BPS | 4/14/21 Work Session

001um uh educational support will be second executive fearce will go forth okay so executive Affair executive Affairs moves to four and education support comes to two is that what I'm hearing yes sir wow um okay for how I'm set up so I'm letting staff know now they're all they're all set um when you're ready to go Miss Woods let me know and I do have some Preparatory remarks for finance and Ops the only thing I I just want to mention I mentioned it I mentioned an email um the public are likely tuned in to get an update on reopening and and I wondered if we should reconsider having that go at the very end of the night and and move it up to the beginning or closer to the beginning well here's colleagues we had

002it in an order that that we work very hard on um to you know to be sensitive to those issues my understanding through Dr Brown who won't be with us tonight was that Mr herd had asked for some accommodation because he has Gest speakers that will be presenting um and you know presumably they're they're here or or waiting on standby so I'll we'll do whatever the board uh wants to do tonight but what I can tell you is that the finance and Ops piece is extraordinary and important uh it should not be last as it typically is when everybody is uh a bit weary and then the reopening and the federal stimulus uh topics are also extraordinarily important uh so all I ask is that when we get to them that everybody be fully engaged

003and and focused in terms of the order I'll let that be a board decision well I know the community has thread a lot of press about the financial aid state aid the American Rescue act so I'm not relinquishing finance and Ops from from being anything other than the starting point that that is what I feel the community is definitely asking about that's what's been in the Press so I would like to start with financing UPS put an update on the adopted state budget and the budget process and I believe uh Jeff Richard and yourself are prepared to present that we are but keep in mind Miss Woods that the federal stimulus issue that you alluded to is not part of financ and Ops that is part of executive Affairs tonight so we have a we

004have a detailed presentation on all of that but it's gonna have it'll right now you're talking about putting it forth you understand I think need to consider our guest under educational support as well um Larry did po a good question um I didn't read the email though but um maybe if you want to go ahead and present the reopening of the schools before education support well now that's a that's the third high high impact High leverage issue is the reopening of schools see there's the adopted state budget that's a separate focused issue on your process as a board for adopting the 2122 budget and where we are with the state adopted budget at this point the next big high impact issue is the use of federal stimulus dollars that funding is imminent and what's the

005process going to be in order to consider uh that those important strategic Investments and we have a forpart presentation around that issue including the nature of public engagement which is important part of that process yes then the third High leverage piece is reopening of phase three and phase four which for Buffalo Public Schools tonight is going to be basically inviting all of the students back we have now invited all of the students back and what you're going to hear is an update on how many of those students prek through 12 have accepted our invitation at this point and are expected to be back in two parts High School April 26 and the rest of the elementary students on May 10th so that's that part under executive uh Affairs you see then student achievement is fairly

006straightforward that doesn't need to be a long presentation but it's an important one that Dr Evans Brown asked about which was what is the update and the expectation on our traditional New York State high stakes assessments for grades three through eight Elementary and math Ela and math and then for our region exams and it's something that Dr Evans Brown thought would be important for the public and parents and everyone to know exactly what the case is for Buffalo Public parents and children uh because it's different this year very different this year so while that's not a long piece we probably can get through that in 20 minutes uh that also is important but it's a standalone it's a standalone and then the last two under education support which we're talking about deciding whether to move

007up the youth risk behavior survey from two years ago it's not current it's from two years ago the gentleman who put that information together is here to go through a slide deck on that he's here is my understanding and then of course our colleague Dr Kenneth maker from ADI College um Mr herd had invited to come and make a presentation about some of the programs and work that they're doing at madii and he's here uh or will be here so that's what your that's what you got to address and like I said uh it's all important it's it's it's all significant tonight you have to decide what order um that you want to do it let's let's not confuse it and um let's go in order order of importance I can call um the president

008of M college and tell them that we'll be set off a little bit I don't want to I don't want to uh cause waves here and can youe so you can hear me we can hear you we can hear you Sharon thank you in and out in and out okay what what you could do Terence whenever I've had guest speakers if you just kind of alert them to approximate time like I think about two hours from now would be a good time for them to come back on and I think that we'll be very close uh to to taking them and if it's a little if it's a little sooner we'll let you know and then you can say we're about 20 minutes away and they can still jump on so right now I would

009say ask them to be ready around 7 7:15 and if that's possible for their schedule then that that will probably work out better for everyone okay thank you and you can form Dr t Williams also yeah t T's here she's here okay can you hear me yes okay so let's be clear when the agenda is set we have to move forward with the agenda that's in the policy guidelines okay that's how the policy was adapted okay and so in order to make a change okay it the change should have been made uh 48 hours before the meeting started and so we're in the meeting now so can we can we move forward with the uh proposed agenda that was sent out and in the future we can make changes accordingly but it's important for us

010to have a a decorum and order of business and we move it forward okay thank you so um are we live yeah are we live yes we're live PA Shar the gend didn't come out to 48 hours ago and I was advised yesterday on with by Dr Brown Hall to uh reach out to one another board member about proceeding that was the only confusion here we're moving forward keep it moving let's going good evening welcome to the Buffalo Board of Education work session dated Wednesday April 14th this is the finance and operations committee our discussion today is on the adopted state budget and an update on the Buckle Public Schools budget process Dr cash and uh our CFO Jeffrey Richard is here Dr cash I give you the uh floor okay colleagues good evening thank

011you so much I want to really start the evening by publicly thanking our extraordinary Western New York delegation of legislators colleagues I have prepared an individual letter with a handwritten note that will go out by mail and by email after this meeting I've shared a copy of the letter for our esteemed Majority Leader Crystal peop sto so you can see how I've chosen to thank thank this delegation you can review that at your leure but let me just say that I have been in this work for so long I can't even remember but over 45 years and the advocacy for Buffalo by our Western New York delegation led by The Honorable Crystal people Stokes has absolutely been extraordinary been off the chart I've never seen it never seen it Senator Tim Kennedy Shan Ryan William

012Conrad Crystal people Stokes Patrick Burke and Jonathan Riva those are our Western New York legislators and the increase in resources for our children in this budget to try to restore Foundation Aid to levels that you know we need particularly in our urban districts it will have a generational impact on the work of this District they now achieve something that we'll be forever grateful and while there are still many unknowns about how the covid-19 crisis will affect Buffalo children and families in the short and long term because of each member of this extraordinary delegation we are in a strong as position as ever to leverage these dollars for the Direct Services support and growth academically and in all the other domains of our students and and we will absolutely fully recover from this pandemic and more

013importantly as I've indicated we will not let any need of our children go unremedied and unaddressed we're going to address it head on fully and systematically systematically is key here and I'll talk more about that later but again thank you Crystal thank you William thank you Timothy Sean Patrick and Jonathan you have done so much for the children and families in Buffalo and you have the heartfelt gratitude of tens of thousands of us thank you and colleagues I would just encourage you for the public record I wasn't able to get in touch with Sharon today I was busy I know she was busy but I certainly would encourage Sharon you to start and maybe other board members say so publicly uh to these colleagues because I've never seen anything like this never and you'll hear

014from Jeff what it really means I mean we're talking about a $78 million for one year for us $98 almost a hundred million over three years in found found Aid I'm not even talking about the stimulus I'm talking about Foundation Aid and just a few short months ago we were looking at a much more dire situation we thought we would be having to climb out of an extraordinary fiscal deficit so I can't we can't I I I just beside myself and and have no more words but Sharon I turn the table over to you president cman uh Dr cash um can can everyone hear me yes you can hear me now okay thank you I I I we would be remissed if we did not um in addition to the people you mentioned uh give

015a shout out to Alliance for quality of Education um in addition to that um our um teachers union as well as the um a Statewide teachers union has advocated for the foundation Aid for as long as I can remember and I was pleased to be in a uh meeting that they had SE uh uh patting themselves on the back and giving each other shouts out for the work that they' done in addition to that there were other people who also played a part we had the uh Jennifer uh Jennifer from the big five uh also was a part of that uh in addition to that uh we would be remissed not to even mention the Board of Regents uh our Board of Regents uh Dr Katherine Collins as well as our commissioner uh uh Betty

016Rosa who also was the former Chancellor of our uh the board of regions these people have consistently for at least the 10 years that I've been on the board have fought to get this money brought and I want to make sure that we recognize them um we also mentioned did not mention uh Senator uh Jill BR J Jilla Brandt uh she has also been an uh supporter of ours as well Higgins our councilman uh all of our uh elected uh rep representatives for the most part who have been consistent with uh pushing Buffalo po Buffalo Public Schools forward has has has really played a huge part in this and we're grateful to them and I have no problem reaching out to each and every one of them um I've already spoken to several uh believe

017it or not who called in regards to uh the charter situation and um offered encouragement and I was pleased to see that Buffalo is uh standing up and moving forward in certain directions uh uh so I just want to make sure that if we missed anyone uh charge it as they say in the church charge it to the brain not to the heart okay and uh I want to thank them all for everything that they're doing and I want to assure aqe that uh we want to hear what your recommendations are since you work so hard you're clear to say that you want to have a voice in in in how this money is spent but I do want to just say one thing here I have been attending quite a few quite few uh

018quite I've been attending an awful lot of meetings lately on a national basis and for real the conversation is we will not program our way out of the urban problems that we have without putting together some source of economic Deliverance for people and that means that we really need to beef up our efforts in the CTE but Dr cash um this is a one in a-lifetime uh opportunity um and uh I'm looking forward to hearing what your uh presentations are to but I certainly would like to make sure that this money is kept separate as far as how it's reported out so that we can make sure that we can go back and we can show how this money was spent in each one of these buckets that's what my concern is thank you so

019much and I'm looking forward to hearing what your colleagues we may need to turn and mute when others are speaking that way we won't have the uh the feedback all right president cman and we appreciate that any other board members would like to say anything at this point um I think it's a like you say a once in a lifetime moment so certainly board members I think should I believe Jim uh let's see Jim mosy has her hand up an R Jim you been an Rivera J member Woods thank you so I I have been fighting well before I became a board member um for this money with aqe with citizen action with different organizations and I'd really like to make a shout out to just the community members in Western New York and in

020Buffalo at one point we traveled um we've we traveled to Albany all the time to try and fight for money but we've been nationally recognized because we had you know folks who actually rode their bikes and traveled to different cities and different you know different districts to see how much they were owed in the CFE money and they rode their bikes from Buffalo New York to Albany in order to try and get this money um it was a Monumental action it thousands of people and uh this is what we were doing you know the folks that you have the folks on the front lines that are elected officials and then you have the folks who back them up in their constituents so this is a definitely a a huge win for every one and I'm

021just I'm so excited to see what we can do about it I'm I'm I just I'm like Dr cash I'm beyond words so congratulations to Western New York City of Buffalo and everyone who had a part in doing this thank you so much and Rivera my thanks is simple and heartfelt our Scholars are high stakes extremely important resilient and deserve the support that they're receiving and I appreciate everyone's all the people named here investment in education C okay let's see Terrence herd then Larry Scott U I just want to say I don't want to iterate everything that was just just said or just repeat but thank you from the bottom of my heart and thank you for recognizing the needs for our children and our district um there so many different things um that we

022can do to help improve education and reimagine education and um I'm glad that we got a board and a district that's willing to work together to to look at every need that we have and and improvements that we need uh throughout our district from school to school from child to child family to family and the work that you that you're doing um um I'm just grateful you know that we can address these needs that's in our district thank you again Larry Scott and then I believe we have um Lou you I believe your hands up to okay Larry yeah I just want to Echo um all the accolades for our local Representatives all the names have been mentioned already they are absolutely tireless advocates for public education and for our kids and for Buffalo um

023I just want to add a few people our parents our buffalo parents um along with what Jen mosy mentioned we have parents that have been supporters of Buffalo Public Schools and advocating for more funding um that can be directed to our kids into the classrooms and then two people I want to recognize as well um president cman mentioned uh Jennifer pile from the conference of big five some of us participated in advocacy meetings um one of those was with uh the Shelley mayor um chair of of the senate for Education committee and the Senate um and it was just a delightful meeting that we had I truly felt like she understood the needs of public education and what we needed more of in urban public education as well as a meeting with the chair of

024the assembly education committee Michael benedetto um same thing where I felt truly that he understood the needs and concerns that we had um as elected officials as as uh Educators um for public education and for our kids so those two people I just want to give a shout out to as well thank you no uh thank you very much uh uh chairman Woods yeah I I just want to say thank you to everyone who has played a part in these critical and vital dollars that the board will put to a good use to improve the uh educational lives of the students of the City of Buffalo thank you very much okay I I just want to say that we have been given the funding and a great Victory from the on the state level and

025the federal level to reimagine education to take it to new heights and I'm just so proud of our delegation congressmen our elected officials our parents and all the organizations that advocated for us we will not let you down it's a new day Dr cash Dr Cas you're you're moted muted muted thank you colleagues uh well stated I knew you would do that and it's really important to publicly acknowledge all of the people that you acknowledged uh tonight thank you for that now our CFO Mr Jeff Pritchard will Justin in two slides share the adopted state budget update and sort of what remains for us uh in the weeks ahead so that we have an adopted Buffalo Public School uh budget Mr Pritchard thank you uh Dr cash and good evening board members um admir can

026you please put up the the slide presentation colleagues I've sent you all these presentations so you have them uh as well and there it is um while we're waiting for that um you know I've we've started to uh today um and and through last week but several of the organizations that do analysis of the state budget um you know they've started to provide information and you know the some what we're hearing is basically unprecedented that's how they would would describe um the state budget with respect to um Aid to school districts um complete 180 degree turn um this is a a very quick turnaround from where we were a couple months ago where potentially significant uh uh reductions in Aid were were being looked at now we're seeing unprecedented increases um and we will get

027to um I will get to some of the federal aid because that's obviously the the largest component of our increases but that's not part of the the that's not going to be part of our general fund budget so um if we can go to the next slide um I'll I'll go over essentially the state aid dollars as we understand them and uh because we've we've talked about this for a few months now the different components of state aid and I have a table on there that uh describes some of the components of state aid uh Foundation Aid expense based AIDS Health Services a charter supplemental tuition reimbursement um what was possibly going to be a a reduction called local local District funding adjustment and then overall state aid so um and then I have uh

028three columns on there showing the governor's proposed budget our legislative request which was from March and then the adopted state budget which is just from last week so Foundation Aid is really the the biggest increase that we have now um we had requested a $90 million increase over three years and the reason for looking at it over three years is that we know now that we have federal aid that will be very supplemental to the district for about three years but what happens when that when we reach that Cliff cliff and that funding goes away so our legislative request was structured around trying to fully fund Foundation Aid and 90 million was our ask over three years the adopted state budget um includes 98 million over three years and 43 million in this year now

029one of the the what's very interesting about this is that um Foundation Aid in the actual budget legislation is slated to be fully funded over three years and this is this has never happened since Foundation Aid started so the the um the legislature and the governor they've made a commitment in in the adopted budget um and in the legislation to fully fund Foundation a over three years um and and that's what we've been asking for advocacy groups have been asking for and and that's what at this point um we're we're looking at and and 43 million is it's a little less than half of it in in this upcoming year that's 8% again the the these are unprecedented numbers 8% you know 3% would be about the highest we've ever seen this year 8% um

030expense based AIDS uh Governor had proposed to consolidate many of them which would have resulted in about a $20 million cut um that's rejected Health Services Aid um we get a bullet aid from the legislature every year um that was proposed to be cut um we did ask for an increase um do we do not have that at this point but we do have a restoration um Charter uh supplemental tuition reimbursement that was going to be cut in half we had asked for that to be restored um and also paid in the same year the tuition's paid at this point we know that it is restored that that proposed cut has been restored um whether we can get that in the same year um that's still subject to potentially uh additional legislation um there was

031a local District funding adjustment um which was indeterminant we didn't know what it would be but it could be a substantial reduction in aid for for our district and other districts um that was rejected um so all of these are very very positive overall state aid um and have that in green at the bottom here $72 million increase in state aid or 99.8% again we've never seen anything like this um nine almost 10% that's uh you know that's that's three years worth of of uh of growth that we've generally you know that we've seen in the past so this is this is from where we were looking at significant reductions now we're looking at just the opposite and again this is state aid I'm not talking about Federal Aid at this point um so it's

032as far as we know again it's the the highest Aid increases that in in my memory and and certainly I don't think anyone's found uh or or has identified a year where state aid increases have been any higher um Again full found full Foundation Aid uh uh phase in um the pandemic adjustment so $ 29.7 million cut we had in in the 20221 budget that was fully restored um that was offset by the first round of federal aid the cares act but again that is fully restored in the 2122 budget um and and there was a fear that that might be something that might take four or five years to restore um and uh you know we're still doing uh you know full analysis of legislation still needs to follow um some of the charter

033school legislative requests and so forth so there there's still much to come but again this is uh this is uh you know very substantial the the aid increases um and uh you know things will start moving very quickly now in our budget you know we again this is this is this was a bit of a surprise last week um and certainly a welcome one and now that we have this that helps us that's going to help us um firm up our Revenue numbers and also um determine what we can do on the expenditure side so if we can go to the next slide um I have a an update of our four-year financial plan so we're not ready to give a complete share out of the of the state of our budget the 2122 general

034fund budget at this point um but one of the things that we have to do is um and this is this is required by legislation we have to submit to the control board um by the end of April a four-year financial plan so the four-year financial plan is a summary of our budget and we've been doing it for several years now um and uh first bullet on here the 201718 through 2021 plan we've exceeded um all of you know all the goals that were in there in terms of cost savings Revenue enhancements we've exceeded all that um that's that's positive um I'll be sharing with you I hope by Friday the um that document so so you can see it um next next bullet on here um again is just reminding that we we have

035to have this plan uh adopted by April um and so the April 21st board meeting is when we're targeting to to provide the fouryear plan well you'll have it prior to that but we will ask the board to approve it um so it can still so it can be submitted to the control board by the end of April and again this is a it's a legislative legislatively required um document um and it's it's in full understanding that our budget is not complete this this essentially just includes a uh um where we are with our budget um at at this time um in this plan we are including the full phas in of foundation Aid that is in the legislation at this point and that's our best understanding and best guess as to what Foundation Aid

036will do over the next two years things can change but it is in the legislation and it has to be removed from the legislation for us to not receive those increases um the four-year plan at this point includes in our draft uh 2122 budget I'm looking at about a 25 or $30 million general fund deficit um and that is primarily due to Transportation Aid so as you all know Transportation Aid is paid in one year reimbursed in the next if you have a year with a very low um very low expenditure which the last two years have been um the following year you're going to have very low Transportation AIDS so that that is artificially reducing our state revenues um and that's where I'm I'm looking at roughly a 25 or 30 Mill doll general

037fund deficit that's down from the 90 million that I presented back in February so this that's you know 25 to 30 is is very small compared to where we were um not withstanding the transportation Aid shortfall we have a plan that is structurally balanced in the following years so and again that's based on the the where where we are with with the you know the same basic and conservative adjust uh projections that we've had we're looking at having a structurally balanced plan um really for the first time since 20156 and uh that again that goes to the to the idea of being unprecedented you know we we conveyed and have been conveying in our legislative requests that you know to structurally balance the district based on our current spending level we would need that full

038phase in of foundation Aid um including that in the plan we it it appears as though at this point we are struct Al balanced um and and again this is the first time in years that that's happened now last point on here that I want to make so the federal stimulus Aid which is is uh a little less than $300 million that is going to be a grant fund uh expenditure so that's not part of our four-year plan that's not part of our general fund budget it will have its own its own budget and we're going to follow um as we roll in into the next uh as we roll into the next presentation um where we'll discuss the federal stimulus um we you know we'll talk about that a little bit more um there

039also are within you know the the the current uh you know with Biden and uh the the the uh the Congress and Senate uh education is a high priority item it's very clear that that's the case um there there are and probably will be additional um there may be additional stimulus amounts um specific to some of the federal grants that we receive currently I don't have really any details on this but things like the idea for special education Title One um we should probably be expecting increases of those in the next in the coming years um and again the the federal stimulus is is not part of the general fund budget it's not included in there it's not included in our four-year plan uh this is is essentially supplemental funding um that that will follow

040so that's that's really the end of this presentation I don't know if there's any questions on on what we've gone over or if we want to get right into the next set of slides where we discuss the federal aid but I can certainly handle any questions at this point board member Woods colleagues I would like to make one important point that Jeff alluded to but I want it to be clear with you and that is that the finance four-year financial plan Jeff is planning to get it to me we've been talking about it uh for several weeks now he's planning to get the full draft Advance draft to me tomorrow I will review it thoroughly tomorrow and we want to get it onto the board agenda for the April 21st meeting on Friday so if

041we upload that on Friday uh we trust that that will give you enough time uh to look at it review it and have questions for discussion on and at the board meeting um and then you can approve under the consent agenda if you so uh will so desire if you don't or aren't able to do that or reach agreement on that then then we'll have to schedule a separate board meeting before the end of April to get this done because as Jeff said it is a requirement by law that we get it done in April just wanted to make that that point okay board member wood I turn it back to you okay thank you uh Jeff it's in terms of working with our different schools on their um school-based budgets and uh production of

042the Buffalo Public Schools plan where where are you on that and the only uh other question uh for Dr cash is these uh these uh extraordinary circumstances uh you we would like to have some public meetings public input into what the community feels they need of to address remediation for their uh for their their students we'd like public input so if you would kindly comment on uh your plan for public hearings and public input so those are my two questions can you address those two please well Jeff can address the first one and then what I would respectfully request is that I have a whole slide on that in the next presentation uh that will answer all of that question Miss Woods if you could hold until then that would be fine okay thank you

043Jeffrey yep and uh so Paul at the the school-based budget process is is has been underway um meetings are going on presently so they they started this week um I don't have any data on them but but that process has has gone forward uh and is continuing as our departments you know we're still trying to get budgets in um un understand though that the the infusion of federal Aid is likely going to change things so you know we we've got many moving parts and and I think as we in the coming weeks and and really coming couple months start to see what this infusion of Federal Aid will do it's it's going to be you know really in large part I think transformative to a to a lot of things that we have done in

044the past so um I I I wish I could tell you exactly how that will look because I don't think anyone knows at this point I I think when when we really get into the planning for this stimulus Aid um which we believe will address many of the things that have always been um you know perhaps unaffordable in the past that now are it's going to change things um and and you know we we'll certainly speak to that as we as we move forward well that that that is exactly the point that I wanted uh to hear because uh where we were previously with the state withholding 20% of our funds and the directives that were sent requiring reductions because of the crisis we were facing that is as you said we've done a uh

045a 380 here so I'm glad to hear and expecting that the directions being sent will be revised and we will have better news at this point that's correct board member Woods I'll I'll um inject a few other cautionary notes in the presentation ahead but at the 35,000 foot level that is that comment is correct thank you does any other board members have any um more questions on this part um Miss uh board president Cotman you um thank you uh Chief Financial Officer uh Jeff quick question the found Foundation a originally had a list of students a list of schools that were underfunded is that going to be taken into consideration when the budget is pulled together um I can remember about four schools that were underfunded over the years uh based on um and and

046that uh ultimately equaled those dollars and I'm wondering if that's going to be taken into consideration I'm still curious to know that's one question the second question um is in regards to the state uh does the uh the uh legislation allow for supplanting at all in this uh in this in their formulas and then the third question is rumor has it that the City of Buffalo is getting enough money and they can stop using ours is that a fact to the best of your knowledge thank you well let me say let me address the first one uh Jeff and then if you have other comments uh you certainly can can chime in um and then you take the second one fully I think the answer is no on the supplant uh always is in my

047in my experience but you can add to that one uh Jeff on the first one board president uh Cotman there there's been a transparency formula that the state has been working on um for a couple of years now and they continue to Tinker with it and in each year that they've done that uh they've identified a group of schools uh you're talking about a group of schools from probably a prior time uh but since this governor uh formula has been laid over we call it a transparency uh School allocation formula to determine which schools are overfunded based on the formula and which schools are underfunded uh that's a different list than the ones you you've been talking about so bottom line is all of it will be taken into consideration and you'll see in our

048presentation that Equity access quality and opportunity will underg guard everything we do when we consider these strategic Investments so all of that will be addressed yes now Jeff on the supplant question what do you have what are your thoughts on that so the this the federal funding which we'll talk about in a minute is is meant to be supplemental so it unlike the cares act that was that was a uh a backfill of a cut of general fund dollars these dollars are meant to be supplemental in nature that's why they're that's why they're they're being separately um identified as grants and in in in our grant fund um I believe there are um there are uh you know there's there's lists of what is and is not allowable and to the extent that a school

049district would have to uh make Cuts in their other funding there there would be some allowance for using federal funds to avoid uh reductions in in existing programs um our intent and I think the the the numbers as we see them currently bear this out that these these dollars really should be intended to be supplemental um because they are they are it's a lot of dollars and it's for a few years but it but it is something that will expire um so it it has to be something that can that that can expire it has to be funding that can go away um and not not leave us with a giant fiscal cliff and again we believe the the the foundation a will go a long way um fully funding that will go a long

050way towards that um so that that's on the question on the supplanting uh the City of Buffalo I have not had a chance to analyze what they have received under the various federal aid um you know I understand that there there there there is substantial uh stimulus funding for obviously schools which we know um in state and local governments um I I but I can't speak to um to to the city at this point Terence herd has his hand up president kman did that answer your question okay Terrence okay I I have two quick questions I'm not quite sure if they're premature or not uh my first question is about the the assessment tool that the principal used to um to um classify you know what programs I need inside each building um how would

051this be affected will the principal be allowed to work with um the district and um I imagine board members to see what programs they need in inside the school so they can have another voice and see how this can be utilized and the second question is about our capital building uh I know we need some um resources for improvements inside um several buildings and uh one that I visited recently was U Westminister Charter School um which I I'm not sure where we'll be at right now as far as um in talks with that um program over there so those just my two questions ad M before we answer questions could you put down the slides I don't think board members are alluding to the slides at this time let's see each other's faces so could

052you take down this presentation thank you so let me answer this question I mean we have a process Mr herd that's going to include all of our stakeholders all of our stakeholders including principles teachers support staff parents everybody so short answer I guess is is yes but what you'll see in my presentation is that there's going to be a very discipline systematic evidence-based approach that we're going to take in order to decide and determine which strategic Investments we can sustain uh that we have the capacity to do and that um have a number of other concerns and considerations that that I believe in my experience and and research-based uh practice need to be considered as we take them through these screens this is not going to be a long wish list of what everybody wants

053to do and then let's go do it you're going to have to have some discipline uh on this because it is short-term money and you don't want to increase long-term Legacy liability uh so that so I'm going to help guide you through this and show you a framework that staff are working on now that we will consider each and every suggestion recommendation uh proposal that we'll put that through uh to determine it's uh primarily whether it's going to be a high priority high impact um strategy so so that's what that's how I would answer that on that question now what was your second question um about about capital building uh we know we need we have buildings in our in our district that needs improvement improvement that particular that particular School uh has a lot

054of money reserved for Capital Improvement so we're going to be trying to access those dollars first and capital Improvement is a is another whole issue and we do have uh substantial dollars and a plan at least a two-year plan to begin to address Capital Improvements uh at this time so I'd like to tap those um Alliance funds uh first as we go through this not sure Jeff you would know uh if there's a detail in the language that that addresses Capital funds with these dollars no um there there are things that can be done that would be capital in nature um uh relative to improvements to buildings to make them safer um for the current environment that we're so so that is that that that is in there there there is and and this is

055months and months and months out but there is actually an infrastructure plan that's going through Congress right now that may have funding for schools for Capital Improvements and and whether that be dollars or or funding opportunities that that's another piece um the the the school building which used to be school 68 um if it returns to BPS would would be I believe um one of our aidable uh buildings for for uh building Improvement dollars meaning we could get building Aid um and and Terrence I'm glad you brought the question up too because one of the things that that I I I didn't include on any slides was that we are working on the uh a refinancing of the joint schools construction debt and um I I hope to circulate a memo tomorrow um City group

056that will discuss the $25.8 million savings that we think we will have and dollars like those will be deployed into into our building improvements so there there's a host of things that I think will assist us on that in that angle in the coming um weeks months years um that we're looking forward to okay thank you Mr Pritchard and Dr cash thank you if there's no is there any other questions on this part to finance and Ops because I'd like to turn it over to Executive fairs because the finance uh the federal stimulus money is a very important area so if this ends finance and Ops and I turn it over to Executive fairs uh vice president L pusi uh thank you uh committee uh chairman Woods uh welcome everyone to the uh meeting for

057the Buffalo Board of Education tonight we have four different work sessions presently we are going to go to the executive Affairs where we have two topics for discussion the use of federal stimulus funding and the process and then uh what I know many people are watching for the phase three and four of the reopening opportunities for hybrid and remote learning at this point I will turn it back over to Dr cash uh Dr cash the floor is yours thank you uh Lou board member Puchi um colleagues this deck of slides we have uh six or seven slides in about four main parts that we want to talk about we want to talk in a one slide uh Jeff will give the overview of these stimulus dollars and um the amounts and and how they should

058be sort of directed then will kestus I have put in as a lead to conduct Community widespread Community engagement uh meetings as well as uh efforts to get feedback on a regular basis from our many constituencies many constituencies we want to hear from um their ideas their thoughts their concerns their hopes their dreams so forth and so on very important part of this process is the engagement part and we look forward to it and then I will talk about some of the cautions and framework that I think we've already begun to scaffold but I'm going to share it with you so that you can share it with others that uh best practice recommends uh that you begin thinking about this in this way this is not a simple issue of Here Comes the Money let's

059go spend it um this this is this we'll get into into a heap of trouble if we start processing it that way so I want to share with you my best thinking at this time uh about that and then I'll finish just with a with another piece to consider you know in my in my uh talks with our cabinet my lessons that I've used to give in graduate school I use a lot of ship analogies you know ships are safe in Harbor but that's not what ships are for uh another one is you got to build the framework before you can launch the ship you got to build the thing to build the ship upon and then you take the ship down and launch it and what we have to do first uh almost before

060anything else is start to consider what kind of foundation and infrastructure infrastructure do we need to develop and consider so that we can uh have a path to run on uh with these dollars that's very important uh to consider or in my experience they fail what happens is everybody has great ideas but then they fail in the end because you didn't plan right on the front end on the front end so I'll say a few things about that so this is an exciting time colleagues let me be clear about it this is our time this is our time and I I'm G to be very clear I'm old getting near the end of my time but I know as an educator and if you are with me and your educator as as well this is

061our time we have lived and built our whole life toward A Moment Like This toward a moment like this and I'm gonna I'm gonna be unequivocal about it we're gonna Seize The Narrative we're gonna seiz the moment and we're going to lead this now we're going to have a lot of folk working with us and partnering with us and being beside us but we're going to lead it because we are imminently qualified to leave that's what we do and I want you to be with me on that message see listen here take input all of that but we're leading this work in partnership with others because that's what we do we're the experts and uh we we we we're going to seize this moment we're going to get it done right and buffalo is going

062to be right at the top of the nation and in pop in the top of the world in how you do this work for children who need us period Dr cash speak on that all right so let me let Jeff start and then I'll come in when my part comes um and we'll and we'll get all of this in this presentation this is the presentation when when we're done that let's talk about it let's talk about it all right all right Jeff if you could start colleagues and admir put up the slides that say use of federal stimulus funding colon process all right Jeffrey you lead off will you're on debt okay thank you uh again um admir can you take it to the page two please okay so what I'm going to go over

063here is is I I you know there's a lot of there's been three big pieces of of federal stimulus that um that we've seen now over the last year and I want to kind of set the frame for what we're looking at here the first one and I don't have this isn't on the list but the car's Act is what was signed last March that funding um should expire and be used up through this current fiscal year that we're in so that that should be um you know should not really at least in any large portion go forward so what we have now are two additional uh large pieces of federal stimulus Aid um to talk about and and I'm putting all these acronyms in here because you'll sometimes you'll see uh you you'll see

064it shown one way or another and uh I think it's kind of important for everyone to know what they are so the Corona virus response and relief supplemental Appropriations Act and that's uh goes by the acronym CR RSA um that was signed into law in December of 2020 um and this is an estimate at this point but the funds allocated to the district are they're estimated at about 88.8 million um so that's that's the first one uh or this is actually the second one so cares act then the crrs act and now the next one is the American Rescue plan of 2021 or AI P or sometimes arpa arpa that was signed into law in March of 21 so just last month funds allocated in the district are estimated to be 2011 million um those

065the 88.8 million 20 million those are the numbers that were included on the state aid run that was released last week um the State education department has told us they're not final um they may not change significantly but they're not they're not final but you get an idea of of the size of these these these two uh programs um one big item that's in the ARP is that there is what's called a 20% learning loss set aside so there are certain things that have been legislatively outlined as as helping remedy learning loss and that in large part that's things that are uh elt summer um programs that are outside of the normal school year it looks at a a lot of those to be uh relative to learning loss there a set aside um there's

066also funds in both of these that will be retained by the state and some of those funds may be may be provided to us in other districts in the form of other grants um so together These funds are referred to as Elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds or Esser so you'll see oftentimes Esser as as the the name of of these and and in this case Esser 2 and Esser 3 three so the second the the CR RSA would be Sr 2 and ARP would be Sr 3 so there's been three um and Sesser one would be the cares act so so that's that's sort of the terminology that goes with these um final allocations guidance and a Grant application are to follow so again the these These are going to be treated as

067a grant they're not general fund dollars they will not be part of our general fund budget they will not be part of the general fund budget for the four-year plan the these are above and beyond um in part of part of our grants fund um the duration at this point looks to be going through about September of 2024 so you're looking at about three years I I've seen and heard in a few instances four years so obviously September 24 would bring us two months into a or three months into a fourth year so I don't know if there may be any adjustments with that but this this there it is a multi-year but not unlimited duration um and uh this next bullet because a lot of people have questions what can go in it and

068um there there are a lot of details that have been uh discussed at this point um and uh you know as part of the actual legislation uh guidance will be received from the state and through the Grant application process but I did put a quote in here that I pulled off of one of the pieces of guidance that really it talks about you know wide range of uses but um activities that are necessary to maintain the operation of and continuity of services in a in a local education educational agency um and Contin continuing to employ existing staff at the Lea so what that really means is that if we're in a position where we have to lay off because there is no funding that it appears some of this funding may be usable if need

069be to to cover that but again in in our initial projections the these dollars appear uh to be and and should be looked at as supplemental dollars um last point on here so a process must be followed to develop a plan and it really starts with Community engagement um and the the plan there's actually a plan that we have to be able to post on our web by July 1st of 20201 so you know we're we're we're there's a relatively short period of time to get moving on this um and it begins with uh Community engagement and that touches on everything Community Schools um board staff everything so um that really gives you the high level on the number side of it um so on to the next slide please thank you Jeff and good

070evening Dr cash and board members so the the purpose will hold on yeah those were the nuts and bolts colleagues of the uh stimulus dollars if you have any questions about that um sort of Now's the Time to ask uh because we do have a a number of slides but this this if you have questions on the nuts and bools I wondered if you did otherwise we'll we'll continue would your preference be to continue or if you have a hand up we we'll take the question uh I just wanted to say one thing I did attend a presentation at noon from the New York State uh Schoolboard Association and they said that the These funds the uh Esser three-year funding has very specific guidelines for what you can use it for in uh doing we

071we having buildings for Co addressing but they have specific things that you will have to do an application showing that you're using the monies for these specific things and they also mentioned this piece about it must have public engagement and 20% must be for re uh Rehabilitation remedial learning so that's what the New York State Association of um School boards presented today at 12 o'clock yes and that and that's correct board member was very helpful uh we were going to allude to that but you you covered that well and so thank you all right will if you could take this slide please thank you superintendent so the the purpose of our public engagement strategy is to receive feedback from our district stakeholders and the general public on the potential uses of Sr funding as it's

072stipulated in the federal and state guidance uh we'd like to invite our district Committee of stakeholders to three Public Live streamed meetings the first one being on Thursday April 29th beginning at 4 o'clock Tuesday May 11th beginning at 5 o'clock Thursday May 20th at 10 o'clock and each of the constituent groups from the committee will be asked to provide recommendations based on the federal and state guidance that I will be providing them and I will copy the board of course in the cabinet on all that correspondence so you have the same documents that they're looking at half of each one of those meetings will be dedicated to a public chat during which members of the public will be able to submit their questions their comments and certainly their own uh recommendations the general public will

073also be asked to use a portal on our website for email submissions and again we'll be asking them to base their recommendation ations on the specific federal and state guidance and just a side note that public chat opportunity and the email opportunity is going to be very important as we try to elevate student voice with this so we will be making sure that we get the information out uh to our students so that they're aware of how they can participate in these meetings and of course Board of Education members will be encouraged to log in uh to the meetings to participate and then we'll be producing summary findings from all of the uh public engagement at Dr cash by May 24th thank you will and colleagues this was just a highlevel short form of it

074all but there'll be many opportunities uh for ongoing and continuous engagement and uh we'll build those timelines will build those calendars uh and the like do I see a hand before we continue Lou anyone all right president Cotman I see is waving at us Sharon do you have a a question I have a question and I think uh Jennifer's hand is also up board member mzi hand is also up all right so looking at these initial meetings um I don't see any weekend meetings involved in this are you planning on using a community school form is this a is this a um I am concerned uh that um we do not have any weekend meetings in here my other question is how are you going to notify the constituents that you're having these meetings how

075are they how is this going to be advertised um I'm looking at the time period Tuesday uh 5 to 7 well that works good if you don't work till 5 o'clock so I'm trying to figure out uh are we making this uh are we accommodating our constituents I don't see you know uh five o'clock if a parent gets off at 5 um getting their children home getting them F or whatever are they really going to be able to participate in an evening meeting so I'm and I don't see any weekend meetings there at all I and and my other question is how are we going to uh notify our constituents and how are uh what is the uh communication plan uh in regards to this uh these meetings thank you yeah so I think those

076are those are U good suggestions good comments certainly this is an initial uh approach to it and what we could do is at the Thursday meeting uh see if there are additional interest in some weekend meetings we we're happy to do that um for weekends maybe we have the first one and then get get feedback on when when a good weekend meeting might occur versus building it in now we could do that I'm open what do you think will no I think that's a great idea I'll put that question uh to the committee uh actually when I send them the first email about these dates that if they have some other recommendations just let me know good so who makes up the committee who makes up the committee I'm just curious to know who's on

077the committee the committee is made up of the all of the leaders of our various parent organizations and the leaders of our all of our professional organizations in the district we also have uh say yes is also at the table uh on the committee so will just for the Public's edification say who say who that is in terms of our professional organizations bcsa best name all the organizations uh pecta bcsa for the administrators uh pecta for our clerical the BTF for our teachers uh so they are part of the committee and then uh each one of the the parent organizations that that sit on the parent Congress bcsa yes well I think I think all of them should be invited I think B Be should be invited I think the the custodians the Food Service

078um everybody should be invited to these meetings everybody everybody leave no stone unturn and then make sure everybody has an opportunity to join if they don't make the meeting they can join live stream they can have a way of continuously sending information in electronically um and I've already directed Miss Calli to uh develop a communication plan for this Miss cman so we'll be using multiple methods of communicating out including a translation of this information into the top six languages and I would like to see a survey also I would like to also see our student representative be allowed to host a student Forum uh that young lady is capable of handling her own meetings and and and certainly she can uh engage our students involved in this um I am concerned that um the board

079is not spearheading at least one of these meetings but since uh boards uh members uh are going to be invited I would like to see a board member put on the committee uh I think that's uh that That's essential that uh part of this District Committee of stakeholders includes a representative from the Buffalo Board of Education uh the um the board and so I think uh we need to add that piece in there so that we can have direct someone directly reporting back to the board on these situations on this okay absolutely absolutely all right all of that is uh duly noted and uh we'll take care of it thank you for that any other questions president Cotman before we turn the floor over to miss mcos okay Jennifer do you have some questions I

080I can't see I didn't see you raise your hand but it was represented to me that you have a question yes yes I do I I think that uh president Cotman kind of addressed much of that I also would like to know are we asking for any of these groups or their constituents to make you know are we putting not pressure but are we asking them to be sure that they reach out to their bases to um participate in this maybe even have uh meetings of their own everybody has a monthly meeting you know are they including this in their agenda with the PO and talking points and the you seem to be very specific on what it is you're trying to address and you you have your your um your agenda down um also

081in regards to what president Cotman said how can board members maybe take the same points and create their own forums via you know Zoom or or whatever just to the buzz has to be real and if we're going to do this in a major way and you have board members who are literally voted in by all the people that we're trying to reach um how how can we also take this on if if we choose to um you know uh maybe like a mock participatory budgeting issue with or or scenario with our students or something along those lines I mean I would I would definitely lean to you all as to how uh you would want for us to be able to go about receiving feedback based on what you have in store as far

082as what you're trying to communicate but you know how can we as individuals um also help out other than just directing people to come to one of these three meetings I I feel like this is a a wildly positive opportunity that we don't you know instead of fighting for money we actually get to see how money is going to be worked out and you know the excitement should be real for this for this city so I I I'm down to host whatever be a part of whatever just you know I echoing everything sharing and adding a little more right your first point Miss mcos is really important so committee members uh as in the past with other projects that we have tackled in over the years they are always asked to convene if they can

083with at least the leadership of their constituent group or create some type of process for their organization to get feedback and they'll certainly be asked to do that for this that's going to be very important I'll also be encouraging to distribute the documents that I send them which is the summary state in federal guidance to all of their membership so that again people can be focused on creating recommendations that align with that guidance from from the state and and federal levels um and I I think we're just open to suggestions on any way that the board members can participate uh you know I'll leave that to your discretion and certainly to the superintendent yeah colle we support all of those uh ideas but now remember uh there's a structure and then there's a uh execution

084on that uh so we want to hear from you uh as well on on how and when and uh you want to get engaged I mean you can do your own Community meetings we'll help you uh stage those organize those have staff assigned to those uh you could do a whole board uh event uh around this where we do it in public place maybe in one of our schools all of the board attends and you invite everybody to come um well virtually uh we we do it so let's let's talk about it we will or send something out to you and uh let's get your feedback and and we'll go we we'll go to work on it I do think student voice is critical we we always have uh talked about it and done things

085lately with it uh work of Dr Morel for example with her Scholars and that could be a form for students to to give feedback and I do think Tamisha Walker our board rep student rep is capable but with support with support I'd have some staff assigned to her if she wanted to do something uh with student form so all of this we will uh take into consideration I've already directed Dr Williams and Dr Reynolds uh to reach out to the parent leaders of the five major parent groups that we have and to get things start moving onto Facebook and into their into their populations of uh constituents and membership and so forth so we we're getting all of that all of that rolling all right anything else at this time uh Mr herd do you

086have a question yes I just had one question um due to the importance of this and the and the timing uh I would like to see possibly that this District can reach out to the community newspapers um so that more people can get involved because there's more people outside our parent groups and there's more people that that um is not aware of the functions of the district and what goes on you know within our schools so if we can reach out to our community newspapers whether you live on North Side East Side West Side South Buffalo that this message would be bought out and also to make it simple if it's possible on our website if there could be a link or so that that parents can actually ask questions and um send to that

087link and it could be observed by the board members and administrative staff members because I know that it's going to be a lot of people um trying to get on to the three meetings in the two-hour time frame they may have a lot of questions that that we won't be able to answer or or might not be answered you know for them so if it's something that a database can be compacted uh for for questions that they can go to that link and just send their messages there yeah we we'll look at that colleagues I don't want you to think that this is all we're going to do with public engagement this is a start I these are things that have come come to us to start the work to start the engagement process but

088this look at this as fluid look at this as organic and that it'll have tributaries that I have all shoots and and uh we we'll continue to engage the public around this this is going to be um a lot of work it it has a it has a 10year and longer impact is what our intent is uh so we won't try to do it and stuff it all into one one month of meetings no this will be this will be ongoing but this is a start and your ideas and thoughts here uh have further stimulated our thinking uh in this regard and I will be directing staff tomorrow uh to follow up on on many of these ideas and Mr herd just to follow up on your uh idea about it being just an ongoing

089that is the purpose of the portal for the public to be able to constantly submit questions comments or recommendations through the portal I'm calling it an email but it's basically a portal that will be live for several weeks so that that opportunity as you described it will exist thank you on Dr caressi do do does the board have any other questions all right uh please continue Mr cresus uh he's G to turn it over to me now thank you will admir next slide please colleagues this is part three of this process uh in many ways this is the most important part of the process and it reflects cumulative thinking uh of of Educators who who are in work like this over many many years I'm calling it a process for identifying high priority High leverage

090expenditures to improve prek to2 academic and social emotional learning and also uh looking at the work from prenatal on into postsecondary options good postsecondary options for our young people strengthening that Pipeline and that Continuum uh all along so here are some questions there are six questions uh that we've called from our meetings with the Council of great City Schools meetings with big five uh our Collective uh experience and wisdom around these issues when you have such a large uh investment being made in public education I was around when they did it uh in 2009 with ar and so some of this is is reflective of of of how we approached it then as well all of it is good is good thinking it's meant to stimulate and prime your thinking uh there are no right

091or wrong answers just things to try to be helpful and make sure we're disciplined in the way in which we address uh the uh the ideas and the recommendations the first question is how does this investment address current and long-term student needs and one of the things I've already begun to get staff doing is where are our students right now on a three tier basis at least in that way uh are we assessing the current student academic and social learning needs and and we have begun that but we're going to have to do that with fervor uh in the weeks and months ahead because without the evidence and without the data of exactly what our children need uh that you know we'll be just shooting uh in in the in the dark we need to

092be making these decisions on evidence and on uh the basis of what our children need we'll be looking at Best Practices in strategic thinking and decision making and there are many uh uh to guide us there's a whole literature on strategic thinking and decision making that we will put into this framework as you will how will the investment Advance the effective use of educational technology we're learning a lot as we have been in this remote learning environment for over a year now um we're going to continue to advance educational technology as a prime way of catching students up and allowing those students who have become more comfortable in the remote environment letting them go ahead for example we're very seriously considering and and we'll be bringing a proposal to you uh once we work out

093the regulations part of it of an online prek to 12 or maybe a uh 3 to 12 uh Online High School uh next year uh we think that that will address some needs of students who can go at their own pace and can maybe Advance out of high school sooner and into a postsecondary option sooner why not uh this is the kind of thing that is going to be on the table and may address some of our students needs that's just an example uh always colleagues and I should have bolded this but always the emphasis will be on access AC Equity opportunity and quality access Equity opportunity and quality for all of these uh initiatives how does this investment Advance the Strategic plan and instructional priorities vision and goes to the district uh currently and

094as we as we go forward um I think that's very important we have a strong uh strategic plan going forward now with the education bargain we will want to look at deepening and broadening the bargain and what we do those six buttons that comprise the education bargain those are important ones to to to continue to deepen and broaden uh you don't throw the baby out right now because those have started to take root and they've started to get traction that that affects and works for children so that's important another goal is what or question is what do we already know about the efficacy of this investment or the likelihood that it will be successful so again what's the what's the research say is this something that has been around for a while and it's a

095Nuance or an iteration of an idea and has it been proven to be uh successful and effective particularly with our range of students so backed by dis cross-disciplinary research cons is it considered a best practice what's the real chance for improving the student outcome uh or is it you know just kind of Wishful uh fly in the air uh sort of thing that we'd like to do but all the there's no evidence there supporting that it really can be successful for for our children what's the communication plan as as you have indicated that clearly articulates the rationale the evidence-based and the ultimate decision for making purchases uh that will support our children you have to have a clear transparent plan I believe uh around those uh issues again the emphasis will be on access Equity

096opportunity and quality what will it take to effectively and equitably implement this program or strategy do we have the right people at the table talking about this do we have the right people to execute the work you know sometimes we can have a really really Grand idea but then when we start peeling it back and looking at it really closely it might be more than we can handle with the capacity that we have uh so we just have to that'll be something to look at do we have the capacity to take on this investment at this time doesn't mean we can't or we won't but we'll certainly have to look at that might not be able to do everything that we'd all like to do all at once how will this investment be sustained that's

097a really important question or continue to build District capacity after the funding has ceased how when it start we we we need to prioritize Investments that build internal instructional and organizational capacity of the district see this is going to be Legacy work colleagues this is building Long Haul see not just two years and done but building long game so that this District stays Best in Class for a long long time we have the opportunity to do that let's not lose that chance and then not least is how will we measure success what it will it look like what are some of the measures multiple measures that we will use to determine whether we've been successful with these initiatives one of the things that's clear in the guidance is that you got to be accountable for

098this money we're going to be audited Contin ly we'll we'll we'll uh have regulatory people coming in all the time and if they catch a whiff just a little whiff of mismanagement or uh misuse of these funds uh will be in the National funny papers so let's don't even think uh along the lines of some Investments That might lead us down that path let's be transparent about what success looks like how the progress will be measured during the implementation at the end of funding and Beyond very important and uh my staff and I will certainly help build a framework for us to do this we have to be considerate and patient about the time needed for certain programs and approaches to take root some things are easy do now done it's going to be high

099impact High leverage doesn't take a lot of time doesn't take even a lot of resources and some of those ideas have begun to come in but others you really really need to build the foundation put this plant the soil put the soil down plant the seeds and let it take root in it over time and it will be high impact but it needs time to grow and to be cultivated and then I just P posed a question about accountability colleagues this is a time when perhaps more than than others and I know some of you been training along this we were in training together a couple of years ago and we just have to spend more time on looking at student outcomes and and the measures of those uh how successful students are indicating that

100they're growing and glowing along these efforts we just we just have a bunch of things that we implemented but none of it yields uh for kids then it was a waste of time it was a waste of effort and frankly it was a waste of money uh so I'm recommending sort of a uh and you'll see this in the next part we've got to separate These funds we've got to have a different way of reporting out on the progress of the use of these funds along the lines of what they're intended to be used for uh and then we have to hold ourselves accountable and our partners accountable everybody is accountable parents uh Partners business partners Community Partners anyone that's working with us in this work they have responsibility too for the outcome and that's

101kind of what I'm saying there on the next slide admir and the final slide here uh is we need to build an infrastructure next slide admir we need to build the infrastructure I I think I'm past all of that I'm sorry keep going keep G how will we build the infrastructure to launch this work and again I don't have all the ideas colleagues but I know when we when we won $110 million from The Gates Foundation uh they required us and we saw that it was an effective way to set up a separate trust fund managed separate from the omm uh and that it was uh very uh tightly managed uh we hired additional highly competent people to help us with the administration of the funding not to tell us how to do it but

102the administration and the uh reporting and monitoring of the use of these funds and we managed it and reported it differently than you do when you're reporting a quarterly report or other kind of report to the board uh and we have to meet federal guidelines in doing that so I'm sort of starting early but we'll come back to you with maybe what the initial Foundation that we have to build a little bit of capacity into so that we can uh really manage these um hundreds of millions of dollars effectively uh over the next several years I hope that makes sense to you all right colleagues that ends uh that part to give you a sense of the process that we're thinking about and certainly uh some of the elements of that process again it's not

103completely baked it's not all done and set in stone but this is these are some initial thoughts some screens some criteria and again we welcome your discussion your comments uh at this time so we can build that into into our planning uh for this exciting work open for questions ADM if you could take down the slide and we'll turn it over to Mr Puchi uh thank you Dr cash for taking the slides down right now uh fellow board members does anyone have any questions of Dr Cash's presentation I have a question all right paet you are first the floor is yours okay uh Dr cash in when we had to go to online learning and make that and make that transition well we found was when the students had difficulties and they weren't able to

104handle the online learning and they needed support what we had to do was build and lean on Community Resources we had to reach out to community agencies and churches and Community groups and and have things and places and people who work with our children are committ committed to our children and just are in the community where the children uh can get too easily we built that as an Outreach mechanism so what I'm asking and uh questioning is um we've got all this money now and additional resources and I would hope that we would build a community arm and build on what we started with the what we learned from the uh online learning and build a community arm to work with us in the community supporting these kids supporting their emotional needs Hands-On training just

105the I I think it was it's a beautiful thing that we've started and I think we can build upon it so what do you think about that yeah well certainly thank you for that comment I I have a good sense uh of what you're talking about and you know we we certainly open up to those kinds of opportunities to those kinds of opportunities um but again we'll hold everyone will have to be held accountable for what do they propose that they can do to help um what is their deliverables that they that they want to be able to be measured by and held accountable to and uh ENT you know what are their timeline what is the kind of group that they want to work with uh and so and so forth and what is

106their proven uh track record with working with with Children of that nature so we'll have a process that we can set up to engage as many people as possible that can help uh but again we'll be disciplined about it we'll be looking at research-based evidence and we'll be uh you know very thoughtful but as inclusive as possible so so your idea is is not a is if you're talking about for example what we did with the virtual Learning Centers uh that was something that was an Outreach we got we got support from foundations and uh other philanthropy groups right here in the city they open up the community centers I think a few churches open their doors uh for our youngsters during that critical time and and and that kind of teamwork and Community work

107around our children everybody wrapping their arms around the needs of our children that's what is absolutely going to be called called for uh during this during this time so short answer answer absolutely yes any other uh questions fellow board members before we move on to the next topic uh Mr Scott I see your hand Larry the floor is yours um two questions first being when we get to the point where we've exhausted um all of the steps to gain public input on how the how this money should be spent um will it then come before the board for us to approve the final plan oh absolutely the board has to have um ultimate and primary fiduciary oversight of all of this in my in my estimation I mean this money is coming to the district

108but it's the board's fiduciary responsibility to manage and it's and to see that the dollars are spent wisely and according to a plan uh so yes absolutely I think that should be uh the process and I don't see it as a one by one by one by one come to the board one one one you know we'll bring things in uh appropriately segmented um grants because this is really supposed to be a series of Grants assigned to specific needs of children and when we get it fleshed out of here's the menu of ideas and Strate iies that we're going to be using to meet this um section of the of the dollars uh you know the grant dollar then will then that should be brought uh to the board on an ongoing basis and then

109the next section and next section and next session and maybe you get reports certainly I think every every quarterly absolutely and maybe every two months you you get an overall high level uh where we are and then in certain months work in your work sessions you focus on a particular um section of that 20% for example that needs to go to uh learning learning loss and making up for the social emotional needs and academic uh exposures of children so there's a number of ways we can cut it and and present it but there's no doubt that the short answer is yes that the board should be uh fully apprised and really overseeing fiduciary responsibility for all of this as well as assuring that the that the district's Mission the plan the vision all the things

110that you want to see happen around equity for example which which is the lead piece Equity access quality and opportunity making sure that all of that is happening I want us to be very transparent in reporting out about this and I want to I I have to develop a process to help you do that but but that's what uh what what we have in mind at this point is that helpful Larry or did that yeah I I assumed that that was going to happen I just wanted to clarify that there's going to be transparency oversight and accountability as to how this money is spent with the entire board informed and and voting on it yeah um uh my second question you started to actually add a bit on this um but wondering if if it's

111not now if it's at what point it will be where we get a little bit more detail about Extended Learning um in summer school and what that might look like um to you know bring those kids up that have been disengaged and maybe have um slipped behind a little bit to bring them back up to where they need to be both academically and socially and emotionally yeah that's a great question and we have been working on that let me see if I can bring you as soon as uh the board meeting of next week under my report sort of a menu that's been developed so far uh Elementary High School uh different needs some of the kids who are Advanced and have uh more enrichment kinds of needs and want to go go do some

112additional things this summer and then those who for example have have had a lot of incompletes this year uh have fallen behind and need need to have an opportunity uh to catch up and and the goal would be to get them to grade level you know by the start of the new school year so we have we have an array of some programs and and elt opportunities that I can have an uh says is working with us I'm giving them the green light uh on on two programs that they've proposed and uh you know to further and finish planning so that we can bring that to you for final approval and then we have an elt a robust uh plan for elt uh for the remainder of this year and certainly uh hitting the ground

113right away all all next year that that's going to be a big part of it is is a big robust elt plan uh for next year um six days a week for example in terms of the opportunity so if if that's helpful let me see what I can pull together for you uh as a board for next week under my report to answer that question more directly would that be helpful absolutely and and I was just going to ask about whether Saturdays we're going to be included in it it's in that plan it sounds like absolutely it will be great thank you Dr cash okay thank you any other questions on this phase of the presentation fellow board members yes Dr an Rivera the floor is yours thank you I suspect I know the answer

114to this question already but I think it's worth just stressing how are you going to incorporate Community feedback into the creation of this plan will it go into particularly the kinds of gos that need to be that need to be shaped what our community feels that they need and align it with the new educ bargain I'm sorry Dr cash I believe you're muted you're right yeah I'm sorry an I didn't I didn't couldn't couldn't quite hear that I'm happy to repeat it so I suspect know the answer to this but I think it's worth clarifying A little bit and stressing the point which is that we're going to be collecting Community feedback on on some an input on to this budgeting process can you clarify for us how that Community feedback is going to go

115into the plan proc process that you laid out for us here certainly so while it's early in in in this whole process um well indicated in the slide that says by May 24th at least the initial effort because we do have a a little bit of time sensitivity because a board is going to be adopting their their budget for onm uh somewhere around that time so some of these could be onm kinds of considerations you see and some could be uh stimulus considerations because there's a little bit more strict criteria for the stimulus dollars than there are for the omm dollars so I will want to make sure that we um assign some of these Community input ideas those that that have uh you know have plausibility and possibility uh to the proper to the

116proper piece so some will be time sensitive if it if if when you're making your budget uh decisions you see but certainly the team that I have on that with will I have Dr Brown hall for example I have Dr tanra Will Williams I have an belli um assigned to that team Jeff Pritchard and they'll come in the ideas will come in and then they'll come into buckets if you will and then they'll come to me uh for final review and then we'll come and bring them to you with some commentary around them try to do a four quadrant piece sort of low impact um High leverage you know low impact low leverage high impact High leverage and the fourth quadron of course uh low leverage but high impact so I'll do something with it

117and I haven't thought it all out yet um I understand everything is on the table right now it's kind of like a brainstorming session every all the good ideas matter and we'll listen to them but it doesn't mean everything will get into the uh execution box if you will no you're going to use just to be clear you're going to use the guidelines that you gave us here about identifying the high priority High leverage because whatever we want to fund we want to make sure that we get student achievement back out out from it that's right and it's just it's useful to hear how the two things go together so uh we can have it in front of us when we're looking at what you give us but also that the community can understand how

118that feedback is going to get used so I appreciate that yes uh any other questions for our distinguished superintendent uh hearing none uh Dr cash back to you for the next phase of the presentation all right thank you sir so colleagues this part is well no I don't want to say that this part is the next part so phase three and four I was going to say it'll be brief but we we can't predict that it it's it's important uh so we gonna take the time we need uh I do see President maker there and uh certainly want to say hello to you uh Dr maker and we look forward to hearing from you uh soon thank you for being here absolutely so colleag some what I'd like to do very quickly you see in

119front of you I don't have to read all of it but I do want to be clear we're not out of this yet we're not out of it we still have to wear masks covid-19 is here it's well and it is starting to Surge again you all know it you read about it in the papers we're not about politics here we're about keeping people safe keeping our children safe and what I'm alluding to in this set of factoids under this phase three phase four reopening uh part of our plan is that we have to stay vigilant we have to stay cautious and we have to realize uh that right here in Erie County we're among the highest positivity rate in the state right now and the uh cases are are we have not seen that

120they're headed this way yet um it's in a Range where we think that's that's read I talked to Dr quo this week he says it is not a good idea um based on the data that you see here um hospitalizations are still there when when you start to see hospitalizations strong that means people are sick this is not just I tested positive I'm fine I did my five 10 days I'm back at work or I'm back at school that means people are sick and uh we're concerned about that I'm concerned over the last three days that we are over 114 cases for our school system and they say a 100 cases per 100,000 is in the red zone now Dr Dr cash is there a presentation I'm sorry to interrupt Dr cash would you like

121us to start the presentation well I think I thought it was in here somewhere oh yes you absolutely need to start the presentation all right thank you I just want to make sure I'm sorry admir go ahead the facto Co facts next slide I apologize colleagues so colleagues out in the public uh what I was beginning to speak about was that you know we're around still 70,000 new cases each day Nationwide uh the trend down over 14 days is up the death toll as we all know is is is just egregiously too high and moreful painful for us to think about um because of the the the extreme ex nature of the loss like that Nationwide it's millions of people globally and every every county is reporting new cases uh and we're at a seven

122point0 positivity 7% positivity rate right now BPS covid total cases for the past three days is 114 that's the highest has been since we've been um reporting this out to you each day now granted most of those cases are still in the remote learning environment many most of those cases are are children who have or um people who have not come into into school yet but still that's a high number and most of them are students which concerns us concerns us deeply um there's there's this article in the New York Times today that again when we say well it doesn't happen with small children and we don't really need to test I mean I've been hearing this but yet colleagues come on this is a new disease we don't know enough about it yet we're

123learning about it all the time all the time and and it's just just too risky to start to take down certain guard rails that we know then will increase positivity rates and perhaps the rate of children getting sick and I don't want one child to get sick because we did something that wasn't smart about this so read that article um colleagues I'll make sure that it gets to you in the email because it it says that even if a child has a symptomatic uh sort of response to a test or over the short amount of time that you need to be in quarantine when we look longer term at our kids and our children uh who've tested positive or who may not have we starting to see some important impact concerning impact regarding neurological symptoms

124pulmonary symptoms and other uh things that are happening with our young children it's just not acceptable if it happens that we could have done something differently so I I just this is the thing that keeps certainly me up at night and I know it does you as well next slide please now having said that colleagues we are uh and have been in remote learning for most of the year and since February 1 um we have had students still learning remotely while we've started to bring back students so for example our prek to two students our high need students our seniors were among the first students brought back in phase one phase two we added some grades grades three and four in the elementary and grades nine and 11 or partial 9 and 11 in our

125high schools um what I'd like Miss belli to do is share with you uh what has been going on instructionally with our uh students during this um first two phases and right up to date to right now what we're learning from that and how we'll be carrying over uh that that data that positive data that we know is making a difference for our children into phases three and four and then we'll hear a little bit very briefly about phase three and four and uh we'll close this slide presentation an belli are you up you ready thank you Dr cash thank you um so good evening everyone I think you've heard me say some of this before but I think it's important to reiterate um that we have continued to improve upon everything we've learned since

126we went out last year um remote instruction has solidified teachers have developed a great comfort level with technology that we may not have had in the past because it just wasn't as prevalent and that learning from remote has made the transition to concurrent much easier um Our IT department has been phenomenal they sent people out at the beginning of phase one to support that first week of implementation um and from that we did learn um where there were potential issues so for example if someone was struggling a little bit managing two screens that was something that the IT department could support them with if someone was trying to figure out how to get the Active Inspire to work on their iwb while they were with a concurrent group that was something the IT department could

127support them with so um many many thanks they're juggling a lot of balls but they have been really wonderful supporting the teachers and I think the Comfort level teachers have developed allows them to point out when there is something they want to work on so they're they're more able to say this is where I'm struggling or um my student is experiencing this whereas in the very beginning we might not have recognized what what could potentially be causing um any kind of Gap so we've continued to build on our experiences from phase one um and teachers are continuing to share best practices I think in the very beginning in February when we came back everything felt very new but that Comfort level has really increased and improved um because we've had experience now with hybrid and

128concurrent instruction so teachers in phase two were actually able to talk to their colleagues who had brought students back during phase one so if the if they learned anything um in Phase One the the teachers preparing for phase two could find out exactly what the technology um scenario would be they were able to make at the school level minor tweaks to schedules based on what they were seeing in phase one I think families had a a greater Comfort level coming back in phase two because they were used to using our techn or excuse me our covid screeners and all that type of thing so there was definitely that comfort that was built um moving from phase one to phase two we learned a lot about technology again um we learned how to set up classrooms

129so and I teachers continually share best practices with one another which is why they're such a fantastic Workforce um people have been using breakout rooms very strategically in their classrooms um so even when it first rolled out and we were 100% remote um teachers began to experiment and now we've provided some additional training and teachers are starting to use those more strategically um in the classroom perhaps while they're working with one group so they might be working with students who are in person and they can have the other students doing breakout groups they can combine breakout groups between students who are remote and students who are in person to sort of build that connectivity in the classroom um so they've really been strategic about how they have used that to support learning and I can't

130say this enough I I've heard this from principales teachers just the joy of seeing students in person I think has been a wonderful experience so it was we learned about our kids when they were remote and we developed those relationships with them and then actually getting to see them in person I think has just been a wonderful experience at the school level um we've talked about a lot of this before we are continuing to add to our professional development opportunities so we had some baseline training for teachers and then we've also provided more along the lines of special education so what does it look like in a co- teing environment if you're concurrent um how do you use breaker out rooms not just how do you create them but then how do you use them

131instructionally um we continue to provide information about schoology and improving this the performance there our mentors um who support our new teachers have been conducting virtual support visits with those teachers and answering questions as they come up um again we've had FAQs and guidance provided um office hours are offered through the technology department as well as through multilingual and C um special education so that those people are always available to support any teachers with questions um and again we've created special subject area groups in Schoo so that um questions can be asked and answered directly for each department and materials get posted there immediately our curriculum is house there so it's sort of a One-Stop shop for any teacher um who needs that additional support next slide please admir I just wanted to highlight um

132we we talk about this a lot that we're leveraging our online programs but I don't want that to just be a a talking point I wanted to show you um so we've definitely SE increased usage in programs like schooly mobimax Mayan below you can see a slide from nearpod comparing last year's usage to this year's usage so it's looking at activity submissions the gray reflect refs last year um from August to March and the blue reflects this year's usage from August to March so an activity submission is something a student would submit so it might be a quiz um they might be answering an open-ended question responding to a poll um doing some matching activities I personally love the draw it items that they can do um because if you're in a math classroom you

133can sketch out the math problem for the teacher um or you can draw the model that you're looking at in a science classroom um so those are really good opportunities nearpod allows us um to have students actively engage in the learning it's got some great opportunities you can use it on a self-paced uh way for kids so they can go on themselves or you can use it as a whole class activity but you can always embed those engagement strategies to make sure that you are checking for understanding um to make sure you have data on how your students are participating and responding to what you're talking about in class um um so we found near pod to be very useful and I I think you can see the teachers find it very useful as well

134the nice thing about all these programs is um we're keeping them right so they weren't just purchased for this scenario where we were out in remote um these are many of these are things that we already had we already had Mayan we already had schooly we already had nearpod um so we've just in increased usage and improved um the way we use it to interface with students and the way we integrate it into our actual classes and we're going to continue to build on that as we return to full in person um I think we've said it a lot technolog is not going away it's something that we know that we need to use um more strategically in the in-person classroom and so all these opportunities will allow us to to continue to build that

135practice and embed these opportunities in the actual curriculum thank you you can go to the next slide ad thank you and that was that was colleagues that's a significant slide and that was for near pod only and that's student work being submitted so that's that's a three million submissions plus is is significant uh indication of work um and and being and being done and being evaluated so I didn't want you to lose the significance of of that data all right I think we have two of our distinguished colleagues that will share just at a high level where we are with phase three and what we're calling phase three and phase four uh we have already made the decision uh not to go to three feet we will not be going to three feet and that

136is at the recommendation of our um medical director at this time he say it's too early uh to be doing that while we're in uh a climate where where the the data does not warrant us us to do that at this time colleagues three feet is basically right next to each other it's it's as if you had a class of 25 30 students they would all be in that in that classroom be able to come to that classro we are not ready uh to do that then the second part that I want to say before I bring on David Hills and Cassandra Wright is that uh we have gone though from 8 ft to 6 ft and we have made accommodation for students who were in music and the art where the there was 12

137fe uh distan we're making with the additional purchase of PPE equipment that's specifically designed for music uh courses for example and for instruments we're going to be able to get more students into those courses uh with a six foot uh space uh so that's good good news all right David can you give us the high level uh for secondary followed by Dr sander Wright for elementary and then colleagues I will give you some of my notes on the big level statistics of how many are back what percentage and what percentage has oped to spay home remote for the rest of the year thank Dr cash absolutely and thank you members of the board um the April 26 six for 9th through 12th grade is the beginning of phase three all but three of our high

138schools have just 9th through 12th grade populations and for phase three they will be inviting back anyone who opted out of the um first two phases and anyone who um is in a group that wasn't invited um so for a school that invited freshman and seniors and some Juniors the rest of the students that weren't invited already will be invited back April 26th is the start of the fourth quarter um which ends on April 23rd is the end of the third quarter so it allows students a full quarter um to start back to work now the three high schools who have um five through eight populations their phase four invitation will roll out to those populations with Elementary roll out on May 10th the most students in the high schools for phase three and phase

139four will be accommodated through a hybrid setting of two days a week groupings uh one of the big constricting factors is not necessarily only the classroom but being able to serve four lunches and having the cafeteria spacing so principles and their their school support teams and their Stak holder meetings have done a lot of really good work of scoping out exactly how they can schedule students so all students can be invited back for phase three and all students who either opted not to return in phase one or two or who um were not invited back will not given an opportunity now the um the uh high schools did have some seniors that were on one one or two day senior support models depending on their work schedule depending on what they needed those students if

140they are still thriving will stay on those models um we also have our five day a week high need students that have been invited back um that were in our phase one and those students where possible will be maintained on that model the the school teams the Min of teams are very excited they've been communicating to their students since well before break uh that this was a potential and they are excited to start on April 26th thank you David thank you David what's the fre the core out there among our teachers and staff and and students what what's the EQ if you will out in the out in the field how are people feeling what's the energy like the enthusiasm or the downer you know what what what what's the temperature reading what has happened

141as since uh students who have returned for phase one and phase two have seen success in um catching up on their incompletes on being more engaged because they invited because they're high de a lot of schools are very excited to give more students opportunity the one uh down I hear is a lot of schools wish they could bring everyone to 5 day uh but it's just not working out for some space restrictions but where possible schools are looking at five-day options but it's there's been a positive response to seeing how students who are in person are thriving and are engaging and for seeing those students who truly are doing well in remote remaining rem remote all right I think the success of Prior phases has built on the sense of what the potential is for

142phase three that's great that's great and colleagues if I could give a high level uh observation for the high school before we go to the elementary uh approximately 2,519 students have been invited to return uh in the at the secondary level um during these phases three and four and 3,746 secondary students uh have chosen chosen to remain home uh if you look for the remainder of the year and if you look at the total cohort of high school students which are a little over 6,000 that means that across All Phases this year 56% of the students um have chosen to accept the invitation to come back and about 44% uh are remaining home that's important to knowe even with all of the you know all of the things that you've heard this year it stayed

143pretty consistent around what I've indicated to you earlier between that 55 and 65% and so right now um 56% of students across all of the high school grades um we expect to come back on April and be there in person April 26 um I hope that makes sense to you okay Dr Wright you're up thank you Dr cashing board members so to reiterate what Dr cash so emphatically stated and we support because we sincerely care and are inevitably prepared for these real circumstances this is our time to show the nation how this extraordinary educational work is done there is no place I would rather be and no work I'd rather do before I talk about the elementary phase and I just have to say kud to the principals teachers teacher aids teacher assistance security support

144staff engineering team Food Service Transportation plants Department central office and most of all families for house seamlessly all of these massive entities worked meticulously together during the most trying times of our life to ensure every single detail was attended to in order to protect the safe and happy return of all of our elementary children so Al students and families who originally opted out have been re-invited for these [Music] four also commence on May 10th on May 10th invited for days remote learning our children will attend five five days a week so it's important to note at this time that is the only time kids spend with their teacher the other three days are spent asynchronous leing the model that Dr cash envisioned and we all work together to enact every child is learning from their

145own teacher every school day either in person at home or both so I think that we really have to celebrate this huge win in a district with thousands tens of thousands of students we were able to come together collectively and make this plan a reality for our families all elementary students prek through 8 have been or are in the process of being invited back for phase four to reiterate unlik a safety concern because we've always said the safety of our children families faculty and staff comes first so unless there's a safety concern every last one of our children have been invited to enderson instruction all of our children all of them are learning with their teacher five days a week either online in person or both again team this was a massive undertaking that was

146seamlessly operationalized again because we care about our children and we in the City of Buffalo Buffalo Public School District we are inimitably prepared for this work thank you Dr cash absolutely ex excellent as always Dr Wright really really well stated so colleagues for the elementary prek through eight grades approximately 4,000 352 elementary students have been invited back for phase three and four so that'll primarily be your fourth your five through eight grades and then those who opted out in the first part of the year they have an opportunity now to come uh in this Final Phase 6,311 at this time there's some more we're still trying to get accounted for but approximately 6,300 uh students chose to remain home for the I'm sorry remain remote and at home for the remainder of the school year

147so this will amount to about 58 to 62% of enrolled students in the prek through 8 Continuum will be coming back in the remainder will be at home and again that that fits pretty consistently with the data across all phases of 40% uh to 40 to 50% so somewhere in that category staying home and 50 to 60 plus percent uh choosing to accept our invitation and come back in person so that's how it'll shape up the rest of the year we're still getting some data there keep in mind that Transportation challenges are are part of this uh we still need to keep because we did not get good clear guidance if you look at all of the extensive guidance that's been provided by the state by CDC County they don't say much about about buses

148and we've B we've been transporting our students one child per seat not two and three uh per seat as uh you can do when when when we're not in a covid environment and that has implications in a domino way of how many we can bring back since we have a majority student population who takes the yellow bus to school but Cheryl Kennedy and her team have just been extraordinary and they are going to make it happen as safely as we can uh for those who want to come back so that's the highlevel uh point of it um I don't really see uh us getting into a five day per week scenario for kids uh anytime soon uh if I can do it and and if we can do it I'm going to look at it

149after these phases come in and we get everybody in who has accepted the invitation uh my priority would be prek through two children I really want to see those young younger children in school every day if we can that would be my preference uh and recommendation to you um but until we get in Dr CR says give it two weeks uh after your phases to see where this virus is here in this community um before we go to a five-day picture for any of our students um a few last comments I will make I am pleased that Erie County has um offered to act well they've asked us if they could use several of our schools to vaccinate citizens um we we gladly accepted that they'll take care of all of the logistics and operational

150detail around that so they're going to vaccinate and continue to vaccinate in several of our schools um we would like them to use more of our schools we we've offered that from the very beginning uh that we're prepared to help with the get more people vaccinated uh now that fizer is beginning a program to vaccinate young people um I think between the ages of 13 and 18 um we're interested in in any support we can offer around that as well uh including uh PS announcements uh to encourage our young people to get vaccinated um many of these cases that we're seeing for the Buffalo Public Schools uh it's alarming to me because most of them are students most of them are students and I did not expect that I don't think we expected that so

151we've got to vaccinate our younger people and get that program for them um as well so those are some of the comments and observations and and uh that's our report for phase three and four uh thank you uh colleagues for your part it's turning back over to you uh Lou I still believe we're in your committee oh we are Dr cash thank you so at this point do we have any questions uh for Dr Casher senior staff that made the presentation regarding phase three or phase four um so if anyone's any questions you can signify be the raising your hand remotely or raising your hand where I can see you any questions at this point is it oh pette you were first followed by board member Larry Scott so board member Woods followed by board

152member Scott pette the floor is yours I was I was raising my hand to tell you that Terrence her Larry and uh Jen had their hands up I I wasn't raising my hand thank you so we go Larry Terren and then Jen so Larry followed by Terence followed by yes sorry for interrupting could you ask admir to take the slide down yes admir can you take the slides down all right Mr Scott followed by Mr herd and then on Deck Miss McCoy um so I have a quick question before before I get to that I just want to commend staff on the concurrence model that we are using um both of my boys are participating in that and it it it really has gone well for both of them and really really really want to

153commend all of our teachers that are implementing the concurrence model because I've done it myself I I see it happening in in the buildings that I'm in and Kenton it is not easy to implement um it is a a tremendous challenge so I I commend all of our teachers that have adapted to doing this and I hope we get to a point soon where where you will no longer have to to do do the concurrent teaching because it is such a challenge to do um my quick question was I I want to make sure I heard you correctly Dr cash you saidif for elementary 58% are returning or have chosen to return in a hybrid model and 42% are choosing to stay full remote for the rest of the year yes we we expect that

154number to go up just a bit uh the asl's associates superintendent of school leadership and the principles are still working out uh those numbers uh as we speak so we I I expect that number to climb to uh as high as 62% uh for the students who come back and then about 38% will will remain home uh for the remainder of the Year thank you okay thank you uh Mr herd do you have any questions for the super Ender staff regarding the presentation yes uh Mr pusi uh my question is about the co shots um now that um new state deem that the youth cannot receive Co vaccinations um are we looking at any studies about who can who will return back to the classroom upon covid vaccinations among our youth I'm not I'm not

155sure I understand the question uh Mr her now that now that youth can receive coic shots I believe it was um 16 through 18 um how will that affect uh re-entry back into our school building from our youth coming back into the classroom and are we looking into the possibility of having a a drive that we can um have our our students participate in in receiving U covid vaccinations so that they may be able to turn back into to the classroom return back to the classroom safely well let me say a few things I mean I appreciate your question um first of all this is early on with it they're trying to get it rolled out I think fizer is leading leading this uh effort for children for youth uh youth will still have to

156have uh permission from their parents uh to do this um we do see a challenge still with a disproportionate number of black and brown uh children and families who uh certainly families who are not vaccinated um even when the opportunity uh to do so is there you'll see a very disproportionate number who've actually gotten the vaccine uh so that's a concern uh so I'm not and then it takes time it takes five weeks uh at least to get fully vaccinated uh to where you're in that 90 93% protection uh bracket uh so I don't I don't know uh whether it will mean that more students will come back because they're getting vaccinated or not that's my point I don't know that will be left up to parents all I know is what we can do

157is is when they're made available we're going to encourage uh families to do it students to do it parents to give permission for for their students to do it and we're going to facilitate in way that we can that's what I can say for sure okay and I know that you mentioned about using our building facilities as vaccination centers um any way that can be tied to our youth also who's willing to participate and families are willing to participate with the vaccinations well we've offered that Mr herd but we don't control that that's really up to the local uh Erie County Department of Health and they um have said they'd like to use two schools but if you if you follow their press conferences they're also talking about it depends on them getting the quantity

158and the supply of vaccinations and sometimes that's been problematic uh with for them so that whatever they get if if we if we can use it and our and our up next if you will then we'll continue to announce uh and help support everyone getting um vaccinated as quickly as possible that's that's the trouble we're in the other the other challenge Mr herd is the the testing itself we when kids are now starting to come back and the numbers they're coming back we need to up our testing regimen not lessen it and so we were ahead of most districts when we were in the 20 to 30% range of testing every day now we're going to have to go up even higher and so to Mr Larry Scott's uh credit he he called staff and

159asked me if I would assign staff to a to a phone call with the Department of Health and Human Services they have a new secretary there who's being very aggressive about helping School District especially High need districts like ours with increasing the testing protocols and regimen and especially the test that is more valid and reliable than this rapid testing which has a lot of positives associated with it and short bottom line is we were on the call two days ago we we were grateful for their support and and they're going to come help us uh test more children and test more that we can bring everyone back safely and with more accurate testing results okay my my last question thank you Dr cash is um you said there's two locations that we're looking to um

160use for the vaccinations sites uh do we have the capacity of of vaccinating at these sites or will Refrigeration be brought in so that we they can use it for testing um let's see who Tanja are you there Dr Williams I believe we've worked this out and they were comfortable with their with the choices T would you be the one to answer that question I think the answer is yes is my point okay I forget which schools they were what T you schools off hand yes I don't have the schools off hand I will share that information um but the short answer is yes that we do have proper refrigeration and we will be ready to support that thank you thank you Dr Wings you're welcome all right thank you Mr herd uh West District

161member and former softball coach Jen mcos Jen the floor is yours thanks vice president Puchi so um my question is now that you know we're bringing students back and a lot of students were just were sitting at home uh with physical education I know that the the guidelines have changed from like 12 foot to six foot are we honoring that as we're bringing students back or are we still uh keeping that 12 foot uh distance between students I feel like we're going to have more Gym classes more students oh gym class yeah like just physical education in general are we G to you know move from the 12 foot distancing to six foot now that we have more students coming back and then how will that look now that we have more students coming back

162even though we know the need for physical education's probably yeah more intense than ever you know yeah I think that's a good question I'm not sure uh I have the answer to it I know that if you structure physical activity um directionally you know fully masks and and uh separated you could you can you can certainly have a a really good physical education class with lots of movement and activity for kids I think I'd have to ask about that um and before I answer it short answer is absolutely that's an important class kids need so much physical activity I I've seen the kid they're out of shape they they can hardly hardly move some of the youngsters when they get out there and start playing it's really oh my God we've got to help these

163youngsters but but the good news is you saw how we handle basketball you see how football is progressing we can do this uh when we're when we're very focused and structured and and pay attention to the protocols so I'm confident that we can get this PE thing I figured out I'll ask uh about that though I made a note of it Dan so then my father followup question and thank you for that would be um can we you know maybe instead of what we current what we currently do in our PE classes when it comes to nicer weather can we really look into strategizing using outside um especially for distance sake and uh really getting kids outside uh more often than we would have in any other you know I know there's protocol every year

164but if we can you know double those efforts I feel like that would not only deal with the situation with the distancing but you know it's necessary absolutely thank you thank you I see a hand raised by former Angola resident paet Woods Miss Woods the floor is yours thank you um um committee head L pusi um I just want to ask Champion legendary athlete inscrutable board member two term former okay now go ahead man for all seasons a diplomat um my question focusing on a couple concerns from the community uh now that we're talking about using schools for a vaccinating uh site vaccination sites what about the issue that has been continually raised about vaccinating teachers um everybody that vaccinates focuses on getting their own coverage students but what about our teachers that's that's a

165question because that might stabilize uh you know our environment and our morale the other community question um which I need to uh get you to focus on and give some response to is uh the brunt of this Co situation has fell on the backs of our parents especially women and they've lost their jobs and they cannot return to employment on a two day a week uh schedule so my question is it evidently doesn't seem like it's going to happen this semester but I really do think in order to re re rejuvenate restore our economy and the for God's sake give the parents a break uh I think we need to really kind of put it out there that we are looking to get back to five days a week and people can go back to

166work is is that the thinking or possible uh no so the first the first question let me answer that one first um I forgot what it was because of the extended comment there what is the first question vaccinating teachers uh since we're using our facilities and they are a key constituent okay the two schools by the way colleagues MST and Southside those are the schools that the Erie County Department of Health will be using to vaccinate community members okay the teacher issue I asked Phil a long time ago you know are you going to encourage teachers to get vaccinated and you know keep me apprised of of the effort keep me apprised of the percentage teachers that are getting vaccinated I thought that was a very good BTF initiative and you know we could partner

167in it and do whatever I I I would probably guess I don't have the data but I would guess a large percentage of teachers have been vaccinated uh I really do and when I look at at at where these centers and sites have been and how important it is uh to our health I I would think teachers have been aggressive at at getting vaccinated I'd like to know the actual data but I don't have it uh we did talk to uh you know I I put a communication to to BTF president early on on this uh the second part is again this is an engineering challenge colleagues we're doing the very best we can um we're looking at it based on don't forget you have [Music] 58% uh or 40 40 some per who are

168choosing to stay home choosing to stay home with their children and I'm sure they have th those challenges as as well but we can't we can't guarantee any five days a week anytime soon according to our medical professionals uh they're saying it it's very um active out there this this virus is very active right now and we need to and do all all du due diligence right now as I said well I was referring to next semester not you didn't see seem to indicate this semester but I'm saying the next school year for God's sake oh next year I'm hoping we we're past this I'm I'm expecting us to have a full school year next year I can't guarantee it because I don't know the direction of this of this and variants and so forth

169but this variant is very virulent right now these variants are no joke and and that's what's causing this rise uh in part and then people are gathering uh in families and in other ways and now we're waiting on all of the return from people traveling at unprecedented numbers during the Spring Break um and they going to be coming back into New York uh from all over and and so we're not out of the uh we we we don't have the end of the directional um arrow on on these cases yet it's just it's you know it's it's just it's a a problem it's a problem so uh yes you're right this will when we look back on this this will be the year of the family the year of the parent there's no D there's

170no doubt about it and we're doing our part of the bargain uh to do what we can to keep our children educated to keep them engaged and to keep them with their same teacher they had from the beginning of the year they've had them all year long I think that is remarkable and Dr W has indicated so now the parents responsibility is to make sure that there's organization at home there's discipline and that you keep your kid focused and online every day every morning when their class periods start from the morning until the end of the day that's what it is this year that's what it is next year we we hope it's better for everyone is does that answer your question Miss Woods yes thank you uh do any other questions because I have

171a few but before I I just want to any other question from my fellow board members no all right I just have three um with respect to the up uh the rise in the cases uh is any of this being associated with spring break either children going away at Spring break families going away in spring break or just the associations of large groups because everyone was on vacation the weather was really nice well I haven't had the Deep dive conversation with Dr quo to say what the causes are yet I think it's early you usually don't see till a week or two when when you come back off of a break kind of a situation and it's still in the first week of that um but basically all of the above basically all of the

172above you you can observe Behavior yourself out and about uh in the town and uh you know I still think most people are disciplined most people try to adhere to the masking uh requirement and the distancing requirement um I applaud businesses that tell you specifically stand here and it's six feet away from the next person uh places where I go for example been very good about that but there's a number of reasons why folks have uh you know why this is still active and alive in in Erie County and I don't propose to be the the expert about it we'll continue to to have to hear what EC dooh says um Dr quo if you want him to come next week he can come and tell you uh what what they're finding um but as

173you know Lou it's a complex it's a complex issue a lot of people are just plain tired you know they're just plain tired uh of wearing masks you know people will tell you that um but I I can't say that as a school system and as educational leaders we can't uh cotton to that to that uh protocol we have to stay very disciplined very strict with how we uh adhere to safety protocols and we will do that uh thank you Dr cash um with respect to the high school and grade school of the percentage of students returning I know that a lot of what I've been reading is that um there's been a higher percentage of Ames and children of color that are not returning I was just wondering if you've looked at what the

174demographics look like with respect for our kids who are coming back those who are choosing to come back and those who are are returning to or who are choosing to remain fully remote yes that that's what I was alluding to earlier uh Lou the the disproportionality that occurs in society r large uh is Manifest in our school system uh so yes the the majority of uh students and families who've chosen to stay home for the rest of the year are um the great majority of that is people of color thank you Dr it's similar with vaccinations I mean I you know I talk to folk and we're looking at data if you talk to Dr talk to Williams um you know she has some informal understanding about this it's it's it's what people are resistant

175to taking a vaccin because of because of our history uh frankly people of color with with with vaccinations with hospital care and treatment um now you come out yesterday with what's going on with Johnson and Johnson uh vaccine and that's going to add a whole new Ripple into oh my God see I'm not going to take any vaccination look at that we don't know what the effects could be so it it's it's a complex environment that we're in uh right now and M are contributing to to all of this and last question uh as we return more and more students uh as you had spoken to earlier about Transportation I just I'm always concerned because I know that we've struggled with both AIDS and drivers I just want to make sure that we have enough

176to uh successfully And Timely get our kids to school well we've been all over that the last several weeks uh before we left school and before we uh and when we came back that two at least two employees I know there's others but I certainly want to call off two uh Myra Burton for it and Cheryl Kennedy and her team for transportation those two uh worldclass Educators and leaders and their teams did not have a break this this April 1st through April 12 they did not take it they were working around the clock to try to figure out the pieces that need need to be figured out to get the students who want to come back onto routes and on to buses and the good news is uh we have enough buses to do it

177and so far we've had enough drivers uh and even AIDS while we may not have aid for every bus we have a really good percentage of AIDs that will be on on these buses as well is that helpful it's very helpful thank you uh are there any other questions uh before I conclude I know that President Cotman asked for five minutes so president Cotman I'll give you your five minutes you can you hear me okay good thank you yes we can so this is very timely as to um the growth of the board and the outcomes that we want to see I um you guys are approved for me to be a part of the Council of great City Schools uh a training program that they're having their ultimate goal with this training program is

178to help districts and um to increase the uh success of their student body through the use of educating uh boards and um the first um this Saturday will be our next our session but under the first session how it started is in order to get different results there's a need in public education to change the mindset of the adults and that you cannot change the outcome without changing the input and the use of board time as well as the uh goals that are associated with the success of board contrary to popular belief there are high poverty districts that are high performing and it basically um it is um it is based upon the commitment that the board chooses to do as far as uh the work that the Board needs to do in order to

179get the outcomes in a normal school year period we spend a billion dollars easily to educate our children but we're not receiving the uh outputs as they uh the outcomes um that we want to see as far as High student achievement and so um I had staff give each and every one of you the one of the first um handouts that was provided to me the handout is about student outcome focused government and in order to I'm I'm I'm hoping that this board will agree to go through this process that they are providing for us it is a coaching process that we would do ourselves and if you take the time and uh to walk through each one of these we talk about our visions goals um in addition to that uh the guard rails

180in regards to the superintendency evaluation uh monitoring and accounting uh accountability of the work and the time that the board is using um uh communication and collaboration with our community uh unity and trust and uh continuous Improvement they provide a defin a list of definitions and they also provide references and the first reference that they recommend a board to take a look at it's on page 13 of the document that you have is the roles and responsibilities of local school board members in relationship to student achievement and I wanted to uh bring that out to the board because if we are about moving this District to the next level we need to be about changing our mindsets our perspective of our understanding that uh board should be governance agencies not um involved in the output

181of student and and productivity and I am going to work with any board member I I hope the entire board wants to do it but I will work with any board member who wants to work through this program to get us to a higher level and to utilize our time uh in a more efficient and effective way one of the one of the uh items that is inside of this package uh is the uh board self evaluation which deals with the time this weekend I will spend approximately eight hours learning how to um or or to discuss how the time that the board uses uh over 50% of our time to be spent solely on student outcome so uh hopefully uh you guys will agree to be a part of it uh I'm trying to

182figure out if it's something that we would do as a subcommittee of the board but I am going to move forward with it I um and hopefully we will be able to benefit from this uh the board has spent a significant amount of money for us to participate in this and I'm sure that we can um learn something from it I see a hand up uh Jen yes you have President this what I reviewed when I saw the documents in which you were saying is this similar to the training that we had taken a couple of years ago it seems some of the documents are almost the exact same is this is this an updated version or the same no I don't know what I don't know what you're referring to but I do know

183the training that we all went to that um we took as as a board around governance uh at Emerson a couple years ago it seems as though a lot of that is the same and I'm just wondering is this like a updated version is it the you know kind of a review um it came from the same place so it's the same the same I think it has the same however when the board when a board signed up for this training it is not a one session training sign and we did the training they came to Buffalo they were here for three days remember I understand I remember that the president they came and they tra we were there for a solid um I believe it was like six or eight hours for three three

184h consecutive days Dr there correct yeah right and and we did not move in that direction but just so that you know attempted to yes there was a lot of momentum behind it at that time when when Dr neverold was was President we never got to the uh level that other boards are at currently working in this District so yes if that was the abbreviation that was the abbreviated session but currently part of this is to monitor other school boards in regards to what they're doing uh upwards of 20 different school boards we have to monitor and uh the purpose for this is to move this district from being governance only or primarily to be more student outcome focused and so for the board members who are interested in moving to the next level we

185can set up and we can move forward with that but it we cannot continue to spend a billion dollars and not have a successful student outcomes it's counterproductive and it's not working for our student body and that's what where we are okay thank you president Cotman thank you at this point um uh that concludes the executive Affairs um committee meeting uh at this point I'm going to turn over to student achievement uh I know that welcome Kenny I see you up in the corner always good to see you um I don't know because we have speakers present if you want to um again this is for student achiev educ educational support we have speakers uh for Education support and student achievement I know that uh uh Dr maer has been very patient I get to

186see him in the center screen uh but again it's up to student achievement and education support at this point I turn it over to Dr Kathy Evans Brown Dr Evans Brown the floor is yours well you know I um hello everyone I do not mind pausing uh to allow our uh guest to go ahead um what's your pleasure uh uh pres um Terence herd um how long is your committee gonna take um Dr Evans Brown well according to Dr cash about 20 minutes Dr cash yeah you know I I really am sensitive um to to Dr maker and to uh Miss sers I think and Mr Hobbs I I think that we'll be fine with this last section it's not the same level of gravity it's just information uh and awareness for the for the

187community I would recommend that we let Dr maker and uh the colleagues for the uh student support uh go at this time okay I agree go ahead doc um Mr herd U thank you um Dr um Evans Brown and Dr KES um as of right now we do have two two parts to um educational support committee this evening and um we will address the the second part of it was just actually mad College the youth inspired programs and how they work with the district in the City of Buffalo and programs that be available so what I would like to do right now is um open up the educational support committee for this part uh only and we will look at um we will speak with um Dr Kenneth mccor the president of mad College um

188Michelle Sawyers Sheen allum and um Kenya Hops and um they will talk about the programs that mad College offered to the Buffalo Public Schools and to the City of Buffalo we also um will talk about um a great announcement that Dr mccr has something we've been talking about for a couple of years now and I think it's a fantastic idea and it's something that this college and institution has looked to U help promote Buffalo and and I do love theob that Dr Mur has done you know in changing the Outlook and scope of M College um as he um opened up to the City of Buffalo since he's um been the president there at that facility and um he also talked about a couple other things how he worked with the district and a couple

189of our schools and many of our students in programming and U things that we can help help him with and work together uh for the as a game changer you know for our community so at this time I'll leave I'll open up the door introduce on Dr um Kenneth maker of M college and as we and for him to um start his presentation thank you super well thank you everybody thanks for having us here with me again our Kenya Hobs who is the director of diversity equity and inclusion at madai college and Michelle Sawyers who is the director of Cs madai College Sher Alam who's our uh Upward Bound director couldn't make it uh tonight we did have a present a SL slide deck uh if that's available to go uh I'll keep talking until

190it comes up and we'll we'll just catch up on it hearing your conversations are very reminiscent to the ones we have on campus these days in terms of surviving covid uh we're debating mandatory vaccines for students faculty and staff with the normal exception for medical reasons and religious reasons uh our students faculty and staff did a great job uh with about 2,500 students faculty and staff the highest point of uh cases that we had in the fall was under 20 uh and we're doing even better in the spring um we had a little bit more latitude we canceled spring break no more fun uh it was really easy to to get through when we just eliminated the opportunities for students to gather and not stay focused um in terms of you know the years yes

191201920 was very difficult in terms of just making that transition uh but like you we have a Fant fantastic IT staff uh that helped us transition and an ed Tech committee that worked with faculty uh to get them up to speed on remote learning working with uh students and teachers uh in 2020 21 we're coming out stronger we're obviously focused on the health and safety of our faculty staff and students uh we received very generous support from the federal government and the three uh stimulus bills we were able to distribute $5.2 million of emergency funds to Medi college students uh so very grateful for the support Mr her uh I'm sorry Dr maker um Dr cash I did send the PowerPoint presentation over to um Dr Brown Hall and to yourself we're we're just going

192to we're just going to ask Terrence if you wanted the power or the PowerPoint loaded yes Dr Mick would you like the the PowerPoint loaded now yes please thank you there we go thank you gentlemen he you can scroll to slide three slide three please Amir there we are so yeah here's our here's our summary of where we are uh we anticipate having a fiscal Surplus coming out of the covid pandemic stronger uh and so we're looking to fund innovative ideas to grow uh academic programs and other Partnerships around town uh and the same thing for 2021-22 uh our enrollment is looking as if it will not have missed a beat for the covid pandemic looking at enrollment numbers that are similar and higher to where they were in the fall of 2019 we will

193be having with one little asterisk we'll be having in-person classes for this summer and in the fall the asterisk is while we're capable of having in-person classes this summer The Border to Canada is closed and we have about 200 to 250 Canadian students who in good times would routinely cross the border on weekends to take graduate school programs in education um next slide I'm going to turn it over now uh slide four there we go I'm G to turn it over to uh Michelle I'll fill in for Sherry and I'll turn it over to Kenya to talk about the Partnerships that we have with BPS through says through Upward Bound and through other avenues through with Kenya Michelle Sawyers jump in evening everyone um so we have had this wonderful part parnership with says Buffalo

194for the past two years uh in collaboration with the bill Melinda Gates Foundation we were able to support our says Scholars uh madai college has accepted the most students into a private institution and amongst the partner schools that we have here in Buffalo um so we have about 300 students and looking and reflecting Upon Our fall 19 data uh we brought in a class of close to 160 students uh what we look to do is to provide that co-curricular support High engagement for our students so what does that mean we are focused on persistence retention and graduation we would love to pick up um where the um the schools from the Buffalo Public School District pick up where you left off so that we can continue to support those students and and see what success

195looks like on our college campus what does that Intel uh it's a brand new department and we have a team of Advocates who will have those um crucial conversations with students um to help them learn how to transition into college from high school because they've never been there before so we will demystify the FASA we will speak about um advisement we will speak about how to understand the syllabus and things of that nature also um creating a a peer environment to where they can connect with their fellow students uh most of our students are first generation um a lot of those students are immigrant and Refugee um and we have a um a a wide diverse group of students who um are being exposed to this type of learning environment from different aspects um and

196so what we look to do is to support that transition and all that entails also supporting what happens in the classroom with faculty because we want them to be successful as well and to build that relationship for our students thank you uh a couple of things that I'll say to to do some shoutouts with madii college and the work that Michelle has done through says um some of you might know Emanuel Wright Manny was a is a McKinley High School graduate and is a student a sophomore student now at midi in criminal justice pre-law Manny serves with me and with President Cotman and with Will cresties on the operating committee Manny as a student at madai College represents all college students uh says students to the says Opera committee group and uh I'm sure uh

197president Cotman and will cresties will will attest to the um Manny's ability to speak with uh confidence and support the work that the operating committee is doing and and challenge us on a regular basis representing the voice of those students uh our Upward Bound program is is housed in the uh at MST school but we work with students uh from other schools other high schools as well uh the Upward Bound programs at madii consist of two uh traditional Trio programs Upward Bound classic and Upward Bound math science uh both programs are designed to provide supports and skills that will Aid students in graduating high school and pursuing and completing an undergraduate uh course of study uh again working with them in the school at MST uh Upward Bound math and science is designed to strengthen

198the math and science skills of the participants there um with a goal of helping students to recognize and develop the potential to excel in various stem uh science technology engineering and math fields and encourage them to earn their degrees and seek careers in stem Fields including teaching in the stem Fields uh there are there are a lot of financial support from the state of New York for um minority students to become teachers to become science teachers and then return to the uh to the city uh where they grew up and be science teachers in their school district uh in terms of other initiatives I'll turn it over to Kenya Hobs who's our director of diversity equity and inclusion good evening everyone thank you for again for the opportunity uh allowing us to sh share what

199we're doing related to diversity equity and inclusion here at Madi college and um having the opportunity to collaborate with Buffalo Public Schools I want to at the very start I want to just share one quick thing with you that is um uh those of you who may be persons of faith and and perhaps those of you who are not Are all uh uh familiar with the concept of repentance right to repent uh the idea of uh apologizing for doing wrong or asking forgiveness for doing wrong so I want to turn that uh notion on its head and flip it a bit and and say I'm going to preent in my section so I'm going to ask your forgiveness in advance just in case I go over my allotted time I hope that's all right with

200everybody because we've got a lot of information to share you know we've got a quart of information that we got to squeeze into a pint of time but we're going to get through it collectively so let me share with you a little bit about how we approach Dei at madii College we look at it from three perspectives uh focused on policy programming and our people obviously people being our strongest uh allies in base so what we do in terms of policy is we look to ensure that every policy that we're uh implementing or talking about or discussing goes through a vetting process process where we utilize the racial Equity impact analysis tool and I'll share with you how easy it is to employ this tool and how we look at it so that we're ensuring

201that we are not inadvertently creating barriers for our students or negatively impacting our faculty and staff that tool simply is comprised of these five questions uh and you'll hear them now uh the first one is are all racial ethnic groups who are affected by the policy practice and decision at the table how will the proposed policy practice and decision affect each group how will the proposed policy practice and decision be perceived by each group does the policy practice and decision worsen or ignore existing disparities and based on those responses what revisions are needed in the policy practice decision ision under discussion now we utilize that to help guide us in our policy development that's the first P the second P talking about programming from a programming perspective we really uh try to ensure that we

202are holistically addressing our students faculty and staff in terms of strengthening and growing an environment that provides more uh diversity an inclusive and welcoming uh sense throughout our entire campus and the way we do this related to programming happens in several ways as Dr maker alluded to and my colleague Michelle Sawyers mentioned uh we work through say yes and and the gates programming with Buffalo Public Schools but we also work through programs like uh breaking barriers which Mr herd is very uh familiar with and and active participant in uh we also work with other community organizations that intersect like open Buffalo and uh the Buffalo black Achievers Inc uh Institute as well as we contribute to trying to shore up the educational pipeline in partnership with you so as students are transitioning from high school

203to college that we're able to meet them at our front door and ensure that we retain them and get them through to graduation so we co-create programming with our student body uh to address P perspective related to anti-racism as well as social justice initiatives just as a a quick point to think about we look at it from the perspective of not just uh what are the trending issues but how are these real concerns and impacts affecting our student body affecting uh those students that are coming to us in physical and uh social emotional ways so that we will have the necessary support to be able to address those concerns in real time we also this past fall uh were able to develop a series called uh black voices matter wherein we gave an opportunity and

204a forum for students on multiple occasions to dialogue about uh instances where they were able to express greater self- advocacy and really talk about what their needs were and in a form where faculty and staff as well as administrators could hear and respond and work with them to co-create uh programs and opportunities that would make them continue to persist along their educational Journey another quick example uh of some of the work that we're engaged in in diversity equity and inclusion includes uh an opportunity that we're doing at a cabinet level with our VPS and our directors as well as faculty and staff throughout the madah community to have honest conversation about racially charged um issues and perspectives with a particular and intentional focus on how is it that uh the role of white fragility uh

205plays in these conversations and how it might imped these conversations and we recognize that you know faculty and staff are the guardians of culture so we want them to be embedded and bought into every process that we are rolling out in the um efforts to make a better and more inclusive environment here at madai so it's a part of our daily work to make sure that it's not just something that we're just talking about but we're walking it out in our everyday practices uh and finally we understand that people are the Bedrock the focus of all of the work that we do and if it's going to be successful it's important for us to establish uh a growing and healthy diverse environment So to that end we've done several things to address that issue um

206in fact several months ago uh we've had some openings here at madiah College particularly looking at uh professionals out in the community um who could serve in adjuncting Opportunities I had sent some information uh several months back to uh president kman uh about that just to see if if there were any individuals within your feere sphere of influence that might want to come in and provide practical knowledge to our students in ways that would impact them uh in great ways to to help them along their educational Journey so and we're really involved in investing in the professional development of our students and including a focus on inclusive pedagogy so that our students are seeing in real time the integration of um diversity equity and inclusive practices that will help them as they matriculate through to

207graduation ultimately what we're working towards is making sure that we have policies that are inclusive programming that is welcoming and ensuring that people have a sense of belonging here at Mada college and we look forward to the opportunity to continue to partner with Buffalo Public Schools thank you thank thank you Mr hob um Dr maker yeah a couple other things to uh the slide deck came down so I can just continue to to chat because I've got it on my other screen so I know it's supposed to come next uh one of the big things this is the announcement that Mr herd was talking about one of the projects that we uh or programs that we had want to give us want to move it up a little bit Amir yeah Slide Five thanks the

208next one slide five please Amir Slide Five there we go uh the first line on this Slide the first generation Payback scholarship we know that a large chunk of madai college students are first generation graduates and that represents a lot of sacrifice and support uh of their families to get them through to that point so what we have is this amazing scholarship program we believe it is still the only one of its kind in the nation if you are a first generation madai college graduate then you have earned your parent those people you list on your fastest you have earned your parents a free tuition scholarship to Madi College again if you're first generation college graduate of midi you've earned though you've earned a free scholarship to MIDI for those people who saw you through

209that time uh in their career so we're very very pleased with that opportunity we currently have about 12 folks it was announced two years ago uh there are 12 participants in the program right now uh again derailed because of the pandemic but that's one of our uh one of the things we try to do uh to support the community Beyond uh Beyond just working with the individual students figuring out a way to make it work for them one of the things the next scholarship program is unique uh we it came out of the co a covid response we know that a number of our students dropped out of college as good academically achieving students because they were the only person in their family and Michelle Sawyers knows the real specific names and families they were

210the only person who could find work for their family and so the economics just didn't make sense for them to give up 50 hours for example at Amazon uh in order to go to school when the family had no income so what we created was a stay InTouch scholarship we told those students that if you want if you can please try take one class per semester at night on the weekends online free of charge just one class just to stay in touch with midi until that time when you can come back and be a full-time student ways that we're trying to address the economic realities of so many of our student bodies the Buffalo Public School families that uh attend midi College have a median family income of under 25,000 and so we we know

211a little bit about some of the challenges that they face K you mentioned the racial Equity round table there are five working groups you can see that we're actively serving in three of those many people also don't know but we have a college imprison program at albian college or at albian prison albian College we should rename it uh next slide please and then to talk about some of the Innovative things that we currently have uh we're the only regions uh the Region's only 3 plus three program with UB School of Law you go to school at madii for three years in your fourth year you transfer up to the law school your first year of law school double counts as your fourth year at midi College thereby saving you a whole year of madii college

212tuition this program costs us one year of tuition because in that fourth year they're up at ubv law paying UB Law School tuition rates so we're willing to sacrifice a year of tuition if it means means getting students through and through a law career even faster similarly we're the only School in the region with a 3+1 program to the SI new house school of broadcast it's a one-year program so a student could go to college for four years three years here one year at SI new house in uh in Syracuse and Come Away with a bachelor's degree from madai and a master's degree from Syracuse we do have the Region's best uh vettech program uh that's not just me normally br but we have a 80 some per pass rate on the national vet tech

213exams and we have the Region's only Esports Management program next slide please in terms of innovation moving forward we are slowly launching an incubation of a project called micro colge micro colge is a one to twoe intensive experience uh we're launching it in on our Rochester campus and the reason we're doing it there and not in Buffalo is because it takes a lot of red tape with New York State Ed to get something like this up and running so we're doing it kind of quietly and taking care of all of that red tape uh on the Rochester campus uh this fall this coming Academic Year and we're going to look to roll that out in Buffalo in the fall of 2022 what it is is a five semester program whereby a student will go for

214three semesters it's a trimester program the student will take 12 credits each semester but will borrow the scaffolding ideas of high school where the student will be in the school building for 30 hours a week and when they're not taking classes uh in you know 12 credits per semester they're in small group tutoring sessions making sure that they get through their first year if they want to stay around for a second year and finish an associates degree that's within reach if they want to matriculate up to a four-year degree and change that's another plan as well uh but the idea is we know from data that the best predictor of college success is a students's first semester of grades the partner that we're working with has done this very program out in Oakland California and

215they have turned students who had a 20 to 25% chance of graduating college into a student body with an 80% chance of graduating college so we're very excited to work through the details and the bugs uh this coming Academic Year and then have a bigger launch in the fall of 2022 in Buffalo we are investing in our athletic complex which is down on El Street um phase one is in it's a full turf field with an athletic uh administration building we are moving dirt on phase two which is the middle of this picture the baseball and softball Diamond uh phase three will have grass fields uh perhaps a box Lacrosse facility we are trying to partner with anybody who wants to use that for the sen KABC Community Center for Valley Community we let them

216use that facility for free when midi college is not on it we've had conversations with the New York High School Athletic Association about hosting especially softball tournaments since we could theoretically fit four Fields four games on at a time next slide please in terms of future programs we're rolling out a really expanded digital media and entertainment um the Esports business is a 12 billion industry we have the Region's only Esports Management program but we're looking to expand the academic curriculum uh even further and be the premier leader in the Esports which is and within the digital media and entertainment uh industry um coach Rich Jacob if you know the Park School you know his success as the basketball coach uh he is faculty full-time faculty at madii College hean Blair lipit from Western New York

217coaches just received a small Grant from the Wilson Foundation and we're looking at launching an international institute for coaching Excellence we have a biology fa uh faculty member who runs Western New York Raptors of Bird Rehabilitation and so we're looking at doing you launching more off of our vettech program and how to do animal rescue and re Rehabilitation and we're working with a longtime Buffalo native Duncan Kirkwood to talk about a resiliency curriculum as a major as a minor as a certificate program these are some of the ideas that we're talking about in terms of funding through the surplus of funds that we're generating this year at madai college for for the future for future programming and there are some interesting things that will help every student in New York next slide please in the

218state budget the state approved a $500 increase in tap which helps all students go to more more schools um they also passed a pel for inmates and that will begin in 20123 which means that our ability to continue to serve uh inmates in albian prison will expand uh we'll have a long-term sustainable Revenue flow to make that work but the biggest one that I think is important for for everybody is that Congress is giving serious conversation to doubling the P Grant and if this happens then that means that a a high need Student in New York would have 177,000 plus dollars of federal and state aid to go to any college they wanted in the state and that's a game Cher for not only the the colleges but it's a game Cher for the student

219imagine again $177,000 of fed federal and state aid to go to any college you want it's a voucher system if you're a good fit for Stony Brook it's more more possible because the tuition room and board is much more in reach with $117,000 of federal and state aid at M College your sayf students are already going to school tuition free which means because our fees are lower than the state system it is cheaper for a Buffalo Public Says student to come to MIDI college for four years years than it is to go to a Sunni or cuni school with a doubling of P we're trying to do the math and sharpen pencils to see if we could accommodate that amount of money to support students coming to madai tuition fees room and board for that

220$177,000 so we're very excited we're I'm actively involved in our National Association in Washington DC as we're working to lobby for that key initiative which is again a major game changer for every student in the country every lowincome student in the country um that concludes some of the stuff that we we we're intending to talk about I believe the next one is just a blank Q&A slide so we can take down the deck and the team and I will be more than happy to answer questions about what we're doing at madii and the ways in which we're looking to uh partner with you um thank you Dr maker um right now I'll I'll open the floor for questions is there any question questions about any the programs or relationships with with the Buffalo Public Schools

221my good friend Dr cash Dr cash and I started at the same time by the way in so Dr cash you're muted Dr Cass is still muted started together as undergraduates in 2015 is that correct that's right okay I wanted to commend uh Dr maker and his team for uh sharing with us this afternoon this evening now and uh certainly uh we'd like to learn more about your programs I know there's one of our former colleagues working closely with you about culturally responsive leadership I think that's very important for uh teachers and administrators to uh become imbued with the uh skills and research associated with that set of skills and knowledge and so we welcome a strong partnership around this uh particularly as we go forward now uh to help our young people anything that

222matches up well with our young people and their interests we're certainly interested in so uh thank you for a thorough presentation uh you know Dr will kestus uh our chief lead for intergovernmental affairs uh certainly you and I uh have a relationship and I had heard at one time you were going to start a center I it was either you a concious but something about a Center for Urban education uh but you certainly uh we want our area universities to get into the game as we say uh with our Urban students I don't our survival your survival we're all connected uh here in Buffalo so again thank you for this and look forward to continue collaboration and learning more about these uh unique programs thank you thanks Dr cash and and to that what I

223would say is you know we are one of the things that we pride ourselves in and and because we're a private institution we have a lot more flexibility unfortunately than some of our our Sunni counterparts I wish they had this flexibility we did as well uh but we pride ourselves in customizing curriculum uh to meet the needs of our partners uh we are we we've got our fingers crossed uh one of our key strategic Partners is actually Geico we have been offering programs on their campus in Clarance for 101 15 years now that they've been working remotely they're looking to consolidate their programs the the number of colleges that offer programs to them from 58 down to 3 and we're in the we're in the final hunts we're excited but one of the things we

224did for them is we ask them how they would like the curriculum tailored in order to best suit their needs and so when there's a critical mass of interest and this can be a short-term gig we can do this for one year or two or it could be a long-term uh it could be a long-term relationship but when we hear what you all need then our faculty who are amazing at creating curriculum can be there to step up and co-create that curriculum experience that really is tailored to to the unique needs in this case of Buffalo Public Schools thank you AB we'll be in touch thank you uh I believe we have two hands up it was um president B Cotman and and and Dr Kathy Evans Brown it'll go in that order scissors H

225so I am so proud of madai uh I can remember from day one when the say yes experience started how you guys came to the plate and you started putting those supports in place and everyone else has since followed your lead I am proud to report that I am a a madai and um I have not uh had a chance to find out uh what's going on at uh MST I was at your opening ceremony and uh I so I've got some homework to do uh but I appreciate um your diversity equity and inclusion uh Division I was at that kickoff also if I remember right it's been a while ago so uh so much so much time but uh so little time and so many respects I have not shared with the board but

226I have been appointed to the New York State School Board Association diversity Equity uh inclusion board and I was taking uh notes and trying to make sure that uh I'll be reaching out to you uh Mr Hobs and uh everyone here uh Ken and and Michelle in regard to uh any ideas that you can give us to help move uh the state along uh to the degree that you guys have uh moved and I will sh with everyone and this may be considered a commercial that when I was looking for a school to finish my undergrad degree um uh M was a great fit because of your mini Master at that time I don't know if you still have it but I loved it and um and because of how close and intimate the campus

227was and so you guys have just done a phenomenal job supporting us and I really would like to have a convers ation about what we can do to support you so you guys have opinions also about what what we can do to help and so I'd like to have that conversation with you real soon so that we can make sure that um we make your lives or your jobs easier to help our student body thank you for everything you're doing you're a blessing in our community thank you thank you Sharon you know one of the things we're we're in the process of launching a new strategic plan and um my focus in this one you were like okay for all these things we've all seen strategic plans and sometimes they're as big as you know

228the New York City library and they sit there and they look great um but we we we try to talk about well if there was only one thing we needed to worry about you know if we could focus just on one thing what would that be and we sort of settled in the president's cabinet on a goal of two act the idea is that the the the the Readiness of the average student who comes to Medi college is that uh with you know the old SATs and the high school scores and whatever there is only a three of eight chance that a student coming in as a freshman would graduate from thei wow and you think about that income level of $25,000 for the family income just as a snippet of all the other things

229that that student had to deal with so our goal is to turn that three out of eight predicted into a three out of four actual wow the idea is this when we think about that one you have to think boldly and differently you can't just get lucky for a year or two and have that happen and it's going to take a lot of really hard work and fortunately we have amazing people like Michelle thyers and Kenya Hobs on the team driving a lot of these initiatives and driving the institution to look to interest in ways where we getting in our students ways now here's the interesting thing about a 2X goal the average starting salary of a Medi college grad is about $445,000 which is not headline making stuff unless of course your family only

230has income of $25,000 and then it's making exactly the right kind of headline now if we double the re if we double the graduation rate from three out of seven to three out of four and you think about out of say a freshman class of 400 students students okay and you do that you double the graduation rate for seven to eight years then the economic impact of that starting salary compared to that that family income and you accumulate that difference over seven to eight years the return to the community is over a hundred million wow that's huge it's huge not only is it the right thing to do but I I've referred to this now as the social justice return on investment all right that's great matter what I'm hearing is black lives matter if

231that's what I'm hearing okay I appreciate that children of color matter I hear that I appreciate that Dr maker I have a recommendation I'm hearing you talk about the Strategic plan committee that you're forming I think that's important uh especially now looking forward things need to be re-engineered a bit even if you had one before um I would I have a some really good certainly several right at the top of the head top of my head uh that I would recommend you invite to be part of that strategic planning because of what they've done in their school or you know with with children um that you're talking about wanting to increase the graduation rate with so maybe a conversation give me a call uh I always think it's good to have as many good ideas

232about the population you're interested in affecting uh at the table as possible so certainly I would offer some staff and and when we get planning on this work that we talked about earlier in the evening uh we'll reach out to you as well and see if you're interested in being H part of this uh part of this CommunityWide work you know when it comes to Partnerships we're really you know we we we like to think that we think differently um so it might not come as a surprise to many to know that one of the members of the madii College Board of Trustees is is is a faculty member from the University of Buffalo Nate Don Barnett who is heavily involved in the STS Group he does the fasta completion project he knows all his

233scholarship is with promise programs like the cazo promise and the say yes promise and so on and so we said we should have this faculty member from the University of Buffalo on our Board of Trustees and so he's been serving in that uh now finishing up on his fourth year as a trustee wow good people yeah Dr Evans Brown I think you had a comment for question sure I didn't have a question I just have a comment I too am a Mada Alum and uh yeah so I mean I I really give you credit Dr m makon maker if my grandfather had done it right he would have spelled it m a k r and then everybody would pronounce it right and spell it right okay yeah I want to commend you on your your

234success and what a difference when I went to Mad my God it was no nothing like what you describe here so I just wanted to um commend you um I do encourage young people to look at madai as an opportunity and it certainly sound like you're doing some good work with our school so whoos to you and your team thank you so much I appreciate it okay are there any more questions I don't see any more questions hands raised so since there's no more question I'll go ahead and first of all I'd like to say you know once again Dr maker I love our conversations and always love to meet with you and I really have no idea how you keep track of your cohort uh because of all the programs you have with u

235University of Buffalo and Syracuse so um and the sacrifices you make um to actually know give up a last year of college you know to going into another criminal justice program or law program um that's amazing to me and I don't know if anybody really understood you know the special scholarship program you talk about your first generation payback scholarship and that's actually for if a child attends M college for four years and graduate from a Buffalo Public School that their parent get to go to college for free for free for a fouryear period at mad College so with that type of thinking and Ingenuity you're you're re you're building up the community you're building up you know places you know where parents have failed at or you know life happens and they couldn't continue with

236college or or or continue with graduation and and I remember we first talked about we spoke about two years ago you know about making reality you know I just congratulate you on these efforts and I think that we need to boast this out more because uh find a way to um to um you know get this information to the community because uh because that that's a great opportunity for for parents you know to be successful and you know some dilemas that they're in we know that life happens bills happens you know when you have start families and you know and and jobs so the time for college is really um has really narrow but you have some very new some great ideas um through genuity to to try to promote education on on their level

237and basis you know so they can succeed so I'd like to thank you for that i' like to thank you uh Mrs Sawyer you know for a great presentation this evening and also uh Mr Hobbs you know um I'll see you again over at to Breaking barriers and um and we continue on and um and any other questions when we know that you can know go straight to the district and help Bond and form these relationships so I thank you for your time this evening and also your work that you do at the prison uh we also have some of our students that do enter into the criminal justice field and maybe we can work together with those students also try to find so um thank you again absolutely thanks all appreciate it to meeting

238have a great night okay at this time the education support committee will turn it back over to the student achievement committee with um with Dr Kathy Evans Brown thank you present okay thank you uh Mr herd uh so this is the student achievement section we're not going to take a uh an extensive period of time it is late um I was so glad to hear Dr cash talk about assessment of what kids needs are in this district and um he's going to you know give us additional information next week you know about more data and where kids stand but today um I'm going to turn this over to Dr cash for an update um as it relates to New York State Regions exam in grade 3 to8 test um test assessments Dr cash yes thank

239you um board chair Dr Evan Brown colleagues it is such a delight to see uh the collegial collaborative professionalism of one of our newest cabinet members uh ebony Bullock she she's just phenomenal and we're so so pleased that uh she's joined us and learning her program program of work rapidly um but but just the epitome of what a great team player is all about so she's going to provide in just two short slides some of the information that I think you wanted to get at Dr Kathy Evans Brown for the community especially about what is the status of these tests and high state test that we're used to having every year in New York uh grades 3 through eight element El in math uh region exams four or five region exams at every kid what

240is going on this year with the continued disruption of covid so that's what she prent present and um also address on the second slide some of the questions and concerns that parents have had while she also alludes to your your resolution on March 17th that you as a board passed on this matter so it's important for the public to realize that all right Miss bullet as always I know you're ready to go good evening um Mr adir if you could put up the PowerPoint there it's just a four slide one um that speaks to the assessments thank you so good evening um Dr Evans Brown Dr I just want to just give you a quick update I won't keep you too long um and it really begins with your resolution that you passed on March

24126 that was our first communication to our state in which we basically told our community that um admir if you can go to the next slide thank you um we affirmed for our community that our position um certainly this year is that any assessment of our students um potentially um it's not going to net us very much information and it potentially could cause some undue stress so our first communication was your resolution in which we told our community that we affirm parents right to not allow their students to participate in this year's assessment um the office of shared accountability followed that up um on the 26 of March where we again communicated your resolution um and also a parent letter explaining exactly what I'm going to talk to you about this evening um we do

242know that in the meantime we have been waiting for the US Department of Education to make a decision whether they were going to accept Net's waiver request to cancel all New York State assessments what we do know is um we did not get that the state did not their waiver was not granted um but it does not change any of the things that we've communicated to our parents so so far and we've been Comm communicating to our parents via emails phone calls um they call me uh the the memo that I sent out to parents listed my office number and my direct email and I've been communicating with parents either by phone or email um since right before the break and they've offered some questions that I will get to you get to in a

243second but Dr Evans Brown to your one of your specific questions you wanted to know specifically what are the tests that are being offered we are only offering the tests that we have to um offer so says the the federal government so we will be offering this spring April 19th through the 27th grades 3 through e uh grades 3 through eight Ela book one only and 3 through eight math uh book one only May 3d through the 11th now those windows were allowing schools to um hello those windows we're giving schools latitude to schedule kids how they see fit um but those are the windows um um June 7th through June 11th we will be offering grades 4 through eight science April 19th through June 9th a big window we'll be offering the nicest slot

244to our English language Learners June 23rd we will be offering Algebra 1 June 17th we'll be offering English language arts to the high school students June 20 second we'll be offering living environment also known as biology um all of the region exams by the way are offered in the morning um and then earth science just a written portion on June 24th and when I say offer is just that our principles um they've done such a phenomenal job through this whole spring communicating to parents um what our plan is for assessments and so they're basically calling parents or emailing parents and and saying we're offering these assessments um we will offer a safe place for your kids to take them if you choose if they choose not to send their kids in um at Meir if

245you can go to the next slide if parents opt to not have their parents their excuse me their students participate in these exams it's just a simple phone call or responding back to schools and again schools are calling and emailing um and if parents choose not to their kids will not face any penalties um again just to reiterate if parents or community members who are watching if you have any questions you can call me directly at 81630 35 or you can email me at eock buffaloschools.org and I respond very quickly to your questions um admir when you get a chance I just need you to go to the next slide so the the calls and the emails I've received from parents they have been really centered on three big questions um admir are you able

246to advance Lou can you check on admir yeah am I did he's working on for whatever reason it's not advancing on our screen Okay so so the the first big question or concern and it's a question right that parents want to know thank you admir is around the participation and and I've gotten calls hey Ebony what's going to happen if I decide to not allow my child to participate in the 3 through eight or the region assessment and what I want the board to know and what I want our uh parents and community members to know there will be no no penalty none none whatsoever for kids um and additionally um we've heard concerns about well will my principal get in trouble will the school be penalized schools are not going to be penalized at

247all um the state in fact uh or excuse me the the the federal government in fact said that there will be no accountability um penalties towards schools or towards districts and principls in their Communications with parents they're not doing a high press they're not saying you must bring the kids in what they're saying is we're going to offer a safe place for your child to take this assessment should you choose because you are the person parents family family caregivers you are the ones that get to have that say um we are not going to bash the assessments because we're Educators and we we were not going to do that but since the federal government is saying we have to give them we will offer a safe place should parents should parents choose to you know

248allow their child children to participate the next big question around this well you know Ebony my child is um you know I'm choosing I'm in that 40% where I'm saying I'm I'm just not comfortable yet sending my my my child in they're 100% remote uh do I have to bring my child in and the answer is no the state government said that we do not have to test children who are participating in 100% remote learning again we're leaving it up to their parents if their parents want them to participate in the 3 through eight assessments the nicest slot region again parents will bring they will make arrangements to have their children brought into the school that is their wish and again we'll give them a safe place to do that much like uh what we

249did today across our district with p uh with the PSA te parents bring their children in at the conclusion of the test parents have make arrangements to have their kids be picked up um after the assessment but again no pressure no hard press we're leaving it up to parents to make that decision and then finally the last concern again themes that uh questions and KMS uh concerns fell under was well what happens next year ebony will my child have to retake these assessments next year and the answer again is no we're not going to penalize students and families okay students will not be required to retake any of these assessments um that they did not participate in this year um in the case of students who participates in regen exams they will be awarded a

250credit um they need to complete all of their coursework and pass the class and what will appear in their transcript is a letter e for exempt um and what we know for sure is that the exemption will count towards the student's graduation and again students will not be penalized because they did not take these assessments um and that's the big message schools won't be penalized our district won't be penalized and our students will not be penalized instead we will continue assessing finding out what kids know what they're able to do we're going to continue to make sure that we support their social emotional growth and health and look forward to a great summer as a bridge to push them on to Greater and bigger learning in the fall and we're going to move on towards

251the 2020 the 2122 school year and this is your 2021 spring assessment update I'm open for questions admir you can take the slide deck down now thank you thank you ebony thank you eony I see a hand up uh President Sharon Belton Cotman sorry about that so I just need some clarity here because I I think the rhetoric in the community is that um uh that these uh tests that they are taking from the state will tell where the children are when do you where they are what they have not learned when do we get these results back typically if if we take a state test is this something that's given back to us within a reasonable time so that uh the teachers can utilize it to move children to the next level or explain

252that to me because I'm a little um um I'm I'm a little confused as to how these tests are used versus the tests that you are currently using within the building so um the way the various measures that we are using currently in the building work they help to inform instructions so kids are taking a DBA or they're going into mobimax they're doing one of those predictive assessments and that teachers are then allowed to say okay so I know that ebony Knows X amount of content or skill right now and that will help me plan what they need to do what she needs to do tomorrow or next week we typically and I'm gonna um ask my colleague and belli to correct me if I'm wrong we typically get New York State assessment and region

253state data late in the summer right a lot of us refer to it as like autopsy data it's this is what they learned all year period um and so then we we we do some item analysis and it gives us some indication of what kids know and can help the next year's teacher plan for the upcoming school year um but generally our teachers have been they've just gotten so much training and they they're you know engaged in such um work around DDI right now with the things that we have we're using now again and belli correct me if I'm wrong the measures that we're using now give us uh they're going to give us they're going to net us because I know as Dr cash said we are building a system right now that's going

254to help us give us exactly that answer where kids are right now so they're using all of the things that Amell said we're using and we'll be able to give you that answer right now using just the book one of the ELA and the math I can't say it has no value but it it will not give us the questions or will not answer the questions that we need answer now because we won't get it until the end of the summer so we need to know now and so the things that we have in place now the mobimax the Mayan those are the measures need to be looking to to answer those questions and to help us set up who needs what over the summer who needs a deeper dive who needs to be pushed

255on we we we ought not wait or rely on those regions out or excuse me the regions in the 3 througha outcomes they won't give they won't get we won't get the information back in time okay so if I'm remembering right there was a period of time where uh New York uh changed their assess M I'm not quite sure when that was I want to think it was somewhere around 215 or whatever and there was a movement uh by the Suburban parents uh not to allow their children to be tested because they didn't feel that they they had a fair chance that they had been given that the exams were correct I think it was under um that changing curriculum uh was it I can't remember No Child Left Behind or something it's been a

256while in my mind so the point what was it the point I'm making is is that why would I as a parent take the state assessments when the uh when you can have the information uh uh assessed by your teachers locally I'm just trying to figure out is this information shared with parents uh of what's going on with their child uh on a day-to-day basis or in the is that is that happening so that's a that's yeah so that's a big question and so let me say this um traditionally and literally up until about a week or so ago or two weeks a week ago when uh we found out that the United States government is not going to allow us to wave wave out of a assessments this year um our funding was tied

257to it long story short right so the district if we didn't hit a certain participation rate some of our funding would have been impacted so that's part of it um secondly I think that um our community culturally believes in if our kids go to school they take the test they do what the teacher tells them to do so I think it was some cultural um aspects behind it and I think that we just need to think differently again they have a purpose but for that daytoday sort of dipstick where are the kids now where are they right now coming out of covid how can we help them how can we move them forward how can we support them we should be relying on the tools that we have um at our hands at our disposal

258right now and and these State tests these are the ones that typically people say the children are uh being taught to uh take the test teaching to the test is that not right um is I've heard that statement yes I've heard that statement in the past and I'm I'm just curious to know if that's the assessment where they were talking about well can I make a comment sure so there's a couple of just points to make here about these uh pass in New York in particular these are what we call high stakes um they're supposed to be Criterion reference test um I don't think they're very good at that but they're supposed to be aligned to the standards in the state and ostensibly aligned to what teachers are teaching to the students what they're supposed

259to be aligned um that needs to be examined because you'll find that often because of pacing and because of other challenges with different populations of Learners particularly the complex needs of our students the pacing guide the pacing guide has no relation to where our teachers actually get to with different groups of students so you end up getting tested often on material that you haven't even been instructed upon uh yet in that year so this notion that if you take the test it'll tell you where you are is pretty much um a false false Ric and it's rhetoric and it's especially true in New York State uh this is an area of expertise for me and here in New York state if you look back over the last 12 years I showed you this in a

260graph colleagues in one of our board work sessions these tests have changed four times four times over the last 12 to 15 years and each time kids start to grow and start to come up they change standards or they change uh what we call items on the test that kids are getting a lot of them right and they change that and then scores dip again and then we climb we climb and then they change it again it's not designed for kids to succeed on I'm gonna be real honest with you and there especially not designed for uh poor children children of color uh in this state to do well on the whole state isn't doing well on it the whole state white orange yellow green black brown students your average is 31 I'm sorry 39%

26141% of the students get level three on this test 39% of the students in the whole state and all you hear in the rhetoric is buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo it's egregious and everybody buys that nonsense and here's another one I didn't know this until recently and this is I never heard of this in any state teachers grade the test stop teachers grade the test you don't take a state test that's designed for everyone to be as standardized as possible and have tens of thousands of teachers graded right there you're going to get into variability differences that are extreme and all kind of bias is going to get into that and we don't even know how schools that we're not in charge of read in between the lines how they set up that process because you

262can rig that process and so it it needs to be examined and it needs to be overhauled what you need is what we call good solid St uh instruction based assessments that are aligned to the state standards these tests are aligned to what whatever the producers of the test are are put put the money into it to to develop and they often aren't aligned they all say they're aligned to the state standards but the the evidence shows otherwise and so this year we're only going to give multiple choice portion of the test that's what book one means and multiple choice is you you can't make good inferences uh out of it very difficult to design a really really well-designed multiple choice question I've seen these questions they are not welld designed several answers could be

263plausible and kids often choose one that looks plausible when you read the stem and then it's wrong and so what are you really measuring you're measuring the ability to guess the right answer research shows that if you choose B just choose B all the time you'll get more than 50% of the of the answers right on a multiple choice test so I don't see what inference you can make about what kids have learned or not learned this year and next you know during the covid time I'm all forward when we get a really good standards aligned test that measures what teachers have taught especially if teachers have taught it well and if they can kind of keep Pace hopefully they can keep pace and kids can keep up keepy pace but short of that you're

264getting what you can get and I don't know how a state a whole state can say that 39% 41% pass rate is good and then still bone lament chastise castigate Buffalo Public Schools coming in at around half that see because all of that is is poor and it's and it's so poor that you ought to Something's either wrong with the test or something's wrong with all the students in New York state and that's been going on for a long time a long time and I've just sat and watched you uh look at it and this add trust and all those groups make it like it's the Lyn pin of Education here and frankly it does a disservice to to all of the children and you go out and take that high stake test and you

265you judge kids by it you judge the school by it you judge the school system by it and it has very little to do with much about what makes for good schools for good teaching and for good learning that all needs to be be tossed out and then in terms of the region exam very quickly I'm not opposed to a good region exam but some kids are consistently failing region exams but they're passing the course so now where's the alignment there how do you pass the course and fail the Regent exam there's something that needs to be examined there uh for alignment and validity and so forth so I just want you to challenge The Narrative that every time Buffalo uh doesn't do something what the what is perceived as as well then you take

266the full brunt of that as if nothing else is occurring in the state there's there's hardly anybody in the the State scoring 75 or above on these tests anyone any school anyone anywhere suburb anywhere City honors is 50% in math in some of the grades on this thing and that's our best Flagship academic school so I just think it's time to while we're in this covid disrupt time to look at this challenge the premise of it all uh and start to to develop better tests but also figure out multiple ways to assess student progress and student development thank you Dr cash that's was a very good overall overhaul and analogy of of uh these tests and you're absolutely right I used to to work as u a substitute teacher and I I continue to say

267is teaching to the test and you're absolutely right when these kids take these tasks they're always something on there that they weren't taught in the classroom so I don't know where who make them up who designed them but they do need to be overhauled so this is our time any other uh questions comments before I end okay an I knew you had something Dr Rivera go ahead I'll be as brief as possible just a really brief comment to amplify what Dr cash is saying we can't confuse accountability with high stakes tests you can be accountable without high stakes tests or you can have high stakes tests in a portfolio of accountability we need to think about that more and I hardly support that uh Jen board member Jen MOSI I think there you that was

268good the there's also the fact if you want to put these tests in place where you're trying to you know assess academic achievement you should also have if we're looking at a whole child approach which is happening across the country in which what we're doing then there has to be something of the equivalent on a national level for aptitude for you know for other other things other than just your academic skills and you know I mean you you have a bad day you take the test and and it it it just to me it doesn't it doesn't it it nowhere near depicts what a whole child is worth or what they can bring to the table it's actually demeaning in my eyes so that's how I feel about it absolutely Dr ebony bolock thank you

269so much for that presentation um any other last thoughts comments no I just thank you for um allowing me to present and I want to tell you that um we're going to continue to just um message that um parents get the right to choose whether their children um participate in these assessments and um I can be reached at eock buffaloschools.org for any parent or Community member that has a question about these assessments okay thank you for that and if nothing else have a good night thank you Dr I'm sorry I'm sorry excuse me have a good night everybody excuse me excuse me we still have someone waiting for educational support oh okay oh oh I didn't know that okay for I'm very apologetic to U Mr Patrick um ma Madden who's supposed to present tonight

270um under um Dr tangel Woods uh the second part of Education support was the um uh something that I believe back in 2018 2019 that the board voted upon was analysis and Reporting uh of our Buffalo Public School um children and it was it was the it was the yrbs the the youth risk behavior uh surveillance uh which talks about our D data and summary and Trends it also shows the data and documentation of the test that was done here in Buffalo and the overview of our of our health and um strategies that we should take so at this time um well the test so so you can quickly understand it it talks it talks about U um injuries and violence has happened to our kids the use of tobacco um alcohol on drugs sexual

271behaviors all the way from dietary behaviors physical activity obesity overweight that's that our children are dealing with and issues and other health topics and concerns that throughout I don't know if the Copic was um part of this or not or has been adapted to it but at this time ID like to bring in Dr Williams to introduce the speaker today and once again um Mr mad I apologize for um you being our guest and having to wait for so long uh it was a very busy schedule today and a lot of important things that we was going through but I believe this is one of the most important things that we can actually talk about today when it talks about our our family our Trends our students um things our teachers deal with in the

272classrooms so so please everybody take the time to listen to this report uh it's been going on for over two years thank you you okay it has been a very long night and I'm not going to um beavor things I do just want to Echo what board member heard Shar that this is a very important um data um you know it's it's a survey that helps the district to generate dollars um it helps us to guide Wellness practices in schools to facilitate who we partner with you know it guides policy um it helps us with individually developing plans for our schools ultimately what it does is it allows us to assess the social emotional wellness and needs of our children and during this unprecedented time um that's extremely important it's an evidence-based way to do

273it uh the survey has been created by the CDC um it was began I believe in 1990 we administered the survey in 2019 and then covid hit so what we have from this data is going to be some really robust preco data we will be again administering the survey um this coming October when you know after our children have experienced a pandemic so we're going to have some really good um almost pre and post data on where our children were prior to um covid hitting and where they are as they have had some experience with it so with that being said um I'm going to turn things over to Mr Patrick Madden he's the Executive Vice President of the market decision resour research organization and I'm not sure if we still have my win I

274know that she has a soccer gang tonight so she may not be able to stay home she's our director of social emotional Wellness but I will allow um Mr Madden to take over at this point and if there are questions afterwards then I will entertain them thank thank you well uh thank you very much uh I'm happy to be here um can you hear me okay sounds like you can um I do have a um a slide deck if you're willing to pull that up very brief and I'll keep it brief I know it's getting late so I will not belabor this we'll keep it uh we'll keep it fast-paced uh and this is really just a progress update on where things stand uh we're actually in the middle of the project right now um

275so I'll talk just really briefly about about the background of the project and where things stand and show you a little bit of data uh so we just finished analysis this isn't actually a presentation of the data itself uh but it is a presentation um just about uh sort of uh where things are in next steps so you can move to the next slide uh just a little bit about you know who we are I'm sure you've never heard of us before uh we're a public health research and evaluation firm really specializing in health and Adolescent research every everything from child health through a survey like the ybs uh and we do that around the country so we actually are currently the uh vendor collecting data on the yrbs in three states uh for Rhode

276Island we've been doing that since the mid 2000s uh we do we conduct the Virginia youth survey which is the Statewide RBS in y RBS in Virginia as as well as in 2021 we're going to be doing the one in Maryland so uh we have a lot of experience with the ybs which I think is why I'm here today uh also supported by by a great team so I I'm working with a great team of analysts at the company they're really doing all the work uh also really want to thank uh my and the rest of the uh the yrbs uh sort of implementation team at the district it's really a collaborative uh sort of working environment um and it's really been sort of a great experience working with them so I think we're going

277to produce some really great results and data for the district uh sort of working together on that so you can move to the next slide a little bit of the project uh background uh you know as is mentioned really this is a survey to provide the district um with data Health Data really to help plan uh policy help plan pro health promotion strategies that not only improve the health of students which is obviously important but actually improve the academic achievement of the students as well and there's actually a lot of research that has been done that has linked uh Health uh you know the health of a student Community with those academic outcomes so and a healthier student body actually has been shown to produce better academic outcomes uh have better attendance um things like

278that so health is not only important in and of itself it will also lead to hopefully better academic outcomes and I think one of the really cool things about this project is that third Bullet at the bottom so we're actually as part of this providing individual schools with their own data back from their from their student body uh so each individual school gets specialized data uh specific to the school that will help them plan uh their own um you know policy and procedures based on the data for their school uh which is really important because obviously every school's different every school has their own challenges of course and there's going to be a lot of data and a lot of information that's being produced out of this uh you know we're we're providing the district

279with the with the actual clean data files uh highlevel District reports uh that are going to provide recommendations districtwide uh and as I mentioned school-based reports are actually going to provide recommendations for each school and built into that is actually technical assistance for us to actually help schools interpret the data uh what it means and what to do with it which is really cool and you know the big question comes up well why are we talking about n 2019 data in 2021 uh the short answer to that uh is covid uh not only did derail school systems and also derailed research uh so there was definitely a delay in actually getting this project up running uh which is unfortunate uh but we're still providing I think a lot of good and useful data uh to

280the district and talk about that in a couple slides so uh you can move on uh also really quickly mentioned a couple improvements uh to the 2019 survey so we always want to make the work that we do better I can't take credit for this uh my organization actually didn't collect the data that was done by the yrbs implementation team at the district so they did a great job collect in data uh they made improvements to the actual survey Administration hopefully to improve data quality and reduce the amount of missing data uh in the survey it is a very long survey uh so what happens sometimes is students don't answer the whole thing uh they get sort of tired of doing it so uh there were steps taken to hopefully reduce that in 2019 we're

281actually in these reports for 2019 adding in in addition to the survey data adding in uh additional administrative data on academics on school class on things like that again to hopefully better link back uh the these really important Health outcomes with academic achievement and again helping schools to really understand what's going on there and linking those really two important aspects of it so and that'll be the first time that that's done is in 2019 and we're also waiting the data for the first time by school enrollments uh which actually something that hasn't been done up until now but it does align with the CDC protocols and it's what the CD recommends that uh that states and districts do when they conduct a survey and the reason to do that is it improves overall representativeness and

282what we find is that schools particularly in um you know low sces regions uh so poor schools in in in minority communities tend to have lower response rates overall and we want to make sure that the results reflect those schools just as much as they do in the wealthier school districts and that's why we wait the data so we can move on to the next slide uh really quickly and this just goes back I think to the wonderful job that was done collecting the data um what we're seeing is we have data on over 6,000 at the district level over 6,000 middle school students uh and there was a 91% response rate so 91% of all of the students in the district actually completed the survey that's amazing actually uh and it's up from 86%

283in 2017 and at the high school level we have data on over 7,000 high school students and that's a 75% response rate up from 69% in 2017 and as as I've been told this is actually the first time ever that every school that's participated has had over a 60% response rate which is sort of the CDC cutoff point for providing data back um and so this is the first time ever that all schools that participated will actually get an individual report so really great job collecting the data making sure schools participate I know a lot of hard work went into that so really Kudos there we move on to the next F uh I think you want to move forward I think that's backwards you I think you can go one more can you go

284ahead one more slide there we go so as I mentioned this is not a presentation on the date itself uh but we did just finish analysis so I thought I'd fold in uh sort of what we're seeing in terms of a little bit a few data points this is a survey of over 100 questions so we have a ton of data but here's just a few selected indicators and I just want to S so sort of show you what themes are going on and I think overall it's really good news uh in terms of the district and what we see I think in general is a continued um Trend in the positive direction for many of these indicators so when we look at something like current alcohol use so that's um students who have had

285at least one drink of alcohol in the past 30 days that's actually declined for 20 2017 down to under 12% and that's significantly lower uh than the state level of over 26% so uh much lower than what you're seeing at the state and on the decline same thing with binge drinking uh we also see the same thing with current cigarette use and vaping use too again that's made a lot of headlines with youth vaping use um there's been a crisis in terms of uh that it's extremely dangerous a lot of unknowns there but the vaping rate in uh the district is 7.2% for 2019 which is significantly lower than what we're seeing at the state level overall now there's one area if you look at you know current marijuana use that's one area where U

286things aren't quite as good overall but um they're sort of on the level as what you see in the state and then one area I just wanted to point out was with regard to physical activity and we sort of heard a little bit about that earlier where things are actually trending in the positive direction so that liem says you know students who are not Physically Active on for at least 60 minutes a day five days of the past week and those are the CDC recommendations for physical activity uh for youth um and so what we're seeing is 63 almost two-thirds of students in 2019 actually don't meet those physical activity requirements uh and that's up from 2017 it's also a little higher than the state overall so again there's definitely issues around getting kids active

287getting them out that's always a challenge you can move on to the next slide uh Middle School level we see a lot of the same results overall uh again when we look at vaping use uh really really really positive results overall uh a current vaping use of of 3% uh which we of course want to see that at zero uh but it is significant Improvement for 2017 it's also less than what you're seeing at the state level again with marijuana that's a little higher than what we see at the state level also a very slight although nonsignificant increase so uh again that's something I think to consider overall and then again we see the same Trend with physical act activity among middle school students as we do with the high school students all right next

288slide there's a lot of data here but I heard that um that um people would be interested in this so um these are uh the questions on adverse childhood experiences so questions that really get around issues of abuse and Ne clect that uh children experience and the scale is based on the CDC adverse childhood experience questionnaire uh which is conducted nationally uh modified a little bit for you know the district itself but what we can see overall is that um you know youth both at the middle school level and the high school level are really experiencing a lot of child adverse childhood experiences and that includes like things like sexual violence and sexual abuse that includes you know parental abuse that includes uh you know living situations that are that are not ideal um and

289neglectful in some cases um and as you can see here you know where you have um about a quarter of students that they actually said you know live with somebody who has served time in prison things like that overall um I we haven't calculated yet but I'll just say two things that generally when you when you add it up um from what I've seen it could be upwards of about 2third of students actually have experienced one or more of these what we call Aces so again they're issues that affect a lot of kids in the district and they're linked to a bunch of negative outcomes and negative risk factors so what we see is kids who experience adverse child experiences are do worse academically in school there's less likely to graduate they have worth worse

290Health outcomes you know there's a whole bunch of um sort of associated correlated uh negative factors associated with that so again um there could to be a focus I think and talking about how we can work on these and improve these overall uh another thing we see positive note about this is actually these questions were asked and part of these questions were asked in 2017 and we can see that there's actually been a slight decline at the high school level in terms of a few of these by a few percentage points so again really positive news uh while it's still a huge issue uh things are going in the right direction overall and another thing we haven't we haven't looked at the data yet have time to look at the data yet uh by things

291like race uh but what we generally find is that you know among black students among Hispanic students that uh levels of aces are higher overall significantly higher overall among those groups uh than they are amongst uh groups you know like white students so again that's an issue that uh we'll continue to analyze the data with and report on as we have it so uh and then I think I have one more slide and just sum it all up you know where things currently stand uh again we didn't actually get started on this until January uh again due to a delay in uh Co and Contracting and all that stuff but things are moving along really quickly again want to thank thank the you know the team we working at on at the district which has

292been awesome uh we have gone through the analysis just completed that we are on track to provide reports at the district level um sometime in May hopefully and we're actually ahead of schedule so we've been developing the school-based reports at the same time so we're actually ahead of schedule there and we can likely provide those school reports at the same time as we're pro providing the district on so hopefully we'll get this all wrapped up sometime in May we'll be the goal U but that's it I appreciate your time I know it's late so thank you for listening to me and again I'm happy to answer any questions now or um or later if you have any um as well that's absolutely fine thank you edmir if you could um remove the PowerPoint so that

293we can address questions yes um thank you Mr Madden right now I open the floor up for any questions and I believe the first one we have is the superintendent um Dr cash all right Patrick thank you for the presentation colleagues I I think this data will be one key piece of data that we were alluding to ear earlier when we said we need to begin assessing our students academic and social emotional learning needs now as we start to consider how we'll use uh this uh Federal stimulus investment um so Patrick it is useful that we have at least some sense of the 2019 but I agree with Dr Williams as well that a will you be the that does it in the fall and if you are can you do it faster can you

294get it can you get it to us sometime within that first half of the year next year so that we can uh get that data now that they've experienced almost a year and a half of covid I I suspect that some of this data that is that is high will go even higher and let me give you the example the example on um families who swear put me down um or are abusive to me verbally uh and physically uh that data we we I don't know I'm hoping not but I I anticipate that that'll go even higher and it's already at onethird of our students see and then that next one which I've seen since I've been here which is just uh really high for a small City like this and that is the percentage

295of students who have seen who have seen not heard about who have seen someone get shot beaten or staged that is trauma colleagues I don't care how old what how old you are what age that's trauma one time but if you seen it often it's it's all but debilitating particularly without treatment and too often our children don't get the treatment they need for that kind of repeated exposure we had a student couple years ago she said 24 of her friends or family and relatives she was 17 years old have been killed and murdered violently 24 of her friends or family members and that's too much in our small town to have one in three of our students face that kind of trauma on a regular basis so you can bet that this is going to

296be a key piece of data and information that we're going to need and use to provide even greater and stronger supports for our young people so I appreciate your work uh I hope you're the organization that does it for us in the fall and the information together between 2019 and 2021 will be very powerful and very useful because of the high rate of participation the high response rate now two quick other questions why don't we have data on tobacco use for the state and I'm just doing this from memory um I thought I saw a blank on the state um we weren't too bad locally but I didn't understand why you wouldn't have that data for the state and then the only other question I have is colleagues that first slide that Patrick and his

297team showed had a lot of uh our students in a directional uh level that's positive it's very positive and Sharon you know I feel you we got to let these these same narrative Clarion blowers start being advocates for the things that their children and the families are doing a really good job with you have you're way below the state on some really significant indicators of of bad youth Behavior almost that whole front page and I never hear about it I never hear about it never talk never hear anybody talk about it don't see a report on it don't see Ed trust putting us out there for being doing a great job investigative post investigative post what a sorry piece of Journalism that is just sorry level one level one I wouldn't use it for fire

298to start a fire I'm just talking to you now you got to stop letting people who sat by the door you understand what I'm saying denigrate your children over and over and over and over again without penalty without penalty these are your kids you one degree of separation from everybody in Buffalo whether you live on Phillis Street or whether you live on dunen or Southampton wherever you live you one degree of separation from what from each other and I've never been I've been all over the country I've never seen the city itself put his children down never seen it you got pressure children here you got talented children here you got resilient children here they're tough they've been through all of this they haven't complained but everybody else is everybody else put us down our

299kids had a record-breaking graduation rate last year first time in history at 76.3 period and all these cowards did was put it down talk about we must have cheated couldn't be true and guess what you just heard ebony say exemptions are a way of life now that's part of what you get but our exemptions weren't any higher than anybody else in fact they were right in here and lower lower than most of the other big five districts who allows that crap to stand I don't but I'm not from here but I'm I'm biing my time before I go down and have my meeting with the Buffalo news that new group that's down there that's a new group down there and you got the same Usual Suspects partnering up with anybody that will put our kids

300down and put your school system down I never seen nothing like it in my life so that's why we're going to lead this agenda that's why we're going to use empirical accurate data to help us frame the work that's needed and we're going to engage thousands and thousands of other parents and community members who believe in their children and who want our partnership to help them get to where they need to be and that's what we're going to commit to that's what we've always been about but you got to help me you got to help me don't play both sides of the fence and all over and think that they really care about you they don't care about you they don't use you they gonna use you up trust me it's already a plan of

301foot to get rid of you they want you to drive me out and by the way I'mma go when I'm ready I'm just telling you that you get your five Vats if you want me gone and then we can talk about it but they ain't driving me out they don't have the qualifications to stand next to me not even close nowhere near so we're going to help our kids and the ones that really really want the help the families that really really want the help and we're going to use organizations like this right here to share the data we're going to take it apart and then we're going to build programs to support them to help overcome the significant indicators that are showing up on this survey so I applaud Mr herd for bringing this

302uh to our attention I applaud Patrick and his team for sharing the 2019 results but remember we want to pair the 2021 results and together that's potent information to build really wonderful groundbreaking innovative programs for our young people thank you thank you yeah I'm not sure I can follow that but just want to answer your question real quick uh I hope for the group that analyzes 2121 data uh I can say we can do it a lot faster next time if that's the case again it's unlikely CO's going to be quite the issue um we've also developed all the we develop the process so it's going to be a lot faster and we can sort of um I think we can integrate that a lot better so I think what you'll see is probably within

303a month or two of actually collecting the data we'll be able to turn around the reports in 2021 so uh you should get those really fast um which would be great yeah absolutely okay um thank you Mr Madden we have um open the floor up for questions um I have um Jennifer mcos hand up right now miss mcos from the Westside district and thank you for that presentation as uh someone who was engaged in this work just as a parent before even becoming a school board member this is part of the this is what brings you in you know parents want to see and Community wants to see this data so my my questions are um I guess for pretty much everybody involved uh because this is so important um I believe that Community engagement

304once again is so necessary when we bring this together and good night baby I'm sorry yeah it's a long night he's been waiting to say good night and I'm wondering um Dr cash and and Dr Williams do we have the capacity to um expand you know or collaborate with other departments particularly like clri around you know helping to grab this data um I don't know how many people we have that actually work on it I know of a few people in particular but we just expressed how important this is and Dr Cashman I can't you just fired me up it's too late to be fired up like this but you just fired me up around this and um if we can collab you know if we my question to you Patrick is if we were

305to able to bring more capacity to collecting the data would you be able to move things further along or is it literally process related it's uh it's process related for the most part because we want to be collaborative and um we want to get input from every you know everybody we can working with the district to to make sure that um the information we're producing is right for the district right and the problem with collaboration is it takes time to do correctly so um that's sort of the case of what it is um and and I just want to share that you know this is not data that is just owned by student support services this is data that you know we collaborate with the Grants Department on with clri with Ann belli's Department you

306know it's District data we work with the associates of school leadership is they're working with principles looking at their individual plans so there's absolutely the opportunity for expanded collaboration because what we have to do is provide you know training and support to the principal so that they can work with their school-based management teams um you know work with their student leadership teams we work with our inner High group that's why this data is so valuable because we really do use it um quite a bit I would also add to that that yes Jennifer this is an opportunity for us to partner with with all of the uh relevant organizations that can help with these issues with our young people um I want to build on the the good indicators it's not just dealing with the

307negative indicators the good indicators I want to give more support to the young people to keep those up keep those behaviors up and then the ones that kind of pop out at us that yes we know we got to do better there that's a good opportunity for accountability two ways two ways it's not all on the schools on the schools on the schools it's a partnership it's the bargain the bargain says we're gonna do this and we're gon to commit to this and and make sure we give you this and make this happen but you gota you gotta be in it too you have a responsibility too so you know that one about being shot stabbed and beaten come on that's not the school stop it let's get in the community and have some Town

308Hall meetings about this gun violence where every other day I'm seeing young people get shot by guns getting shot dead where all these critics you know where they are these crickets not credits it's crickets my followup question would be we're gonna be out talking about that and the other one is how you talk to your children how you talk to your children you know you want to lift them up raise them up have them be strong and who they are then you got to speak to them with respect you got to love them and nurture them one in three is real data that's 33% of our kids being sworn at cursed at talk down to and belittle that's what that data just said so everybody has a piece of this so my follow question would

309be we'll do it I love how you were just so fired up this is awesome my followup question is um is it possible now that this data was was put out there that we can get some sort of kind of onepage or bullet points around this so we can promote you know not only the importance of the data but the good points as you said like we have to get out into the community and really engage our community members um our organizations and folks to really also look for these indicators to help us achieve this you know looking for this data and helping out um I I'm just I was fired up about this years ago and it's you know I know a lot of people have been putting hard work into this um you

310know my win to Baldwin folks like that just I just want to make sure that we all do what we can we see how important this is and it's so necessary for our students that's a huge point you know 33% of our kids are dealing with this so what are we going to do you know to to it's not just about helping people it's just to create that awareness and making sure that you know we do our part that's what we're voted in to do y uh yeah I can speak to that um so yeah we're currently working on the reporting deliverables for the project and as part of that uh absolutely right so we're going to have like one pager uh really brief synopsises of key points right so again uh some something people

311can digest easily they don't have times to read big reports we know that uh and that will actually help get out the word and that could be like I said used by Partners used by whoever to sort of disseminate this information get it out there and that should be coming very soon um now we want to facilitate that however possible we we definitely want to make it as easy as possible for people to understand the data and what's going on and what to do about it and uh and that's what we're here for to help out in that way thank you thank thank you Mr Madden I don't see any more hands raised so I'm just going to go ahead and say that um uh this is this is our responsibility each and every one

312of us we've been elected and put in a position where we can help address some of these issues and and I think that we really have to take a deep dive this is this is my city this is my town and as I look at this data it's very it's very disheartening to know that at our Middle School we looking at 15 to 18% of our kids contemplating suicide and the high schools is from 14 to 20% of our children that we working hard for to educate are contemplating suicide and then through all the conditions um Dr Cass talked about uh witnessing a violent act getting shot or stabbed or but how many of our kids are involved in those in those Acts or are persuaded by gangs or or just things in their neighborhood

313um and then expect them to come to school get good grades educate do virtual learning and everything you know that goes in play to towards a cohort to graduation and these are the deeper things we have to look at because everything that we work for is based upon what happened now I would like to see this board actually take this information and go to the com Council because this these problems are bigger than just the Buffalo Public Schools and I would like to take this to the council and present it to the council because help to come from everywhere and this is a this is a situation where we have to look out reach out to our counterparts you know that's in office that make rules and and work with our police departments and and

314job training programs and and work with um schooling and and reach out see what we can do about these problems because everything everything that happens comes back into our classrooms when a child brother get into a gang fight with another another guy that child come to school he's scared because that brother friends go go to that school and he's scared for his life to go sit in the classroom or go go to school because those problems from the streets come right back into our buildings as as a educator I dealt with it our teachers are dealing with it and and it's inside our building students are dealing with with these issues and as a school district job is to educate but we doing everything else trying to trying to um look at the health and

315wellness of our kids and and and educate the all the way to the parents to CTE programs and grandparents so we trying to do everything and I think most's problem is is the city problem so if we can get together get get a um get get get a a group together that we can actually go present over to the common council with these findings and and let's let's make this a bigger form like you said Dr cash about getting um going to the community and and getting forms together um yeah let's report the good and the bad that's in this report right um and move forward with this well stated what percentage of people participating on this meeting have to go to the bathroom right [Laughter] now okay any more comments colleagues got to go

316and that we can um bring this back up again next week to talk about this data next week absolutely now I'm going to conclude the educational support committee meeting all hearts and minds are clear everybody go to the bathroom grab some to need there you go good night everyone be safe and once again mad I apologize once again I apologize Mr Madden about coming on so late um we really tried to try to um push the agenda forward and have you wait this late and and I hope nothing like this happens again I learned a ton about the school systems School District today so thank you very much it's it's great and I'm happy to do stay fired up