001welcome everyone we are fortunate to be 14 months into closet and we are still amongst the living will you please rise for the pledge of the flag for all thank you calling to order our monthly board meeting may 19 2020. dr cash yes i um am depending on you today to uh handle the board recognition card okay colleagues this first recognition my heart is heavy and yet is so grateful i want to read a letter that just came to me yesterday and dear dr cash please allow this letter to serve as official notice of resignation as chief of staff and district clerk for the buffalo public schools i truly appreciate the opportunities i have been afforded during my time of employment to say that i have learned so much that ultimately aided in securing a
002superintendent position with being under fate i am deeply grateful for the continuous learning that i experienced each and every day for the past eight years under your leadership dr cash and know that the buffalo public schools will continue to thrive under your continued direction although my last day of employment will be wednesday june 30 2021 i will forever be a part of the buffalo public schools educationally yours dr darren j brown hall colleagues i want us to rise and stand for the legendary for the incomparable for our irreplaceable dr darren brown hall believe me there is no other dr dan brown hall thank you thank you my friend my colleague we love you thank you thank you very much i appreciate dr cash um i was wondering if i could contact uh nate could chime
003in here and uh nate is there anything in the books that can stop this is there anything in history you're right right legally what can we do can we file a 78 what can we do right now no believe me president believe me president cottman if there is i'll find it yeah that was for tonight because this this you know this the time is coming near well he will have to go to his new school district we will have some buried celebrations uh in the weeks and days ahead you'll be notified and we can go and come together and do a more personal uh joining and send off for dr darren j brown hall so i just wanted to say that tonight in public because truly i i've been in this work a long time
004and and and darren is one of the one of the very best one of the very best thank you very much well we we are going to open it up at this time for our board members uh to have their say uh in regards to this if anyone would like to uh chime in here i think there's not uh hands up let's see who's first i i don't see any hands okay and dr ann revere and number one oh somebody else is number two let's see uh we will follow her by hope jay i'm sorry hope if i miss you hope jay will go after ann everybody's hands up yup i was quick on the mouse today so and i think i've said this before and i've said it to you personally dr brown hall
005uh and indeed to several of our community members for whom i said they are gaining an amazing person to work with our loss is their gain and while i i know that i personally will miss you and i know the district will miss you it is so wonderful to see your career continue and i'm grateful for the time that you did spend with us thank you so much for everything you've done thank you so much next board member hope jay darren emma i don't think anyone's ever really seen me get emotional at a in public at a board meeting but i feel like this is going to make me emotional you're making me emotional yeah you are a consummate professional you are uh i don't think anyone's ever really seen me get emotional we celebrate
006you darren um everything that you bring to the table it's irreplaceable i just want you to know that and i think that um williamsville is so incredibly fortunate to have you at the helm you are going to be a fabulous leader you have vision you have integrity you have uh compassion you you have every quality that it takes for somebody to to lead a district and to um inspire people to you know to you lead by example darren um i i you know i've i've worked with a lot of people in my life and and you you're just one of the best people i've ever met so much miss jake i'm really going to miss you and i'm going to stop now before i cry okay thank you my goodness next we have board member
007jen makuzi so everything hope and anne said all of that but man it's your time it is your time i'm going to get emotional i don't care you have been there way before bored anything you've always had my back unless you change your phone number man you ain't getting rid of me and we um i look forward to like the celebrations to come but i'm so excited for you i am so excited for you because that district needs i'm sorry i'm gonna say it out loud that district needs some realness that you're going to bring to the table and i am so excited that change is going to come thank you i appreciate it ms mccosy thank you awesome awesome next uh board member paulette wood you paulette we can't hear you you're muted okay
008now can you hear talk okay so what you you might have to log off and come back in miss woods because you're not the log off and come back in okay try one more time yeah okay all right uh we're gonna move forward uh sorry about that uh we'll come back to you uh board number one uh mr uh board member terrence hurst brown hall um first of all i'd like to say congratulations for a position that's well deserved thank you and i'll and i can call you dr uh superintendent dr brown hall congratulations superintendent and uh i always knew that some this type of success was going to land to you uh you earned it it wasn't something that was given to you and working in this district with all the different personalities you
009you really really showed you know your wealth your knowledge and and all the time you know since she was a teacher and assuming the super superintendent position to me you still was a teacher because you taught me a lot i called you all the time actually questions and and i know that you will continue that wealth over at the williamsville school district also i like to call you historian also because you're the first african-american um to um be a superintendent for a school district outside the city of buffalo so congratulations on that thank you good thank you i i really am very proud of of your works and i know that your works can propel still to the buffalo public school district i know that connection now is gonna be a bond that we're gonna
010be able to work with for for many many years to come and and this is not a promotion to you because you already have the skill set for a superintendent and um i just like to congratulate you and your family um your son and um continue on with the good work and like what jennifer said about your phone number don't change it or send us a new one because we still gonna be looking on to you for her questions thank you absolutely thank you mr hurd i appreciate it did uh board member woods get back on not yet okay next i'll move on to uh larry scott darren dr brown hall um yeah this is this is tough this is tough um you know there's something about you where you have this ability to work
011with everybody i think you have this ability to work with the entire board and as well as us individually and you know we can be tough we have challenging personalities somehow you are able to work with us be our quarterback and do it effectively even in the the face of adversity um you know thoughtful compassionate and resourceful i don't think i know another person that is as dedicated and hardworking as you um being able to reach you late at night on the weekends and you being so responsive quickly uh in your responses to us so just so grateful for everything you've done williamsville is certainly you're going to serve them well and you are certainly irreplaceable here in buffalo and one thing i want to know before you do leave is if we have to
012continue these remote meetings any further who is going to be the one the gatekeeper of having people mute their phones not speaking we'll figure that out thank you darren thank you for everything congratulations i appreciate it thank you mr scott board member uh paulette woods are you are you are you able to speak now you're muted at this point board member woods you are muted at this point board member wood are you able to speak okay you're unmuted i don't hear anything and we can hear you paulette she can't hear us i need mike lucci to reach out to her on her phone please mr lucci's reaching out to her right now thank you i appreciate that all right moving forward moving on we have dr kathy evans brown next dr darren hall brown hall
013um you're leaving a position that i don't know how big these feet your i don't know how many people um dr cash is going to need to fill your role here that's first of all and williamsville i believe they know they're getting the best that's why you were picked um you're you know like i echo everything everybody said you're professional you're efficient you could tell somebody off and they don't even know they were told i would be like oh you know that's how good he is i've seen them in motion tell folks off and they oh did he just tell me off but he told the truth with wow so you're going to be missed um like everybody else has have said uh we're still friends and hopefully you don't lose our numbers not at
014all thank you thank you very much okay so my recommendation for uh for um paulette woods is that she calls in and um uses her uh phone as i'm using uh sometimes we have that problem next would be mr lou pachucci bye thank you thank you president calvin you know darren it's tough to come at this stage because all the well-deserved accolades and compliments um but it's bittersweet darren it's so bittersweet because as much we want to see you go on to the next level and you are going to exceed uh you know what's sad for us because you have been that uh that that glue that keeps us all together the person that keeps moving us all forward the person that has that very unique skill where you can uh tell somebody off but
015do it so politely that they thank you darren and that is a very rare quality to have but we are all we are all going to miss you i know dr cashwell i know that all of your co-workers will and i know the board will as well you've done such great service to everyone in this district uh your legacy will will stand uh behind you uh but but go on to your next opportunity but just don't forget about us but thank you darren thank you for everything we're really going to miss you thank you mr fukupi i appreciate it board member wood any luck yet we want to make sure if for whatever reason we cannot get her on at this session we will make sure that we do are you calling in now paulette
016so what i'm going to do while while she while she's calling in is i'm going to say that i've had the pleasure to work with darren as uh in many capacities um one of which was an interim superintendent and um human resource uh yeah that's a just you know darren has uh is just a phenomenal person and of course i received some phone calls from williamsville asking me about you trying to get the 4-1-1 on you darren so let me tell you what i told them make no mistake darren is the real deal don't get confused okay and don't take his kindness as a sign of weakness okay he is the real deal and guess what each one of them said we are so happy to hear that okay so you have earned your rights
017of passage as a matter of fact if we were playing monopoly you probably get two million dollars instead of two hundred dollars for pets to pass and go and it says god still loves you you're not he's not uh after leaving buffalo he's not sending you straight to heaven so maybe he uh gave you williamsville and instead because after working with the board and dr cass don't get that picture right mixed up please either you do deserve to go to heaven for real because you kept yourself together but anyway we love you karen um uh paul it looks like paul let's play that person all right we can hear you we can hear you click in the bottom right hand corner oh don't mute whatever you do don't mute whatever you do but damn even
018your even your um people who are involved in conrad who've worked with you over the years everyone is happy for you and um to williamsville get it straight and keep it straight darren is not lost he is not being let go he is leaving on his own and we love him and we want them back and if he decides to come home because you're not treating him right we have a place for him in buffalo public school district as long as i'm in this district and i'm sure all the board members agree with that thank you so much darren for your excellence and that's what it equals the real deal and your excellence uh i think it's the god in you that shines and i don't think people understand that you are a very religious
019person and uh they they also don't know that you can sing and play the piano and do all the other stuff either there you got a lot of talent out there now don't get it confused but i think it's the god in you that shines out and i think that we're very blessed to have had you and we and one of the things you might consider doing once you get things on um established here it's it's thinking about doing something with suburbia and the inner city uh student you know right uh we're preparing yeah we're preparing our students and each other yeah that's you know that we should think about uh starting to collaborate and um letting our our world become smaller uh board member woods before we move on are you there she was
020for a minute okay so we're gonna come we're gonna let her say her her her her piece uh later on darren before you before you escape no problem okay all right do you want to say anything i do i want to say that you know everything i've been in buffalo public schools for 18 years and it truly has shaped me to be the professional i am today um you know i started i was a little boy on the east side of buffalo went to school 54 went to west harlem academy went to hutch tech i did all my college um collegiate work here in buffalo my doctorate at ub and you know the bible says despise not the day of small beginnings right so i always reflect and that has all contributed to the person
021i am today and working in central office for the last 10 years the last six years of chief of staff working so closely with the board has truly shaped me to be the professional i am working under dr cash as superintendent mr ogilvy as superintendent i've learned so much and it has all led me to this point in my career so i want to appreciate everything that you all have poured into me all the challenges you gave me because it helped to shape me and just watching dr cash in action has shown me what i can take to another district and actually use that to propel another district and build on their greatness and all the board members that i've had the pleasure of working with i know that i'll take that knowledge and that
022skill also to work with the board i'll be working with in williamsville so i want to thank you all for giving me such a phenomenal experience here in buffalo and i have you know a little more than 30 more days left and there's a lot of work to do in that time but again i want to thank you for everything that you've poured into me and i truly appreciate you all so thank you very much you got your hand you got the hands full now because i heard nobody wants to fill those shoes 10 10 pair well listen colleagues we have two uh maybe three other brief but important recognitions uh that i'd like to make uh at this time first dr morell our associate superintendent for the office of culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives
023has the division and thereby the buffalo public schools has received a 1619 project pulitzer education center grant to develop new 1619 educational resources as part of their inaugural national educator network this is the pulitzer center college it's a big deal nicole hannah jones who was the original 1619 project creator and a new york times journalist who donated her bps speaking money she came to the urban education forum is our guest speaker this year and she donated uh five thousand dollars to each of the parent organizations at the following two schools harvey austin school number 97 mst preparatory school 197. so she donated 5 000 to harvey austin and 5 000 to mst parent organizations we certainly congratulate those two schools and communities and we thank nicole hannah jones for her generosity colleagues that's a big
024deal as well all right and then last but not least we thank our own dr tanja williams who applies for a my brother's keeper family and community engagement grant to the state and the state has just sent me a letter that says that we will be awarded a hundred and twenty five thousand dollar grant annually uh over the next few years to support and work that alters the trajectory of our males of color by strategically and deliberately enhancing and reorganizing the district's approach to better leverage families caregivers school-based community partners and the local and national community in the work of preparing our males of color for college career and life so that's a big grant so it's a great work that fits well within our overall program of work and what the board stresses around
025equity and developing all of our young people so congratulations dr tanja williams and buffalo public schools for this uh exciting grant there it is miss continent back to you cass you just you know you you took us down and you brought us back up okay we we're a little low there for a minute we're talking about darren leaving but after you uh announce a real part of the political pride family and uh we have additional grants uh coming to our district for my brother's keeper i think uh we're on a roll again now back to board member woods i don't want to get too far out of that did we lose her again when it rains it pours okay i'm sorry about that okay so moving forward um uh we're going to do our speakers
026at this point we have quite a lot of speakers okay so i am going to be stringent about the three minute guideline today board members for your committee report we are also going to say within three minutes i received so many compliments from staff and from our listening audience about keeping that our uh committee reports uh to three minutes uh so we have to move forward with that everyone was pleased with that uh that commented on it in regards to our speakers at this time the board welcomed speakers who have signed up to speak at tonight's meeting please be reminded that 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 viewers include
027persons from throughout western new york including children this board asked that speakers conduct them points 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 answer to address excuse me the buffalo board of education about issues that serve the public interest and district missions and the bourne answers to speakers demonstrate appropriate decorum thank you for joining us our first speaker today is sheryl jones cheryl jones are you on the line yes ma'am i am welcome you hear me yes ma'am okay so uh the reason why i wanted to be a part is so that i can um mention how you know i hope that westminster's third does not close and what i want to say
028is my son has been attending with minister community charter for two years and which my son and i are very well pleased it has always been a top priority with me since my son has been attending the early years i'm sorry it has always been a top priority cheryl one moment please please mute your phone everyone we will give you additional time thank you go ahead um okay it has always been a top priority with me since my son has been attending his early years of daycare to the present time to take time to ask how his day is and what i noticed is that he had more pleasant days while attending westminster versus any other school or daycare he attended the school has an overall feeling of acceptance and pride and teaches their students
029how to have confidence in themselves and respect for one another and i believe this is why we have more pleasant dates while he was attending westminster versus anywhere else when you close an available charter school it takes away the possible alternative choices for parents in the neighborhood people want to have a variety of options to choose from when it concerns their children's education and what that particular child is in need of and the structure of a charter school with its relationship with the parent as well as the curriculum would be lost once minister also takes a special interest not only in the child but the family as a whole offering a variety of classes and resources for improvement in life for the entire family through the past program this program alone has helped parents receive
030over 400 thousand in their adjusted gross income by helping parents save a hundred thousand increditory tax filing fees and it has also helped families by providing necessary resources for first-time home buyers securing the cost of their first home the program provides financial coaching to families improving their financial health and security in which over 75 percent of all participants quality of life has been improved the program provides assistance with job placement by helping to create or editing existing resumes for parents who need it for better job opportunities for future career paths which in return helps increase and improve the leadership capacity of parents the closing of westminster will be more than a loss to another charter school but it will also be losing a valuable staple in our community that will both hurt its existing students
031as well as families who have benefited from its existence and that's all i wanted to say thank you uh mrs jones we appreciate your uh comments in regards to westminster if you are on uh once the uh toward the end of this uh our speakers list the superintendent will address uh your comments okay okay i will thank you thank you thank you we appreciate that next dinera carrasco parent and everyone yes see if i just pronounce your name thank you janita carrasco thank you oh danita okay okay thank you yes uh please you have the floor thank you miss sharon i'm also a parent from westminster westminster is home to over 550 students and has been a crucial part of this community and hundreds of families and their lives it is well known that it
032takes a village to raise a child what westminster is our village our home and a safe place for our kids they represent unity friendships accomplishments and community they have been helping families from this community for years hand-in-hand with m t bank and the buffalo promise neighborhood they have created a safe environment for our children and their families where teachers become second moms and dads aunties and uncles and trustworthy adults not only for the students but also for us parents having an open door and transparency policy where we are welcome to be part of the education and decisions regarding our children's development both physical and emotional westminster has always prioritized improving the quality of life of this community and the stability of their families which will directly impact children's lives every year we have students graduating
033from westminster with full academic scholarships to amazing private high schools such as nardin buffalo academy of sacred hearts canisius high school the park high school and san jose collegiate institute to name a few they are also exposed to advanced programs such as stem buffalo prep step and many other programs and resources that help enhance their academics and skills westminster has been part of my family for over 11 years my son graduated last year with a full scholarship and is currently attending san jose my daughter is currently in seventh grade with and has been a student since kindergarten with amazing grace and outstanding support system my youngest is in second grade she calls her teachers mommy on a regular basis giving me an idea of the loving and safe environment and which is learning making the
034decision to close our school on march 31st four days after the deadline for schools for charter schools enrollment it is not only unfair but unacceptable when you vote to close a charter school you are also taking parents of illiterate shoes westminster reopened on september 1st 2020 in person learning as an option for parents where buffalo public schools did not reopen or had a concrete system in place until mid-february 2021 but your decision was based on low performance and outdated tests and faulty information in a year where testing was suspended not even given the opportunity for the school to show the progress and improvement of their students since then ironically just back in february 5th 2021 member of this board mr larry scott tweeted and i quote as a public school educator and public school parent
035i've never seen anything from three to eight state math and ela tests that tells the strengths and needs of students just arbitrary numbers to josh and demonize our teachers know far more without them and i quote also ironic how our superintendent mr cash mentioned and discussed how he believes with the issue been his expertise that the entire process for the state test assessments needs to be examined that kids schools and school systems are being judged by this test but they have truly little to do with what makes for a good school good teaching and good learning how ironic that several members of this board agree with his statement that day after voting to close westminster for those same test scores that they do not believe are fair please make it make sense thank you for
036your time for your comments duly noted next parent is albert edwards parent westminster community charter school mr edwards are you there going once twice mr edwards are you there three times moving forward kai mckee parent closer of westminster and switching it to bps is kai mckee there here okay all right um next parents demetria haslam parents west minister community charter school so i'm here can you hear me okay yes we can hear you you have the floor thank you for calling okay thanks no problem thank you i have been a part of westminster community charter school family since 2013 when my oldest daughter transferred from build academy in the middle of her third grade year to due to the school's low performance wccs not only challenged her but also made her reach beyond her potential
037to excel in excellence she was accepted into two private high schools saint mary's in nerd and two magnet schools all center city honors and bps 304 hutch tech she currently attends olmsted and to be honest i regret not incurring a financial burden by not sending her to one of these private schools i've witnessed videos of the learning environments kids shooting dice teachers with their feet on the desk kids throwing things and i believe that in fact it has reversed some of her wonderful lessons that westminster has instilled in her these very lessons made me enroll my youngest child in kindergarten once my youngest found out from the media that her school was closed she grew angry and asked me why my school she heard that there was a petition to try to save the school
038she not only signed it herself she sent it to our family and her school age friends requesting and at times demanding them to sign as a parent it is hard to watch your child fight to keep a school she has grown to love open when she should be trying to concentrate on learning by doing this you are creating additional unnecessary stress on families as if the pandemic wasn't stressful enough to decide to close the school without actually considering the actual facts the students the parents of the community is very close-minded board member sharon dalton cotman said if buffalo public schools had these numbers they would be put on correction planned or shut down was wccs put on a corrective plan were there in any notice given amid the pandemic that their school was slated to
039be closed this very same board member said she received several emails from individuals talking about how great westminster is and how warm and fuzzy it makes them feel and then went on to call it a missionary approach implying that wccs teachers are only creating happy environments and making people feel good but nothing beyond that this is wrong and demeaning and clearly defies the data in 2019 uh school year 2018-19 school year wccs had 22 proficiency in ela which was an improvement from the previous year in that same very year bps 53 had 13 bps 91 was at nine and bps 31 was at eight all five below westminster and these schools still remain open to this day contradicting the board statement that these students would these schools would be closed and made front news in
040total westminster has outperformed 24 buffalo public schools and math and 2 and 23 and ela that year during this pandemic westminster students have shown increased percentage point grade in both math and ela from september to march and almost every grade level was this data ignored we absolutely understand that this is about proficiency but as parents educators community members we also understand that in order to gain proficiency from our students we must close the gap in opportunity and achievement research support that what we all know already and may have from experience the kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities are not afforded the same opportunity academically because they face barriers that their wealthier peers do not was ministers have worked tirelessly to counteract these factors by establishing a happy school environment but focusing on entire students academically
041socially and emotionally thank you thank you very much for your comment next parent uh harriet black westminster community charter school um good evening um everyone my name is harriet black i am here on behalf of my granddaughter diane raising my grandfather started westminster charter school at age five for kindergarten this school has shown so much support my grand and my granddaughter's learning life this wonderful they are wonderful teachers there fire and go far and beyond the duty the call of duty i'm so thankful um for the teachers they are so determined for each student to achieve their goals and they also communicate very well with the parents i mean it had been so many times that i spoke to teachers and being a grandmother raising a grandchild at this time of my age the time
042that they take with me and helping her with the school system from far beyond from where my children were were um they're all grown up now and i'm very thankful for the school and the time that they take with my granddaughter when we had the pandemic i mean everything in the world was going crazy um homeschooling was a challenging for me with my granddaughter and what i really loved about the teachers they went far beyond the call of duty i would facetime them talk to them on the phone um anytime my granddaughter had issues with learning it was after hours and they would even face time to help her put her in the right direction and i'm so thankful for that my granddaughter was so excited about finishing the school year there she's going to
043eighth grade this coming fall and she was excited about doing that she loved her school she's excited about her school and this really hurts her and for me i was at work and i'm looking at tv and i see the shocking news that westminster community charter was closing with absolutely no warning to me or other parents um i feel that my granddaughter um i really feel that she's being thrown away and not being in consideration um i just um at least should have gave me the chance to proper prepare to look for other quality schools elsewhere i didn't even get that um you don't realize how hurt this is for for parents and people in the community hearing this news um these children live in this community they play in this community and they learn
044together at west munich community charter school please reconsider your decision i thank you for your time thank you very much uh harriet black i just wanted to uh just double check that albert edwards come down for kai mckee siva come on all right moving forward um i do expect that we will have comments uh in regards to the uh westminster uh charter school uh situation uh by our superintendent um and any board member who would like to comment uh at the end of this uh agenda in regards to our speakers eric clapper ex-director of tapestry athletic facilities is mr clapper here eric clapper all right moving on brian rayburn teacher or uber maybe i'm saying it wrong brian ruber teacher instrumental music funding and food number 93 both wrong most not many people get it
045right can you hear me rover yeah good evening and thank you to the board for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this evening on behalf of my students my name is brian rover and i'm currently an instrumental music teacher at southside elementary this year will conclude my 13th year teaching in the district and my sixth year of teaching instrumental music at southside when i first came to southside there was no organized music program just a handful of students taking lessons from the previous teacher who was a 0.5 as we call them in the district half the time at south side the rest of the time somewhere else the principal at the time arlene jazenowski saw the potential value of having a full-time band program in her building and increased the 0.5 full-time my
046students in grade 4 through 6 are able to have music with me quite a cycle and a rehearsal period my seventh and eighth graders are able to have a lesson and a rehearsal every week i still to this day consider myself to be lucky to landed in this position my first year getting to know the students and the building i had about 50 students enrolled in our band program the next year it grew i will not take credit for the growth my students showed the rest of the building how awesome we were i've gone from having one band to having to split into two groups in a normal school year we have about 130 students participating in our instrumental music program in grades four through eight every wednesday i come in early and move all
047my chairs music stands drums amps and whatever else to the other frame stage so we can rehearse basically i move all of my classroom furniture down the hallway and back once a week it takes an hour before rehearsal to set it up and an hour after to put it away in a normal year it's a daily occurrence to have younger students look in my door and smile and wonder what we're up to i invite them in and they watch for a minute those same students walking by are the ones asking me when they'll be able to join the band when i see them in the hallway we play holiday concerts and pack the auditorium we play at the nfta terminal with santa hats on and walk to the vfw and made a play for a
048memorial day observance we go to darien lake to play music and ride roller coasters because we worked hard and practiced all year we eat pizza in the hallway after our concerts just to celebrate the practice the performance and to be with our friends we make lasting memories it's sad when they leave but my eighth grade students always seem to go to better high schools i like to think that music makes them reach a little farther they tend to do the extra work that wasn't required much like the seasons change music teachers in buffalo always know when budget time comes i was informed at our site based management team meeting that my position would be trimmed to 0.5 because there was 80 000 less to work with this year that makes no sense to a fourth
049grader that is a death sentence for our groups at south side the work that we are doing now is simply not possible in half the time a 0.5 instrumental music position in a building with roughly 1 000 students is not enough our students have been away from school for so long to take this away from them upon their hopeful return next year angers me they've worked so hard we make people happy we make better students why should our principals have to make that decision with a building-based budget why do they have to decide what's more important for their students a librarian or a music teacher if you need an example of how great a music program can be in one of our schools look no further but please restore it those kids have worked so
050hard to build something i'm asking it to explore the instrumental program at south side back to full time thank you thank you very much next tiffany whitfield teacher of the music department at school95 hello hi uh so i teach band also and i've been in the school district for 23 years and i'm currently currently at waterfront 95 i've been there 13 years i want to tell you it's so important to our students that we just continue to fund these music ensembles in buffalo they are our kids lifeline to creative outlets it's the it's how they calm themselves it's therapy it's how we bring people together in the community and we need to bring these people back together again soon our sense of teamwork must return for these students the bands and the orchestras in the
051ensembles have to continue it it's the reasons children love school mew means mother and sick means science so music is the mother of all sciences all develop societies know that learning to play a musical instrument creates a challenge that accelerates our brain's development and the sharing in the teamwork is essential to personal growth at waterfront we have a band next year funding was restored but it was cut down to 0.16 why is it always cut each year and why do we have to ask for the program to be restored why is the instrumental music offered at some schools and if the principal or the site based management team doesn't doesn't or they don't have the money for it or they need it somewhere else and we can't offer it to our students every year and
052do you know any suburb schools have you ever heard of a suburb school that didn't offer instrumental music no so where is the equity there why aren't our students offered the same quality education why is it not in our budget there is a lawsuit currently ins and it's still in process between the district and music teachers who are pointing out that seven high schools are not offering any music it's against state guidelines part 100 regulations for required seat time is that all high schools offer both art and music classes the distance response is we do offer music go to buffalo academy for the performing arts but what if you're a kid who's at one of the high schools that doesn't offer music riverside emerson emerson annex bennett da vinci mckinley virtual pathways research bio high
053school they all don't have any music classes at all ultimately the responsibility for staffing and funding lies with the board of education the community is calling for a well-rounded education for people and we need their whole selves educated music is the key to unlocking the child's growth teachers and students and everyone who plays a musical instrument understands this please continue to fund the existing programs instead of cut them bring the light back to these schools that have no music thank you very much very much edward spidell parent unified sports um thank you for allowing me to speak first i'd like to congratulate darren brown dr brown on his promotion to williamsville um you'll be daily miss [Music] second i'd like to tell everybody to make sure you tune in for the parent summit tomorrow um
054many parents students and teachers will be getting awards um that's the positive the negative um i i had to have many discussions with many people regarding having unified sports played for our children and um i want to thank board president sharon cotman for all her help i want to thank the teachers the coaches the students the parents who showed up for our rally um i have a concern that i got two phone calls in the last couple days um basically trying to get me to forget about talking on the call today um the first phone call was like well it's all taken care of you don't really need to be here today's call was could you find it in your heart to give credit to the superintendent for unified sports and i'm here to tell
055you that the superintendent is not why there's unified sports to unified sports because the the board and the parents and the students collaborated on doing the right thing for the students parents should be heard and respected the same with students when we watch our children we should get it we shouldn't have to beg for it we we talk about being uh equitable and giving everybody the same opportunities but with unified sports we tried we tried to take the neediest kids and tell them they weren't work they weren't worth anything and they couldn't play but we allowed general pop to play um i'm just i'm alarmed with that anybody who would like to talk to me regarding this matter you may call me on my cell phone at 578-3219 because we need we need to make
056sure things like this don't ever happen again thank you thank you mr uh fidel we appreciate your comment sam raffert we the parents mr radford are you there once twice mr radford third three times next we have miguel lucian bowling student who reopening at school number 64. hi it's miguel hi hey yeah good evening superintendent board members and board president my name is mila boland and i am nine years old i go to third and i am in third grade i go to fredericton who said 64. all i want for my birthday is to reopen i would like to go back to school very much because because it is very hard to learn at home than at school if we do not go back to school immediately we will not get a good education i
057miss being with my teachers and friends full time two days a week is simply not enough we need all five days my parents tell me the biggest reason why buffalo public school is not is not reopened right now is because of the transportation issue due to the ransomware hack well for starters i would have found any way to get to school i've been psycho my dad can drive me i can walk or even crawl that is because i want to go to return to school so much my education is very important to me because when i grow up i want to be an astrophysicist and study black holes or meet a scientist and study viruses or be a doctor and help set patients i cannot do the activities like science experience because i am not
058in school full-time thank you very much for listening to me speak please consider opening schools right now since september last year we have spent 104 days doing remote learning in just only 16 days in person imagine this 16 days is equivalent to 3 weeks and 104 days is equivalent to 28 weeks you have spent 90 percent of the school year at home third graders in other districts and private schools have been in person since september this is really unbearable and just not fair my mom is taught is very tired of supervising me at home it is not my fault that i have to be at home and the superintendent of buffalo public schools please let everybody know if you reopen fully right now or in the fall thank you again [Music] thank you young man
059thank you we appreciate your comments julia robert city honors alumni julia roberts mckillah hall student vps swim michaela did i say it wrong michaela you said me oh okay all right thanks okay hello my name is michaela hall i am currently a junior at olmstead i'm here again to talk about the bps girls combined swim and dive team thank you back in january for emailing us announcing we can keep our team unfortunately my team and i were saddened to find out the athletic department is choosing to reverse the decision now i just don't understand why after receiving the email back in january my team and i worked on recruiting process and fundraising just to find out this news can you please reverse the athletic department's decision i don't want to see the team and accomplishments
060created in the span of five years in the athletic department's plan to have all 12 of the current bps swim teams represent the buffalo league and have city honors and olmsted stand alone it's detrimental one the facilities are not equitable two as a district it reduces our ability to be competitive throughout section 6 girl swim and die program and three having students athletes lost enough already one we lost our ability to compete in two we lost the ability to engage and interact with our peers at school and three now we're losing our combined swim program once again i asked can you please reverse the athletic department's decision to dismantle the bps girls combined swim and dive team thank you concerned citizen johnny b wiley sports pavilion usage hello can you hear me yes we can
061wonderful my name is cedric holloway recently retired 33-year veteran detective sergeant and swat commander of the buffalo police department i'm the executive director of the omega mentoring program has been in existence since 1999 and is currently housed at johnny v walia metro athletic sports pavilion i'm also the chair of genevieve on the board most importantly i am the son of johnny b wally a legendary community activist for youth i want to commend the board of education the outstanding nationally recognized work has been committed to equity i too am concerned about equity and the opportunity for inner city youth as a law enforcement officer i witnessed what happened to misguided youth and decided to dedicate my life as a mentor with other committed individuals we volunteer our time developing programs to prevent high-risk youth from entering
062the prison pipeline on one of the high leverage activities we use to keep kids engaged is youth sports for years as part of our lease agreement the chinese walleye executive board had access to johnny b wiley stadium and we worked with bps officials and select little league clubs to schedule time to play on the field unlike other locations that offer youth sports we've never had an issue with our young people coaches or parents in fact after the tragic incident when a little league coach was murdered bps school officials and buffalo police elected to house little league football here at jbw until things settled down dr cash board of education members i'm sure you do not know i've spoken with various vps officials about usage on the field and have been denied access it's hard to
063watch private schools suburban schools and other entities play on the field located at jefferson and dodge when kids from ellicott mastin ferry districts and entities like project plate are prohibited yesterday i was encouraged i got a phone call from dr christie's he promised to have a meeting with me that will address all the issues regarding the inequities the members of the jbw board appreciate the efforts of the district to support amateur athletic sports and recreation for the neediest students in buffalo i thank you for your time thank you and thank you for your advocacy uh jeff capela concerned citizen public policy analyst current curriculum with jeff capella online can you hear me chap yes we can hear you now thank you all right good afternoon my name is jeffrey damien capela i'm a disabled veteran
064of ground zero has been married to a person of color for over 26 years by trading a public policy analyst formally training among other things national security strategic intelligence counterterrorism counterintelligence and political warfare i want to thank the buffalo school board for extending the opportunity to engage with them this afternoon my comments today are predicated by a conversation i have with a fellow veteran distraught after his daughter expressed self-loathing in response to the inclusion of rhetoric common to black lives matter indeed the context of the concerns shared by my fellow veteran brings to mind some of my professional training during the soviet year of the cold war stalin was quoted as saying quote education is a weapon whose effects are determined whose hand at rest and whom it's pointed keep in the context of stalin's
065statement in mind the dangers of politicized education is tragically evident in the effort to include black lives matter rhetoric in the buffalo school curriculum in my professional observation black lives matter is a radical left-wing terrorist organization that preys upon people of color and regularly espouses the use of violence to obtain its political goals examples of the radical violent nature of black lives matter includes but is not limited to black lives matter being sponsored by thousand currents which has on its board of directors pro soviet terrorists elisa rosenberg convicted for bombing capitol hill in the 1980s the role three self-emitted trained marxists played in the founding of an early development of black lives matter the organizational ties between black lives matter co-founder opal tolmetti and the violent maduro regime currently occupying venezuela black lives matter support
066foreign espousal of the world view of convicted pro-soviet terrorist assad as a court racist statement by the founder of the toronto chapter of black lives matter uracil kocali which suggests white people are subhuman public statements made by the black lives matter new york chapter leader hawk newsom quote we will burn the system down if u.s won't give us what we want black lives matter subsidiary organization assad's daughters predation on vulnerable women young with women of color with the goal of indoctrinating them in liberation theology thankfully a wealth of healthier alternative organizations whose focus centers on resolving the disconnect between the black community and law enforcement uh agencies as well as the broader historical challenges facing people of color exist such organizations include the manning johnson society the national organization black law enforcement executives it is
067my sincere hope bringing the above information to the attention of the buffalo school board will further inform their efforts to include challenges facing people of color in a manner that does not harm or disenchantize other members of the student body nor alienate the community at large for the benefit of the school board to provide further context to my statements i ask that my supporting material be included in the record and minutes of this meeting finally let me close by saying thank you again to the buffalo school board for hearing my concerns jeff capela next parent is jacqueline hall bps combined swim team good evening yes can you hear me yes we can thank you thank you good evening distinguished board members and superintendent dr cash thank you for taking the time to hear my thoughts
068on the athletic department's plan to dismantle and eliminate the bps girls combined varsity swimming and diving program as you may remember many of our student athletes parents and stakeholders presented our concerns back in november of 2020 which led to a community meeting and ultimately written correspondence dated january 11 from the assistant superintendent of physical education health education and athletics stating the district will not be making any changes for the upcoming school year the district will continue to evaluate all bps athletic programs to ensure equity compliance and fairness when we receive this communication the girls were overcome with joy and immediately organized themselves to start planning and goal setting for the 2021-2022 school year however that enthusiasm came to a screeching halt when we receive an email from the temporary athletic director stating that there will
069no longer be a combined team your student athletes and our daughters were devastated that all the time and energy they put into formally articulating and presenting to the buffalo board of education and receiving confirmation that the combined team would continue only to be informed that the promises made were broken in trying to understand why the dismantling and elimination of the combined swim team was so abrupt i went i went against the january current finance i had a conversation with the temporary athletic director who indicated that the new plans for the girls swim program was a done deal and that the board had signed off on it and i should get on board to support the new program unfortunately i am unable to do that as the bps girls combined swimming and diving program is not
070just near and dear to my daughter's heart but to all swimmers and divers throughout the buffalo public school and it is worth a further discussion and fact finding to determine the value of such a team given there are multiple inequities throughout each of the district swimming locations how will bps have a competitive swimming and diving program in each of the facilities lastly i would like to humbly request that the board of education and superintendent please consider the following one continue building capacity within the current bps girls varsity combined swimming and diving program structure two ensure that when the athletic department submits the section 6 combined sports application for the 2021-2022 school year that it includes the bps girls varsity combined swimming and diving program three assisting with additional collaboration between the athletic department student athletes
071parents and stakeholders to support the 2021-2022 bps girls varsity combined swimming and diving program for timeliness of swimmer recruitment swim camp etc again thank you for your time and consideration regarding this matter your hard work and dedication to the students of the buffalo public school district is appreciated and does not go unnoticed thank you eric hall lorico cluster parent dps combined swim team oh hello hello can you hear me yes we can okay okay hello my name is lorika clauser and i would like to thank the board for allowing me the opportunity to speak again tonight i am here today to express how my trust in the buffalo public school athletic department has ceased to exist as a parent i have the understanding that no changing changes were going to be made to the girls
072combined swim team this coming 2021 and 2022 season this was based on an email forwarded to me on january 11 2021 that originally was sent by the assistant superintendent of physical education this was fantastic news unfortunately that was short-lived as i was shocked and disappointed when an email originating from the temporary director of athletics was forwarded to me may 10 2021 and another on may 11 stating and i quote city honors and olmstead will be stand-alone teams they will no longer be combined this was very disappointing and confusing news since olmsted and city honors never had their own combined team in an attempt to get clarification i contacted the temporary director of athletics during our conversation i was conf i was accused of being disrespectful and only caring about my children swimming better that accusation
073was very offensive and so far from the truth because i questioned the credibility and pointed out the dishonesty of the board of athletics i was being disrespectful no that makes me a concerned and passionate parent i want every female athlete who has the passion for swimming and diving who wants to swim and dive to their highest potential to have the ability to do so now more than ever our community should be pushing for women empowerment that is what these young ladies are doing for their team and the city of buffalo they along with their families are fighting for what they and other female athletes deserve equity for all female swimmers and divers to practice and compete on a strong team in the best pool in the district the athletic department is willing to sacrifice this
074well-established high-performing team so they can click the restart button instead of working to get the other girls to the standards of the combined team the athletic department expects the girls currently on the combined team to go down to a level that is far below their ability doing this will be a failure not only to the current combined team swimmers but for all girls starting in seventh grade looking for the opportunity to swim at the same high level there is no olmstead city honors team there is only the bps combined team which is for every single female athlete in the buffalo school district i asked the board to make the athletic department keep their word to these young ladies and leave the combined swim team as is thank you very much okay we're on a roll
075we have the koster family here i believe cameron concerned citizen number 195 alumni dps combined swim team cameron are you there yes we do all right hello my name is cameron klauser i'm an alumni of city honor school class of 2018 i slam on the city honors modified swim team and varsity swim team serving as a captain my junior and senior year i am here in support of keeping the dps girls combined swim team i myself have disadvantages of swimming on a stand-alone team in the buffalo school district due to the size and weakness of our team we were limited to where we were able to swim and who we swim again even though i did well throughout my high school swim career i was forced to attend second rules and class tournaments alone with
076the exception of a few relays was very discouraging sitting and watching other teams come with a group of boys while it was just me and my coach my sisters performers and divers are blessed to have the combined team i've watched a computer some of the best schools in new york i've traveled to places like rooseburg and rochester's to cheer them on they surprised the olden teens with their outstanding performances i can only imagine what it was what it would have been like had i been given the same opportunity as these girls i believe the bps boy swim team could have been better and accomplished great things had we been combined i've witnessed the growth in the girls combined team since its con conception and i can only see them growing stronger from here but that
077would not happen if the team is disbanded i'm asking that the board give every female swimmer who wants to swim and dive the opportunity that i did not have by keeping the team combined let them stay strong thank you good much cameron next we have karen klaus foot pauser i'm sorry it's karen karen okay thank you hello my name is corinne clauser i am 18 years old and just finished my freshman year at suny fredonia as a former female athlete who has competed under olmsted stand-alone team as well as the bps girls combined team i can say that the disbanding of the bps girls combined team would be a huge injustice being a part of the bps combined team from their start i was concerned how well girls from different schools would compete together but
078i can truthfully say that we were more than a team we were a family never have i seen more encouragement in sportsmanship than i had under the girls combined team girls were giving advice to girls who weren't from their school and built friendships outside of the team that would not happen had they not swam together under the combined team under the bps combined team many girls have been successful at sectionals class tournaments and have even gone as far as breaking bps pool records these opportunities would not be possible if those girls could not compete together these girls have proven to be strong competitors together so why take that away thank you for your time and consideration and i hope you make the right decision next carrington closer closer i'm sorry i'm getting worse huh closer
079it should be cristiana before carrington oh i'm sorry christina hello can you hear me yes christina my apologies go ahead all right hello my name is kristiana klauser and i am a junior at frederick law olmsted 156 and i am here again to vouch for the protection of the high school girls bps swim team following my last time speaking here my team and i were under the impression of the bps team with dave we gave our reasons as to why we deserve this team and it is extremely disappointing that it wasn't enough to convince the athletic department as an ap student this school year has been one of the most stressful years in my school career and when an outlet that i use to escape the stress is being threatened i begin to lose hope
080and trust in our athletic department as well as our board of education i understand that times have been and still are complicated considering the circumstances of this pandemic but we've had students and parents take out the time take the time out of their days to stand with the bps as the sam with bps as a family and we will not stop until our appreciation and dedication for this team is recognized and rewarded with our original bps team girls from any buffalo public school swimming together in one pool united as one team i see no valid reason to disband and or alter the team in any way shape or form we were given the team to encourage female swimmers to participate in a combined team but we've grown astronomically since then and as soon as we
081go the farthest we've ever we have ever gone we are expected to just start over that isn't fair to the present and future female swimmers that want the best chance in competition with the best resources coming from someone that has looked forward to the bps swim season each year i'll be very disappointed if nothing comes from this but i would just like to thank the board of education again for giving me time to speak and just hope that this time it has a greater impact thank you thank you very much christiana now carrington are you there hear me yes we can hear you okay hello my name is carrington klauser i'm 12 years old and currently in seventh grade at olmsted 156 i've been swimming competitively since i was seven years old including swimming at
082olmsted's modified swim team for fifth and sixth grade it was very sad when coveted forced us to have school virtually this year because i wasn't able to join the bps girls combined swim team i watched both my sisters compete on the combined team and i was excited to follow in their footsteps i was excited to compete alongside girls from other schools in buffalo school district who share the same passion for swimming as i do with the chance to qualify for sectionals and the class tournaments as the team has done in prior years now the team is in jeopardy if the combined team is disbanded i will be forced to swim at homestead in an unsafe 20-yard pool which isn't the correct pooling for competition and has wooden blocks that can fall and injure me if
083someone forgets to stand on the back of the block while i dive because olmstead 156 has a middle school i will have the opportunity to try out for the swim team regardless but the combined team is that if the combined team is disbanded what will happen to all the other girls who want to swim but go to a school like discovery all girls in 7th and 8th grade should have the same opportunity we should all be able to swim on a team that has access to the best pool in the district we should be able to swim on a team that can compete against suburban varsity teams girls who want to dive should we have the ability to do so not have the ability taken away from them we should be able to represent both
084our schools and our school district of buffalo with pride please don't let the athletic department take that away from us thank you for your time thank you the closer family i appreciate uh the board appreciate your comments next is mike riley parent school reopening mr riley are you there mr riley mike riley won twice three times moving forward taylor shepherd student bps girls come by hi taylor you have the floor hi there hi because i've been a competitive swimmer since i was five years old i was so excited to have the chance to join the bps combined swim and dive team in the 7th grade the team gives us a chance to make new friends and swim with other girls in the district we were all so proud to represent the buffalo public schools even
085as a 7th grader last year i could tell that the other teams took us by surprise i'm always so excited when i get to pair up with my friends in a relay and represent buffalo public schools as we work together to get an amazing time we're better and stronger together as we work our best and represent the buffalo public schools in an amazing way even though our practices are tough sometimes we swim even more than 6 000 yards in one practice alone which is not easy for even the most competitive swimmers i can't imagine having to do those practices in a pool other than the district pool this practice and amazing facility helps us push harder and get our best time i hope you will consider this team together for a long time we would
086all love to grow the team and would like to help bring new swimmers and it seems like all the girls in the district get a chance to swim in the way that fits them best and i have friends that like to swim in the winter because they can't practice in other sports like volleyball and soccer in the fall i'm confused by some boys like boys teams like football and lacrosse are allowed to play combined with other combined with other teams and have a chance to do this do the support they love and make new friends while the girls must face many obstacles and have to fight for their right to even have a combined team in the first place as a young female athlete i will not stop fighting until we have a combined team
087where we can all compete to do what we love finally i'd like to invite all of you to a combined girls swim meet next year i know you would be proud of us thank you for your time thank you uh taylor appreciate that i might riley were you able to get your mic unlike if you are on your phone you might hit star six that may help mike riley okay we're going to come back to you again uh we're moving forward james will hide parent curriculum can you hear me yes sir did i yes so i'm here i'm actually embarrassed to be going through this channel to get a hold and get your attention i did get response from a few of the board members i reached out in regards to a negative incident that
088happened with my daughter i'm not i don't even want to discuss what she did physically but then she was having multiple nightmares after viewing um with emancipation curriculum videos and the school handled it very well but they put me to the board to get the answers that i'm looking for and no one can give me even any logical and i'm talking to you dr criner cash i hope you hopefully you will please call me um who has chosen this curriculum on what level was it uh um evaluated for age-appropriateness my daughter's four years old and she was having nightmares i don't want to discuss the details of it but i would like to just in public i'm embarrassed that i'm calling to have this honestly they had to get someone's attention thank you paulette will
089you spend a long time speaking to me and you gave me the courage to come here and talk and in the meantime in the last two months i've been waiting for a call back i've spoken to many other people in the public teachers and there there is concerns out there but no one has a platform where they feel they can actually come forth and discuss some of the concerns and i think most of it is it comes down to age appropriateness in regards to what a child can handle there's also other social which you guys call some social emotional issues here in regards to whether a child can help us oh yeah thanks chris dr chrono cash looking away um but i i do expect a phone call from someone i'll summon with that but
090um it's pretty alarming that i need to come to this level the school said hey we don't put the curriculum in place i need to come to the board i've reached out to the board just so you know i documented it it was with lisa keynes who i believe actually set this uh conference up and then cassandra would not give me her last name so i made two phone calls back then i reached out this week i did get some because i was out and again actually uh i apologize if i say dr morello's name wrong but she called me and said the reason why she's calling me is because i was on the docket but i've been trying to get a hold of someone and have had no response and i would appreciate someone
091to call and talk in private in regards to this matter thank you and i respect that's all i have to say thank you for your comment um mike riley we're going are you there success yet nice hear me yes we can hear you thank you hi okay thank you okay thanks uh yeah i'm calling tonight i have a six-year-old kindergarten student at olmsted and i'm speaking tonight for myself and my wife and our comment respectfully to the board and superintendent is that we feel it's time to move full speed ahead with reopening the schools this fall school needs to reopen september 8th for five days a week in person learning with the option for remote learning for those who choose to keep their kids home this is the plan already announced in proceeding in rochester
092city schools there's no reason buffalo can't or shouldn't do the same and i refer everyone on the call to the rochester school district website and letter from rochester superintendent dated april 14th over a month ago and now i'd like to read from that letter beginning september 8th 2021 rochester city school district will return to school five days a week for in-person learning following the three foot of social distancing restrictions all students grades pre-k through 12 will receive direct instruction from their teachers five days a week as wednesdays will no longer be asynchronous we will offer a 100 percent remote learning option to accommodate families who don't feel comfortable sending their children back to school in person the superintendent letter in rochester goes on to create a deadline of may 7th over two weeks ago for
093families who choose the remote option um to enroll and if the district hadn't heard by may 7th then uh all children in rochester public schools are automatically enrolled as in-person students we participated in the reopening committee online meeting monday facilitated by dr brown hall in that meeting we heard that there's an issue basically that we can't plan or we can't state or what the plan is for september 8th because the state might still change the rules uh this is just unacceptable remote learning must be a backup contingency preparation for five day in person needs to begin now so that september 8th reopening is an overwhelming success parents especially of younger children like ourselves are growing extremely concerned that bps has not made a commitment to five-day in-person learning in the fall we're now over a
094month behind rochester city schools and planning for september a3 opening which is only three months and three weeks away from now it's time for bps the board and the superintendent to make its plans for september 8th known to parents now we can continue to raise our kids through the internet kids deserve a real education with teachers in the classroom no concurrent learning and less technology they deserve a return to normal life playing with their friends at school and in terms of safety visit any playground in buffalo parents are far ahead of where the state and schools have been and parents know best it's time to reopen thank you thank you mr riley next our final speaker is sean crowley teacher use of money to open western new york day treatment thank you hi thank you
095yeah hi thanks for calling me dr cash the board members uh most board members have heard from me the ones i could reach and i tried many times i think hope jay's probably got me blocked by now i've been calling um when this when our school west new york day treatment it's it's like a miracle working place and um when you describe it people say buffalo has that it sounds like something from finland um the services these kids have kids with mental health issues schizophrenics kids who cut themselves bulimics bipolar and you know everything the whole gamut and please raise your hand if nobody in your family's had a mental health crisis me either um we've all been there just last summer i was there and um you know uh the my parents are done
096with me the swimming the swimming uh advocacy here for this swim team good lord if if you could organize that i i would hate to be on the wrong end of those people but the energy there and the advocacy and i was it was suggested to me by almost every board member come to the meeting speak up for your program at day treatment and get some parents my parents quit taking my calls back in about december i bumped into one mom um christmas shopping and she was just defeated she pulled her kid out of school and was home it's going up she works at amazon she's like yeah me homeschooling right she goes but what am i supposed to do we took kids kids all the kids who fall between the cracks of every high
097school in buffalo the kids who hide in bathrooms the kids who sneak out of school the kids who come to school hi um in short you know the phrase i used to look at these kids and say that's the phrase there it is right there the least of our brothers and um there they are and we would take them in and you would see this change they had therapists they had two psychiatric nurses they had psychiatrists they had a rec room they had a safe secure place to just put themselves back together and i i've seen it happen i have these kids that i've i've known from 13 years ago who sent me pictures on instagram hey mr cry look at me i just got my cosmetology thing look at my new tattoo and i'm
098like this was a girl who used to lay on the floor under a table and say please don't bother me until i can get myself together i knew this was gonna happen this is why i want to do this she used to come to school and sweatpants because her meds made her put on so much weight she couldn't wear anything um her mom was white and didn't know what to do with her hair and she just lay on the floor and now um she's got friends she's got a friend who's a hairdresser she's put her back together um she looks great she's in great shape she's a little tattoo nut but you know so what um i see these kids come through our program and i see them thrive they don't just get up off
099the floor and put clothes on they thrive and for this program to be closed i mean every board member i talked to said yeah this was a mistake man we stopped but there's no money there is just no money and i said yeah i get it i'm not out for blood um i just want these kids to have a chance you know the chance that they had and the last parents i talked to it was ugly they were like yeah she's in a room i don't know what she's doing um the one message me when we had a zoom meeting during the schoology thing we did and she said yeah i started cutting again and i was like bless it you know we can do better um this is the board we wanted you guys
100are it we got rid of the millionaires in the charter school advocates and all the people who just had some other thing in mind but our kids you guys are the ones we wanted um i've spent the last week watching my brothers and sisters in palestine being just beaten to death treated like you know the least of our brothers and i feel like my kids right now from day treatment are in the same position they just took a beating and who's gonna stand up for him who's gonna go into the money thing and say hey the government just gave us all this money why don't we why don't we reopen day treatment um i'm sorry for emotionalism um it's been a long time coming i've been kind of stewing on this and i was told
101make sure dr cash hears this because he will he will advocate for you so thank you thank you we appreciate your advocacy uh julie knope thank you so that concludes our portion of our comment from our speakers dr cashy uh do you have a response to any of our secrets opinions uh mike would you care thank you dr cast your music okay back to the faces so some colleagues there's quite a bit of conversation tonight um i'll break it down in a couple of groupings my pleasure to respond first of all the westminster community charter school [Applause] on advisement of general counsel should not say i should not say much about this pending legal action there so i won't and i would recommend you do the same uh colleagues but what i will say is
102that we have had a number of meetings that we've offered with our westminster charter school community and our enterprise charter school community and these meetings we had another one last night and these meetings are very very sparsely attended and i asked where any of the parents that spoke this evening at the meeting last night and the answer was no they were not and these meetings are important west charter westminster community charter school community because they're designed to give you accurate information about what is going to happen next with the westminster charter school because what i heard tonight was mostly misinformation and inaccurate information so i would recommend that you attend these meetings that the school system has set up with top-notch staff my best people are at these meetings to give you accurate information so
103i'm not going to say much more than that the school is not closing there will be many many of the programs that we feel are value add for students that will be continued but come to the meetings that we hold so that we can have a smooth transition and so that you can get your answers and your questions and concerns addressed we want to do that we're here to do that on the issue of music to spokespeople certainly music is very important they on the surface the point makes a lot of sense but what we've got to do colleagues is there's two parts to the equation you've got to grow interest you've got to grow commitment just like parents on the swim for that particular sport for those particular kids grow the interest you support
104it and we will supply it guaranteed guarantee when things get cut from your school or reduced from your school it's because the the principal or the team has made a decision that if that the interest has waned we'll i'll never cut a program so that it's inequitable we want equity i would love to have an instrumental program every school all across the district let's grow the interest let's have it then you come to us and you show us the data you will get the program all right that's a commitment but this this these decisions are made based on data and it does take a two-pronged effort that's what the bargain is all about the student and the parents have a part in this gotta do the work you gotta show us got to be motivated
105no shortcut and then the district will provide the program you can get a great education in buffalo public even though there's still much much more work to do but you got to come to school you got to put in the work and no shortcuts you do your part as a student and as a parent and we're going to provide and continue to provide greater access equity quality and opportunity we're committed to it we have evidence that we've done a lot in that realm so far but we got more to do work with us as a partnership it's a partnership ed spidel great always a pleasure you said it and i don't have a lot of comments to it other than uh we'll continue to see if we can grow that program and i'd like to
106see you be a part of the committee as we look at it it's been a challenging year and there is plenty of commendation to go around uh even though certainly i didn't ask uh for you to do that uh let's see sam radford i don't believe stroke tonight uh the young student from 64. um again what was the issue five days a week darren do you remember me yeah we you're reaching out to parents now to pre-k too uh in particular to try to get uh all these pre-k to two students back five five days a week um but there are significant challenges uh with transportation and and stuff the way it is and even today i just heard from the asl's that the pre-k the two not because of transportation but because of footprints
107they're concerned now about even getting back pre-cated too they said doc we need to come we need a meeting with you as soon as possible so i'm gonna be meeting with them tomorrow but i do thank you for your comments young fellow you were very articulate and certainly we are looking forward to having a full and robust uh school year next year uh to the to the group of swim uh folks uh let me just say this the more i hear about it i just i don't get it more and more uh so what i want to do because it's an equity issue for me it really is and i don't get the equity argument that you're making you seem to be talking about a bps team and i don't think you can speak to
108a bps team uh because we don't have a bps team right now and i got to talk to you about that so what i want to do is a bps combined team whatever i want to have an in-person meeting with you in person i'm off i got my flu shot both up and it's been a couple of weeks couple of months so clouds are family and whatever suppose you get your flu shot and we'll go meet somewhere and we're going to sit down and hash this out because i have some information for you and i want to hear you clearly about this this this combined bps team where girls from all over the city can come and play on one team really i'm not i'm not sure about that because that's 150 170 girls gonna
109be on one team how they all gonna get to swim equitably uh in that so i wanna talk to you we're gonna sit down and then what how we going to get them all to one school what's the transportation and the logistics and the after school schedules and all of that that has to be figured out in order to have everybody come to one team i want to talk to you about it i'm going to keep an open mind but believe me whatever energy you bring i'ma bring some energy too and i'm going to be there with my team and my staff and we're going to be respectful and we're going to get to whatever we can so we can figure this out in the best interest of all of the students that's my commitment
110we're going to set that up before this school year is out before this school year is out so dr brown uh figure that out with our athletic team and let's get me somewhere somewhere safe that we can spread out and talk okay all right um mike riley school reopening this fall absolutely mike thank you for that uh come on come on uh letter from the superintendent in rochester uh if you could send that to me i'm just gonna cut and paste it and put my name right there because we certainly uh intend to do just that that's what we intend to do i've never said different uh but there are a few more planning pieces that have to come together before i can say it definitively uh to everyone but we fully intend to be
111back in school all students all staff hopefully having a safe normal school year next year and uh it's going to be better than ever it's going to be our best school year ever with these additional resources with the programs we plan the initiatives that we're going to bring the equity overlay the access quality and opportunity everyone can be excited about what we have planned for next school year so let me rest assured that god willing we all intend to be back uh next year but what i am going to say is that we need to get our students vaccinated there's too many students that still are not vaccinated even though the opportunity is there now for 12 years of age and beyond and we have a lot of our families mr raleigh that live in
112three generational households we have a lot of students in the last several weeks that they're the main ones that are testing positive and we have to bring that number down there's still a zip code in buffalo and i hope this will be much better rounding into the summer and into next year but we just got a report yesterday from dr crow our medical director that said while overall the numbers are coming down buffalo zip codes are still over that 100 per 100 000 threshold that was yesterday so we still have to be cognizant of that and safety concerns are still at the front of mine but next year our commitment is to get everybody back and have a good strong normal year we'll be communicating accordingly over the next several weeks all right james rhodes
113you know certainly you were on the phone with the right person dr fatima morrell she called you uh she spoke to me and she said it was you know some kind of cartoon video about hank aaron uh that that was upsetting you and your daughter uh i'd like to know what it is so we'll reach out again and and try to understand what it is that's causing you trauma all right then we have sean crowley who spoke about a day treatment which the way he was describing it sounds like a terrific idea it really does but what i would like to see is some let's have a further conversation um and get in partnership with some of the things that we have going for example we do have mental health clinics and 56 of our
114sites and can we make those stronger can we have even more services that get provided out of those centers so i'd like to hear more about your idea i think mental health is a huge issue treatment for a variety of issues is a huge issue in our community and i know this board and all of us are concerned about those things that are affecting our students our families as we continue to try to educate so yes uh we will follow up with you through dr tanja williams our associate superintendent for student support services thank you for your comments so board members that would be how i would respond and uh again since we had a late breaking uh news story this afternoon as the board meeting had begun um i would i would let general
115counsel advise you regarding anything to do with these uh these charter school issues those are my comments thank you thank you dr cash uh i i before uh we move forward i want to make sure uh uh that paulette woods uh gets her opportunity to talk to uh dr darren brown hall if she is able to uh paulette are you able to speak to dying because you know darren uh can you hear me yes we can dr hall brown um what can i say you've been there after five o'clock you've been there during the summer you've been there i've i've called and didn't know what to do and you've always had an answer i don't know what we're gonna do without you but i have to say i'm gonna miss you and i'm just proud
116of you i'm so this i know we just was getting the best uh i guess the lawyer didn't come up with any way to keep you so i guess i'm just gonna have to wish you well but i'm gonna miss you thank you for all all of you support you've given me i really appreciate you thank you very much miss woods thank you very much well we wanted to make sure that paulette got hers in there too because uh uh we appreciate uh the work that you did there moving forward uh oh one other surprise one other accolade we have the board members uh mike lucci has a brand new baby um and uh he's a first-time parent so if you guys want to uh give mike a shout out uh via your emails or
117whatever and uh share some of that wisdom that you got i'll look at the guys in the uh board room they're reaching over to them and uh right about now i'm wondering if he's had a good night's sleep in a while but congratulations like congratulations yeah okay moving forward um i needed um a motion to accept our a minute from our previous meeting from may the 5th and may the 12th um yes i'm sorry did you respectfully ask the speakers uh who completed speaking uh that they should leave the um screen at this time yeah see that's one of darren's functions i have to add that in darren i have to remember that moving forward because you're not going to be here to tell me that me and so that's why he wanted to pick
118it up and make sure he reminded you so he passed on to me now sharon to our uh speakers thank you so much for your uh comments uh uh please sign off at this point so that we can continue to conduct our business thank you sorry about that board uh we have a couple of people that are still on thank you okay um my glue to you may need to exercise your privilege okay thank you actions on previous meeting let's see may the 5th and may the 12th i need a motion to accept our previous um minutes from those two meetings i see paul edwards may i have uh a move second uh lou petrucci all in favor but everyone's in favor anyone opposed so move thank you moving forward we are going to uh
119do our committee reports three minutes each um keeping in mind that these meetings are recorded and um i probably got more calls on this than anything or more emails on this than anything of late so do we have anyone who wants to volunteer or do you just want me to call you out all right i'll call you out how about if we stop uh we're going to save paulette wood for last because she's going to update on the budget uh mr petrucci vice president do you have anything to say thank you president a couple different things one thing i wanted to uh give some recognition to the south park sparks for their class a section ship championship of ghost sparks they have a great football program there i want to make sure we recognize them
120uh before that we did have the um uh we did uh part of um executive affairs was also we had given some time to dr rivera to make a presentation as well um i wanted to say that i i did um i just want to bring some people up to speed with the educational committee uh the buffalo common council had their final educational committee this uh this week until september uh some of the things that they were concerned about the same topics that we've seen but uh segregation gifted education the district and charter school sustainability uh district academies for withdrawn students the auto tech program how we can successfully open schools mid covid and there were some requests from some speakers to address the common council education committee as well these the committee meeting and
121summaries available on the city of buffalo website but i just kind of wanted to bring it to everyone's attention i also want to let people know that that i reached out to the comptroller's office and we've been going back and forth so hopefully we'll have an financial ad hoc committee meeting sometime in the very near future and that concludes my report president cottman so much uh vice president petrucci next we will have uh mr terrence hurst educational support to your educational support yes thank you on president belton common um this past week on on wednesday may 12th 2021 our educational support committee was held and we talked about three different topics and um it was a very very robust presentation and the first topic was presented by uh our legal counsel nate kuzma and he
122gave the sports update for the um section six and with that sports update um we talked about the swim program and one in pacific um just generally basing the the the email that went out and and the future of the swim program so uh for those who came on and spoke tonight i know the closure family and and others that you know i had many many conversations with that um that the district is looking into the swim program and that was the presentation by our general counsel and that um and that um you know whatever the consistence of what dr cassia today of what program is going on that he's going to take a deeper dive into it and and let's look for a very very portable and equitable outcome um with the sports update
123also talked about the the future for sports and and scheduling so um and secondly we talked about the nurses appreciation week uh mrs um uh cala uh came in um did something about someone sees which is very important and um with the nurses appreciation week we talked to uh she gave out and worked with um department here with the buffalo public schools and gave out flowers to all our nurses and us in the city of buffalo for nurses appreciation week was very very nice um i believe we had over 70 nurses that received flowers and it was gifted from the administrative staff members and dr cash and uh we just want to know that um that we appreciate our nurses you know they sacrifice a lot you know to work with our students and they
124are very well trained and what to look out for especially with the copic signs and they they put their life you know on the line every single day so they are our first responders that we honor you uh the third thing we talked about was mental health we had a mental health presentation by dr jojo williams and um also uh charlene watson uh spoke um she's the principal over at burghardt high school and she has a great program about mental health with a weight program and um she has and she got a very very very good presentation on mental health and things that they do prepare um using the where grant the samsa grant and um also who spoke along with her was dr laura for cara and um and this is um arlene adams
125uh she's her role as a training staff of mental health uh we talked about suicide prevention and also um what is mr hope we asked that question and our children being labeled as bad and we talk about you know children who have maybe have um some disorders going on and and getting suspended but it might be due to mental health and some of the things that we look on the diving deeper you know at as a district and get understanding what the needs are of our families our our students and also andrea sanders supervisor and she talked about a suicide intervention that was one program that was not that's very much needed for these found out more recently that a large number of our students had thought about contemplating suicide and that's statewide and countrywide
126so uh what can we do to you know reassure these students to have self-wealth and um and and different things so uh we'd like to go deeper into that next next month going on educational support committee meeting and also look more into our domestic violence also so uh thank you for your time and um there's great presentations and everybody missed it please uh rewind you know go back to our district webpage and look at it again it's a lot of useful information that the district can help you with number heard next um dr kathy evan brown do you have a report for the board uh president cottman yes sir i'm sorry did i miss something no is it okay if i modify my report uh before we move on to dr kathy evans brown sure
127i'm sure kathy won't mind yeah i'm sorry because i misspoke the time before last was when i gave time i believe to dr rivera this time that we had the discussion about bps field usage and the superintendents so i just wanted to correct that before we moved on uh thank you for allowing me to speak and correct the minutes president cotman oh no problem i'm sorry on that point uh and uh dr revere is there anything that you'd like to comment on that which is my comments yes what i wanted to do was recognize cinco de mayo as a time where we can honor the contribution of our community members who are latino latina and latinx and i really appreciate the opportunity for the board to allow me to speak on that recognition okay thank
128you sorry about that okay dr kathy evans brown i'm your report please yes i graciously gave up my student achievement session time for the board to continue to review the budget for 2021 um and so the information that i wanted to uh talk about um actually came from ann dr revere about the special ed information in terms of backlog backlogs on evaluation and possibly some assessment information but that will be conducted in our june meeting but i did attend the reopening committee meeting um on monday that dr brown hall chair and he did indicate that we're looking at bringing kids back on a five-day schedule um starting in september and he did ask um different committees uh to look and ask their constituents what they wanted wanted the school year to look like and so
129that was open for all of the people that are on that committee including parents teachers or people like myself and ann etc um there was a robust conversation about the tech supports being um critical and essential uh in september as they are now making sure that technology and the cameras are working effectively they like the fact that parents can go to south park that site for the computers they thought that was pretty pretty decent very organized during the year um there's been great strides in terms of communication with parents and this is from you know various people whether it's parents or teachers or community people these were some of the um highlights i got out of that meeting um so great strides in terms of communication with parents they were you know because we were
130forced to use technology i mean this pandemic uh took everyone um by surprise and so with a district this large we did a very good job considering um considering that uh let's see and it was one other thing they were hoping that the remote can be an option for some families um even though you know you have a number of parents that want their kids in school five days a week there's still a number of parents that want to continue the remote learning for their children because they are thriving they are doing well and they're still scared people still are dying of cold it i'm going to a funeral next week um with a family member who uh passed away um uh with the complications of of covet so that's the reality um and then
131you know we talked about vaccinations which is you know it's not required and so i know dr cash mentioned it earlier kids 12 and up can get the vaccination but again they have to have parents permission and you still have a number of people who uh don't want to get vaccinated for iv you know for various reasons whether it's religious whether it's you know reluctant to to to not even know what's involved in that fascination and you hear a lot of mythical stuff and you kind of laugh at it but the reality is people are still hesitant i have colleagues who uh still aren't um comfortable with getting uh the vaccination so that was it we're gonna eliminate the subcommittees and do just one committee meeting combined right uh dr darren hall um within the
132next two weeks so that was uh my report thank you thank you very much um up next larry uh scott do you have any update for the charter world charter of no not at this time okay thank you any other board member if anything to share before i uh bring uh paula a finance and opt guru and has her hand up i'll be very brief i had the pleasure of attending the cpac meeting with dr evans brown last last monday and the special education department unveiled a really wonderful initiative about ways in which to include student voices in making their own ieps and in the iep process it's really a wonderful uh it's really wonderful because what it does is it allows students to support themselves and advocate for themselves throughout their schooling and prepares
133them well for adulthood cpac is also very active right now in training parents working with parents and supporting parents and they just wanted to commend them on their activities [Music] thank you thank you very much um financing out the uh doctor of charlotte wood thank you madam chairman um finance synopsis has been meeting for the last couple weeks we've been reviewing the superintendent's recommended budget because once uh once it's adopted by the board it becomes the board's budget and the board sets the priority the budget sets the priorities and the spending plan for the next year this the operating budget does and then that becomes the basis for our spending plan for years to come this year is especially important because it is a year of high hopes for our community our political leaders have
134brought home the bacon they brought home a 76 million dollar increase in our schools our final foundation aid and um the parents and the community have high expectations of increased and expanded supports to our children especially to look at some of the problems that they've had uh under remote learning and uh trying to deal with isolation from covet so the operating budget all of our board members have been receiving we've received three updated copies from our uh administrator from our cfo the operating budget is the budget that doesn't go away it's not grants it's not the grant fund which uh even with our esther money will go away after three years so our our board members have been going over the operating budget and our cfo has been very gracious answering all types of questions
135about priorities why there are changes and funding cuts in some areas and increases in others uh we've had extensive opportunities to ask questions and receive answers on the operating fund uh in short in the operating fund uh it was explained that a significant portion of that 75 75 million dollars extra that the community was thinking would would um give us so many dollars and extra items a significant portion of it had to go to close a gap for transportation aid because we didn't have transportation uh funds this year we didn't we didn't do transportation so we won't get that revenue and a significant portion of that money 29 million had to go to close the funding gap because the um cares that money from the previous year is disappearing the overall operating budget is 972.5
136million dollars it's only a 1.9 increase it's not significantly increasing and the superintendent's recommended budget puts a significant portion of the 17 million increase in contingency accounts for significant events that uh they anticipate next year uh 3.4 million in supplies for buildings which is prudent and they put 6.6 million extra into content at the contingency account for equity and for uh the school closing of the um and reopening of the charter schools westminster and um the other one each of the board members also received and uh thank you dr kathy evans brown for giving us additional time so we could go over our school-based budgets which went uh and showed staffing decreases and increases in a number of schools which everyone had an opportunity to raise their concerns as to why uh you might have
137been expecting as i was expecting increases and i saw decreases of the superintendent's budget and our cfo pointed out very clearly our population has dropped by 5 000 students our teaching staff has increased significantly that's a mismatch so when you have population drops they adjusted school-based budgets in a accordingly so everyone's had an opportunity and we've sent significant questions about that um the budget is on the agenda and i did send another 20 questions to our cfo he was kind enough to get back to me on those questions and there they were sent to all the board members the answers and the in a nutshell the plan is that we are receiving 290 million dollars in esser funds that is a boom that we have to use and it's mandated to use to address learning
138loss and to bring and solve a lot of problems that uh that were brought up and being brought up at our at our at our parent stakeholders meetings is prudent our cfo's plan he's always given us this uh prudent plan it is prudent to use those funds to address a number of issues that the board members have been saying we need reading writing and arithmetic we need to emphasize those things we need literacy coaches there are a lot of things that 290 million dollars can address and we will all have our input and be monitoring that but that is the grant fund those funds are in the grant fund and um each of us has had an opportunity to take a look at the grant fund um i asked a number of questions but basically
139the grants are still going to be there uh some of the grants were i didn't see in the budget but they are going to be refunded so uh the only remaining two questions that i had on the budget that remained as of the last meeting was the equity overlay dr cash has been gracious in the last couple of years to give us an equity overlay of a number of positions so that schools which face greater challenges have students that are at level one or two have a number of l's have uh higher poverty and need more resources he's been gracious enough to give us additional positions i hope all the board members received the sheet from our cfo uh 12 noon today which shows 48 positions that were added to the school-based budgets to attempt
140to address equity and given that there is a contingency fund for further equity issues that's that's still there so um the other issue that was remaining was the school-based budgets that were not delineating six million dollars of a primary concern after school programs summer programs and extended learning programs but uh our cfo has assured me that that eunice is down and they've had difficulty putting the monies were in the school-based budgets but it's not a reduction and that area is another area that will be significantly funded and supported by our uh american rescue act president biden's esser funds so um any board members that have any other questions that's the summary the the budget with a lot of contingencies and sound appropriations are presented and attached for your review and for passage today that's my
141report thank you for your sense of report i have two hands that are up dr castro you want me to wait until uh the board member asked or you want to go first dr cashier on mute yes let the board member speak first okay i saw larry uh scott's hand up i have questions and comments on the budget but i will wait till we get to that point in the agenda but miss wood can you clarify where i can find the additional 46 positions that you just referenced the email the email from jeff today i asked um i asked about 20 questions and your your your question was the first ones on that sheet that he addressed and there are 12 pages of material and the 12th page is the chart of the 48 additional
142positions under number four i think it is larry if you'll take a look at number four the attachment number four i think is number four questions from the national meeting okay all right thank you so um the reason for allowing uh paulette to uh go on in regards to the budget is because i was hoping to move the budget as part of the consent agenda and so this is the time to ask your questions because uh i'm gonna um be moving forward but if you have specific questions i'd like to say on this topic right now uh and uh then allow the superintendent to speak uh before we move move on it's what i'm saying round now here we go all right just found it doctor so i have um um larry scott i you
143had a comment according to uh lisa um and you were the only one and paulette has already commented on her so um if you have additional comments this is the time to do it and then the superintendent has something to say in regards to that i'm sorry i'm taking it out of order but i think it's necessary so that everything flows smoothly you're likely okay so i'm on yes mary okay thank you president cottman so as you all know i've been asking questions about the reading teachers and the literacy coaches um and i i appreciate all the responses i have received um based on what i've uh calculated here our total reading teachers um are 46 in this proposed budget literacy coaches 37 instructional coaches 24.5 for a total of 61.5 literacy and instructional coaches
144and then we have data coaches technology coaches a few a math coach rti coach so overall 94.57 coaches district-wide is what i'm seeing in this budget um and 46 reading teachers based on the duties of a literacy coach and a reading teacher a literacy coach acts as a consultant supports staff provides guidance provides advice strategies they are not typically working directly with students providing services providing intervention pull push in pull out where a reading teacher as described in the email reading teachers are staff who are generally working in small groups pull out or push in with students to provide reading intervention as part of rti now as a and as an educator as a parent who has received support from whose kids have received support from reading teachers this is what our kids need they
145need that direct intervention they need that direct support and they're going to need it more than ever given this past year and so i it's hard for me to accept that we need and it's not to say that the coaches don't serve an important role but it's hard for me to understand that we need this many coaches and so few reading teachers and then if this is what role they're playing in each building we have five schools that have zero reading teachers for next year zero reading teachers so that means based on the way the duties were explained those schools will not have a person that's providing supplemental reading intervention to the students that certainly need reading intervention so i i really i need something to be addressed with this because i am not comfortable
146with us continuing with this this type of structure with literacy coaches and reading teachers ms botticelli can you uh respond to mr scott please yes this is ann botticelli can you hear me okay um so the literacy coaches are assigned directly as part of the education bargain schools select the other positions so they determine what they want to fund whether it might be an instructional coach a data coach a math coach or a reading teacher schools that don't have a reading teacher it doesn't mean that they their students don't receive rti services they might be offered directly by the classroom teacher every school typically does a walk to so students walk to the appropriate instructor to receive the level of service that they need it may be a reading teacher but it might be a
147classroom teacher um so it's definitely safe to say that students receive the supports they need and it isn't always offered by a reading teacher so jennifer uh i'm sorry uh larry did you have a response for that or you just wanted other board members our time i don't think that logistically that is very feasible and effective in providing the reading support that all of our students need when my son both of my boys have received reading support it's come from a reading teacher in in addition to what they're getting from the classroom teacher a classroom teacher cannot consistently provide supplemental services and intervention okay um well uh wait wait a minute let's say that miss potter telly respond so in the walk to model students walk to the level of service a reading teacher might
148provide the most intensive level of intervention or maybe not depending on how the school has arranged the services but students do walk to the teacher who will be only providing intervention during that time so we're not asking the the classroom teacher to do two things simultaneously she's getting a specialized group at the same time the reading teacher is getting a specialized group there's also reading teachers that push into kindergarten classrooms to offer supplemental services so every school uses their staff a little bit differently but we definitely offer the appropriate services during the rti period at the elementary level so ann are kids learning to read by specialists who are trained to teach reading which is a highly specialized skill uh one of the most researched fields in education uh through the ira as you know
149the international reading association do we do you feel we have a gap here mr scott is um concerned about a gap with literacy which we know is the most important uh skill for all of our learners particularly young learners do you feel we need to add staff to support literacy instruction and reading specifically in reading the schools have made those decisions they they may have picked to have a reading teacher providing that level of service but in some cases they may have selected a coach instead not the literacy coach because that one is provided but they may have felt that they had other needs but we have been training all of our teachers at the primary level in letters the language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling we've trained our coaches as trainers of
150trainers and they can support that rollout at the school level and our reading specialists typically do work with the students who need the most support okay so the school does not have the choice to choose a reading teacher over a literacy coach they wouldn't choose one we would automatically provide the literacy coach that is correct and then they would like what i'm suggesting is that we as a board of education and district if my colleagues agree we should be providing the reading teachers to the schools and we shouldn't be having so many literacy coaches that still to me i'm not understanding what impact they're having what impact they're having in our schools what impact they're having on our educators what impact they're having on our students where i know clearly what a reading teacher does
151and i see the the outcomes as an educator and as a parent [Applause] okay hold that thought and we have two other hands that are up jennifer mccoozy cotman i um well dr cash asked one of my questions already is what do you feel are the gaps um there's clearly not just the gaps of literacy but the physical gaps of the people who we need in place and i think this is clearly what um board member scout is referring to we i've stated this multiple times i know i get a little pushback but i want to publicly state again that we rely on the the the schools so heavily because they do know what they need and they put their teams together there but at the same time we essentially are responsible for the success
152of these schools and if there's a consistent gap then that should be put in place by us to make sure that those positions are full and we've known for quite some time now that the reading teachers you know you hear attendance teachers we've heard different things and for me when you say things like we're training other teachers to be able to have the capacity to do certain things to me that's not saying you're providing reading teachers to do the work it's saying you're mandating what we don't have i want to be able to say very clearly in in our district with what we got coming in that we are putting all the money toward the gaps that we have that are have been you know really publicly stated multiple times and making sure that we
153start taking a stand as the district when schools are not are putting things in place that we question heavily and hold accountable to the positions that are not being asked for if you said it yourself but now unless i'm completely misinterpreting dr belichelli is that you know we're training folks to be able to have this capacity um we have we can bring in folks with the capacity i also have a student in my household my son who has benefited from these services so i i'm i'm been trying to kind of keep my personal out of this but i've seen it i've seen the effects that this can have and i just want to make sure i'm sorry i'm outside and traffic i'm on a big street but um i'm just asking that we kind of
154rethink and reimagine how we go about holding accountable you know sbmt teams what's what our schools are asking for not saying they don't know but also knowing that we're being held responsible for what they don't put in place and when we keep saying well we let the schools decide it keeps biting us in the behind so i i'm just asking that we rethink how we do this and i 100 support bringing on people with the monies that we have coming in as opposed to teaching people what those people already know and are in place for thank you okay thank you uh portland oh you want to respond to her oh thank you i just wanted to clarify so we're definitely not band-aiding anything by offering the training the classroom teacher is the first primary teacher
155of reading so that teacher teaches the 90-minute block or the 60-minute block of reading to the student so we're just ensuring that they have the most up-to-date accurate information and strategies at their fingertips but they they are the primary source of reading instruction a reading teacher supplements that instruction and in many cases as i said the classroom teacher may supplement it depending on the level of service that the student requires but letters has been very well received by our staff and the reading teachers also participate in that not just classroom teachers it keeps us all fresh it makes sure that we have the strongest base of knowledge but i just wanna to clarify that the classroom teacher is actually the teacher that is first instruction of reading to the student i i appreciate that i
156needed that because and again i'm not looking to push back but the the way that um it was explained is how it sounded to me and i just wanted to point that out so thank you for that i do want to stress though that we do have a need we've recognized it we recognize the inequities in our in our you know in bps we've addressed them heavily we put things in place that addresses these heavily and i'm i'm just not understanding why we don't have not in abundance it's not like we need 46 teachers in one building but there should be a power of a certain amount of teachers in every elementary school building and then if you know if we don't need or the the data proves that it's not necessary we make changes
157from there but we should always be prepared is what i'm saying and it just seems as though we're always looking for or we always have people who are bringing to our attention including radio teachers themselves how there's there's a shortage and they really would like to have more support that's right okay uh mr terrence hurt your hand to talk yeah thank you um president dalton cottman um going off subject um are we still sticking on the same subject right now about the reading yes we are okay i'll hold off until this is completed thank you um so i have a comment on this because um one of the the concerns i have and i've said this until i blew in the face is that there's no ownership of the data and so if you look
158at a school we see these budgets every year but unless you go to the state's website you don't see how the schools are performing and the data reflects that we need to be doing some things differently period the end okay and when i'm talking to principals what they're telling me is that things have been so uh thin over the years that all they're doing is trying to get what they the bare minimum they can get they have no idea they're afraid to even ask for additional things and so when we we're sitting here saying that our children are not reading at the level that we expect from them to read at they're not doing math at the level that we expect and we think we receive enough money this year to make sure that we
159provide resources for these children where is the ownership of data for each one of these buildings okay because it's time out for making decisions based on what you think and what you feel if you have a building that has x y and z and these students are doing great then you've got a good fix there but if you're on the other hand if you have a school where the students are not performing you cannot continue to go down the same road we're not going to get the results we need and we're not getting the results and the lack of ownership of data for each one of these buildings is is almost in my opinion um it's unacceptable okay because in some schools and as i said last week some schools you have these high ratios
160here and there but no additional support how do you justify in my opinion a ratio of 49 50 uh uh students else in the building and no additional supports are in there to help them learn how to read and do math and stuff something is wrong here and we're not owning the data we have never owned our data and now that we have the money to do it we should be owning our data and we need to stop talking about what we've been doing and look at each food and see if it is working and i bet i will put money on it that what larry is saying and requesting is a reasonable request and i also think the other piece that's missing is the math overlay because our children need math as well and
161so somehow or another the data is missing and nobody's uh nobody's analyzing each building at that level i'm sorry i don't want to hear about what's going on in the in the principal meetings i'm looking at the cognitive data and which we have very little for this year but i i from what i'm looking at we need to be doing something some things differently and stop doing this same formula it's time out i'm sorry all right so dr cass you have some questions this is sandra wright i i think i'm confused about principals being afraid to ask for what they need when we work out cassandra let me clear that okay principles are so used to not having that if they can just get by with the bare minimum or if they can just get
162by with what they had last year they don't even look to the next level as to what else we could ask for or whatever and that's the truth okay that's fast that's a pretty broad thing i'm letting you know that that are struggling and i have the issues yes this is the conversation that we were just glad to get what we had mrs cottman we didn't know that we could ask for more okay we never thought that we could i'm just telling you how it is we never thought that we could ask for a reading like well you this that that's what you're saying dr cass but you're sitting in city hall and i'm i'm on the phone talking and meeting with people okay get it right i'm not trying to confront them five asls
163that have 11 schools each to talk to their principals every day so let's let's hear from asl's about what cassandra was trying to ask about how we're hearing and you're hearing you're hearing about all this not being told and not getting back to us i want to clear that up for the record all right no i didn't say that you said that you said that you just said when i said dr cash the parents the t the principals are so happy just to get what they've been getting that they don't even know how to move to the next level have you talked to all 60 of the principals i talked to the ones that i needed to talk to with them ratio for three the same because you do know is to have you do
164know is to have and to have not so let's not even go there let's not go there let's not know that i want to hear from you and cassandra i want to hear from you could you please respond to the board that is making this narrative right now that somehow we're not responding to the needs of the schools because i didn't say that about it as well cassandra could you help please yes yeah absolutely um president cotman i have absolutely no doubt that you have phenomenal relationships with your principal in the in your district i i just want to say that we have daily communication with the principals and will speak to us very candidly about their needs we have been able to provide them with everything they have asked for so their budget may
165have said x you may ask for above and beyond that meaning with the data went to dr clark and he to tie the principal with everything that they asked for one school in particular school number 61 their grant ended which would have meant she would have had a bunch of part-time performing a visual arts teacher i wasn't that attached about it i spoke on behalf of the principal and dr cass granted her her request and let's go to a different level rule number 64. so often people believe that the students at school before don't require additional reading support the principal there came to me she had problems i think it was about a point three she wanted that teacher to be whole i wanted to have the class with her request backed up by data
166dr cash granted her that request and many of our buildings the assistant principles would have been cut the principals came close with their data and their requests you went to dr cash and every last request was honored well i i guess i'm just confused about where the map is because we have more relationships with principles that are not based on fear i i don't know why that would even be projected i take pride we take pride in not only our professional relationship with them but our personal relationships with them as well because quite frankly we care deeply about who they are as people and we they put our hearts minds and souls into this work for the sake of the children and when they ask supported by data they are able to receive we're very
167blessed this year to be able to have millions of dollars as a result of the emergency code response and the principles have over and over and over again express their gratitude for having their needs met for the sake of their children that's the that's why their removal being met their data and their children and colleagues all i'm saying is literacy is crucial but if there's more reading teachers that is the solution i can tell you the key to reading is a multi-variant solution there's no one solution to it but if that's something that the the the principals want or the schools need and you feel strongly about it uh like you did a few years ago with with pe teachers and we we we did 31 of them at the last minute then i don't
168i'm not against putting reading teachers in school let's put reading teachers in schools if we think that's going to be you know the the magic bullet there but i want the process to be honored i really do make sure that those principals look at their data with their teams with their asls who are in there all the time at my direction we do look at data that's all we look at and then say here's a gap here's a major gap and if they come to me with that i'm going to do anything i can to make that happen anything i can to make that happen okay there's some other people we're on the same page with that we're on the same page what i said i meant the teachers the principals do not know how
169to in the environment that they've been uh exposed to and been living in it is a struggle for them to believe that they could get additional resources in their buildings by simply asking and whether and that's not a reflection on anyone and their work it's not a reflection on the asl it's not a reflection on you it's a reflection of the environment that is existing and when they would go in there and you would do six and a half and you come back and give them back the six and a half and they were like hallelujah i got my six and a half feet my six and a half staff back i i'm gonna shut up and i'm gonna take what i got that is the environment it's been it's not a reflection on the
170work that people are doing dr cash it's just not i have other i have a couple other hands that are up okay i'm not sure whose hand went up first okay but i think what i'll do is cassie wants to go first then i think we'll go to lou we'll go to uh uh terrence and then we'll go back to jennifer thank you yeah i think you know the district is doing uh a great job asl's the the principles etc i think for us as board people and i told my story about me personally as a young girl in the first grade that reading was significant for me after getting the exposure in a small group with a reading teacher i became an avid reader i think for us as more people we will feel
171better if we saw the data because you don't want to get to a point where and it may not be happening this is just me talking but i think concurrent with what larry is saying jen has said that we don't want and dr cash and i know you you you in support of this as well dr brown etc we want children our children in this district to get to the fourth grade third grade and reading at that level you know not behind one or two grades you know that's all we're saying that yeah we all want the same thing and we're thinking you know we're not experts here we think we are but i think that you know having additional reading teachers in these buildings is significant well you can't disparage the tests and then
172say you that they all are doing poorly they may be doing poorly on a test you look at some of these sixth grade tests for math look at them take them yourself okay then we might you might need a reading teacher or a math teacher but what i'm saying to you what i'm saying to you is don't just say we need all of this and not cost it out and not look at the data let's talk about and give you direction to say bring you back to committee let's look at some data let's look at how we're approaching that issue and then if we have some additional staffing that you think are required then we'll look at i have no problem with it that's good and you know no matter how ugly it is let's
173fix it well if we can absolutely if we can uh i'm sorry uh you got to have good teachers that's the key you got to have great teachers good teachers um i'm sorry uh uh lou uh larry are you trying to go before luke no you guys got the same question uh larry asked the question sharon so yeah i want to clarify my position on this and it's the same as last year it's philosophical it's i'm not necessarily asking for additional staff i'm asking for us to reallocate re uh purpose how we're using staff to address reading um dr katz you always have said we are have added staff and mr pritchard has shown the same thing we have added staff over the years many staff so it's not necessarily that we need to add
174all these additional staff it's how we're using staff and it's to me it's it's against what i believe in as far as how we can best address the readings of students so to get more concrete with this school 18 school 76 school 89 school 90 and school 94 are entering with this budget next year with no reading teachers so i completely understand that the classroom teacher is responsible for that um reading that tier 1 primary reading instruction but you're always going to have students a percentage of students that are going to need tier 2 tier 3 in supplemental to what they're getting in the classroom with their primary teacher and so how are these how are the students that will need that supplemental reading intervention going to get their intervention at 18 76 89 90
175and 94 next year excellent that's the question that's the question now any asls on the line that those schools belong to patrick cash i'm on the line this is darlene jose now pie overseas school 18. school 18 departmentalizes down to first rate so the teachers are trained in di direct instruction they're trained in the write-in reader so the teachers are all training those specific areas so when children go rti they can then go to one of the teachers specialize in that area and get their reading instruction their additional reading instruction to support any skills that they might need additional support support with them sorry um and in this case the principal wanted to add to her junior high so she was at the additional ais those junior high classes in order to support them so
176that's how she allocated her money with her sbm teaching they worked together in collaboration to craft the budget that you see before you tonight so that's how school 18 utilizes her budget um as far as her reading teachers so she also has seven enl teachers at her school that also helps support that reading program because she has a high enl population at school but colleagues you know what we're saying we say it all the time if kids don't learn to read by third grade and read depthly and effectively and like reading they're going to struggle throughout their school career it doesn't get easier because the con all the content subject matter are reading subjects so you know we have this push from pre-k to three to get every everybody on reading on grade level by
177grade three that that's just been part of our uh education bargaining part of our plan so if reading teachers are a gap all i'm saying is that we need to put them in as enzymes to continue to bolster that goal because it is a multi-pronged goal to get everybody reading because different kids have different needs as you know uh then i have no problem doing it but just have the conversation talk about it because that's my expectation of you uh colleagues not your board members but but my staff so that we can improve these uh reading results and and literacy and numeracy results that's the bottom line we all want to improve it how do we do it and larry's okay his suggestion and i'm hoping to continue hearing him okay okay so all right
178lou do you have something to say um not at this point sharon but thank you okay so next person up i'm not sure who i called out was it uh mr hurt oh yes i can go on this topic here i would just like to say i don't want to um you know keep pushing the same message and um but i don't want to leave president cottman out you know an island by herself also because we do have principles that do say they need more programs um in which they had things like music and i have talked to a a various number of principals we have we also have principals in our elementary schools at which they can have plays you know there's certain schools that that does very very well with like performances and
179plays christmas and things like that in other schools that you know they can't you know push the exact same agendas and um and the reading support is more critical than ever now only because of colby because parents been struggling you know with with activities and helping their children you know throughout the kovic and virtual learning and going back into the classroom uh we can't rely on data right now what that is going to say a year from now because we have to be prepared for the year that's coming up uh with um teachers like reading coaches uh math coaches because our kids have fallen behind you know trying to get education at home working on tablets and if we wait for next year for the data to come we're going to be way far behind
180for our kids and that district will be further behind so um i do support what larry is saying but i also do support having more reading teachers um to move forward so that we can prepare for whatever is going to happen so if we can somehow you know have that conversation maybe bring into a committee meeting and see how we can um make those type of adjustments just to be prepared for um what's going to happen we also like to say principal said you know they wish they had sporting programs especially elementary schools and educated sports um in which they had teachers and more subs so some said um that you know we have subs that's uh been in the classrooms for a long period of time and principles i requested teachers for those positions
181i know that the district looked out couldn't find teachers you know qualified to to jump into classrooms like this but um that's some of the things that people are asking they're asking for field trips uh for their kids and doing like events and and things like that kovic has hindered all of that but i'm just more concerned about you know what's going to be the outcome when children do come back to school next year and and hopefully you know in full in in classrooms that we be prepared as a society for that but um also you know where the reading levels be where they math levels be at that point so i do think that we do need to look into interest of more reading teachers that can be prepared for you know what's coming
182forward i'll rest with that and um we need to move forward i have another part of the agenda i'd like to adjust thank you next um jen uh macuzy yes so i'll make this brief number one i i'm not in any way shape or form and i need to clarify this um expressing anything stating that we don't provide what principles are asking for i feel like that that's a misinterpretation of where i was going with this what i'm literally trying to bring right back down to ground level zero the narrative is and the way that we are all structured is that there's reading teachers that are looking for you know to to be in the schools and see the need it's still happening our job as board members is to make sure this is addressed
183and we are bringing it to the table with this influx of money this cfe money i want to make sure we i get this straight to the cfe money that came in i've literally gone to albany i've i've traveled to albany back and forth and fought for this and was treated like crap behind it locked out of rooms rallied for this month hundreds of people on buses for this money and it was for the betterment of our students and their education so yes this is a little strong for me when i talk about reading teachers because i personally as hilarious that i personally seen firsthand what they can do i'm not asking okay dr cash i want you to sign the the the order and i want 50 reading teachers and all the schools across
184the district do it now like that's not what i'm saying how do we when you say you make sure you the district had the schools have what they need i need reassurance that we as a district are not you know we're not saying oh okay like in school 18 from what i just heard she put money toward what she needed in junior high this is my district i also know that the populations in that school if a school needs reading teachers it's definitely school 18. so knowing that that's the budget she's working with maybe she needs in both of those categories how do we resource her to have it all with the re the influx of money do we have these options these are the conversations i want to have in committee we need to
185make sure because there isn't a single elementary school in this district and i don't care resourced or not that is not going to have issues with reading and just as you said dr cash if we're going to make sure and we put this out there and you did publicly again today by third grade we have to have this right we need to make sure we are resourced with these people so i was like you know what i mean and i'm and i just i'm not saying that we don't but i'm saying we need to back up the schools if they don't ask for it then you know why we should just make sure they have it anyway because that's the na that's the narrative right and we're being held accountable to our narratives every day
186all day we can't say boo without it being thrown back in our face in some way shape or form it's proven itself real today and we we you know i mean let's just cover our behinds and make sure we do we do right by what we promise everybody and and do it as a group and and you know if we have to see more data if we have to reimagine how we communicate all of this let's do it but i'm not saying anybody's dropping the ball i'm saying let's reimagine how we've been doing things today and make it so that no one has anything negative to say that's all right okay next is uh board member woods and that's the last uh board member on this subject okay um all i want to point out
187is two things we know we have learning loss it's documented our children were behind a year or so behind before covet they're more behind i understand that there are high expectations we got a lot of foundation aid i'm not saying we have to use the foundation aid to address all of this because we have 290 million an sra rescue act but we have to own up to the fact we have the learning loss we must address it as you said dr cash reading is fundamental and math is fundamental and i am tired of people throwing it up in my face that we have 16 of our schools who ten only nine or ten percent of our our of children are reading at grade level and they're doing worse than charter schools i i can't stand
188that and i can't stand having people telling me six percent of our children can do math at grade level we need to do better we have an opportunity to do better if reading teachers will help dr cash let's let's do what we have to do because we just need better ela and math performances we you you committed to improving our schools let's do it i know we can do it we agree and i'm going to say this because i want this to be clear when you compare an entire district to one building there's something wrong with that uh that analogy if we had the responsibility of just as a superintendent a school district had just the responsibility of taking care of 500 and something children certainly we wouldn't be having this conversation and it's in
189the process we were able to screen and not take the special ed children and the english and the english as a second language children we shouldn't even be having these conversations in this city right now okay we really shouldn't they should be ashamed of themselves that's all i've got to say and i'm not and i and i stand strong on everything that i say okay i'm not backing down because i do the research and i have the data to support it so now moving forward right that you're right that information was so distorted today and i'm gonna correct it when i get with that group all right colleagues i i don't have much to say because you've done a great job expressing it but i did have a superintendent's update and we just scuttered right
190past that because you guys wanna i don't know you just went right over the superintendent but anyway uh i'm not gonna agree i'm not gonna give it but i was in my i had three items one was on the reopening of the next school year see i was gonna talk about that so but you're in the interest of time we won't get bigger we want to hear it coming and you'll be getting a communication about it because we intend to open fully fully staffed more staff even uh based on this budget uh excellent programs bps reform 2.0 uh the school community is going to be extremely proud and pleased uh to be part of the buffalo public school you just stay tuned okay so that's coming the second part was and miss woods did such
191a great job she was outstanding describing the budget the budget needs and why it's important to get that budget behind us and still work on all of these issues around equity and staffing and so forth but we do need to pass the budget and get it and get and keep moving because there's so much that's a time crunch on staff between now and the end of the school year we got three major pieces of work to finish in order to draw down and get this stimulus money so please uh move on if you can and certainly we'll answer any questions that you have thank you for the discourse tonight because it was excellent we don't disagree and then third because lou started it and i was we were gonna do it and miss cotman kind
192of and then miss woods failed to do it under her report but the mighty sparks won a championship in football the mighty bennett tigers won a championship in basketball and the mighty lady centaurs won a championship in volleyball and that's just so far so what i asked there to do is we're going to have a big celebration of all of these great athletes in the june meeting because what i'm hoping in june is that we can meet in person again and hopefully not in that that's little city hall room 807 is too small but let's get a big place bring all our student athletes down and honor them they'll be so pleased but they weren't able to kind of get it all together for this meeting uh because they've got a lot to do but
193those are some great achievements uh that were that occurred there that really were uh and how they fought back came back uh you know the team it was just a really great achievement for those three and then we'll have some more we'll have some more champions come come june so i just wanted to let you know we haven't forgot about our student athletes uh but we do want to honor them in in june so that was my update uh at this time but make no mistake and and what what you can start doing in a very one sentence way in your facebook is to say we fully intend to bring everybody back in the full year uh in september and we're gonna have a very robust set of summer programs for all our students to
194begin to catch them up and get them back on grade level uh for those who need it and we'll talk more about that um at the committee miss uh dr cassidy evan brown i recommend you ask about those summer programs uh at your committee i could catch my apologies for the update i thought once you you said what you said back to the concern that the board has on the budget i was just trying to move this through the content agenda that's the reason for trying to move forward and to try to get this uh get this agenda uh uh handle and so that we could uh uh go into executive session and um and uh take ourselves home so what is your understanding of how the board feels about the um about the uh
195literacy uh piece in your reading piece at this point where are you with that and so that the board can have an understanding of what your thoughts are with that you asking me yes sir well it's a little bit more nuanced i mean i think we have enough particularly for those five schools but keep in mind don't don't never underestimate our principles and our staff i mean that this is what they do actor patel for example now i'm a good alpha she's a she's a reading specialist she knows she's a reading specialist she trains the teachers in her school in reading she knows what she needs and what she wants all i'm saying is you give me a number of what you think it should be i'll bring it to staff we'll do an overlay
196on all the schools and we'll get it into the budget but give me a concrete what you're talking about and if you say now they've already texted me that we should not do it at the expense of coaches because principles are strong in their advocacy for the coaches and how they use them you gotta let you gotta hear the principles out on that that's not us forcing that but if it's for additional uh support then let's talk about it we'll have resources to do it i don't know how long you can sustain it over time but i think we should start it and and see and see what the staff have to say so i'm not against it but let me hear from you on what what you think that is if larry's saying let's
197start with these five schools and shore them up with reading teachers then we certainly can do that we can search bennett montessori must be added to that list well again we can do why don't you why just as back in the day when they advocated for coaches why don't we say that any school that does not have a reading larry what do you want is the reading teacher what do you want what are you looking for let's let's ask for it said at the very least adding a reading teacher at those five schools that don't have a reading teacher right now in the budget and then any other schools that reduced reading teachers i would like to see those reinstated okay then that's the request of the board then thank you will that request be
198honored then as a part of approving the budget yes yes it will be that's the condition of the budget how many reading teachers were reduced larry just because i don't know that offhand what did you see in the data well i'm seeing those five schools don't have any i don't know overall from school to school the reductions but if a school for example went from two reading teachers to one reading teacher and then there's a coach added here or there's a music teacher added here because they gave up a reading position for adding a music teacher i would like to see that reading teacher reinstated at that school i think that's a fair request at this point and dr cash you can come back to the board but this is a condition of the board
199i think we have enough board members that want to see this so let's move it forward again bennett montessori must be added to that list okay president yeah just a quick comment on this uh i know about based on some conversation i had that oftentimes these reductions are predicated upon projected enrollment uh so i just want to make sure that we take into enrollment of the schools as a factor also uh just to make sure that we have sufficient students for the future let me let me take some yeah let me make it six done okay the six let me then go with the ones that you say were reduced let me talk to staff and the principals have a brief justification possibly that might be more enlightening and then we'll look at it again
200and see what you think after you've at least had their justification around it because it may have something some sort of what moves this and then i think we got it so and any other and then thank you is there other schools that reduce that we need to look at this i mean you know what lou i understand what you're saying about the attendance and that sounds real good in a regular year but this is a colby year okay this is a covert year okay this is kobe so you know i'm sorry that that that shouldn't even be an issue at this point all right so we've agreed with that okay i'm i'm sorry for um clearing off of the agenda please forgive me but i think it was important for us to have this
201conversation because our minds are clear on this point and you're comfortable with uh voting on the uh budget is that right no yes mr hurd yes um i want to reflect on page 46 of the 129 page document and i'll just like to address um sports right now uh one thing is clear that our district and the parents and students in the city of buffalo is very passionate about sports we see the impact that sports have on our kids in education and their lives and we also see the effects that that happens to our children when they can't participate in sports or or sports program won't be available to them uh that's one of the reasons why i've been so digitally pushing the unified sports program and the modified sports program and some of the
202things that's in the modified sports program and also really just with the unified sports program is uh mentoring training and tutoring and i look at the line items that set aside for on page 46 for sports i don't see anything that reflects that and as we're going to look to put a robust type sports program in the city of buffalo that's going to um start off with the sixth seventh and eighth grade students and also with the unified and modified sports and have inclusion with sports like football baseball softball tennis swim basketball volleyball uh cheerleading and step i i don't see that type of inclusion that's that's in the budget for the sports and also i don't see anything that reflects the mentoring and training and tutoring i know we have strong relationships with partners
203and community partners that offer those programs but i really think we need to sit down and have a conversation on how we can enact this you know in a feasible way and and and uh also um how can we uh really you know work to establish this you know for the upcoming school year um sports is the key and a lot of colleges university picked up on this a long time ago they built these sports programs and the students came and as a district we should be following that same type of mentality that if we advance our sports program students are going to come to class students are going to do their work they're going to work harder and with the encompass of the uh of the tutoring and the mentoring programs that we can
204utilize you know our current programs and to to be involved in uh we can really you know really build our character and our children and and make them you know self-sufficient and these and things where they're lacking that right now and also build this theme up and like i said sports is very very important to western new york and and competition you know one of the way our children um build their you know their their who they are you know reflect on you know what what type of skill set that they have and it's also also on the track to for them to uh go to get college scholarships and go to universities places that they never thought they attend and get letters you know from those type institutions also this help this addresses the
205school to because a lot of our kids have left valley sports as we seen you know as parents complain about the unified sports program not sure all of us spoke to a lot of parents about these these programs and um we need to put this in the budget so that these key issues can't be addressed and we can't you know get our kids back on track you know for uh be interested in school and education okay so dr cash you have something to say hello thank you one okay jennifer uh the board member uh mccoozy so the only thing i really want to add to that everything that i'm tearing statement is true the needs and necessities when we're talking about the budget and what's in front of us i really feel like i need
206to get clarity on um whether or not monies are going to be put toward what's existing with the opportunity to bring some you know have a fund for how we incorporate you know the things that the athletic committee has been working on along with the already given um there's an already from what i keep hearing there's already a modified sports program in the district but i believe that we haven't come together with you know everything that terence is bringing to the table that the athletic committee is bringing to the table and lou and terence please interject but i believe that we need to sit down and make sure that we collaborate on again uplifting and resourcing the modified um sports and you know unified too but modified sports that's already in place and make sure
207that we have enough funding in place to be able to expand to you know all the schools not just those that are participating uh recruitment to make sure we bring numbers to the sixth seventh and eighth graders you know all of the ideas we spoke about whether or not it's even possible like these conversations need to be had um but i really would like to just clarify that monies will be put into the already existing modified sports program unified sports program so that we can uplift those in general and then also have again like a slush fund or a little opportunity for some wiggle room to incorporate some of the suggestions that we brought into that we brought to the table as a commitment hey uh dr cass do you have anybody else there yeah
208i have a question i'm just curious are we are we in compliance with section six on our modified sports program did we submit that information to them and we're going to be part of the section six with modified and and unified force or did we miss the the uh cut off no we're good with unified uh i'm not sure about modified because that's a new program for the lower uh level i don't know if you compete or not i have to look into that um okay so the only reason i'm asking dr cash is that you know it concerns me that we're paying this amount of money in dues and the only thing that uh that we really are benefiting from that is through our football team other than that okay if i'm if i'm
209thinking right other than that we don't really play with other children until we get into the sectionals okay we don't get to play we play amongst ourselves and then we and i'm trying to figure out how do they justify paying us charging us that type of money when we're not actively involved and they and they have us in our own league we have to play our own students up until some point in the future where they tell us we after our kids have uh played against each other that they can come out and play other children that's not happening in the other division that's just happening with us okay so i i really need us to take a look at the dunes that we're paying because i don't think that we're properly being fair treat
210it fair and the other thing is i agree with parents i don't see in here anything about teachers so maybe it's somewhere else in the budget but it is unacceptable to be doing sports without making sure our children are being tutored and have um and have teachers there because they'll come and they'll do their homework if they get a chance to play sports and i don't see is that somewhere else in the budget that i'm overlooking or something i'm not sure but i don't see it in this on this line and before my question and jamie never got back to me on it my question was simple why weren't we hiring more teachers when we had more children that were coming coming to these sports i mean you had 40 and 50 kids at one
211building at one time why did we why weren't we hiring more teachers and uh i was the reason uh someone else got back to me and said it was it was expensive it was the cost it had never been budgeted and so i don't see it budgeted in here i'm wondering where is it budgeted in the district uh budget for more teachers from for teachers that work with our children and do this during the sports uh uh after school during the course uh president pierson i mean one of the things is trainers because um over for decades um uh outer district schools have been pulling our children away because of training opportunities and they'd be going to other districts i'm not going to name the districts but um they've been going to other districts and
212they've been stealing our kids and actually putting parents up in homes out there because they know they have scholar athletes um here in the city of buffalo and they will use those to propel the sports programs out there so um the idea is to feel that robust um have a trainer you know for the sports that's being recognized so our kids can have that type of training here they don't have that encompass on the parents who work two or three jobs trying to pay for a private trainer for their children it'll be something that the district or uh one of our partners can pick up so that so that they have that specified type training get more people and more kids into the league and you know that comes back up to us in other
213other ways we have uh kids that made it to uh pro sports and they wouldn't return come back and support the teams that they came from you can see it right now in one of our um scholar athletes and um stephen means junior um he came back and gave money back to the district this year so we already we had that you know constantly over the time and and by you know sowing seeds like that you know it comes back to help us and encourage our kids to you know to do better and our teachers also have a great morale over our teachers our schools and and our administrative staff members also you yourself just now said that you want to bring our our athletes and you know um sometime in june you know to
214recognize them for their accomplishment in sports so you know it reflects all the way to the highest highest of office here within the buffalo public school so we need to encompass those type of trainers those type of um uh coaches and um tutoring programs you know to to have this type of robust program that's gonna you know bring kids back to the buffalo public schools that's a lot there that you're saying um i'm a look i'm a big fan of sports boys girls uh modified unified all of it so you don't have an argument there what i'm gonna what i'm reviewing terence short answer is it's not in this budget but we have plans for it so i'm reviewing a two million dollar budget regarding modified sports on friday okay because it's just been put
215together by the team i'm going to review that soup to nuts i hear some of your pieces about trainers you know we do need more trainers but that's an additional request i hear your thing about tutors but i guess i'm thinking you mean tutors at like a study table or when you know i like to see kids do their homework before they start before they start practice because they're too tired when they get home if they you know after practice so at the study table are there tutors are there uh sufficient staff that can help the student athlete i think that's i think that's what you're asking and we can make sure that that's built into the budget uh now in terms of mentors i'm not sure what you mean there i'd like to see
216a really robust sort of volunteer programs that started there uh with mentors because there are a lot of men there are a lot of groups male female that you know sorority fraternities uh 100 men 100 black men so forth that churches uh that we can get a great we need a greater uh volunteer participation core to help with mentoring but i'm certainly uh want to see all that injected into our next phase here so bottom line is it's going to be in with the arc and the esser money because i want to make sure we get it straightened out first let's iron out all the all the you know bumps and kinks and see exactly what a unified sports program is going to look like it's to ramp it up terence it is going to
217require a lot of a lot of cultures and a lot of training and a lot of participation we have some great people working on it uh the campbells of the world and the koran butlers i'm sorry the koran barnes brothers help us with this so i'm excited about that yes we are going to have a roblox budget to get modified sports in its first year off to a great product uh the fourth year seems is the most expensive because we um lou um jennifer and i and sharon bell and cotton you know we spoke at many meetings um concerning you know about field development making sure that the fields are in play at certain schools you know in different sections of the city uh there's a lot of income yeah it's too much to go
218into tonight but i know we're working on it but is it uh we'd like to know if the athletic committee can be invited to these meetings or or get updates on the meetings or our input into the meetings so that so that you get understanding a direction that what we're looking for and um and so that we don't just keep you know well i know we're going to go unified and modify right yes yeah so we'll give you at least a monthly report and as we get going that because we got to finish i got to get through the school year but as we start to round the corner and you want to do something every two weeks or monthly then that'll be fine that's fine a very challenging year that's all i'm trying to
219impress upon you and we couldn't do everything that we wanted to do i i don't i don't your vision i like it i want to see all of that for our kids i do but we got it we got to build make haste slowly make case carefully and so okay because we don't want we really don't want any more meetings where there's so much disconnect between the community and the department that we have to go through 25 speakers or something on an issue that for most of us had already expressed our concern and felt that it was a gun deal swimming because i still got to understand what the heck that's all about well i want to be at that meeting because i'm going to help you understand it because i don't have an understanding
220of anybody can uh not understand uh uh children performing at a higher level than being uh told that they can't i i that's that's audio okay so it's moving forward to our consent agenda please i'm sorry for uh staring off but i think we're getting through here uh i'm sorry i know we're gonna vote on the agenda and this is part of the package but um i hear dr cass saying that we're going this year is it clear you're saying this year we're going to add monies to this he said 2 million or we're not going to add too many into this we are we are that's what we're keeping the budget back so i review the budget to make sure it has what i know it's going to need okay and you might you
221might want to uh start with uh equity uh some equity classes too okay now item number 20 b lou petrucci i'm a teacher i'm a teacher how this house uh lou petrucci you have a uh uh concern on a consent agenda for number 20b no i just have an exception to voting on a chair and i just noted my exception okay karen hurt item 24b 24b 24b is um i don't have a 24 b the board resolution oh no it's 24a as a fixed resolution okay so so what we're going to do is we're going to vote on the consent agenda then we will come back and the consent agenda today includes the resolution that was presented by the superintendent for the continuance of services for build academy um uh and so uh that will
222be part of the consent agenda the uh resolution uh 24a will be uh voted out on separately okay let's be clear on that because we need to have a discussion on uh that resolution which involves section six okay all right so any other questions about the consent agenda okay so may i have a motion to accept the consent agenda okay sorry we're a little i want to uh all in favor make a roll call vote if you don't yeah my apologies i'm how do you vote on the consent agenda dr kathy evans brown you're muted kathy you're muted what all right i'm yes what was the question sorry i had to go do you do you have any exceptions on the consent agenda is it no exceptions dr evans no exceptions okay thank you mr
223herd no acceptance miss jay captions miss mccosy no exceptions mr petrucci i know you noted one but for the record for the record exception for 20b and other than that no exception sir correct okay dr rivera i couldn't hear that is that no no exceptions thank you uh mr scott recuse 18k uh family member employed by the vendor and then no exceptions okay thank you board member woods mr woods no exceptions and president belton cotman okay consent agenda passes thank you okay let's bring let's bring up the resolution in regards to board resolution number 24a uh in regards to section six um for the record the resolution uh will be a part of the permanent record if uh let's see war revolution section six may 19 2021 sponsored by board president sharon broughton chapman vice
224president mr uh lou pacucci uh vice president dr kathy evans brown board member terrence kurd member at large larry scott member at large paulette wood central district board number whereas approximately 12 years ago the buffalo public schools dissolved its own athletic league to join section six whereas section 6 is comprised of 74 school districts and 96 member schools whereas with 19 high schools the buffalo city school district represents 20 percent of the total number of member schools within section six whereas the district pays a proportionate share of annual membership dues to section six totaling ninety thousand dollars annually whereas as a majority minority school district a significant number of district school athletes as well as student athletes and other member schools throughout section 6 are of people of color whereas the governing bodies of section
2256 including the athletic council and the executive committee whereas pursuant to the section 6 constitution the executive committee will have general management of section affairs during the interval between meetings of the athletic council it will have jurisdiction and all matters not covered by the constitution or bylaws appeals protests and questions of eligibility when the athletic council is not in season in the quote whereas while the district and buffalo league have representation on the athletic council it does not have representation on the executive committee whereas for the 21-22 school year the buffalo league will be the only league within section 6 that does not have a representative on section 6 executive committee whereas section 6's executive committee does not presently nor has it historically had a member that is a person of color whereas the district's
226lack of representation on section 6 it fixes executive committee limits excuse me limit is ability to have a voice in the important decisions made by executive committee despite the fact that it represents 20 of the total composition of section 6 and it exposes our student athletes to disparity of treatment by the decisions made by the executive committee therefore be it resolved that the board of education demands that section 6 immediately amend its constitution and bylaws to incorporate more proportionate equitable and diverse representation on its executive committee which would include a representation from buffalo public schools i add a friendly amendment to that thank you so board members do you have anything that you would like to comment on in regards to this um jennifer has raised her hand um yes uh mrs uh and then
227we have karen kurt thank you president catman so in talking um with some folks i just want to know what is going to be our position and our narrative knowing that the elected the executive committee is an elected board what is what is going to be our position as we're looking to bring a seat to the table but apparently it's an elective process for me i see this as an opportunity to maybe look into their elective processes and making sure you know what are the qualifications how do you get on the board how do you get elected what do you need to have to be a part of that board i don't know if we dug that deep but that seems to be the pushback that i'm getting is that it's an elected position i
228completely agree and have supported this verbally i'm not saying i don't support the resolution to have representation not at all i'm just wanted to know when it comes back to us that's an elected position what is our narrative and what are we making sure we want to change based on all of the historic you know points that you brought to the table there was no one of color you know i mean this is it's obviously their need for someone from buffalo being how much we pay all of that is valid and it's true i just want to know what we're um what we're coming back to the table with from what i'm getting you know we do have the most seats you know on the council which we should because we pay 90 thousand dollars
229in dues i don't know and i did that very clearly i don't want to hear that we deserve everything that we have and more so tell me why we shouldn't be on you know we shouldn't have representation on executive committee and we all have to come back because it's an elected position so i'd like to have some you know something to give back to these folks and then what are we bringing to the table well well certainly i want to take a piece of that okay so what we've asked is that the bylaws and their constitution be changed okay it's not a big request it's a simple request okay if we are just clear i'm good that's what that's what i'm literally asking for is changing bylaws and how they do that so i must
230have missed that in the reading but that was what i was hoping we were putting in place when you know we said that we wanted to because it's an elected position so i missed that i'm sorry okay so let's be clear the new york state school board association recognized that they could not get anyone elected uh to their school board uh to represent their uh at at the uh state level because uh the votes were not there in which they will never be there and they were smart enough soon enough to add a position that would make sure that there was minority representation considering the fact that they wanted to be equitable in their decisions it doesn't mean that because we put someone on that seat or in the uh we hit someone a treat
231at the table that we will even have an opportunity to even represent to have a fair shake because of the voting processes that are there but it does say that we will at least know what's going on somewhat for the most part in regards to that so we're unapologetic about what we're talking about if you take a look at the money dr cash i mean we could have taken a stance last year that since we this is covert we're not going to um pay all of our dues we're only going to pay a part of our dues we were we we did not do that you know we were very decent about that but this is not the first time that we've had a situation with section six it was an easy fix and i
232don't think that our children should ever be um uh banned or not given the opportunity i don't believe that the other team is proud about the fact that they did not earn that uh the legitimate way that it was handed over to them so you know we we have to fight for our children in section six it's just so you know there are lawsuits that are pending throughout the state in regards to how different uh different sections are doing things so this seems to be a problem throughout the state it's not something new so i'm going to ask terrence hurst to ask his question and if they want to come in after that or dr cash or you guys want to have a conversation after that let's get the board members uh uh questions up
233and out mr herr can you uh um briefly state your concern please yeah i'm actually gonna go into this this is um with the section six and the question that you asked jennifer um basically is a closed-door election and you get about extension from other districts that reach out to me that i speak to say that as a closed-door election and people one person retired from the executive work uh committee and that was it and that was replaced with another closed door election so those people have been in place for quite a long time and looking at the 20 years that the buffalo school district been part of it has been any change in that section of committee uh for retirement now the administrative staff member has nine members uh they have three assistant directors
234uh executive director they have uh directed communications sales marketing administrative staff distribution direct director and with no minority participation nobody from the city of buffalo they also have um um eight meetings that they have you know uh every school year from the new york city public high school uh uh association athletic associates and the city of buffalo is not representing those meetings either um we look at the um the section six the office and support staff uh no representation from the city of buffalo there and and there's four members there that govern the statistics here uh down downtown and we also have uh the six meeting dates and the city of buffalo i'm not quite sure how many don't mean that they attended or happened in the past but we know that that there are
235some meetings that we haven't participated in or haven't been invited to and there's a lot of closed-door meetings that goes on with the section six that that nullifies us from having participation on which way um decisions are made so what we're looking at is equality clauses and also um the voting practices so we don't have any insight of how they vote when they vote and when the vote goes on but all we hear is that they're closed doors meetings and that uh and buffalo is not included in the vote um that that that happens you know for the second committee so just know that the 66 is a not-for-profit organization and not for proper nation governs uh six of them in new york and they govern our sports here in in west new york and
236the rest of the state also so they have their own bylaws they have their own uh governing practices how they go about um doing um sports here or how sports are being recognized in the city of buffalo and every other district so i mean it's a lot more going to if you look at adp for the modifiers please don't please don't please don't go into it please don't i know disrespect but enough sometimes sometimes uh we're trying to keep it simple and we want to keep the narrative simple let's just keep the narrative simple at this point we can talk about that we do have four represent for representations from the city of buffalo that do represent the city of buffalo but none on executive committee thank you that's what we said in the resolution
237thank you okay um the reason that i'm i'm trying to keep this simple is sometimes less than best okay less is best sometimes and i don't want to get into the semantics and i don't want to get into this that dr cash your hand is up you want to comment on that you're you're muted dr cash yes thank you i'm just going to keep it simple i agree with you and and and let me tell you i have a lot of experience with this in every state this is a huge huge inequity issue in every state that i've ever been associated with there's a lot of money to roll through these state and sectional athletic councils committees whatever you want to call it and they end up dominating the decisions that are made for high
238school athletics it's a huge justice league so you have a great resolution here it could even be stronger but we'll start here and we have to have representation on that executive commitment there's no if and but and they make all the decisions about what happens and it's not consistent it's inconsistent it's all over the place but it's a closed door thing parents is right so let's get on that committee let's fight for the for equity for all the children that participate in high school athletics and this is an important start it's a justice issue all over the country so dr cash i had asked at one time because um uh to have uh section six records fall and for whatever reason it was not done aboard i still think that it's important that we find
239out um more about section six in regards to certain things and i i don't know i i don't understand why we would not move forward with that fall at this time does anybody that have a problem with me uh preston uh uh staff to do that i believe that's kind of what i'm looking for is to make sure that we're it's because it was obviously spelled out but i missed it make sure that we we're pointing out yeah that it's that it's in equities across the board they're all of the things that you said but we also want to make sure that we investigate to make sure they change how they do not just say we want to see and this is why we want you to change your practices moving forward because that's just
240equity across the board like i want to push for them to change the way they do things all together as section six what yes and we can lead the charge and buffalo will be the lead in the in that conversation but at the same time it's a to me i just don't want it to be oh buffalo wants seat on the board because they you know i mean this is this is the narrative i'm fighting when i'm talking to people you just want to see it on the board because it don't look right no no no obviously we want to see it on the board because you wait right so what you're doing that's wrong how about we check into that you know that's kind of what i want to do so if that foil
241is going to bring out what we need to use to order the push for this then yes i'm done i'd like to uh and in addition to that nate um did you get a copy of the last uh meeting that they had and then where this decision was made were you was your was your full request honored in regards to the uh videotape uh yes it was uh president covenant i didn't get a copy of the audio version although the quality is rather terrible but you know the last coil that i submitted was in result uh of the decision when they tried to move and and pretty much send and create the buffalo league and only have us compete against ourselves when was that a year and a half ago and part of the reason
242was i was suspicious a lot of chatter had happened over the email and behind closed doors that i was interested in knowing what happened you know ultimately when they reversed their decision uh they asked that we pull back the foil and i did do that at that point in time but it's something that i could revisit i wish you could uh consider doing that okay well with that said um are there if we're if all mines are settled can we go ahead and take a roll call vote on this um i'm sorry sharon um i just want to add one thing is that we should have more than one seat on the executive committee because of the number of kids that buffalo schools host so it should be some kind of equity issue also i
243have one seat for one vote but i actually have two sleep because of the number of kids um whaley um [Music] 20 would be two seats of a nine uh a nine board committee at least two seats yes twenty percent we want twenty percent right okay nate uh council nate kuzman can you pull the board i can't so is there a friendly amendment with consensus to the board asking for uh proportionate representation yes would someone make a i i'm sponsoring the resolution can sometimes on on the board raise their hand and make that friendly amendment please uh paulette woods would you stay uh please add the word proportional representation to the amendment thank you okay meeting 20 okay of the total portion of the executive committee okay i'll make those modifications board members tomorrow and
244we'll get this distributed assuming it passes is there any objection from the board members to that friendly amendment or all in favor all in favor okay would you like a roll call vote on the resolution uh six resolution how do you vote dr kathy evans brown yes mr hurd yes to the resolution and the changes miss j yes miss mccosy yes mr petrucci yes okay dr rivera yes mr scott yes miss woods i support us strongly yes and president belton commons yes thank you okay uh resolution passes unanimously thank you okay so we're writing down we're getting there uh lou petrucci will do the uh our uh bereavement honors um and we will um go into executive session after i read the um uh uh as we voted in uh it's getting late i'm getting
245tired and then we will um take a break i will give a five minute break if everyone agrees to that and then we will come back in executive session and press the pound so mr petrucci would you do the honors of uh honoring our bereaved uh our our our uh transitioned uh friends and family well thank you president uh copman may we all rise greatness for the may 19th board meeting of the buffalo board of education on may 13th gerard bootsy grandi beloved husband of carol grandy retired human resource journalist with the department of human resources may 15 joseph h tanowski devoted father of barbara bogdan a teacher at hutch tech high school number may 16 preston peoples dr kathy evans brown east district board member may we bow our heads in silence thank you
246all for your recognition thank you and let god find peace with your soul may i have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of receiving legal advice i saw jennifer's hand second please i think that's here okay we will take a five minute recess while nate makes his way back to the to the board room or maybe you're there you're going to stay there or you're going to the board room no i'm i am home tonight so i'll do it from here all right we'll do it from here okay so uh give us a five minute break thank you the board went into executive session to receive legal advice no action was taken our final piece of business today deals with uh scheduling our next retreat board members uh by tomorrow can
247you at least weigh in as to what date is available for you uh dina has been patiently waiting and if you would do that then we could end this meeting without having a major discussion about it are we in agreement with that okay may i have any other additional business old business unfinished business answers no with that said may i have a motion to adjourn may i have a second uh then uh paulette all in favor aye any poll no opposed okay thank you have a good evening good night everyone thank you for your attendance