Buffalo Board of Education - Board Meeting April 20th, 2022

001performing arts so the stage is theirs [Applause] oh [Music] do oh [Music] thank you [Music] my [Music] oh shows [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] unknown hey [Music] so [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] big [Music] [Applause] [Music] blue [Music] [Applause] my i know i am [Applause] so okay go do yes [Music] do [Music] oh [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] me [Music] hey [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] oh [Music] okay yes [Music] oh [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] oh [Music] me is [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh yeah [Applause] i might steal that one sure okay thank you all for coming the meeting's over we'll see you next month i'd like to just take one second for us to acknowledge the principle of this phenomenal school

002miss covington that was amazing and what i don't think a lot of people understand is that in addition to the academic rigors that these students have to meet they don't get any waivers or anything like that on the graduation requirements that they have to meet they also have rigorous arts requirements that they meet and i think we saw that today with i mean the choreography the costumes the music the lighting everything was really amazing and i can't think of a better way to start a meeting so thank you so much miss covington for hosting and arranging that that was amazing [Music] [Applause] okay yes [Music] if [Music] studio [Applause] [Music] thank you i can is um thank you for the hospital uh of the united states of america and to the republic for which it

003stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all so as many of you [Music] to the [Music] order to interim superintendent for borderlands relationships thank you so much for president petrucci to do the recognitions hold on make sure hold on make sure okay good evening everyone good evening on behalf of the buffalo public schools we are pleased to recognize two dedicated individuals tonight who have each served the district for over 50 years they have both provided distinguished service to generations of students and families and it is an absolute honor to recognize them officially before the lawful award for education and the community first i would like to ask this ethel fine he's a valued teaching assistant at school number 74. [Music] [Applause] [Music] she will be introduced to us by associate

004superintendent darlene good jasmine good evening dr williams good evening board members i would like to introduce character cook principal at school and he will introduce and recognize the spirit we love to employ at school 74 in thank you good evening thank you for both the time and recognition of our prestigious college ms ethaquin thank you dr williams thank you all members of the board of education and thank you especially to our hamlin park board president mr sheridan donald klein has been educating students at the buffalo public schools for over 52 years her dedication and commitment to the students and families of hamlin park is unparalleled this client has taught generations of families throughout her years not only is she respected as an outstanding educator but she also is a revered member of our school community

005she was a parent involvement specialist and an advocate long before others even knew what that meant she expects the most from her students most importantly she holds a high level accountability for each and every one parents and teachers reach out to this client for advice and support thousands of students across the past that must find in her 52 plus years and all of them have benefited from her wisdom compassion and love the city of buffalos must find a deep debt of gratitude for her outstanding service to our students and families thank you ms klein you have truly made a difference in all our lives [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so what a wonderful recognition 52 years i know this i would like to have word come and take a picture with this line she looks amazing [Music]

006i want to start it as a baby yes um oh [Applause] we've got a couple more so i've asked the board just to just sit down on this platform next we have this elaine santa clau who is a dedicated teaching assistant and the wonderful school number 84 and she will be introduced to us by associate superintendent tanika good evening everyone to our board members to our interpreter dr williams i'd like to call up principal to introduce miss santa cole this all came about from a conversation with joanne sweat who was bragging about how dedicated the teacher aids and assistance are to the district so i want to say thank you to her for just sharing her love and how proud she was of both of you thank you mr schneider elaine sandra cole started with

007buffalo award of education as a teacher assistant on october 9 1970 at school 57. in 1972 miss daniel transferred school 45 and worked in the title one program there in the summer of 1972 elaine worked es white school lady warren fell in love with the students in staff she transferred to school 84 in september 1972 as a pool aide and gets transitioned to other positions within the school she is currently the title 1 teacher assistant at school 84 where she provides assistance and support to both the students and staff throughout the building minister paul is such an important and valuable part of the school lady for our family she has proudly worked for buffalo public schools for 52 years [Applause] another young beauty that's right yes [Applause] [Music] now the district is very proud to

008recognize and i know this gentleman mr richard isaac jr as this year's recipient of the distinguished social studies educator award from new york state's council for the social studies just for the score for social studies introducing mr president and to tell us more about his extraordinary award as our chief academic officer this is ann good evening and thank you for having me tonight um i have the distinct pleasure to introduce richard isaac for us tonight he is this year's recipient again of the distinguished social studies educator of the year this award is presented to an individual who exemplifies the best in professional social studies education in new york state but the person who receives this award has considerable visibility and a significant positive impact on social studies education in the state but the person's contributions

009are widely known and well documented over a period of five or more years and i have the pleasure tonight of talking a little bit about mr isaac rich started working for the buffalo public schools in 1999. he has instructed multiple levels of social studies throughout his career in buffalo including grades 7 to 12 history and global studies economics participation in government ib and ap in his current position as the social studies coordinator which is responsible for providing support including professional development curriculum development and a lot of guidance and support to teachers of social studies in grades kindergarten through 12. if i was to list all of rich's many accomplishments organizations that he's involved with the events he sponsors we'd all still be here tomorrow morning so i'm just going to give you a few highlights

010rich is the national history day advisor judge and liaison in this area since 2008. he is a member of the niagara frontier council for the social studies and advisory members since 2010. he works on the new york state council of social studies special projects committee as the co-chair since 2019. he's the buffalo presidential center board of directors since 2019. he's on the buffalo teacher center policy board since 2014 he's on the erie county police and judges board since 2016. part of the new york state 250th planning committee since 2020 he is currently the president of the niagara frontier council for the social studies and this has been going on since 2015. he's worked to create resources for the buffalo public schools social studies teachers and teachers across western new york for his numerous efforts which

011has also received the new york state excellence in teaching award in that the daniel peter louder award from the buffalo history museum in 2018 the new york state history in 2013 and 2018. and the suny ecc distinguished alumni award in 2015. which is dedicated which is hard working and he is an exceptional educator his passion for the subject is evident in everything he does and in everything everything he does to support our students and our teachers and he's also a really nice guy so i just want to commend you rich and thank you and give you a token [Music] [Applause] all right [Music] uh [Music] okay so for our final and certainly worthwhile i think missions the words courage bravery and fortitude come to mind very unfortunate and traumatic action took place outside of the

012school building at mckinley high school during this semester on wednesday february 9th that could have easily and with full understanding left the school's entire staff of administrators teachers aids assistants clerical custodial sstn cafeterias students families caregivers and the community at irish broken and shared because our worst fears were realized and we were all forced to confront them and staff member were severely injured and it was witnessed by masses of students but you heard me say earlier that this involved mckinley high school and that school has a long-standing legacy of strength resiliency togetherness and family and there's something really special about being a part of the mckinley mac family so i will now ask our associate superintendent school leadership mrs boya wilson and i see she's already up here she's ready to go to present some

013very worthwhile public recognitions that are very well deserved associated wilson thank you good evening board members superintendent colleagues and community i'm honored to be here tonight to celebrate the heroic acts of the buffalo public schools employees at mckinley high school on february 9 2022. as you know on that day there was a significant incident that occurred and during that time heroes rose to the occasion to support mckinley when it needed support the before most share the names of these heroes i would like to share take the time tonight to share a few quotes to define the essence of a hero i think a hero is any person really intent on making this place a better place for all people our hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite

014of overwhelming heroes are never perfect but they're brave they're authentic they're courageous they're determined discreet and they've got grit mckinley right a hero is a person who is admired or idealized for courage outstanding achievements and noble qualities i think all of these descriptions exemplify the staff at mckinley who stepped up on that day and continue to step up every day to support the healing needs of the community tonight we are here to recognize these extraordinary individuals for their heroic acts when i call your name please come forward officer bradley walker [Applause] [Music] officer jennifer [Applause] [Music] both officers here today risk their own lives to support mckinley and we the buffalo public schools would like to recognize you for your courage with these beautiful classes that outline the work and support you always give and

015continue to give family [Music] do you have any family members [Applause] and we would be remiss if we did not share that brand walker's mother mrs brett walker is one of our revered retired recently retired principals from the arthur roy school of distinction number 61. [Applause] we have a little more uh one two three four two three one two all right [Applause] it's thank you very much we have one final recognition mckinley staff who are here with us tonight please stand hmm [Music] foreign um just awesome i mean unthinkable things that this situation happened that we felt we needed to give honor to the entire staff at mckinley high school yes everyone at mckinley is a hero in some way whether you help someone who was wounded or you simply help students feel better about

016being scared in the moment so so for that reason we really wanted to honor the entire school community because we looked at trying to get a list and there were just so many things that people stepped up to do on that day that really just helped the students and helped everyone who was dealing with a really difficult situation so tonight we honor the entire mckinley staff and we'd like to recognize you with this plaque that we we want to see hanging in your home for the back house [Music] [Applause] thank you and another congratulations to all of our honorees tonight [Music] good this brings thank you so much so i'm happy to share that phase one of our listening tour has been completed and it consists instead of visiting eight different locations between march 28th

017and then april 14th for the tour we solicited recommendations from the board members on where you should call meetings from the city and at each of the locations we simply ask the audience to respond to five questions we have moderate moderators and inspires [Music] strategic plan and in addition to visiting all of the locations that i just shared we also met with almost all of our building principles and i will meet with my final group of principals tomorrow evening in addition to that we have three additional phases to collect even more today we want to be inclusive so on monday i will be meeting with a group of students has helped to facilitate that we will also be meeting with our enterprise students and we also because we want to be inclusive we'll begin with

018students who have encountered some challenges in schools who may have incurred suspicions or literacy we want to hear feedback from them i was also visited by mr rodriguez here tonight one of the churches that's on the west side and to me for the community and get some feedback and share a little bit about my mission and finally we will conclude so our goal is to have all of our tour sessions completed by june 1st of this year [Music] to is and share our own narrative and so we began sharing brief updates on the work taking place a couple of weeks ago and it's just a newsletter a couple of pages long but it highlights the different areas of the district and the work that is going on and then we provide spotlights and you never

019know who's like our first spotlight [Music] negative narratives being shared by our history so we will be sharing with the true marriages that's happening it's a lot of work today something phenomenal with you know the performance that the students are here [Music] other newspapers that they would like for information please just let me know uh we also submitted a document 25 days and what it really did was um we would like to engage in prior to may 31st um let's see here i will be creating a multi-tier communication that will be going out to our community to our families to our partners just to remind everyone on behavioral expectations as they enter our school buildings it's a reminder because for a while we had limited visitors into our schools in accordance with cdc regulations but

020i believe it's time to share with everyone just as a reminder some expectations to continue to ensure safety and orderliness in our schools and some of the basics include making sure that upon entering a building that everyone reports to the main office they are willing to sign in they only report to authorized areas of the school that they should be in and speaking respectfully to all of our school staff we're in the business of educating children and it's important that when children witness adults engaging with one another that it is respectful and so i will be creating a multi-tier communication that will go out via the robo we will also put it out on social media that we have high expectations for behavior when we have visitors entering our schools i just would like to

021share a very brief covered update so that we all remain mindful and diligent that kovid is still very active in our community and it is easily spread currently in erie county we are at a medium level which is yellow as of april 14th there were 61 patients with covet 19 in erie county hospitals and we still have some zip codes where we have higher positivity rates including zip codes one four two one three one four two one four one four two one five and one four two one six and so we're still actively engaging in testing and encouraging vaccinations because those are the best strategies against covet 19 as well as masking and continuing to socially distance and finally i want to congratulate dr morrell i believe that one of her students who participates in

022her mbk fellows program will be participating in a statewide discussion coming up is it this week next week and it's a statewide my brother's keeper exemplary schools models and practices and she does phenomenal work with our mbk fellows and we want to congratulate jayden coronado because he will be one of the presenters thank you dr williams for your thorough and thoughtful comments um which brings us to the comments from speakers portion of our meeting this evening let me start by reading the guidelines for speakers at this time the board welcomes speakers who have signed up to speak at tonight's meeting please be reminded all speakers remarks must be limited to three minutes or less we ask that speakers be mindful that this is a business meeting open to the public and televised locally attendees and

023viewers include persons from throughout western new york including children the board asks that speakers conduct themselves professionally and that their comments remain civil and courteous bearing in mind that they will be heard by people of all ages this is an opportunity for buffalo's residents to address the buffalo board of education about issues that serve the public interest in the district mission and the board asked that speakers demonstrate appropriate decorum and as always thank you for joining us tonight uh i believe that btf president filmer moore is in the audience who wish to address the board um mr moore we will call on you first thank you mr president and i thank you my superintendent my name is phil wilmore i'm the president of buffalo teachers federation i'm here to address you about the negotiations our

024negotiations started in may of 2019 that's almost three years ago i didn't start out with a big problem the district wouldn't even agree to ground rules a particular one ground rule that they absolutely refused to accept and i will read it to you and you can try to figure out why the district would not accept this the parties will schedule in advance a minimum of two tentative negotiating sessions would agree upon timelines your negotiating team refused to agree to that we asked him several times why no was the answer at that time we said okay we'll give you some time and you say that this is enough and maybe you can reconsider it that was back in 2019 we knew that there was then issues then come march of uh this year or your proposal

025for the teachers was no salary increase in the new contract for 2019-2020 no retroactive payment for teachers who retired prior to the ratification of the contract no increase in the number of there's going to be an increase in the number of weeks of the school year from 42 to 44. there's also going to be an increase in the number of hours for teachers that teach both seventh and eighth grade and then elementary school and on top of that then teachers would pay 20 towards their health care that wasn't enough 2019 2020 no salary increase uh effective with ratification only teachers who are on board would get any kind of increase 22 23 zero percent and then in 2024-25 a big 2.5 increase this is what you're telling teachers they have to work two extra days

026pay twenty percent of health care and get minuscule salary increases inflation and cost of living was seven and eight percent and has been now your budget we've taken a look at it you have a 280 million dollars in your reserves 280 million those those are in unrestricted reserves you also have 36 million dollars in restricted reserves which could actually be used for other purposes one of the things you're also going to be getting is in as part of the increase in uh the foundation aid for 2122 you're getting an extra 41 million dollars an extra 35 million dollars 23.24 an extra 35 million dollars in addition to that you have millions and millions of dollars in federal funds that can be used to keep and retain teachers and that money is not the kind of

027money that you usually get that you can't supplant you can use this money any way you want how do you think that money's gotten here who do you think's been fighting i know that you fight also for money but who do you think has been out there both on the national and federal level and you know we're affiliated with both national unions the nea and aaft we're the ones have been fighting for years and you know it for the foundation aid and you've amassed all of that money all of that money but yet you come up with a contract proposal like the one that you have now there's been talk about the btf contract proposal where we took the average of the big five or six city school districts and said this is what their

028average is and this is what we want and all of a sudden we come and say oh and also we want to decrease the amount of steps to get the maximum and then we say oh what are you trying to do bankrupt us well they also shame on you if that costs that much money then there's something wrong here now you say oh the big cities while the cost of living is high well let me just give you another example here it takes buffalo teachers we have our maximum at 27 years okay hamburg 19 years and what is the masters in hamburg making at step 19 eight 94 and sixteen dollars what a buffalo teachers make at the masters at that step seventy-seven thousand dollars how about williamsville you know just listen for a little

029interest how about williamsville they get to maximum in 16 years what did they make at a master's level at that 100 what does my full teacher make i'm sorry macaron what do they make in the masters at step 20 95 500 was the buffalo teacher bank at 20 79 700. yeah i hear we can't afford it then i hear the most insulting part is that you're trying to bankrupt the district madam president uh i mean madam superintendent these proposals came out were done before you were superintendent and we look forward to your leadership and the rest of the board is saying btf isn't trying to bankrupt us as a matter of fact what the teacher's saying that the board's trying to bankrupt us they'll actually be making less money under your salary proposal with the

030additional years and the inflation and paying 20 times their health care and they're making that we ask you superintendent members of the board we're looking for a proposal to the buffalo teachers that doesn't degrade and demean them we're asking that you we're going to be in negotiations tomorrow put a proposal together that has your stamp of approval that this is the respect and the dignity that you deserve you have hundreds of millions of dollars and a lot of that money came from hard work from the teachers of the city so i ask you superintendent members of the board we look forward to seeing the proposal and when we see a next proposal we will say that this is what the board of education and superintendent think of its teachers and we hope that that's one

031that reflects what other teachers are getting just as well as the buffalo teachers and i thank you for your time [Applause] thank you very much president moore next up on our speaker's list we have arthur carter concerned citizen regarding students on the bus hello my name is carlton carter and i am a city school bus driver and i think i talked to the to the board at um antioch so the thing that we need is aids we do not have enough age to to ride the bus with us a bus driver job is very important when we transfer kids to school and we have a lot of bad kids on us in our buses these days and um that's what i have to say and you and um i know the last time i talked

032to the board that um you said you was going to give us some aids and i understand that they are working on that okay but um what i like to just say is that um we drive the buses we have to watch for the people in the streets not only the kids in the bus but we have to watch the kids so there's a lot of duties that we have to do as driving the bus that's why we need aids okay and um you say you was gonna come to my june union meeting okay so after the meeting i can give you the date that we're gonna have it all right because i know everybody at the union would love to talk to you they couldn't be here today okay all right thank you thank

033you mr carter i know the board has been very concerned about getting a proper number of bus aides as well next up we have otis tucker a concerned citizen and parent regarding bus drivers thank you mr carter uh next on the agenda is amy quindy teacher regarding contract negotiation salary and the rate of inflation good evening on behalf of my fellow teachers i had some questions for the board why do we as bps teachers earn less than teachers in almost any other public school district in western new york and any discussion of a raise comes with unreasonable conditions yet at the same time most of us were asked to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt in order to have the advanced education required to teach with no financial help from the district or

034state whatsoever why do our average hourly wages now rival those of companies like starbucks and target for jobs that require zero investment in a college degree to obtain why with the current inflation rate ranging from 10 to 24 and prices of goods skyrocketing have our salaries not been adjusted for inflation every year our steps raise our salaries just one to two percent which is still less than the average historical rate of inflation at 3.8 percent i did the math i earned exactly the same now that i did in 2010 when adjusted for inflation yeah i had 12 more years of experience speak three languages and taught in four countries as an enl teacher at the very least i am demanding that the district raise our salaries in step with current inflation rates why as part

035of new contract is the district asking us to work even more weeks after they already previously added 40 minutes to our school day when many other districts still work one hour less daily why is the district proposing an additional loss of health benefits that were already lost in the last contract our health benefits fund health problems that teachers and their families otherwise couldn't afford to treat we should not have to pay as much out of pocket for health insurance as employees in other more lucrative industries our benefits remain one of the few incentives for aspiring teachers to choose this profession this brings me to my next topic since 2010 enrollment and teacher preparation programs has declined nationwide by almost one-half combined with stagnant salaries difficult working conditions a lack of career pathway opportunities health care

036and vacation time in jeopardy and lack of paid family leave the teaching profession as a whole can not compete with other professional occupations especially due to new remote options a recent survey done by good hire company revealed that nearly 80 percent of employees prefer and 40 percent demand the chance to work from home at least two days per week for leads and many other reasons the district will soon struggle to attract new teachers why do we continue to be treated like second-class professionals is it because we as teachers are still predominantly women why haven't we been able to attract more men and teachers of color into the profession is it because of all the hoops that teachers have to jump through only to be paid treated and regardless regarded poorly which sadly women and people

037of color are historically used to thank you so much for your time let's think outside the box for a change and get this done thank you [Applause] thank you very much for your comments up next we have sheila jones my teacher assistant regarding the summer arts miss jones uh followed by mouthfields concerned citizen and parent your writing pet good day blessed love to everybody putting students and families first to ensure high academic achievement for all the mission statement of the board of education it seems that we spend most of the time at these meetings addressing adult issues and not student issues i wish there was a way to reverse the actions that have been taken that limit public input when the former superintendent came before the former superintendent kane the public was invited twice a

038month every two weeks to come and address their issues once the new superintendent came that was once a month things moved very fast in this district and i think once a month is too little the time to have parents or people have the opportunity to to address this board i wish we could increase or go back to the original time of every two weeks so we can be current with issues as they occur we used to be able to talk three minutes and then get 15 seconds to close now that 15 seconds has been cut out we should have education by any means necessary there should be no way that we don't explore ways to educate our children not all children learn the same way and we don't they're not we shouldn't use a cookie

039cutter approach i have some some of my students some of my children who find the education system very boring and don't really like coming to school every day and find it not inviting and not exciting we should always explore the remote option for those who it works for uh we still do not have students who read write and do math on or above grade level that should be the very basic that they should be able to read right into math on grade level if not above grade level no option for education should be off the board like i say we should have education by any means necessary and i like to see us actually address the students needs and not spend so much time on the adults needs i know the teachers are important the

040bus aides are important the bus drivers are important you are important but i remind you of the mission statement putting students and families first first to ensure high academic achievement for all i'm not sure if you know what first means or what all means but by your actions it doesn't seem so if our students do not read write and do math on or above grade level what sort of education are we giving our students when students graduate and then can't pass a six grade level interest exam what value is that diploma thank you [Applause] thank you very much for your comments and concerns next we have charlie smith student regarding performing arts education mr smith mark bruno teacher and parent regarding misleading bts data i see mr bruno's coaching good evening dr williams distinguished members

041of the board of education and members of the bps family my name is mark bruno and i've been a buffalo teacher for 20 years and also the proud parent of a four-year-old going to pre-k in buffalo so i'm a city resident so i have you know a lot of faith in the city and also the buffalo public schools um before i get started i just want to give a big shout out to the students who performed before the board meeting i don't know about anyone else but they were fabulous i could have watched that all night and that is a perfect example of a lot of the good things going on in the buffalo public schools um also to give a shout out to rich pizac who i've known my entire career and was a

042good friend and it was good to see him honored and especially i'd like to acknowledge our two security guards officer walker but also officer little who i worked at riverside for many many years with and is also a very good friend so it was good to see all of them honored tonight and uh they they greatly deserve that honor um dr williams i just want to thank you for the last board meeting when you answered and every speaker and and spoke to every speaker and that was huge for me because we haven't seen that in quite a long time here so the fact that uh you addressed every speaker was just you know great and thank you for doing that i appreciate you going on a listening tour and i hope you know my comments

043are not directed at anyone here they're directed that i'm about to speak about they're directed at the culture of uh the buffalo schools kind of for a lot of my career here um and some of just the data that we're looking at um for example if you sign into my school sixth period you're considered present but you can miss period one two and three 3 all year and that's not being looked at i have thousands of illegal absences every year and so do many teachers in my school so that's something i've been passionate about for years talking about illegal absenteeism because you can't teach in an empty seat um and um also students even if they don't come to school the entire marking the you know the entire marking period still get a 50. um

044a lot of our students work very hard to get 50s especially you know a lot of our enl students our english language learner students so again you know some of the the data is providing kind of you know a false sense of what's going on in this district and also when it comes to school safety and violence there was a presentation about school suspensions i think we can all agree that the fact that all you know like most of the principals in the district were here um at the last board meeting um and the board meeting before that and there is definitely in you know an issue with with safety in the schools and i hope we could start you know looking at how many weapons are coming into schools how many physical altercations are

045in schools um again i i think we have a new beginning here and but to tackle these problems um i think we have to look at all of the data and not just some of it thank you for your time and more than praise we need a raise buffalo teachers do and we've i've only had one contract in 20 years here and i think it's time to pay buffalo teachers what they deserve thank you so much for your time thank you mr bruno uh next up we have hutch tech frederick aries wayne from local 17 regarding the custodian very nice thank you uh what a wonderful school you have here not that the school that we did this before wasn't just as wonderful but very nice and the presentation was great williams uh buffalo school

046board members good evening uh hopefully everybody had an opportunity to see monday news monday's news story from wgrz channel 2 claudine ewing did a little interview with me if you don't know claudine reported on the 13 year old public buffalo public school contract with the school engineers association and of course the subsequent contract with the school buffalo school custodians in her story she talked about how the school custodians have gone to work now for 13 years without raises and only seen an increase because of new york state minimum wage going up in 2020 and 2021. she also asked who is ultimately responsible for the disconnect and i said doesn't the school board have the final say and therefore responsible now for some fun facts [Music] fun fact number one buffalo school board is made up

047of nine publicly elected members this current board uh four were elected in 2019 uh one in 2018 three in 2016 and i'm sorry uh one from 2010. um so 2010 is kind of when the whole thing went off rails for some reason and i wanted to ask um ask the board member do you remember why this contract wasn't renewed back then and what is so important that it's held up for 13 years now with the school engineers and is the reason more important than the livelihoods of the 200 plus custodians that work in your schools the other news that i've read lately is how the buffalo school board has bought out the contract from the last superintendent dr cash at 316 uh principal mckinley for two seventy five thousand uh so we're talking 591 thousand

048dollars have gone out half of which for somebody that's not actually working and i wanted to say that if that's how it works i'm in so please make the check out to the buffalo school custodians for the sum of 23 million 423 thousand two hundred and eighteen dollars in back wages uh less taxes of course and um the next check should be made out to the custodians and their pension fund for 5 million eight hundred and twenty thousand uh three hundred and sixty dollars uh for pension benefits um and we just call it good you know wash the last 13 years away and see if that's okay so um in closing uh if we can finally come to an understanding with these school engineers then we can come to an understanding us we can come

049to an understanding with them for the essential workers so thank you for your time this evening i look forward to seeing everybody next month kind of the same bed time same bat channel thank you all thank you mr swain for your comments uh next we have desean baldwin advocates regarding parental rights hello hey blesses and peace everyone how are you guys doing tonight um i am here um to talk about tonight with the parent rights just highlighting um paperwork um mostly starting from the buffalo public schools code of conduct so in parental rights um it's a lot of rights that parents and students do get but when we look at the school suspension requirements um it's specific on what parents get for short term and long term our parents have been getting information so the

050parents that i've been working with most of them all get information some of their information that they would get that notify their children if they're going to be suspended short term does not come within 24 hours i do understand that sometimes maybe a student might rip up the paperwork but then if that is the case and they're notified of it they still don't get it um so parents to them they like we didn't get the paperwork and then there's other cases where some of them never got it within 24 hours at all so then they don't get the right to the informal hearing just because it was sent out so i'm seeing kids who's being sent home from school that same day um they never get the paperwork um they they they got the phone

051call from school but they did not get the paperwork or the documentation which therefore means that they don't have the right to know that they have the informal school hearing to be able to have a full investigation and talk about the process so this is happening to a great deal of parents some parents also are getting long-term suspension paperwork but they're not getting it one time i have one parent who has it late and sent out seven days prior to after when they should have received it and then the information comes it's not uniform so between all the school boards like our every school how they decide to write up the short term suspensions in the long term suspensions the paperwork looked different where some schools might say the reason why that they're being formal

052or why they got in trouble other schools may not say that um so parents bring up the questions too when their paperwork is not done or written in the correct format or they don't get it on the timeline what is the point of having that time if they do not have any ways that they'll be able to negotiate or um have discussions on if their children can do a short-term suspension i mean in school suspension versus the long-term suspension or if they can shorten or less than the amount of days because they've already been out of school all this time so we have like one parent who've been out for like 30 days um before after receiving a notification because they didn't get their stuff sooner but if they would have knew that they had

053a long-term suspension uh quicker they could have already tried to did all the steps so that way they could be back in school sooner so these are so many issues that's happening um and i was wondering if someone would be able to provide me with information what type of rights do parents get if any when they do not get documentation um in the appropriate time line and if um the public schools is open to modifying um the paperwork that go out to be able to have it unified and make it more parent friendly because it is very confusing to be able to see um how the informal process happened or something referring them to go back to their code of conduct because a lot of parents are so confused about the entire process and how

054it works so i just wanted to state that thank you guys for your time i look forward to you guys getting back to me you guys have a blessed night thank you very much next week advocate concerned grandparent random person regarding the buffalo community pta hello everyone can you hear me i'm sorry i'm minor ferguson if you don't know who i am and i'm standing here with a group of parents that we have formed together called the buffalo community pta i just want them to introduce themselves and let them know where their child go to school please hello good evening my name is may bynum um i have a granddaughter to go to bennett and i have some uh granddaughter to go to 81 and build academy i have some nieces and nephews hi i'm

055erin ruffins my child goes to primary hall sarah lee palmer and i have a senior at buffalo visual and performing arts and then i have a freshman at western new york maritime charter school and then a sixth grader at south buffalo charter school who aspires to come to high school at buffalo visual performing arts desmond knolls and i have a six-year-old here who goes to buffalo united charter school and i also have a senior who attends bath but proudly thank you i just want to say briefly to introduce you to us we have formed together collectively to represent for all children and needs in the city of buffalo we will be the first charter ever in the state of new york to collectively have a buffalo community pta that stands for peter terrance teachers parents

056teachers association i apologize which we have over 250 000 members throughout the state of new york and i want to thank the district for being very supportive coming out for all children because all children need to have somebody to advocate for them tell parents to stand up and collectively work together as a whole thank you that's all i need to say and the charter meeting is may 10th we have flyers in the back i have sent them out to all board members been posted on social media may 10th will be charter at 2421 main street if anybody does not know the belmont housing in 1199 building on main street is from 6-8 and please come thank you thank you [Applause] next up we have joe mancha a concerned citizen regarding a wrongful determination mr nashville

057the floor is yours thank you and uh good evening everyone dr williams distinguished board members president patucci uh this goes back to the fall when i was called by the superintendent of the grounds department and he asked me to file an application they were looking for six employees well i was uh i was called filled out my application with civil service and the board of education everything was approved i was one of the three that actually got the job i had the job for a month i was called down to the human resources department by an arrogant condescending and dismissive person and it took all of five minutes for her to terminate me she asked you only have two options one termination one to resign and i wasn't going to resign i was accused of

058lying on an application the board of education and the civil service applications i crossed every t dotted every eye my only option was to come here plead my case to the board members and see if this uh this termination could be overturned and i can get back to work all i want to do is go to work with the grounds department i was there 14 years lost a shoulder back to work and [Music] all i want to do is go to work with the department i've worked with before i have no problems with anything all i'd ask for at the minimum is a hearing i understand not only there's a new superintendent but you have a new human resources director and again i've been trying to get in touch with somebody for a month i've

059actually sent the president the dr williams and the new superintendent emails about trying to have a meeting which hasn't happened all i want to do is get back to work i was accused of lying on an application which is ridiculous the the the question was were you ever terminated or resigned from an employer which my answer was no well i was accused of lying because they said i was an employee of the buffalo municipal housing authority which i was never an employee i was an elected commissioner just as you board members are elected so if your board members are elected and i'm an employee that means you're all employees of the board of education ridiculous all i want to do is have a fair hearing go back to work with a department i love guys

060that i've worked with for 14 or 15 years and just do my job and bring to the board of education what you need passion compassion work ethic i know the schools i know the employees i know the work i've been a construction worker most of you know me for over 50 years so i do know a little bit about the grounds department working there so please review it overturn it because it's false and let me go back to work thank you very much i appreciate your time next up we have kathleen richardson parent concerned citizen regarding national superintendent search kathleen richards next up we have kate hack conserved citizen bps teacher organization regarding organizational priorities good evening everyone my name is dr kate hock i've been a member of the bps community since my children

061started at school here in 2001. however my husband and i have been parents since 1990 and our three sons graduated from buffalo public schools in 20 2008 2011 and 2018 it seemed like high school would never end for my husband and i uh i'm also a retired elementary school teacher and literacy coach and a proud member of the new york state united teachers retiree council number two although i exported my talents to the suburbs i did my student teaching here at build academy under mrs johnny mayo and olmsted 64 back in 1983. so bringing up children in the city is not easy but i was lucky to find a support system along the way with the buffalo parent teacher organization a district-wide board recognized parent group currently i serve the bpto as the curriculum chair

062and i'm here tonight to welcome members new and seasoned to our upcoming membership meeting and to take advantage of our family and community events the best thing about the bpto is that it welcomes everyone current parents and caregivers students teachers and concerned community members like myself we all have a lot to offer our community and bpto recognizes and takes advantage of talents no matter if you have students currently in the district or not our mission is simple in order to facilitate student success within the buffalo public school district the voices of all members of the community must be engaged through ongoing relationships thus it is the mission of the buffalo parent-teacher organization to initiate support and advocate and recognize positive projects programs and accomplishments of the students and the schools now this mission is purposefully

063optimistic we also understand and engage with the problems and issues in our schools and our neighborhoods at the same time we want to promote a positive bps experience for as many families as we can so we work hard to put families in touch with staff who can help with specific issues we cultivate and maintain strong relationships with all stakeholders and we rally in support of programming that we know is best for our children and families our monthly meetings are informative and accessible and we hold them at east high on saturday mornings from 9 to 11 and we also bring people in via zoom for instance this saturday april 23rd will host dr fatima morale the associate superintendent of the department of culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives members of the bpto hold dr morrell in high

064regard and keep her close to our hearts as she does the difficult work of talking about race and equity in our schools and in our city every single day she is committed to providing a high quality education for all of our students even when having courageous conversations continues to be difficult work across the nation parents are attacking their educational leaders for bringing real historical accounts into the classrooms we have chosen the opposite approach we celebrate our real and sometimes difficult history literature and contemporary issues knowing that facing our history warts and all makes us a stronger more cohesive society so please come and learn more about this groundbreaking work in our district on saturday the 23rd at east high 9 a.m thank you thank you [Applause] uh and she also uh serves on the say

065yes uh operating committee as well so give credit where credit is to our last speaker for the evening is mr ed spidel apparent regarding positivity is mr spidell in the audience well i was looking forward to the positivity comments um that concludes our speakers for this evening i now turn it over to the response to speakers thank you and thank you to all of the speakers and when um when we have folks from the community come forward and speak i really really listen to what's being shared so i want to begin by saying to mr carter we did i believe he came to one of the sessions at antioch baptist church and um we did get to speak a little bit and i am definitely looking forward to meeting with the union the bus drivers

066union and hearing what some of their concerns are and i just want to mention for the record that what he shared with me is that he is directly related i believe it's a first cousin to us congressman john lewis and so we got to talk a little bit about that so i'm glad that he came tonight and reminded me of my commitment to come to to hear from the bus drivers union thank you for coming tonight um mr fields it's always good to see you i've seen you also at uh some of our listening tours and it's always insightful what you have to share i believe you mentioned tonight that we used to offer the three minutes and the 15 seconds i believe we still do that we're still offering three minutes to speakers with

067what it was before okay so that's something we can talk about um offline so that i can better understand it appears that we're still offering what as i remember in recent years we've offered but we can talk uh about that um i you know think we agree that you know we focus on children's needs we focus on children's needs however we do understand that the adults that are working in our schools on our buses um in our cafeterias you know they have to help us with ensuring that we're focusing on the children's needs so we're all working together and we certainly are putting our students and families first to ensure high academic achievement for all so we do do that and we will continue to do that mr bruno congratulations on having a four-year-old i

068can only imagine how busy you are uh i want to share though that the way that attendance is taken as i understand it is really regulated by the new york state education department and we follow those regulations so i do hear and understand what you shared and know that we will certainly be engaging in a deep dive in disaggregating our data and taking a look at attendance data as it's been taken ms baldwin it's always good to see you it seems we've been running in the same circles also so you share today that you have some concerns or concerns have been brought to you by some of our parents regarding paperwork and so i would ask that our assistant superintendent for student support dr brown reach out and meet with you so that we can

069better understand and take a look at where there are differences in the paperwork we certainly expect that paperwork will be getting out on time to parents um it is what is articulated in our code of conduct that within 24 hours you did share that there may be times where children have been given paperwork and maybe it doesn't reach home and so schools are calling parents to make sure that they're informed either way i'm asking that you meet with our assistant superintendent for student support and see where there may be some gaps there miss ferguson it's always a pleasure to see you i'm excited about the buffalo community pta that you are bringing to buffalo it was nice to see some parents here in the audience um i agree that all of our children need parents

070and adults in their lives who will advocate for them so i'm very excited about the work that you're doing with respect to that thank you for bringing that to the attention of our board dr hock always good to see you also um i am pleased to hear that the work of the bpto is alive and strong and that dr morrell is going to be coming to speak and present to the group on april 23rd i agree that she does fantastic work and it's good to hear that the bpto continues to embrace the work of clri the important work for clri i think that concludes most of the speakers i would at this time though ask that our general counsel come up and address some of the concerns that were brought forward that may be aligned

071to negotiations or legalities mr kuzma thank you superintendent williams board members for the public who doesn't know me my name's nate kuzma i'm the general counsel uh of the school district and as part of my responsibilities um you know i oversee and handle on behalf of the superintendent in the board our collective negotiations with our 11 collective bargaining units and you know i know mr swain there he is has been here i've i've spoken with him and met with him on a few occasions as well but he's been a frequent speak speaker here um to the board and um there has been some news coverage about uh the impasse with with local 409 and its impact on our uh custodians and certainly i i don't want to minimize uh that at all in fact you

072know i in many ways i certainly support um you know why mr swain is here and what he's asking for on behalf of his membership the custodians do extremely valuable uh important workforce and and you know as you've said on many occasions and i know you superintendent have said to mr swain as have i um you know we we respect uh and certainly appreciate and value that work um and at the end of the day i understand that doesn't put thank yous don't put food on the table you know wages do the wages that they work uh very hard for but i i wanted to i want to correct the record for the public and also talk about what we're doing to address that issue for the public to hear and for mr swain to

073hear and for the membership his membership that that is presently here to here we we have a a collective bargaining agreement with local 409 which represents at any given time between 40 and 50 operating engineers in our school buildings as part of their contract they get wages they get a salary to operate our boilers you know which is their operating engineers they operate our boilers and they receive a salary for that in addition to that salary and this has been a system it's called an indirect custodial system we provide a lump sum of money based on the square footage of each building to each operating engineer what happens with that money that we provide in terms of a lump sum contract who are operating engineers we don't know where it goes we know some of

074it or a good portion of it goes to pay the wages of the custodians we know some of it goes to buy snow plows trucks uh equipment you know to maintain the grounds and to shovel the sidewalks and to take care of all of that stuff but at the end of the day we don't know what is left and what is kept as profit from each operating engineer okay in addition to that this board provides a lot of the overhead expenses that would typically go into maintaining the school building the cleaning supplies the chemicals to clean the facility the paper towels the the the soap the the hand sanitizer all of that stuff is purchased on top of those contract amounts by this board one of the groups that we don't negotiate with is local

07517 and mr swain which is often left out of his presentation to you if i ask mr swain tomorrow come meet me at my office at nine o'clock and we will negotiate increases to your members wages you couldn't do that you couldn't do it correct you have to negotiate with local 409 and i'm willing to gander that you haven't had one [Music] negotiation session in 13 years with those engineers who are directly responsible for negotiating the wages and the terms and conditions of employment with local 17. now that hasn't been mentioned in any one of those presentations the appearance is that it's this board's responsibility it's my responsibility to negotiate with local 17. that's not the case that is not the case and i and i i i would like to be corrected on that

076but i i don't think they've met to even start bargaining instead they've chosen to come here and lay it at the feet of this board which i don't think is it's not accurate and it's not fair okay and i wanted to correct the record and make the record straight on that mr swain if we can negotiate together you and i i think we could get it done in 10 minutes because i've settled seven other contracts and this board has approved seven other contracts in the last six months to increase wages for our employees throughout the district now what we are doing understanding that this is a group of people that work very hard in our schools granted we don't even know the names of many of them because we don't hire them we don't pay

077them we don't enroll them we don't fingerprint them we don't even know if they are fingerprinted by the operating engineers who hire them despite the fact that they're in our schools but we do understand that they need a raise okay so we have went to the group that is responsible for negotiating with them and we have made an offer to them to give them additional resources financial resources with the understanding that they would prove to us how many individuals they've hired they would prove to us that they've negotiated an mou with local 17 so that those wages would go directly in their pockets so that they can get the wages the wage increases in the raises that they deserve we are near the finish line on that and i'm hopeful that we can get that

078done but with the agreement to provide additional resources to and we need to ensure one that that money goes directly to our custodians that are working and that there's some accountability on behalf of the engineers to demonstrate to us and to this board that that's where those financial resources are going and i've made you aware of that mr swain and i don't know to the extent that 409 has even brought that to your attention at this point i know they're in a side step that one so in any event we are working on it and it's not something that's completely within our control we need agreement from the other side local 409 in this instance to finalize this mou and once that's done it's not going to be everything and anything that you want at

079this point but it's the best we can do at this point in the construct in which we're operating so i want the public to know we've been working on this for three or four months we are making a considerable effort but it's not something that mr swain and i can just walk to the back here and settle ourselves there's an additional construct that we have to deal with because we don't negotiate directly with our custodians okay so now turning to uh negotiations with uh with the federation um it is of critical importance and it it is a critical priority that we settle our teacher contract and that we provide meaningful competitive sustainable and affordable raises to our teachers it's no secret that we have we are in a sound financial condition in which we can

080do that i don't think it's productive to do this publicly i could go through the federation's proposals right now i could go through three of them and i could tell you what the cost is publicly which i haven't done to date i could go through our proposals and talk about how much money that is going to cost the board over a four-year period of time that's not productive at this point either what is productive in negotiations is sitting down at the table and talking through the priorities of each party we understand that it's going to take a financial investment to resolve this contract but we have other priorities student-centered that need to be addressed as well there are benefits in the teachers contract that teachers in other districts don't have there are things that other

081teachers have in other in their contracts that our teachers don't have it's trying to meld the two of those and you do that at the bargaining table i made it very clear when we met the day after our last board meeting when we exchanged our economic package that this was a starting point okay and it was an effort to start the conversation on the meat and potato issues that we knew were going to that we know are going to have to get resolved to get this contract on i didn't say this is our best and final offer i said this is the start of a conversation okay in response to that we had three negotiation dates that were canceled by the federation and a demand to go back to mediation which we're doing we're going

082to meet with the mediator tomorrow and we'll meet with the mediator again next week and i expect that we're going to have vigorous hearty and productive discussions about what it's going to take to get this contract done and i will commit because i've spoken with the superintendent about this and i know this is her desire and i know it's this board's desire i'll set aside as much time as it takes over the course of the next month to sit down with president remore and his negotiating team to hammer this thing out because really it shouldn't take that long if we can actually sit down and have a meaningful conversation about it okay i know what the goals of this board are i know what the goals of the superintendent are we can get this done

083and we're committed to getting this done and i will set aside as much time as it takes to do that because i think our teachers deserve it thank you mr kuzma next on the agenda we have action on the minutes from the previous meetings do i hear a motion to approve the meetings from the march 16th in the april 4th meeting so moved by kathy second by paulette all in favor any opposed any abstentions thank you the motion passes next we have committee reports i'm going to start with miss mikozi and go around the table so jennifer do you have anything that you'd like to report yes thank you president petrucci this month has been kind of a busy month a lot going on i attended on the second the third and last school board

084forum with the urban think tank and we the parents along with board member woods and board member cotman um there were a lot of discussion really great questions from the crowd and you know productive i also attended the last community pta meeting that was held at it was the old was on um very the old way there and um you know that was that was pretty vibrant and and you know it was good to see a lot of folks in the room and you know there's there's definite energy around this group on the seventh i attended no more excuses it's we we women women warriors are um it was like a sequel to another event um really hearty discussion around violence in our community how to bring the youth back into you know back into

085our arms figuring out how to include youth in you know working on solutions and some of the problems that we're having in the city not just within the school that's in school but in their communities as well it was a lot of conversation from a lot of community members about that um board member heard remember cotman and board member woods were there as well on the ninth i there was a united women in faith this is united methodist church that while the women's groups across western new york came together for their annual community breakfast they had elected me their keynote speaker and are very concentrated on the school-to-prison pipeline and how communities outside of buffalo can be supportive or you know help out or just be made more aware so with the time that they

086allotted me i wanted to make sure that i wasn't the only voice in the room and i was graced by interim superintendent andrew williams dr fatima morale ms sharon brown it's not my win who really spoke to the work that we were doing and i believe that the education piece and the energy whether you guys know it or not these folks were very very energized by what they heard emotional at most because majority of these folks didn't look like us or any of the people who were speaking from the bps and the only information that they normally get is from what they see on tv or what's been talked about so it was really cool and it was very energizing for people to see that we are doing work in the bps that supersedes any

087imagination that some of these folks had and they want to meet again they want to figure out how to support i challenge them as i always do with folks who say they want to support well you got to come to the table to do that so i look forward to bringing us all together again and and you guys to develop that relationship and on the 16th this past saturday i attended the national action network a homicide to healing that was a that was an intense uh intense time it was a memorial where all the names of the folks who had been you know killed homicidal victims in our city in the last year were actually named they had posters on the on the table where these names were actually listed where you can see their

088names and see their pictures and just to address how we as a community need to come together because this is not just on law enforcement it isn't just on faith-based groups it isn't just on the school system it's on all of us as a community to be able to address what's happening the violence in our community and how do we take our strengths and pull them together in order to make sure that these numbers aren't as high that also was attended by board member cotman and i just you know we had a busy month other meeting with other parents me going to different groups and uh just trying to garner information from others and input i will say saturday this saturday the 23rd from 9 to 11 30. there will be a st a student

089teacher forum at the community school session in iprep from 9 to 11 30. we're harnessing teacher and student voices as we've been hearing i know myself i don't want to speak for the rest of the board but teachers and students are coming to the table as if they're not being heard as often or as much as they'd like to be they have suggestions they have ideas on ways to help us attack issues and they want that input so we'll be doing a participatory budgeting session where students will have their own breakouts the teacher will have their own breakouts and we'll get some of that just real data information where we can take it back to the district and see if anything matches up with some of the issues that we're working on so if anybody

090would like to come again it's 9 to 11 30 there'll be breakfast and lunch eye prep international prep high school from 9 to 11 30. thank you dr rivera yes i can report out on our work session of executive affairs where dr williams kindly and impressively shared all the things that she has been doing for the last 25 days which is an extremely short amount of time she broke it out for us in the areas of quality meaningful and inclusive instruction safe and supportive learning environments high performing workforce and realignment of human capital enhanced community connections and operational excellence there are so many items on here i won't read them all but i'm going to give you a few highlights particularly one she bolded for us one of them is meeting with secondary asls and

091building principles in this short amount of time as well as expediting elt programming for elementary 21st century schools which is a really big accomplishment in my opinion uh safe and supportive learning environments interviewing of bus aid or security officers excuse me as well as scheduling a bus aid job fair and combine those two i apologize disseminating individual school safety surveys creating letter that was shared with bps parents regarding service regarding school safety implementing a pop-up moving over to high-performing workforce and realignment of human capital implementing a pop-up um to central office locations on fridays to greet meet and informally gather feedback on the work from staff and also you know make more connections interviewing candidates um and so oh and i forgot to add also with safeties the gold sander of walkie-talkies which is really

092critical in the areas of enhancing community connections she has met with so many people there's a large list that are from community members that are from school communities that are from parent communities that are from non-profit communities and faith-based communities and she's going to be starting parent congress meetings as well and then in operational excellence centering students in boe meetings by showcasing the brilliance of our youth at the start of meetings and we saw some of that today as well as ensuring equity and accurate fiscal accounting cultivating community and stakeholder support hosting bi-weekly cabinet meetings working with the cabinet to continue to further the work and she also made promises by the end of may it was delightful to hear in my opinion i really enjoyed it and i appreciate her willingness to share these

093and i'm looking forward to seeing more we also discussed the extent to which it's important to work with our community following the lead of our interim superintendent and talking more about as we move forward as a district and where we go next is assessing needs and assets throughout the district and ensuring any any search process or other process reflects the priorities of our school community thank you thank you uh thank you president uh first i'd like to start off with a report from the um athletic committee and i'm just in a very busy note also um first like to say that um the spring sports are in full swing this year for athletic department and contests are starting this week for the girls junior varsity lacrosse team now this was uh implemented for the first

094time in the buffalo public schools history so now in the buffalo public schools catching up with the rest of the state of new york and the rest of the country and supporting the lacrosse team we're also looking for uh other avenues how to support the lacrosse program uh bringing a men's lacrosse team and um working with um juniors and youth um lacrosse uh great news is that uh ohio stadium is now under construction so all the planning that we've been doing and um all the work we put for about putting that deteriorated field together um it has now started so the old turf has been removed and the preliminary work for that is underway right now so we give a hand to our internal superintendent and and our board for uh passing out those values

095and getting the study done about what would be the most destructive way of putting that that program together over there so um we already stated in the past all the work that's going into that into ohio stadium but right now is underway and i do have to ask permission because i have a person who's doing um a study of history in the city of buffalo and he wants to go and photograph ohio stadium as they tear it up and put the new the new program down but he's an independent um individual working for himself so um he asked for permission and another group also to be part of history and uh recording the uh the refurbication of um ohio stadium so um i didn't have the i couldn't get more paid to go ahead but

096he was asked to be removed from the property the next thing that we have is our fall coaching staff and support scheduling is complete and tomorrow tomorrow we have a meeting with the modify sports program this is the first committee meeting with the modified sports program and we came a long ways because we're also looking not only for input from our current coaches that's here in the buffalo public schools but it's be initiating our community coaching program that we've been talking so much about and getting those people that have invested in the community to reach out and and speak with thyroid i speak speak on behalf of the community and working with our kids something they've been doing for for decades so um that's gonna be tomorrow at riverside at 12 30 p.m and um

097the next one uh uh in mr house uh he has been serving on a section six um officials negotiating committee so um that's something new also the first time we ever have someone on the section 6 negotiation committee so we're looking for more input about what direction happens within our district and what we have in the sports program and what we what they can afford for our children and what we can give back you know in return so um you know we're paying the section six so we all believe uh as a unit that we need to get more supports from the section six so this is one of the steps that we've taken to make that connection make the bridge um firing that from the sports committee uh last thing i'd like to say

098some of the sports that we'll be reading about tomorrow would be a a club boxing program we're looking for we have uh representatives from the community coming for the wrestling program we have basketball we have football we also have uh joe schneider from the usa tennis association coming in um in town for this meeting and we have lacrosse and our unified programs will be the bowling program uh at this point so um it's a sleuth of different programs and not we miss jim horn we golf is going to be here also so um we're really looking to build out this program and all the efforts that we put into it so thank you dr tanja williams for helping us lead in this now for some of the stuff that we've been doing in the community

099um um i we went to dr tanja williams get together that was a very fun event where we have all elected officials and friends and and people of the district attend so uh i know her co-cabinet was there and it was a nice time to get together to recognize our intern superintendent dr chandra well so congratulations with that also on 3 24 we had the uh attended the best south black leadership dinner that was um that was something that was by elizabeth wilkie ganga she's the president of chief executive officer uh best self and uh the guest speaker there was um bishop roger hennings from a new zion baptist church and we talked about mental health issues that's all with the district and the programs that they're working with our children that that's within the

100district i also met several times with the community leadership program and best self is going to be a sponsor from them also along with uh along with say yes about giving them counseling and mentoring and tutoring so we also have a meeting set this thursday to work with the community leadership program to make sure all these certifications are in place as we work to work to put at least 100 people prior us from the spiritual community within our schools and with our children yesterday i attended the naacp health committee it was a very very important opportunity to talk with some of the some of the things that were said negative about the public schools in our food program and really take the opportunity to clear some of the facts on that and talk about our

101new healthy choices program and things that we've built in our district for a food program uh some other interesting terms came up um the term was about food deserts that's in our community and and that terminology is being changed nationally to be called food apartheid and that's something that we talked about in albion that i'll get to but it says that 20 um poverty or 80 people that's below the u.s minimum income wages um that fits the criteria for buffalo or one mile from a store that has healthy food so right now we're actually in the full apartheid uh here in the city of buffalo some other programs we met that was concerning hillary clinton like to thank dr williams for for giving permission for the release but uh we met with hillary college for

102the dual enrollment partnership program that's gonna provide up to three million dollars in benefits up to the buffalo public schools it's going to save nearly 3 million in tuition costs for our buffalo public school students and hilbert part-time tuition rate of about 700 per credit hour so this is a great addition to education for our kids and receiving college credits under graduation some of the schools that this program is has been um inserted into within the school within this district is uh i've been living at buffalo county for the performing arts here uh bergaard city honors of fostering massive pirate east high school emerson school hospitality the frederick law homeschool hutch tech international prep and learned our da vinci program dear buffalo jay bennett um high school and those three schools that exist within that

103program mst mckinley and uh and the bioinformatics programs riverside also so ansar park so so we have a salute to the program that's going to benefit our children to receive college credits upon graduation uh we also have um at the time to go visit the new york state association for the black and puerto rican hispanic and asian legislation and um there and albany lobby you know for some of the things that's going on in our district and some of the events that we attended and spoke at was uh about the food apartheid another one was uh strengthening diversity in uh an education pipeline and continuing to fight against gun violence and public health epidemic uh the empowerment of parents in the classroom birth of equality and justice for black moms and there we met with

104senator kennedy senate attorney general james we met with mayor byron brown had a forum that went on we also met with new york mayor adams assembly leader christian people stokes was was uh in attendance and we had lunch and breakfast along with her as we spoke about the issues that's going on here in the buffalo public schools with violence and education and also at her chairwoman's reception so it was a delightful time to get together with some of the leaders in our state and talk about things that we can better hear in the city of buffalo and the buffalo public schools i'm going to cut it off but the last thing i'd like to say but thank you for the individuals a lot of individuals that was here tonight that came out and filmed at

105the wbz studios for the education awards uh i gave i gave those board members a copy of the date which is may 7th that's going to be aired on channel 7. and i'd be remiss if i didn't say that that um that we did attend a couple of communities tours and also um the bpa group along with aina that was a great event over on east ferry street i also met with cj banks he has a recording studio that i'll be working to connect here right along with the performing arts school and also we did something that was fantastic with wbbz tv and wkbw tv on channel 7. we came into makowski school number 99 the harriet tubman school east high school angry at performing arts and recorded children talking about positive things that they're

106that they say about their teachers and their schools and recorded it and um i was long here with um crime buyers with the permission from dr tanja williams and the principals and uh our students will do commercials for the next couple of months and it's going to be aired on channel 7 about the positive things that the buffalo public school does within the district so it was a great time you know spending a day with the children and the kids and um these commercials going to air hourly on channel 7 and wbbc tv just to reflect how great this district is and some of the things that we're doing here within the buffalo public schools we did attend on canisius academic talent search where we are working here with the district also and coach reggie

107weatherspoon from the keystone college reached out on our modified sports program and and getting permission to use the kessler center for rain days for our basketball program for the summer for our children so those are some of the things that we're working on he also wants to work within the district and our children a little bit more with the ncaa regulations thank you very much mr herd next dr kathy evans brent do you have anything to report initiative because we as a district have to change our narrative i am so sick and tired of being sick and tired of hearing negative things about this district we do a fantastic job and this year that is our goal this is clearly we are changing the narrative to a positive because we have great things going on

108in this district um and if i hear one other person come to that mic to say that our kids are graduating in the deficiency i don't know what i will do but stop it so thank you okay so before i um uh report on my work session uh i do want to talk about some of the things that i participated in as well i did attend a saturday academy at dr charles drew and i met with uh say yes administration dr david russ and tanya staples and it was a fantastic activity you guys don't know what you're missing parents hear me clearly we have some fantastic study academies going on in this district there is something for everyone i participated myself in a healthy eating class and was taught about you know how important it

109is to eat healthy um given you know nice healthy dishes and etc i got full off of it um i also participated at that school there was a uh truck and in this truck was um gaming activities and this young man he's a minority out of rochester um and the kids were really excited they were participating in the gaming activities it was it was vibrant there was a lot of music going on and uh it was fantastic also i saw or observed coding you know going on there were also a number of bps students who were either current students or graduates of our district who are mentoring and participating or interning with the buffalo museum of science and they were modeling you know various behaviors with our young people um with various abstracts etc so

110that was pretty cool um so and then you know we had a conversation with david ross and tanya we just don't give ourselves enough credit say yes it's been around for at least 10 years and so as we're talking that is another pipeline that we get our teachers of color from right so i said to them let's to look at what it looks like for the last 10 years i met a woman who is now a teacher at um a school one of the elementary schools she came out of say yes she was a counselor i met another um administrator who was an assistant principal at child's room and she was a say yes employee so they started naming these these individuals and i'm like we need to have that credit because that's another pipeline

111to add to our portfolio as to what we're doing with increasing teachers of color in our district okay so they're working on that and i'm going to help them all right and then um i attended the pta facilitation that some of my colleagues talked about at the east ferry resource center um in support of dr williams in her role as interim superintendent um i attended that along with my colleagues uh sharon dalton cotman and um paulette woods at tribeca that was pretty cool too because it's nice to hear conversations from parents in the community and community folk to talk about what they would like to see in our district in our schools and it was ironic because i was at a uh re-pass at johnny b wiley recently and i ran into dr wright who

112was holding a meeting with um her security team along with bp some of the buffalo public school i mean i'm sorry the buffalo police department lieutenant and sro so that was pretty cool too to meet them she was on her job and then um i attended the common council's education committee meeting i was invited there by uh mr bowman who chairs that committee and um as you know there was a resolution in conjunction uh with um councilman wingo that support they submitted a resolution in full support of interim super superintendent uh tommy williams um they're dictating but they want to put it out there that they do support um the talent that's in this district number one we have a lot of talent in this district in the cabinets and we want to keep the

113talent here in buffalo hands down i don't care if you do a national search or whatever this cabinet we're killing periods um and i think also the communication and the young women talked about um you know not getting or parents not getting the information about suspensions whether short term long term via their students well i was a parent of those kids too that did not receive um maybe a physical paperwork or an education right about what's going on so i think you need to do a better job and communicate that information because when a kid is suspended whether short term three days or long term the parent got to have that information and so [Music] if we're doing it you know we are giving the kids the information it's not into the parent we have

114all kinds of ways let's figure it out to get it to the parent whether it's telephone tax um social media whatever we got a little better job so at the at the student achievement uh committee meeting i believe it was held on the 6th of april um and by in particular our chief academic officer presented a robust portfolio of activities and programs for our children and she started out with the after-school program that began in december for the high school students programs that offer or can offer credit recovery for grades 9-12 credit approval for seniors and regents review opportunities she presented how schools have the flexibility to add enrichment components because we do have kids who um you know successfully commit um go through the vigor quicker than other kids and they need um you

115know more enrichment kinds of activities for example um and so as i move on through this report you'll find that there are enrichment opportunities for those young people and one that stands out for me is um the nursing program that the university of buffalo is offering and want to collaborate with the district and and um spoke to me earlier that they have connected and we have uh approximately 30 to 40 slots you know for our young people this summer um so these are young people who are getting you know really in-depth information about the nursing profession and as we all know that that is a need and that particular credential can take young people wherever they want to go matter of fact my goddaughter now completed the nursing program and she's she always wanted to

116be a visit to nurse or traveling nurse and that's what she's doing she's traveling the country and enjoying her life so getting on with the after school program the elementary after-school program is here to meet students social emotional academic physical recreational and you know overall uh holistic wellness needs the active school framework consists of the academic the positive youth development health and wellness and they partnered with the 21st century or extended school day program that began january 25th it started out virtual after school the time of day for the 21 21st century programming in person um saturday april 4th and the targets start they the district ran elementary programs start actually this week and will conclude june 10th that would include boy boyce and girl scout club the buckle at school fit 43 and the

117various club houses throughout the district summer school it's not too early to think about getting your child registered for summer school and i think this board agreed that if we had our brothers we would mandate every student is actually going to beside the school but we don't but the summer school um staffing um the jobs were posted in march and will continue to be reposted as needed hr will reassess late april through term additional recruitment steps if needed teachers working seventh through eighth grade programs will now work full day even if students only attend morning or afternoon sessions and that's an attractive feature that you know teachers have the opportunity to work full day and post it for attendance teachers pre-k to 12 social workers these are just you know staffing updates guidance counselors speech

118pathologists to provide additional support summer school safety and wellness will include nurses at each summer school site current school year mitigation strategies remain in effect further guidance will be provided in summer school handball there will be a consideration for established start times for high school programs all right so the district is hiring a minimum of two security officers will be assigned to each seventh through twelfth summer school site the district is hiring additional officers security officers will be trained in these escalation and self-defense techniques sros will circulate among sites during the programs they're working collaboratively with bpd and f ta and local partners to ensure safe passage winding will take place and again communication protocol that pd vpd these acronyms collaborates with bps to note five parents the critical situations will update parents as soon

119as possible so summer school i mean we have a very robust portfolio of programs and what i'm going to start with is to say yes program they'll be serving um location throughout the city i don't know how many but when i was involved there was at least 54 throughout the city and some operate halfway some operate a full day so it really depends if uh if the funding is documented by your county so if every county is argumenting funding you will have a full state program and all of those programs that say yes overseas must have a certified teacher on staff because they do a lot of math they do a lot of ela and so the kids really get um verifiable uh instruction as well as enrichment activities so i'm not going to go

120through all of the information from the athletic camp that runs from july 11 through august 12th and they looking at expanded down to grades two to six which will focus on fundamentals beginner activities for specific drills competitive games etc there's going to be stage and song musical theater that's at school public school 32 there's going to be a fan camp uh orchestra camp woke words my brother's keeper mba mvk i'm sorry um proposed location at public school 195 there's going to be a rising 6th and 7th grade my brother's keeper initiative which is nice um our young men will focus on identity and talent development character education and community service conditioning if i didn't mention that mr hurd conditioning high school students will have the opportunity to attend strength and conditioning programs to prepare for

121the upcoming sports season got to get our babies ready for the task of winning um emerson school of hospitality it's going to be functioning advanced manufacturing program that's with the uh mayor summer youth program they'll provide the students with real world experience in auto technology machine tool technology welding technology students who will receive academic enrichment in the morning for math and english travel to their respective field will work with trades look at that riverside conservation program sct students and the conservation program they'll engage in work work-based learning opportunities to build conservation so there's this wealth of information parents that please take advantage of these opportunities for for your child your children this is world-class information and our babies need to be involved thank you thank you very much board member scott do you have anything

122to report yes thank you president petrucci i'll be very brief um march 17th i attended the very last after school task force meeting um kind of finalizing details just want to thank superintendent williams chief botticelli tara sims and all the stakeholders that were part of it for really moving the after-school programs forward just saw a post from mr gonzalez about after school programs starting at school 76 and the excitement there i've been getting positive feedback on the after school program starting so thank you to all that have have made that happen um april 6 in our work session educational support committee dr ramota reynolds did a presentation on the new bps information hub which is a one-stop location for families to find answers it includes an faq on special education community schools parent centers and

123student services and there's also a tab to a form for any additional questions that are expected to be answered within 24 hours um and my last update um i can't remember the actual day it was but a saturday a few weeks ago i attended frozen junior here at performing arts which was performed by fifth to eighth graders it was absolutely phenomenal um as you saw from the performance tonight it was you know these the students here just are so gifted and and i i think back in it was probably my first experience as a parent in this school other than as a board member to just be able to since the pandemic started that is just to be part of that experience and hear some parents and family members talk about how it's nice to

124be back in person and experiencing these these experiences that we our students and our families absolutely need so that is all for me thank you thank you yeah it has been very busy trying to keep up with our superintendent who's meeting with everybody going everywhere i did uh attended urban thank pink forum with the other board members i did attend the pta meeting with inf ferguson which was very interesting and we do need a parent group that actually has a lot of parents and empowered parents our parents need help and i believe we're going to help them that way i attended the we are women warriors forum their theme is no excuses we have to improve educational outcomes and we listen to that i attended three listening tours with our superintendent and she was excellent

125wanted antioch one at the mary ware of the library and another one at two bethel the community loves the transparency listening and respecting parents it's a new day and i'm so proud to be part of it i visited stanley makowsky bennett montessori waterfront and hutch tech to see the problems facing my principles and to get their feedback on this current budget i also had to work with three of my schools because that young lady from the cao was talking about one of my students at best sex there is a problem with students who have ieps getting suspended and not getting paperwork and other students not having the uh information to get the informal hearing so that that is a big problem and it was that i've worked with three other schools on that problem so

126i'm hoping we're gonna come up with a better answer uh friday i am meeting with city owners to get their take on the progress uh for improving diversity and their admissions and the progress on that uh field and also on saturday herman belladio is having a celebration and they're inviting the community to see the success that they've made since that incident with doris ma on the uh on the bus she and her parents will be there to let you know that herman bella deal was all right they solved those problems and they're proud of their school other than that um i attended the new york state association of counties new york state school board association presentation on the 15th they presented the 2022-23 state budget which has now been adopted and other than that oh

127oh my i went to the um i went to the naval park where we cut the ribbon my 99 year old father thanked the school board for honoring him he cut the ribbon to open the naval park and was the first person to walk on the uss sullivan for this season i pray we saved the sullivan because the world war ii vets really serves they're the greatest generation they saved our nation the last thing i want to mention is that i um attended the meeting at st john baptist church where they presented how the community can work with the school system they get over 30 years of experience turning youth around and they have a plethora of programs that can give our children a well-rounded experience and enrich their lives so it's it has been

128busy but it buffalo public schools is on the move okay thank you i want to be real brief um i i want to focus in on the things that are um that our our parents uh need to hear about and our students about this evening rather than going down this entire litany uh march to 24th i attended uh the day of hope uh with kelly galloway who is dealing with trafficking in our community she has a female student group that is available for parents she's located on kensington and it's important that we understand that there's a major trafficking problem in our community major i am going to again only hit the highlights i want to say that on march the 25th i attended a retirement party and a networking event honoring uh our uh retiring

129uh commissioner police commissioner brian lockwood and i want to be clear that several firefighters and policemen asked if they can get involved in buffalo public schools we have to create an avenue for our community people to be able to be a part of this transition that we're going through and they are willing to work with our students and and help they want to be involved so many people came up to me and i took their names now on the 29th i attended uh aina ferguson's um community pta event the launch is going to be on the 12th of may but i want to say that there's a need for a pta in every school or some parent organization in every school and until we get there we're not going to have our level of parent

130involvement that we need and it's important that we put together a plan madam interim superintendent that we start capitalizing and utilizing our parents and get them in our school so that we can uh do what the charter schools do so well the missionary approach to make them feel that uh they are welcome and um that they are involved i attended on april the 7th of the finale for the uh big sisters little sisters their closing ceremony at emerson hospitality kudos to dr fatima morrell and staff and to the young ladies who hung in there and participated they are phenomenal young women and i really hope that we're able to expand that program to our listening audience for many of you who are not doing uh anything and who want to be a part of a

131solution we are here and we need adults to work with our young ladies our young men please reach out to us and we and we can get you involved stop sitting back talking or thinking about it and just for for next year let's make sure that we're doing something to uplift these young ladies and young men on april the 8th speaking of uplifting young women at mst dr kevin everly and staff put together a group of ninth graders who had potential at the beginning of the year who showed potential at the beginning of the year who fell off the grade and they worked with them and got them back up and running and it was about five or six young ladies their parents came and it was great to see that this was done by

132using data and how they work this formula to pull these young ladies up so that they're back on track now and i want to give them a shout out for that and it's really important that we think about focusing in and using that data to drive decisions we had a meeting on april the 7th with the big five who sponsored a meeting with uh sed facilities we had not had a meeting as a district since it was a very good meeting president petrucci as well as uh finance chair paulette woods was there on on the eighth i attended new york state school board association diversity equity and inclusion committee and the topic was about racial inequities and it was a very good pro uh lecture excuse me program and i want to make sure that

133i share that with our staff superintendent as soon as possible on april the 9th and i'm saying this because this particular group the butler mitchell has an annual event they honored two of our coaches who worked at uh mst for years they were coaches that uh that were that helped that were part of the village that made sure my young men my sons made it through coach nano and kept coach neisel and the reason i'm bringing up butler mitchell is because this organization every year sends a hundred children to camp outside of the city of buffalo at least 100 so some parents are out there wondering what they can do for their children to give them a better experience they can reach out to the butler mitchell over on the west side and let's see

134i think um other than some of the things that have already been mentioned today however i spent time with the inner high student uh council they are looking forward to meeting with you superintendent on the 11th they have a date my suggestion to them was to put together their concerns and to possibly see if you would also entertain several members of their schools with them so that would allow them to show their leadership abilities and bring some of their students with them or whatever fellow students and show their leadership ability uh unfortunately our uh our student board representative is not here this weekend on saturday part of our annual hamlin park taxpayers association our neighborhood cleanup is happening on the corner of ferry and walters we start at ten o'clock we go to two o'clock

135we also have a community school at 74 that day so we're going to be visiting that and we're up and running uh this is campaign season and we're campaigning campaign season and we're going to be campaigning uh this year for those of us who are seeking to retain our seats so thank you um i hope i didn't take too much time thank you miss cartman uh i have a few things that i'll just touch upon because uh our audience is dwindling and the evenings meet a little bit later uh yeah it's it's a very busy time of year for all of us i do want to kind of build upon that the meeting that we had with sed was was great it was the first one we had in a while it helped to address

136some of the spatial concerns that we have as a district as we look to grow our high schools and our high school offerings so i i thought it was invaluable i did have the opportunity to attend one of the saturday academies i went to the one in my neighborhood at southside where they honored arab history month which was which was my first time for an average history month celebration i also attended the uh the event at the saint john baptist where they mentioned about investment in the community through buffalo's black billion but also about how they could partner with us and help to move the district before there seems to be this general spirit of people wanting to move together to move the district forward i um last saturday i met with the buffalo equity

137uh committee uh just to update them as to where the board is with respect to all the various things that we're doing with equity uh within the city of buffalo and um i would paraphrase i thought the meeting went well but i think they i don't think that they had a full width and breadth of all the efforts that have the district has made we still have a little bit more to go but i think we've we've laid the groundwork i did go to the superintendent's listing tour again at south side not that i don't have other schools in my district but south side does have the best parking but it was very well attended and i know that uh the superintendent and her staff were very cordial and answered a lot of questions which

138everyone greatly appreciated i attended the say this operating committee and i'll just give a little teaser that uh they're going to come and make a presentation but it's one of the things i know that we've worked on for a long time but it's going to be about three-year-old and three old programs because i know that's one thing that so many of our parents and families have asked for in the district i did go to the press conference yesterday so you know interim superintendent and uh the board president or former board president cotman was there and it was good for us to be able to first of all to engage in kind of a healthy and robust dialogue but also to present our opinion and it's and it was nice to see how we could work

139together to resolve an issue and to address and answer many of the concerns that were out in the community so i thought it was a good event um and i believe that the last thing i had to do oh yes i just want to mention briefly about the um i did i was able to attend for for only a brief time but a group that i do try to meet with when i can the farm to table committee and just to listen about what i'm doing to change our menus and some of the concerns they had long term about our commissary and what's going to happen with that mr president can we give kudos in a shout out to our staff members that attended that press conference yesterday uh yvette gordon and senior kenneth cease

140and if you have not seen it or if you want to see it please go to i think betty jean grant's facebook page has the best coverage those women were a dynamic duel and they do they deserve to be a cat [Applause] you know for activations to be made about this school district that we would be cavalier and not be doing the things that should be being done they really represent it and i want to give them a shout out and i hold each and every one of them because in addition to them this is the first time that a superintendent went into the community to address an issue and it made a difference so um without giving too much attention to this right uh a previous employee uh said that um we were not

141uh following proper protocols in regards to lead district and um they shut the house down i think that hopefully and moving forward the lesson learned is that come to the table and talk to us we will be happy to bring our staff we will be happy to answer your questions but they're really in my opinion was no need for a press conference and i think everybody here concluded at the end that uh you certainly don't want to bring gordon and cease back into the community okay thank you again sharon thank you for uh for um for bringing out into calling them out for their great efforts it also demonstrates that when we receive these things the degree of effort and severity and solemnity that we take when it takes to address these concerns when someone

142from the community brings it forward to us yes and was that evident from what they did how seriously they take those concerns so that was very good to see as well all right thank you very much that concludes the uh committee reports that being said now can i have a motion to accept the consent agenda so moved by mr terence heard second by miss jen macos let's see what we have for our exception list here stupid exception for 24c i notation [Music] oh thank you secretary petrucci um i just wanted to uh to know more about this before uh we approve it um i just i just seen i just looked into it and uh received a call from another board member about it and uh i just wanted to to know did we actually

143take a look into this document you know fully before we uh to go out to another group your plan oh 24c [Music] the four-year financial plan that's chapter two okay [Music] okay well there are other questions here so if you don't mind if i could bring it back up then so we can all address it yes okay thank you uh the next person i would have would be mr lawrence scott regarding i have it as the enumerations services 17k uh regarding lamar advertising for community scores thank you president patricia just it's a very quick question i noticed that this item is listed twice in two different spots um it appears as if the purpose is the same and the funding source is the same so i'm just wondering why there's a contract with this company

144for the billboards um two two contracts for the billboards when it appears to be the same i will verify that mr scott it should be one contract and can you just um elaborate for the public on what the purpose are the purpose of the billboards are the purpose of these billboards is 11 billboards throughout the city it's to help to promote our community schools and parent center programming i will say that for the past several years the billboards and the opinion of myself as well as our director of um strategic alignment and innovation um we feel that it's become a little stagnant a little still so we have uh met and we are discussing ways for revamping those billboards um so that we can utilize it to do exactly what we're all talking about to

145send and promote the positive message of the programming that we're doing and we're also going to utilize those billboards as a way of really recruiting and promoting more engagement in our community schools and parent centers thank you dr rollins i just wanted to clarify for the public that i saw something egregious in regards to what the purpose of these billboards were and i just wanted that clarified for the public i'm not even going to get into what it was because it doesn't deserve the attention thank you thank you don't turn that mic off mr scout next up is 23a 22 2023 buffalo city schools district calendar eight it's another quick question and probably quick answer and just some parents raised in regards to the superintendent's conference days i believe they're usually the week after state

146testing we have a half day and then we have a superintendent's conference day the next day and some parents inquired what's the purpose of those and how come they can't be uh aligned right at before or after a weekend just to talk about the purpose maybe ann i can talk about the before after the weekend i think we intentionally um because part of the purpose is exam grading and review and we intentionally avoid mondays or fridays as those tend to be lower attendance days for staff so we want to make we wanted to make sure that we held them in the middle of the week when you know we have uh higher percentages of staff that that are attending but i think you could talk more about the purpose of them yeah i would also

147say that we do have a certain window of time before those results are due to boces so we have to be careful that we have enough time to finish the corrections prior to the day they're due so we're mindful about where we situate that day on the calendar so the early release day we use to train teachers to score the next day so for example we just finished the english assessment and then so on the early release day teachers were trained to score the assessment some of them had to finish that it went a little bit into the window of the next morning they take the cas which is the state's mini practice to make sure that they're ready and then they can begin scoring on the superintendent conference day so we do that for

148both the english assessment and the math assessment for three to eight the other teachers who are not part of scoring participate in superintendent conference day professional development so we do a mix of normally live but lately a lot more of the virtual live and the self-paced courses that we offer so for example our pre-k staff our k-2 staff our high school staff and on alternating days our seven and eight you know english or math teachers they will participate in professional development geared to support them either directly from their content area or part of particular initiatives the district offers so some of them might do clrt training while others are going to english training specific to their department it just varies thank you very helpful any other questions there mr scott that as well all right

149thank you very much unless we have 24c i know that this matter it's been mr pritchett miss woods myself i've had a variety of conversations about this today i see she was just discussing with our chief financial officer so that being said uh mr hurd you have the first question uh my questions are simple um just to see that we had enough time to go over the package for the four-year plan before we release it out to other um we went over some some of the budgetary issues um quite a few of our budgetary issues that you presented um this month and last month but there's some of the stuff that's in here i was just wondering you know where did it come from or or how can we um uh move forward because i

150i really don't think that that i personally didn't have a death dive into this document you know i don't know if i can put up a brief presentation i actually have a one slide document that will really show what is in here yes please mr crutcher i think that would help greatly and then i can kind of speak to it a little more detail but what the four-year financial plan is and i think there was some confusion this is not our budget so i don't want it to be confused with the budget that the board will get hopefully next week and you're all aware we've been doing it the same way for the last five years it's got all the details on the revenues expenditures and so forth and the entire back half of the

151document is each of the school-based budgets so we're working on that right now what this is it's a statutory requirement that we have with the control board to prepare a four-year plan and then we have to update it minimally once a year and that minimally once a year is due to the control board by the end of april and it has to go through the city because it's part of the cities we're actually you know it's part of the city's four-year financial plan so it seems a little illogical um that we have to do this before the budget and we've raised that issue many many times um with the control board but they have to follow the law um and essentially so do we um to to comply with it so we have the four-year

152plan the four-year plan um every every april um i bring a revision to the four-year plan so what we have in the four-year plan in the board packet now is a revision of last year's um and the you know if we can get that i don't know if we can get the slide presentation up but what we have in there i guess at a high level i can kind of talk you through some of the big changes so we start a four-year plan last year um because that was the that was essentially we had completed a four-year plan and we really started a whole new one last year um and now we've got some things that have happened and we have some updates to that plan um and what i have here again this is

153the only slide that i have um and what i'm showing in there you've got you've got some columns with numbers in there so we got last year's budget that was adopted by the budget last may in yellow and then you'll see a 21-22 projection so those that's like the current year that we're in right now so i have through the third quarter and i'm not quite done with the report but through the third quarter i have done projections and and and have numbers for that so that's one of the updates in the four-year plan i've actually i've taken what we had as part of the four-year plan and i've rolled it forward for what's happened this year this is not um anything that you probably wouldn't recognize we we had revenues uh of 943.5 million

154in the budget expenditures of 972.5 so we adopted a budget last year with a 29 million deficit um through the third quarter i'm projecting a budgetary surplus of about 6.3 million so we already know why this is we have staff vacancies we have the associated benefits and then we have um transportation costs transportation costs are down like 15 million something like that and and another 20 roughly with um with uh uh vacancies in staffing in the associated benefits so that you can see in at the top on the right hand side where you see that that yellow so revenues expenditures and then use of fund balance or surplus we actually are looking at a surplus below that 6.3 million my projected fund balance and that's just a total fund balance at the end of the

155year will rise a little bit to 319 million um a little further below that i got some more numbers so and i have boxes around them i've got state aid i've got a labor contract contingency and charter school tuition state aid i had budgeted 810.2 million my projection now is 795.8 this is no different than it was in january i gave a presentation actually in a report in january presentation in february we have lower uh than projected state aid because one transportation costs were lower last year other reimbursable expenses were lower um so it's it's down a bit um that still there are other revenues that are that are increasing labor contract contingency i'm going to get to that in a minute you'll see there's a big zero there nothing nothing in the budget there's

156nothing um in in the projection right now charter school tuition 142.8 million that's how much we're i'm projecting we're going to pay this year um it is higher than the budget the budget was 135.7 million the difference between the two westminster and enterprise those were we'd planned those to close they did not close um and we're projecting that they that they stay um you know that they stay open at least for the next two years so as far as the four-year plan four-year plan we all had last year so i one of the big inputs changes is all right what happened during the year so that's my projection so during the year from a fiscal perspective it's an improvement from the budget but on the downside why is it improved because we we weren't we

157didn't have the same number of bus drivers and bus routes and we had a lot of vacancies so you that shows up as a positive in the financial numbers that's not necessarily good for the district aside from increasing fund balance now what we have uh next that green column which is 2223 this is not again this is not our budget um you're going to get a detailed budget hopefully by the end of next week and then we'll have you know two to three committee meetings and another board meeting to to go over all that and we we hope that all of the you know all the things that we need to address through that are covered but what i have done is is taking existing four-year financial plan and state aid updates and so forth

158i've got uh revenues we'll be jumping up to 985.5 million expenditures in the general fund the budget you know again this is the four-year plan our budget will be very close to this um are gonna it's actually gonna exceed a billion for the first time from a budgetary basis um and 34.6 so we're recommending that we have a a that we fund a deficit through the use of fund balance of 34.6 million so in large part it's very similar to last year's budget um the the increase uh on expenditures is goes from 972.5 to um 1 billion in in 20 million and it's about 4.9 a little under 5 percent um revenues are going up by about 4.5 percent so the the the difference you know expenditures are rising a little faster than the revenues

159that's why that use of fund balance bumps up a little bit projected fund balance at the end of the year would go from 319 to 284.4 million so if we actually spend all that budget next year and again this isn't the budget but this is probably very close to what the budget will be if we do um we will have a projected fund balance at the end of the year it will decline from 319 to 284. now what are some of the big things that are in there really the big stuff that's in there is state aid state aid is going up 35.5 million and that's really the primary growth driver in in the budget so it's going to go to 843.7 million from the budget of 810 um but if you actually look at

160it it's it's we're projecting 843.7 million it's actually going up even a little higher than that because from the projection of this year but again that's what it is now below that you'll see this line called labor contract contingency this is in our general fund this is an estimate of the cost less savings of district proposals to various bargaining units i'm not going to get into really any of the details what they are you can kind of guess what some of them might be because you know where we have contracts that are that are currently out and we wanted to for up to a couple things one we wanted to recognize that there's costs that are not reflected in our budget right now for what we hope will be settled contracts in the not too

161distant future okay um and that amount there is is the amount that we're putting in asking to go into the contingency line so it's it's not being allocated to salaries or anything in particular contingency we settle the contract contracts at that cost and that would get allocated out to various um you know various other lines um that's not necessarily the timing of what you see there in in the amount those things will probably change but this again is just really a recognition because we get questions all the time from the control board from debt rating agencies they say well if you've got an outstanding contract are you budgeting for that well i would say yes we are in this particular plan we've not done that historically we never did because these contracts were outstanding for

162so long teachers in particular and administrators but we didn't even know what it would be then we settled them and we really got to the point where all of our contracts were essentially current but now we've now we're getting you know a year or two out on a couple of these contracts it's it's important for us to recognize that when we're doing our budgeting and that's why that line is in there that's a really big change for how we've done these four-year plans and i'm showing that and you can see zeros to the left 26.2 million in that green column that's what we're what we would most likely put in the budget that you will see next week and then that number is going to grow in the out years but i haven't got there

163yet um below that charter school tuition so the next big thing that's really changing in there is charter school tuition so we have a new charter school that's opening next year uh two that we thought were going to close last year are still open and then we've got seven other charter schools that are continuing to expand um we're going to have over the next four years we're going to have three full high schools of charter schools that we didn't have before so we have to keep that in mind and where does that impact us well it impacts us in the charter school tuition those students count as part of our foundation aid we get revenue for them but then we turn around and pass it over to the charter schools through tuition so 154.6 million

164um is what i have projected right now for next year in 2223 for charter school tuition if you compare that to last year's year ago's budget at 135.7 you're almost 20 million higher in one year in charter school tuition and that's because the rate's going up the special ed uh average cost is going up um and and there's more students so all those things combined together and grow that so that's in a nutshell um you know there is a six page document uh eight pages of an executive summary that really outlines all this but but if you if you take the fact that we've done these four year plans really forever um and last year we i think we had a really good one that actually showed us to be solvent but it didn't include

165the cost of potential contract settlements and it also didn't include quite as high a growth in charter schools and and that can certainly fluctuate now the columns to the right hand side you got three more years in there um 23 24 24 25 25 26 i've carried those expenditures forward and you can see i've i've got a 34.6 million dollar deficit in in in the plan for 2223's deficit 23.24 it actually drops down to 8.3 then it then it increases to 16.6 and 30.8 so we've got deficits in the plan projected every single year and again that's based on our but you know proposed future budgets which things change obviously you know every year each each year one of these future years becomes then the next year and it goes from being sort of a

166theoretical to to an actual budget but the four-year plan the intent of the four-year plan is to sort of lay that out now the labor contract contingency you'll see 26 million 25.6 34 or 45. so that that ramps up that kind of tells you there's a ramp up in in the cost in in the out years the uh state aid increases i project it will increase in 2324 when foundation 8 is fully phased in that'll be actually a pretty big increase because they're holding some back now and then whatever inflation or other uh increases are in there will hit us next year and then in the next two years um it this total state aid actually kind of flattens out a little bit some of that has to do with building aid so um one

167of the items in in the plan um as a tentative proposal not for this upcoming year but for two years out is that we've got to start thinking about how we're going to fund capital projects you can borrow or if you have funds in the general fund in a surplus you could use that basically pay yourself you know loan to the to the capital fund and then collect that money back at 98 percent over 15 years so those are a couple different options so we'll not this year because we we've got about 13.8 million in refinancing savings coming next year but the following year 2324 i do have a projection of a number in expenditures for a potential um capital transfer one way or another we're either going to borrow or we're going to or

168we're going to do some sort of a transfer to make sure that we can continue to maintain our buildings fix roofs windows doors all that stuff and that that goes well beyond what what you might think well we could maybe put some of that in the arp plan there may be some things that we propose go into arp if they're not aidable but a lot of the aidable type things you know we've got to make sure we can fund those things on a recurring basis so kind of a future discussion but that's that's part of this whole equation as well and you can see the charter school tuition that really ramps up um you know you're looking at 10 10 11 million dollars a year based on projections now who knows things things can change

169there may be a school that closed there might be new schools that get opened um they get approved but that those are really kind of the big the big things that are in in this plan um and again we we've got to get this plan this plan goes into the um into the the city's overall budget that has to be submitted to the control board um it's uh in large part a lot of it informs what you will see next week with the proposed budget from the superintendent because it's really going to mirror a lot of that um as best we know now there'll be some tweaks because numbers are always changing um and that's really you know i guess that's basically what the four-year plan is about so it gives you sort of an

170idea of where we are um i'm showing some of the big changes in here that labor contract contingency it's an important thing and again we've got it lined up in the general fund not not not the intent here is not to fund it through through arp it's it's if we if we're going to do these these contracts we've got to make sure that we can fund them in the general fund and and by doing that we would eat into fund balance um and and you can see the fund balance numbers projected fund balance each year kind of it drops a little bit based on the proposed um you know based on the proposed use of fund balance to to cover you know to to cover the the deficit um so that's kind of what it

171is um and you know this this it's again important it's it's a regulatory requirement that we have to do it helps inform our budget inform our planning this is why i you know i'm always bringing this up to people in terms of we got to be thinking out two to three four years because i'm going to have to present this probably you know we had to update the four-year plan in december so it's quite likely if we settle a contract we're probably going to have another version of this that will have that contract take it out of contingency put it into the actual expenditures um and you know we have to do that because we have to update debt rating agencies we've got a debt refinancing coming this is part of what you know part

172of some of the data that we have to share is what what do our numbers look like based on the best data that we have and the best data that we have right now is is this um and again it's it's it's using a methodology that was developed years ago and a plan that was that was sort of done anew last year at this time so we've updated it in december now we're updating it again here and that green column will largely be the basis of what you see next week with the detail budget yes mr hurt okay um just a couple quick questions i don't want to vote for too long um you said that um the aarp funds assert funds those will be those cannot be used towards the contract it's not necessarily

173wise to use short-term funding for contractual costs that are perpetual so if if we provide a raise in a contract that raise goes forever um if we use arp funding that's only for a short period of time so when that funding goes away what then how do we pay for that so we it really we we should be planning um our our our labor contract negotiations around a long-term view and around a view that takes into account what likely general fund revenues are going to be because we we don't you know there's not going to be another ar passer uh funding like that for another 20 30 years if ever um so so while you theoretically could fund some of it in there how would you pay for it when it expired maybe i read

174it wrong because my computer's down but i uh i believe on page 25 or 27 said that the contracts would be funded no that is that is uh totally uh incorrect now what you might have been looking at is in the in and i don't i can't show it up here but in in the document itself um and there's a contingency line and in that contingency i noted that there may be some things in our plan that have to come back to the general fund it's just the opposite of what you're talking about so if we fund something in the art plan uh let's talk about elt so we we've done elt in there two years from now that elt program is going to come back to the general fund that's what you were looking

175at so anything that you're thinking is is funding from it's not funding from arp arp is going to is going to bring to the general fund a whole bunch of expenditures when it expires um so so it's not going to bring revenues to us when when arp goes away everything in that plan in terms of an expenditure is either going to be funded somewhere else another grant or the general fund or it's going to have to go away so the line i think that that some folks were looking at is is not talking about bringing revenues in it's talking about how's the general fund going to cover those thank you uh things last question um or statement would be that uh in the next year to the modified sports program i've been looking about five

176to six capital projects on wood fields um would that include in there also or would that be something that we might address next week and this second part about it is our community groups uh funding that you know that can be used with the art funds but um but i didn't see that in there to incorporate right well um the you know the the four-year plan is really a general fund document i do have in the executive summary sort of a discussion of our passaire um there there are so we recognize you know there there are community contracts already that are in that were approved by the board for this fiscal year so those are going to go into there uh i think the expectation is that those will continue uh next year um and

177and so that's one thing there are um you know some of the things that we still have to work through sort of internally before we share it with the board are we we know that there's there's additional costs for field improvements you know you've got bennett you've got riverside um in johnny b wiley um so i you know there's there's there's costs that we will have to determine where can they go um and and those are some things that they're not answered at this point in in what you see here okay but i have them as open items um for that we need to discuss internally before we bring a proposal to the board because there's a lot of competing um spending requests thank you mr pritchett thank you mr president financial chairman thank you

178mr prichard uh when i took the time to review this document there were and i saw a significant increase to an over a million dollars budget i was hoping that you would do just what you just did explain the 20 million of this increase is charter schools and why because it was a significant significant increase and um with so many questions about the extra full funding of foundation aid and people expecting to see so many additional programs looking for the extended learning programs looking for us to remake education i thought it was very important that we point out yes this budget is greatly expanding we're receiving greatly increased revenues and what programs are going to be uh presented to the public so that they can see well wisely using them or getting their phones so

179this overview i greatly appreciated you answered quite a few questions and i greatly appreciate you going over these items with this board who is responsible for buffalo public schools before it is sent to the fiscal authority we have a requirement yes but we are the board we're first they're second so i appreciate you making the presentation and i look forward to may 4th when we will get the school-based budget the supplemental schedules the details and we can know what each of our schools have had and we can make recommendations and suggestions to the superintendent as to any other um problem areas that we may feel that she may need to look at but thank you thank you very much so not seeing any other questions um man imposed by mr kuzma for a roll call

180vote on the consent agenda how do you vote uh miss belden cotman dr evans mr herd uh miss j is absent i don't know if she's been excused yet just a reminder for the board uh miss mccosey how do you vote dr rivera no exceptions mr scott no exception miss woods and president petrucci [Music] consent agenda passes thank you thank you very much so with respect to unfinished business we have two items [Music] hope hope you're excused i hope you feel better uh last may i have a motion authorizing the district to fully settle case number eight one five zero three two slash twenty twenty and the amount of twelve thousand dollars so moved by paulette woods and a second by mr territory all those in favor signify by saying yay yay and he opposed

181the motion carries so that brings us to this thing called an adjournment uh do i have a motion to a jury i have a one motion oh yes mr unfinished business sure mr scott if i may thank you thank you president petrucci um and i make this motion also um seeking um the advice of legal counsel mr kuzma to ensure that this is something that we can move on and approve um but i'd like to motion um with a request for a 500 donation to the center for hope of western new york uh the center for hope of western new york is a non-profit organization with a mission to help survivors of abusive relationships to be resourced to leave and maintain maintain stability the organization offers legal advocacy financial advisement mental health supports as well

182as holistic healing services the organization was co-founded by board member hope jay who's not present tonight and our board member jim mccosy serves on the board for this new organization mr kuzma are you kidding me yeah thank you board members i mean we've had these situations from time to time i know the board you know commonly or you know occasionally does buy a table um you know for a fundraising benefit you know i think there's been some for the urban league there are other organizations that the board certainly has supported um the important thing you know to avoid the gift of public funds sort of issue is there's got to be an educational you know there's got to be a nexus between the mission of this board and the organization in which you're supporting some

183sort of educational benefit for example or support that the organization provides that directly benefits the board i don't know enough about this organization and its relationship with the buffalo public schools or what it does for the constituency that this board serves to adequately you know advise you at this point whether that nexus exists i don't know if somebody can provide a more detailed explanation perhaps as to why miss mccosey i would advise you not to um respectfully um because you are a board member of of the organization so that that's what i would be looking for is those details in order to to give the thumbs up or the thumbs down and from my legal viewpoint i can respond to that based on the information that's been shared from the organization as initiatives to work

184with high school and college students to recognize and contend with red flags of this type of relationship abuse one of the initiatives in particular is to develop a panel to go into the schools and then educate students on intimate violence and coercive control okay um [Music] their organization with their name their reputation i believe that's a conflict of interest that's the definition of the county point of view public funds i'm disappropriated when they are used to fund uh a board member's benefit a board member's position on the board organization especially when she has a direct interest in an imbalance in the organization financial or non-financial in an organization [Music] services [Music] um service are they buffalo school children um that have to be resourced to leave and maintain stability from their services [Music] yeah i'll

185just say respectfully um in regard to the conflict of interest i certainly understand that and i agree with you the board member in question who is a part of the organization is not here this evening and is not participating in the discussion the other board member that's a board member of the organization which i learned today i had a conversation with her and she's you know recused herself appropriately from it um you know there have been other examples as well and i don't mean to pick on i'm not going to use a name but there was a board member who brought you know a similar request to the board um for an organization that that she was a part of and the board certainly provided funding i think to buy a table at an event

186that board member similarly i think recused herself from you know a discussion in a vote so i'm not concerned about that per se but you know in terms of and there are a lot of organizations right that not not just internally but that third parties that provide a lot of wrap around support for our students and families the extent to which this organization is presently doing that or does that i can't answer that question i don't know and maybe we need to learn some more about that before the board considers it and perhaps you know i suggest maybe tabling this for a month so that we can learn some more about it i can get some more information and then we can revisit it at that point i speak okay so this board has never

187done anything like this and i've been here since 2011. there are other board members sitting here after problems as well okay but the bottom line is that if it did not directly involve a scholarship i don't remember at any time that's not doesn't sound to be accurate just referenced ask you for your uh to me it is offensive to even having this discussion at this point okay would be cited for the youth of public funds it's unacceptable it's just not done okay i'm affiliated with a noun for profit i would never think about bringing it up to this world it's just not done there's a conflict of interest it's not a harmless transaction let's get back so um yeah i just don't have sufficient detail into to to determine that nexus at this point okay

188let's let's leave it at that okay [Music] so what's that thank you very much um [Applause] [Music] on march 11 is a special education teacher at southside elementary april 4th arborist violet corduro caresses mother dr will crestus chief of administration public affairs and planning mother-in-law to debi cares is a support math teacher in hillary park school number 27. november 30th mark t only an adult education teacher april 10th junior father isaiah bulletprt teacher also father-in-law evening chief accountability information officer with pdps and we'd also like to [Music] yes [Music] thank you all very much yes