BPS | 4/21/21 Board Meeting

001welcome everyone to the april the 21st regular business meeting for the buffalo board of education we will rise and uh pled pledge of allegiance we will follow after that we'll support a conversation on the board recognition please rise uh and on the count of three please let's pay the pledge of allegiance on the count of three one two three thank you thank you for coming to our board meeting this is our monthly meeting i'd like to remind our public and listening audience that we do normally have two additional meetings prior to this meeting on the first and the second wednesday in which most of the business of the board is conducted during our workshops and our committee meetings i'd like to start today with talking about an event that happened at one of our schools

002um in honor um it's ironic that uh this month is national child abuse month and we have been expanding uh the exposure with that we have done some things with the cyber bullying with the child pedophile situation that our children experience on the internet and we talk about child abuse next year i hope that we will continue to expand it however today at mst we lost one of our brilliant students um last weekend her name was lanisha johnson i say her name because oftentimes in our community the names are not uh spoken uh you will hear a woman 18 years old today the community agreed that we don't feel that our our 18 year olds are truly truly up and grown okay we still feel that there are babies and the community was very much

003in support of the things that i said today one of the things i said is that as a community we share a double loss in this situation we struggle with getting our children to graduate and when we have students who are college bound and prepared uh readily prepared and able to move forward and tragedy happens in their life for us it's a double blow and so dr cash i want to assure you that today it was clear that we have a community that stands united with this district to move things forward uh to improve our children the uh social emotional issues as well as the academic issues and i want to send our regards our condolences to her sister who is a student at bergaard her brother who is a student at riverside who courageously

004stood up today and spoke on behalf of his sister we had other student people uh leaders our board member tamisha walker spoke courageously about her experience with domestic abuse and she sent a message to our young ladies i hope we can get that tape and we can share it on our website then a young lady who currently is a junior at mst to leah payne who was a friend of lanisha johnson spoke sierra sierra johnson no relationship spoke also she is a grad she graduated last year she knew this young lady and i think the young man terence terry uh also her brother really spoke in a big way her guardian was there she also spoke in regards to her concern and she echoed my sentiments that this is a this young lady was a

005baby she was just forming she was just about to bloom into what she could be and so in addition to me being there we had two board members we had hope j from the north district as well as board member terrence hurd we appreciate the fact that they were there to to support the mst community as well and i'm gonna open it up to the board at this time if the board would like to say anything to the family of this young lady or to the community that this is the time to do so before we move forward do we have anyone that would like to say anything on to this family okay i see your hand mr terence heard yes um good evening everyone it's it's really really sad that um that we had

006this event held today and event to um talk about social emotional learning um he talked about child abuse to this this evening and he also we also spoke about our children you know what was the path for our children and um you know we this district has been working hard and the educational support committee has been you know working towards you know prevention of abuse and abuse comes in many different forms and this is so sorry um that this caregiver adrian mccain um had to um come to this meeting and speak to smoke this afternoon to talk about her daughter and her family that needs help so um i know i'm president kavin i already reached out to the district about helping his family and i appreciate all the efforts that that she gave towards

007you know supplying some social emotional um help for this family and it's really hard to speak upon this but there's something really to be addressed then and this this woman was 18 years old but but we know that she was a child a child that's in our school system and we really need to look at more ways and find more ways to um help students that may be going through you know any type of um emotional distress in their lives you know whether it's coming from home a relationship um society gang war for the streets it can come from anywhere there's many different types but uh we got to work to identify these people that need help and some of us may have experienced in our lives at some point in time but um you

008know that it doesn't feel well it doesn't feel good and and sometimes you don't even recognize the the pain that someone's in or or a person might not recognize know that they're in this position uh it may be in the name of love or or trying to keep a relationship together but um um mrs mccann um from me personally i would like to say um sorry that this happened and we will work very hard that this doesn't happen to another family another child thank you thank you uh board member heard and and yes mrs mccann has uh promised and i didn't even know she's my neighbor believe it or not uh and so uh we're gonna see well she has some great ideas dr cash she said she'll be uh calling in to the community

009meetings and being a part of that and that our next hand said the next hand that went up was board member hope j followed by vice president lou petrucci um yes can you hear me yes we can hear you now okay first of all i want to offer my deepest condolences uh to the family of our student miss johnson and i want the community to know how how deeply saddened and troubled we are i speak i'm speaking for myself as somebody who daily works with victims of domestic violence and has devoted a a large portion of my professional life to advocating for and working with victims of domestic violence this is particularly troubling for me to have one of our students fall a victim to a domestic violence homicide and i want to make this

010very clear to anybody that's listening that we're not talking about child abuse we're not talking about gang violence what we're talking about today is intimate partner violence and it's a whole different type of violence when there is power and control issues in a relationship and particularly when we're talking about adolescents there are thousands hundreds of thousands of of teenagers who get involved in these types of relationships and these uh power and control issues that come into play and because these are young young girls young women who don't have a lot of life experience they don't realize or understand that they are in a relationship that is abusive there is emotional abuse their psychological abuse there's something called coercive control and coercive control is when somebody attempts to control what's going on in your life they

011they try to tell you what to do they try to tell you what to wear they try to uh control what you say and who you talk to and um they're very jealous and sometimes you'll see stalking behavior and things like that those are all examples of coercive control and these types of relationships are fundamentally uh power and control relationships and a relationship that ends in homicide like this is the most extreme example of power and control and i want to be very very clear in a situation like this there aren't two victims there's one victim and the victim is this young woman who was murdered and again i i think it's important as uh as professionals as um people who are trusted to work with adolescents um domestic violence affects uh people in all

012aspects of life all ages all socioeconomic statuses all uh all parts of of of life and i think it's really important that we find some time to talk with our students about how to understand the um signs of emotional and psychological abuse that they can recognize it for themselves and that they can reach out for help that we educate our staff and our administrators on recognizing the signs of coercive control and intimate partner violence and that we provide resources to everybody that's involved in working with these young people so that they know where they can reach out for help we have tremendous resources in our community the family justice center is one there's domestic violence advocates that work throughout the court systems i recently founded a a non-profit organization and we work exclusively with victims

013of narcissistic abuse and domestic violence so i just want the community to know that there are many many resources available there are many people who are trained in this area who can come out and speak to our students myself included thank you thank you board member hope j next we have uh board member lou petrucci uh thank you very much president common i'll be brief i i don't want to detract from board member jay's powerful words uh i just wanted to offer my heartfelt condolences up to the johnson family and all those individuals including her fellow classmates teachers you know everyone that's been impacted by this uh terrible terrible crime uh again my heartfelt condolences thank you board member uh vice president lou petrucci next we have jennifer mccoozy board member from the west district

014again so it's not to be repetitive i just truly want to put forth you know my utmost condolences and also to state that there is much that we have a responsibility for in our communities and maybe breaking down the silos and really um bringing forth all of the resources available um we can maybe deter something like this from happening again to the families to the family of this young woman i my heart goes out to you and i i i really don't know what else to say i couldn't imagine how you're feeling or what else to say but just you know know that my heart is with you thank you board member makuuzi next we will have board member anne revere terrible tragedy and i want to offer my condolences to the family friends and

015community of miss johnson [Music] as a board member i agree with miss j that we need to work with our district colleagues in supporting and educating staff and students on intimate partner violence and i hope to be engaged in those efforts as well as the efforts that president cotman referenced in her remarks thank you board member anne revere next we've had board member larry scott i just i just want to send my my strength and love to the johnson family and friends of of miss johnson for this horrible tragedy this is hardest for them um i also want to recognize our crisis team the mental health professionals on the school school community mst um the students the staff the teachers there because this is also very hard for them hard for the helpers that are

016helping those that were close to miss johnson cope with this loss so sending love and strength to them as well thank you um let's see i think i've hit all board members if uh i have uh dr kathy evans brown thank you i just want to echo some of the sentiments um that was stated already we lost you you went back kathy you went on that yeah thank you must be a ghost but um i i want to offer my sentiments as well uh to the family um they're you know contrary to to to to what's been said this is prevent child abuse month and this was a child there's a parallel here i can't you know dismiss that domestic violence is real and you know we need to have culturally competent services service providers

017in the community that these young people can go to and feel that their information is going to be safe silence in this area is not an option um if you see something as a young person say something if it don't feel good when you're with a partner it is not good it's not it's probably not and so education is important when we talk about relationships um i think there's a tremendous pressure you know to keep these kind of matters private there's no privacy when it comes to being abused and so i think that you know moving forward we have to do more you know with these young people it starts young um in particular in the black community it is really prevalent and um it's always hidden under the carpet we gotta make it more

018prevalent because our young people are dying just like the older folks are so domestic violence is real again at my sentiments to the family and you have our support if you need anything let us know um i work in the community as well so i see domestic violence all the time and i do have some knowledge about um how how to um put educational programs together so thank you and god speak to you thank you all for that i thought it was very important that this board speaks out on that oftentimes these uh victims or the victim does not get a chance to have a voice from our community we are grieving to the loss of two lives in regards to this and that's how we feel and unfortunately it has happened and we we

019we grieve uh we grieve and it does not um it does not take one from the other we are sorry that this has happened one of the things that the conversation has been at the school about ideas that they can do and and then dr cash i'd like to talk about possibly moving this to throughout the district is to provide a uh something that has come up to be the lala chest that was her nickname or the hope chest where uh it would be painted purple there would be a box where children could put their concerns or names of uh students who they feel are in trouble and and that uh that would allow our support teams uh to have uh some uh knowledge about what's going on with some of the student bodies uh

020dr eberly and his staff i have to uh salute them they are very um very uh they're just a great group of people over there they're working to turn that school around and they have a lot of empathy and they are not allowing excuses uh uh such as a child being in poverty to be the lamp light for not uh children not being successful they have high standards and they're working these children so i think we've spent a portion of our board meeting but i thought that it was important that we speak out because uh both of these children were our children and um if we can get them through doctors cash if we can get them through school we certainly want to get them through life and so we want to uh talk more

021about what other resources we can provide i'd like to give a shout out to your staff members who were there you had your associate direct uh associate leader uh toya wilson in addition to that you had the principal for the bergaard who was supporting her student who is the sister of this uh charlene watson you had the peacekeepers there uh pastor giles you had mvp was there uh who was doing an initiative on violence in our community and i'm going to ask them to come forward soon to present it before the board and i'm sorry if i missed out any other names but we just had a family meeting there at mst in the snow today dr cash made me think of opening day in february so i just wanted i thought it was important

022that we send a a message out uh to these young people and that we and i want to talk more with staff about what we can do and bring it before the board how we can grow this initiative and make sure that this negative uh becomes a positive and that children and this never happens again so thank you for that so without any further ado dr cash i'd like for you to uh take over the meeting at this point and talk uh your superintendent's update okay colleagues thank you i wanted to commend you for that segment it was un uh planned but it was absolutely necessary and essential and timely so i'm so proud and pleased to see all of our board members so actively and willingly to to attack this uh insidious problem this

023is a problem that is not talked about as much as it needs to be and i see it as a opportunity an opportunity for strategic investment with our esser funds uh this this should go to the top of the class to the top of the list of the kinds of things when we talk about what our children's needs are short and long term uh the the kinds of things that they grapple with on a daily basis um pre-covet post covert during covet uh they just need a lot a lot of our support and love uh it's amazing frankly that so many of them are as resilient as they are but many of you have expertise i'm hearing that and uh you will you will see in these meetings that we're going to be having in

024the community over the next couple of weeks as well as the one on thursday that i'll mention in a moment all of this ties in all of this ties in when we talk about gun violence we talk about domestic violence i think relationship abuse is a very critical topic for our young people to talk about and our young people will talk about it if we give them a space a safe space to do it we're going to include that in our agenda going forward and president common i commend you for uh giving your colleagues a chance to talk about it in the public we will address this issue thank you okay colleagues we have dr dennis crowe with us um as he often comes when i ask him to i think we it's very important

025that he he'd be here tonight for a few minutes just to give him give us some some high level observations about what is going on and why we need to be where we are and hold the course uh because there is conflicting narratives going on out there right now and we're not going to be conflicted we're going to be clear so dr quo if you could share with us uh in your own good way like you always do we're so proud that you're on our on our board um as medical director let us know your observations and where we ought to be going because we are going into phase three on monday and uh bringing in a good number of more of students uh and how does that impact with with what's going on in

026the community right now okay uh hi uh hi everybody uh thank you dr cash thank you board members uh again a pleasure to be here um we are in an interesting phase because uh we want to as dr cash said i think it uh we can and should continue to move forward in the in the way that he has outlined um there has been some more updated information and guidelines that continue to evolve and that includes some updated and your state guidelines for operations of schools the government states that there is again multiple layers that have to be taken into account including distancing masking screening uh uh you know ventilation multiple layers that have to be included when you consider the safe operation to schools the guidelines from new york state specifically state that there

027has to be monitoring ongoing monitoring containment of potential transmission and both uh new york city and cdc guidelines also have different recommendations based on the prevalence of the disease in the community that threshold for the highest the highest uh prevalence category so like the the top category of the highest risk category what they consider the red zone is the number is 100 cases per 100 000 persons over a seven day period and uh that number the threshold for this for the red zone is 100. erie county's numbers over the last six weeks the lowest it's been which was in mid-march it was 169. last week it reached 371 and in this week it was reported at 359. so the biggest driver of risk in the school setting is actually community levels and so we have

028when the community levels are very high we have to make sure that our policies and our protocols are adhered to to make sure that we do have containment of any potential risk for transmission we are working very very closely with the erie county department of health they have been very good very fantastic partners we share data openly we do our own contact racing they do their own contact tracing we compare everything and our goal is to make sure that there is no transmission within the school setting to go a little bit deeper into the city of buffalo uh we have a major wave of covid right now in erie county we are in the area western new york is really the outlier right now in the entire state of western new york the cases are

029lower in the rest of the state it is the highest in western new york in the last couple of weeks the cases in the city of buffalo became the highest in the county it was not always the case but they are now currently the highest in the county and data that the erie county released yesterday it is important to recognize that as a few examples uh east buffalo uh one two one four two oh four remember that the threshold for the red zone is 100 cases per 100 000 per seven days the 14204 zip code was 851 over the last seven days uh one four two one five is 655. one four two one one is 681. so we are very very high levels within this within the city of buffalo in addition uh we

030know that the cases are skewing to a much younger population that includes not only your young adults and their children we think that we are very much under testing in children our test positivity rates we had utilized another statistic called the test positivity rates and the test positive rates are high that means either there's a lot of disease out there or you're under testing in which case you're underestimating how much disease is out there um the uh the test positive rates in children in erie county have been in the 10 to 15 range over the last several weeks in the adults they've been sitting in the three to six percent range so they are very very high in children right now which tells me that they are we are very much under counting what's out

031there in children it is true that most children do not get severely ill and we are continuing to see that most are not getting severely ill however when you have that much disease out there you will see sick kids and you will see sick adults and i think folks have seen in the news that the hospitals are at capacity again the icus are full uh children's hospital is actually quite busy right now and has been seeing a lot more kids than we saw in december so that is something that we need to keep in mind that our burden of disease is very high and even though we actually do have a fair number of individuals who are now vaccinated the disease burden is so high that we have to be very careful and vigilant and

032when we are opening schools now i am very glad to tell you that we are doing everything that the cdc guidelines are doing and more the distancing the masking the cleaning the ventilation like kind of the the gold star part is to do very close work with ecdoh and on-site testing for both screening and for testing when there are individuals that come down with symptoms we are actually not getting a whole lot of positives in those testings but we do offer it and we as we had mentioned in the previous meeting we have our own state issued limited site laboratory license which allows us to do our own testing along with the states to be able to first to do surveillance for what's going on in the schools we get reports every day of the

033number of cases of individuals who are affiliated with buffalo public schools students and staff and teachers we look at every single one of them we look and see if they are in the schools we look and see if they are out of the schools some of them are outside the schools and therefore do not contribute to in-school transmission some of them are into schools we looked at when they were last in the school we do contact tracing internally we have an incredible medical team that does that and we work with the erie county department of health who then looks at the outside the school contact tracing and then we come to a decision about what we need to do we have not found any evidence of in-school transmission of any of our schools despite the

034fact that our cases are six to eight times higher than the red zone transmission the red zone threshold and i think that is actually a remarkable achievement for the protocols that we are following and the adherence that we're seeing across across the um uh across all of the schools and i am comfortable continuing with the phase reopening that dr cash has outlined because of the very ability of us to test to trace to isolate to openly look at where the cases are and to be able to make sure that they are not in the schools or if they are in the schools that they are isolated quickly and that there is no evidence of in-school transmission because we can do that i am comfortable with continuing to reopen it has to be done carefully considering

035the burden of disease that is circulating right now now i do think that the cases will come down fairly soon we are seeing cases stabilized in the county we are seeing cases stabilize in the hospitals at a very high level so we are still at risk but we are still we are seeing it stabilize um i do want us to remember that it is a multi-layered process that there's so many factors that go into operating school safely but we also have to make sure that we offer a stable predictable nurturing experience for our children we have to make sure that they feel safe in the schools and as the rates continue to change we need to constantly readjust with the ability to test trace and isolate so the protocols will continue to change as more

036and more students are offered the opportunity to return we have the ability to keep this under control i'm very proud of our team so far i'm very pleased to tell you that so far we have managed to keep every disease to every case to a containment within the schools and that's our commitment um we will continue to evolve i'm happy to answer questions this has been fast moving uh and uh i will stop and see if there are comments or questions thank you dr quo as always um if we have board members that have questions uh you can ask those i would ask you dr crow as we bring in phase three uh students and and phase four two weeks after that i think we should take advantage of that site license to test and

037test more students in the coming weeks and more of our staff as we start to bring more into the school environment can we do that do we have the tests available to do that we do have to test and i have discussed that along with our uh with our team uh they are there they are available they are there for use if we see any hint that there might be a concern in the school um we know that uh there are different recommendations for example for the high schoolers uh for adults and staff because historically uh the uh uh as we know this the adults have been the ones that have been more at risk for more severe disease um and so it offers us another uh opportunity to make sure that we are not

038seeing spread in the community so yes we have uh we actually ordered more tests and received more tests than the initial allotment we got for phase one uh and the state has actually worked with us to make sure that we not only got our license quickly that we have been tracking and getting the delivery of the additional tests so that we can actually do what we what we need to do all right well thank you for that let's get ready though to test some more more more people so that we can hold the line and hopefully not have to disrupt uh classroom learning and school based learning by shutting down schools and closing down classrooms uh because that's what will happen if we don't stay vigilant to our state to our safety protocols so so

039as always thank you any questions from board members colleagues larry did you have a question yes uh thank you dr quo for breaking that all down for us so i i i hear you saying that erie county although we've plateaued the past few days it looks like or even have dropped some in some of our cases um that especially in the city of buffalo um we're seeing the highest amount of cases especially among younger kids um and we're well above that cdc threshold um i did i was on a meeting with my son school today and the principal indicated something very similar to what you've said that there's been cases in the school but because of the the mitigation protocols there has been no evidence of transmission um and so there's a as you know

040there's conversation there's changes with the three feet especially for the younger students elementary students um and i'm just wondering what your thoughts are for us to get to a place where we could start talking about bringing back more of our younger students potentially five days a week no thank you i know that's a pretty hot topic um i think the conversations uh should be there and i think the the part that uh should happen that we should think about is we need to be able to test trace and isolate and ensure when we are going to disrupt and we when we are not going to disruptively see cases as you noticed uh as you as you have been told there are cases in the schools they're just popping up and they're not spreading because of

041our protocols um one thing to consider is that um yeah the i think the biggest thing to consider is that this more than anything else is uh the importance of culture and the importance of adherence to protocols and you know i think it is no small feat that we have been able to uh continue with our phase reopenings without uh you know despite the fact that our case has skyrocketed over the last six weeks um one of our challenges is to make sure that we do keep up with the contract tracing and right now our contact tracing and the test tracing nicely right now when a case pops up in the scroll our goal is that when we know that but that policies are adhered to we we stop because there's no risk um when

042you change the flow in the density in the school along you know that calculus starts to change and that is what we need to consider when we have our discussion with our um you know with with our families uh with our teachers you know with our you know with with ourselves um and when the cases definitely start coming down i think that is the time to have that discussion i do think that we need to we can and should plan um and as dr cash mentioned we do have to test to be able to do surveillance when uh uh when that happens i think the the issue right now is that we're just seeing cases every day we're seeing multiple cases uh and we have to calculate are they are we exposing anybody in schools

043right now that the fall changer is now um you know when did the default answer becomes if the answer becomes yes then that's not the time to start to put more students in the schools when this case has become more isolated and we know it can test trace and isolate i think that's a time and i think that is a discussion there's not really a threshold but the guidelines also state clearly that this is a joint discussion between all members understanding that when we test trace and isolate we look at the safety of everyone involved along with the need to maintain our continuity because we don't want to disrupt learning we don't want to put anyone at risk at the same time um those are the factors we go in when we have that conversation

044so larry uh every two weeks we're going to be looking at this to see if we can bring for example are pre-catered to youngsters uh it's just a high high priority to try to get them into a five day a week um modality but right now and i've looked at this data with dr crow we are sky high with these cases uh particularly among 10 to 17 year olds which is which is just mind-boggling not not 10 to 7 to 17 year old and uh so when we start monday with the high school see we'll take a look at that see how that sits out and hopefully we got it we gotta i don't know i don't even know what's going on it's not all sports it's not all attributable for sports it's just some

045folks are tired of it i think i think some kids are saying i'm done with this and and meeting and you know gathering and going places and then uh it comes back home or it comes back into the school uh and what have you so so we just i want us to stay the course stay on the big five which is masks social distance six feet minimum make sure that you wash your hands warm water five times a day uh be courteous when you when you sneeze and sniff on people sniffle and then don't come to school sick see one of the things that people are doing they're going places knowing they have symptoms knowing they don't feel well and boom uh it it it spreads so not right now but we'll keep watching it

046every two weeks larry and board members to try to move toward a time when we when we can go that way for some populations of children but it just may not happen this year it may not happen this year thank you dr cashion and dr um so the potential is still there if things improve um but i just want to make one more comment especially since we have parents that are listening in parent leaders community leaders that are listening in i was in a meeting with dr williams regarding possibly the health and human services coming in to do some additional testing and one of the challenges we're seeing right now is that we're having difficulty with parents giving consent for their children to test and so i just want to encourage our parents to um

047provide that consent especially as we're returning more students because that's going to help us in assessing whether there is uh transmission and how much of that transmission exists or how many cases exist in our schools that's right yeah that was not as invasive dr paul if you could reiterate some parents are still thinking is that one that goes up into the brain and you know they're afraid of that and think it's too invasive this one their thing is not invasive but it's much more reliable can you comment on that dr paul uh yes i can um the test that we're looking at that we use is just in the nose up in the in the front and it doesn't go all the way into the back so it is something that is extremely safe to

048do our you know our nurses are trained to do it um and it is used for screening purposes um as i mentioned as i mentioned in past meetings it's it's used for surveillance and it's used to just get a sense of what's going on in the schools and uh board member larry i'm very very glad you mentioned that that is actually an active conversation piece within our medical team that the more families that are able to give us the opportunity to work with them to see what's going on in the schools that very much helps our ability to assess and move forward uh with changing and looking at the density of how many students are able to be in school that's actually a very very key piece of it because uh and that really is

049uh very much part of new york state and cdc guidelines that you have to be able to know where the disease is and know it's okay okay colleagues we have uh a number of speakers that are there uh but we are following the uh agenda so if there's nothing else for dr cole i'd like to let him go about his way and we go on with the rest of the board recognitions uh that are up next is that all right with everyone thank you dr cole yes dr cash we need to move forward thank you thank you dr quall we have some personal guests on here as well if i can see yeah i've got it taken care of all right colleagues we have uh under board recognitions next to recognitions or several recognitions that

050are coming to us this evening from the new york state school boards association uh so that we're delighted by uh the first item is certainly we want to acknowledge the extensive time and effort that board members are required to put in to continually expand their knowledge and skills for better board governance and as nys sba members on credits for participating in these training opportunities including the annual convention and the uh districts that they serve so we have two members that we want to congratulate and uh commend tonight uh first miss paulette woods uh she has participated in leadership development opportunities totaling 250 hours and that's that's a big deal and then jennifer mccosy participated in leadership development training totaling 75 points so thank you board members for continuing to improve your knowledge and skills that

051that ultimately benefits our young people so if all of us could give a round of applause to our colleagues that's really good um and mayor you can take that piece down edmure okay and paulette and jennifer i have your certificates so we will make sure that that fred or someone delivers those to you soon very soon okay congratulations all right now thank you mr paul longo with us i thought i saw him just a moment ago and he's in ny sfba new york school boards association member relations member relations manager and he's here to give us an award and i want to hear what he has to say and then i might have a concluding comment uh mr longo this is your time uh for us are you there can you hear me yes we

052can thank you for being here sir thank you so much and i i want to thank you all for having us on behalf of our president fred langstaff and our executive director uh bob schneider i'm here you can see dr cash was holding up a um a pdf uh that actually is representative of a banner uh that we have sent to your district and i just want to take a minute to explain what we're recognizing and the program that actually where we do the recognition so the program is called champions of change it was champions chains for kids we tried to open up more because with what we're looking for um i actually i had the opportunity um of january just before colgate have a fantastic meeting with dr cash and we're talking about the

053challenges and the successes at your district and we also have a a program called eclipse i'm sure most of you receive those and that's an aggregate site that takes media education related media from all over the state in some cases nationally for us to kind of recognize what's going on uh in the districts across the state we can all kind of read those articles and learn more about what's going on uh others have reached out to others since something has been out of district and you know said hey how did you go through that and it's kind of in this uh shared learning experience and so we look through those clips for positive things that are going on through the state and we developed a program we have awards and recognition committee actually the two

054members who just had those um those uh recognition that he just held up that's part of that committee and part of that program and we have another program that we created the champions of change for kids program and uh what we do is we actually look for initiatives in the district that are creating change for either the students uh the admin the staff and or the community and so we actually saw an article it was in the buffalo news it's from rod watson and he was talking about a program i believe it's through your office of culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives um yeah right office and and so we saw that you guys were inviting speakers uh some speakers from all over the country uh in this case specifically the author and speaker mr ibrahim

055kennedy and he spoke regarding anti-racism and from what we understand uh dr morel moderated an hour-long q a with mr kennedy on december 9th for 600 to 700 teachers administrators parents students school psychologists board members and other stakeholders and you know this past year has been a big push for uh dei diversity equity and inclusion and we know that this office is really working more specifically with equity and um so we saw this program we took it to the committee they loved it they thought it was the change that you were bringing through programs like this and not only you know doing it but also in such an uncertain year financially uncertain year that you continue to actually fund these programs you know there's a lot of districts had to make a lot of cuts

056and you know there's a lot of programs that were cancelled um so we didn't really have we saw very few programs before making it to the press and we saw this we just thought it was fantastic and so uh we actually mailed a banner to your district uh we apologize uh because the mail system really is not as reliable even fedex so you should be receiving that again i apologize for you not having it right now in hand but you will be getting that and so that reads champions of chains for kids and we're recognizing the buffalo city school district board of education uh for your anti-racist anti-racism initiative and we are so proud to have your members we're so proud of the great work you guys are doing and we just like to applaud

057you with this banner uh somewhere you can hang this you know to recognize the great work you're doing and if we could just give yourselves a round of applause very good and we look forward to seeing so much more from you guys i know there's a lot going on you guys are really leading from the front on this and i'm just very proud of the work you're doing thanks so much really appreciate it thank you could you take down okay thank you mr longo thank you so much that was uh just a joy to hear from the esteemed new york state school boys association and i know all of our board members are very very proud of that work i would like to segue and simply say that that work continues that work is going

058to happen 24 7. we have to sleep in shifts on this work because it's never done and our young people have to have to come up in a better world we can do better and we're certainly going to lead that charge so tomorrow mr longo uh under the leadership of dr fatima morell you know who's my captain on this work uh we're gonna have a we can't wait for justice town hall meeting that is going to be led by our scholars our young people are going to lead that conversation and we're very pleased that mayor brown uh crystal people stokes our majority leader uh in the state assembly uh chris and our president board president will be there to make some uh few remarks just a few at the beginning but then that time we

059want to reserve for our students and some of the topics that they'll be addressing you know we we don't play here we we don't play we get right into the meat into the gist of it and our students are becoming um more articulate and more confident leaders uh as we go i'm just so proud of what fatima is doing but look at the topic role of systemic racism and racial bias the impact of community gun violence on our youth there's too much gun violence going on but i think we can now add not necessarily tomorrow but in future town halls we're going to talk about you know relationship violence and abuse and so forth uh those are topics our students are ready to to grapple with but at the end it's a positive it always

060ties back to a positive where we want our leaders to become they we can't have a democratic society if we don't develop the voice of our young people about what's right amen right and wrong and so we're going to get them in this conversation uh dr morrell is gonna have us on fire as she likes to say and she says that the scholars are ready the scholars are ready so please join us tomorrow and we're gonna we're gonna you're gonna hear about this all the time and it's going more and more what the biggest impact is more and more being infused into our day-to-day curriculum see our everyday curriculum we call it our emancipation curriculum and it's good for all children not just black children brown children children of color it's good for all children

061to learn about all cultures and all journeys and stories that we have to offer it's not a subtract curriculum it's not a takeaway curriculum certainly not a council curriculum it's an additive curriculum and an embracing curriculum where we all learn and discover each other's story so very proud of the work and we are especially thankful and grateful to you for presenting us with this special award thank you thank you thanks for having really appreciate it again see you i'll just get you tomorrow i just have a few i'm gonna make this brief but it is substantive and it relates to the speakers so first thing i wanted you to know under my update tonight colleagues is that uh we have not only the town hall tomorrow that you should all have received some notification about

062it but but i've actually i've been putting our cabinet is actually right now as we speak going through five sessions two hours each of what we call equity literacy training institute for for education educators and this is the senior staff going to this so i sent you on email just a while ago uh some of the abilities knowledge and skills that we are reinforcing in that training this is being provided and presented by east ed uh elizabeth denvey and randolph carter are the uh consultants presented for us so good start off to the first session today and we'll continue because you can't really talk about it as sharon was saying earlier you got to be the change you see you got to feed the change we see otherwise we're just talking about so we're going

063to be about these these behaviors and these initiatives if you look closely at them they're absolutely on what we're talking about here so i'm very pleased with that number two uh we have a list of our summer program some of you asked well what will we be doing for our young people during the summer and if you look we've begun a fairly robust uh array of summer programs for our youth to catch up on their skills and help them go ahead in their skills and knowledge and enrich their knowledge and skill so they're different kind of camps and different kind of opportunities for different children uh we're even gonna have sports camps uh so that they can get this physical activity uh it's pretty it's pretty bad for our young people they haven't been getting

064out and they got to get out and get going again you know i was out running some of the kids the other day and that means you're in really really bad shape all right so um and then we're gonna work on a program i just want to allude to it because it's it's something that i think we might be on to something with the mayor the mayor and i will be sponsoring what we call a earn while you learn uh program awesome and colleagues there are some young people i'm not saying it's all the kids but there's a cohort of kids that they had kind of disengaged with us during the year and we've got to bring them back into into the fold so that they have a chance to graduate and so they'll have

065to get back on path to graduate and so we are talking about and setting the mayor very graciously said well why not as part of my summer youth program uh and you know they come to work but they come to work to do their work to do their school work see and they get paid for that uh while they while they do that and while they learn some soft skills and on-the-job uh skills as well so it's something we're exploring uh we tried some of this in memphis i didn't get it as deep as i wanted to because i left because you know the year after that uh but they are doing something like this in washington dc and uh we're going to tailor it to the needs of our children here in um buffalo

066i think it was lou petrucci who said you know a lot of our young people they need dollars they need dollars to support their families and to help their their their themselves to to get get food to take care of basic needs during during the summer and during the year so we're going to look at that that's on the deck that's on that the next issue colleagues an item i wanted to bring to your attention i i sent out a letter this afternoon uh president and copman and i talked uh at least once a week and she said you know let's get this out as wide as possible to invite uh people into the conversations about the use of this essr ess er money and funds so we're gonna we've started to sponsor a series

067of community meetings the first one will be april 29 from 4 to 6 p.m you see the letter that i've sent out to over a hundred of our local civic leaders from all different levels and walks of life here in buffalo and they're going to be invited to and join us they have been through that letter and invited to join us uh in the first meeting and in all of the subsequent meetings so we'll continue to to inform the public uh via a robust communication plan that miss cala is working on uh as we speak so i think that's good news is something that you had asked for and it's something that's required frankly and we'll be very innovative about making it an ongoing uh effort and different ways multiple ways for the community to

068give us feedback on on the investments that we need to make for our young people all right the testing is going okay colleagues as you know you can anticipate it's just a relatively small percentage of our students who are signing up and have signed up to take the ela section one and even smaller number for math uh is what i'm hearing from ebony of our osa but we'll give you a full uh number and percentage and break it out by race and gender and so forth by the end of this week and we'll send it out to you so you can see very specifically who took the test and who did not uh but we have offered it each day of this week all right we're ready to go uh for phase three on monday

069uh you've heard a little bit about it uh this evening uh the only sort of cross your fingers and toes is you know we gotta make sure that the the system holds for more kids coming on you gotta understand this is the year unlike any other when it comes to technology traffic technology highway traffic is more kids and staff have been on the technology highways than ever before and so when more come on and both at home and in school the system gets gets wobbly it it rattles and rolls a little bit and you may experience some outages we hope not but we have done remarkably well when you consider what's been going on across the country uh with the various vendors who provide that service to us uh so we'll stay tuned but we're

070ready to go uh otherwise on monday and then i don't think i have any more uh tonight colleagues to say but i would strongly urge you to have a committee meeting a workshop or work session on some of these issues that were raised tonight at the top of the meeting um it's very important that we not lose uh track of that issue uh for our young people and we will be there with staff to see how we can make sure it gets messed in with our uh overall curriculum work ms cotman i'll finish by saying you had talked about some lead ambassadors that were mental health ambassadors i think any time our students are trained to help other students that that really is positive and powerful and so even in the whole issue of relationships

071and seeing the signs and and knowing what to do if you're in an abusive relationship all that kind of training needs to happen with our young people as well so that they can help other young people see it because they talk about this stuff all the time on social media and i just think it could be a much more educated dialogue if there were some helpers and pavers in those conversations so that's where uh hope's ideas and conversation her training can be helpful and then we can get other community leaders to come and just support the overall work you know it's so important so so that that i hope is helpful to you colleagues thank you for your interest and your time uh i would only say that you do have the four-year financial plan

072on the agenda today it's important for you to get your questions and try to get that address today because we'll be out of time to get it approved by state law i just want to alert you that that is on the agenda uh today all right thank you president copman i'll turn it back to you thank you dr cash uh we're gonna move forward i want to say to our uh speakers we do um appreciate that you are here to uh be heard and the board is interested in hearing you however at this time the board welcomes 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

073to the public and televised locally attendees and viewers include persons from throughout western new york including children this board asked that speakers conduct themselves professionally and that their comments remain civil and courteous bear in mind that we will be heard by people of all ages this is an opportunity for buffalo's residents to address the buffalo board of education about issues that serve the public interest and district's mission and the board asked that speakers demonstrate appropriate decorum thank you for joining us with that said our first speaker this evening is louis d'angelo i have citizen common hope buffalo public schools comprehensive sexual health wellness policy mr uh deangelo are you there thank you miss cotman thank you sir hello and uh just thank you all for the time today to discuss how our partnership between hope

074buffalo which i am the project manager of and the buffalo public schools can be leveraged to support equitable implementation of the buffalo public school board approved wellness policy which provides a map to supporting our youth in our schools with the knowledge skills and behaviors that they need to achieve optimal health including some of those skills that we've been talking about or you all have been talking about around healthy relationships and skill building so over the past five years we've invested over a quarter of a million dollars into the buffalo public school district uh to support implementation of these evidence-based programs that the hope buffalo collective supports including reducing the risk and be probably responsible that does not include the funds that we've set aside and supported community partners including peer educators and community health workers

075delivering these programs in your buffalo public school health courses we've reached over 5 500 students over the last five years and this year we are set to reach 2779 students this year with these evidence-based programs this past school year we also purchased 65 digital three-year remote bundle accesses for access licenses for our buffalo public school health teachers as they transition to remote and hybrid learning and these are important because we know that the youth behavior youth risk behavior survey that the buffalo public school collects from their youth shows that these programs are effective in reducing our risky behaviors around among students specifically when students were exposed to this program these programs and comprehensive sexual health education we saw decreases in premature sex unprotected sex and increases in things like economy and healthy uh relationship skills

076uh right now we're seeing a rise in stds across buffalo and erie county and uh we just are really calling for your support today and we really need your support to equitably implement your award-winning wellness policy health is academic in our schools and i'm going to ask you to leverage the resources that hope buffalo is offering you all to ensure that our youth parents schools and communities are achieving optimal health including some of those things again that we talked about and allowing us to be the change thank you thank you uh hope buffalo is that the um organization that uh stan martin is a part of yes ma'am stan is my director and i know you've been a champion for hope buffalo uh previously and we appreciate it and i also want to recognize uh

077all the hard work that dr tanja williams and my win from the department of social emotional and wellness support have uh given us along with sue baldwin director of health and physical education okay thank you i just wanted to make clear because there's several hope programs out there just wanted to make sure we're good thank you very much we appreciate that um uh next speaker is uh mr sam radford cao we the parents and a parent concerned with the cultural mou district-wide number 59. mr radford yes i'm here good evening uh war president common how are you today good morning good evening sir uh thank you so much for remember first of all i want to uh join with you and offer my condolences to the johnson family um you know and you know as

078you know i lost a granddaughter uh who was also a student at mst um so i'm particularly sensitive to when we have to bury our children children we shouldn't be children should bury shouldn't vary um parents are very children and children from very parents and so um so i also want to thank dr tantra williams who called me twice a day in relationship to uh some of the issues that i was concerned about or we were concerned about uh and i heard in dr cash's comments some of them being responded to so i'm gonna i have three concrete questions i want to ask the board to consider uh in my two minutes left um the first one is the um if the board would consider a resolution on school zone cameras um the buffalo common

079council has already passed a resolution um calling for the ending of the school zone camera program um by a 63 vote i'm active the board of education joined them as you know buffalo is the third poorest of the united states of america uh the second highest child poverty rate and to have a school zone camera program that takes money out of the pockets of people in our community and sends it over to people in switzerland um you know just seems like to me uh not the most effective way to address school safety um if we screws on cameras don't stop people from speeding but a speed bump would and it don't cost the people in our community in the poor communities we have 20 schools that have them in front of them we don't even

080have them in front of our school and a high concentration of them are in our poorest neighborhoods we just feel like this is an inequitable unfair program and we asked the board to consider a resolution to um to call for the end of the school zone program the next one is the public school um as it relates to the closing of enterprise and um westminster charter school our question is that because 25 of the buffalo public schools are performed lower than uh in math and reading than enterprise and uh westminster will we we would like to know if there will be a guarantee that any child that is has to leave um one of those charter schools or enterprise in this particular case would it be a guarantee that they will have a right to

081be transferred to a school in good standing and not be transferred from one low performance school to another low performing school um as it relates to westminster we would like to know because this was the anchor screw for the uh promised neighborhood what is the impact since we spent tens of millions of dollars in the promised neighborhood what is the impact on the buffalo promise neighborhood program by the closing of uh westminster school um we also would like to talk a little bit about the trans the open transparent processes relate to the arp funding but i did get a letter today at 447 that i haven't had a chance to read that kind of begins to address some of the issues that we have um but lou petrucci you will remember the last time we

082you were on the board the last time we got this funding um we had some real concerns about how that money was spent the top funding that was that came in and so we would like to know for sure that parents will be listened to they will be what they have to say will be taken into consideration um there are two more things i have to say but time is running out so if i can get an answer to those questions uh that will be a good start thank you board members you have a blessed night thank you mr uh any responses will be done to any uh uh speaker tonight at the end of the speaker agenda alison giomando teacher westminster community charter school yes we can hear you thank you board member president

083cotman hello superintendent cash board members and members of the community who are listening this evening my intention tonight is to speak on the behalf of westminster community charter school but before i start i'd also like to give my condolences to the johnson family and my thoughts and prayers are with all of those who are affected by this tragedy in regard to wccs i firmly believe it is safe to say that a global pandemic can and has been an absolute unforeseen uproar in our school communities given recent circumstances with our school in addition to a pandemic our students and their families need more support now than ever before i'm reaching out to you our school community and i'm asking you to help our scholars and families by listening to their concerns and giving them feedback when

084it comes to what may the only if what may be the only consistent and positive component of their everyday life meaning their educational environment westminster prides itself on its close-knit community collaborative work positive and nourishing learning environment and most of all going above and beyond for our kiddos to ensure success that is not only academically based but with each child in mind looking at the whole person model using evidence-based practices earlier in this meeting during opening messages it was stated that as a district it is our goal to get our scholars college and career ready and this is exactly what wccs does on a daily basis i want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak of the concerns that many have in our community and please have an open mind when it

085comes to considering the issue thank you for letting me speak have a blessed night thank you we appreciate your comments next speaker is chandra fisher parent in regards to reopening is chandra fisher available we will come back at the end of the meeting at the end of the list of speakers to just revisit to see if she has returned natalie tan parent school reopening are you there can you hear me yes we can thank you thank you good evening superintendent and board members my name is natalie tan i'm a buffalo public school district parent of a third grader and an eighth grader i'm a strong advocate for public education i do love the city but i'm losing my patience at this point and i'm very close to moving to the suburbs um dr cash you

086you very correctly asked this question um in this meeting what are our children's needs and i'll tell you what our children's needs are at least for my children which is to support a five-day in-person option as soon as possible and put all resources to committing to a full reopening option in the fall for all children and at the same time you should allow individual schools to reach out to every parent in their schools to determine their needs and co-develop reopening plans so i'm just going to tell you a little bit about this year it's been completely soul-crushing for us as a family for my children in terms of experience with remote learning my children are completely drained by this remote learning experience and i'll just give you very briefly an ex example from today my

087son's um ela class 30 minutes he's he he gets kicked out of teams six times in 30 minutes how can he learn is my question and hybrid learning is also ineffective because how can a teacher teach in person and as well supervise the other kids in class so in my opinion it's just an absolute failure by educational standpoint absolutely cannot see moving on to the second year um you know considering that other children have been in school since september of last year so i i have to say i absolutely cannot see it moving on to the second year so i would like bps to put all resources to committing to a full reopening option in the fall and i'm telling you that i i'm exhausted as a full-time working parent um so exhausted because i

088have to fill all the learning gaps of remote learning i am a eighth grade math tutor for my eighth grader i'm a third grade tutor i i supervise i make sure my my children are at their computers they're loot they're losing it they can't do it anymore so i'd just like to let you know that um as dr dennis quotes that there's no evidence of school to school transmission for us as parents and my husband and i are fully vaccinated the benefits of sending our kids back to school greatly outweigh the risk there's a societal acceptance of risk including motor vehicles motor vehicles are the leading cause of death for children 5 000 children per year die of from car crashes um we acknowledge the risk in sending our kids back but i have to

089stress that the benefits greatly outweigh the risk so the recap is for this school district you should commit to a full reopening option by the fall so i'm just going to finish up with my son's quote yes thank you i'll just finish up thank you um the fifth day of in-person learning for my son after one year which is on monday he told me this he said mom today is such a good day for me everything went well in school i had so much fun i am so happy thank you very much thank you we appreciate your comments next speaker is jamie torres parent enterprise charter school is jamie perez here jamie once twice three times next speaker is wendy mastrata i'm sorry wendy nick again mrs cottman if we can again remind everyone to

090please if you are not speaking or please mute your cell phone um so please do those actions so we can hear every speaker without feedback will allow you the same courtesy thank you very much thank you dr brown hall uh dr mastrada are you there good evening everyone uh this month i wanted to use my my three minutes to share why i speak at board meetings um i have two principal reasons first it's simply my right to speak before my elected representation for my school district 13 years ago this month i made the decision to enroll my children in international school number 45. in a very real way i hired the bps to educate my children and i have always believed in the right for high quality public education for all students but i do

091not believe that a public school system has a right to like my voice and i have been committed to using my personal and professional knowledge in support of our school community you all know that during these last 13 years i have participated on dozens of school district and community committees by my rough estimate i have volunteered more than 10 000 hours of my time and if i haven't always expressed my appreciation for the work being done by our staff that wasn't intentional there are just too many people to acknowledge but this secondly does not negate the fact that it's also my duty to speak the bylaws of the dpcc stipulate that in my role as president i am our official spokesperson therefore i also feel an obligation to share thoughts and concerns from our parents

092audience and caregivers with the decision makers of our school system it is true that many of our issues may be addressed by district or school staff indeed that is why i have spent so so many hours meaningfully engaged in meetings again i value those collaborative meetings up until two years ago we were also invited to monthly meetings personally excuse me um i'm sorry whoever is on the call and does not have their phone muted this is the last time that we can uh hold up a meeting for you we will have the cause uh muted by our administrator please allow this lady the time to talk thank you i'm sorry dr mistrada that's okay thank you poor president go ahead [Music] okay up until two years ago we were also invited to monthly meetings with

093our superintendents where we could personally collaborate on behalf of our parent leadership sadly this is no longer the case although we know that kreiner meets in person regularly with his cabinet the school board the unions the mayor and community partners such as say yes the largest of the stakeholder groups parents are no longer regularly seated at the table with him i remain committed to the belief that parents who wish to do so have a right to participate in shared decision making and it was lloyd hargrave who impressed upon me that every time we're not at the table when decisions are being made about us we are being placed in the position of reacting this has set up an offense versus defense narrative that is not in anyone's best interest therefore every month that we do

094not have a meeting with him and when my schedule permits i will continue to use my three minutes to share our concerns here and i have many concerns but i have only time for one more tonight one request tonight may i please have a definitive response to my request from september 24th for a presentation and q a with our chief financial officer at a monthly dpc meeting although we've been very fortunate to have other knowledgeable people join us with budget related presentations we know that there are some questions only our cfo can answer for parent leadership that are very critical to our families thank you as always for your time and attention and have a good evening thank you dr mistrada and thank you for your commitment to our district next speaker is tamika johnson

095enterprise charter school parent is tamika johnson there okay we will revisit that next name is elizabeth haas parent enterprise charter school is elizabeth good evening to everyone um i am just reaching out as a parent um i have a child who is in second grade and a child who is in fifth grade um i give several props and kudos to enterprise my children have done amazing with the remote learning my children's grades have rocketed out of this world um my fifth grader um she's struggled a little education wise and she's very ambitious and i've tried with the buffalo public to get her an iep but they won't consider her because of how hard she's worked the enterprise teachers have gone above and beyond to help her um i myself teach preschool so i'm a very

096active parent in my children's education and i feel that if we can come together as a community and a school and we try and strive harder to get more parent involvement i feel that can too help the school testing and other things that people look for in a child's education what happens inside of the classroom needs to happen at home as well and i'm just my children love the school i love the school and i just appreciate all the hard work everyone's taking to try and figure it out i don't thank you for hearing me thank you mrs haas uh the superintendent will have a comment at the end of your at the end of the speaker's list moving forward erica smith parent enterprise charter school the evening board and um i would like to

097give my condolences to the family of the lady who was killed tragically uh my heart's prayers goes out to her um i'm calling because my daughter charlie german is a fourth grader enterprise charter school she's been going there since we got hurt and the staffs the teachers we have a close-knit relationship my daughter has learned so much as far as uh academics um culturally they're always doing programs to uh bring cultures together um to my understanding the test scores have raised since uh the last time i'm just very concerned about if this happens which i hope it don't closing what would happen with our children thank you oh thank you uh mrs uh smith uh uh all right our next speaker is favors amari parents enterprise charter school is favors amari parent for enterprise charter

098there okay moving forward lisa godwin teacher esser federal funding number 97 and at number 43 is lisa gottlin here here okay next catrice sweat parent enterprise charter school i'm sorry lisa got one hand raised okay are you there unmute oh she's not able to unmute um [Music] add me or if she is she muted by the host edmure can you check no she's not she's actually muted herself thank you edmure miss godwin so we have not muted you ms godwin um you're pressing the microphone button all right you may need to log out and log back in and we'll come back to you okay is that okay president cottman absolutely and if you like you can give her the call-in number as well we will come back to you okay thank you but we are

099going to move forward and we will come back next speaker is catrice sweat parent enterprise charter school is a catrice sweat available okay no okay next speaker uh yo yola monica stockton that's okay yola monica stockton i'm here um thank you thank you for giving me the chance to speak and thank you for all your work and your commitment to the cause of social justice and i i'd like to express that i share your grief for the loss of this child linisha johnson and that she will be in her family is in my thoughts um so i am an assistant professor of photography at buffalo state and i'm here to today to speak to you about reopening so as a professor last fall i faced the usual challenges of online learning my students struggled they

100failed to answer questions and to turn in their assignments and they kept their webcams off and when they did turn them on i often found them in bed or in cramped noisy spaces they might not rather let others see and while i was teaching remotely and my partner was working also from home our third grader with a vps student leopold stockton was in his room attending um homestead 64. and please notice that i have to bend common language to say that attending school you know from his room and how was he doing he was failing to turn in assignments he was keeping his camera off he was reclining in bed he was failing to answer questions just like my students college students and even unlike them he was taking breaks to serve toy websites for

101a hit of relief so from a bright curious and engaged child he faded into the distance part of distance learning and dr cash you spoke about how during the past year some students have become disengaged and i'd ask you to consider how does how does remote learning work so the teacher's face appears as the size of a postage stamp the voice is tinny the keyboard fails and the child must tap with two fingers on the screen to write something instead of practicing uh skills of writing a worksheet which might take minutes by pencil becomes an odyssey communication with other children is forbidden messaging is turned off everything is disembodied and abstract and nothing seems to function a child sits alone with a hot plastic rectangle in his lap instead of in a schoolhouse instead of

102with trained adult professionals instead of as part of a community and it was aware are the relationships with educators and peers and the shared responsibility that true learning requires what was once the great civic promise of public education is instead outsourced to a slew of app developers now we require an advanced degree in computing and a vigilant trained and available parent the parent must play the role of a teacher i.t support food delivery worker cafeteria staff custodial staff and mental health counselor most importantly this while fighting for her own job if lucky enough to have one because the parents productivity is down and the wolves are at the door as the fangs of our social inequality so if you'll just give me a minute to finish up i know i'm out of time i would

103ask you to think think about this two-thirds of buffalo households are headed by a single parent and this is in the city where the median household income is under 32 000 how can vulnerable parents often paradoxically deemed essential workers provide for their families and fill the educational vacancy left by our public institutions so my last point is to say that during this experience my son has acquired a new vocabulary he now knows the words depression futility hopelessness and most alarmingly suicide we can hardly get him out of bed in the morning and so with all our relative privilege we are not immune to the ravages of the closure of the institution to which we have entrusted his care and last point last point um that i practice okay i i am now teaching in person

104and i would advocate that um for real full reopening for our schools for the children who need it most thank you thank you so i want to go back is lisa goodwin on teacher okay if not thank you very much uh mr yeah seander so can you hear me now yes we can okay good evening i'm here tonight as a parent and a physician because i believe that all children deserve the opportunity to be in school five days per week and that available data support this it has been 404 days since my daughter attended school in person my son takes his computer and sits in a classroom where his teacher has the impossible task of teaching in-person and remote students at the same time not enough is said about the risks of not offering in-person

105school depression anxiety eating disorders sleep disturbance loneliness learning loss food insecurity are all on the rise currently health officials cite high rates of coven 19 and children as a cause for concern regarding school reopening as long as community transmission remains high children will continue to be at risk for contracting covid it has been shown however that schools are not a major source of spread studies worldwide and across the united states and examples of schools in our own community have continued to show that school-based transmission is low when proper precautions are taken opening schools is not without risk but we now know how to mitigate those risks the cdc in march provided a roadmap for schools on how to reopen harvard school of public health has provided detailed information about making buildings safer simple low-cost interventions

106like opening windows and portable hepa filters significantly improve air flow and reduce the risk of viral transmission despite evidence-based recommendations by the cdc and american academy of pediatrics supporting three feet of distance this board and superintendent refuses to space children any closer than six feet fully masked in classrooms what expertise does this board have that the cdc and aap lack this is the same board that allows high-risk sports to go on during a time of high community transmission yet withheld low-risk sports at a time when transmission was low currently it's high covered rates keeping kids out of classrooms but what was the reason for the switch to full remote just weeks before the start of the school year when rates were low when is the medical director whose guidance affects all of our children going

107to be made available to answer specific questions on the merits of these policies the time is now to start preparing for full in-person return to school as soon as possible some parents will not want their children to return to school and a remote option may be needed for some time to come but we need to show them that school can be done safely we have to contradict the misinformation and disinformation and make decisions based on the facts and evidence we have to weigh the risks and benefits of not returning to school not just state of course what case level is acceptable to you what level of vaccinations what goal posts are you waiting to reach before you reopen schools what if we never reach them i am here to tell you that there is another

108way to do this in a community of physicians willing to help thank you thank you miss uh fisher uh i have also a lisa uh gottlin yes can you hear me now yes you can oh fantastic sorry i teach through teams all day and don't have problems but um first of all i would like to offer my condolences to the johnson and mst families i also feel as though we need to rejoice uh from yesterday's verdict because yesterday's justice was served and now it seems as though we have a starting point on helping our buffalo community good evening dr cash and board members my name is lisa godwin and i've taught music for the buffalo schools for 18 years as an instrumental music teacher this year has been extremely challenging as it has been for

109most people to make things more normal next year i have found funding through esser funds that would be able to purchase ppe that we will be needing in our instrumental music programs we need these materials to explode in a more positive way sr funds are from the cares act for march 2020 the crrsa of december 2020 the arp of march 2021 it's not from the budget or from title four funding new york state was given over one billion dollars in s for funding to qualify the materials must ensure the student safe and safety and health give resources to address the need of individual schools and develop and implement plans for the next school year i personally teach at schools 43 and 97 those are the two schools that i'm hoping to get assistance with attaining

110the sr funding the cdc national association for music education and national federation of high schools recommend the use of players masks 30 minute practice time followed by at least one air exchange along with new york state recommended recommending 12 foot spacing for instrumental music students we are doing that at school heart at um harvey austin 97 we began last week we brought back 20 students in person playing their instruments it was amazing i actually began crying and so did some of my students we have found ways to make this work we need materials for next school year so that we can make sure that all of the students can the two buildings i service have 182 instruments available i broke down the materials that we would need through esser funding the ppe that we would

111need and it would cost just under two thousand dollars i have it all um typed up and i can send that to the board members all i'm asking for at this moment is help in getting the sr funding because everything i've read up on says that the district has to approach the state to get it i would also like to add that our students need and deserve more instrumental music teachers and more full-time instrumental music positions many of our students crave involvement in the arts which contributes to the whole child after 18 years in this district i love my students more than i can express in words i i feel so passionate to see these children that need more and we have the ability we just need the ppe to make it safe for everyone

112and as a parent who also has a child playing instrumental music she's been able to some suburbs can't many schools can't we have these abilities please help us do it thank you very much teacher goodman moving forward our next speaker is jessica bauer walker voices of mothers president kaplan good evening good evening tonight i will be reading a letter with several other mothers written by a group of mothers and sent to district leadership on monday and which we have not received an acknowledgement of we are reading the letter this evening to ensure that it is heard and submitting it to the public record as part of tonight's meeting i also want to send my condolences to lorena johnson and her family dear superintendent cash and board president belton cotman we hope you all district staff

113board of education members and your families are safe and healthy at this time we are reaching out as an interracial intergenerational multicultural group of mothers and women caregivers who also serve as parent and community leaders and professionals and provide direct care service and support to families in the fields of health education human services child care and housing we want to express our appreciation for all the good work the buffalo public schools has engaged in over the past year to support public education public health and basic needs of families during the pandemics of coca-19 and systemic racism we acknowledge we have all been working in unprecedented times and under very difficult and stressful circumstances we also know through our personal and professional experience that there are significant gaps to be addressed and that it is only

114through robust collaboration between the district families and the wider community that we will be able to ensure that each and every child and family is healthy safe and supported in school and in life we believe in the power of bps and public education to be transformative and to provide our children with the knowledge and skills they need to create an equitable just and healthy buffalo and world we cannot achieve these aspirations without discussing the historical systemic and present day challenges that we and our children are facing at the time of this letter only seven thousand of thirty two thousand bps students are receiving any in-person instruction over a year into the coven 19 pandemic there is limited data related to student engagement and outcomes and whether any measures eps has put in place has mitigated

115the educational inequities experienced by the most vulnerable students and families child adolescent and parent mental and physical health have shown troubling trends over the past year as well confirmed by the cdc and a recent study there is no current bps data in this regard publicly available the most recent youth behavior survey data on the district website is from 2017-2018 we share the following in the spirit of representing our lived reality amplifying the voices of mothers parents and caregivers and asking for understanding in action by the district on behalf of students and families thank you thank you jessica bower walker next khadijah hassan parent caregiver both voices of mothers jimmy yes we can good evening before i begin i would also just like to give my condolences to the jackson family and also the family of

116mst um the next thing that we have on our letter is recognized parent and caregivers are under persistent acute and chronic stress parent caregivers has been asked to take on so much work on educating and supporting our children this year often in isolation and without adequate support significant gender and racial and social economic disparities are impacting bps families the majority of which are also i'm sorry the majority of which are run by female head of household in a bishop that is over 80 percent black in genetics and people of color no also known as high fat women have been disproportionately impacted by the 19 pandemic leaving the workforce at a rate four times higher than men black and latinx women have unemployment rate doubled of their white counterparts parents and caregivers who have maintained employment

117are carrying an enormous workload between their paid jobs and parenting with women and mothers providing unseen and undervalued physical and emotional labor many of us have also experienced sickness death violence and loss in our families and community the racial social and political strife over the past year has been acute and traumatizing particularly for black families first and foremost we must understand and work to support the extreme challenges that parents and caregivers have been facing over a year my next thing is developing an integrated approach for equity in all policies practice programs a comprehensive approach that addresses uh academic social emotional and health and health needs of students and families is critical at this time bps has historical history and present day challenges related to educational equity based on race social economics and concerning special populations

118students with disabilities english language learners families experiencing homelessness violence and abuse youth and detention and etc these have been excavated by the pandemic of copenhagen and systemic racism students and families with adequate and social and economic support have fared substantially better than those who do not the education trust new york has extensive research and recommendations related to equity that highlights these issues building on the good work that has begun under the department for cultural and linguistic response initiative it is critical that families represented a full range of cultural communities in the district are engaged to identify federal equity challenges and co-create an equity equity task force and plan muslim students and families have considered continuously advocated for increased understanding and support of ramadan and eat for years with little progress appropriate funding and clear transparent

119outcome indicators are essential to ensure progress american rescue plan stimulus fund coming to bps the city of buffalo and erie county must support educational health racial and social equity for children and families with those impacted by disparities students and parents and caregivers engage in this process thank you very much ms hassan next vanetta rolls concern citizen parent mom's letter to i'm bps to pick up where uh sister khadijah left off and ensure the health safety and well-being of every student and family covet 19 has increased inequity related to nutrition safe and affordable housing health care child care and internet access significant increases and rate of depression and anxiety abuse gun violence and pediatric injuries illustrate the impact of these factors on well-being while bps has worked to put supports in place to help meet basic

120needs many of these programs are underutilized through the accessibility and only provided in english and or online transportation barriers service provided during house uh hours parents are working in supervising children at home and through a fragmented system between district departments and lack of coordination with community-based resources now more than ever we need to align public health and public education and work through the research-based whole school whole community hold child model in the district wellness policy recognizing the district cannot do this alone we must create strong partnerships with community-based coalitions and networks that support the current and emerging needs of buffalo families related to basic needs and overall health and well-being children need consistent care and education support before and after traditional school hours financial support and auxiliary education staff should be provided at local child

121care sites who consistently maintain these children and their families for access to safe quality and reliable care education and communal relationships the department of social emotional and wellness supports should be appropriately resourced to have the capacity to implement the district wellness policy and the currently vacant district wellness coordinator position should be filled the code of conduct in its addendum should also be reviewed revised implemented inclusive of restorative justice and in partnership with families and community rebuild relationships through trauma informed culturally responsive communication and collaboration we are concerned that the decisions that have significant impact on our children and families are being made about us without us lacking critical context of their lives and experience of students and families and formal and formal uh structures can build positive mutually beneficial relationships where parents caregivers feel valued

122respected and part of decision making this issue brief engaging parents and families to support the recovery of districts and schools help guidance give guidance in this regard bps specific policies practices and programs that that can be facilitated uh uh this process include a district-wide communication plan to support consistent clear and timely two-way communication regular meetings between superintendent board of education and parents to assess the needs of families and respond to those in partnership with families themselves district and school implementation of restoration justice i'll finish the sentence with fidelity to repair harm and promote positive relationships and you all have the rest of the letter that is sent to you already we await a response thank you very much thank you very much uh vanetta rose next we have marlon capron hi hello marlene i'm sorry

123you got it hi i wanted to start off by saying that i'm really sorry to hear about the heartbreaking and tragic death in the school community my thoughts and prayers are with ms johnson's family and friends thank you board members for the opportunity to speak this evening our family has recently relocated to buffalo and we're looking at options for our two children for school for next year we applied to have them take the test for the olmstead and city honors programs my son was able to sit for the test last saturday however my daughter's application was denied the reason i was given is that admissions was unable to verify our address and this is not true as we provided the two proofs of buffalo residency along with a letter from my daughter's current where she

124currently attends which is not a buffalo public school our address buffalo address was verified in writing and verbally by her current school i asked to see the written policy that states why my daughter's been denied especially baffling as my son was able to take the test i've not received a response to that email isis i suspect this is because no policy exists many of the board members on this call were cc'd on that email which was sent of monday of this week and i haven't received a response yet i'm a tax paying resident of buffalo and we're looking at all opportunities available to us public schools and charter schools alike tonight i'm here requesting for the opportunity for my daughter to take the test just as my son was able i'm not asking for anything

125to be given to her simply the opportunity i've spoken to a few of you on this call who are shocked and confused as to why one sibling could take the test while another one couldn't so i have faith that you'll publicly support me here as time is of the essence as you know the last test for um incoming seventh graders is this coming saturday so i'm looking to receive a confirmation that my daughter elliot can sit for the test as soon as possible thank you thank you very much i appreciate your comment uh solomon myrie senior grandparent role modeling for our children mr myrie are you still online mr marie once twice three times i'm gonna go back over this list catrice sweat parent are you online okay also um tamika johnson okay with that

126said uh that ends our comments from our speakers dr cash response to the speakers from the superintendent item number five it's dr cash there mayor could you take that clock away thank you yeah colleagues i think i'll look at this as global uh this evening there are 20 speakers i see some groupings here that we need to respond to certainly the charter school community the westminster and the enterprise community you should be assured that we're working uh and have begun to reach out with the administrative teams of those two schools with the board presidents of those two schools a letter has been written and sent from uh the superintendent and the board president of the buffalo public schools out to those respective communities and we expect to begin a very uh constructive uh positive uh

127transition for both schools we have a plan in mind that's been designed and we have some of our top staff that have been signed by me to work closely with those teams we would like to hear from the enterprise community as soon as possible and we are waiting uh to do so on the issue of uh school reopening a number of parents talked about talked about that um and talking about the needs that or really the trauma that they've been going through this year the travails the stress and i would say to you colleagues that um all of us have been touched and traumatized by the events of this past year um i'm i'm getting to be older now and uh in our wisdom years our grandparent years and i have never lived and i've

128never even heard of a year like the one that we were trying to navigate through as individuals and families let alone as large school systems we have largely been left to our own device on how to navigate uh through this year uh the policies have shifted uh weekly uh there have been far too much politics injected into the decisions about whether to return to school or not and at the end of the day this will be a year that we all uh hopefully will understand that we we did our best we did our best to save lives we did our best to protect our children and our families and i have uh arguably one of the most difficult jobs in the in america today to make sure that we do not lose any of our

129children there's been over three million deaths uh to this to this pandemic and i never wanted to lose one staff member i never wanted to lose one child there's been hundreds of thousands there have been a high number of deaths much more than a few or just several there have been a lot of children that have died from this and there have been a lot of children that have been suff that are still suffering long-term effects from being sick from coving and i wonder if that ever happens to any child what the conversation would be if i had been reckless in my decision making about this we're going to make it a priority to recoup the psychosocial effects of this on our children the mental health effects of this on our children but we have

130to bear in and had to work to be supportive of it uh as we've gone through this there just is no easy simple answer uh to all of this so i don't want to make it a contentious issue because i do have extraordinary faith in our staff they have been superb our teachers have been our principals have been all of our staff have been and our cabinet leaders in these areas that you are alluding to so when we talk about mental health supports psychosocial supports and the needs of families you're correct parents when you cite some of the statistics and some of the disproportional impact on communities of color we understand that i know those statistics we live those statistics i've lost several family members to this uh pernicious disease and so i don't want

131uh us to to forget any of that in the trauma that we all have suffered and so we're going to make it a priority in our funds and in our strategic investments as we go forward there's no question about it um and we're going to do it with your with your input and with your partnership you can be assured of that uh so i'm excited about the next phase i want this this phase to get past uh as soon as we can as soon as we can all get vaccinated as soon as children can begin to get vaccinated but there still are too far too many that aren't and in our zip codes in the buffalo public schools particularly for children and families of color the numbers are sky high you heard that today they

132are sky high and a report just came out refuting on a scientific basis we haven't been in this disease in this disease long enough to have a whole lot of scientific knowledge about it it just hasn't been long enough so today for example this report just came out uh on abc that there is more transmission than we thought that can occur in schools through children just came out today and you will continue to see those kinds of evolving studies i don't want to argue with you about statistics about what people say where things are safe just make sure you keep your child safe you keep your child safe and then what we will do when we open schools at the process and level that we're going to open schools we will do our best to

133keep the children and the staff safe that's my commitment and in terms of education our children are resilient they are resourceful and they will catch up they will get back on on track um i have been in this work long enough to know what our young people can do with just a little support a little help so you do your part as a parent and we're going to do our part as a school system and together together we will get our children to wherever they need to be so that's that's where i'm gonna uh end my comments tonight president cotman and uh i thank all of the speakers for for coming down and sharing with us this evening thank you dr cash uh there were three questions that a speaker uh placed before the board

134my my recommendation in regards to those three questions it's for the board to move them over into committee uh one of them was about school zone cameras one was about um that uh uh in a comparison and in that inadequate an adequate comparison of buffalo public schools to charter schools our schools reflect all children okay they do they do not they they do not reflect uh portions of children so when you start comparing buffalo public schools make sure you have your stats correct in addition to that when you are conversating about buffalo public schools make sure that you uh differentiate if you are talking about buffalo public schools versus buffalo public schools and charter schools i would appreciate that so what we'll do uh in regards to that is move that into our um committees

135it is a conversation already that the board will need to have in regards to the schools on cameras uh and what's going on with the common council and we will further talk about that in the near future in regards to uh charter school students we will respectfully treat all students equitably and fair and that's how we roll okay uh and i need to go on record one more time to say because the uh buffalo news put out an editorial about a charter school execution in regards and my name was listed i want the buffalo news and i want our community to know that when it comes to education sharon belton cotman has not only been critical of charter schools she's been critical of buffalo public schools and anybody who has ever watched me in a

136meeting or a committee meeting or or staff who has worked with me behind the scenes when the joke is mrs cottman is coming in get your pins and paper ready okay that is letting you know that i have agendas and i'm moving things forward so to uh paint a picture that i am targeting any schools i go on record to say that my ancestors died and i stand on their shoulders for the rights of all children all parents to be able to select educational institutions without discrimination but you cannot go 5 10 15 20 years and not produce and not have a charter school office that holds you accountable it's over at this point so i don't care if you pull a picture out of me from of me looking like i'm attacking someone i

137don't care today was proof positive that my community respects me and recognizes the work that i am doing in our community okay and that's what counts that who that's who puts me here and that's what i'm about i am not about discriminating against children i do not play that okay and if as hard decisions have to be made i like many other board members spend countless hours pondering the roads to go and i'm not going to be sorry for children i'm not allowing excuses to exist for children heaven being in poverty i do not accept that i've read an editorial in the news about uh it's a that the poverty rate is higher in a certain certain charters than other schools what does that have to do with academic success i'm i came from a

138poor family many of us came from poor families we can read and write we were able to move forward so stop painting a picture that poverty is something that that can be used against our children irregardless of what the stats say it's in the minds of the adults and one of the things that is clear in order to move things forward we have to change the mindset of the adults in order for our children to grow i see a hand up mr scott do you have something you'd like to share i'm just gonna share this when we did updates but since we're on this topic real quick i just want to clarify for the public the uh chairman and ceo of m t bank um was quoted in the paper buffalo news um characterizing this

139board as not being transparent not being inclusive making decisions behind closed doors and i want to clear that we had a hearing for westminster a public hearing for westminster a public hearing for enterprise and then we convened two nights of of i think five hour meetings each discussing um our action on these two charter schools so there was no nothing done behind closed doors this these were public meetings they were open to the public um and i want that corrected for anybody that's listening out there thank you well i'd like to uh add on to that in 217 we were approached by m t bank to take back enterprise okay so let the record reflect what has been going on behind the scenes okay let that record reflects that okay i want that to be

140clear with that okay and that conversation continued it was not a new conversation okay so let the record reflect that that transparency that that was done behind closed doors okay mr scott i just want you to put that in there but you let them know that uh there's some stuff going on behind closed doors okay stop stop painting that picture okay so in moving forward my apologies for uh stepping a little bit off the agenda but yes there's another prior prior to us moving forward i want to at this time thank all of our speakers this evening uh by phone or a video and ask that you please log off at this time um so we greatly appreciate your contributions and you're speaking to the board and the public but we do ask that you

141either log off your video or log off your phone um thank you very much again and you are able to go back on and listen and thank you uh dr brown hall for that uh appreciate you really do moving forward thank you so much moving forward uh i need a motion to accept the previous board minutes may i have a board member i see lou petrucci and i see uh jennifer mccoozy uh all in favor raise your hand any opposition any opposed thank you i appreciate that moving forward i want to board uh the committee reports okay i am going to limit each committee report to no longer than three minutes if you feel that you need more than three minutes i need to know that tonight okay i need to know does anyone think

142that that's unfair at this at this time of the evening is everyone okay with that mr heard you have a problem with that you have your speaker off yes um on president on bell in common i will need more than three minutes to address the youth risk behavior survey this evening uh the so are you saying that you plan to go over the entire survey because it is it is not complete it was not it was presented in a snapshot to us and that they are going to bring back additional information on that and that that was done at a committee meeting yeah i mean i'm clearly here because the purpose for the committee report is just to give basic information and if people need additional information they can go to the youtube bring up

143the board meeting for that day okay and see the entire conversation okay so i need to be clear you know that when we are here our job is basically to just give the public a brief explanation of what happened and then they can be referred to the youtube if they need it or they can contact you directly for additional support okay i need to we need to make sure that we are we are about moving the uh consent agenda and um and handling our meetings in a more timely manner so i am requesting that at the most five minutes would be allowed but that is the reason for the committee report just to give a brief synopsis of what's happening and board members can share what they're doing and if everybody recognizes that we have

144given our uh our public a limited on the time that they can speak we don't have to worry about uh you know things going on and on and on is anyone in a uh does anyone have a problem with that this evening i don't want to disrespect anyone i don't want to but i'm really trying to move forward and uh get to the business of the board okay everybody's nodding most of people are nodding they're okay president katman one more time i'm sorry to keep interrupting but if i can please have miss vanetta rhodes and mr louis d'angelo um log off mr deangelo if you could please log off we'd appreciate it and miss rogues if you could please log off thank you very much i'm sorry thank you and jennifer i'm seeing you twice

145i'm not sure um why i just wanted to let you know in case something happens okay i am awful yeah just let me know something happens okay you're cloned today okay so moving forward yeah can i log off and come back on that's crazy i only see me one is only moving so it's like one is frozen okay yeah all right okay i just want you to know because i don't you know want you to lose out on anything okay so moving forward can we start uh with our committee reports um and any uh board uh work that has been done by board members that uh would fall under ad hocs or our subsequent two committees uh dr kathy evans brown can you start off this evening do you have a report you're asking me

146so this is from the student can you hear me yes we can okay so this is from the student achievement meeting of april 14th uh primarily we focused in on updating the new york state region's exams in grade three through eighth tests um our cso i'm sorry o-s-a ebony moloch office of student accountability presented um a robust presentation and she talked about the communication that's going on in terms of assessments update with parents um uh an assessment memo was sent out um on march 26 um on march 17th on the board of education us uh presented a resolution on state assessments in a pandemic and then on the 7th of april the united states department of education denied the new york state education department waiver request to cancel all new york state assessments so as

147a result there are going to be a limited uh amount of testing for grades three to three through eight um for example i'm not going to go through all of this for example the ela book one only will occur from april 19th through the 27th 2021. the reasons exams will be condensed as well and those consist of algebra one on june 23rd english la ela arts uh june 17th living environment which is earth science june 22nd and then um i'm sorry living environments and then earth science both will be conducted on june 22nd and june 24th respectfully um parents there were some parent concerns for example i'm not going to go through all of this but just to give you a a breath of what happened uh during that meeting uh one of the questions

148the parents were concerned about was what is the penalty for non-participation in these assessments um and the answers were students will not be penalized as a result of non-participation in this year's new york state assessments or regions exams secondly schools will not be penalized for participation rates in terms of state accountability status second question will students who participate in 100 remote learning take this year's new york state assessments answer parents families may choose to allow their child children to participate in this year's assessments even if they participate in 100 remote learning parents and families will be contacted by their school children's school to determine their wishes and then lastly the last concern that the parents had was will students have to retake these tests especially regents next year to receive credit the answer no students

149will not be required to retake any assessments that they did not participate in this year in the case of students who do not participate in regions exams they will be awarded credit if they complete all their coursework and pass the class this will appear as an e for exempt on the student's transcript an exemption will count towards the student's graduation requirements that was it in essence because i know that you know the real concern for parents and other stakeholders is um how do how do we uh assess student um during this pandemic in terms of remote learning so that is where we are thank you thank you dr uh kathy evans brown for that report for student achievement uh does anyone want to volunteer or you want me to call you out uh i'll call

150on um uh paulette woods for finance and ops the finance and ops committee received a report from our cfo and dr catch thinking our delegation for their lobbying to get us significant foundation aid increases in state aid revenue and they committed to a three-year full funding of our finance our foundation aid it that's just a significant increase in aid and a significant achievement that they've been fighting for for a long time um the cfo also presented that we are going to save 24 million on re-issuing uh bonding for our joint school capital debt so we are saving monies in that way and um the new york state school board association also gave us a presentation on the requirements for the 249 million dollar federal american rescue act funds so there's significant progress being made our

151our budget is looking significantly better we're no longer having to say we were going to have a 20 cut and uh there were going to be dire consequences we are doing significantly better and we are working to produce a budget and at this meeting we have a four-year plan which is a very positive impact um we also had a board retreat which was very positive also that's my report thank you board member paulette woods next we have mr terrence hurd from the student support committee thank you president cotman uh first off educational support uh committee meeting um i would like to just go over we had two presentations um last wednesday one was madaya college youth inspired programs and the other one was um youth risk behaviors uh the overview and the data on degradation

152now go with media college i'll go to this quickly as possible um dr kenneth mc donald dr kenneth maker also with his colleagues michelle sawyers sharing salon and and kenya hobbs presented about um the guy college and the future outlook and their relationship with the buffalo public schools they have a very strong relationship we've been working with for years now and they've been working within a couple of our schools uh here in the city of buffalo mckinley to name one another one is um mst and other projects that's become available that dr cash was very very inspirational of saying that he will be working with the district uh madaya college um all schools went through a difficult time but they coming out strong with some very innovative programs um they address um uh special scholarship

153programs and racial inequity and in round table talk they have a new sports program and also i don't want to be uh to sound like i'm doing a commercial from a guy very good colleagues and um and they do did one thing they're the first college in the nation that if your child go to media college for four years and graduate that the parent could go to school for free for four years so it's the first college and they should never do anything like that and so um they just want you to take a look at their programs and some of the innovative things that they're doing over at madai um the next part of the program was the buffalo public schools 2019 yrbs analysts and reporting i'll try i'll try to go as quick

154as possible but uh there's a lot of details in here that i will i want you to miss and um this is a the preview for the finishing of of this analysis it was done by patrick madden uh vice president at market decisions research and also presented by dr tanja williams here in buffalo um this um yrbs stand for risk for youth risk behavior surveillance and it's about sir surveillance survey okay um that that also talks about um also talks about uh programming policy development talks about student health improvement with academic outcomes and support for individual schools to create action plan specific to their needs so it's how we can help develop programs for each and every each and every one of our schools according to the needs of those buildings and according to the

155needs of our students and and also have some information here about teachers also um it's designed for improvements and services the improvements the programs and services administration to approve data quality and reduce missing data is also as a attempt to bring attention to academic the school climate and other administrative data to more clearly demonstrate a link between health and other outcomes and also in waiting datas outside by school enrollments to align with the cdc protocols to improve representatives um and the results um it has some very staggering numbers that came across this data in this survey and one of them is that we look at our um middle school surveys uh middle school the city of buffalo was over over six thousand three about two six thousand three hundred students that were served by in

156our middle schools and high schools we had over seven thousand two hundred and twenty two people that were surveyed so um they had they surveyed a great percentage of our kids and got some results uh some of this most serious things that we found out doing this is um seeing the seriousness of the things that we talked about today was um kids that seriously contemplated suicide and in 2019 it shows that uh the new york state average was 17.3 percent and 2019 here in buffalo we had um in high schools average of 13.9 percent of our children that was contemplating suicide um we also had some staggering things that um kids didn't feel safe to go to school about about 10 percent of our children that that was rated at that time felt unsafe about

157coming to classrooms and these are some of the concerns that we have about children and their um grades and um coming to school and behavior patterns within the schools so i'm not going to go deep into all of these as of today but there are there are a prevalent use of alcohol within our facilities according to state average and um and seriously considering um the kids that were bullied we had bullying that was up about 40 percent but the survey also says some of the good things that this district is doing also i'm glad to hear that back into the survey and see some of the things that we are highly achieving again but when the completion of the survey uh plan to go into committee meeting and um really um have our parents to

158understand what's going in our buildings and teachers and how we can plan for a better future thank you thank you mr hurt uh board member larry scott you have something you'd like to say real quick i just from what i remember from that presentation it gave a comparison to state trends and in many of those areas including perceived feeling like schools weren't safe it compared to the state trend and we were actually below state trends for alcohol use and other substance abuse as well so there are a lot of positive trends on that that and um this is why i encourage um us uh as a our constituents if they want to listen to that uh particular meeting um they can go online but uh it was a snapshot it is not the complete report

159the complete report has yet to be presented before the board and we recognize that uh it is delayed due to covet but uh our concern and i want the board to be um thinking about questions that they would like to see directions that we would like to go on with the next report the next report because we can craft certain questions for those for that report so i really want you guys to be but overall in my opinion it was a very positive report uh it showed that we our trends were going uh that there were some of the interventions that we had put in place in most cases were impacting our children in a positive way and that's the reason for having the complete report because when that complete report is put before us

160you also have the staff members who are working with the social emotional issues um who can also provide guidance and uh preview into what where these numbers are actually coming from and so to provide us with some substance so that was just a uh preliminary report but i'm i'm encouraged by what we saw in that report uh particularly i think this is our second or third report that we've had if i remember right all right mr uh hurd are you through with your report at this point yes yes and and to uh just just to react to some of your commentary it's like a vaping use is very low and here in the city of buffalo compared to estate averages we also have a couple other things that you know that's below estate averages but

161there are a couple things that's higher you know that we have in middle school high school uh just this there's only a few but uh but anything um for drug usage we actually compare very well against state average on the city of buffalo compared to new york state absolutely because we certainly don't have problems with ecstasy in our district hallelujah okay okay so anyway and moving forward okay um thank you very much okay so we have lou petrucci vice president do you have anything to share with us and after this if there's any other board members that would like to talk about any work that they're doing um that the board needs to be brought up up to date on it will be open at that point thank you president cotman uh this week i

162had the opportunity to participate briefly in the south park psych management team it was about college college applications and uh what what was concerning to me was that at least at south park that many of our seniors were holding applications in obeying because they didn't know what's going to happen in the fall so it i don't know if it's going to be a trend across the whole district but there seems to be a significant amount of students that weren't applying to schools just because they didn't know what the fall would hold for them and they didn't know if they wanted to continue remote learning or they didn't want to delay until such times they could go in person but that was one thing that that i took away from that that is maybe something we

163want to take a look at as a district i know that in my committee that met last week the one thing that i know that we were working on uh through the revenue ac hack committee and that on my committee um uh in general was part of the bond refinancing and i was glad to see that uh um we received some uh information as to how much the district is actually going to benefit from the refinancing of the joint schools construction board so that was some good news to receive this week uh on a side note i participated uh or i'm participating in the uh the harry harriet tubman run i'm a runner for those who don't know and it's going to uh the race benefits the omega mentoring program which is trying to keep

164kids on track to make sure that they uh go to college if that is their desire to do so the dpc has reached out to me that they are looking to uh do some type of uh memorialization for lloyd hargrave who is an educational advocate in the district for many many years i know that we've been kind of going back and forth with wendy mastretta about how to best do that but i'll update the district or my fellow board members and district as things evolve and last because i know we have my three-minute timer uh the new york state school board association the resolution committee is starting their work once again so if there are any uh matters topics or specific resolutions that you would like to see the committee advocate for and then they

165would bring it to uh our elected officials in albany please let me know so we can start the process early i'm going to pick up where larry and i left off last year because we ran out according to time but i think that the resolution that mr scott proposed is still uh is still prescient and we will go from there but if there's something else that the board feels is worthy uh please let me know and we will draft a resolution thank you very much president cotton thank you um mr scott uh do you have any update on the charter schools have you done anything uh with that since our last uh meeting i know that you have been doing like some work you know uh trying to get it together but if if you

166want to hold off until you talk with the charter school uh committee uh ad hoc committee before you share that information i can appreciate that but i do think that um i just want to make sure that if we can moving forward every meeting that we talk about what's going on with charter schools in this district even if it's just that you provide some stats and and a percentage so that our parents who are the majority of parents in this city can understand the impact of what's going on with charters so i'm sorry to put you on the spot today but i just want to i just know that i just want to start moving forward with that every at every commit every meeting thanks thank you president common i don't have an official update

167but just one update that was brought to our attention yesterday the buffalo commons charter school that was approved by suny charter school board of trustees um has been delayed they were expected to reopen for this coming school year they're being delayed one year to reopen and then in two years thank you for that update are there any other board members that have anything they'd like to share um i'm sorry uh mr uh heard your hand is up your speakers is not on and i can't see hands i don't know why uh darren i'm not able to see hands today okay i'd like to form the board and all of our colleagues just listening in about the 2021 excellence education awards ceremony which is going to be um viewed on wbbz tv on may 2nd this

168year uh so just keep your your um tvs tuned to uh the x's education award 2021. we have a very strong committee that put a lot of work into it uh we have over 400 nominations from teachers from buffalo schools uh charter schools and private schools so we want to include all all our educators teachers administrators and support staff members that work with our children to help them you know achieve excellence uh we had last saturday we had a red carpet event we're over 125 um of our nominees who were uh selected as finalists that came to walk the red carpet over at buff state and also just quickly we have cameron woods he's uh uh he's one of our hosts he's a graduate from um performing arts high school he lives out in l.a

169now so we flew him in and he's one of the people that does uh the movie called ensure it's a sitcom that's on hbo and emily lampa she's a a.m buffalo host she's going to be our other host for the evening we have stars like uh thief tasker and um no disrespect to you i don't want to cut you off but you do realize that that should be um something that should not be during the committee time you do realize that other work that we're doing i apologize so those are that's going to be on aboard daniel cory of the oval so uh at may second we honor our teachers and give them the some time to reflect and um also to give them um you know to uplift them in the break that they

170do with our children okay thank you for that but uh that should uh in the future that would have been under unfinished business um not during committee uh uh report time thank you i appreciate that okay may i have a motion to accept con the consent agenda i see two hands went up uh dr kathy evans brown as well as uh board member larry scott all in uh all in favor okay we're moving no no opposed yes good okay let's move forward okay so what i have here are about one two three four five items the only board member that has questions is mr hurt and i want to make sure miss you're we're good with this um they have you down for uh lisa has you down for number 17 b that you have

171a comment and just to clarify mrs uh board president katman other board members um their questions were answered in the document that i sent out and some of those were also answered for mr heard on the document i sent out so we'll see how many still need to be um answered i guess when you go through it okay thank you so 17b is uh uh lamar advertising for community schools mr hurt uh i just wanted to say on that the district doing a great job of uh actually doing promotions with uh some of the programs that we're doing with our schools and our community schools so i just want to give our district dr cash uh a thumbs up for um for us looking for starting to promote you know within our community to see

172some of the things that we're doing here in the district in the city of buffalo that's all everything else has been answered through email thank you mr hurt we're going to refresh all of those billboards and we're going to dominate them we're going to take over every billboard in the city and advertise what's going on with the buffalo public schools [Music] thank you be nice to get a couple of articles in some of the local newspapers too we've got some uh prolific people in our district they need to uh share what they're doing they really do does anyone else have any questions about the consent agenda i'm glad your questions were answered mr heard does anyone have any additional questions okay if that be the case uh nate kuzman are you there i am president

173gottman may we go move forward with taking the vote for our consent agenda uh yes dr kathy evans brown on the consent agenda how do you vote no acceptance yes mr heard um are we are we um yet to address the jesse ketchum what number was that on the agenda oh well that that was number uh one moment i'm sorry that was number 23a number 20 a um uh i will everything yes for everything but the jesse ketchum awards so uh exception 23a section 23 8 yes okay other than that no exceptions board member jay options no exceptions okay board member mccosy exceptions board member petrucci no exceptions board member rivera exceptions no exceptions okay board member scott board member woods no exceptions thank you and president belton cottman no exceptions okay consent agenda passes

174thank you okay board members so typically during this time what we do is we do our uh our bereavement list and then we go into executive session uh nate kuzman has requested that we go into executive session today and so um mr petrucci do you have the list i do president cottman would you do me otherwise please thank you fellow board members uh the bereavements for the april 21st meeting of the buffalo board of education 2021 on march 26 state trooper joseph j gallagher son of retired pector union president james gallagher on april 2nd audrey r daniels grandmother laquita shetrick ct teacher at mckinley high school and tanika cedric principal of build community school april 5th anita melendez sister vivette feliciano and a couch clerk typist with the buffalo board of ed or with the

175buffalo public schools april 9. jim affectionately known as joe lewis holly father of tammy holly mcgee deputy director of human resources april 9th ronald wayne pugh senior retired physical education teacher and head football coach at east south park and burghard high schools april 17th larisha johnson a senior waiting to graduate at mst high school sister kenisha johnson of burgard and terry johnson of riverside can we please have a moment of silence thank you all very much thank you vice president petrucci [Music] so um the board i'm going to uh ask that um i get them i have a motion i need a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of one to discuss the negotiations for the lease of real property two to discuss information related to a current investigation of a criminal

176offense that is disclosed would impel effective law enforcement and three to discuss the potential discipline of a specific district employee in addition number four for the purpose of discussing collective negotiations with the buffalo education support team may i have a motion please thank you uh jennifer second by lou petrucci all in favor any any anyone opposed so moved uh board members would you like a five minute break or uh is that sufficient five is good we're good with five so we'll uh how about six we'll meet at 8 20. nate uh kuzma needs to get upstairs as well how's that that's on the computer mike just need mr lucci just needs to let me in okay uh lou would you have um have him let uh nate in thank you board members live we are

177live now i will turn it back over to president cotman it's 10 33 p.m the board went into executive session and no actions were taken uh may i have a motion authorizing the superintendent to pursue section 75 charges on employee with initial c dot l may i have a motion cassie dr cassie brown second by lou petrucci all in favor please raise your hand or do we need a nate do i need a a so raising the hands would be fine you sure okay uh raise our hands okay anyone who is opposed let the record reflect that that um hope j is no longer in the meeting and did not vote thank you all right so our last item of unfinished business is uh there was an email sent out by dina in regards to

178doing it a two-hour session on april the 30th which is friday of next week from five to seven is it possible for the board to accommodate her i i didn't see that email about friday well that makes two of us but that's what nate has advised me of i mean uh darren advised me up before he left so it must be out there that's what darren asked me to ask the board before he left what made it may have come out late mary scott said he could make it on wednesday the initial date and he said he said friday so i think most people said that was cool to accommodate them yeah oh okay so is that when they tell people i thought that the suggestion was wednesday because it's a normal you know larry

179did you say you couldn't make it on a wednesday i can't do next wednesday right okay so she moved it to friday from five to seven but marie sent an email to all of us with different dates today all i know is the fourth and the eleventh yeah all darren asked was can you do it on april the 30th from five to seven is what he asked me to ask the board tonight yes do we raise our hands or how do you want to do this sharon well who can't let's go that way who's to attend is everybody all board members team board members all nine board members are going to attend this at this point until tomorrow until i talk to nate it's the will of the board did you take a vote on

180that take a vote on what will it board what's friday nate your your mike is not on nate we can deal with this right now the the feedback that i've gotten from the board is that they don't believe that the superintendent should be at these meetings at this point in time and that the other nine board members have work to do uh until uh for future meetings and there may be a time but it's not at this moment it's not the next meeting for dr cash to get involved so that that's the feedback that i've received um i have not gotten a position from the board president but i'll share that with her now that that's the consensus that i received back if anybody wants to say any more on it at this point they

181can but but that's where it is well i have to agree with the board and i'm glad that the board is mindful enough to know that it is important that we work together and solidify our work that needs to be done before we bring on our only employee and that's what i i agree with the majority of the board on this situation now uh does anybody want to take a vote on it do we need to take a vote on it nate because it was previously voted it wasn't previously voted on it was just agreed on we don't have to i don't think so we're not required to take a vote does anybody disagree with what nate said in regards to your position you're all in agreement with what nate said there's not a problem

182okay fine all right so so it has been resolved at this point okay now back to april the 30th can we all agree that we will do april 30th from five to seven yes yes yes everybody agree okay then and then dan will be happy and we'll move forward and um thank you so much for that is there um anything else that the board needs to discuss because other than that we're ready to conclude this meeting online i just want i just wanted to recognize laurie maciello he's retiring from 20 years he's retired from working at mst and i just wanted to say i wish her the best i don't know what else we do to send letters to thank people for 20 years of their lives but i wanted to say thank you well

183that was nice to you i i'm glad you i don't even that's nice okay with that said may have a motion to uh adjourn uh jen i saw your hand go up second by larry scott all in favor any any people opposing i don't think so thank you for your um time we appreciate you have a good night bye-bye good night stay safe