001Go. >> Oh, man. >> Not tonight. >> You guys ready to go? >> All right, we're going to um go ahead and reconvene our monthly uh business meeting. I do apologize that we were in executive session longer than anticipated. We do value everyone's time and I appreciate everyone being here today. So to start the meeting off, we're going to have our newest commissioner, Mr. Michael Root. Can you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance? >> Stand for the pledge, please. >> Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thanks. Been saying it for 35 years. >> Thank you. recognitions. >> At this time, I would like to recognize uh our staff and
002student achievements. This winter, the Syracuse Police Department's Police Athletic Activities League, PAL, generously donated holiday gifts to 30 SCSD high school students. Before holiday recess, Jimmy Olivera and PAL volunteers delivered gifts to the students at Corkran, Henninger, ITC, Noddingham, PSLA, Fowler, PSLA at Fowler, and the Steam High School. We are grateful for their continued support for our students. Get all big smile on three. One, two, three. One more. One, two, and three. That yours. Okay. Noddingham DECA students recently received honors at a regional competition with several qualifying for an upcoming state competition in March. Nine Noddingham students participated with teams taking first place in two categories and second place in one. Congratulations to Noddingham students Diwas Ry and Wyatt Cole first place entrepreneurship team decision-making. Theo Benjamin first place personal financial literacy and Nadar Nor
003Muhammad second place quicks serve restaurant management. Thank you to Hener advisor Melinda McCarthy and Noddingham advisors Carol Charles and Theres D. Roza for their support and encouragement. No, no, no, no. >> Here she is. >> We are proud of all our hardworking student athletes. This fall, members of various athletic teams were recognized with all CNY honors. Congratulations to the following. Football large school at Corkeran, Pablo Joseph and PSA, PSLA at Fowler, Jaden Cotton. Football small school ITC students Lamar Watts Jr., Naquan Gilbert, Ryan Brown Jr. Boys soccer from Nottingham, David and Shir and Shizy Rungulu and Sam Bian. Boys volleyball from Hener, Ethan Wen. Girls soccer from Nottingham, Keani Diggs and Lily Lockwood. and girls cross country from Nottingham. Delilah Pandora how coming back. There's either a month earlier or This concludes our recognitions. Okay,
004I'll got a couple people heading out. I'll give them a moment. I'll ask for a motion to approve minutes as submitted. Second. >> Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? >> Ask for a motion to accept the monthly financial reports as submitted. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Roll call vote. >> President Barnett? >> Yes. >> Vice President Rafford? >> Yes. >> Commissioner Bill? >> Yes. >> Commissioner Cordano? >> Yes. >> Commissioner Habib? >> Yes. >> Commissioner Rifford? >> Yes. Commissioner Rue. >> Yes. >> Motion passes. >> Perfect. >> You just let me know when you're ready. >> Okay. We will now hear from those visitors who wish to address the board and who filled out the appropriate card available near the entrance door at the boardroom. Speakers are asked to
005limit their comments to no more than 3 minutes. Board policy 1510 does not permit in public session discussions involving individual students. uh district personnel or students, sorry. Persons wishing to discuss matters involving individual district personnel or students should present their comments and/or concerns to the superintendent during regular business hours. All speakers are to conduct themselves in a civil manner. Obscene language, threats of violence, statements advocating racial, religious, or other forms of prejudice will not be tolerated. If you wish to speak and have not already submitted your blue card, please do so now as additional cards will not be accepted once the first speaker has concluded. The board is here to listen to all comments. However, we will not engage in dialogue with speakers during this meeting. Our first speaker, Mr. Hassan Bworth. Good evening. >>
006I know I only got three minutes, so I'm going be real short. Removing an elected official, removing an elected commissioner is one of the most serious actions public body can take. Voters deserve to know specific allegations before the hearing, not minutes before a removal vote. Transparency is not optional when overturning the will of thousands of citizens, close to 13,000 to be exact. At the same time, I think that transparency has been lacking from board members, and I think the public um deserves better than that. Um, from the new and from the old. I mean, if it applies to one, then it applies to all. That's it. >> Thank you. Our next speaker, Mr. Rex Jardine. >> Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My family's advocacy for our neighborhood's children's was primarily centered around the
007school buildings and facilities. It was probably a bad idea for the district in 2008 to ignore providing hot water at Ed Smith for more than a decade. You know how parents like to be vocal. We ultimately stuck it out. three kids, 13 years each, three success stories. They did have some great teachers, but in consistently underwhelming school buildings. During the start of JFCB phase 2, now 10 years ago, I became the most vocal advocating for at least considering new schools in in lie of feudal cycles of reinvestments. The entire state delegation under D. Francisco gave our ideas an hour of their undivided attention. The 53rd mayor and Sharon Contrary paid Ed Smith parents only lip service. I got wanted to ask Stephanie for my vote back. I remained vocal and had perfect attendance at these
008meetings for about three years. Attendance is important, right? Not a native of Syracuse, native born, I moved here from near Philadelphia in 1987 to work for an architectural consulting firm, my first job after college. I had no background on the dynamics or history of the politics in Syracuse. I was fascinated that many of the architectural consultants were in the hot seat with the FBI, the state attorney general, and the ex-meor was headed to jail. I guess from consultants, kickbacks to the mayor were not a legitimate business expense on their taxes. What a city. Too much going on behind closed doors. Your district has recently weathered what may have been well-deserved criticism for consulting agreements that were lucrative but didn't seem very transparent. I didn't really have the time or inclination to follow it very closely.
009The cost and value of consultants can often be pretty subjective. The saying goes related to some. If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made prolonging the problem. I suspect that I've waste a lot of my time lobbying here for a new school instead of short-sighted renovations at Blahett Ed Smith and the list goes on. City leadership listened to those parents who lobbyed for nostalgia over inspiring or even adequate. Certainly wasted a lot of paper and postage. Maybe I should have been talking to the charter schools, but you probably wouldn't have liked that. This board has the exclusive privilege of naming schools. Oh, sorry. I meant renaming schools when faced with receiverhip, adding the words academy or Latin. This board may never actually get to name a new school building. Imagine
010what a distinct honor it would be to for you to select a name for a new school so fabulous f would be jealous. I'd love to be at the ribbon cutting of the Joyce Sussik School. Thank you. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is Mr. Walt Dixie. >> President uh commissioners, welcome uh Pam, excuse me, I should say. Superintendent Pam Oles, congratulate you in your new role. I'm sure you're going to be amazing at this your role. But I I want to go back to a minute by alliance network was formed from the years of Margie White for those who know her that the party the unions didn't want to support her and we got her in office to Margie White Marisel Hernandez I ran a lot of the city these campaigns I thought was
011done with education and what I want to just caution this group moving forward is it is a slippy slope when things become personal, not business. And at some point, the data, the information is going to get out. And I had a conversation with Reverend Sharon today. People are watching us. I'll be calling the NACP tomorrow. People's going to be watching us. Syracuse is watching your decisions and what is in the interest of these kids. Now, I'm not anti-UN. I'm pro- Union, but union does what it does. It protects its members. Commissioners protect kids. So sometimes there can be confrontation folks like myself and others that push for accountability on a host of issues. And you can Google the work that we've done over the decades that I know my time is running short. I'm composing
012myself, but I want you to know we're going to fight this throughout the state. We're going to do meetings in the community. If you remember when the union went against Sharon Contraz, we showed up and you guys may not know it, but I'm out here. This is people are talking about this and there's other ways to handle some situations that should be handled, but the way you handling this, it's not going to look well on you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Our next speaker, uh, Miss Nicole Capsell. >> Good evening. Uh, Nicole Capsell, president of the Syracuse Teachers Association, and I stand before you to remind folks that we are a very large association of 3,000 very diverse members. And my job as the president of this association is to ensure that my members have
013the support and the safe working space that they need. So our students have the safe and supportive learning space that they need. When we are out here advocating for our members, it is always with our students in mind. And something I would like to remind all the adults in the room is that our students have 24 access to our actions nowadays. And what we put out in the media and what we put out on social media and what we put out in our community spaces, our children are listening to and our children are watching. So regardless of the situation before us, how we handle this situation in front of our children and how we take responsibility for our own actions is what our children are going to see and are going to learn from. So
014I will remind you please to act as though you want your children to grow up acting and remember that our workspace, our union protected workspace is our children's learning space and that is what we are here for. Thank you. >> Thank you. Our next speaker, Dr. Dexter. >> So kind of you to call me Dr. Dexter today, Miss Barrett. >> It's Barnett. >> Barnett. My apologies. Um I I'm I'm not uh Walt Dixie and I'm not any of these other folks. So you might want to call the police over here for for me. Uh and I'm gonna be frank with you. A lot of this bareactic extrement that you all are doing is not suitable with this uh community. We don't bully from the school district. We don't hire bullies and then we can't discuss
015with the district superintendent about issues and then the issue becomes the superintendent. We can't come here and discuss issues about the superintendent. The job from my understanding is to let's retain good teachers, but we're attacking individuals about problems that you can sit down and resolve. Mr. Bloodworth said transparency. Uh Walt talked about unifying. When Sharon Contrus was here, she called complete hell. That's in the Bible. That's not defamation. and you all, those of you that were here um standing fighting against her, at least she sat down and spoke and communicated with people. This board, old or new, doesn't do that. They deflect. And I'm standing here and hopefully channel 9 News and Syracuse.com, who you all pay a lot of money to to do curves, I I you know, and so they'll probably do a
016curve on this as well to make you look good. But when parents have a concern, don't shut them down. Don't give them false bar letters. When grades aren't being put in, things aren't being done. But this board member that you all are attacking, you need to make sure when you're pointing the finger at somebody, look at yourself. See how many kickbacks you got. See if they got smoke over there with your kickback. How did you get your organization started? How many things did you do to get paid from this this school district and you holding position? So, I'm saying to you, I'm not a Al Sharpton fan, but if I had to get out there with my picket sign and come here and support what you all are doing to an individual that has I
017watched and sat along with advocating for children. We might not agree on a lot of things, but I dogone sure agree with God. Whatsoever you sow, that shall you reap. My time is ended. Our next speaker, Mr. Daniel Mu Mule Mu. I think I mispronounced the last name. My apologies. Mule. Okay. Me. Mal. I got it. Bless you. >> Bless you. >> Got one more. >> Got another one. >> You sure? >> Appreciate it. >> Sure. >> How you doing? My name is Dan Neil. I'm the unit 6 president. Uh I've been unit 6 president for 22 years. I'm a 30-year employee. My topic is a little different from what everybody's talking about is I just want to let the board know. Before I say I do want to say that Superintendent ODM, Mr. Manning,
018Mr. Jefferson over there, and Mike have been very supportive, but the system that started July 1st, Oracle is not working the way it's supposed to. People's pay is wrong just about every payday, at least in my unit. People that work overtime is never correct. We have members that have vacation time that starts in July 1st. It's still incorrect to this day. Our fiscal time is starting July 1st. And they haven't even got that correct. And how are they going to have it correct when that starts? So my question to the board is how long are you going to financially harm people? How long you let this go on? Where every single payday my phone rings, it doesn't stop. I come down to the main office, I talk to them, they they're very receptive. They're trying
019to get it corrected. But when is the district going to be proactive instead of reactive? That's it. >> And our final speaker for tonight, Mr. Don Little. Good evening, commissioners. Uh, superintendent, I was thinking about what was I going to say tonight because I I think this is the first time I've actually got to talk about Syracuse history a little bit since you've become the superintendent. Uh, because I've missed the last couple of meetings and obviously my first for you, Commissioner Root. So, just a couple of thoughts. I was thinking, well, what do I want to talk about? And I was thinking about the very beginning of my career. And at this time I happened to be in GW5. And that's the room that Jim Degan was in. And anybody who was lucky enough to
020have Jim Degan would tell you he was an absolutely legendary math teacher. God bless his soul. And even after he had retired, he spent many years coming back to the school to do fundraising for uh the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. and he raised a lot of money even after he retired before he passed. But I kindly think about him telling me his very first year in the Syracuse City School District when he was assigned to Central High School and his home room sang Good Morning Dear Teacher to him every single day. And I had to actually finally when YouTube was functioning high enough, I actually had to hear Good Morning Dear Teacher because Lord knows in the time I've been in the district, nobody has ever sung that song to me. Maybe we can work on
021that superintendent so that everybody will sing Good Morning Dear Teacher every day. Uh but that's not it. But I started thinking about central and I started thinking that I think it's this weekend that Matilda is being done and I was thinking about that auditorium and Lincoln Auditorium and that's where George Gershwin performed and that's where Admiral Bird came and talked about his ex expeditions and that's where Pavarati performed three times because he wouldn't perform at the civic center because Lincoln Auditorium has better acoustics. And I just started thinking what a fabulous space and how lucky we are to have that school. I'm sure it's still a work in progress. I'm sure there's a lot of dust. I have no doubt about it. Um, but I'm excited about the prospects of this space and I can't
022wait to actually go into Lincoln Auditorium, which closed before I was old enough to go there and I've never actually been in it. Would be nice if we had an open house and let staff go to see it. Um, just a thought. Uh, but anyways, I want to thank you for all of your hard work and your dedication to our students and our staff. And I just wanted to end it with a little something about Central today and of course perhaps my favorite superintendent that I've been thinking about today or one of them I shouldn't say my favorite but one of my favorites Percy Hughes who really was a compassionate educator and I hope that at some point we will consider naming something after him. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, we'll move forward
023with the agenda. I'll start with the president's report. I I want to welcome our newest commissioner, Mr. Michael RP. Your first board meeting. >> Thank you. >> Very much. >> Go ahead. >> For the superintendence report, I would like to welcome Commissioner Root to the board. >> Uh again, I will continue to try to get the good news out about our students. So, 18 of our students from 9th through 12th grade had their artwork selected from uh for the Scholastic Arts Festival at OC. 25 pieces of art from our students will be on display from January 14th through February doesn't give me an ending date. I don't know why. Uh at the Whitney building with other art from students across the region. So, if you can go out there and see it or go to
024OC, please make sure that you do so to see our artwork from our students. 11 of our student athletes were selected as all central New York athletes for the fall sports season. We had athletes from football, boys and girls soccer, boys volleyball, and girls cross country make the list. Congratulations. Our steam school students will be performing in the school's first ever musical this weekend. They will be presenting Matilda on the stage at the Eersonson Museum. There are about two dozen students in the show that have been getting ready for shows Friday and Saturday. So, if you can go out, let's support our kids. Our student musicians in senior high all county band, choir, and orchestra performed in the senior high allcount music festival at Salv High School this past weekend. Remember, we will be hosting
025the junior high allount music festival at Hener on Friday, January 23rd and Saturday, January 24th. Again, please if you can come out and support our students. And that's my report. you can go forward with the consent agenda items. Oh, wait. At this moment, is there are there any other commissioners that would like to bring anything up for discussion? My apologies. Okay. I would like to introduce and recommend the resolution title submission of grant proposals. >> Yeah, the consent agenda items 9.1. >> Apologize. >> President Barnett, commissioners, I'd like to recommend approval of the resolutions in item 9.1 through 9.10 as a consent agenda. Ask for a motion. >> Motion. >> Second. Jesus. All right. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Action items 10.1. I would like to introduce and recommend the resolution
026title submission of grant proposals >> for a motion. >> A move. >> Second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> I would like to introduce and recommend the resolution titled 2025 to 2026 2-hour delay. >> For a motion, >> second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> I. >> Any oppose? I would like to introduce and recommend the resolution titled 2025 2026 inclement weather contingency plan for a motion. >> Moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> Any opposed? I would like to introduce and recommend the resolution titled acceptance of HR reports. Ask for a motion. Second. >> Second. >> Any abstinations? >> Abstain. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Oh, okay. Yep. >> I would like to introduce and recommend the resolution titled
027request for defense of indemnification. Ask for a motion. So moved. >> Second. Second. >> Any abstain? >> All in. All in favor? >> Any opposed? And that looks like it's I ask for a motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> There you go. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Any oppose? Thank you. This meeting is adjourned.