September 20, 2021: Board of Education Meeting

001good all right welcome everyone to the september 20th uh 2021 board of education meeting for the phillips clifton springs central school district some notes from the top of our agenda the board of education welcomes in-person attendance based on the new york nys doh commissioner's determination on indoor masking pursuant 210 nycrr 2.61 issued on august 27 2021 universal masking of teachers staff students and visitors to p12 schools over the age of two is required we kindly request the cooperation of all board meeting attendees and following this directive from the new york state department of health and those wishing to submit public comments should sign up please sign up on site prior to the start of the meeting the sign up sheet is at the front of the in this table here you're already here and note

002also this meeting may be viewed hopefully some people are viewing through the live stream on midlakes.org and the mid lakes youtube schools youtube page and if you are live streaming our agenda is available also on the midlikes page so you can find it there and follow along with what we're working through okay i think we're ready for the pledge crystal [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all we'll do a roll call of the board so jake amadon board member amber wilkes board member brian davis board member matt murphy board member don miller board member matt sickles superintendent crystal plant district clerk thank you um approval of the

003agenda can i have a motion to approve the agenda please from ryan a second please second second from amber any discussion on the agenda that's before us hearing none all in favor of the agenda please say aye aye any opposed to the agenda thank you number four is consent agenda items so a through g any discussion on the consent agenda items hearing none all in favor of approving the consent agenda items please say aye aye any opposed the consent agenda items are approved all right moving into our presentations and what the minutes note that tracy altman board member is present so presentation a retiree recognition administrative team okay well it is long been mid lakes tradition to recognize the staff members who have given many years of service and had distinguished careers for us and

004have retired traditionally we recognized them in june of each school year the year in which they retired whether they retired during the year or in june obviously some circumstances have intervened in the last couple years that have prevented in-person recognition we have done it via zoom but we wanted to take this opportunity now that we are and have been in person um to invite our retirees from 2019 2020 and 2020 21 um to be here with us um to be recognized um two of those retirees have been able to join us and we're grateful for that we realize people are very busy it's uh unusual times but it's our pleasure to recognize all of our retirees tonight whether they're they're with us in the auditorium or not um we've come to know at mid lakes

005that the experience of our students is the product of all the people all the adults who work so hard in so many different roles to make a difference it truly takes every single role every job description to lead to student success and we've certainly seen that more than ever over the last couple years but it's always been true so it's it's really our pleasure to recognize all of our retirees we have our administrators who are going to assist in the recognition if somebody's going to speak on behalf of each retiree we'll start with 2019-2020 and we'll recognize kathleen cammy catchment i believe that's mrs benzer hello can you guys hear me okay so mrs catchment was a kindergarten teacher when she retired in 2019 countless kindergarten students have had been blessed to have had the

006opportunity to be in mrs catchment's class she welcomed her students each day with a smile and always maintained a nurturing classroom environment that not only comforted students but encouraged them to be active participants in their learning mrs cutchman had a way of communicating with children that allowed her to reach them on a deeper level and when it comes to five-year-old that's not always an easy task her positive and caring approach with students and colleagues has left a lasting impression on the mid-lakes family we hope retirement is treating her well mr moyer i think i think you're next amy mccann's who's next i know i'm not but which teacher is next because there's a plethora of them all right so amy mccann mrs mccann was a member of the fourth grade team for many years she

007approached each day with a fresh outlook and positive attitude amy was one of the teachers that led the charge to provide flexible seating options for her students and to accommodate different learning styles she always advocated for her students in order to provide them with the best education possible ms mccann has officially moved to florida which was a year and a half ago but officially moved to florida right after retirement and is reportedly enjoying her retirement to the fullest and mr moyer thank you you can see right there who's next mr stark mr stark all right [Music] it's a challenge when my glasses fog but i have to wear a mask so mr stark has filled many roles throughout his time as a mid lakes employee he spent many years working as a primary level teacher

008before moving to the intermediate classrooms russ even spent a few years as the middle school dean most recently actually when i wrote this these i wrote these actually when these people retired so actually not most recently but we'll still go with it most recently russ tossed sixth grade and had the exceptional ability to be flexible and meet his students where they were he has also been described as one of the most patient teachers one has ever encountered these abilities made him an incredibly successful teacher many mid-lake students have also known ross as coach stark russ has coached many sports but has spent most of his coaching years on the football and basketball court football field in basketball court i would have liked to have wished him a great retirement however russ came back again last

009year and filled a fourth grade vacancy from january to june and i called him again this summer and russ is back again filling a third grade vacancy that we needed up until the first week of december when asked he told me i've never taught third grade i thought i'd give it a shot and the kid our students are blessed to have him and for those of you that don't know he also is currently coaching football here so we know russ is enjoying his retirement even though he's not really quite retired our next retiree to be recognized is jane westfall and mrs benzer and mrs wood so mrs westfall has filled many roles during her years in our elementary school for several years she ran the special friends program which provided our youngest students with individualized

010support while learning and practicing social emotional skills her work within the program allowed many students to be successful learners and friends jane also applied her skills to support our kindergarten students in the extra step program one of my favorite things about jane is her contagious smile she always has a way of bringing out the smiles on everyone else that's around her mrs westfall's optimism and positive approach with children was highly valued in our school we hope you are enjoying all that retirement has to offer and spending lots of time with your grandchildren so jane is always remembered for her dedication to the social emotional wellness of the students she worked with she took on a challenge for me when i needed somebody up at the secondary building a few years before she retired so it

011didn't matter whether the student was elementary or secondary she always advocated for their needs and the programming supports they needed she was a teaching assistant who was interested in running social emotional programming and play therapy with some of our younger learners and did it well on a personal note i know she is missed by many including me for all of our conversations and sharing of life events i still wish i had been able to go for that yoga walk on the farm that people still chat about as one of their favorite wellness activities come on up here jimmy yes we invite mrs westfall up to receive a token of our appreciation for her many years of service thank you jane our next retiree is nancy plate secretary and mr moyer will speak on her behalf

012you're all going to get sick of hearing me tonight for many years nancy plate was the first face that many students and parents encountered when they entered what was then the intermediate school main office nancy always greeted everyone with a smile and a welcoming hello what really set mrs played apart was her ability to form strong lasting relationships with our students it was not uncommon for a group of students to congregate each morning in the office for their morning conversation with mrs plate her presence in the office has been greatly missed and i know that she is enjoying her retirement so i will recognize the next few yvonne cockett retired as cook manager in the middle high school in june of 2020 after 28 years of service to the district as cook manager for the

013secondary building she prided herself on connecting with and understanding the needs of our students she knew the majority of our students by name as well as as well as their food preferences and allergies she engaged students in conversation asking them specific questions about their families pets and school work yvonne listened to the comments students shared with her and she was especially responsive to the needs of our mech students and always tried to make the cafeteria time as enjoyable as possible we're incredibly appreciative for yvonne's many years of service bill johnson retired in june 2020 as a cleaner after nearly 40 years of service bill was a dedicated and valuable part of our midlakes facility staff his most recent assignment was at the middle high school but he previously worked in the south street and teft

014avenue schools his knowledge of the buildings were a huge benefit to both to his co-workers and supervisors bill was also known for the connections he made with our students he was often recognized by our student athletes as a person who had a positive impact on their experience at midlakes we're grateful to bill for almost four decades of dedication and service to the mid-lakes family his retirement left a void within but as i often kidded him we were never going to let him go and he has in fact been back since last spring not quite full time but pretty close helping us out with our additional cleaning needs and continues to do a great job to serve the middle lakes community so we're very appreciative of bill [Applause] and our last retiree from 2019-2020 roger spafford

015retired in december 2019 after 31 years at mid lakes he was our head bus mechanic and he always distinguished himself as a dedicated and hardworking employee he's especially known as a talented mechanic who always kept our fleet of buses safe and well maintained and thanks to roger we were able to maintain perfect d.o.t ratings we're grateful to roger for his dedication to keeping our students and staff safe we're now going to recognize our retirees from the 2020-2021 school year and we're going to start with siobhan connor who's going to be recognized by mr moyer mr b rossi did nobody retire from the high school at the time of her retire retirement siobhan was a member of the fourth grade team um and was teaching mathematics throughout the time working with siobhan i made the comment

016numerous times i would have wanted my own children to have had her as a teacher shaban's approach to each day excuse me siobhan approached each day with the same vigor and desire to provide her students with a top-notch education it was great to observe siobhan learn along with her students students as we shifted to remote and hybrid learning along with the support from her team she successfully made the necessary adjustments and provided our students with the best possible education that could be provided earlier this summer many of you probably don't realize it shaban came back to school for a day and volunteered with us to give us an extra set of hands her dedication to the community and our school is unquestionable and unwavering she has not only become a trusted colleague but she is

017also a close friend now we wish her all the happiness in retirement oh congratulations siobhan our next retiree is richard jones school psychologist will be recognized by mr bay rossi and mrs wood so richard jones as i affectionately call him dr jones was truly the backbone of mid-lake secondary school some called him the mayor of the secondary school it was very rare occurrence to walk by rich's office and not see him counseling either student or a staff member most of the staff went to richard for his sage advice and vast knowledge of mid lakes and the surrounding community his shoes will be extremely hard to fill richard uh gave advice to everybody richard was the go-to person for everybody and richard really uh was the climate and culture of this building and he will be

018sorely sorely missed for what he brought to this building so i think next time i'm gonna go first so i don't have to cry or anything like that through my little spiel but richard jones was definitely a mentor and a friend to many he was the district's number one school psychologist for summer work for the last 13 years in which i've been the department director and it wasn't until this summer the first summer without him that i truly noticed all the support he gave the csc office and the secondary building i already miss our many remember when conversations and our comparisons of students to their parents because many of you may not know this but richard and i have been here decades and so we have seen generation and generation of mid lakes eagles across

019our many years together and really loved those times when we would reminisce about the successes and what we learned about the challenges so our next two retirees i've i got the pleasure to interact with much more often last year uh due to covet they're they're two of our school nurses and they're tremendous losses um and the the first retiree is gail care and she'll be recognized by frank and tammy and i'm going first okay so i was lucky enough to start the same year at the high school as gail and so i was the first special ed teacher who pushed in took classes at the high school and she was a school nurse with lots of experience what i always loved about her was her smile that she always had no matter how stressful the

020day was um i will never forget her dedication to her job and her search for supports for families and the students i admire her for her efforts and quick responses to health situations in classrooms or hallways and franken agree with me there have been some circumstances over her 26 years here at the district that were pretty challenging i remember some tough situations that her leadership and dedication to the medical profession got staff members students and families through it in a positive way and it wasn't just the copic pieces last year not at all not at all what do you say about the person who has taken care of an entire building for so many years gil gail has handed out band-aids helped with bumps and bruises and dealt with medical emergencies on a regular basis

021for many years she did this with a smile on her face and warmth in her heart she was always the first person to arrive in a medical emergency and always the last to leave the side of a student or an employee she will be truly missed [Applause] our next retiree is margaret pegg carlson will be recognized by miss wood and mr moyer good i get to go first again so miss pegg one of the things before i forget before i talk about her dedication is i don't know how many staff members that are currently on staff remember the wonderful skits the nurses used to do for the right to know that is truly the gift and i know peg was that creative genius behind that oh it took place right here so anyway i do

022miss that a great deal but yet again she was another dedicated individual to mid lakes her mid-lakes family and her friends she had a no-nonsense way of handling students staff and families she was the lucky first employee who had to have the talk with students hitting double digits her dedication to emergency situations or being the nurse to count on for the annual senior trip was also very commendable her behind the scene dedication to making sure families were taken care of and on the right list for the holidays whether it was a list we organized at school or one that was worked on with the community agencies she had she made sure families were helped mrs wood didn't leave me anything but i will say that there was not a time that i didn't ask peg

023for something some kind of support that she wasn't there and what tammy said you know working with fifth and sixth graders in particular there were numerous times i'd go to peg and say i i need you to handle this one for me um talking with our students that are getting up to that that kind of tweener age and she was always willing to do it and did it with a smile and did it with tact and grace probably don't know this but mrs carlson is also venturing into breeding burmese mountain dogs so if they are wonderful dogs i'm trying to talk her down in price because i know that's why but she is also she's looking at that as something because they are wonderful and something to think about thank you [Applause] our next retiree

024is ann leverty secretary for the uh middle high school pso this is not that i i didn't want any of them there but i wish anne was here a lot of what i'm going to say is is a joke between ann and i and she only she would get it you know ann was the smiling face that greeted everyone when they entered the pso she always kept the office in tip-top order organized grades college applications ap exams grade books report cards honor roll lists and kept the counselors on task she was quick-witted always had a comeback ann and i had this this running joke for the last eight years because i passed her office every day on my way to bus duty and i'd look in the office and say good morning anne and she

025just looked at me what do you want and i told her for eight years i said before you leave i'm going to get you to give me a hug before you leave and she snuck out darn it before i could give her a hug so i was hoping she was here tonight so i could trap her and give her that hug but ann is truly missing that office she really kept on organized um and was that smiling face to everybody everybody got to see when they needed somebody at a time of need so thank you ann our next retiree is darlene swank who was the cook manager for the elementary school and in addition to feeding our students became very well known for her catering of a wide range of meetings that took place of

026different professional associations and i know for example there's a lot of superintendents who are very upset um she'll no longer be doing the catering uh jill swarthau our food service manager and mr moyer will speak on her behalf well i believe darlene was with mid lakes for 28 and a half years she was always moving the program forward she was very dedicated as matt said to providing special meals for different venues such as superintendents conference days she also established an adult line for our teaching staff so they could have flexibility in the things that they were consuming versus what the students were required to eat her dedication to her to the students was unmeasured she was always going above and beyond to satisfy them and to create certain things that they could process like gluten-free

027items and things like that so we're gonna miss her so when i started as principal um i needed to get to know everybody and the first thing i noticed about darlene was how approachable she was on many many mornings we would both we'd be the first two in the building i'd just go in and sit down in her office and we'd talk kind of get things squared away that weren't working well but she was always willing to stop what she was doing and have a conversation with me and it's interesting what joel said about the the catering and the food if ever we needed something whether it was a sheet pizza for a breakfast or whatever always willing just to make sure we had what we needed when we needed it and she was always

028smiling while doing it so she is greatly greatly missed in elementary kitchen so our last five retirees we're recognizing tonight are all bus drivers and i'm gonna recognize them as a group and as you'll hear from me a little later on in the meeting they are especially missed our bus drivers are critical to obviously getting our students here safely and home safely but ensuring that they have the opportunity to enjoy in-person instruction but our bus our bus drivers are are even more important because they are the first face and the last face that our students see every day and they greet them and they make them feel well welcome and comfortable and excited to come to school um they're often the first to let us know um if there's something we should keep an eye

029on they're really a treasure for us and these five bus drivers serve the district for a very long time and are especially missed lorraine manning retired in january of after 25 years of service to the district mariana mcwilliams retired in june of 2021 after 27 years of service to the district terry poultin retired in june of 2021 after 26 years of service denise reynolds retired in february of 2021 after 25 years of service and patricia t retired in september of 2020 after 25 years of service that's a long time to drive a bus it's difficult work it's important work they're incredibly missed we'll take them back if they want to but please join me in recognizing lorraine mariana terry denise and patricia [Applause] so once again it's our pleasure to celebrate those who gave so

030many years of service to the district but most importantly to our students and thank you all for being part of recognizing them wow that was a lot of institutional knowledge or a lot of dedication [Music] a lot of a lot of people here a long time that's that's awesome and sad to see everyone go um and for those of you that are able to attend tonight thank you for doing so um you know as um [Music] if you laughed that we you would not offend us um but you certainly can see uh you certainly can stay and see how we um continue to work on this great foundation that you laid for us so thank you all for being able to attend tonight um and thank you everyone whether you're here or not for for

031for the years of service to the to the district and usually at these events uh we eat some cake from darlene um and that is true that's i guess not again all right where are we we are into more presentations so let her be the strategic planning update by the members of the strategic planning council okay well we're very excited um after some substantial delays to share with you a very important update on our strategic planning process this is a process that due to a variety of factors took a little bit longer than we anticipated but i know the 10 members of the mid lake strategic planning council or here who are here tonight are very excited um to tell you about the process so we're going to start with mr bae rossi um several

032of us 11 including me will be part of telling you about the history of the strategic planning process the goals and what the draft strategic plan contains mr b rossi thank you so what you see in front of you is a quote from dr tony frontier and we thought this was apropos for the work that we did the the real important part of this quote is the key to success is not doing more work and making more changes but doing the right work and making the right changes and i think if you talk to every person that was involved in this process they would tell you wholeheartedly that what we came up with is absolutely the right work and the right changes and you'll see that in in the presentation that everybody was extremely involved

033and extremely enthusiastic about the work that we did and excited with with the outcome and you'll see that today but we thought this quote really kind of encompassed the work that we did and kind of kicks us off in the right direction you so as matt said it it was delayed but i kind of see it differently that it was a little it was kind of fortuitous that we had the delay because it took us through the covet it took us through and where we are where we're standing now through all those days of uncertainty not that it's over but i i find that when we did it was that frank said the right time and the right work and i will say it was actually fun you know those were fun days that we

034spent this summer they were long days but they were fun you'll see that the group used the district vision and the five parts of the of the mission to drive our work as we get into this plan you'll see that all these are represented in the four focus areas that are represented within the plan thank you so just to give you a little background on the planning process the board knows this discussion began um really back in the spring of 2019 and we went back we went out to a request for proposal for our consultant group to lead us through the process and that happened in the summer of 2019 and the the reason that we saw an outside consultant is we knew that we needed to collect very honest candid and transparent information from

035all of our stakeholders and that you know maybe if the superintendent asks the questions or a principal asks the questions we we may not get the same face-to-face candid answers that we really needed um as opposed if we brought in strangers to our staff so we went out to a request for a proposal and the warner school of education out of the university of rochester was selected by the board to lead this work it's really important to note however that they just facilitated it and i think the the members of the the team who are here tonight can speak to that they collected the data they compiled it so that it was easy to to read and understand where we stood and how we compared other schools and then you know they set up the

036activities that enable the team to create the product to create the plan so the plan is the work of the mid lakes team it is not the work of the the warner school but we're certainly grateful for the role they played we did have a few bumps in the road we were ready to go all the data was collected and the first planning council meeting was a full day session was scheduled for march 18th 2020. three days after we we switched to remote warning so we had to adjust we even had to do a little bit of reconstruction to the team based upon people's availability but we ended up with 20 members representing different stakeholder groups who did a great job they came together for three full very eye-opening grueling exciting fun all those those

037words apply days of work to to put this plan together and i know they're very excited to share the draft plan with you so the first thing that that the team looked at was really the program report and what what that was the warner school had collected um a bunch of different data most of which can be found on the school report card site and things like that and it really took an inner look at what our data was and the best part about it was the comparison and benchmark districts that they also had for us so they had our data comparison data which was schools that are similar in our demographics and our achievement and then benchmark schools in which our schools that are similar in our demographics but they outperform us in achievement

038and seeing those different comparison and benchmark schools really helped us to reflect on the areas we need to grow and it was okay that we had areas to grow in every building every department had areas and you'll find some of that out in just a bit so the perception report was put together it was a full gamut of staff members board members students community members that were invited and the warner school came in as for a day long asked them a ton of questions and some of that was also compiled with some surveys but you can get a better feel when you're you know face-to-face asking those questions there's a chance that they can interpret a question differently and that you're there that person is there to kind of explain it so that was it

039was good to get that perception data from from everybody in the district um the interviewers were impressed with how many community members showed up they've done this at larger school districts and they've had very little people show up at all from the community which most of us know how passionate and involved our community is so it was no surprise to us that we had a huge turnout but it definitely was eye-opening to them to have doing this in the past with bigger school districts and we had a 10 times bigger turnout for community support for this um all the feedback from this report helped kind of drive our focal points that you'll see later on in the in the program and it was it was just very interesting to see the perception of what staff

040stakeholders community students thought we were doing well and also you know it was eye-opening to see what they you know had thoughts on what we can do better and it was you know some of those things there that they provided with us that you'll see later on of what helped us drive this pro program so john took a lot of what i was going to say about the community report so that the u of r was absolutely amazed at the input that we had from this community additionally i want to reiterate to all of you that looking through this data was definitely difficult work i've been a teacher in the secondary school for 17 years and i'm a parent of a third and a fifth grader in our elementary school so i have my own

041observations and perceptions of what's going on in our district um so but to be able to see all of that together on paper the numbers was a lot to digest there were a lot of positives in the report absolutely but it was human nature for some of us to focus on the negatives and the teacher and me to fix them all so it was a very rewarding experience to be a part of this initial planning for strategic planning and i'm excited as both a member of the staff and a parent to see it through thank you aaron i just want to add to that because as a superintendent i did the work alongside the group i was a participant but i got to watch them read this information and watch the response and in it

042some of it was difficult and and the the plan is rooted in acknowledgement that we're not where we want to be and for people who take a lot of pride in what they do you know that was difficult for them but i applaud the entire team for digging in and using that as motivation to make some really great recommendations for how we can do better for our students so taking all that information from the data sources it was pretty neat to be a part of the process with myself being a mid lakes grad also a parent of a mid lakes grad and three current students and then to now be the director of curriculum and instruction i could see it from all the different points of view and the program report we took a look

043at we were able to identify areas everybody could add to the list and the u of r helped us to then combine all of our documented areas of concern and areas of strength and kind of meld them into four areas that seem to kind of bubble up to the surface and what you'll see here is academic excellence being a high priority and it was kind of hard to swallow that pill and say yeah our data is not where we want it to be and we're going to own that and we're going to move forward and we're going to make plans to make this you know better a better education for our students moving forward uh the second piece was the mid-lakes community and the different pieces to that involving communication within the community communication within

044the internal mid lakes staff community communication out to our families and to families maybe whose language is different than english to make sure that they are understanding and feeling a part of the community a third piece was our strong and empowered staff so having that staff perception report and the staff meetings where they met with the u of r to give their feedback really helped us to see their point of view see their needs and figure out ways that we can try to address those needs and retain our awesome fabulous teachers so that they'll stay for 30 40 years or keep coming back after they retire and then the last piece was huge in that we were able to have two students uh participate and they also were able to look at the data through

045their eyes and their lens and and provide the rest of us with that unique perspective that yes i was a student here but you know back in the 80s and 90s things might have changed a little um since then and student life and and their perspectives um is a huge piece and a huge voice that i think you'll see throughout the plan so i'm going to turn it over to the group that focused on academic excellence i'll kind of dive into that a little deeper for you but i was one that worked on that particular subgroup with academic excellence so under the area of academic excellence obviously student success is one of the primary goals we need to look at areas where we can improve the outcome for all of our students and first and

046foremost we decided that this process has to be data-driven our plan is data-driven we're going to utilize the data looking at areas of our strengths so that we can capitalize on those strengths and then the areas of opportunity where we need to grow and develop more so um we've got a lot of information from all those different sources that they had described earlier and we're going to use that to inform our decisions secondly the we're going to do this through tier 1 supports that are available to all of our students and then also recognizing that some of our student subgroups have special needs that need to be accounted for to again allow all of our students regardless of their status to achieve to their maximum potential the second thing we looked at was support systems

047so an implementation of an mtss program is something that we are aware of before the strategic planning even met however in strategic planning we were able to formalize a plan with supporting our students being at the forefront of us welcoming our students back into the building full-time this month some of these tasks are already being implemented such as the eagle time in the secondary school some of the tests that will come out of this goal include a k-12 plan and provide professional development and training to the staff for these programs we will also effectively use the data collected using the power bi dashboard to help guide our interventions trainings and review the effectiveness of those interventions in the last section under academic excellence is programming and really programming is is all about making sure that

048we create a robust program for all of our students whether they're preparing for college a trade or career so that's us looking at master scheduling course offering course offerings and college partnerships to make sure that we are giving our students choice we're giving them voice and opportunity within their schedule and what they select throughout their their time here at mid lakes to kind of round out that economic excellence portion of the strategic plan thank you so the next focus or goal area of the plan was mid lakes community that came out of the data so i'm going to invite that group to come up which i was a part and this is really looking at community in a number of ways one how we can engage with the internal and external community but also develop

049productive collaborations and access resources that will help our help meet our students needs mr moyer okay so i get to lead off here so that you'll see that the first piece of of this is communication and engagement and it's essential that we have good solid two-way communication with all of our stakeholders and when you look at that first highlighted area that first bold area the word that jumps out is confidence and with confidence you know there's trust trust both directions you don't have confidence in your school if you don't trust your school and i think setting the groundwork with good communication by any means possible you're talking to me preferably face to face but any way we can get our community our parents and our students engaged we will we're going to strive to do

050that to build that confidence with uh between ourselves and our community we also talked about community partnerships and as our group came together we quickly realized how much our school and our community have to offer one another and how much more could be possible so um we'd like to utilize and optimize all of those resources and collaborate together so that we can benefit one another as much as possible so that eagle pride can be seen felt and heard throughout the community and not just on campus thank you and we recognize that if we're truly going to be a mid-lakes community that involves everybody and making sure that everyone every single member of the middle east community every one of our students feels included feels a sense of equity feels a sense of belonging that there

051is no sense of alienation equity and inclusion is an initiative that is being embraced at the state level by the new york state education department and the board of regents that many of us will be attending virtual events in the coming weeks with those groups on that topic but it's it's really important work that we're going to be engaging with internally and with partners to make sure that every mid-lake student when they walk in the door regardless of their characteristics regardless of their background regardless of any factor beyond their control feels connected and feels like they belong when they walk in into the in through the doors and onto our campus so as our school community continues to become more culturally diverse it's definitely more important than ever that we give all students parents and

052staff an opportunity to highlight their accomplishments and also celebrate their tradition some of the ways in order to do this it is necessary that we collaborate with our local businesses and organizations to identify the different ways that we can share everyone's story so as a member of the multi mtss team and the strategic planning team we believe it is necessary that we create a mid lakes motto it and somehow market it throughout the community and as well throughout our schools there's definitely a lot of really good schools out there already doing some wonderful work in this area so if we could partner with them and network with them to kind of get some ideas on how we can share our mid-lakes pride and also be able to share the history of of mid lakes and

053lastly i just kind of want to point out that we definitely want to give everyone an opportunity to share their personal stories i think so far this year we've done a really good job at giving kids the opportunity to do this through our sel time our eagle time but we can definitely do more and we need to be able to share the greatness of midlakes thank you our next goal area is creating a strong and empowered staff so we want to make sure that staff no matter what role they have at the district that they realize that they all have a part of a student's success and some of the retirement stories that you heard tonight definitely you know those bus drivers are just as important as teachers in the classroom because they are those

054first people that get to say hello to kids when they when they get on that bus to come to school so one of the things under professional development that we're definitely working on this year is that social emotional learning because that is what's needed for our students right now but going forward under professional development really a needs assessment for all staff so that administration does know what supports they need to do a better job so that kids can be more successful and with that the internal communications working with principals the district admin and and really all staff to increase those conversations across campus that horizontal and vertical communication you know upping that public relations what's the best way for that information to get out to the community staff students and the like and some of

055the things that you'll see throughout this plan is it's woven together kind of meshes together you know education's never done in silos all of these things should work together so some of there's going to be some common themes throughout the different things that we do um and employee wellness is one thing that we've been working on um we have a wellness committee and we uh partner with excellus our goals are to expand on that and then some of the things that we do with students we also want to do with staff like character dares or you know the staff they also need some emotional support at times you want you know if the staff is having a bad day um we've got to figure out to make sure that they're cared for as well so

056that they can take care of the kids that come through the door so it's just important just as much of an of a goal for us to make sure that we provide those supports for our staff is just like we do for our students and we'll work through our wellness committees to make sure that that's done thank you and our last goal area recognizing that our students are at the center of everything we do is student life good evening john neil you're working very sharp tonight thank you um student leadership i'm glad to be part of this strategic planning by the way um our is to provide students to take active roles in our education um it would help us build self-confidence self-worthiness and authenticity where students can feel welcome to share their ideas and

057for them to be heard and valued that is student leadership with the co and extracurricular activities you know we're going to work with students parents and advisors and coaches to find and create ways to evaluate current programs assess the needs of our current programs and what's needed to move them forward we'll be working to improve the current opportunities and constantly working to assess you know what we might need to add maybe what we might need to take away depending on on what we find from our our data that's driving these decision making processes but we're constantly going to work with the community and students to make sure that we're striving to make sure that we do the best for our students in our community our next is student wellness and the first category that we

058i'm going to go over is a student conduct students want to work in an environment where they feel safe and pleasant without being distracted that just for most of our students you know next category is drug and outcome prevention and awareness as the epitome of drugs grows faster and faster many of our students are participating of the use of such substances on and off campus raising awareness is a key part of this plan because it will help students to properly understand each addictive drugs and their effects on the human body and i'm the next one too diversity equity and inclusion while this does not pertain to teachers but mostly students because teachers do a good job of diversity the plan is to create a structure where all students no matter race belief gender nor sexuality

059can feel included and accepted and it goes with what the midwest community said teachers do really good do a good job about it but this is your sort of student perspective and then finally the educational opportunities like again this is kind of one of those things that meshes through everything so um we're gonna keep investigating and fi and create ways to partnership with our internal and external groups to create community service opportunities provide more ways to expose our students to the trades other careers and college choices out there so again we'll keep surveying having kids having teachers community members work with us to provide those enriching opportunities for our students to be exposed to a multiple facet of opportunities thank you for all of you for for um expanding upon those goal areas um for

060the board's sake you know then where do we go from here so we have the plan you have the draft plan for feedback um prior to finalization and making it public but what are we going to do with this so you know the plan is is worth nothing if we don't act upon it so the next step is we you know the one last piece with the warner school is they're going to come in and work with members of the administrative team who are identified as year one facilitators for some of the initiatives in the goal areas identified by the team so that year one management plan first i should begin by saying that all of us wish that we could snap our fingers and have this entire plan accomplished in the blink of an

061eye because it all represents all the things that we want for our students and for our school community and the community at large and we wish that we could do it fast but we want to do it well and that means being patient being thorough being data informed data driven and taking the time to really make sure that the work sticks so you will see in the plan that you know tasks are identified for year one year two year three year four even year five so we're going to start with year one management plans where the warner school is going to work with us at those of us who are identified as year one facilitators to figure out how do you write it so that it's attainable and how do you write it so that

062the steps are there to make sure that those actions take place that will then equip us to work on our own after those year one steps are accomplished to write our year two action plans year three and so on and to adapt as we go so that's the work that lays ahead and then there's going to be a lot of reporting out to me by different facilitators i will say that when somebody's identified as a facilitator of an initiative it does not mean they are solely responsible for accomplishing all that work this is just as creating this plan was collaborative doing the work is going to be collaborative it has to it has to engage the entire community there's a lot here so the facilitators will delegate they'll empower they'll work and lead you'll work

063with and lead many other stakeholders to actually do the work and then report to me who's responsible to the board to make sure the plan is carried out so there will be periodic reports on the schedule that's outlined in the plan and then there will be reports to the board as well we want to acknowledge that the plan is a living document and that the planning process is a fluid one this represents what this group of people saw in the moment in the data that was presented our data hopefully was going to change in a positive direction but it's going to change one way or the other data changes circumstances change and we have to be able to adapt and respond to that you also probably noticed a lot of overlap as we split out

064into those four goal areas you know academic achievement has some of the same initiatives as middle lakes community came up with and some of what mid lakes community came up with had some of the same initiatives that student life had because a school isn't compartmentalized everything is connected so as we go we may see initiatives you know merge and and consolidate and that could affect the timelines as we go so this isn't a rigid document it's a living one and we'll work together and adapt as we go and then hopefully be able to identify you know because we we expect that academic achievement academic excellence middle lakes community a strong supported staff and student life are going to continue to be important for as long as mid lakes is here so this can very easily

065grow into a year six a year seven a year eight and so on but there will be updates to the board as we make progress on the annual management plans but as some of these initiatives are accomplished and then feed into new initiatives and then finally i want to recognize not just this outstanding group who are brave enough to come out or foolish enough to accept my invitation but thank you all of you for being here tonight to present the work of the entire team but listed here are all 20 members of the mid lake strategic planning council representing all different stakeholder groups and i know they appreciate the efforts of the group tonight who are here to present and before we open up the questions i just want to say thank you it was

066very difficult work it was humbling work but this group took tremendous pride and i think they created a really great product for our students so thank you and we open it to questions so board we do have a uh spot on our agenda under discussions for for any discussions amongst ourselves about about the um about the street planning in the process and that sort of thing but if you have any questions for the the presenters now would be a good time to ask um to fill this uh to thank you very much for the presentation uh that was i mean it was thorough and um and and certainly reflects an incredible amount of work uh i mean this this plan is i've seen strategic plans before this this looks well um well laid out you

067know so i'm happy for happy uh that we contracted with warner because i know that's reflected there uh their expertise in putting together plans but it also reflects all the hard work that went into it into it by the planning council and especially the community members i mean the number of community members that were involved is is awesome and that's certainly reflects um you know the the love of the school but also you know and also the interest in making us do better um and do better by our students so that that's what's great to see i'd like to give a shout out to navoo door who was unable to attend however she did this on her birthday yes her 16th birthday matt the community survey report was there what was the difference in the

068in the questions from march of 2012 the questions were pretty similar but recognizing that time had passed and some pretty significant events had passed so it gave the opportunity for community members to give updated feedback through whatever lens they experienced um in in the year year and a half that had transpired so the questions were in terms of evaluating um the different areas of performance were pretty similar a lot of the same people answering it it was all anonymous so we did have um again the warner school was incredibly impressed by the volume of participation in both surveys but the survey did responses did go up we hit 300 on the second survey so there were you know that's a really good sample size um so it was you know a good amount of data

069to be able to trust that that it was reflective of the broader community i would say probably where that data had its greatest impact that second survey was on the community the middle lakes community engagement piece all right i think we're good well thank you again for that presentation that was um well laid out and uh and reflects you know a lot of hard work that's happened but also previews a lot of a lot of hard work to come um but certainly sets a road map for for you know a lot of our efforts um in over the next five years which which is good to know it's good to have a plan i mean this is awesome i think we're ready to move on to the next presentation absolutely thank you all uh you're

070certainly welcome to stay some of you have to stay but some of you are certainly free to go but thank you for being here uh to be part of the presentation so our next presentation is an update on our school meal program so i invite um jill swarthout and mr berasi and mr moyer tell yourself [Laughter] so today we had hot lunch for the first time since we've reopened school we were ecstatic about that we got to see our kids we got to communicate with them we got to just just be with them again my team we were very very pleased to be able to do that do you want to go to the next slide so um initially we were thinking of october 4th as when we could roll this back out again but

071due to tightening up our procedures and our team we were able to push it up to today which we were very grateful to do we have a regular hot lunch item along with your accruements your vegetable and things and then we also have a peanut butter and jelly deli sandwich or a yogurt option for those that need a meat non-meat alternative we are not currently offering point of sale items such as ice cream or chips or cookies due to the fact that we want to keep things as sanitized as possible okay the k through six students served are served in the cafeteria we're also waiting for determination between the six foot rule and the three foot rule and we didn't have a lot of space to be able to accommodate the six the three foot

072rule unless it became evident that we were able to do that the seventh and eight students coming through the line first and then the nine through 12 12 students are called up by seat again meals are free so our numbers have increased dramatically and they're free for all students and is funded by the usda until june 30th of this year hopefully legislation will push forward that we will be continuing to offer free meals after this year and going forward that's a copy of our menu up there as you can see we started with deli sandwiches and then today we were able to offer famous popcorn chicken which the kids just love with smiley fries and tomorrow they're pretty excited too toasted cheese and tomato soup so this is what we're going to continue to do

073thank you to jill and and to the both building principals and their teams um for for making this happen um they they the last couple weeks they've been doing something they've never done before you know um working under new new guidelines that weren't allowed last year so they took the opportunity of the two weeks to work through the procedures and were comfortable recommending this transition so i'd like to say you know working with frank you can jump in any time too working with jill's been great she's been easy to talk to um very accommodating to our ideas and listening to us which is you know the basis for a good relationship um today the kids were super excited um and it went very smoothly you gotta imagine i mean it's one thing when you're talking

074about kids that have gone through the line a number of times our first graders nor our kindergartners had been through a lunch line so you you start today with them never being through a lunch line and it was very smooth the other little few hiccups absolutely but there were no major spills you know everybody got back to their seat with their popcorn chicken everybody enjoyed their meal and it was it was wonderful and we had kids say can i go back and get more um they were very very excited can i pack my lunch and buy my lunch tomorrow absolutely you know they're very very excited and i cannot it speaks volumes to the staff to um the kitchen staff the monitors everybody involved um from top to bottom our secretaries all took a turn

075today going into the cafeteria and helping just to make sure that we we got through it smoothly so it was it was a great experience and it was i want to say it was the right decision to do what we did um it gave us a few days to kind of get our feet wet before we got into this and it was a good it was a good transition today and it was the right decision i i would echo um what mr moore has to say and it's you know obviously the two buildings are different it's different personalities with students different age students i have and i have a couple little two little stories when i that our seniors that go to fltcc in the morning come back and it's in between two lunches so

076there's probably about 20 or 30 of them that come in and they come in and they sit in the cafeteria until the bell rings and they can get lunch and a majority of them are our boys and they came in and sat down and ten of them right in the front row just looked up and they said mr barros is today popcorn chicken i said yes it is i've never seen so many high school students excited for popcorn chicken and and they were you know as i was walking around lunch today i walked by one of our football players and he was sitting at one of our booths and he had two trays on his table i said two lunches and he had a smile from eater he said yeah popcorn chicken dave mr bear

077rossi um you know so it it the two weeks were necessary for us to get the procedures down to make sure that we could function and keep the kids safe while that we were serving them but today was a great day the kids were excited happy to have hot meals um wanting to know what's coming next you know now the staff want to know okay what what's coming next when when can we eat so i know jill has like chris said jill has worked with us throughout this entire process and has been wonderful to work with and is always looking to to do something else to see what else she can do to help us and make sure that the kids and staff are getting fed so it's been a great process and we are

078very happy today to be able to feed our students at lunch thank you and i want to give a shout out to jill too because what she didn't mention is that she was even a little short-handed today uh for this first day of the transition so it really speaks to the collaboration within her department but also the collaboration with the building level staff as well so thank you all for for working together to make this happen so quickly [Music] great thank you um and uh you know do you know the board does appreciate uh the efforts uh to move to warm lunges i know we as as she noted that we started with uh with bag lunches uh so that we could work out our work out your processes to ensure that things went smooth

079and safe but as as you may have noticed if you were at our last meeting there was intense interest from the public and and the board has received communications on bringing back warm lunches so i'm glad that you were able to smoothly do so ahead of our previous slot schedule so thank you any other questions or follow up on that from the board great all right moving off from presentations to reports for county school boards association so i let me find my notes here i attended the board of directors meeting it was a long time ago now back in august with the sign up where are the setup of the four county for the year standard normal stuff except we did have our previous director that was her last meeting and at that august meeting

080we were presented with a person that they had interviewed and wanted to hire which was dr steven miskel who was offered the position and approved by the board of directors on september 7th which i did not attend that one so that's i mean that's the biggest news from four county um we did i did get a communication today from four county asking for some feedback for their legislative efforts fort county does lobbying for on our behalf with the state and federal governments and um and they want they have a short survey for us to to fill out with some information uh looking at uh our thoughts on what issues should be lobbied on this year we'll discuss that at our next meeting in october so that's what i have from four county questions or thoughts

081all right matt superintendents report okay well you've heard quite a bit from them already on different topics and most recently on the school meals but i just want to give mr moyer mr bae rossi an opportunity give a quick update on how the first couple weeks of school went so i can say and i'm sure mr morio will echo this it has been wonderful to have a full load of students back in the building um you know the last year was something that we all struggled through i think both staff students community members we all struggled through it and to have all of our students back in the building has been absolutely wonderful the second day of school traditionally mr giancurcio and i have our class meetings we call the students down here and kind

082of go over expectations for them for this the year and one of the first questions i asked this group this year is you know how many of you are excited to be back in the building and when you're asking 12 to 17 year olds that question you know you can imagine the responses that you'll get but most of them said yes we're excited and then i said how many of you were tired every single kid raised their hand um you know i would say that the one thing that we're battling now is is having the kids back in the building and getting them back up to a point where they can their stamina is down because they're not used to being in the building and they're tired they're exhausted but to see them with each

083other in the hallway to see them communicating with each other and socializing with each other i think that's something that they have missed you know there's kids that generally you would say don't care for school that are excited to be back and express that they're excited to be back the staff is ecstatic that we have everybody back in the building and it has just been wonderful to have everybody here and i'm sure mr mario will will echo that [Laughter] wow thanks so i everything frank said i echo think back to about two weeks before school started matt murphy was at a meal for our new teachers and he said are you ready and i looked at him and i said we're going to be ready if i want the eighth to be tomorrow because we

084wanted to get the kids back in the building the bottom line is we're going to be ready because we needed to be ready and and it we were ready and it was exciting and it's been working very well i mean how can't it you know surrounded by the people you want to be with you know teachers and administrators we're rare we like what we do you know we we come to work every day because we really enjoy it so i mean how can't we be excited to get back to a day when we got all of our kids in our building you know we have we're doing what we want to do and what we are meant to do and the kids have been great um i think the difference with the younger kids is

085the teachers need more stamina because you know i think you see the flip side because they are full of energy and by the end of the day we're all kind of on the other end of it you know when you're working with the four five six seven year olds but the procedures are working well we've been uh mrs benzer and mr circus um spent some time last week um we restructured our rival dismissal one more time we started to scale it back you know we started all hands on deck and now we're starting to kind of release the reins a little bit because the kids know where they're going now you know that safety issue isn't as high you know our littles are still being escorted you know our kindergarteners our pre-cares but our older

086students are starting to go to their classrooms on their own without us guiding them you know breakfast is running much more smoothly now those little things that take a few days are starting to really click and anybody coming in to the building you know in the afternoon for pickup sees how fast we're getting cars in and out now so things are coming together um it's been fun um i don't know that's about all i can say i do want to just give a shout out to the administration and the staff in both buildings for the responsiveness and flexibility and working out procedures um you know the elementary school last year did have the opportunity to to work out procedures for parent drop off and pick up or pick up and yeah drop off and pick

087up i had it right the first time um and and really had that down to a science with a lot of different people helping out since the secondary school did not have that opportunity to end the year in full in-person instruction i think nobody was anticipating the incredible increase in the number of secondary middle high school parents who dropped off their kids on day one which led to a back up all the way to the corner route 96 and i i have to give you know a shout out to everybody to deputy holland our sro to my griefstack to the entire facility's committee literally they stood in the parking lot after the last car left and were immediately on day one problem solving what needed to happen it be happened that afternoon for pickup and

088they had it down there are still a couple hiccups but by the next morning it was all smoothed out they've rerouted some traffic and we never had that issue with traffic backed up um onto 488 let alone out to 96 again so that's just an example of the teamwork um and the responsiveness and how everybody is just you know the every circumstance is different you know than it's ever been before and they continue to rise to the occasion and i just want to thank and recognize them all for their efforts so thank you next part of my report so i want to give an update and it's evolving and if i if it's confusing i apologize it's confusing because it's confusing regarding required and optional testing of staff and students a memo came out on

089september 2nd from new york state department of health there are many parts to this so the first part is the required testing of all staff members weekly testing of staff members unless they opt out by showing proof of vaccination it's not really important to phrase it that way it is not that vaccination is required or showing proof of vaccination is required the testing is required the proof of vaccination is the opt out method so we've been working through that and giving staff members an opportunity if they so choose to opt out by showing proof of vaccination there are some staff members who want to be tested so they don't show the proof we're going to be working with ontario county they got a nearly three million dollar grant to put towards staffing to support the

090schools in ontario county and all the supplies for as long as that money lasts we hope it'll last so long time but we're we don't have that staffing or those those supplies yet but we're working through it um so you know we're collecting that information from staff so we know exactly how many staff members have to be tested on a weekly basis that test is going to be a self-administered saliva test and we'll have results within 24 to 48 hours we will be at some point we will have an lpn assigned to us by ontario county but we will have to allocate some of our own staff to assist with the logistics of that that's still evolving um we've been talking about this for a while now and we learned new information this morning in

091our weekly meeting so um we're probably at least a week away if not more from the actual testing because we're trying to get certain very critical questions answered so that we're all of us when i say we i'm not just talking about mid lakes i'm talking about all the superintendents of the anterior county schools are having these conversations and trying to clear up misunderstandings so we know exactly how to do this well we also have to identify space where this can happen so it doesn't interfere with instruction so that's the staff piece second piece of the requirement is we have to offer with parental consent purely optional the opportunity for weekly screening testing of students now this for students k-8 it is going to be a self-administered with coaching by the lpn self-administered light swab

092of the inside of the cheek so it's also saliva base okay but it's a swab of the inside of the cheek for great that's k-8 grades 9-12 it's the same collection method as it is for adults which is a spit test collecting the saliva that way and again we'll have results and they're sent out to a lab that ontario county has a contract with and will have results in 24 to 48 hours that is going to be an opt-in for parents not an opt-out so we're not saying everybody and unless you tell us otherwise the parents have to tell us that they want their students tested we have no idea how many students to expect so if we have 1200 students whose parents want them tested even with the additional staffing from ontario county that

093could be very challenging to do in a week so it may be a situation where we have to do some sampling or split into groups and every other week and again we're working with ontario county on that and we want to wait until we know more details to share information originally we were going to launch a registration form tomorrow for parents to begin opting in but we just learned this morning that the lab that ontario county is contracting with has their own registration that has to happen so if we did our sign-in form they'd still have to do the companies so we're going to probably just go with the company registration because that information will be shared with us and not make parents do it twice which would be confusing but we're waiting for confirmation

094of that so we're just taking a breath getting all the information before we communicate so we're not confusing anybody and then the last piece is optional diagnostic testing for students and staff who are either symptomatic or exposed regardless of their vaccination status and that's going to be a case-by-case consent we're not going to have parents you know give blanket consent for the year and say oh yeah if my kid's ever you know exposed or if my kid ever has a runny nose go ahead and test him it's going to be case by case we're going to hopefully work out a docusign method so that the nurse who would have to call home anyway would say okay i'm going to email you this or text you this you know docusign consent and then if they're symptomatic

095or exposed they'd have to be tested anyway this just allows them to be tested at school with supplies provided by the county the whole goal is to keep them in school or get them back to school quicker now if they are symptomatic they still may be quarantined as per the department of health's flow charts but we're trying to the whole goal of the testing is to try to minimize quarantines so that is going to be a shallow nasal swab this is not that deep brain tickler that many people talk about this is actually the one where i actually mr clawson created video last year and i was the test subject where and again this will be self-administered by the student or staff member with coaching where it's just very casual or very shallow in the

096nostril a couple times around the inside of one nostril a couple times around the inside of the other and then that goes into a machine that will have right here on campus provided by the county and will have a result of that within 20 minutes so they're all nucleic acid based so pcr style tests um and they're all you know the the student or staff member will be in control of the the application of the test um so again we're learning more every day and as soon as we're you know we're getting closer to actual implementation and know more of the many questions that we have and that you may have then we'll be sharing that out with parents and with staff just pause there because there's a lot about that testing you may have

097some questions so just for clarification all staff are required to be tested weekly unless they show the opt-out of their vaccine correct and that's new york state school that's dictated by the new york state department of health and and there are some staff members who've said i want to be tested weekly so i'm not going to show proof of my vaccination because i i want to be tested that's their choice um but we're in the process of collecting that information but it's the testing that's required not the vaccination so as of september 20th 2021 as you said the testing um this self-administered is this something recommended by the county i guess i'm trying to picture these our youngest kids doing it i was a little surprised about that as well and i think there's probably

098going to be quite a bit of coaching involved and you know the lpn and our our nurses will be trained as well so you know we'll we'll see how it goes and we want to make sure that the test is is valid so we're going to have to see how that evolves i'm sure our nursing staff and the county nursing staff will be making some recommendations and adjustments as they go i i have the same question about how you know you know getting a five-year-old to swab the inside of each nostril so i mean is there concern about how long that's going to take during this yeah i mean again we have no idea how many parents will opt for that i mean i mean i'm just referring to staff i mean can that be

099spread out over time or you don't know um well you know we're trying to make the most efficient use of the staffing made available by the county our our nursing staff you know again last year they didn't start out with all of our students here every day they are swamped they are fielding calls from parents on symptoms they're fielding calls from ontario county on contact tracing they're doing all the normal immunization records they're you know dealing with you know all the normal things that kids come down to the health office for so they're very busy they're going to have to be involved but we want to be mindful of that the information that was given us to us today is that they believe the county believes that they could administer 50 to 75 tests per

100hour in the way that it's laid out so if that's the case you know even if we had half of our staff 150 that should be manageable in a school day in one day a week as long as we're you know scheduling it out and working you know with people's availability but these are the many details that are discussed every time we meet as a group of superior superintendents with the ontario county administration and public health could these tests be used to take kids it's just one positive it's my understanding that we don't have to close that yeah because there's not there's not student to student transmission within the classroom so everybody has an asset right so say you had more than one positive case in the classroom which would probably lead to the quarantining

101right but say you brought them back you know i know in some places they test like after day five right and then if they're negative the quarantine can be cut yeah and again all those decisions are made by the county but since the county is coordinating this testing that's the intention and our hope now what decisions they make along the way you know sometimes their decision making and their thresholds will evolve like last year when we went from six feet to three feet and brought kids back k-6 a hundred percent at first they were quarantining pretty aggressively and then when the data showed that there wasn't transmission then they started to relax and lay off and be a little bit less aggressive on the quarantines having worked with them now for quite some time i

102would expect that that's probably how they'll operate is they'll probably still be cautious at first but that's the goal of the whole thing the whole purpose of the testing is to shorten the amount of time that kids are out of school so certainly at the very least they'd be out the 24 to 48 hours while they waited while we get wait for the results back if if it's for diagnostic if it's for if it's the screening that's you know certainly will end up contributing to those decisions but it's more of a proactive step and a piece of mind step to get a handle on you know is there how many asymptomatic cases are out there any other questions on testing i wish i could be more definitive but every time we meet we walk away

103with a few more questions and they don't have the supplies in stock yet anyway so my guess is we're at least a week out um and i know i'm talking with some superintendents if they call us on thursday afternoon say we could test on tuesday we might say well that's great but we now that we know you know how many kids or now that we know the information we gotta get the information out the families and know how many kids we're talking about and we need another week to plan so you know we could be a week to two weeks out from actually testing i expect to be testing staff before we test students um transportation challenges again i referenced earlier in recognizing our five retired bus drivers um i will tell you right now

104this is our my single biggest concern about maintaining in-person instruction right now and you've probably seen seen on the news all over the place not just on the local news but state and nationally there is a bus driver crisis there is a shortage before covid i don't know if kovitz contributed to it but there is there's a flat out crisis now we've lost five we've we've hired to um credit to kitty and mike who's our interim director of operations they i'm signing agreements whenever possible with other school districts who happen to transport students to the same out of district placements as we do and they'll you know we'll sign a cross contract and they'll transport our student for us and then that frees up a bus driver to stay in district and and man our

105runs but we're using our bus mechanics we're using our bus dispatcher as needed we're we've only had one sub for like the last two three years now and that person's getting ready to like be really retired so you know that's going to hurt when that happens you may have seen today that governor hochul well first of all last week week before the state of massachusetts decided to mobilize i think 250 national guardsmen to serve as bus drivers new york has said you know they're not quite there but governor hochul did identify some steps to try to increase collaboration across industries and to try to get anybody with their cdl to drive a bus and to try to incentivize them to make it easier to um in some regards easier to become a bus driver waive

106the 14-day period between the permit and the driving test but they have not relaxed the process of of getting certified so they were getting licensed so it could take two months for somebody who doesn't have a cdl it could take two months to get one so i really hope that the department of motor vehicle will take a close look at that and see if they can differentiate the the standards because you know the standards have been going up to get a cdl and they're equating bus drivers to cross-country truck drivers and who need to be able to fix their truck on the side of road our bus drivers don't need to be able to do that and the federal standards are scheduled to get even more stringent in january which could make matters worse so

107i'm concerned and i'm having the transportation department work out plans of okay what would we do to stay open if we were now one bus driver what would we do to stay open if we were down two bus drivers and have those layers of plans up until the point where there's just not enough and is that after two is it after three is it after one we're assessing that because they're still plugging holes right now on out of district runs and working with other districts to free up as many of our drivers as possible but we might get into a situation where we have to identify certain bus runs to say okay today's uh plan a day and then plan a bus number whatever and bus number whatever are are going to get picked up

108half an hour later than normal because they got to go cover for another bus first get those kids in and then maybe go perhaps to the kids that are closer to the district and then get them and bring them in it's that type of that's just an example we haven't settled on anything but we we have to get creative and and there might be some inconvenience to some families to get kids here a little bit later if that's what it takes rather than having to go straight out remote right off the get-go but with the level of shortage that we have i would be shocked if there isn't a day or a period of time and and you know if somebody is exposed or quarantined that only adds to the the challenge where we might

109have to switch to fully remote for a short period of time because we we simply don't have the drivers there's already districts at least one district that i know of in this area that's had to do that again we're working right now to identify strategies to prevent it and then once we know that those strategies can work not without inconvenience but they can work then we'll work on communicating them out but it's that will be a challenge this year questions on transportation how about our bus drivers that retired that handful of bus riders have we talked to them yeah they they're they were done i mean we'll we continue but they have not expressed interest other questions i want to speak very briefly um there's a motion the first motion on the agenda under new

110business is a motion for the district to join a mass action lawsuit against jewel labs inc there's not a lot i can say about this because it does involve pending litigation but it is related to student vaping it is a contingency-based lawsuit where the lawyers involved only get paid if the districts involved get a settlement and it's to recoup past and future costs associated with managing student vaping providing anti-vaping education purchasing anti or vape detecting or vape detectors and bathrooms and things like that um so it's low risk for the district it's a mass action that's already underway and we have the opportunity to join in so that's what that motion is if the board chooses to approve and engage in it and that is my report thanks matt any questions for matt on any

111of that all right moving into public comment [Music] so the board of education values the input of the mid-lakes community and 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 include appropriate language and observe proper decorum anyone making public comment must identify themselves by name and address public comment period will be limited to a total of 30 minutes and one comment per person individual comments will be limited to two minutes the board does not respond to items presented or questions raised through public comment the board may discuss topics of public comment at a later time and or contact the individual who submitted the comment so crystal brought up the public comment sign-in form and it is blank so

112is there any members from the public that do wish to comment that did not sign in all right not seeing anybody get up we'll move into board discussion so the first discussion is on the strategic plan so we heard a presentation earlier today earlier tonight on the plan in this you know just uh i was just reflecting right this i mean this this process uh has been a multi-year process already i mean i do remember us having a board goal three or four years ago of trying to learn you know where we're trying to educate ourselves on what on what strategic planning is and um and just uh since the district has never engaged in a strategic plan before just just to um just to get our head around the whole whole idea and and

113really decide whether we wanted to do it or not um and so you know and so then so we did that and then you know and then we i think our next goal was to was you know how do we run it you know whether to run it ourselves or to hire an outside group to help us through it and and then that and then um and then the last couple years you know a year or two of supporting the process you know supporting the kickoff meeting um and thanks to tracy for being our representative to all those meetings and discussions um around the strategic plan so i'm i'm excited to have it um you know it's the first one i looked at we got a copy of it at our board retreat on saturday

114and so it was you know that was the first i had seen of of the of the work um which i i know i was i'm happy um i lost my train of thought i know i know at another point but i guess any other any other thoughts or comments on the process or or where we are in the discussion from the board i'll just reiterate that it was a pleasure to be a part of the planning those three days they were i think it was just amazing to be a part of the process and to see a mix of people all working together to really make the district better for all of our students so so cool anything else yeah i think just tackle what you said jake i'm thrilled to finally get to

115this night we started it a decade and a half ago to get here um and you know it's one of the you know matt you said earlier that everybody that was involved in the wish you could snap your fingers and it would be all everybody would have not every standard but i think in this it's one of those things where the process is as important as the outcome you get to really look at yourself and challenge yourself and i i can't thank everybody that was involved with it enough i think it's awesome that we had 300 community members step up that wanted their voices heard and i'm you know i'm thrilled that we're now getting to really dig into what we found out about ourselves and to start moving forward cool and we did celebrate

116nabu's birthday with her and let her go a little early so she participated awesome but yeah i mean the student involvement was was definitely an important part as well it was it was great to hear directly from students who are involved cool well cool um you know the board i mean we'll stay involved certainly with the process through many ways and so uh you know we'll have lots of opportunities to talk about it um in all its pieces as as the next five years go through any other thoughts or comments on the strategic plan cool all right school meals discussion just um follow up to that [Music] you know we heard the presentation a little while ago about the the um switch back to hot meals today you know and one part of that that

117that i um struck me was the um was the idea that now um i mean we started uh through through grants being able to provide free meals to to all our students uh breakfast and lunch um you know when when the pandemic started a couple marches ago but it didn't occur to me you know that that that continuing means you know a greater volume of people work is going through the lunch line than they've probably had in the past and so that's you know that's that's a lot you know that's just more work more work that our staff is doing which you know which of course i appreciate um you know and i do appreciate you know that as i said earlier that we've been able to open safely and move to hot meals as

118quickly as we can any other follow-up discussion or thoughts on that yeah two things um i wanted to ask and frank you can the the last person through line so when you call them up nine through twelve do they how are they for time wise to eat so first of all it's always fun to watch the lunch room and kids go through the lunch line i will say that by the time we're done you know each each student gets 30 minutes for lunch they probably have a good 20 to 25 minutes to eat their lunch and it takes most students five minutes to eat their lunch when you're in the lunchroom you can tell when the kids are done because the volume starts to increase exponentially as they they start to finish their lunch so

119i have not seen a student that is struggling um to get their their lunches eaten probably the only kids that that struggle are the afternoon boces kids but we when they come into lunch we let them go through through the line first because they have to leave early to get on the bus to go to boces so they're the first three first ones through the line on the b lunch so i have not seen anybody struggle to eat in time trust same story for you saying that again does chris have the same same story probably yes time yes yeah yeah i kind of figured frank i had a quick question for you um there was some mention of some some shuffling of schedules um maybe too many kids in a certain way so we shifted

120so we shifted some of our kids from a lunch to b launch and b lands to c lunch so that it's pretty okay pretty even across the board right now so it's all ironed out yup it's all ironed out we did that so that jill wasn't overloaded um trying to get the kids served yep cool thanks thank you thank you matt i got a quick question for you too on it um moving towards advocacy for free lunches moving forward do you have will we be able to pull a number on what we're serving now versus what we were serving before they were free so we can get you know when we sit down and start talking to people about you know funding this the question is going to be what's the difference you know are

121you giving that many more out and it would be good to have real numbers on that right so i would um i wouldn't like take our snapshot right now because i let the hot meals take hold um but i will make note of that and ask jill to gather that information over you know so that we have a sizable amount of data to share but quite honestly kids are required to attend school they're required to be here for six to seven hours a day we should be feeding them i couldn't agree more and i know that i'm just echoing and i hope that you know certainly the consumption piece will help you know make that case but our rising level of poverty and the rising level of rural poverty across and urban poverty across the

122state is reason enough that this should happen and i'm hoping that if if anything good can come out of the last couple years and a lesson can be taken from it that you know the governmental agencies will make the decision to continue this because it's what we should be doing yeah this should be the easiest no-brainer yeah space of the planet yeah but it's not going to be so right everybody yeah so we will we will gather the information um and i'll have um you know what we'll look at you know the first half of the 1920 school year before we closed down and then yeah um and and then do a comparison after we have a sizeable amount of data what's really important for families and we're going to be pushing this and thanking

123crystal um is in case they don't our greatest fear in having the lunches free right now is that families who qualify will have no motivation to fill out the free and reduced launch paper paperwork because they're everybody's getting free lunch and that could really hurt on the back end if they don't continue free meals for all and then our rate goes down and then people aren't qualified so we really want to encourage people to still fill out the paperwork because that could set our rate for next year if they don't continue this program so we kind of play both sides against the middle a little bit on this and advocate for it to continue to to plan for it to not the the only other question about lunch is um i skipped dinner tonight is

124there any leftovers it sounds like the odds of that are still okay sorry ryan i i guess it's you know bologna sandwich i i do want to point out just you know free lunches school meals it's all a reimbursable program it is one of the most heavily regulated um programs that there is and we you know jill um you know she works long days she she left but she could speak to the fact that the record keeping and the proof that has to be provided of the meals that were served to get the reimbursement is a very stringent process so it's very closely regulated man say that again so we do not get money up front we no it's a reimbursement spend the money and then get it reimbursed right correct yes okay uh any

125other questions or just got so any other discussion board on on things that we want to talk about before we get into our business one more thing just on the school lunches i know there have been in the past there have been grants for districts to be able to provide free lunch to every student is that something we can look into in the future yeah it tends to be based upon the free and reduced lunch rate right um and that's something that you know um prior to her departure for sydney geneseo tracy marshall and i spoke about quite a bit and that that was a goal um you know sometimes you know districts hit that threshold where it becomes free but then it becomes hard to maintain it again for the same reason i identified

126that people can't stop filling out the paperwork and then you can't sustain it but we'll continue you know to we'll advocate and but we'll look for other opportunities it all comes down to families filling out those paper yes with paperwork filling out the application and it has to have the application has to be done yearly correct yes it has to be done every year and you know we're at about 43 to 45 percent i think right now is that michelle's up i'm accurate and traditionally we know and this goes for pretty much every school that is an under reported number because as kids get older they tend not to want to fill out the paperwork so even as our free and reduced rate has gone up we know that it doesn't accurately reflect the experience

127of our families so being able to have this current program where it's free for everybody without the paperwork it is a great service to our community and we want to be able to continue it thanks thanks any other discussion items or anything we want to talk about anything more lunches cool all right moving into new business first one um is the letter a is the resolution on um the litigation for jewel labs just uh remind the board that um you know or that we talk it uh we have to talk about legislation in executive session uh not legislation um lawsuits and litigate litigation uh so if if the board wants a long discussion on this uh we will do that executive session and then come back to public session afterwards uh to to um to

128approve or disprove to pass or not pass this this thing um but if the board is comfortable passing it uh now then we can do so so bring letter a to the floor any discussion on letter a any concerns that would cause us to talk about it more not hearing any everybody in favor of letter a please say aye aye aye any opposed all right a passes let's do b c d e and f as a block any discussion on b through f all the money stuff not hearing discussion on b through f any uh or not hearing any discussion on b3f all in favor of b through f please say aye any opposed g and h athletics and fundraisers any discussion on g and h um yes i was just wondering this is the

129first time we've offered hockey correct do you have a large interest or has that not been signed up yet oh nice so john said three uh three students that moved into the district so cool any other discussions on g h all in favor of g h please say aye aye aye any opposed and letter i surplus vans any discussion on letter i it's not hearing any ever all in favor of letter i please say aye aye all right let me hit post letter i carries moving into personnel letter a is retirement bus mechanic so any discussion on a all in favor of accepting a please say aye aye aye in the opposed so a is accepted letter b appointments we have 10 appointments here in the discussion on the appointments all in favor of approving

130the appointments one through ten under b please say aye aye aye in the opposed letter c is resignations two resignations in the discussion on letter c all in favor of accepting letter c please say aye aye aye aye any opposed letter c pass and we'll look at d e f g and h the rest of them as a block any discussion on d e f g and h hearing no discussion on d through h uh all in favor of d through h please say aye aye any opposed d through h pass this brings us to our second public comment period is there anybody from the public that does wish to abort wish to address the board at this point not seeing anyone we'll move out of public comments and we'll move to adjournment and executive

131session so motion to adjourn the regular board meeting for the purpose of entering into executive session for the purpose of discussing matters leading to the appointment employment promotion demotion discipline suspension dismissal or removal of a particular person and contract negotiations all in favor of adjourning and moving into executive session please say aye aye aye any opposed excuse me motion passes we are now in executive session thank you all for attending thank you everybody work this year thank you we will reconvene in the library [Music] you