moved into 8320 so there's a giant chunk of that policy that moves up to 8320 but there's some leftovers that stay put and those leftovers govern how um the the policy that the district has in terms of Furnishing
096in instructional materials to students who live in our district but actually attend private schools okay so then the new title for that would be instructional materials and non-public school students now in terms of what the policies actually contain there isn't a ton of change so just take the time um to review those policies um but it more or less says uh there there's several criteria about um instructional Tech uh instructional materials uh that have to fit in order for us to adopt them um the primary one being that it has to be aligned to New York state standards and then there's several other ones that follow so again take the time to review those and come back in our second read with questions all right then we get down to the uh objection to instructional
097materials that's what our current policy 8330 is entitled um and then we have an 8331 simply called controversal commcial issues so the objective to instructional objection to instructional materials um kind of describes itself it builds out the process or or provides US policy to to follow if uh a Community member parent Guardian were to challenge the inclusion of instructional materials that we currently have whether that's in a classroom or in uh a library media center uh controversial issues is essentially a philosophical statement that says um the district um doesn't take a position per se on controversial issues but we understand the need to furnish all sides of an argument through the instructional materials that we have so students can learn as much as they can about that controversial issue in the classroom um in a
098like a political way right no stance one way or the other so we furnish a diverse um set of instructional materials so they can um evaluate their own stance and their own opinion um on that so here's what're we're going to do we're going to take the contents of the controversial issue policy and we're actually going to combine it with 8330 so then it becomes a standalone policy that governs the objection to instructional uh inclusion of instructional materials and controversial issues in one policy and then that actually makes the the page of 8331 completely blank there's nothing left there so we would actually retire 8331 as a result of of this reorganization so in terms of uh the objection process um we did as a policy committee go through and have a discussion about what
099that process will look like in the folks who should be included at the table in order to evaluate um if materials should remain included in in our uh battery of instructional materials or if uh they should be removed right so again take the time to review um the policies they're all loaded into board dos for this meeting meeting and then we'll spend a little bit more time um talking about that process and answering questions at our next read so at this point I keep saying ask questions next time um but are there any questions in terms of this set of policies and instructional materials okay our next policy update policy 7552 gender identity so this policy has been around um in the district for a long time uh it was last updated in 200 and
10015 uh the initial policy was created based on guidance from New York State uh the New York State education department released a document named guidance to school districts for creating a safe and supportive School environment for transgender and gender non-conforming students so that original document was um based essentially on um um civil rights law all right both in the state and federally and since then there have been some key changes to the laws that govern um discrimination and um um the the Civil part of uh the the discriminatory and uh civil rights laws connected to gender identity so the first one is civil rights law 64 and what is called the gender recognition act so civil rights law 64 states that if a person's name change could be any any person if a person's name
101change um and disclosure of said name change could result in someone um being at risk right then it can't be part of the public record so it turns out that legal name changes are are a part of the public record right um civil civil rights law 64 says if disclosure of that name change would put another human being at risk then that name change documentation is actually sealed right so the gender recognition act explicitly extends that to um transgender individuals so when a student or um a Community member changes their name because they are transgender then that name change would actually be a sealed public record and not released okay so what does that mean for the school what that means is is we actually have to respond in kind with the way that we
102would um house and transmit any Student Records for a transgender individual so the situation the hypothetical situation would be that we've uh received documentation in the district for a legal name change for a transgender individual ual all right let's say that that student then moves to the North Country okay and they attend some school let's I'm not going to name one but somewhere up north and we receive uh a request from that District to transmit records if we have received a legal name change document then it is actually incumbent upon us to change the records that exist for that student in house prior to transmitting them because if we don't do that we're actual ful violating uh civil rights law 64 so the main update or one of the main updates in our transgender policy
103is to say we're going to change those records if we receive a legal name change request for a transgender individual all right so that's um item one the second one is that the gender recognition act also um compelled our state to include a non-binary option uh on a driver's license so an X and because of that we have to respond in kind to um provide a nonbinary option on our forms here in the district so we actually have to go through our forms anywhere that we have male and female we also have to have a non-binary option for transgender and um gender non-conforming students okay um another minor update for uh this policy is that there was or there is a definition of gender in the dignity for all students act and our definition of
104gender in our current policy doesn't match the one for daa so eie one says change your definition of gender and your policy to the match the one in Dasa so they're consistent so we've just modified that definition and then finally um education law 409m is is a law that was passed in 2021 that says that public schools need need to label any single stall bathroom as gender neutral uh we have a standalone policy 5633 that states that we're going to do that there is a section in this policy 7552 that deals with bathrooms uh so we have updated language in that section of this policy to reflect uh consistency with um policy 5633 so those are the big updates please uh like I said review the policies posted in board dos and uh we'll have
105a second read uh at our November meeting of policy 7552 any questions right now just like Crystal knows the exact number 18,000 yeah so like 384 that's it that whole book that's more than 384 it is not oh I guess that's a good thing 3 it's only 384 four down with the first read 380 to go yeah it it will be a multi-year process there are going to be some that are easier than others for sure so we'll be able to B bring um bulk quantities uh to the table when we're ready yep all right thank you yep back to you superintendent's report I'm gonna do my best here we go so uh first and foremost I just want to point out that in addition to Schoolboard appreciation it is also National principal month so
106thank you Dan and thank you Chris uh for doing what you do every day um yes oh yeah we won't go into that okay so um I I would also like to just talk a little bit about our conference day I know we spent a lot of time talking about plans for excellence um but I was really proud of our administrative team's um perseverance in creating our conference day on October 6th because our planning um admittedly was a little bit delayed because one of the things uh that's great about the plan for excellence process is that th the goals that the the Departments and the buildings have created then the question is is what professional development do we need for our teachers and staff in order to best equip them to accomplish the goals um
107we were able to embrace that challenge and create um a conference day that was strongly oriented Ed to the goal work that's already starting um in the buildings so I was just really proud of the team so I appreciate you all for doing that work all right um back on the week of uh September 25th we had our annual safety week I'm not going to go into great details other than to acknowledge that we um conducted several drills throughout the week um of um emergency protocols that we may have to use at some point so it's good to get our feet wet with those protocols both at an administrative level at a teacher level at a staff level and then at a student level so if something were to happen um we feel ready to
108respond um one of the new twists to safety week is that we did bring the district Safety Committee together uh that week on a Thursday say early evening and we did run a tabletop drill uh which we're going to include annually now as a part of Safety Week the tabletop drill is a plausible and hypothetical situation right that is proposed to the group and you simply talk through how you might respond and what it does is that that collaboration of how you might respond actually reveals maybe some things that that we haven't thought about in terms of dealing with an emergency like that so uh I think most people walked away from that meeting feeling like okay I've got one or two things that I could do to improve my response um in an emergency
109so I think it was time well spent and I want to thank everybody who um played along with our tabletop drill all right uh real quick Capital project update so um Mr Godfrey who is here earlier tonight our uh Middle School band teacher he's in his new classroom which is really awesome to see uh you walk by that room there's still a couple instrument lockers on back order but the room is inhabited kids are using a new uh you know 21st century space and uh we're really happy that that's happening and we're going to see those dominoes fall uh one by one here throughout the next few months in terms of our our new music classrooms um I don't know if I mentioned this before it's possible I did but our old middle school cafeteria
110is borderline unrecognizable at this point um the demolition is well on its way so that's a really good sign because you know as we saw the Middle School cafeteria um look nothing like the space did before and then very quickly it turned around into a usable space so um I'm I'm happy happy that um that demolition is happening all right so I didn't do one thing to set myself up for a streamline presentation here and I want to bring something up on YouTube Okay so we're here here oh no need volume so it's been a little bit since it happened but I wanted to to make sure that the board saw this video um Todd Clawson put it together with some help of of some other folks so we're going to click on this and
111hopefully we have sound make some noise for your screaming eag feels incredible but looks even better very sharp blue all the numbers the hashes the new F looks nice the new details that they added like the new fonts with the for the letters and numbers gives it a brand new Vibe a new look oh man it's amazing I miss it so much play this field since youth football able to be here back again has a great feeling we heard that we were going to get back my senior year so it feels good that it's now and when coach told us we were all excited I mean everyone started screaming we started cheating we weren't expecting it we were in the locker room coach wi had a sitting down and then I don't know just came
112in he announced to us that we were able to come back to play this year and was very loud in there everybody was happy everybody had a smile on their face to be back at home field it's amazing that I I get to step on this field as a senior for my last year play with the home crowd here man I love them mid get every game after the national anthem that's when people start to get going get out there everybody STS is cheering for us my family it's easier for my family to come and watch me too you know it's great to like see them like you know I I like to make them proud of me for what I do and what I do on the field I'm just happy to be while
113you know we missed out there in the cross season as well any sport doesn't matter as long as we can have the fans watching us you know watching us make big plays and see us win on this field our home field is just a great feeling I'm so happy that we got his field back this just feels great to be on it again be able to play once again on it a lot of great is happening here can't wait to [Music] see all right so the video is great there's no there's no doubt but I think I wanted to show it because it it tells a lot right so you know a nod to Mr tillberg and his crew for working hard with our vendors to make sure that that playing surface was ready and
114would withstand um the traffic of a football game uh sooner than we expected there was a lot of work that went into that uh getting the the line painting robot out right that was another thing that had to happen so that little cart was controlled by buy an iPad and it it does the whole thing it's pretty awesome um now the other piece is is listening to the students what it means to these students in order to have a facility that um they're proud of right and we see it coming to fruition I'm lucky in my position right now to be on the back end of this project and just be able to put this out and celebrate it having done almost none of the leg work that's the truth right so so but I
115think as we move into our next project right which we're beginning to talk about it's important to keep in mind that how our students feel when they walk into the spaces that they're learning in playing in or performing in um it means the world to them and we're doing more than just um having a facility like it's kind of hokey but we're helping kids uh create memories and they're going to remember these things forever and how they feel about Midlakes is going to be our community in the future right so we have to remember that and I know I'm just kind of soapboxing a little bit on that point but I I feel like that video captures it and those kids said more in their enthusiasm um than than the adults can really explain so
116thanks for listening um so actually uh just to the in the same vein um kudos to everybody who put together homecoming homecoming was a really successful event from the administrators um who helped organize it to the class advisers to the class officers um to our music teachers who had the band out for the football game uh and to those who organized the uh pepper alies that afternoon and the spirit week just kudos to everybody for working so hard to do you know really great things for our kids so that does it for me and uh the superintendent's report awesome thank you yep uh board discussion topics I don't have anything does anybody have a no okay we're good so on to public comment uh the Board of Education values the input of the Midlakes community
117and welcomes public comment on any topic related to board work with the exception of matters pertaining to individual personnel and or students all public comments must be must include appropriate language and observe proper decorum anyone making public comment must identify themselves by name and address the public comment period will be limited to a total of 30 minutes and one comment per person individual comments will be uh limited to two minutes the board does not respond to items presented or questions raised through public comment however the board may discuss topics of public comment at a later time Andor contact the individual who submitted the comment there are none okay thank you all right so on to new business so the first item of business is um item a policy manual modifications is there a motion to
118approve the policy readings and modifications as presented so moved is there a second a second any discussion all those in favor of approving the policy readings and modifications as presented say I I I all of those opposed motion carried okay um Item B resolution regarding partial settlement of the vaping litigation is there a motion to approve the resolution so moved is there a second second any discussion all those in favor of approving the resolution authorizing partial siment of The Vaping litigation say I I I all those opposed motion carried all right um I'd like to block items c d and e so contracts agreements uh field trips and Midlakes fundraisers is there a motion to approve items C through e under new business as presented so moved is there a second second any discussion all
119those in favor of item c e c d and d as whoa wait am I there oh yeah C D and as presented say I I I all those opposed motion carried my grings struggling here tonight um all right on to Personnel um I would like to block items a through D oh wait we have to we have to pull out oh I got we have to pull out B because Amber has to abstain from B okay so I take the back so item a is there a motion to approve the appointments as presented so moved is there a second second any discussion all those in favor of item a as presented say I I I all those opposed motion carried Item B the coaching appointments uh mostly the winter season I think actually all
120winter season all winter season coaches is there a motion to approve the coaching appointments for 2324 winter season as presented so moved is there a second second any discussion do I need to announce it or just sit back all those in favor of Item B under Personnel say I I I all those opposed motion carried Amber abstained okay we'll block item C and D um so mentors and substitute appointments uh is there a motion to approve the substitute appointments and mentors as presented so moved is there a second second any any discussion all those in favor of item C and D as presented say I I I all those opposed motion carried all right on to adjournment uh is there a motion to adjourn for the purpose of entering into executive session for the purpose
121of discussing matters leading to the appointment employment promotion and contract negotiations so moved is there a second second any discussion all those in favor of adjourning say I I all those opposed motion carried