001someone is not muted if everyone could please mute we'd appreciate it so thank you for joining us this evening we have two committees this evening we have our educational support committee which is up first and we have our student achievement committee so we have uh many items under each and i will turn it over um to our educational support chair mr terrance heard um good evening everyone um i'm sorry dr brown are we going to wait for the superintendent we are not dr cash dixon the board member is an email uh maybe about 10 minutes ago so we can proceed okay thank you uh good good evening everyone um welcome tonight to um tonight's educational support committee meeting uh we have some very very interesting topics tonight and um and i'd like to say that
002um you know some of the topics that we have tonight is very very uh important you know as we move forward uh with um you know learning here here in um the buffalo public school district we have um we um have an update we'll be uh council update with our athletic department apologize and we're going to talk about online security today and the mckinney-vento program uh these are two things that's very important as we move forward um and um we know that it's been a couple of issues with online across the country and also within our school district about uh pedophiles that's been reaching out to our children and um today the district is going to present on the securities that went on that we took that we took to try to stop some of
003these means and some of these measures that's been um attacking our children and it's very very heartfelt you know the protection of our children the health and wellness and the safety of them and um i'm just happy that our district you know has been working to prevent you know these type of incidents from occurring but um pedophiles that they reach out to our children and um and these incidents you know they occur quite frequently and with um and with uh the practice the practice because of the copic 19 virus of um learning from home using uh tablets instruments and and the virtual learning process you know it opens up the doors you know for this type of um act to happen now i'm very sincere that we bring in a guest speaker today um of
004julie palmer from the path organization path is people against trafficking humans we worked together in the past in the past on on certain projects and um she's a very influential person but she has a history of herself that she'd like to tell the board about and the stakeholders um about human trafficking and about the dangers that exists in our communities and to our families and children um miss palmer will you please push yourself uh good evening everybody thank you for having me here today i'm the executive director and the founder of path people against trafficking humans incorporated and we have our enrichment center we're at 999 delaware avenue actually the former mental health advocates building we just actually had a community philanthropist purchase us the building so we were able to move from our lease
005space into this space which has been fantastic post covid to have a lot more square footage and so terrence had asked me to speak a little bit about what our agency is experiencing and what has been happening um particular to virtual learning and what we're seeing with perpetrators and that impact so i'll speak briefly on that and briefly on our services and anything we can do to better support your district and the efforts and work that you guys are doing to try to serve kids during this pandemic is not an easy task my husband's actually a teacher so i do appreciate and understand how it is affecting the schools from even a personal perspective of an educator and i have four children so i see it from the parent side so it is quite a
006feat you're trying to accomplish right now um but just to speak a bit about what we're experiencing just by and large in general before covid um the primary means with which perpetrators are recruiting is all through the internet and as you can imagine that makes a lot of sense because essentially everybody has a device and so you know we have federal partners with homeland security the fbi and other offices where they say by and large the number one recruiting and solicitation is happening through social media through various apps dating apps it can be through gaming there's a lot of statistics about how perpetrators will just join these apps or gaming and just start chatting with youth i'm also part of the national missing exploited children and just some of the statistics they have and there's
007also a center in washington dc uh it's the national center for sexual exploitation and they do a lot of work looking into that and they did find a lot of loopholes unfortunately with google and the google classroom format um where perpetrators are able to reach out and solicit through those platforms and not all the blockers in place can stop it so there's a real reality to that unfortunately and i have kids on devices as well so what i would say is just being educated and more diligent and i've noticed that every school district is kind of handling it differently as far as protections that they have in place and we obviously all know that costs money so the more protections the more dollars that is for your district but i would say that we had
008a discussion as a staff prior to the fall knowing through learning was going to continue and we have experienced a double in our caseload of youth that have been referred to us i would say a lot of it has to do with not just virtual learning but that a lot of the people we serve are now in homes where guardians have to work or can't be there and they're unsupervised and so some of the things we've done is tried to look at how can we help students we have a tutoring program that helps keep them online and just our interventions to help work with them but i would suggest that is a a big issue and things that you can be considering looking out for obviously specifically we are looking at human trafficking and what
009that looks like which is a 150 billion dollar criminal industry and it's recruiting harboring and transporting individuals for sex or labor trafficking so it can look a lot of different ways as far as people recruiting and it's a crime when there's force fraud or coercion so we see an awful lot of coercion that goes on whether it crosses over with addiction we also see a lot of grooming or dating so individuals will date get compromising videos or photographs of youth and then blackmail to post that if they don't continue to do more acts and so we see this as becoming a very large scale problem in our community as well as the nation by and large and so some of the things we look at are you know what are red flags and indicators unfortunately
010the average age of an individual being exploited is about 12 to 14 years old in our youth program we serve 13 through 19 and i would say our average age is 14 year olds that we are serving and they are being recruited through a lot of vulnerabilities um one if someone has experienced abuse um or they are running away frequently i heard through a law enforcement training that if a child runs away more than four times they have about an 86 percent chance of being exploited addiction is quite an overlap we see anybody who's in a situation where they lack support uh maybe they are you know more in a poverty status family that has a lot of different criminal backgrounds homelessness domestic violence foreign born which i know you also have a lot of
011students in that population we're seeing a lot of overlap of that and so some of the things that we are looking at statistically one in six children want to raise are likely to be exploited individuals are definitely targeting through these internet means and looking at vulnerabilities they will date so we do have a lot of clients that actually have dated their perpetrator before they start requiring or asking of them to do certain things one in seven children ages 10 to 17 are sexually solicited online and that's a statistic from the national center for missing exploited children so that means if you have a classroom of 21 kids three of them are being solicited at any time and how that works is a lot of the apps that you the kids use have messaging components and
012so we can put parental controls and blocks on that but we can't control the people that message and so that's where a lot of it happens there's also messaging apps where information is deleted as soon as it's exchanged um one thing they found with google and in the classroom is that perpetrators were sending pornography through google docs because there's not an ability to block that document from coming through so if your child clicks on that then that document is revealed to your child um there's also chat features in google so depending how well that's being monitored or blocked in the school's classroom kids can be chit chatting um and a lot of pictures can get exchanged and things can be going on even simply while they're virtually learning in a classroom so a lot of
013that has to be dependent how restrictive or what components the district has to block that exchange but on social media i would say that's a huge issue with our youth they're saying facebook messenger facebook live um of course the you know snapchat is a big one instagram um a lot of the gaming apps now um there's a discord where that's kind of a gaming chat a combination a lot of those different platforms where their socialization is occurring is where a lot of recruitment um and one piece that they will do is when the children start joining those platforms it will auto send emails to them because you have to use an email to create and register so it will auto email them messages from people and some of them can be solicitors or derogatory so
014that can even come through and it might go to their spam or their trash or go right in their inbox um but you know i even did i experimented with that my son's device and in his spam was about 35 solicitations that were pretty derogatory on his school chromebook so it's just because those platforms push things through so there's just a lot of different ways that those things can be happening it's very difficult to mitigate we also unfortunately are seeing a lot of dynamics with substance use and targeted um youth and a lot of that is if they get either can get them addicted and then reliant on that addiction or they already were addicted and then they use that as a lure to say well we'll give you more if you do this um
015and so we're seeing and particularly with kovit is i'm sure you're aware an increase in that usage um increase of that coping strategy on increase of that component which makes people then more vulnerable if you're an ecstasy or if you're high you're less aware of what you're doing and decisions you're making and then after the fact it's been recorded there's just a lot we're working with a grand jury case where the youth were recorded and gang raped and they were given ecstasy and had no idea what's happening to them um so it's just these kind of components and that was all just a connection through a social media chat where they met people and heard of a party there's what hotel parties going on there's just a lot of different things going on where people
016are engaging so red flags for you as a school community would definitely be i mean obviously we know that truancy is a problem by and large just because of the way virtual learning exists but just kids that are truly not even existing and logging in or their grades are not happening that's a piece kids that are getting acquiring items but you know that they don't have the resources to acquire a lot of things will get bought for them hair and nails done give them things um somebody purchases them a device a phone and says you know my boyfriend bought this or whoever um you know and just also is a caveat perpetrators aren't always men and boys um we actually have a number of youth that are being recruited by females um and obviously you
017know it or may not obvious but the vulnerable communities of the lgbtq and others are also seeing an increase of being targeted um and so we're just seeing a lot of that overlap happening you will also see a hyper sexualization happening there's a lot of sexting going on aggressive behavior unfortunately frequent pregnancies in youth that may be engaging we unfortunately have several youth right now that are expecting and just navigating that process people will be branded with tattoos you'll see an inability for them to make decisions without getting permission from someone so you'll see kind of these different things going on and how they're engaging how they're interacting with their peers um inconsistencies in their communication or the way that they would share what's going on um and so those different things um you know
018or they can't give you a lot of information on who they're with they're with an older person um whether it's a a young male dating an older or by you know the female getting older so it doesn't necessarily gender is necessarily matter in what we're seeing especially with the way that things are just cross-culturally happening with that we're seeing a lot of people take advantage of all different ways of individuals and so we're seeing all sorts of concerns but when we find a lot of times the youth can't even tell us a lot about whoever they are engaged with or have a relationship with those are red flags of like well what do they do for a living where are they getting their means from or how are they helping you well i'm not really
019sure they don't tell me i mean those are concerning things when they can't give you a lot of that information but definitely as far as their devices i think obviously the more funding you get the more controls districts can put on it i know some districts the teachers actually have the capacity to control the virtual classroom when they are instructing the class and can freeze it so kids can't um google search while they're on um virtually and you know obviously everybody's a different place with that but just whatever can be done in educating parents so that they truly understand that the freedom of devices is basically handing a child i say it's like giving them um access to everything in the world that basically as adults we have access to and so just thinking about
020how they navigate that even with pornography or even with the ability when you google search even you know friend of mine was just saying the one day she just was google searched dicks for the store and didn't think in her head and just so the stuff that pulled up in that um and so just thinking about how our kids have full access to pretty much anything that exists on the internet without restriction um youtube is also a big issue um so even we've been talking to schools about youtube restrictions that if the teacher wants to use youtube only sending them that link permissions to that link because again anything you put on youtube you can find a video for and so it's just a lot of the considerations now on top of addressing kovid that
021since we have leaned on virtual instruction have opened this whole door and so of course perpetrators you know wherever there's good there's also evil so they think wow all the kids are doing this and they're on this so how can i use that to my advantage and so unfortunately they are trying to do that um and and getting youth compromised or blackmailing or promising them things um and just putting them in situations like that as far as what our organization does uh we have a three-fold mission of education prevention restoration so we have we spent countless times educating and all different platforms such as this or schools or businesses or community partners other organizations and we do full-fledge uh you know education and training on human trafficking in much more detail and how that's affecting
022the community we also do a lot of prevention measures so some of the referrals we receive are at risk or youth or adults and risky behavior that lends them to potentially being perpetrated and then our restoration piece is is at our enrichment center as i mentioned at 999 delaware we provide support services to adults and youth who have been affected by sex or labor trafficking or have a trauma that makes them high risk and we welcome people of any you know faith ethnicity status we're really here to serve individuals who need more support we have social workers that do one-on-one crisis safety engagement coping support we have a variety of support groups particular to our youth program we have a licensed agreement with love146 where we are able to provide child exploitation prevention curriculums it's
023a five-week curriculum i highly recommend if there's a way to engage that in your community uh the youth actually are extremely responsive to it's very relevant and well done to relate to the times with our youth and it's very informative on ways that they can be more aware of how they're being perpetrated red flags they can look out for what are healthy relationships what are boundaries look like it's a very excellent curriculum that we can offer we also have for both our adult and youth programs uh creative arts therapy so we have an art enrichment program we have people therapy we have fitness we provide meals for every client that comes each day we have spiritual care support for those who require it we have clothing and hygiene items and we have a tutoring program
024actually our tutors are two retired buffalo public school teachers who approached us and offered to volunteer their time who are outstanding they do a fantastic job and we also have a work readiness program which helps our clientele find employment so that's just kind of an a quick synopsis of what we do and if you ever were in a situation um where you felt you had those that needed support we i can you know i think i believe i sent um parents all of our contact information um but we have a 24-hour call and text line at 716-601-5678 which he has and we also have a website path of wny.org where you can email or reach out and if you call us we're happy to set up a time to meet with someone or if you
025give us contact info to an individual or family we will reach out follow up with them and we also have virtual as well as in person capacity so however people are most comfortable um we provide both options hey julie yes um i'm gonna ask you to stay on because um the district's gonna present now and if anybody have any questions about you your program and uh some of the things that you spoke about today uh it's very touching that's why i was choked up a little bit earlier i was speaking to someone just before the meeting um today about that was that's going through some problems and issues um concerning um some of the topics that you talked about so um i was yeah a little choked up earlier but uh right now um i
026want to give the floor to i'm dr tanja williams [Music] assistant superintendent she's available yes but uh mr hurt myra burden will be presenting with tonya so i believe myra will be beginning um this presentation regarding internet security thank you um well we'll be moving on to a couple of topics or some of the things that the district has done to prevent some of the issues that was going on we must be speaking about internet security online securities and measures that we took to um to uh you know help the families help the children as you know that's you know reaching out online or going to sites or or different sites that uh spoke about by julie also we talked about peer pressures um their peer pressures um this type of um behavior you know
027not only come from pedophile from pedophilia but it also comes through other students themselves so um this is uh martin burton i mean if you want to go ahead you mr heard uh mike lucci could you put up the presentation thank you so good evening board members and colleagues tonight i'll begin our discussion on internet safety by sharing some of the things that the it department is doing to promote internet safety so and the first thing i like to talk about and share is that we have our student technology handbook which can be found at buffaloschools.org for slash handbook this handbook was developed just prior to the start of our 2021 school year and its availability was socialized uh in the parent and other update meetings at that time so that parents and students were
028provided with information about online safety but also how students should care for and appropriately use the device for an optimal learning experience more specifically the student technology handbook provides details on topics that are concerning using technology securely and responsibly there's a section on that cyber bullying there's also a section on that and there's also a qr code that can be used to report inappropriate behavior to the district student online safety and how parents can assist with students online safety and links to sites that can provide information about online safety another way that we promote online safety awareness is through our digital citizenship curriculum and a monthly awareness of that a digital citizenship is how we should act when we're using digital tools interacting with others online and and what should be taught to help the
029next generation be better stewards of technology for schools and teachers it's what we teach our students and how to interact with the online world so because we are using learning devices such as tablets and laptops teachers have the perfect opportunity to educate the students about the digital world and how to be good online digital citizens so our digital citizenship program is infused with our curriculum by grade level with a focus on monthly themes such as digital adequate uh privacy and security along with cyber bullying and even appropriate collaborative use of chat features we've had over 20 000 activities that have been completed since september of 2020. um there is additional information about the curriculum and even some monthly infographics for the monthly themes and you can find that at slash buffaloschools.org the next way we
030also promote online safety and this is directly um with regard to the student devices and that's through content filtering so inappropriate sites are blocked both internally and externally up to our district network by our content filter and they're blocked by categories so we block anything that is labeled as adult or mature content such as dating sites drug use weapons gambling gaming social media and even adult explicit sites and we also block downloads and streaming sites the youtube access is limited to only those that are labeled as educational and when i say labeled as educational label by youtube as educational the district doesn't use google classroom and as new apps and sites are created frequently obviously there's a need and an action to continually adjust our content filters we also have on our devices a control
031of the app store availability we use self service as our app store and we control the apps that students can install on our devices further student emails are limited only high school students have a district email which is primarily used or intended primarily to be used to submit college applications and so finally what we're excited about and coming soon is a digital safety course the information technology department specifically the instructional technology department has been working on developing a digital safety course for parents which will be offered in partnership with the office of parent and family engagement this course will focus on best practices for technology use in the home it will also be recorded and it's going to be archived on our bps website and we will be offering it in multiple languages with the
032additional initial languages being english and spanish the first english class is going to be held on april 14th and then the first spanish class is going to be held on april 21st mike could you proceed to the next slide okay thank you so this slide illustrates um the three one-pager do's and don'ts that we have for internet safety and they are also found on that digital citizenship web page um so that's buffalo schools dot org fort slash fort slash digit the first one to the far left of the screen is written for elementary school students and it just simply points out how students should protect their private information they should balance their time when using media and other activities and that they could stay safe online the second image is primarily for our secondary students
033this one emphasizes that students should protect their personal information to not share passwords do not post photos online to not agree agree to in-person meetings with unknown people or if they are engaging in online chat with some of their friends and they're trying to meet up with their friends they should obtain parent permission and obviously to be aware of online ads the third one uh the third image it provides tips on how parents and caregivers can support their students with internet safety parents should be encouraged to have their students keep the computer in a public room in the home periodically review what the child is doing on the computer have the ch and have the child's password are just a few examples that are detailed on that particular slide so um i t is currently
034working to ensure that these documents are translated in multiple languages we expect to have spanish up before the end of the week and we will work with the multilingual office to make sure that this information is communicated effectively to our multilingual parents and students it's also important to note that these documents were done in partnership with the division of student support services under the leadership of dr tanja williams who at this time will discuss the supports that the division of support services offers for students as it relates to internet safety doctor thank you next slide please so good evening chairman heard and president belton cotman board members chief brown hall and colleagues good evening so what you've just heard from chief burden is that there are lots of preventive supports that our district has in
035place um to try to protect all of our students against being victimized um you know with respect to the internet but even with all of the safety guards that she just shared we know that you know technology is constantly evolving and so even with all of those safeguards there are times and opportunities for our students to be victimized as you heard ms palmer speak of earlier and so when there are situations where students have been victims of harm through internet situations the district has a pretty systematized tiered situation of supports and i just want to go through kind of um what those tears are and um situations that might fall into some of the tears so at a basic level um let's just say a student has uh received as mr hurd mentioned um situations
036where there's peer pressure um to do things and it's happening uh through cyber forces or if it is a first offense of cyber bullying what we do is we want to work to um resolve any harm and we want to be able to do it in a way that's restorative and as least punitive as we can and so at a tier one level when situations like that happen um district school and uh you know we're working together the district and school administrators are working together along with student support teams that are in the schools and our um bps security team to do a investigation and to see what really was the level of harm and what happened and then working with everyone including parents parents are the common thread that you'll hear throughout all of
037the tears to try to restore any harm that may have happened and to try to make the incident um a teachable moment but if things um either are not being resolved or they're escalating or they're at a higher level where students have experienced some form of possibly emotional distress then they move to a level two and we're still working with all of the facets that you see under tier one but in addition to that it ratchets up and so all of our schools are working with um community-based organizations that provide mental health counseling and we have a phenomenal crisis prevention and response team and so when there's been any kind of emotional distress that's where we involve our crisis team and we're working with mental health uh supports to try to get counseling and support
038for this for the student um it may involve us working with organizations such as uh the path organization that was discussed um tonight to also um involve family support to get support for our families so when things are not resolved at the tier one level and there's been emotional distress we move to tier two now if the situation is um has gone to another level you heard mrs palmer talk about some really um very serious things that unfortunately some of our students could be exposed to including you know issues that involve pornographic websites or being victimized by adults when things such as that happen we work very closely with our buffalo police department and governmental officials um swiftly and severe you know to make sure that whatever happens whatever the outcome is that it is
039as severe we take it very very seriously whenever any of our students have um experienced any kind of a situation like some of the ones that mrs palmer mentioned we want to make sure that you know again the situations are handled swiftly and uh severely so we do have a tiered process that's in place um you know with the um you know uh implementation of um [Music] of um uh enter uh i'm sorry i just lost my train of thought but with the implementation of covid and students working um you know on their laptops and and uh you know on their tablets more than they ever have before um it was necessary for us to put in place a tiered process so that we're supporting students but we're also looking out for their safety next
040slide please so in addition to students being victimized we've had a few situations where students have knowingly themselves violated our code of conduct and we have a code of conduct addendum that the board of education recently approved and included within that addendum is explicit language on digital citizenship and the expectations in fact we have a full page it starts halfway through page five and it goes halfway through page six that is dedicated just to that and so when students have violated any measures in a knowing fashion within our code of conduct addendum it could result in the district temporarily confiscating the student's laptop or tablet for the purpose of inspecting and investigating whatever the violations were and if it is founded it could go from a level one penalty which again is focusing on restorative
041practices and repairing harm right through to a level two or three both of which are out of school suspensions level two would be um a short-term suspension but a level three is the most serious thing that a school principal and district uh really can do to a student and so we do take it very seriously that's a long-term superintendent suspension hearing if the actions involved constitute any kind of crime under state and or federal laws well then it becomes a situation where we're working with our security team local state and federal law enforcement officials possibly governmental entities so you know it could escalate to that level it is a crime and so it could escalate to that level next slide please i believe that concludes our presentation and so at this time we're able to
042entertain questions okay at this time if um any board members or administrative staff members have any questions about the presentation today please feel free to uh talk with dr taja williams um mrs burton or um julie palmer kindly please raise your hand and i can call on you okay i do have a hand raised by um president um sharon belton comment thank you i want to thank uh julie palmer and tom joe williams and myra burton for their presentations i am particularly interested in this human trafficking piece uh the last two seminars i traveled i attended the last two conferences i traveled i attended seminars on this issue and i'm wondering if we are doing enough as a district as far as educating our students i'm wondering if um if anyone can tell me if
043it's included this topic of human trafficking is included in our any part of our curriculum our sex education or anything because one of the things that recently came maybe about two years ago we had a young lady who was uh being who was recruited for sex trafficking at the library downtown and i understand that those guys are always on the hunt for young girls and her you know her mother etc and so i'm wondering if we can uh do maybe a link that connects our uh uh julie palmer and path enrichment can be one of our community partners and allow us to do a link that connects this information to our website so that under services but this is a serious issue and from what i've heard and been told i think we have a
044galloway kelly galloway is also doing things in this area and what i've been told is that buffalo is prime prime territory because we're within six to eight hours eight hours of a lot of areas including montreal and new york city and um and albany and et cetera so i'm wondering if you need to ask the superintendent to take a look at this and start incorporating this topic some way somehow into our uh classrooms because uh there's a major issue going on with women being traffic uh sex trafficking and it and and if many of you are aware there is a large number of african-american women in this country and i'm not talking about ten thousand i think the last number i saw was upwards of probably about fifty thousand who have just disappeared um family
045can't find them and they believe that it is connected to a trafficking ring that exists um and i i'll be honest with you i've had a a years ago a young lady who had been picked up by truckers they called her a beaver that there was a beaver uh trying to hitchhike and she ended up hitting with the right guy getting saved that day but i just want to know what we can do for to make sure that our children are educated on and our parents are educated on this topic because buffalo they say is a prime area for this to happen with the borders that we're near so president cotman um i certainly would be very interested in connecting with miss palmer um certainly her organization i think she very eloquently tonight shared that
046they have a level of expertise um you know in this area um i would certainly be interested in moving that forward and seeing if there are some com kind of comprehensive um you know uh curriculum pieces so that what we're presenting to younger children we're not presenting you know to older great level children so i would love to make that contact okay thank you now the other thing is is that april is child abuse prevention month uh and i looked on the calendar if you saw me head down i was looking to see what dates are celebrated nationally uh in regards to this topic and i think that falls under although uh human trafficking happens in january um a human national day of human trafficking awareness was january the 11th um october is national cyber
047security a month i was wondering if um we might think about a campaign or something and tie it into somehow um ideally you know when we talk about child abuse um we are normally talking about sexual abuse but i think it's important that i also think we can tie that into cyber cyber of security as well i think just think that there's a need with the spring coming on that we uh do a uh campaign of some sort what do you think about that mrs palmer have you been involved in any campaigns like that absolutely and as you mentioned january was national human trafficking prevention month so we did actually a campaign in january um so absolutely you know collaborating with partners such as yourself and addressing that in a broader scale beyond even just
048human trafficking itself is a fantastic idea and just to piggyback some of the things you mentioned which were fantastic there's multiple ways we have engaged with school districts um and so some of the ways that we have done that is we have we actually have certain districts where my staff or i speak to different classes as you indicated the health classes we actually they have us come in annually and we speak into those classrooms for a full day we have other districts who have had us come in and do a full presentation for the faculty as well as for the student body i know i understand this year is definitely more tenacious with virtual but we have been adapting to that and offer virtual platforms to do that so it really can look whatever way
049works best also fully agree that how we present to the younger grades is always different than the older grades um and so we have been we have adapted our presentations um based on the population we're speaking to but i think it would be a fantastic idea and i appreciate this group's desire to educate um because the reality is whether we want to say it's happening or not it is happening and we have kids from every district too and i'd i even like to make sure the community knows that because i think unfortunately people will just say it's an inner city problem but we have children from all the surrounding districts of western new york so i think it's really important to talk about it and we don't necessarily do it in a way of making
050the youth feel like they're a quote human traffic victim there's ways we can have these conversations with them in how we present that gets them more aware of what is inappropriate engagement and contacts and what they should be better understanding so i think that'd be fantastic whether we push into a classroom and do it whether it's a school-wide presentation whether the faculty get engaged but we're happy to help you with whatever you want to do for a campaign however we can support you as a district we would love to be able to do that just fully understanding how difficult things are and how you're having to navigate everything so and if we can support your district even if you have cases or concerns please don't hesitate to ask we work with that risk or people
051victimized um no referral or phone call is a bad one we really are happy to even just talk through things or if a family member we even get parents that will call with questions we're happy to help we've had a few parents or we just come in and work with them on how to even navigate their kids how to help with that so there's so many ways we're happy to help but we would be thrilled to be a part of any campaign idea i think that's fantastic well i'm not thinking of anything real elaborate but i am thinking of maybe definitely talking with the superintendent to see me and dr williams to see what ideas they have but certainly i would definitely like to make sure that your your link is definitely on our website
052uh because i think that's that's a huge issue and um it just gave me an idea that maybe there's a need dr williams to set up a different type of search mechanism on our website and maybe we should maybe we need to start looking at some social emotional searches you know that people can connect like you know uh human trafficking or sex abuse and it would take them to different things and that's some ideas but thank you so much i appreciate this presentation this is a this is a serious problem it really is okay thank you um president on belt and codman does any other board members have any questions or comments for the staff members okay since there's no more questions um i would just like to say that one thing you mentioned about
053girls being trafficked and i like to say that the young men are being trafficked just as much as the boys right now and um and um i was on the sex defense task force in the state of georgia where i've seen things that i i can't talk about but um where we do raise into pedophile houses that was uh probationers or uh parolees and um we're looking look into their homes and and look for um any type of inappropriate activities that goes on and um bring them back before the judge in court so i i see over and over i've seen these cases and i see them right here in the city of buffalo and and buffalo is a gateway for sexual trafficking and harboring uh due to the closest of uh rochester uh the
054border of canada and um there's a lot of streams out here you know that goes on i also would like to say because of the parent i just received a text message from a parent i had a couple of parents that gave me permission to talk about this is that within the district it was a couple of times this winter where i was out three or four o'clock in the morning looking for looking for around children children um that left the home because they met somebody online and the district has helped us out with some of those kids and um three four five o'clock in the morning my family and i and we call them people up uh did facebook blast and have people all looking for it and one of the main concerns that
055we have that's going to the police station is that they don't identify anyone as being missing until 48 hours later and so for 48 hours you know you have you know there's no alerts going out of amber alerts going out you know for these children you know that's left home that that's been pulled or or or you know they're um that they've been violated you know um in any kind of way but um but there's got to be more protections out here you know to help these families these children and i'm glad that this district has stepped up you know with with some counseling and mentoring you know for the families and moving forward now just received another text message from another parent that we talked about i'm saying thank you i appreciate it very
056much um another one that um president captain helped me on a couple of months ago is that one of my great friends um you know she lost her daughter that's that's too much that's too much yeah so that's a lot that's too much this this is this is serious and i think that as a district we really need to address this and move forward thank you mr hurt i think um are we ready for our next topic i believe dr tanja williams will be presenting regarding mckinney vento about the program with kenny vento and uh and uh we spoke briefly with dr tanja williams and uh doctor they put a presentation together about some of the concerns now that president uh belt cotton go ahead and leave this well i i think it would be
057appropriate for tanja um for dr williams to present first and then we can answer questions and then you know president belkin cottman always has questions we'll answer them or we'll follow up with the correct information for president belton cottman so dr williams please proceed sure if mr lucci could please um put up the presentation thank you so um tonight my intent in sharing a presentation on our buffalo public schools mckinney-vento program which is our homeless education program is really to enlighten you um in four different areas i want to begin uh the presentation by talking a little bit about what mckinney vento is um i'll then move into talking about some of the pillars of work nationally and statewide and where we fit in with that work our own buffalo public schools mckinney bento and
058the work that we're engaged in and then i'll talk a little bit about enrollment data um over these last 12 months and uh during this time of covid and then i'll wrap it up with you know a full disclosure of transparency and i'm going to share where we have some opportunities for improvement within the program next slide please so i wanted to begin um by sharing kind of an overview of kenny dental is because i know a lot of us hear mckinney bento and we associate it with homelessness but we don't really know um where where it came from um or you know who even is leading the department of um kenny vento right now uh within our department of mckinney-vento it's a small staff but they work very very hard uh they are housed
059over at school 12 on ash street the director of student placement and registration is miss kelly daniels and she really leads the day-to-day work within the divi within the department but there's also a supervisor for the mckinney-vento program and that is uh my we also have a community education leader in the department that works very very hard and her name is miss marva brown so it's a small staff but they do a lot of work um that's who leads mckinney vento and i just wanted to share with you a little bit about why it's even called mckinney-vento i did some research myself just to find out and um there were two house of representative individuals one being bruce vento and the other being um stuart mckinney and um you know they came together in kind
060of a bipartisan effort one being republican one being a democrat and felt very strongly that um it was important for persons who were experiencing temporary homelessness to be afforded as many supports and services as possible and so for specifically the school portion of it or the educational portion it has really been able to survive different um presidencies and initiatives it was included in no child left behind it then was included in race to the top and it's now included within our every student succeeds act i felt it was important to give a common definition for really what mckinney vento is so that we're all understanding what it really is and it's when children and youth lack fixed regular and adequate nighttime residency and that could mean that students are living in hotels motel trailer park
061shelters cars parks public spaces abandoned buildings bus and or train stations or doubling up in homes and we'll talk a little bit more about that in december of 2016 um it used to be such that students who were awaiting foster care placement because they were temporarily displaced and met the definition that you see here were considered homeless and in 2016 um according to the essa act that part was removed and so now students who are awaiting foster care are no longer necessarily or automatically considered homeless it's important for us to all keep in mind that this is a population of students that is near and dear to many of our hearts you know unfortunately it's a population that um sometimes can be looked at as almost invisible you know where you know that you have
062populations of students who may be experiencing temporary homelessness um but it's not really highlighted and i know that president belton copman you know this is a um this is a program that is very very dear to her heart and you know when i look at this population of students it is directly aligned to our education bargain and what we are about within this district and that is making sure that all of our children are provided supports and services but especially as facets five speaks to our students who are most needy and certainly that's a population of children that fall into that facet next slide please so when we look at some of the federal and state requirements um for the program um we know that you know one of the main points when you look
063at everything is that we want our homeless youth or our children who are experiencing homelessness to have equal access to education supports and services just as their non-homeless peers have that's really in a nutshell what we expect we don't want the factor of homelessness to serve as a barrier we want to do everything that we can to try to fill that gap and so there are six requirements that our state education requires and i want to talk about these six and share with you for buffalo how we meet um these requirements so the first one talks about how students and youth are to be allowed to continue their education in their district of origin and we certainly do this and we do this very well we work very closely specifically our community education leader when
064we get students um that come over to ash street to register and the student or the parent may say you know we're from a suburban district or we're from you know another district and because we're experiencing homelessness and we're now living in buffalo the district may be telling us that we can't um continue to be educated in that school district um we very assertively work with those districts to ensure that you know that the law reads that yes they can continue within their home school district if they so choose and it works both ways and so if we have buffalo public school students who happen to be residing outside of the city because they're experiencing homelessness we again work to keep those students within our district because consistency is important you know when you're young
065and you're experiencing things that you have no control over at all or when you're a parent and you're experiencing hardships the last thing you need to have to worry about is um trying to get your child you know enrolled into a new district and acclimated to new um situations and so where we have to we call it's called new york state teachers and it's a hotline and they are very versed on the law and so we work closely with that organization when we have to if we're working with other districts to make sure that they're very clear that those children are able to continue um in their district of origin the second piece that um the new york state education department requires is that districts that have children experiencing homelessness must provide transportation meals and
066educational services and we do that again very very well we make sure we work very closely with our bps transportation department and so again if a student you know was a ps student and has had to move outside of the city due to homelessness our transportation department does a magnificent job making sure that we provide transportation to whatever district we need to provide transportation to so that there is consistency normally for transportation purposes it could take seven to ten days for a student to get transportation but under this guideline we want it immediate and so it could be in as short a time as one day um and no longer than three days before we get that transportation piece set up so we do that piece very well the next piece um involves identifying students
067who may be um experiencing homelessness and we do have a student housing questionnaire that when we get new students and it's a part of the registration packet that families are able to fill out um and we do it in a way that is respectful to students when there are conversations that are had with parents um regarding you know if they indicate that they're experiencing homelessness we do it in a way where it's respectful um you know it's private you know it's not broadcasted and um you know this is one of the requirements that the state has and that we do for every single student that comes to bps to enroll if they check that they're not experiencing temporary displacement that's fine but it's a part of the registration packet and if they are then that's
068where they meet with one of our mckinney-vento folks the next piece is immediate enrollment in school and that's a huge piece we work closely to make sure that we get students in school immediately even when students and parents show up with no documentation because when you are experiencing homelessness is possible that you know you don't have you know some of the documentation that we require as you enroll in and so we work closely we work with social services we we work with um uh the birth certificate office upstairs and we do you know a lot of the lead work to try to get in you know the documents that parents need in order to get their children registered so we do that piece number five on providing educational supports and services you'll notice that that's
069circled in red we do do quite a bit um with respect to this um during this pandemic you know we had our supervisor and our educational community educational leader going out and picking up hot spots and taking them to shelters um they picked up um school packets when we first you know got into the situation with school closures they delivered backpacks um to some of the shelters and families and recently we started a process um under miss daniels where 10 families are being called every single day that we are aware of who are experiencing homelessness just to do a check and connect on how you're doing and you know how things are going how we can better support but i have that circled and i'll come back to it in a little bit because that's
070one of our opportunities for improvement and we can continue to improve in that area so i'm going to talk a little bit about that a little bit later on the final piece which deals with maintaining a dispute dispute resolution process we also do that very well the law requires that if a student or a family comes in to be enrolled um and we have questions about you know whether it's valid or not we enroll them in school and we ask questions and investigate after and so we do do that now what i found out today which was interesting is that we always ear on the side of the parent and that today we haven't had to implement the dispute resolution process because we follow it so well so our staff at you know ash street
071that work in mckinney-vento are not necessarily going back and forth with parents they're enrolling the children so there's really no need for um the dispute piece because we're airing especially at this time on um on behalf of our um parents next slide so this slide is a little i mean when i looked at it i was shocked um this is a slide that's um looking at our bps numbers of identified students who have over this last year experienced unstable housing and so when we pulled our data from march of 2020 um right as the kovic crisis the pandemic hit we were at about 964 children families um within our district who were experiencing homelessness when you fast forward six months later we were down to 171. that's a big drop and when you look at
072um as of february of 2021 where we are you can see that it's starting to creep back up and we are we were at as of february 28th about 282 families so it is shocking um we know that while the identification has dropped um that there are many families that we know of that are out there that are certainly experiencing homelessness and so we're you know it caused me to pause and to wonder how could our data look like this during a pandemic when we know that families have lost jobs and you know there are all these difficulties happening and so um i believe about a month ago there was a national study that was shared i believe miss belton cotman shared it with us and it came out of michigan and it's a study
073that talked about the loss in the mast shuffle in a virtual void and what it discussed is that our data is not the only data that looks this way this is an issue nationally statewide and within western new york where there was this sharp decrease with the impact of covet and there are certain reasons that contributed um to you know why the data looks like this um the first is that it became very difficult to identify children and youth experiencing homelessness during the pandemic because sometimes you know relationships are pretty big and so when students come to school and you know they're able to speak to their counselors um you know teachers you know and share some things um you know that's how we find out sometimes that families are experiencing this well with the
074implementation of virtual learning um you know some of that contributed to us not knowing that there were children that may have been experiencing um homelessness so distance learning contributed school closures and shutdowns also you know contributed but also there was a relocation of many of our families and an inability to contact some families you know as we all know when you're surviving and you're experiencing homelessness and possibly you know illness or wellness of you know non-wellness of family members um you're not necessarily thinking that you know you need to call the school to let the school know that this is what you're experiencing if your phone is shut off you know it became a challenge to continue contact with some of our families and in addition to this we wondered how is it that the
075number dropped so much but what what the um research shared that uh miss felton cotman shared is that you know with the moratorium that was placed on um families being evicted due to non-payment of rent you know it probably contributed to some um decrease of homelessness but we know that that's not forever also and so we want to be proactive in knowing what could be coming um down the pipeline so some of this um you know it was shocking for me to see it initially um it was a little bit affirming to know that we aren't the only district you know across the country whose data looks like this there's been an under identification nationally uh and so now the numbers are beginning to um creep back up next slide please so with fall that
076i just shared um and it was just a quick overview i believe in full transparency and so there certainly have been some challenges with mckinney vento and i view challenges as opportunities for improvement and i do believe that within buffalo public schools we are certainly up for the challenge um to make sure that these improvements are in place so for about five years um we have not had a grant that specifically is dedicated to moving the work within mckinney-vento forward and even when we did have the grant it was um you know it was a small grant it was less than 100 000 um that we had and so we know that you know in a city like buffalo that has been um documented as one of um the cities across the country that experiences
077poverty at a high rate that there has to be some advocacy for us to get adequate funding for um you know for our children and families but even with respect to us not having dedicated funding we've been able to maintain a small staff and um one of the things that you know we've put in place is that we're looking at creating systems within schools right now a lot of what you heard earlier is done on the front end we make sure that when families come in we get them transportation right away we get them enrolled right away we get them registered those pieces are in place and so now it's time to move to the next level which is providing supports for the children once they are in these schools and so one of the
078things that we have begun doing is to notify our principals and student support teams as they're getting children because we have an infinite campus our school-wide um student information system but unless you're going in and looking every day for a flag to see if the child that you've received is experiencing that it's possible that you wouldn't know and so as we're enrolling children who may be experiencing um homelessness we're sending uh information to our principals and our student support teams so that they know and they can dispatch support for the children when they get to the schools that's huge athletic questions um and so we just um learned that there is some funding in fact it came out agenda mr hurt you're not muted please so we just found out that there is funding that
079uh we will be able to answer them today mr heard but it's not on the call and we intend to do that so um the state's grant will come out in november and we've been closely pouring over um the last grant that was submitted to see where there were gaps and we can make sure that you also have a very serious issue at bennett yes for her please note okay apologize that that was on mute that's okay so we just want to make sure that we're filling all of the gaps um so that this time when we apply just like i shared earlier on the slide we are up for the challenge so that's those are some of the things that we're doing to make sure that we get some money in buffalo public schools
080for our most needy children and families the second piece um that i shared that was circled in red that i said i'm gonna come back to um as far as supports and services yes we do you know we got the hot spots and uh we've delivered backpacks and you know again we've done some some baseline things that are good but there were a group of us that went to visit our sister city um last year it was a little bit before the pandemic hit rochester and we were able to um walk through and see some of the things that they are doing which were very innovative i think we all left impressed and then kovit hit um and so we want to make sure that you know we are seeking donations and supports aggressively for
081our children one of the things you know that they had were little um wellness paths um with things like deodorant and lotions and things that some people take for granted but again when you're surviving and you're experiencing hardships you know they're small things but they're not small things uh they had new clothing for their children and so you know it went beyond just you know uniforms for kids but you know we our our children want to assimilate you know and so they want to wear denims just like you know the other kids wear and um you know some of their things were gently used but um a lot of their things were brand new and so we want to you know get to a place where we're also in a position because i believe that
082there are folks out there and businesses out there that would be willing to support you know something that's worthy i want to thank all of the board members and and my colleagues this past christmas i have a couple of pictures of you may not be able to see them very well but the donations that you gave uh really help to it probably will be a life impacting experience for children you know who again um you know christmas could have been very dire because when you're surviving and you're looking at toys or food food is gonna win out every single time but to children to children you were able to help you know every child got you know a toy um every child got things to keep them warm you know mittens socks um hats and
083it was really something to see and i think it reinvigorated the staff also i think they were just as excited um as probably the children and parents were who received the items so we want to do more of that kind of um thing in addition there are many stakeholder groups in our city that are all working with the same families we've got to get that better aligned so i know that there are churches that have hands trees and that work with um the homeless population there are community organizations and then the city of buffalo has a department which works with this population and i think we would maximize our resources if we were all working together and aligning putting together what we all have finally um i think you know we talked a little bit
084about it in the last presentation and i think it's it's another area that you know certainly we're going to work with in making sure that you know on our webpage that our families who may be experiencing this kind of need it's easy access for them to know you know who to call where to go to how to get the help that um that they need next slide please that concludes the presentation i'll take questions at this time and at this time if any board members have any questions concerning the mckinney-vento program and and the district needs and what we need to help uh keep our program going we can eventually in this district please raise your hand and i do have um president sharon bell copman hand-raised already thank you i just want to say
085thank you to dr williams you know we pulled you so many ways i mean you you make me think of that little stretch toy that just keeps on stretching no matter what you lay on her and i want to thank you that i want to also thank the staff that's involved in this this is huge because i don't think uh i i felt it was necessary to bring it to the board's attention because as we start doing our budgeting our our priorities for our budgeting i really think that this is an area that the board needs to take a a more closer look at because um um our numbers are down significantly and you said everyone's numbers are down but we're talking people here we're not talking you know uh widgets we're talking people families
086in their lives and i think that we can uh grow that area and do and expand it and that's the reason why i really wanted and i'm grateful that you brought it up here before our budget as i was looking at some of the information about the cares act um that's out there i hope i said it right um they're saying that this population um needs to be supported and um we're gonna see a lot of people become homeless after these moratoriums are lifted and things like that and so i just am praying and hoping that our district because we're number three i think we're one of the uh uh very poorest areas i i just hope that we can do more that's all and that's why i wanted to share it with the board
087members because i think it's something that we need to focus in on before we start talking about the budget i agree thank you um president cabinet are there any other questions well personally i would like to say um thank you uh uh dr johnson williams for all the work that you put in into your presentations today we know that it took a lot and um and larry has his hand up i don't see larry okay i'm sailor finish your thought mr hurd and then i'll i'll i'll speak okay uh these are two very touching um programs um that we're dealing with in our district and they're very serious because they um talk about the needs of our our students our children based bases that's in our classrooms is working with our teachers it's a tranquil
088effect that goes through our classrooms through our teachers um to the homes and you know back into the building um as former educators we know that um we know there's something wrong with our children we know if they face if they're coming class hungry or if they put their head down on the on the desk if they're not feeling well or if they're going through something we know that the days they come in happy and and cheering you know as educators and uh you know these are signs that we look out for and continue to look for these signs in our children and um you know talk to them um we know that we have great rapport and great relationships um with with our students and continue with those relationships and um so that if
089something like this occurs you know in their life or any hazards that happens within the family or or you know with their friends you know they can come talk to you about it and we appreciate the work that your teachers and administrative staff members are principals and are doing it in the classroom in the buildings um that goes for you know all schools in the city of buffalo and um thank you to you i went to work and let's work together to to end this um type of tragedies that's happened within the families and and sicknesses and within people thank you again uh mr scott thank you mr heard um and thank you staff for the the great presentations dr williams especially all the detailed information that you shared um i just wanted stated for
090the public we heard from a few uh parents concerned about our mass policy in regards to students with disabilities and those with medical needs myself and i i think two other board members respectfully requested that this item be discussed um at our educational support committee um so i just want that noted and i still feel like it's something that needs a discussion by this board dr williams did provide a very detailed um response by email on a particular case that was very helpful for me but i still think it's a matter that this board needs to discuss collectively well i think you've heard with uh mr scott that have received a lot of emails and talked to parents about mass policies and and troubles that um has been going on within the district but um
091we've referred to dr children wheels who uh also talk about the code of conduct and the safety and wellness of all families of all children that's within our school district and on our buses also so if anybody want to reflect on um mr scott's question at this time we're way beyond time i'm not expecting a discussion at this point but i just want to know that it needs to be discussed at some point and that it was requested to be discussed today um i have um i'll talk to you personally about that uh mr scott thank you as of right now there was one other topic that was supposed to be um on the agenda um it was um dr cash was to answer questions about the athletic department and um it's future concern from
092our stakeholders we know we have stakeholders on the line that was waiting here answered for the questions but hopefully um the board can convene and speak about this on a later date um so with that uh moving back on to uh dr brown hall i will say regarding those questions that we received at uh approximately two o'clock dr cash did indicate in his email to the board that he will answer those questions and send them right back out to the board members with answers tomorrow when he returns to the office so them board members you can feel free to share them the answer is with your constituents your constituents really don't have to wait long for answers to those questions that were received thank you very much we're going to turn it over to dr
093kathy evans brown for our student achievement meeting we have three topics whose hand was up jennifer mccool uh i just wanted to ask real quick i don't want to delay too much longer but the questions were those posts to the board before they went out today this morning at two i don't remember seeing those before you receive those no mister uh i'm sorry no mrs um miss cozy we haven't um um questions will be formulated by people in the community and that's when i receive um the questions and i sent them directly to um dr cash so that he can um have time to review the questions and give a report about the questions i did reach out board members about formulating um the athletic athletic committee about formulating questions concerning the um um the
094future of the athletics here for the um for um the spring sports uh okay now i just wanted to know if those came out to the rest of the board before i saw them earlier if i missed them thank you okay but i also requested that we can discuss this next week during our board meeting also so i will refer to uh a president comment about that thank you dr evans brown you're up thank you good evening everyone nice seeing you all uh so this is the student achievement section and you know as dr hall brown mentioned we're going to start with the jesse ketchum resolution update i see dr will caresses here and then the new york state uh regions exams and grades three through eight tests and then lastly connect and engage in
095all learners so with that we'll start with uh dr will caresses uh thank you dr evans brown uh thank you dr brown hall and good evening board members um you're aware that recently the board approved a resolution to develop a policy around school choice for jesse ketchum scholars in case you're not familiar with all of the details about how scholars are selected they're nominated by their schools after they meet established criteria and then they are distinguished as the top eighth grade student in their class so the purpose of the policy was to assure that jessie ketchum scholars have every opportunity to attend the high school of their choice so uh mike if you can get the slide up i just have a couple of points of where we are in the development process for that
096policy and some of the high points uh that's not it mike it's a single separate slide that says jesse ketchum admissions policy mike do you want me to email it to you quickly there you go all right thank you um so just to go over some high level points that are emerging in the draft we are still in the process of getting some feedback but you will have a preliminary draft that over the weekend that you'll be able to table for next week's meeting we can continue to take edits and then you'd be ready to vote on the policy for your april uh meeting but to begin with the policy does envision that jessie ketchum award winners will be re-canvassed for a new first and second high school choice during july of each year and
097that's if they choose to participate we already know uh just from some emerging data that dr brown hall had collected most jessie scholars already get their their first choice but this will be an opportunity for them to be recanvassed and to consider some other options the procedure as it's unfolding now does not require any change in the timetables for the bps high school selection process that normally takes place over the winter and spring for our eighth graders or any of the timetables related to what the jessie ketchum board does to select their scholars so that's a good development that that we've been able to produce something that doesn't disrupt any of the timetables i know that was a concern uh for uh board members um you know how would we navigate the calendar and uh
098we think we've come up with with solutions to take care of that it's also envisioned that schools with ninth ninth grade classes of 110 and above will have two extra seats added and set aside for students now in the re-canvas who want to take part in the re-canvas who may be interested in selecting these schools if you're below 110 that school would have one extra seat added and set aside for re-canvassed jessie ketchum winners the one thing i want to remind the board of is that this is just a starting point for 2021 and we want to make sure that that we have that we're careful and thoughtful about how we launch a policy after the current admissions cycle has already transpired and the high school choice process has already taken place because we want
099to make sure we're supporting current vps applicants from being displaced by any of the decisions we make with this policy and then for criteria based schools jesse ketchum winners would still need need to meet the established admissions requirements at the time of the re-canvas so the best examples of that is the student in the re-canvas now was interested in attending performing arts high school they would still have to be part of an audition process they would have to meet the standards of the standards for that audition committee similarly if a school has an admissions test they would have had to participate in that process as well and finally uh when you receive a draft i just ask that you reach out to me with any edits uh that you may have any suggestions that you
100may have to improve the policy and i will certainly review those with dr cash and we'll just have it be a part of the policy that the board will consider for its vote thank you i'll take any questions if you [Music] have so do we have any questions okay i see can you move this mike yeah thank you president belton cotman i thought we were doing good until we got to number four and i'm not going to um moving forward with things slipped by um i let something slip by at the last committee meeting and uh it went and things got out of control so it's a known fact that the tests are a problem in the criteria based schools with letting people get in our understanding and writing that resolution i assisted lou petrucci
101in it is to make it clear that if a child has ex has gone through the steps and is at the top of their class that they are given that opportunity and to put a an additional step in there i understand the performing arts piece i do not understand to take the test piece the admissions test piece that's major for me that's a no-no okay i have a concern about that thank you there's our hand raised thank you president cotman um do you want to respond to that dr percy or should i move on um i mean no i certainly understand uh president cotman's uh comment um i guess the one thing that we would have to then look at is if you those of you who were on the board when we were undergoing
102our office for civil rights monitoring you remember that annually the board approved all aspects of the admissions process related to any of our competitive admissions schools and all of our criteria-based schools one of the things that you did approve is that there would be no exceptions to what the established criteria are to get into any particular school the reason you did that is because i think wisely you anticipated that if you make an exception even for a very noble and worthy uh you know purpose in this case like jesse ketchum winners then you know you would there would be opportunity for other exceptions to come along for other very noble and worthy causes so it's really the board's decision it's the board and the superintendent i think that's good feedback and it's something that i'll
103discuss with dr cash and absolutely have it considered you know prior to you getting a draft you need to consider it because if we take a look at what what has happened in regards to city honors in particular we had more children uh minority children passing the the admissions test under the old test than we do now we have fewer minorities at city honors than on the date that we had our lawsuit filed and answered so there's a problem with testing with certain people but these children have already proven that they are excelsiors okay and that's the reason for crafting that jesse ketchum award and putting that in like that it was not to say oh once you become a testimonial you still have something the same hoops that everyone else has it was because
104we felt that they've already jumped through who hit the head of their class right i have a problem with that one sorry okay thank you there's another hand raised in city hall uh looper two vice president lou pertussi uh lou patricia tonight thank you kathy evans uh yeah i just want to say that um i think this is a great first step in trying to both retain and recognize our jesse catchment award winners um i just my concern is more about the universe and the number of students you know the one and twos i will say that last time i was on the board uh the majority of jesse catch award winners did not receive their first choice if they are now that's wonderful that's great because in the past that they had it and
105that was one of the problems that we had was that oftentimes these high-achieving students were going to schools outside the district or they were frustrated over their lack of ability uh to attain a seat in one of our criteria based schools so i guess that was kind of it the second thing though is that that what i like about it also is that it presents multiple pathways in order to gain access into our criterion-based schools too often parents felt that there you had to go to a very small set of schools in order to be accepted into one of these criterion-based schools i think it broadens the reach and gives multiple pathways for our students to get into these criterion-based schools and i think that's going to have a positive impact across the district for
106all of our grammar schools right it's a good point thank you for that vice president um there's another hand raised uh board member heard yes um thank you vice president um evans brown uh my question is um um with this policy i would like to see something done with the borderline students the students that um that don't qualify to uh meet the criterion um scores but that's borderline i'd like to see maybe programs set aside for those children in this package that maybe that can escalate them you know to uh a criterion-based school or to a higher performing school uh if there is maybe a after-school program or a summer program or or even more um types of programs within the classroom that these tutors can receive so that they don't be left out or
107or just left midway um in our district right that's a that's a great suggestion and um i would like to share with you you may not be aware mr heard but the district has a very robust relationship with buffalo prep and they are an organization that is serving more and more buffalo public school students in their after-school and summer program that program is actually uh uniquely set up to serve underrepresented students and prepare them for having aspirations to attend any school that they want and then to compete for slots in those those schools and um we under dr cash's leadership we've really boosted that relationship where in the past we may be nominated 50 or 60 students a year we are now nominating hundreds and hundreds of students through a more centralized process so that
108that partnership and i can certainly talk to you offline about it and give you more details but that that really goes to the comment you just made about how do we support particularly underrepresented students to have all of the tools they need uh to compete for any slot you know that they have aspirations for so that's a great point and i'd love to talk to you about it at buffalo prep um i believe it takes about 50 students or a little more uh no they have they have more they don't take the hundreds that we nominated but from that they will reach out to all of those parents and they will probably get uh at least 50 in each of the grade levels that they work in so i think they have a few hundred
109students that they touch each year but i can give you all of that information and i can even set up something for you to have a conversation with the staff at buffalo prep okay thank you um dr chris thank you that yeah that's a very excellent program is smoke it's is it still operating out of the university of buffalo yes acting well okay at the south campus site across across the street from the main campus there yeah i'm very familiar i used to work in partnership with them when i worked at the university there is another hand dr ann revere you're on one second thank you very much can you hear me okay ah sorry i'm having connectivity with you so you can hear me now wonderful thank you so my question is about how
110the modifications to this to the resolution and the program regarding jesse ketchum award winners would dovetail or complement some of the work that's being done with the entrance exams for criterion-based schools how might that actually increase pathways because i think what mr patricia is saying is really important that we need multiple pathways for students in order to access criterion-based schools because one of the things we want to make sure is we want to honor all sorts of learning styles learning differences and learning abilities there's a lot of skills that can't always be counted by one kind of test in addition to what president belton cottman is saying about historically the ways in which um tests replicate systemic racism i know that there's some initiatives on the on the table about this can you tell me
111a little bit more about how this would work with the other initiatives regarding our criterion-based schools well um so if you're talking about how the district evaluates the quality of an admissions test so that it is as free from bias as it possibly can be i i probably would want to defer to uh chief of osa ebony bulla because i know she's made it a priority to have that examined each year and um you know dr cash continues to be concerned is this the best quality instrument that we would use for an admissions test so um there's your chief bullock i don't know if there's a comment you want to make about your own uh interest in evaluating our admissions tests so the comment that i will make is that um we are our rfping
112out um that rfp has gone out um through purchase and we are looking to um perhaps get a better quality test the company that we're working with now they say they have um instituted measures to make sure that their test um sort of addresses some of the concerns that we have around biasedness um but certainly what i can do is um gather that information and get it back to you guys to the board excuse me um i can get that to you within a few days um to just to to so you can see how we are how we have evaluated in the past and um i can give you a summary of in our new rfp process uh what we're planning to do to uh sort of answer those questions because they are important
113questions um and then i appreciate that i'm sorry go ahead i'm also having a delayed connectivity uh issue but that that's the end i don't have the answer for you right now i will get it to you um in the next couple days that's fair it's a complicated question i just wanted to reiterate also first of all i appreciate you sending that to us i think that's really important especially as we're talking about the ways in which equity and access need to be increased preserved first of all and increased second of all for all of our learners so i think that's really critical and these are the conversations that are going to get us there um secondly i just wanted to reiterate the importance of thinking about the ways in which we can increase that
114equity of access to all of the programming that our district has to offer but also particularly with criterion-based schools specifically with gifted and talented programs just because there is a historic and not just in buffalo this is you know national there is a historic there's a way in which historically they've been gatekeepers for students who don't fit a certain profile and that includes race that includes class that includes learning abilities um specific kinds of learning abilities not necessarily aptitude and so i know that i as a board member would like to see us work on that more and a good place to start is what we're doing now i wanted to tell you tell you that uh dr crusty's and osa we just launched a new research project right now where we're doing exactly that
115we're building sort of a um equity-based dashboard if you will to look at first our first priority and dr k correct me if i'm wrong our first priority is to look at um the pri or the criterion schools but this dashboard is going to take a look at which kids are going to which schools and you know and we're going to start looking by the subgroup so yes race and ethnicity but gender um our students who are impacted by poverty are students who may have a um iep are english as a new language learners all of that's going to be able to be sliced and diced and um dr cressi's is is leading that way with us and so it is interesting and it is it's fun work for my department so um you'll be
116hearing more about that um then we're excited about that partnership with dr christie's i really look forward to seeing more of that i appreciate that you're working in that direction uh thank you dr rivera you know you know changes is is constant and i think this is a good start with jessie ketchum uh students uh you know across this country even with some of your ivy league colleges yale for example um harvard they have modified uh admissions they don't just look at sats for example so some of them have got you know thrown them in the garbage and they look at other kinds of stuff that um warrants admissions into their schools and i think this is where we're going um we can't continue with a status quo concept we have to look at this
117and that was one of the reasons lewin sharon drafted this resolution so that we could look at these young people who are top of their class have been there since grade school and we need to keep them in this district we don't want them to go anywhere else um we want to keep them in our criteria in school so thank you for that i saw another hand who is this go ahead who is it it's larry scott board member larry scott i apologize you're on sorry thank you dr evans brown vp um dr bullock if you could also share with us the current assessment that is being used um for the criterion day schools i know hutch tech i believe uses a different one but i'm particularly interested in the one that's used for olmstead
118and city honors i'm wondering also if there is a district committee that assesses criteria for our criterion-based schools in particular city honors homestead um and then i you know i think it's kind of been mentioned already i think at some point in the near future the board should devote some time to a deep discussion on the criteria that are being used on the test that's being used to determine um students that didn't get accepted and enrolled yet city honors in homestead right understood but as far as the district committee goes to is there like an operating committee that evaluates the criteria at this point the the last time that any group convened uh was when we were establishing reviewing the criteria and then establishing it as a part of our ocr monitoring so that would
119have been um probably around 2014-15 but then it really kind of took a boost under dr cash's tenure around 2015-16 and um one of the things then that the board approved at that point was this is what's determined to be the criteria for all of these different schools and these are the processes the only change to that was more recently when with the with the advent of opting out of state assessments the board then made a separate decision to remove state assessments from any of the considerations that schools had been using as a part of criteria so that was the most recent uh change that we made but no i will certainly discuss that with dr cash and um you know bring bring your uh your comment to him about you know maybe it's time
120to take a fresh look at the whole thing again so i'll mention i'll certainly bring that up with the superintendent and i would include if i didn't if i didn't make that clear the gt process too for the gt processor yep thank you okay any other questions on this issue aaron i just want to say on that gt process uh yesterday uh last night and talking with dr williams i brought up um the commissioner's regulation 117 dot one two through three and that deals with uh the registration process for uh uh registering children of which gt is a part of that and it also states in there that children who have never been in the district are supposed to be assessed i think we're not uh thoroughly doing a job our the best our due
121diligence in that area uh recently i think they share a uh i think it was uh education law 4452 if i remember right but the one that um predates and and and is a prerequisite before that is uh the commissioner's regulation 117 dot one through three we need to take a look at that entire process in registration because it is not happening and um we're not checking students that have not been that have never been to our district um when they come in to test them to see what their assessments are and so i think um we need to take a complete look at that and i asked dr uh williams to uh to take a look at that i'm asking you also dr uh caresses to take a look at that uh uh regulation
122thank you great okay anything else on this issue dr caresses we really appreciate the hard work you've done now we've come a long way and we're going to continue to chip away at um finalizing this uh jesse ketchum resolution updates i appreciate the great feedback tonight i will incorporate it into the draft and then have something to share with you all very soon okay thank you uh next we will uh the next item under student achievement is new york state regions exams and grades three through eighth tests dr darren brown hall yes and we are very fortunate tonight to have our chief academic officer ann botticelli and our chief of accountability and information and information um ebony bullock to present on this topic thank you dr evans brown mike can you pull up the slides
123please so go good evening esteemed colleagues board members um so ann and i are going to present to you about what we know now about what's going on with the new york state regis exams and the grade three through eight assessments so mike if you can forward to the next so uh as you may know the federal government has mandated that we administer assessments um in order to measure proficiency for ela math science and of course to make sure that we are tracking the progress of our english language learners um and so that that comes from a federal mandate um and even though we are in a period of covet and we know that um our community would uh is urging us to sort of hold off on giving those assessments this spring um the
124federal government has not actually waived the state assessments for 2021 but they are allowing all states to apply for certain waivers and these waivers um include maybe shortening the version of the statewide assessments um states could offer remote administration if it is feasible states also have the ability to perhaps extending the test windows into the summer even perhaps into the beginning of the next school year so those are sort of our options with waivers mike if you go to the next slide um so regions exams as we know they're they're a part of essa right the every student succeeds act um and it requires that uh students be assessed once in high school with ela math and science um and of course we have to annually administer the proficiency assessments that help us track english
125language learning and their progress in absence of a waiver new york state will administer the english regents exam algebra one living environment also known as biology um physical setting and earth science right um at the upcoming board of regents meeting and it is on the 15th uh the border the new york state ed is going to propose some regulatory amendments and the amendments basically are what you see on the screen i'm basically saying that the region's exams will not be required to meet graduation requirements uh that any region's exam that is not required by the department of the u.s department of ed we could essentially cancel um and that all august regis exams would be cancelled um again it is the opinion of our state ed department that uh delivering or excuse me administering these
126exams would cause undue stress so mike if you go to the next slide so um and this state has said that um if you look at the last uh bit of information there um the state has actually said that this is an issue of equity and access right that um it can't be safely given equitably and fairly to all students across the state um because of um the pandemic and how it's impacting our communities i think earlier it was mentioned in the in the board meeting that you know we service a a city a community that is um has been adversely impacted by poverty and then you layer on top the the pandemic so the state is saying that um these assessments cannot be fairly or equally administered um also with respect to equity and
127access um i want to bring in that the pandemic exposed this sort of connectivity divide we knew there was some divide around technology but myra and her team did a great job getting devices to our children but then what we realized is there was issues what folks refer to as dead zones across our city where families just could not connect onto our uh networks to get the the fantastic learning from our teachers um and so we know that we need to really sort of look at increased federal funding to support not just our district but state infrastructures some other implications of administering these assessments deal with logistics we service over 30 000 students so if you could imagine bringing all of those kiddos in to um take these assessments we and try to still maintain
128social distancing that for just the test and then alone for our adults when they're scoring that is going to be a hurdle um and then we have the hurdle of our remote students who um are either fully remote and then we have students as you know they're hybrid that they may only be in two days a week and so all of those are hurdles that we need to think about um with respect to accountability um we will not be held to the same level of accountability as we traditionally have right so um we're gonna we're gonna request a waiver we have um where we're asking that our school identification sort of be held and we know that that could happen right so whatever school is designated right now that's what they will be in the
129upcoming school year so if you're a csa not csi now you will continue to be csi uh next school year um and then we're also looking for um a waving of the accountability with respect to participation rate we all know that schools are held accountable if they don't have 95 of their students taking the assessment and so um we want a waiver of that um lastly i want to just bring in uh some some data um again in in terms of implications of administering these state assessments um the three three state assessments and the regions are summative um so it only it's going to tell us you know what the kids have learned throughout the course of the year um and and what the federal government says they want us to use this in a
130diagnostic way it won't really help us sort of gauge where the kids going into the school year um need to be so that's a hurdle like how we use these summative assessments to gauge where we need to target our teaching for next school year um we do know that in terms of gauging where they are and where we need to go with instruction we do know that pacing was sort of turned upside down by the pandemic and we had to work really hard this year to recapture learning from the previous spring and prioritize learning goals and we're sort of still in the midst of that and so um to give the assessments when we're in the work of that is a hurdle that we would have to think about um so these are things that
131we have to think about and figuring out the the importance of these assessments how we're going to give them with the logistics the accountability how we're going to use the data and again going back to equity and access um how we can safely give them um in a way that supports our kids and does not do harm to our kids and our school communities mike can you go to the next slide so we recognize that we didn't have state assessments last year and we will be administering them this year but we don't know exactly how many students will take those assessments and we don't necessarily have the ability to use them for diagnostic purposes to target specific skills that students need to recapture so we just wanted to share some of the other available data
132sources we do have and then we could use this information to specifically target skills for students as they move forward into the next school year so i'll just summarize these quickly we have a couple measures that we use for the younger students so for example we use a screening measure called i station in pre-k we also use a qualitative screening measure with our incoming pre-k and k students that didn't take it in pre-k just to see if the students are hitting certain milestones in their development we test all new entrants a screening measure for basic literacy and math so no matter what grade level students enter we do give them that assessment we have double screening measures for literacy we have star math screening measures for mathematics up to grade eight and then in terms
133of our multilingual population we do use the lost links measure that's for all of our dual language spanish courses and it measures the domains the four domain the four modalities like listening speaking reading writing in spanish we use the erla and the anneal with our multilingual students to assess their progress in literacy this year every year we give the nissitel to new entrants who have potentially are going to be identified for english language learner services um we have not been giving it and we're bringing it back now because it's an in-person administration so we'll be soon be starting the nctel administration and we'll have that data we also have some district benchmark assessments those are optional but they're summative measures in our four core areas and many schools have also begun to use common formative
134assessments at the school level mike next slide please um and just a few other assessments that sometimes we forget to capture when we're talking about our data sources so all of our 10th graders will be offered the psat we have advanced placement and international baccalaureate assessments that certain students take the students who qualify for alternative assessment are beginning their nisa tests we have um the committee on special education evaluations for students who've been referred and that gives us a deeper understanding of where that student might need support we obviously have our grades so every quarter our teachers collect grades and those are used to provide specific supports to students and then we're also going to be rfp'ing for a three to eight measure in literacy and mathematics to give us more predictive information towards state
135assessments in the future mike the next slide please and then teachers have additional data sources available to them to use internally so obviously they have their own observations they have teacher created assignments and assessments lexia placement tests all the students and then gives ongoing data about student progress mayan actually contains a lexile assessment that students who are using when they're using mayan they're periodically assessed in the beginning of the year we administered benchmark assessments using our new moby max system so we were able to if a third grader an incoming third grader would take the second grade benchmark so students started the year with certain data points that teachers could use instructionally cern provides k-6 provides information on mathematics progress castle learning is used throughout the high school level for different regents types of measures
136and we have a lot of built-in programmatic assessments that teachers can choose to use so in english and math there are mid-module assessments in math there are exit tickets at the end of each lesson and in english there are quick rights at the secondary level so there are actually a lot of data sources that teachers can use in sort of a formative way to help prepare their students and these are obviously available every year i think next slide mike i think that's the end thank you we just wanted to share this information with you we knew you had questions about state assessments and regis exams and we obviously don't have all the information yet but we're hopeful that after the board of regents meeting in march that we'll have more information to share and we
137wanted you to understand that there are a lot of data points available um to the district and at the teacher level so that they can target the appropriate level of instruction and intervention for our students so i'm sure people might have some questions so i'll just open it up to everyone now okay so thank you for that um miss osa uh chief ebony block and chief ann butticelli we have a question here when i think about assessment i always think about uh teaching to the test and it it really bothers me because i think a lot of times kids are missing you know information um because we're teaching to the test so that's just my take on it um all right so we have someone in in city hall is it board member larry and
138or larry okay there you go you're on thank you dr evans grown um so my i don't really have a question i just want to make a comment and have this wrong record for the public well first of all i will be introducing a resolution in regards to the mandate at this point to administer state assessments in this pandemic some of you have signed on as sponsors so that will be introduced next week but i want to make clear i have a child in second grade and a child in fifth grade in buffalo public schools and the list of assessments that ms botticelli went through those are being implemented there are staff that are actually using those assessments with my children with all of our children it's not just a generic list for people to
139look at it is actually being used and it is being used to provide information for teachers and for parents and to determine how to provide intervention so my younger boy is he needs some reading help and through the assessments that have been done and most importantly through observation and the professional uh opinion of teachers and staff they determine okay what the intervention will be in order to bring him off to grade level in the area of reading so i just want to make it clear that these assessments are being done time is being spent on them it's not as if our students aren't being are being ignored and we're not measuring their progress and we're using the information from these assessments to determine instruction and to determine intervention it's it's happening and it and we
140don't need state assessments in order to determine how we progress and how we teach our children thank you thank you for that board member larry that is an accurate assessment um there's another hand uh board member paulette woods you're on yes i i have a question for ann when we go on new york state when we go to new york state reports on how our schools are doing when they give the ela test when they give the english i'm sorry i couldn't hear you mrs woods there you go when we one night we can look and see through their uh state assessments in english math and reading how every school of charter private everybody is doing as far as whether their children are coming in uh above you know one two three fours where they're
141coming in it's one place objectively and everybody can check that and see what what our kids are doing these multiple guidelines and and and various tests that are given i don't know if how they're standard or whatever what a where are you reporting or where is there some objective report that gives us the same information that the state test would provide what is what is your your your standard place where uh myself as a board member a parent anybody's looking at the schools um if we're gonna say to charter schools we're doing better than you where is that data that i can say no look our children are doing well and here's where they are and then when you answer that where i can go and look at that will you also answer me with
142the parents in the community are saying where is the next set of standard tests that will show them uh the children have the children who don't have the access didn't have the hot spots got their computers late how far behind are there so that we can say okay we need summer school or something to say objectively they're a year behind this is where they at this is what we're gonna do oh uh nobody wants to penalize anybody but the parents want something that they can look at i think we need something we can look at that's that's standard and we do need to be able to say we're doing better than the private schools i i i i'd want you to answer how we're supposed to do that if there's no standard test and place
143that can go to especially if they're saying they're not going to use it to penalize us so i just want to get an understanding so you asked a few different questions um and i'll do my best to respond so there would not be one particular assessment that's comparable across all schools even the state assessment wouldn't be because some private institutions don't necessarily take regent's exams for for example so there's no one measure that you could use across all schools in the state however i think you're referring to the state report card which which shows uh how different school districts have done on state assessments and so to your point with that our internal assessments might differ from another district so all districts don't use dibbles for example however that data is accessible to parents um
144in fact when i would go to parent conferences that would be one of the first things that the teacher would share with me how my students performed on those screening measures so parents have access to that data to your point about the comparability everyone in the state has to administer a screening measure we chose to use dibbles other districts might have chosen a different measure but we're all required to have a measure in place um so the exact test might not be the same but there is we're all following the same regulation it's an rti regulation when you say a measuring place where is that reported like the um the math and and english and assessments where where where would you go to look and say okay these classes are doing at this level our
145our school is doing this my school is is is where do you go to look at that i know to go to the state where where the students are not required to report the um those regul those measures across uh or out to the public i mean we we can certainly share internal data with you but we're not required to to post it somewhere online or something like that are you you're new okay you you you say you can share is this something that you normally do is it someplace i can go look at this well so we don't post that data but if the board requests it we can certainly um provide data to the board for example star math would be we could run a report for you and parents have access to
146their own students data okay individual students there's 32 32 000 of them for that's data that's not information information is data put together in a form like what the state does for us so we can see okay here's where we are so um what's comparable and there there is and i can take it um from here there really is nothing comparable miss woods um it's unfortunate that the way we've done over the years with using new york state ela and math data and the way that um many companies have tried to you know uh to to pit district against district school against school who's doing better because of the assessments and the results what we really are looking for is to use the results from any type of assessment to improve instruction for individual students
147not it's not a competition not to compare schools or to compare districts right mr scott said earlier that when his kids are given those assessments the student the teachers use that to better the education for the students so we can differentiate the education so we know what students may have missed right it's not to be used in a comparative manner right education is not a competition that's why we took out those ela of math assessment results when we're looking at look looking at a total picture of a kid for admissions into some of our schools so to go back to your original question is there a website you can go to to see how a school is doing based on the assessments that ann and ebony shared no there is not a website like that
148to ann's point every district is using different assessments and we want to make sure that we're assessing kids when they're ready to be assessed to make sure they've mastered the material that the teacher has taught them right not to compare students versus students but to ask point if at another work session there are some assessment data that you would like to look at we can definitely provide that to you but we would need to go through it with you so that you can understand what the assessment was what it's measuring and how teachers have used that in the classroom to differentiate the instruction and to ensure that we are working in the right direction to get students to mastery of that material not in a comparative fashion this teacher did this way compared to this
149teacher or this school compared to that school fair enough i'm looking for a measure that tells me the school is doing good uh the answer the the criticisms that we get uh thrown at us that we're graduating children who can't read they're going to ninth grade at reading at a third grade level how do we say if we have nothing that is comparable how do how do we measure ourselves and say how good a job we're doing with our students and that our students are able to read at this level and that we're graduating students who can compete and that we are doing uh as good or better a job is as as these charter schools who are trying to steal our kids and then the other thing is and if we need that baseline
150measure so we can see what was the impact of this year of remote learnings so that we can target improvement where needed right and that's exactly all those assessments that ann talked about that's exactly what those assessments are doing and that's what we'll be doing going forward also to make sure that we are catching students up where they need to be caught up at but keep in mind we still have graduation data we still had an increase in our graduation rates to show that our students are being um are able to master everything they need to and they're demonstrating what they know and are able to do in order to advance out of high school so we do have measures and placements works to make sure that we are not leaving students behind and that
151we are meeting them where they're at and then taking them to that next level so like i said before if there's specifics that you want we can look to a future student achievement meeting and we'll work with dr evans brown to bring some of those assessments and some of those assessment data and review that with the board okay perfect um you okay paulette in the future we'll bring some of that data to a student achievement uh meeting i i really would appreciate that because monitoring and letting our parents know our even being able to brag on our achievements and our students level of reading would be would be something i'd be very proud of okay thank you all right um president cotman you're up next followed by uh board member terence hurt okay so my
152question is about equity you have this data and you have it you've accumulated it for years how does that translate into the supports for the students within the individual schools in other words my i'm basically saying it that since you have the data you have an across-the-board formula where you give each school some money based on whatever ratios you come up with how is that data being used to support children in an equitable way that's my question moving forward how is that supposed to be used particularly after uh last march i think it was or may or whenever we filed the resolution of equity well so different data points um do help us with rti so response to instruction and intervention so we can look at a student's scores on certain screening measures and determine
153what level of intervention they would require to be more successful so we use that specifically in reading and mathematics so students will get intervention based on how they score on some of our screening measures we also looked at grades over the to recommend students for summer school this past year and we that's something we do consistently um so we use different measures for different purposes um and i would say intervention the most strategic method we have i need to know how that ties into the budget process in other words you identify a school that needs extra support versus a school that does that's doing great how does that equate or work into the budget formula for these children how are the resources being driven because for look for the longest probably since i've been sitting
154on this board i've said the same thing we do not own our data and if you owned our data there would be resources flowing automatically for example i have uh two uh school csi schools that are now using your same formula we went through this last year and they're being required to reduce staff etc etc however we know that when we look at the data the need is so great that it's not happening and so what i'm concerned about and moving forward is that we don't have this conversation every year that the data is on that it's not the principal spot that for some reason certain group of children are being put in certain schools that's not their fault but once we put them in those foods how are we providing the resources to support
155those children and i know you don't have that answer because it's not your question to answer in reality dr question but in fairness i wanted to point it out to the board that we're going through the same thing that we went through last year same conversations okay people are getting frustrated and we know that we need more supports now than ever and somehow or another that data is not being used to make sure that we drive support for our students can i say one president catman because i don't and i don't want to belabor the point i know it's past 7 30 already but i will say that um many of the schools when looking at their school-based budgets in their school-based management team meetings use that data to decide what they are going to
156put into their school-based functions okay yeah i want to make sure the entire board knows that and i do know that when requests come through the associate superintendents of school leadership principles use that data to substantiate their request and that's when dr cash has that hold back every year when you guys approve the budget and approve that hold back he uses that data and reviews that data with those requests to substantiate giving schools extra when that is requested okay all right i was making sure the whole boys are there what i'm saying is that this board for the past three years this will be the third year as they had to go through the same conversation when you realize that you have schools that are in greater need and they are not being given the
157supports up front and all of a sudden for christmas if christmas is in may we give we give the schools what they need because the board is recognizing it there's a need to look at the process the process is not working for the most needy children in this district okay and when we look when we talk about it not only do we talk about the title one programs or whatever we look across the board and the money is just given away evenly across the board if you've got 350 kids uh you can get 2.5 teachers for this subject if no one looks at the data and say the 350 kids are not even reading that level we need to provide additional supports for those children and that's the conversation that we want we want to
158have because if absolutely my head is going to do a degree spin if we have the same problems that we had last year when those budgets are put before us those needs should be addressed before they come before the board i don't want to see christmas in may i want to see christmas every day of the year for these teachers these teachers and principals who are trying to advocate for our children you'll be pleased to know that we are convening teams of um uh administrators and teachers over the summer to develop new formulas for our school-based budget books also uh you know what is mine this is covet doctor dr brown oh this is perfect we are going into a covet written environment and if our children don't get the supports now i fear what's
159going to happen in september okay and i'm i'm sure and i want to assure you that you know like you and all the board members and all the staff and dr cash we do have the best interest of the kids at heart i was just trying to share with you what's going to happen over the summer because we were talking about those food-based budget formulas and we you know and resolve to your equity resolution but i hear what you're saying and i will thank you very much i have principals that are having the same conversations they had last year maybe it did not go up but literally i am not afraid to get a bullhorn and get in front of a building to address these issues i don't have a problem at this point because
160i can't keep saying the same thing over and over and over again as i sit at this table and my question and and i'm sorry to put you on on front speed like that but this this should be a conversation it should have been resolved uh years ago that that we are looking at the data inside of each building and we're providing the supports that the children need to make them better but i do have a question about individual assessments because i sit on cause uh national cause and many school districts with this covet um time period are recommending individual student assessments where each child is assessed the parents are informed where their child are and then they are given um uh achievement paths to or or you would know better than me roles of
161pathways to to be successful to accomplish in uh this uh drought period how do we get them within a year or within a 18-month period back on path and we started having any conversations like that well i think that we continually try to use our data i don't know that we i have done it exactly the way you described but again our rti and and the way that a teacher teaches is affected by the data that they have for each student so and we also prioritized at the beginning of the year we looked at our curriculum and embedded lessons from the previous year or strategies and scales from the previous year into the existing curriculum because we knew that we needed to make sure students had recaptured any learning from the previous year so we
162make adaptations in the instructional practice every day in the curriculum as well and then the rti and ais that is offered to a student um would align to that but we didn't speak of it the way you're speaking of it specifically with a pathway this involves the parent piece that the parent is informed in this piece and the parent is involved in a contract to try to help the child move to the next level or get to where they need to be that's the piece i think that we might want to uh look into thank you for the work that you do i know it's been a very difficult time i will share with you that my granddaughter is uh at my house now until the uh now she's enrolled in school at four years
163old pre-k and i was very impressed with her teachers she's over at louisville uh order uh mrs uh i only had one teacher so far mrs quanah juanatino or whatever excellent i am amazed at how these uh educators are engaging these children in this virtual world and they deserve to be saluted and appreciated and i i want to thank them for that thank you oh thank you for sharing that i'll make sure that school 3 hears that information um and if you have examples of what you are referencing with the individual plans i'd love to see one if any if anyone on your calls has shared um anything any documents or anything that would be helpful well we'll work on that thank you thank you this is this is such a robust discussion um and
164i just read something where uh above hall the buffalo district will be be receiving 250 million dollars through this coveted relief and i'm so excited because some of that money can go to earmark what we've been talking about just now but and i just want to call you dr evans bro i want to caution you because very similar to how we receive money in the last stimulus package the money that was earmarked for the district the governor on the other side took that out of the aid he gave the district so it was a complete wash so if you read the article that actually quoted the other superintendents in the area we are praying that that doesn't happen again but that is a possibility it's earmarked for buffalo but the governor may say okay since
165you're getting 250 million from the federal government that's the amount i can withhold from your foundation aid so we're just praying that doesn't happen so we we're very we're cautiously optimistic okay thank you for that clarity uh dr brown hall uh terence heard you up next uh i believe i believe somebody raised a hand about that issue and they are working on with uh the new secretary and the new uh and the new biden administration to make sure that that does not happen so let's please keep our fingers crossed and we have signed on to support of them in their efforts to make sure that planning does not happen again thank you and i want to add to i want to add to that that uh congressman higgins and the biden administration has written specifically
166into the law restriction to make sure that grant doesn't happen okay i don't break even that's good news that is not accurate though anybody else on that subject of the 250 million all right all right mckinney put this in there that's right we're going to do some things you could do a lot 250 million dollars uh board members tears hurt let's not cross our fingers on that but let's act on that just to make sure that our voices are hurting her and our needs are met for kids um i'll just i'll just make my eyes quick um i'm more concerned about the um psats the sats and the acts um this is a kovic era and um i'm thinking about our our high school seniors and and um and junior varsity um we'll be looking
167at um what i'd like to say is that um that i'm more concerned about that about about them meeting those stores because they're in competition with not only not only our suburban district schools but schools across the country uh when taking these exams and and i know that districts uh have presented you know the last couple of months about about their um having our children uh being prepared to take the psats and that's also said that today and the sats um i'll just like to know we can gear education you know more towards those exams for our high school and junior high school um kids i know um we spoke today about a bunch of apps and a bunch of different um educational tools that we use within our district all the way from kindergarten
168through 12th grade and it's so many and um you know what and i know our teachers working very hard to educate our kids and families at working to um making sure that they retain that knowledge but i'm also looking at junior colleges our colleges our hbcus our university and and you know what's the criterias um we must meet for those children to be adapted to go into a good collegiate environment in the future we know that they have to take a foreign language you know they we know their gpa has to be up and even we look at our ivy league schools our harvard's our yales our canals and browns you know um um we looking at um we know that it's a huge number um we have to receive of ap classes our ib
169courses our our gpa uh has to be up and we got to do something in preparation so that they can compete uh in these classes um i i don't know i don't know if the district is saying basically using you know the apps and the learning tools that we used before but i did request in the past about you know what how many of our children are going to college uh reports about you know what colleges are they going to how many of our uh criterion school graduates are going to ivy league schools and what subjects are they're taking and how are they doing in those classes are as retention levels high um in these schools and you know those and i'm still you know waiting to see these type of reports come back to
170us so we can know that would be how we will assess our value as an education system and the things that we are doing and not doing um i i think that i think that um we talked today we talked about state um testing and and and and possibly uh you know you know not having it this year um by state mandates but but let's concentrate and see what it's going to take for our kids to um get to the other level the next level and um and just just concentrate our efforts there thank you um i just want to double check that wasn't that was not a question you were asking but making a statement or is there something you wanted me to answer apparently you're muted you're muted parents guys i apologize i
171know we keep muting all the time um uh it's not it's not really a question for you to answer but i just wanted to just gear our education more towards you know meet the standards so our kids can perform well in our psats sats acts i know that you know around that time we take classes you know that's supposed to help get our children towards it well it should be something that should be taught all year long there should be something that should be taught you know during all throughout our high school and all through another um you know what 78th grade and they start taking their ap classes um i just think that you know they perform much better and get into better schools you know i'm not saying you know disregard other education
172or disregard other courses you know that's the values that they can learn from those but if we can get education towards them you know going to uh these collegiate and ivy league and universities i i think that we have a great turnout and i still would like to see some of the data you know that we have you know about our children going to college and what colleges are they going to their attention on that i know that's a whole nother gear um that they look forward to look to and try to do but um you know that's very important and so cause we need to judge ourselves i just feel that we need to judge ourselves you know um of our output of our children and where they end up going yeah that's what
173we heard this is this is dr williams um we certainly are able to provide you with information every year mrs younger's department the department of gangs and counseling works with say yes to education to identify exactly what you just shared which colleges our students you know are going to um and you know as a support we do pay the board has approved for us to fund all of our 10th graders to take the psat and the 11th graders and really that's a test that's designed to really help to identify any gaps any um you know academic gaps that students may have and it is used by teachers you know to try to fill those gaps so that the scores continually increase so that the first time they're exposed in sophomore year you know the scores
174are baseline scores and then teachers are working you know with wherever the gaps are per individual student so that when they take it as 11th graders hopefully you know there's some increase and it's preparing them to take the sat which we also pay for one of the sittings for the s.a.t for our students and we even have um excuse me we even have students who um with respect to um the s.a.t that are able to test for that test in our schools we have some vps schools that now serve as sites so that even like transportation to schools that may be 10 miles or 20 miles outside of the city they don't have to worry about doing that anymore so we are beginning to crack that nut okay thank you dr wells i'm just saying
175i say at the stage they take the psat and we see what the students lacking i just think education should be geared towards at that point you know uh for them to be successful with the sat what what values and tools do they need you know what courses can we apply you know so they can take these sats perform well against other people in other districts and across the country so they can get into our uh higher level schools you know can i can can i ask one thing also we also want to give a report of our cte graduates because one thing doctor olalei many years ago taught us is that we should not be judging ourselves just on the number of students that get into college because students that don't go to college
176are not less valuable to the district right so we should also be looking at our students who are enrolled in cte courses and career paths that they take right because all of our students aren't going to college although we're preparing them to have a choice about their future and what they want to do we should not discredit or discount any student that does not go to college so yeah that's a good point uh right there from up to bring that up thank you again i just think we need to do a better job at tooting our horn because we have a number and we may not know this on this on this panel but i know for a fact we have a number of young people who leave this district whether they've graduated from special
177west c t e uh regular uh um you know some of our specialized schools etc they have massive uh number of of um um uh um what's the word um admission emissions from various schools that they can take they could select for example where they want to go we have a number of them who get millions of dollars you know in tuition and we need to to to uh to our horn because we are doing a good job with with a lot of these graduates i was reading something the other day we have the the law program and some of the kids are doing well they're actual lawyers who who um finish over at um i believe is bennett so there's a lot of stuff going on positively in this district with our kids and
178we need to toot our horn all right that's just my soapbox absolutely we agree with you dr evans brown that's why we try to put as much positive information in the daily brief that dr cash and eleanor send out so that that will give you all more information to brag about the district and so we're going to update i believe it is updated on the district website the major district accomplishments because we want to brag about everything that's going on and about our students and the great things that they are achieving so we are really really in alignment with you on that thank you um there's a hand raised dr ian razira we'll make it very quick and just say as somebody who works with college students uh every single day our bps graduates are
179delightful they are talented and they're brilliant absolutely there's another example so yeah let's start talking about what we're doing um right because our kids can compete with anybody in this country all right um okay so with that uh any other questions on that area if not we're going to move on to the last item on the student achievement list and that's connecting and engaging all learners and i kind of wanted to just briefly see what we're doing and connecting all of our learners um because i was really sad to hear about the uh homeless the mckinney mckinney vento population to go from 900 all the way down to 200 and something kids um during this uh pandemic and so i you know you know we're all concerned about other children who may not be connecting
180for various reasons i know i had one incident i was helping this family uh lou and i um to find out why they weren't connecting and we found out that um they had an internet they needed a new modem and so myra burton was very instrumental and um you know get given this family um and she worked herself she talked the spectrum they went out to the house that day they put a new modem in the house and the kids were you know back on track and they had not been in there for been in remote work for about two weeks no more than that two months something like that but so we have those kids and um and that's one of the reasons i put wanted you know darren to put this item on
181connect engaging um i'll learn so dr darren huh thank you very much dr evans brown so tonight we have the pleasure of having our associate superintendents for school leadership with us and they're going to present and they're going to talk to you about what schools are doing to connect and engage all learners so we have darlene josinowski miss contan dabney david hills toyah wilson and our lead elementary associate superintendent dr cassandra wright and they'll take it from here thank you dr brown good evening board members thank you mike could you go to the next slide please right thank you so much all right good evening it's it's always hard to be the last presentation but we're going to do our best to give you the information that you requested in an engaging manner so when
182we thought about how to present this information we started off thinking about categories of kids so we thought about students who are thriving academically and socially emotionally students who are faring well or moderately well and have seemed to be well adjusted emotionally students who are attending classes but not having success in class coursework or students who are not attending classes and not engaging with coursework the more we thought about the categories the more we realize that it really doesn't quite work that way so the school administrative team the teachers and the support staff hand in hand with families collectively work very intentionally to provide individualized supports to each kid so you may see some redundancy in our presentation but that's because a combination of these strategies are used per the needs of each individual child
183so consider this as parents and caregivers we can have four different children who respond to situations in four very unique ways during this pandemic children have responded in very unique ways their response to school during the pandemic is not necessarily tied to academic ability or economic status so for within the same healthy happy two-parent affluent family you're gonna have a child who thrives no matter what another child who goes with the flow and maintains decent grades b's and c's they seem well adjusted another child who works as hard as she can and she still struggles while one child who worries the parents the most who does not seem to respond to supports and actually recoils but no matter what place a child is in academic or social emotionally the parents and caregivers do whatever it
184takes to ensure children get what they need to continue to grow no matter what category they are in as a school community we have utilized various supports and many children are actually thriving as evidenced by formative assessments attendance records anecdotal records from children teachers and families and parenthetically speaking i don't believe we need a state assessment to prove anything according to the strategies that we have put into place many children are doing quite well you see the list i won't read down each individual list but i'll take the time to amplify three of them so i want to talk to you just a little bit about the review of instructional practices to better meet students needs so remember we were more than i so what we had to do is draw upon what we learned
185from distance learning classrooms and from global scholars teachers listened to families and kids and made some shifts in their teaching methodology for example a whole lot less teacher talk far more student-led activities more time away from the screen more group activities and as you heard dr williams earlier probably one of the most profound impacts that a teacher had was a deeper connection with the student as a person so the kids seem to do the best when they have a really solid relationship with their teacher another strategy that really helped kids to excel was allowing students to set their own schedules so for example we found that some kids needed to log in a little bit later and not worry about the negative consequences we know that there has been some profound impacts on family dynamics
186and so for some children they needed a little more sleep and we found that the teachers who understood that and simply welcomed their child into the classroom no matter what time they logged in they did better they were able to thrive parenthet excuse me conversely some kids 7th and 8th grade high school they needed to have time to do their work their asynchronous work at night so if they didn't log into schoology at noon for their asynchronous time but logged in at 11 pm for some reason they seem to be wide awake the teachers understood that and accepted that work without consequence the teachers and the students began to communicate about what their academic prime time was and the children whose teachers work collectively with them really did a great job and were able to
187thrive in that environment for other children the utilization of peer leaders was profound what we know is that children are social beings that's why so many of them are struggling right now but because some children needed to stay on remote or in remote whether it is part-time or full-time we allow the teachers allow children who are mastering concepts to become the lead teacher or the group leader these children who proved themselves to be quite responsible were able to lead small groups for instructional purposes or small tutoring groups and then they found that the children thrived together so utilizing the the talents within the teacher and the students just helped the whole class to thrive so we in those situations we found that like when kids weren't listening to the adults they were listening to each
188other but the teachers and administrators and the parents were strategic enough to choose those children who would be responsible leaders darling will discuss some specific examples regarding the child who is doing well academically and presents as well adjusted and is doing getting b's in cities and no complaints about behaviors darlene good evening board members um in this group mike if you could go to the next slide please thank you students in this group are doing well but still benefit from a little encouragement and supports so some of the supports that our schools are offering are providing office hours to our students so if a student maybe have some concerns with some academics the teacher can pull that student into those office hours groups and meet with them individually or in small groups to reinforce any
189skills that the student may need extra help in at the building level they also have organized schoology courses for easier access and our principals have done a phenomenal job of being creative on how parents and students can access schoology we've had principals create bitmojis where a student can log into the school's website and they can actually go to a picture it'll have their grade level on it click on that picture and you'll take them to their courses for the day and that also helps support parents and they see it in one central location um we also have our sst team members working with tier two so they provide support in several ways they could provide checking supports to our families and to our students so they do lunch bunches with students that maybe are struggling
190and in many cases some students that just want to meet with them and just talk about things that are going on in their home life or things that they're doing in school and just need a little extra support and encouragement to continue with the work that they are already doing we as a district have given schools the autonomy to um to give students additional time when it comes to missing assignments so teachers are creating plans where students can make up any assignments that they have missed during that quarter to ensure that they're given every opportunity to be successful teachers will develop those plans meet with students lay out how they can make up those assignments and how they can submit them in a timely manner and if a student is having difficulty meeting those goals
191they can then also meet with those students during the office hours that we're providing to them on technology we are very fortunate that some of our community organizations are offering virtual field trips to the science museum to explore and more to the buffalo zoo and they are creating virtual activities and field trips their students can participate in whether they are remote or they are in person we are now given the opportunity for our students and i was fortunate enough to sit in on a lesson where students were um actually presenting their powerpoints to their class on a lesson on an activity that they had previously done and they created as groups and the children were so proficient in getting onto the team's meeting setting up their powerpoint and explaining their powerpoint to their classmates and
192then we also have created breakout rooms that our teachers are now utilizing those students can meet with their peers and different activities and then come back to their home to the teacher and share out what they're learning so it creates more independent learners which is really what we're hoping for our students as they move on to high school and to college and we're also doing our principals are doing a lot with recognizing our students by sending home student of the month awards and even going to the homes and presenting students with those awards to make sure children are recognized regularly on what their accomplishments are and in many instances they're giving them little goodie bags but trying to really keep them involved in what they're what they're already doing in school but even so that
193they feel that what they're doing is being acknowledged in a positive way to make sure we keep them engaged in the learning environment and what they're doing in school so now our next presenter will be david hills thank you darlene thank you board members um so there are students who have experienced stress and trauma as so many of us have during the pandemic and they're engaging they're online they're coming in in person um but because of maybe their emotional vote or things that are going on or even they're trying to do a lesson and there's a large number of other children in the house and their ability to focus is not as strong it's affecting their academic results their ability to demonstrate math mastery and they may feel overwhelmed these are the students that might
194may be getting one or two incompletes in a quarter and schools are taking targeted approach approaches to start to reaching those students and reaching those learners um if you look on mike if you could go to the next slide we tried to make this as small as possible apologize for that um there this is where there's starting to be a layer of some real robust um strategies added in one of the if you cluster some of these to streamline our practices as you've seen in other slides schoology has been organized so that when a student goes on navigating schoology is not part of the cognitive load they're able to quickly get to what they need to do um practices have been targeted um and assessments are refined to meet students needs and also to identify
195the high leverage standards that need to be mastered assignments are made accessible if a student maybe has some incompletes or has some assignments to make up those assignments it's addressed what what is the barrier for that student why are they having a hard time um if they are having a difficulty producing mastery on a computer format one school calls it the pony express and they actually are delivering um packets to to households so they can have a combination of online and paper learning um if it's a student that missed four or five assignments in a week instead of making them do each one they're clustering assignments to key on what the mastery strategies are what exactly are the standards that need to be assessed in those assignments um schools are creating even between courses combined
196assignments that count for multiple assignments that maybe is an english language arts class and a social studies class schools are creating complex and lengthy near pods that essentially are flipped classroom that if a student you accesses the near pod does the top the nearby that will be a compensation for learning so they've streamlined to really look at and we have near pod we have packets some schools have set up makeup folders on schoology of replacement assignments alternative assignments um so there's a lot of strategies to just make it easier because if you're having a bad week a bad month for many of our students we just need to reduce the cognitive load for accessing the curriculum and demonstrating mastery to make sure that they can show what they really know um there's also flexibility built
197in you've heard about in other presentations the office hours at other times um and about um alternate learning assignments and engaging technology those virtual field trips the teacher that goes out to a creek and films a lesson that they put online uh to show a certain story from from harcourt or trophies or from a certain lesson or a certain ecology element many of these students in this cluster have been the ones that have been returned to in person so that they are in those 100 high needs students that are able to access personal supports to get them on track and there are also many opportunities for credit recovery you have many many of the schools that do credit recovery have grad point in after school programming there are hubs they're able to do um with
198some of their individual school funds credit recovery after school also redesigned pathways programs has 10 teachers assigned to school buildings that are embedded during the school day that help with credit recovery so those options and um dr wright and associate jasonowski mentioned also some of the programs that we use to measure student learning cern maya that list of assessments many of those are adaptive learning programs where you take an initial assessment and if you have a gap in your skill level it helps you go back to build that gap um as you have in cern so you have those that flexibility and as was mentioned earlier teams now has the ability since i think christmas time around december to have breakout groups that are very robust teachers are using those to have ability-based groups and
199if there's a extra staff member that can help with the classroom to have a breakout group either during synchronous time or during asynchronous time so that flexibility is key and then lastly a lot of these elements you see here are to empower or outreach to students we have clri embedded in the curriculum and social emotional learning and there is a multi-tiered um support systems coordinator systems of support coordinator that is helping schools identify extra supports we keep learning as a district how to reach out to students and how to break down barriers and we're also creating systems where we help students with time management we give them a key individual they work with that helps them to manage their time and as you may know we have a communication tool in both the talking points
200program for english language learners and also when anyone contacts a student they record that contact in infinite campus in a parent teacher contact tab and anyone that looks at that student can actually see that contact so if there is a barrier that gets recorded all the teachers can see that barrier so they can all address it if there's a strategy that works it can be shared that way um schools are beating in team meetings um some some successful strategies for students that are on site that are struggling is actually have a teacher that has a strong relationship with the student that helps them to make a plan for how they're going to get their work done what they need to do how they're going to prioritize that helps them to do some of that executive
201functioning that thinking through what i need to do to succeed so that those areas the streamlining of what we do the flexibility and empowering and outreach helps us to meet those the needs of those students who are present who are taking the step forward every day but are not necessarily seeing evidence of mastery and i'm going to pass it on to associated good evening school board mike if you could move the slide to the next move to the next slide can we move to the next side you did oh okay i'm so sorry i can't see it on my screen um so i'll just continue so the last group of students that we want to talk about and talk about strategies for support for that particular group are students who may not be attending class
202and who are not engaging in the coursework what we want you to know and realize is that this outreach for those particular students began last march and what our principals and school leaders and teachers and support staff have continued to do is to continue to reach out to those families throughout the time of since last march and through the pandemic we realize that a student may connect one time a student may be connecting for two months and then they may not connect and so those strategies that we have in place are continually refined by our schools so we've worked on improving communication to our families through our liaisons that we can that we continue to use we continue to make sure that we're reaching out to our enl families to make sure that they not
203only understand what comes through a translation in a meeting but also through what we're giving in writing to our families we have principals who do for their bilingual learners have meetings for their spanish-speaking families have meetings for their english-speaking families we have other schools who reach out to families and have in-person meetings with our enl families to ensure that we are meeting their needs in case there is any communication gap we continue to use an infinite campus our parent teacher contact tab one of the things that we realize and schools have realized through reaching out to families and reaching out to other people on those emergency lists is that they have other contact information that we the schools may not have been given and so because of that that information tab is very important because
204that last contact may be uh the contact that the teacher needs and it may the social worker may be the one who have who received that information and the teacher may need to reach out and so having this one place where we keep information that we connect with families helps in the communication to them and to reach out to families and parents if their child is not connecting i'm not going to go through this list but i do want to point out some things that we continue to do we use a variety of means to connect with our students what we what principles are reporting and what we're seeing that they're doing is not just using phone text emails not just trying to contact and work with families during the school day but also reaching
205the reaching out to them over the weekends in the evening using social media and other strategies to reach families not in just our traditional ways from eight until four o'clock because we know that we have families that work during the day but using alternate strategies and alternate times to reach out to families our administrative teams and teacher teams continue to do conduct home visits we continue to engage our community partners say yes in journeys in that may have other ways to reach out to our families we have designated staff at each of the buildings our attendance teachers our counselors and our social workers who work with this particular group and with the the families in this particular group on a daily basis reaching out trying to um connect and reconnect students to instruction um we
206have been trying to identify those students for in-person learning so that when we are able to connect with families those are the the families that we are inviting in emergency situations we're inviting them in as needed we continue to confer and adapt the supports to make sure that and i admit i i believe that tanja williams addressed this earlier some of our families need support outside of what is just helping students with instruction they need support with um connecting to a food bank they may need they may have had a fire and they need or they may need tech support and so our schools have been reaching out to families and trying to address that need and then reconnect the family i think my colleagues have gone over a lot of the other outreach strategies
207but what i think is most important for everyone to know is that our principals our teachers our schools our district have not given up on reaching out to students no matter what category of learner they fall into each and every day our schools are attempting to meet the students and families where they are so whether it's a student that is fully engaged teachers are continuing to work on concurrent instruction in person instruction assessing students and for those students who may not be engaged and families that they're not being able to reach they have staff that continue to reach out to those families search for those families reconnect those families so that we don't have one student lost in our school district so we appreciate you taking the time to listen to our presentation tonight and
208i will turn it back over to dr brown so dr evans brown and board members you can see that we are very very um working very very hard to engage all of our students and to make sure that we have robust programming at all of our schools to make sure that we're keeping our students engaged and keeping track of our students so i hope you got that from what the associates presented um again they are a phenomenal uh group of colleagues to work with and the principals are also a phenomenal group to work with as they support their teachers and really make sure they're supporting all the students in their school building so we owe a lot of the uh um you know the accommodations to our principals so dr evans brown i'll turn it
209back over for you to you there's probably board members that have questions can i see some hands up yes thank you so much thank you everyone for such a robust detailed um presentation you put a smile on my face i'm excited um there is a hand and uh board member terence hurd is first you're up great presentation and thank you teachers administrative staff for all the work that you're doing and working with our children to try to get a balance you know uh just hearing the different times of that a child can handle work for the education is is crucial and uh it's going you know far beyond you know what the call of duty was a year ago you know as a teacher to the things that they're doing now and working with our
210children and our children also adapt into this new way of learning and where you're learning getting work in and and it's a different type of relationship you know that that you establishing with them um could you give me more um just later on just send me email possibly on more of your or your high school credit um that was no less that was the last slide uh there's more information about this if you can send me an email or anything like that talking about the credit recovery parent yes just know more about the credit recovery program thank you so much my pleasure uh board member heard okay thank you okay any other okay um board member paulette woods um to ms stabney how large is the group that you were you were addressing that are
211disengaged all right is is that the 17 which is maybe 5 000 students how how large you admit estimate that group of students that you're that you were speaking about i may take this miss woods hi it's ann i'm sorry i don't mean to interrupt but i was actually speaking with ebony and dr cash about that very question and we're pulling together um the data so we'll have more specific numbers for you do you have an do you have an estimate because you you've been saying it's maybe 17 which would be about 5 000 students and i i do commend you one on the presentation as far as the ways of outreach but i i would like some indication of how big of a task you're you're facing and as soon as we get those
212numbers i don't want to speculate on numbers yeah as soon as we get it we'll get it out to the board number and and i'm sure and i know this because i follow research that it's just not buffalo this is happening across the country um and uh you know unfortunately well fortunately for us at least we are explaining some of the wraparound services that we're doing some of the interventions that are being put in place such as home visits calls texts media etc those are all critical and utilizing you know community-based organizations um you know sometimes we have to use um non-traditional ways of of um bringing kids in and um engaging parents and that's what we we're the experts here we know how to do that so it certainly sounds like you know you
213guys have really um touched on a lot i've been in the working in the community for many years and i'm in concert with what you're doing um so yeah it's across the country it's not just buffalo any other questions okay oh and revere dr rivera it's less than a question more of a thank you for the instructional strategies that you're detailing here a lot of this is best practices in online engagement with students i'm particularly impressed with the way that you're looking at moderately well students you're providing fewer more meaningful assignments you're modifying grading practices you're embedding sel and clri and coursework and i like i really really like the way this was tiered you know you're thinking about what's working for the students who are advanced and you're feeding that need you're thinking in
214the next tier and what they might need all the way down to the students that are really really struggling and i like hearing how sensitive you are to the situations of students who may be struggling it's because of the context you know as dr evans brown pointed out this is a national problem this is a problem because of covid and i appreciate the work that you're doing with this and i i also just really love that you're allowing students to submit assignments at different times because i can just speak personally as a working parent of a working family with a seventh grader who is in virtual learning in bps allowing that means that we can come home we can spend some time with her we can help her out and her stress level has gone
215down since that has been the norm so just as a parent thank you for that thank you anne and i think you know all of us are doing things differently um i work you know hybrid um from my job you know and some days when i'm at home working i could be doing an assignment at 11 30 at night but you know getting the work done and so this is new for us you know in terms of of this this whole pandemic and i know i was at my nephew's my great nephew's home the other day uh my niece has all boys she has four like me but the point is i watch them you know i didn't interfere but they're in buffalo schools and they did their remote work they would you know get
216on do the math uh one in this this side of the house one on that side of the house and they were really involved i was so impressed somebody was upstairs when they took a break i said what time you go back on i go back on at 11 o'clock you know so they were really into it and they they have it really down pat so they decided not to be well my niece decided not to return them to to uh in person so they're doing uh full remote and they're they're they're thriving every child is different every household is different and whatever works let it work but and i'm and i'm glad that you guys are really reaching out and doing uh non-traditional things to engage uh the young people who may not necessarily
217who are struggling and and those are the ones that we're concerned about in addition any other questions i just have one question please so are we moving forward with uh next week uh returning children back to school phase two on march 15 next week monday absolutely and thank you all for the work that you're doing you still have smiles on your face so it's you're doing well we also want to thank the board for allowing us to come and present all the great work that's going on the buffalo public schools it gives the board members an opportunity and our stakeholders the opportunity to see exactly what's going on and how well our teachers our students our administrators are really taking this um so thank you for that opportunity thank you anything else if not i
218will um conclude student achievement thank you and now good evening have a good evening good night