BPS | 9/16/20 Board Meeting

001number three count of three we will say i pledge allegiance one two three i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands and one nation under god god indivisible with liberty and justice we are still a sovereign country and we are um grateful to be citizens of uh the best country in the world i thank you good evening to everyone dr cash your staff the board members uh today is september the 16th and we are having our board meet meeting today um i am working um somewhat with a disadvantage today people to bear with me um hearing an echo we have to get that housekeeping piece under control before we start okay thank you all right so and starting out dr cash yeah this is

002more recognition for us today i do please share good evening colleagues earlier this afternoon we sent you an email that outlines the board recognition for this evening gives you the names of 28 amazing students and the schools that they are from so i'd like to introduce our student technology leadership program interns this evening to you and give them a special commendation and recognition from the board of education and from the buffalo public schools community this evening it is our pleasure to recognize our third cohort of 28 student technology leadership program interns this team of technology wizards is mentored by their equally dynamic instructional technology coach brianna pride welcome all this year's cohort is an exceptional group of students who served on the front lines in the midst of the covet 19 pandemic you will recall

003that the student technology leadership program internship allows students to gain career experience while they're earning income and community service hours toward graduation requirements this summer's experience provided 28 talented students with the opportunity to learn technical skills improve their soft skills and gain real world work experience students from 10 high schools were pre represented in this year's internship and accomplished the following they reconfigured our classroom computers and our computer lab in preparation for our return to remote school learning they prepared our one-to-one devices for distribution and that included repairing updating organizing and inventorying our student ipads and laptops they sub provided support for our four tech support site locations at bennett east south park and lafayette high schools and that enables students and their families the opportunity to pick up their devices and hot spots and

004have their devices repaired they staffed a help desk for students and families participating in summer school they facilitated introduction to schoology training sessions for families and caregivers and they helped distribute devices to students in grades 2 through 12 also to staff for the start of the 2020-21 school year so you know these 10 schools from hutch tech to louis j bennett lafayette international city honors mckinley buffalo academy of performing arts south park high school riverside academy and iprep school the international preparatory school and the new buffalo school of culinary arts and hospitality management those are the 10 high schools each student represent and i want to conclude now by naming the names of these students for your special recognition aaron are the students online with us this evening they are so we ask that when

005you say their name they say here or hello so then that the camera will be able to pick up on them so we'll be able to see them okay students i'm gonna do the best you have some beautiful names and i want to make sure that i pronounce them to the best that i can first cadence aguilar [Music] good evening sahara ali ariana cologne elijah darling kevin forbes priscilla forbes james love jason mccallion abby kareem mohammed davin moore fog ooh oh my oh ariana parker rem pollock quinlan keones josiah ramirez alyssa schroeder miracle singleton saifullah tayyip tyler thompson tatiwaneshi naigo naido taguere florence ugamaro adriana vasquez miata walker and lania woods colleagues join me in commending and congratulating this really really amazing group of students [Music] board members for members is there anyone that would

006like to uh jen mccoozy has raised her hand thank you i would just like to thank each and every one of you you're juggling your own learning as well as trying to teach us all grown folks and everyone else like how to get this done i appreciate you as i have a child in the schools right now and technology is not my friend so you guys have great futures ahead of you use this to your advantage and keep doing great work very proud of you very proud of you thank you mrs mccoozy mr aboard member heard yes first of all i'd like to thank your parents you know give your parents a hand right now because they're the ones who's uh influenced you to go ahead and help out with the district and um just

007your just your energy that you give you know it it helps us adults also you know in our mission so let us know that that that we're working hard for for you guys and that you guys stepping up like this is like a huge inspiration for us and for me personally so i'd like to thank you and um give your parents a hug and um i wish i could um thank you so much everyone mr hurd are there any other comments from our board uh board member larry scott um i mentioned it last week that i saw some of you firsthand with my my younger boys when we went to exchange devices on south park have and you are all wonderful you worked with my boys and getting the devices hooked up and ready to

008go um very cautious with um the covet 19 guidelines and restrictions all of your work is just extremely commendable and you should all be very very proud of yourselves um the work that you're doing is just absolutely critical for our students for our families at a time that that is extremely challenging right now so be very very proud of yourselves i'm very proud of all of you so thank you yeah thank you so much uh vice president lou petrucci i just want to say thank you all very much it's it's students like you uh that are the best of the buffalo public schools and it really makes me proud it's one of the reasons that i like serving on on the board of education is to see what what talented young people can accomplish not

009only for themselves but for the district and the way that you guys are helping your fellow students achieve the next level is very impressive thank you very much we're all very proud of you i don't see any other board members hands raised with that said i will say to you young people that i want to frame this point in time think about what you have been able to do young people who are just starting out to realize that you can handle this if you can handle this you can handle anything else you encounter i really am sitting here today thinking about our culturally linguistic responsive initiative and i'm looking at a rainbow coalition so proud of the diversity in our district and i'm so proud that you stood up to represent and help us and

010i'd like to um utilize this group of people dr cash to make sure that they have an opinion when we have our forum for our young people be allowed to be uh uh uh guests invited in in a special way to participate in the conversation that you can have with the board in the future so what i suggest you do something that you think that we can do better or that uh you save it we're going to do this probably by next month i hope before uh definitely before thanksgiving break allow our young people to have a conversation with the board of education and i want you guys to be our special guest because you've already contributed and we appreciate you and continued success to each and every one of you thank you thank you

011dr cash with that said thank you young people we're gonna move forward thank you brianna too brianna leading that is amazing brianna you can log off now thank you for being on for that recognition time feel free to log off now thank you very much i wish we could somehow take a picture of them for a group shot of them on the screen you're muted mrs cottman we can't hear you put their pictures on our website if nothing else to be able to uh take pictures of those individuals and have them as our uh as our stars and our and i call them our ambassadors because certainly they are uh assisting us and uh being the best we could be after we do you know support and uh guy dr cass are you there yes

012i'm here your your superintendent's update dr cass okay colleagues i just have two questions for you tonight and something i want you to think about as we go forward um for every meeting that we have and in our conversations together what are our district priorities at this time at this time number two what is in the best interest of the buffalo city school district right now short-term and also long-term i have some succinct responses for my way of thinking about this but i want us to join it as a as a team and as a board and use it as an anchoring point so that we can focus we're getting ready to go through a tunnel and it's a severe tunnel and i want to make sure that the light at the end is not

013a is not a train coming at us so let's think about what our priorities are let's focus in on them and let's make sure that that guides us through this year it's going to be one of the most challenging years certainly in my career which spans over 40 years and probably anything that you've seen and the only way we're going to get through it is if we start focusing today going forward and that we work together as a very tight tight governance and management team and that's that's that's my main update right now sure what you updated on but i i hear what you're saying and i think that and speak collectively for the board and saying that our priorities have always been to put children first and to bribe to provide the best education

014for our children and i think that this board uh does that very well and uh our conversations have always been about uh moving our children to the next level that is a priority always been evident with this particular board and i can uh reference quite a few things that that i can uh show that we've done that so if someone else wants to speak to that as a board member you certainly have the floor to do so at this point however if you do not we will definitely pick it back up when uh vice president lou petrucci has his executive uh affairs uh committee and we will certainly uh make it clear at that point what our priorities are as a board uh so that we we can uh be in uh uh it is

015a consensus together uh dr cash okay our concern has always been as abort children first and i think the decisions that are being made by this board the questions that are often asked i speak loudly to that um and as anyone disagrees with me please speak up or has anything else to say but other than that i felt that that's been uh our focus day one well i put the caveat in there about at this time certainly that's always been the case but we're we're in a different kind of timeline so i just want you to think about it it's not something you can really answer tonight uh in my mind so think about it and let's talk about it in our in our subsequent meetings together we are going to do that and if

016we need to have a special meeting just for that case uh in case to do that i'm sure this board would be receptive to do so because we do want to make sure that that in times like this that we're clear on what our expectations are and each board member is articulate capable of expressing themselves accordingly and understand where they stand all right so what we're going to do we're going to do something a little different today in regards to our speakers oh i'm sorry um thank you thank you president yeah i'll be reaching out to the board members to find out just make sure we're all on the same page with respect to priorities uh both at the district level and what is of the best interest for the district right now thank you

017larry vice president yes larry well do we are we opening this up to a conversation about some of our priorities or are we delaying to it to another meeting or another time well how i was saying it is that if it was something on your heart that you wanted to express you certainly could express it or you can wait until uh a meeting at another time to uh it's just what you're what you want to do i think i'll just say because i think there's a lot of attention from parents on this and from the public in general that um given the circumstances that we're in providing an equitable education to all of our students um is an incredible challenge right now and i think we need to be we need to start having some

018hard conversations about how we can safely bring back some of our students to in-person learning um in the near future especially our students with disabilities our english language learners our at-risk students and our youngest students pre-k kindergarten first grade um that's you know i think what i'm hearing most right now from from folks safety is obviously the priorities but we need to find a way or at least begin those conversations and how we get to that point um the funding right now cuts from from the state are a major major concern and how that's going to impact this district um this year and beyond um and along with that um i'm going to be presenting a late item towards the end of this meeting on charter schools because the the continued growth of charter schools

019are significantly impacting buffalo public schools as well as our existing charters that are operating quite well um so that's certainly something that we're going to discuss further at the end of this meeting um and i think i'll leave it at that but i think it needs to be said that this is a challenge for all of us and we need to start having that tough conversation about how we bring back our most vulnerable students into our goal points mr uh scott very good points um i've seen another hand go up uh terence heard your hand go up and come down again yes yes um thank you um i believe that through all our committees and and and the board's um research and work that we've been doing i think we've been doing a wonderful job

020if it's from executive affairs to finance and ops um educational support or the student achievement a lot of issues have been addressed this year alone um we only into two months in to this school year i mean a month into the school year going into the second and uh a lot of great decisions have been made i know that um one thing that larry said about reopening school and getting children of needs back into our buildings and that's one of our huge concerns that's everybody's concern and i think that this board right now is looking at what's going on in the other district in walesville district we're looking at what's going on lackawanna you know our neighboring bodies and um and we're pulling together and working hard together you know and and meeting with our

021distinction with our stakeholders you know about you know what the plan gonna be and and what's afforded we got two groups of people out here we got um families that want to return in person learning we have families that feel that the the safety for their children will be better met at home so it's it's some it's a divide but it's not much of a divide because you know we're addressing the best way that we can and we're looking forward and i don't quite understand you know what the comment was about about working together because i believe that this board is doing a very diligent job working together uh putting a piece of the puzzle together and everybody on this board has a very unique quality you know that they can adapt you know to

022to the board to the district you know in certain areas that you know that needs to be met here in the buffalo public schools so uh i'm glad to be working with this board and i'm glad you know the work that the district has done and even you know um introducing some of our plans and reducing some of our works you know um by listening to our community we we're first hand with the community we're working with the community and we give those answers back to the board you know to the district and um i think that we're doing a wonderful job working together we have an additional hand that went up paul edwards i i want to say that equitable education for all is is always going to be a priority and in a

023time of cutbacks making the cuts in a way that children still get a quality education and all children receive it is important and the clr training making our education relevant to all cultures and all backgrounds must continue that's one of our greatest achievements and the only other thing i want to point out is that in a time of earning a lot of parents are saying that children are not able as quickly or get as great an education a computer screen and what they're hoping and they're expressing to me is that working with these community groups if they can their children can go to community groups to get some one-on-one edit would be a big you just have to get some one-on-one can't bring them into the schools big gym in a big gym where they

024can get it groups the community uh groups churches etc are well able and have been to uh that type of additional support to our families okay okay with that said i don't see any other hands um and i guess i i guess the other other thing that i would like to say is that when i i have always been raised family that if there is a shortage the children don't go without the adults do so if there's not enough food in the house the adults don't eat the children do so let's make sure we keep that focus that our children go first before anything else with this board and that's what's important to us we will definitely have this conversation and if we need to have a special meeting to do it we can have

025one of those as well but um i it did catch me off balance that this conversation even came up because i thought we had a clear understanding that this board is very serious about uh uh moving forward uh for the for our student population and doing everything we can for them and making sure that students are first so with that said let's keep on moving we're going to do something a little different uh uh vice president lou petrucci is going to handle the comments from speakers section today i'm going to turn it over to uh vice president lou petrucci thank you thank you president cotman let me begin by reading the guidelines for speakers the board welcomes speakers who have signed up to speak at tonight's meeting please be reminded that all speakers remarks must

026be limited to three minutes or less we ask that speakers be mindful that this is a business meeting open to the public and televised locally attendees and viewers include persons throughout western new york including children this board's asked that speakers conduct themselves professionally and that their comments remain civil and courteous bearing in mind that they will be heard by people of all ages this is an opportunity for buffalo's residents to address the buffalo board of education about issues that serve the public interest and the district mission and the board asked that speakers demonstrate appropriate decorum thank you very much for joining us this evening that being said tonight our first speaker is leslie addison a teacher about community-based programs good evening can you hear me uh yes we can oh perfect um great job in

027recognizing all those students today and great roll out with the computers it's been wonderful but really that's not my focus today i'm a nice teacher at mckinley i've been working for months in conjunction with parents to save our two classrooms they've been housed at mckinley for years i've been delivering district lessons all weekend having a voice to create and form today and i want to use mine on behalf of my parents and students the parents and i have been reaching out to the special ed department for answers as to why one of our classes were dismantled at our school and students were transferred out sadly our efforts since june have been ignored and we want to know why the state of the art program at mckinley with numerous amenities that no other school can boast

028about was disregarded so easily our amazing classroom resources allow for the perfect community training program we have awesome teachers at our school that allow our kids to participate they participate in horticulture carpentry ecology sociology jrotc and other programs and that allows them to really be specially kids to be part of a whole school community and yeah our classroom is big enough to house two classes and you know what come and see it kids if they were there would make you some delicious cookie i'm not kidding our students have been with us quite a while and we're a family unit and together i get a little emotional here because we struggle with the death of one of our students who died from leukemia and we mourn for others who experience loss one student lost a precious

029grandma one a father and others who've lost loved ones and we've been there to comfort each other and now they're going through loss again we welcome the student who came from a refugee camp and he was made part of our classroom family and creating diversity is important to us and now because of the changes our students and their families don't understand why some had to leave our program and change schools and teachers this has had a negative impact on our most vulnerable students and they question why this happened our immigrant student is displaced and tossed around another school one student called me up and said why do we become orphans and we'll get moved but no one cares parents were told by the special ed department that this was a change that was put in

030place to enhance the needs of our children in fact the opposite seems to have occurred what they failed to recognize and consider is the bonds that we created at mckinley not just with our students but with our parents the buffalo school district education bargains stressed the importance of students and their families but in this situation i'm not lost to how to rationally explain to my students parents why this happened when we can maintain the program at our school our principal wants to keep it in place and he says we have the budget for it students are adjusting to have to stay at home but when they come back let them return to some normalcy at their home school they deserve that i appeal to your good chances to keep our program and our students in

031mckinley students and families are depending on you i love these kids and will advocate for them in order to provide them with a rich academic and social emotional environment that meets all their needs yes you're well over um can you wrap it up quickly sure i just have um one of my arabic parents some parents tried to get on the call today but because of their lack of english language they asked me to say a quick statement i'll be really quick they said please switch our daughter back to mckinley for high school she needs to be where she's comfortable learning we're not happy with the changes that were made change them back what happened to school choice we'd like her to go back to mckinley it's so close to us where she would be safe

032and where she loves doing horticulture and also i had a parent called three times and leave a message to talk to me nobody ever got back to her okay thank you thank you thank you miss ashton we appreciate your comments uh next i have uh aida montalvo apparent regarding the current instruction mode uh miss motavo um miss maltable are you available ma are you available hello okay um well we'll try and come back to miss multavo um miss phillips angela phillips a parent regarding the change classroom to one teacher miss phillips uh yes can you hear me uh yes we can thank you okay and thank you for allowing me to speak today um i am the grandmother of jalon robertson who was in the community-based classroom with ms addison and ms zimmerman and i

033just want to say that i was a little surprised at the dismantling of the class where he you know thrived on stability he doesn't adjust well to change um you know this summer they switched to programs the district stating that it was you know for his social and emotional you know well-being of the kids and this is you know kind of not what we wanted and it i didn't feel like it was to his benefit and if anything you know these changes have caused a little stress on him when he found out that he would be you know with the teacher and with some of the same kids that he has already been with you know he should be with his teacher you know that he was previously with um these kids um have special

034needs these are not things that they're just that's just attached to them um they're just as human as anyone else but they're a little different and special in their own way and sometimes things like this that we see can be small some can really cause um have a different effect on kids of that nature which which i'm trying to say of different nature that everyone have their own kind of special need and i'm just asking that if it's at all possible can this be fixed and he'd be placed back into the classroom you know that he was in with his friends and his teacher at mckinley high school for some normalcy all right thank you miss phillips uh darren or anyone else would like to respond or do we only wait till afterwards i think

035we keep going with the speakers and then at the end the superintendent's response um you know how he responds to all the speakers at once i do darren yep it was a rhetorical question um uh jessica osmequita parent regarding remote learning miss amasuita um hi thank you for having me on my name is jessica amesquita i'm calling as a parent um to a pre-k child um i had some issues as everyone did the first couple days of school with technology but my biggest concern is that um she has certain activities that she has to do like touch screens and we don't currently have the resources or funds um to purchase like a touchscreen laptop or big enough device that she can learn with and i know that the school has mentioned that they're still waiting

036for orders to come in but i also had some issues regarding additional technology devices for instance headphones and headsets that have a microphone as a mom that's working from home and also trying to teach well you know work alongside my daughter to help her and assist her with the instructions that the teacher gives her it's difficult to have her focused um while she's also listening to my background noise and i'm sure other parents are probably going through some struggles like this at home if they have to work from home um so just just being more aware that certain families and certain parents might need more resources not just a laptop or a chrome um my other concern my second concern because i now only have three minutes um what's relating to the meal distribution so

037like i just mentioned i'm a parent that's working from home and uh trying to assist my daughter from home while she's working at in school and the time frame 11 to 1 o'clock is very uh time constraint like i i can't really make it um and i've talked to over 20 parents that are in the same position they don't they don't have any time to make it to the meal distribution times so i was just wondering if there's any possibility for late evening late afternoon or um some type of accommodation with delivery distribution um that's simple enough for parents that are working or can't make it to the to pick up the food there could be some kind of accommodation for for parents like like me um and my last concern which was kind of

038mentioned in in the meeting uh was community hugs and having partnerships with community centers boys and girls club um different centers like that to have more of the one-on-one student tutoring or student attention um i work with students from the buffalo public schools that are used for advocates and one of the things that i'm concerned about is that if they don't get the support that they need like the one-on-one assistance then they might fall through the cracks um so i was just wondering if there was any kind of uh with community hubs and that was my last point okay thank you thank you very very much miss emma uh thank you again um next i have emily zimmer a teacher regarding the mckinley community based room uh miss simmer are you available hi i'm here

039okay please continue ms simmer okay in june miss addison and i were completely caught off guard from hearing the news of the closing of the community-based room one of our parents received a phone call and was told that their child would not be returning this sent a domino effect onto the other students and parents we had numerous phone calls and texts from our families asking why and how this could happen we started to advocate for our students and families by sending numerous emails to various people in the special education department and to dr abraham we had no response it was frustrating for us all we couldn't get any answers we're trying to keep routine consistency and friendships intact we have the school budget to keep both classes open the parents and students want to stay

040at mckinley the teachers want the program to keep growing yet we are asking why why would they close a state-of-the-art classroom our school was remodeled in and the community-based teachers at the time were able to help set up amenities for the room our classroom is equipped to handle two classes even with the recent ratio change we have two full kitchens where students can learn independent living skills restaurant skills and kitchen safety we have three stovetops two ovens three dishwashers two fridges three microwaves and so much more whereas many other classrooms in the district that do nicer don't even have an oven we are able to teach hygiene and laundry skills with our washer and dryer and three sinks we are able to have monthly food fundraisers where the students take orders buy supplies and cook

041for staff in the building which helps them learn important vocational skills customer service skills our students have even planted flowers and help with the horticulture program we have a yearly district-wide talent show that allows the nicest students to show off their talents for many this is the only opportunity they have to be up on stage the district spent a lot of money to set up this room and it isn't being utilized its greatest potential our location leads to many vocational and community training opportunities with its close proximity to numerous businesses restaurants and the main metro bus line we participate in the faba ice skating program and art classes at the knox we are able to walk to penny birchfield buff state and the history museum buffalo state teachers student teachers also come and work with

042our students which is a great partnership each year we have seventh and eighth graders visit the building and they can't believe our setup and amenities students say they can't wait to come to mckinley so why would we close a room and take away those roster spots as a teacher we are taught to advocate for our students best interests and well-being since the end of june i've been trying to do just that my students have said the following statements would show how much they missed their friends dariana said i want my friends back because i really think it's unfair and i had a very good friendship friendship with anwar i miss her a lot she was like a little sister to me i want them to stay in the classroom because it's not the same without

043them and it's not a family without them it's incomplete missouri another student said they were my friends and taking them away from me takes a piece of my memory and my life away all of the students ask me about their friends and why this happened i am dumbfounded and unsure what to say so i stand here for my shy students advocating for them and their peers with the hopes that you will help us reopen our community-based room at mckinley and keep two rooms we're asking to keep our mac family together and allow the students to remain at their choice of school so just to kind of go off of what miss addison said we're just both trying to advocate for our students we have such a great program in a state of our classroom and

044we just think it's such a loss to the district to close the room out of that program okay thank you very much miss zimmer uh we appreciate your comments uh next oh you're welcome next we have sean crowley who's a teacher regarding the closure of the western new york day treatment uh i just want to say i i wanted to uh thank mr crowley for bringing this to my attention and that i did receive a response to many of your inquiries previously yesterday so at this point i'm going to turn it over to mr crowley if he is available mr crowley mr crowley hello okay um not hearing from mr crowley i will ask if lori king a teacher is available regarding support of the clr curriculum ms king yes i'm here thank you um

045king thank you first i want to start by um thanking the district officials for all their hard work that's in this unprecedented school year i know a lot of difficult decisions have had to be made and i appreciate all your efforts i next want to voice my support for the clri department and the curriculum that has been developed and provided to educators in this district as an educator as well as a parent to a brown child i appreciate the opportunities this curriculum provides i believe that curriculum should function in two ways the first being a mere it should function as a mirror for students to be reflected in the curriculum and see themselves in what they're learning as research has proven students excel when they are represented in literature and curriculum we as educators have

046an obligation to the students we serve to provide them with opportunities to be accurately represented within the curriculum the clri curriculum provides those mirrors to students who may not always see themselves in what they're learning with this i urge all to remember that allowing our students of color to have a mirror in the curriculum does not shatter nor remove anyone else's mirror there is space for all and this curriculum works to be inclusive secondly i believe curriculum functions as a window a window to learn and explore the lift experiences whether that be present day or historically speaking a window that allows students to be more equipped to navigate this vast culturally and linguistically diverse world we live in we as educators have an obligation to share and create those spaces for students to explore this

047curriculum provide provides windows for students to look out and gain a deeper understanding of their neighbors friends and work towards the goal of allyship this curriculum is multifaceted and a true celebration of diversity individuality and community i want to thank all who are involved in the creation development and teaching of this groundbreaking curriculum thank you for your time and the space to speak this evening thank you miss king we appreciate your comments next i have uh jacqueline croom who is a parent regarding the black lives matter curriculum uh miss croom are you available jack link's room okay all right uh we're gonna move on then to wendy mastretta dr mastretta is a parent and she has comments regarding the reopening uh dr mastretta are you available i am can you hear me we can we

048turn the floor over to doctor mister thank you so much good evening everyone let me start by saying that my kids are doing fine with remote learning it's not ideal but it's much better than in the spring and we appreciate having a schedule to follow however i'm here tonight because it's not just about me and as president of the dpcc i feel a strong responsibility to continue the 20-plus year tradition of ensuring that our caregivers are able to participate in meaningful parent engagement and support of shared decision making is outlined in federal and state laws and regulations and in accordance with our own district policies with this in mind the dpcc executive committee decided to host two meetings this month last night we had a special meeting just on reopening and next week we'll be

049have our regular monthly business meeting the guiding questions for last night were all focused on supporting our students during remote learning we know that that's the space we're currently in and we were trying to work through and support that however what we truly heard was that our families continue to be confused frustrated and angry in terms of supportive requests our families are seeking as much normalcy as possible in a virtual way we are seeking a system of establishing social and academic pods for our students for example for group projects lunch periods and after school clubs i was informed that schools would not support this new team due to safety and security concerns however we know that students will find another way that may be even less safe or secure we also know that it is

050working very hard to meet needs and there was a suggestion last night from an online i.t chat line to address urgent issues plus we are also concerned with mental health issues and we would like all schools to ensure that guidance counselors are meeting with students as soon as possible as you already know so many concerns revolve around clear and consistent communication this involves challenges with getting information from and to our schools in the district we have heard that a family liaison communication plan is coming but many families still have not heard from schools or teachers we continue to do our part too through our outreach meetings and supporting district efforts such as requests to update contact information however there are problems with inappropriate scheduling access to in-person services and confusion over assignments especially for families

051with children and multiple grades in schools we are hoping that parent access to schoology will address some issues but families are really seeking a consistent communication system including information for whom to contact with issues and concerns when normal channels do not respond while these are important questions needing a quick response the larger issue is really families wanting to know what comes next what is the actual plan for reopening when we can't get answers to basic questions like what is the soonest possible dates that students may be back in buildings and what metrics will be used to determine such accessibility and how and when will parents be engaged in the process and will the voices of parents who were not a part of the consensus speaker at this time we are left wondering if there's even

052a plan to make the plan we continue to appeal to you all for a partnership to ensure meaningful parent engagement to support open and transparent shared decision making for reopening and beyond thank you thank you dr mastrata next i have danielle gray who is a teacher who wishes to speak in support of the clri curriculum uh miss gray are you available to speak i am can you hear me we can the floor is yours miss gray thank you so much so thank you for allowing me to talk today i'm calling in support of the clri curriculum and to give my opinion on the way buffalo school district has started the 2020-2021 school year i'm proud to be part of an organization that is student-centered when we have a district where 80 percent of the student

053population is black and brown children it's important that we make sure that we're inclusive with the clri curriculum we're addressing all of our students which includes the marginalized students that make up 80 of the population we started school in an unprecedented way and we're addressing issues within our district in an unprecedented way the district included social emotional learning personal identity social justice and civil rights is our opening lessons for the first two weeks of school we're using principles such as loving engagement community empathy and diversity as a guide for our students to start the school year it's gratifying to be part of this curriculum and methodology i don't know of any other district that has dedicated this amount of time and energy to making sure we address our students well-being i think that any parent

054teacher or even member of the community that sees the materials used to teach these principles will be impressed with with how it's designed to support student learning and student voices they will also see that we're using thoughtful materials that teach our children to think for themselves and to use their voices in a responsible way to make a difference i feel it's important to be able to voice this to use our voices in our schools so thank you for letting me speak today i just wanted to show support for the program thank you very much miss gray we appreciate your comments uh next i have brooke woods a teacher and parent who wishes to speak in support of the clr curriculum also uh brook woods are you available i am okay the floor is yours miss

055woods thank you so much for allowing me this moment on this platform to speak for the clri curriculum it's very near and dear to my professional and my personal heart i have a really unique role in bps as a teacher and a parent and i find myself with the opportunity to have a positive impact in creating racial and social justice within our district as a white educator with a growth mindset on my own anti-racist journey i realized that our biggest impact our work and our protest towards equality for all can actually start with me it can start in my classroom and it can start within my own home this is why i find it so crucial to become a part of the clri department as the guardian of equity from my school last year and

056as a parent liaison for my daughter's school this is why i joined the crli curriculum team this past summer in an effort to teach the history of our bipart community members accurately with pride and with grace and with self-empowerment we wrote and we collaborated on lessons to directly address and dismantle bias and racist beliefs so that as oftentimes unfairly in our educational settings that come to come to surface we needed lessons that teach our black brown indigenous immigrant and refugee children to see themselves in a positive light where they display self-worth self-love and cultural pride also these lessons are helping their white classmates become more than just peers and friends they're becoming aware they're learning how to focus their responsiveness on social justice and they're becoming true allies these lessons have created safe spaces where

057students can be vulnerable they can share their experiences expand their empathy foster their social emotional growth and create restorative resolutions my own brown children deserve to see their beautiful faces their skin and their cells and the curriculum and the literature chosen by their teachers at bps they and their classmates must have more exposure to the beauty of all races culture and ethnic backgrounds we must teach inclusion tolerance and acceptance for our entire student population this is why i think that white allyship is so important for all of us for me with staff and educators and others yes where i'm encouraging my colleagues to consider the lens we're using as we're trying to create this inclusion for all um we welcome other educators with varying perspectives to join our ongoing effort in the creation of our

058lessons and i've been teaching them for the last week and a half to my students and they're so impactful this is truly from my heart i can't i can't tell you enough how much growth we've had in these last couple days with our kids um lastly we became teachers because we all love kids and all of the kids that join us in our classroom we love to watch them find their voices and feel inspired and i can't imagine a better way to facilitate this growth than through infusing culturally relevant teaching and our curriculum thanks for your time very much miss woods next we have betty macklin a parent guardian and grandmother who wishes to speak on the black lives matter's curriculum miss macklin are you available to speak yes i am how are you i'm

059doing well the floor is yours grandmother macklin yes i would like to get the guy who's the head of all our lives and to thank dr morrell for a job well done just like to say black lives does matter as well as any other lies that matter you ought to teach these kids maybe we start by teaching these kids that black lives do matter as well as all lives matter they would know that black know you people black people stuck those on the shoes of plasma cotton we all matter so we can teach these kids a little unity put them all together as one and buffalo can catch all the cities i don't act like math all matter and i just want these kids to learn so my grandkids your grandkids love grandkids can have

060a beautiful life and yes we all i just want to say dr morell job well done keep up the good work thank you miss macklin next we have jessica bauer walker a parent who wishes to speak about trauma-informed care miss bower walker are you available to speak right now yes i'm here thank you the floor is yours thanks i'd wanted to say too i'm not sure if other people are hearing this but it sounds like somebody's not on mute there's quite a bit of background noise so folks are on the phone maybe they can make sure that they're muted my name is jessica barrow walker i'm the president of the buffalo schools community health worker parent association i'm also the pto president and a parent at international school 45 and i'm executive director of a

061nonprofit organization and a trauma practitioner so from that lens i wanted to say i realized that this is a very difficult time for all of us not just as parents but as district and building leaders as teachers as students and community partners and we really want to stay positive and encouraged and we also want to from a trauma informed care perspective affirm how difficult these times are so i just wanted to lift up those trauma-informed care principles and they're they're very much aligned with equity and the culturally linguistic responsive initiative which i fully support as well for us just to think about the fact that we're dealing with collective as well as individual trauma and those trauma-informed care principles are are so important right now and those are safety peer support collaboration and mutuality trustworthiness

062and transparency empowerment voice and choice and gender race and historical issues even just the speakers on this call and i've spoken to over 100 parents and students over the summer and on this first week of school about their experiences in both one-on-one conversations and my work as a community health worker as i'm trying to assist people with food and i.t housing issues getting mental health services and people are going through a lot i think that our district leaders are well aware of that and i am hoping that we can really center that as we move forward and know that term informed care the training is really important and the the most important part is really how we embody it that we need to be practicing it as adults and that we really need to be

063working in full support and partnership with our parents and students right now just the folks on this call have talked about some significant issues you know for our special education parents and students for our parents that don't speak english who have low literacy who cannot navigate these technology platforms for our parents who are working and trying to balance working and parenting and supporting a virtual learning environment we need to figure out how we can do more and i'm not putting that all on the district but i'm asking the district for support and partnership because we're really overwhelmed as parents right now um and and i talk to parents every day who are struggling you know when it when you need food in your home and you're working and you can't get over between 11 and

0641 to get food that's not a good feeling and we need to figure out a trauma-informed approach to make sure that people can get basic necessities like food when our families have really depended on the district for food so i'm not saying that there's easy solutions but i'm really hopeful that we can really work in full partnership and share decision making and collaboration and again that collaboration and that trustworthiness and transparency which are principles and practices of trauma-informed care i think can really guide us and help us to move forward and is unprecedented in time thank you sorry about that i forgot to press mute uh thank you miss bower walker for your comments next i have karanda meters a concerned family member regarding the black lives matter curriculum are you available to speak okay

065the floor is yours yes we can how is everyone going to support we are doing well thank you for asking awesome awesome so i am calling today in regards to the curriculum um that dr fatima harrell has put together which is i'm going to say absolutely amazing i actually have a seven-year-old grandchild that is learning virtually so a member of most of our parents mvp and stop the violence coalition and as you know we deal with a lot of parents that are transitioning into the virtual world of learning i used to homeschool myself so i do understand how significant learning can be through the computer but i know that it is a transition for most so this curriculum that i'm actually was able to see some of the lessons from my grandchild is amazing um

066the fact that we are dealing with you know just turbulent times as it relates to race and all the tensions that is going on i think it's an excellent opportunity for young people to be able to understand from the mindset of something that's more collective in the sense of teaching it in a way that stems from love and education and empathy um a lot of parents you know their home all day with their kids is you know they can't go to school but they actually are taking them to protests to rallies and a lot of times the young people are there and they really don't understand what's going on but they can see the tension they can see the anger they can see the hatred you know they're listening to different obscenities of race that

067is being um you know called and going around with the people that's involved so the fact that there is a curriculum that is actually taking the time to explain what black lives matter is the importance of it um being that buffalo is one of the most segregated cities in the country we know this in the fact that it's been like between number three and six with all the studies so race is definitely a issue that in the city here that we deal with a lot um our young people deal with it our children you know little kids deal with it and i don't think they understand it so the fact that buffalo public schools actually has a curriculum that is explaining it teaching it is long overdue very long overdue i think this is a

068model that every school district should have nationwide i've looked at the lessons they're very informative they're so good actually that i've been trying to um screenshot and save it because i think it should be workshops that adults actually need this um you know i love the exercises the dialogue that's involved the different tasks that's given and it also opens the opportunity for discussion um a lot of parents are having a difficult time trying to really explain the things that's going on in regards to race because they don't understand it themselves and with this curriculum it actually provides the dialogue as a parent and child a grandparent and grandchild to explain it in a very simplistic matter where they get it and not only do they get it they get it in the sense that they

069don't have the anger and hatred attached to it they're learning it in the way that our history is important what we offer is significant but also the fact that we almost work we all must work together as a human race so i just implore you to keep it in keep it going regardless of the people that might have an issue with it thank you thank you very much for your comments i greatly appreciate it uh last i have niall dobbins guardian among other things who would like to speak about cultural education and black lives matter mr dobbins are you available mr dobbins neil's daughter oh nile i'm sorry niall dobbins are you available [Music] now uh one last call aida motalbo are you available sean crowley are you available and last i'll ask if jacqueline

070croom a parent is available to speak not hearing any i'm going to close the speakers list thank you speakers all for your comments at this point i'm going to turn it back over to president cotman thank you vice president patucci uh dr cash do you have any response to our speakers today i do i do so thank you to all of our speakers for your comments uh we very much appreciate them and it's what makes a great democracy work when we hear from our public and our citizens i would like to suggest colleagues that for addison or leslie addison uh angela phillips i believe she was with that group and emily zimmer i would like to to have a meeting over the next few days with you with some of our staff district staff on

071on the call with you i'd like to understand a little more about this particular issue and see what i can do to to rectify it i'm not quite sure i understand it fully but it seems concerning to me in listening to you and i'd like to have us all sitting at the table see if we can work to work through these issues so um ann botticelli and kim hoelscher i will be calling on you and toya wilson uh to sit with me and call these colleagues and so that i can hear better about this this particular concern for the seven equity guardians of equity i would call you we really appreciate as a board and as a district your commendations are offered tonight in support of the culturally and linguistically responsive teaching initiatives black lives

072matter curriculum and the way that you expressed it i couldn't express it any better than you have done tonight so we really appreciate that dr fatima morell's leadership on this uh has been fabulous and i believe cutting edge in this country so certainly we will continue the work but i do want to say that the curriculum was always meant to be a bridge builder not a divider and if you get into the curriculum uh with us come join us in these courageous conversations we believe very firmly that this is the way to build unity in the country uh today not to further divide it and sometimes there's that a misconception that that that's what this curriculum is intended to do so please join us we welcome all comments criticisms all of it but this is

073something that is very much needed not only for the 81 of our student population that is black and brown but for all of our students all of our students whether you're new to the country uh as what we call new americans whether you're white uh latina african american and white isn't the same by the way white white has many many many flavors and and ethnic uh richness to it so we want everyone to to join in this important conversation and i like when the one the commenter who said that this this has never been done before that in her experience and so let's make it strong let's root it in deep and then let's see this tree grow and then i believe the last grouping of of comments came from our parent leaders uh so

074we we thank our parent leaders uh wendy and jessica who are very familiar to us and certainly would want to share uh with you partner with you and continue to improve the school district that's what this has always been about is to keep getting better and better this work is never done never done you only keep working and trying so please uh joe let us join your meetings i'm always willing to have staff come join your meetings wendy so that we can on the spot respond to the concerns of your constituents and uh jessica we certainly we certainly agree that in this so many of our parents and families are struggling uh and what we've always said is we will reach out to them individually uh to let let us know who needs what and

075who needs help and and we will disperse staff to to be helpful and develop a plan of action for that particular family for example and i'm going to close for example on the meal distribution that i believe it was uh yessica amazuta talked about we we have a lot of parent volunteers and we'll we'll deliver meals to you i'm sure bridget would be amenable just let us know she'll fix up the meals for you and we'll get them out to you through a one of our parent volunteers on the issue of the community hubs which some board members have talked about and we certainly support we actually have a new initiative underway as we speak with substantial funding from erie county and they are working closely with uh districts buffalo public schools and say yes

076david rust and i just talked this morning for example about we have 45 sites across the city uh over 2000 seats where we will be having in-person one-on-one um students coming in to those sites and and being able to take part in remote learning from those sites so that's in the spirit of what some of you have talked about tonight and is how we're going to provide that one-on-one support for students during a time when we're out when we're learning remotely from home so this new partnership with say yes through funding from erie county is is going to go a long way toward this uh community hub uh learning model so so thank you for your question and and and we'll keep you updated on the progress of that important initiative all right so that

077in effect is are my comments uh for tonight and again thank you for for all to all of the speakers for their for their comments it helps to improve us as a district thank you thank you dr cash um dr cash i'd like to say in regards to that that concern um that community classroom i was i i was concerned about it because um it ended up moving they they ended up moving the children to another school and providing an extra teacher did not understand why one of the schools is a csi school put additional stress in that building when you could accommodate it at another building so i really want you to take a look at that because i just think that the supports that exist at um italy are are second to none

078with the access with the arts museum the uh uh the saba and the other things and i really i'm really glad to see that you're taking another look at that because i do think that the additional stress on our csi school was not necessary we do um okay so um with that uh being said um additional hands okay a motion to accept the minutes from our previous minute motion i mean meeting uh hands up please so i can see i have tears heard and uh second by jennifer mccoozy with that said go forward uh see um now is the time for our commit uh committee reports and i am going today to ask us to limit our community our committee reports to five minutes if you have to go over five minutes um i i

079uh we we need to we need to talk about it because um it's a summary it's what it is and i hope i'm not offending anyone by uh recommending that and if i am please let me know but i think we can do it within five minutes this is your elevator speech so to speak okay all right so who wants to go first with the committee reports see anyone excited okay we're going to start with dr cassie evans brown okay i don't have any formal can you hear me yes i don't have a formal uh committee report on the reopening sub ad hoc committee only because i've been active in the district's um reopening committee between and dr ann revere and myself we've been doing tag team attending those meetings um so right now i

080don't have anything formal we're going to continue the process as we've been doing it okay so your last committee meeting do you have anything to share with the board on that or would you like to come back to that for me to come back to you on that come prepared because i sat in for about 15 minutes and then anne took over the rest of the meeting um basically it was um an update with deciding how to go forward with the different entities and remote learning the meetings will continue even though we started school september 8th those meetings will continue with uh the chairmanship of dr brown hall um at that last meeting i'm going to swing it over to ann because like i said i only sat in for 15 minutes you know i

081think uh dr uh kathy evans brown mrs cottman is talking about your student achievement work session uh that was held just an update about your student achievement work session where tanja williams dr fatima morrell and um and botticelli thank you for that reminder um that just happened last week right it felt like it's been a month but nevertheless nevertheless we started um i thought it was important to start our meet the first student achievement meeting with how instructional uh work would look like for our district particularly our children who have experienced trauma who have experienced the lack of social emotional learning experience just quarantined all of us have and so just to start out with looking at kinds of things were impacting our country not just in buffalo but the country worldwide many of our

082kids have experienced deaths um covet 19 whether it was friends and or family members many of our kids have seen the the killing of george floyd um on television they're concerned it's concerning to us adult so you can imagine a little person actually seeing that and so and before you can get into any uh real learning as far as academics um we thought that putting that team together as we did last week was critical to start the uh school year off and as you know many of the parents and guardians and grandparents talked about the effect of um the good work under uh dr cash and dr fatima morale that it did um make a difference and it is making a difference um you have you're always going to have um the naysayers that may

083not agree because change is different when you start something different that never happened in a district um you're going to have naysayers that say oh no we don't want this we we're not used to this kind of thing but get used to it this is the new norm um this is how it's going to be for some time and nobody have any definitive um recollection of when that's going to end so let's get used to the change because it's important for every student not just black students but every student so that that's why that was done thank you uh dr ann revere uh is there anything that you'd like to uh add on to that or report out at this point for the reopening well for in in for the committee work that you are

084at hack work you've been doing with your uh you have the floor now okay so the reopening committee met right before school started we discussed a lot of what people have already seen roll out there was some work still planning to be done regarding uh grading and special meetings and there will be continued meetings for the reopening committee to discuss what happens after the four to six weeks i believe that there will be a plan to do that soon i'd like to hear a timeline eventually when the district's ready but it sounds like that's part of what dr cash was ready to talk to us about soon thank you do you have anything to report on cpac for us yes i do i do have uh information regarding cpec so cpac has been meeting they're

085pulling together activities as well as um continued outreach for parents they're reinventing their bylaws to make it even more open and to include more parents and they're looking forward to being supportive for parents as they move forward they will be pulling together lists of trainings for parents on education special education topics and they'll be continuing to do outreach they have a facebook workplace page now for people to join to be a part of it and i look forward to the things that they'll be doing as they move forward the last thing i do want to say is that cpac really does mourn the loss of one of our members we'll make mention of her later but i'd like to just personally make mention of her yasmin young will be very very missed thank you so

086much we're sorry to hear that about jasmine young um she has been active for a long time thank you that concludes your report we're going to move on uh paulette woods board member woods do you have anything to share with the board on your committee yes i do the finance and ops committee had a presentation from our cfo jeff richard and he went over the budget and he spoke on the 20 percent withholding of new york state revenues by governor cuomo and his potentially disastrous effect on buffalo public schools budget gave us a very thorough presentation it was very concerning the board also addressed in the finance and ops committee that we wanted a comprehensive review of grant funding and staff changes in the grant and a review of a vacancies in those in those

087positions and also a a method of board notification a possible layoffs sort of the board can review the impact on our priorities such as equity the clr program uh two of our committees are dedicated one to maintaining our financial stability we did meet with barbara miller williams the controller and we continue to meet in the finding of the revenue enhancement committee to meet to stabilize and secure our fund balance because it was clearly presented that we need to every dollar of our fund balance the committee being the expense of charters on our budget uh i believe um you should be presented with a resolution from uh larry later on that but those are those are our critical issues minimizing our expense securing our revenue and coming up with a plan to uh contain quality education

088for all of these uh budget cuts and trying times much um next up and i don't want to put anyone on the spot so uh um i'm going to bring up ask questions uh the tears heard next up i'll take it um we had a very robust committee meeting for educational support one of the things that we talked about was instructional remote learning presentation we had a group of our students um that they came along and actually presented and um about our remote learning the the how to use remote learning um they gave a demonstration to the board and also the other parents that was watching um how to use remote learning how to access the um get access codes for um their their teaching within the classroom and also all the way into um

089the programs that's just available through schoology that they'll be accessing and using and microsoft teams also um um this was um presentation um uh was the possible by uh by annabeth dr chandra williams who um who i worked very hard on this program about um remote learning and and uh we're looking soon possibly soon to phase in to in-person learning or hybrid type learning so um this is very important right now in our district and our parents to make sure that they get a handle on this of remote learning uh we also talked about um uh distribution of tablets uh we had um parents picking up tablets out last week for their kids and um and so that make sure all the parents that receive tablets that they can and we also um uh revise

090that um classes k through one uh we'll be picking up the tablets in late september and um so um so that those students also and the teachers can be uh accustomed and using the tablets um you know for those parents also we might have to look into possibly um uh looking for another training exercise or using our social media platform for um the use of the tablet for the parents and kindergarten through first grade um we also talked about a couple services that was available for parents and um and the second part of it was the implications of the code of conduct during kovic 19. this represented by dr williams a lot of work that um that keith frist has worked on and um generally we talked about the code of conduct and we talked

091about you know how we how we can utilize it and how it'll be used and that is a it's a project in work right now that the district will later on um present but we want to make sure that we make current with the code of conduct and uh it applies to this new situation we all know that this the kovic 19 um invasions into our community and our countries you know across the world has uh you know has changed the dynamics of how we look at things and how we teach so um that's one thing we have to look um we have to re-examine the way that we utilize the code of conduct and add things to it so that we can address the code of conduct issues that we're facing um we talked

092about um um discussion for a robust communication with parents this is uh very important it was discussion that we had along the board members and the superintendent administrative staff about um possible future communication with parents how do we communicate with parents um as we heard today we have a lot of parents and many concerns um that goes on with within teaching within the within the code of conduct we have um concerns about uh positive and negative concerns about the uh the clri project working with black lives matter and the the 1619 project so these type of things are very encouraging and i heard a a sleuths of very good things um with this program dr fatima morrell put together and for the district and um i think it's a very very great robust and and

093great learning experience for everyone for for every culture and it is intended to address every culture so that um so that our children can get a better education than what i have you know and our goal as a board is to make sure that you know we tell the children the truth and and they'd be very knowledgeable about our customs and other customs also um um the dangerous people of america and other foreigners that comes into america so that the the truth can't be heard and taught within without districts and um uh one spoke one person said earlier that they can take pride you know in their religion their culture and um and look at the possibilities the as a mirror aspect and as a window aspect um the last thing that we talked about

094it kind of relates with the ad hoc um athletic ad hoc committee and uh we did a brief update on the research so i will take this over to the athletic ad hoc committee and uh what we talked about was the formation of of a modified sports program for the city of buffalo um currently um it's myself as the chairman lulu petrucci and um jennifer mccoldy and um president belton common has been working on the plan for modified sports here in buffalo it's been very it's been very very uh um detailed uh we put a lot of time and research into the modified sports program and i'll be looking to address some of the um concerns that we have about lack of sports that's in our early ages uh and children that's in the grades

095seven um eighth and also we're looking to address the sixth i grade smooth the paperwork here um some of the things that we addressed with the modified sports program we looked at some of the programs um that's that's being presented with the section six as like badminton baseball basketball bowling cross country field hockey football golf gymnastics ice hockey soccer lacrosse skiing um many other sports um volleyball track and wrestling but we also looking to incorporate a couple other sports that we look into that's very familiar with it within our community um some sports is um dance we also looked into step programs we also uh looked at the possibilities of having um um dance it was dance stuff we also drill team drill team was a big influence here in our community so we're looking

096at that we have a lot of community partners that help fight this program and we can give a better update later but for now we just want to simplify it just by saying that we're we've met um weekly on planning on this and i'll be happy that dr cash after the presentation is willing to work with this with the district and um before district personnel to try to achieve these goals so that concludes my report uh vice president uh petrucci uh thank you president cotman uh just a few things because hey uh we were cut off for a while so i don't know what was discussed i don't want to be uh duplicative but also um you know i have been working closely with members woods and heard about both the finance and ops and

097executive affairs and with the ad hoc athletic committee which they both reported out on i had the opportunity to participate in a zoom call about the farm to school program about getting farm fresh produce uh to our students um which is important uh which is well uh which is uh of a high value particularly at this time as more and more families have come to uh rely on the district to in whole or part help provide their nutrition so that's good i'm glad that we are continuing to distribute foods and meals to these families that need it i did along the same lines i just stopped by discovery earlier today to to see uh to see how the food distribution was going there were people waiting in line uh to be honest i thought that

098there would be more people there there wasn't as many as i anticipated the other thing too is that i know that larry's going to address this later as well but the new york state school boards association has a resolution committee this is when they bring particular topics to the body as a whole for voter discussion then put they put their resources behind them the the deadline for the district to file any more resolutions is this friday at 5 30 and i believe larry might have something uh uh don't want to steal his thunder but he might have something for us along the same lines i'm getting calls from parents about the reopening i know i mentioned that the executive affairs session that we had earlier i know many of my fellow board members are as

099well i just want to talk a little bit too about clri and the black life matters curriculum i did receive some phone calls about it the phone calls that i'm receiving aren't so much that the uh the parents all seem to preface their remarks with the uh the same types of comments that uh that they want to have these conversations that these are good conversations to have that's going to make the district a better place that they try to teach their kids properly but a lot of the comments that i'm getting are more along the lines about they want more inclusion in the process uh or they wanted um they felt that there should more emphasis on hispanic or native or asian culture and the contributions that they've made to the to the united states

100and the district and our history as well um so that was part of it parents wish they could have been part of the process a little bit more um there were some questions about whether appropriate ages and some students that uh were concerned that by teaching this somehow that schools had become less safe because they associated um particularly black lives matters with protests or or that somehow there would be uh disruptions in the in the schools and that isn't true uh dr morrell has been very good we've been working uh to where we've been i've been presenting these to dr morrell who's been reaching out to families to address their individual concerns so i want to give a shout out to dr morrell she's been very responsive and i know that she's been contacting these

101families that have raised concerns to me as well so i just want to kind of put that on the table as well and that concludes my report madam president thank you uh vice president pettucci moving forward uh there uh mr scott have anything to report out uh i'm i don't want to put people on the spot jennifer i'm not sure if you want to report out anything today that on your mind hope jay as well uh if there's anything else that you guys want to report out at this point in regards to some of the work that you're doing um in conjunction with either your ad hocs or at this point if not we can save it for later on in the business meeting when we have open session it's your call i'll wait until

102um the end when i present my late item problem hey for i have really nothing to report mostly about already and uh board member hope jay thanks uh i don't have anything to report either thank you okay so i do want to say in regards to the bullying initiative uh um that um i hope you've been involved in that over the years uh there is a month i think it is april like to possibly see if as a board we can do initiatives uh around bullying for that entire month because we it and i'm not sure exactly i think it is april uh to possibly uh remember hope j to see what type of ideas we can come up with to make sure about uh bullying during that month in a big way so we've

103got enough time to start working it um is tanja williams on this at the meeting right now like i don't know if she's here you're on the call yes okay all right so i'll reach out to tanja about that i just want us to take advantage of uh what's going on nationally with our children i think also in that month uh um cyber uh is a part of it as well as uh their items so let's let's move forward with that uh is there anyone else whose mind uh has anything to share i just want to share briefly with the board that i am working um with a stem organization who is seeking funding for us to try to expand um stem into our district in a big way and so hopefully based on this

104week's meetings uh toward the end of the week we may have uh some great news to share with the superintendent and the district as far as uh funds provided to help us with the stem initiative i'm looking forward to uh a conversation with that i have received calls in regards to the uh change in curriculum um and most of them have been very positive i will be responding to every email that uh that was sent to me in regards to this and we'll move forward but with that with our minds clear the committee reports that let's move forward to our consent agenda may i have a motion to accept our consent agenda so move woods and lou petrucci thank you lou and pathekin by paulette thank you okay so the items that i have and

105if there are others please let me know i have currently item 9b or terence heard sign b is let's see actually it's nine i just want to briefly state that i read over the the personnel and the personnel changes personnel affairs with instructional personal personal changes the civil service personal changes and administrative board changes and um i can't tell i don't want to speculate but um this is from the names of the new personnel or the personnel changes that we have within the district um i i didn't see um enough diversity of being hired and i know that it's a huge issue among our district about finding um diversity hires or transfers within our district and um finding a credible people who want to come work here up here in the cold buffalo in the

106north uh but i would like to have a conversation with the superintendent of possibly forming a diversity task force to try to find different ways or different measures or look at other cities and districts or how they try to um hire more diversity within the school districts and um i know that um this district had gone far you know as far as um jamaica you know and uh look for diversity teachers who can actually relate to some of the um population that's here um in the city of buffalo we have over 85 different languages that represent buffalo public schools and that's represents some of our challenges so we can try or possibly form a task force i know the department of clri has been working diligently with dr fatima morale and dr tanja williams and

107also and also we have um um jamie warren um who's working with us with human resources but i just think that if we can maybe get some type of expert advice from somewhere else or or reach out to some other universities that we can try to close the gap on some of these concerns i know like i said the district has been working hard on it in the past but um i just don't see much of diversity um as far as new hires okay um thank you for that uh what i'd like to say in regards to that is one of the things that i am holding uh the community accountable to is the fact that uh if we in order for us to be able to hire people oh okay okay okay i saw

108that um in order for us to be able to find people or hire people we need references and we need uh the conversation and so um this is a national issue it is just not unique unique to buffalo and um i did not go into education i went into business and so i'll take some responsibility for a shortage with me but uh it is a responsibility of the entire community uh to help us with that we cannot do it alone and so um let's see how um you know if people have uh quality people uh to refer them in and let's see what we can do but uh in fairness to our staff uh it's tight out here it is yes president yes uh i'm sorry for interruption but at one point the board had

109an inclusion committee uh who worked on a variety of these issues about trying to get a workforce that reflects the city of buffalo and we had a variety of different uh initiatives that were going on to to try and address this particular situation uh i'd be if i chaired that at one point i'd be more than willing to share the work and what we did and what we're able to achieve that's nice would you do it at your next committee meeting yeah absolutely i'd love to all right okay mr heard did you have something else you were trying to say uh yeah i was thinking that the district we also possibly could have a a program within our own district um the teaching kids how to become teachers you know some some minority kids or

110or kids might want to be influenced to teach you know as a career and maybe we can have some type of uh work towards that goal would that be some future teacher program we already have a mckinley high school something like that you think yes um i really need to know more about the program how many kids that were involved in the program or do parents you know what i'm just thinking president cottman that might be the best way to start is to ask dr cash to list the myriad of things that we have done to increase diversity in the district and figure out you know with what mr pachuchi is going to present at his work session and for us to present everything that we've done like mr heard mentioned the trips hr has

111taken to puerto rico the um advertising we've done at historically black colleges and universities i think that would be the best way to do it and then we can try to merge what mutual troops she's doing and then come up with a plan so that you can see everything we have in place now and what we've been doing for it wouldn't you agree president cottman i think that's a starting point and certainly to know what what the board did in the past i'm very interested in that i'm also interested in knowing if there are any community partners in assisting us with relocation fees to help us relocate people who want to come into this area also so that's another area that we can uh look into because i think that would be a challenge for

112most people um moving forward um let's go into 11b i have uh sir petrucci and we miss president cotman mr uh mr scott's question hi mr scott i have the screen up and i'm not able to see my my bad please all right um for clarification i i think i heard mr hurt say that he is questioning the diversity of these hires and it based on their names do we have actual information on their racial background because i'm just pulling it up and one thing i think it's important to note is that all of these hires if i'm looking at their same list um live in the city of buffalo so i think before we make make judgments we should um have accurate information on the diversity of these hires we had talked about doing

113that at one time having a report once a month that talks to us about was the board who was hired and what capacities the um um i don't know the racial makeup was and there and um i think legal at that point fashioned us on that and um when we talk about this at mr petrucci's com uh uh committee uh let's talk about it let's talk about what what what the board would like to see to sort of uh get an understanding of that um [Music] and so we need to find the legal perspective on that as well we have to be very careful we need to clarify for the public though that it's not an accurate conclusion that this group of players is not diverse it potentially isn't but we don't know what certainty

114that it is isn't diverse good point and and i think i really think that we're treading on sacred tier grounds here yes mr herb uh let me reinstate that um i started off by saying that i don't want to speculate or or um try to draw a conclusion but from the different arrays of names that i see that it's possible that um that we have um a lack of diversity inclusion i said i don't know but i would like to see the statistics on it also um i know that this district does very well and just tries very hard to to have inclusion and i'm well aware of that and this is no means a punch at the district but i'm saying that i would like to uh to just re-examine you know our hiring

115practices and to see what we can do to try to get more inclusion that was my fault so i think i think we can open up that conversation in a big way um and i am interested in seeing uh the training uh that the interviewers have uh it's one thing to someone in a position to interview another conversation as to have they even been trained um on um the process so i'm really looking forward to opening that one up i think it's a big one um so mr petrucci i'm and i'm i'm sorry uh i missed you hope jay i just saw your email i'm gonna bring it up after um after we finish this um mr um petrucci and mr heard for 11b uh community-based organizations terrence you want to go first yes um

116actu actually mr um patricia and i spoke about this um in in private in person when in private but um we have um i just had concerns like a company um best self um it seems that they've been employed for one year and um i know i know that um doing some research on them you know they have uh they have social workers and they have looked like um in six different locations around buffalo for the city of buffalo and four two on the outside and um they do supply internships but um i see that they're part of this package and we see that we're on 370 thousand dollars and i like to know what type of work would they be doing in our community and um and how would they be working with our

117community schools what school would they be working with so um i know we probably can't give all the answers right now but the district can possibly afford those answers to me so i can build a better understanding what best self um company would be doing and how they'd be working with our community skills thank you and mr hurd i'll be able to get that information to you actually on the uh boardwreck if you look at the boardwreck in at the end of each of those phone numbers because the fund numbers identify the school at the end of each of the fund numbers where you see bs that means best self so those are the schools that best self will be working in and i can't remember what their name was prior to best self because

118they've been in the district for a while i know best self is their new name but i can let you know what they'll be doing with the community schools because they host the virtual community schools they started that when we went completely virtual in the spring and they'll be continuing that in the fall so i can i'll be able to send to you and the board some of the examples of some of the virtual activities that they do with the students in the community schools on the weekends okay okay yeah it seemed like they had a very robust program but it seems they you know listed as only one year in business it seemed kind of compelling you know to ask the question you know what can they actually offer you know they was in

119business one year but if you said they had a name change to get better understanding of reflection yep you're right they've been in the district for a while mr scott is trying to say something child and adolescent treatment services they were previously on their right and go through the county and they've they've been around for years they provide an array of services and supports uh you know intensive mental health support psychiatric support to students across the county across the city um they provide a range of services through our community schools um i've seen nothing but excellent superb work from from best self and what was previously child adolescent treatment services okay mr petrucci do you have anything to add on that well i i do um just my um my concern was that in the

120south district where i'm located we have uh two community-based organizations one's run out of uh south side of the ozal south park uh but there's a large section of my district that that isn't really covered i was just wondering if there's a way we can increase this to have a cbo somewhere down in the ward or the valley or seneca babcock kaiser ghost town like one of the other neighborhoods that i uh that i represent mr fukuchi i i sent you an email i know it was kind of late when i got that question but just to be clear these cbo's that are listed here are just for the community schools however there's two community schools in your district south park and south side but explore the that entire community it's not just for students

121that attend those schools and again it's only these cbo's are only in our community schools it's not the cbo's that operate that may operate at other schools but this is community school specific for this board record thank thank you dr brown hall i just said many of my parents have transportation issues and oftentimes they could avail themselves their services at their other locations that was just the point that i was trying to make i understand i'd like to bring up my concern about the community uh based organizations and the contracts uh one of the when the um community base uh when the community schools were being formulated uh the idea behind that was to make sure that community organizations were able to benefit from uh these community-based uh contracts and where i've been told that

122uh they do utilize certain people for certain things i want to take a deeper look in that into that in our finance and ops committee to find out how we can make it um easier or to assist our uh minority women business enterprises so that they can uh participate in this what's happening now is that an agency has to go trinity based organization has to go through like uh through one of these organizations in order to get paid and when i looked at the eeo uh and i wish you would bring that up the eeo um mix i only found two that really were reflective of our our uh our our school district two had very few hispanics very few asians and very few african americans that were employed proportionately so and so i think

123as we move forward um we need to start having some expectations from these organizations if they're going to work within our schools that they start hiring people that that mirror our students um that's my editorial comment jennifer mccoosey you have something you'd like to share i think i'm gonna because it doesn't really fall under this but it does i'm gonna share it a little later i just wanted to bring up a concern but it's more around say yes than the community schools so um i'll bring it up later for sure don't let me forget thank you i won't um mr heard you have 17b yes seventeen seventeen b um reading through the um it was just me wasting nothing through the contract it said that um that they was gonna have job placement and i

124would like to is there a report for the job placement and if there are um did they submit that to the district and can we view it for the placement that they did in the past i see they've been working with the district a number of years and i'd just like to see um who do they place and how do they get placed as part of the contract okay that's something to be had an executive um cotman we do have rob harris who is our director of cte on the line um and maybe he can let us know if that report we can send to the board rob good evening board good evening superintendent and uh president cottman i just want to explain that this is a seven year program where we start off with

125a planning year we are currently in our seventh year students haven't graduated from the college yet in order to be put in line to apply for the position currently though this vendor is providing internships for our students at the prevailing wage so they're actually working on his site listen since they graduated from school before they before they attend alfred state college these young men will be going on to out for state college and he's already talking about having them come back during their down time during the um summer months and then he's probably going to offer them employment because he enjoys what they have done since they have been working with him in their internship program you mr uh mr uh harris um so it's a seven-year program and we're in year seven and no

126children have finished college yet is that what i heard you say that is correct the first group of students will be graduating sometime by the summer of 21. okay thank you all right and when i i'm sorry and when i say graduating they're graduating from alfred state college not from our school they're connected to alfred state college so they're finishing up alfred state college and then they will be offered positions once they graduate well we're going to be looking forward to see how that pans out i hope okay all right uh can we move forward to 18 c mr hurd thank you mr harris um the only thing with 18c i was looking at is um the identity of bidder's list uh attached to it um we have a group of minority farmers that's working

127with our district um i know the irp went out for it and i don't know if um they submitted anything for it um i was like but i did tell them that it was rfp that were that was out so i'm not sure if they uh put in the bid or not but we do have a group of minority farmers that that works here in food co-ops here in the city of buffalo and um i see the wegmans got the whole um piece for this um project and i know i shop at wegmans all the time and that's my favorite store here in buffalo and that they had the freshest food and produce but we also have thank you for the edit thank you for the commercial well we also have uh uh minority uh

128farmers here that's struggling also that's also do food co-ops within the city of buffalo and like to see if they can also have a bid or or just to give uh notice about the bids for this type of project mr hurt if you get us um we will definitely work with rick phantom our director of purchase to make sure that they receive the bigs when they come out i know we distribute it to 15 individuals and we make those bids public the rfp is public we received only one bid for this on the boardwreck i i reviewed the boardwreck and if you see it list the number of bigs and there was only one wegmans was the only one that did on this but we can work with rick fanton to see if there's a

129way and to make sure that the uh minority farmers are receiving this is the wrong this is the wrong parentheses listed here i'm not sure what happened um um okay so um 19 c also uh um um 19c uh uh after reading through it i would like to see what real estate property was acquired it didn't state what property was acquired in this bill thanks mr herr this is nate kuzma no real estate has been acquired but as you recall last december the board authorized the district to pursue the purchase of the plot of land across from city honors yes commonly known as foster mcmaster field so i began working with a specialist in commercial real estate to begin working on that transaction and at that point you know um you know kogan 19 hit

130and things shut down so that project is stalled for the time being um so we have not yet acquired that property uh but if and when you know things clear out in terms of coven and we revisit that project you know we'll have to make a determination as to whether it's still a priority to pursue that so that's what it's in regard to um and at this point we haven't acquired anything thank you attorney kuzma all right next up is uh jennifer mccoozy with question on 21b yes thank you thank you president catman so my question was um just basically on our strategy in order to disperse this great donation um across the board i know it's for ppe but i also you know now that we're really looking at things in a different light

131than we have in the past especially where athletics is concerned and where equipment sometimes had you know not not been dispersed very equitably across the district i was just wondering you know how we're going to go about this and can we you know are you looking to see who needs more than others and then working from there or is it just going to be a you know a distribution across every school in in the same kind of manner this many many coaches this is what they get and it's you know something that's just par across the board i'm just wondering is it a par thing are we looking to make sure everybody's kind of at the same level with what they have and bring people up to an equitable level with their equipment before we

132disperse anything else that's coming out or is this just for very specific items yeah this is for uh mask you know the same things we have in the school right it's for the the ppe for the athletes coaches officials the athletic trainers and things like that when we do start sports looking towards the spring if that is a possibility because we know fall is not and when we do begin sports in the spring we will make sure it is done with the equity overlay in the equitable manner no i appreciate that i'm not saying it wouldn't be i'm not accusing the district of not i'm just making sure that you know you're about to reassure me just strategy on how we go about it moving forward because it's it's a new it's a new day

133all the way down the line thank you thank you are there any other questions on this uh agenda before we uh vote oh if not mr kuzman um poll our board please uh yes on the consent agenda how do you vote dr kathy evans brown receptions mr hurd no exceptions no exceptions miss mccosy no exceptions mr petrucci no exceptions dr rivera no exceptions mr scott no exceptions mr wood miss woods uh is no longer on the call i'm not sure where she's at right now president belton common excellence i couldn't hear you president belton common absence no exceptions okay consent agenda passes hey thank you okay so board members we do have a couple other things um we need to talk about um um i need to know if um uh mr kuzman if you

134recommend we go into executive session now or should we just for our last part of our meeting today i i suggest you deal with i think there's a resolution that was mentioned uh perhaps you finished or anything else okay why don't we do that okay because i was looking for it and i didn't see it um is uh mr scott asked the board to take a look at a resolution that you are you have uh crafted could you share with our listening audience and board members in order to pass this and move it forward we need uh to uh uh first take a vote on allowing it to be discussed at the table so in order to do so i need a a super majority get a motion to adjust our agenda to allow so

135uh this uh resolution paul edwards and jennifer mccoozy has seconded okay with that said um mr uh scott uh i'm sorry about is there any objections to this moving forward we have none okay so mr scott would you share with us uh your uh resolution thank you president cottman um and i just want to thank the board members that many of you i spoke to over the past few days about this resolution some of you provided some input on it um and i think it's a very compelling resolution it's a very necessary resolution at this time we're at a breaking point um both for our district schools and for our current charter schools in buffalo um and therefore because i think this is a an important compelling resolution i'm going to read through it it's

136going to take some time but i want i want the public to be clear on the rationale for the resolution um so it's the resolution on district and charter school sustainability in the city of buffalo sponsored by president cotman vice president of student achievement kathy evans brown mr terence heard dr anne rivera miss hope j miss jennifer mccosy and miss paulette williams whereas new york state legislature enacted the charter school statute in and whereas since the statute was enacted the buffalo city school district has worked enthusiastically and supportively with charter school partners across our city and whereas our commitment to school choice for parents was notably demonstrated when in 2003 as permitted in the school charter statute at the time the district sponsored an authorized enterprise charter school whereas the district went further in 2004

137by converting public school number 68 into westminster charter school again establishing a new standard nationally for embracing school choice for parents whereas now with the creation of community schools in state law the buffalo city school district stands second to none and delivering the broadest array of school op schooling options for discerning parents who want the best education and services for their children whereas by 2019 however the board of education became increasingly concerned that its tradition of openness to support new startup or expanded charters was becoming unsustainable for a variety of key reasons namely number one the district now had 78 of its schools designed designated in good standing meaning that new charter schools are no longer essential to fulfilling an unmet need in buffalo number two annual new york state foundation aid increases approved in

138the state budget for coming in one door of the district and going out entirely to funding increased charter school tuition costs three a looming teacher shortage had accelerated nationally and in buffalo as public schools both traditional and charter race to hire a diminishing number of certified teachers at times sacrificing the demand for quality in the classroom all parents expect four 26 of our 60 traditional public schools became community schools eliminating eliminating almost all together any unmet need in the buffalo public schools five the enrollment rate of charter students in the city of buffalo surpassed 20 percent although the 98 statute stipulated a maximum five percent rate unless significant unneed met was established by the application or the district consented to the charter application and whereas it is now clear that funding new charter school seats

139in expanding or startup charter schools directly results in underfunding and damaging the education of traditional public school students whereas growing dps expenditures to charters will amount to approximately 153 million in the 2021 budget 138 million in tuition and 15 million in other services whereas new charter school approvals and expansions are now pitting one set of students against another with traditional public school students disproportionately and negatively impacted by having state aid increases set aside to fund newly approved or expanded charter schools whereas the city of buffalo has now reached its breaking point the new york state board of regents and the suny charter school institute can no longer saturate the city of buffalo with more and more charter schools without children and other public schools both traditional and chartered paying an unacceptable price and a harmful

140teether shortage reduction in services and supports and unwarranted redundancy whereas affirmative votes cast by the board of regents members and suny charter school institute trustees approving these charter school applications will cause the children of the city of the buffalo city school district face unrecoverable harm to their notably improving education in traditional public schools and whereas the buffalo board of education has conducted public hearings on the proposed charter school applications reviewed their school designs and determined that the proposed applications do not do not fulfill an unmet need in the buffalo city school district and whereas the buffalo city school district maintains ample available seats in both elementary schools and good standing and the distinct secondary school programs that serve students who have withdrawn from schooling or are at risk of doing so doing so therefore be

141it resolved that the buffalo board of education in agreement requests that the following pending charter school applications be denied as a result of the considerations expressed here in buffalo number one buffalo commons charter school number two ellington preparatory charter school number three learn for life charter school and number four royal academy at buffalo charter school and lastly be it additionally resolved that the buffalo board of education authorizes the superintendent of schools to commence legal proceedings in order to focus wholly and comprehensively remedy the demonstrated harm to students enrolled in the buffalo city school district as a result of the saturation of charter schools in our community beyond the limits established in the original charter school statute of 1998. uh thank you um mr scott i just have um uh some clarity here um why wasn't

142it listed as submitted uh submitted by larry scott to the board so that he can take credit for the great work that he did in putting this together can somebody give me a clarity on that uh i defer to mr scott i missed this from all of us i suppose it could be amended to say introduced by submitted yeah submitted or you know introduced by you and it's something i just want i mean you put a lot of work into that and it's it's a very well writ written document and i just want you know granted uh it appears that the board is unanimous in that would you like to have uh is there any board members that would like to well have an open discussion in regards to this or did that uh what

143mr scott put together was that a mouthful and that was enough for all of us any additional comments um yes mr petrucci thank you you know i i think it accurately uh board member scott's uh resolution actually reflects my humble opinion so many uh so many concerns that the board has raised uh and and about our concerns going forward in the and the impact of the never-ending stream of charter schools is having upon our district the only other comment i wanted to add also is that i just sometimes see albany speaking out of both sides of its mouth they want districts to consolidate and they want fewer and fewer school districts but at the same time they're allowing charter schools to increase without limit and it causes a duplication of services and a drain upon

144existing districts i just think it's disingenuous uh to say the least that's a mouthful uh well what i had to say earlier in regards to that and i am working with the big five on an initiative uh in regards to this uh it appears that buffalo is open season they are just we're just here for the picking is what it is and um we have i remember the last count four charter schools of upwards of 20 plus that are functioning at a level and they do not and most of them do not even have a high percentage of african-american children in there who else are students within english as a second language or special ed so the disproportionality is real and that has to stop and we have to as a district start holding them

145accountable for the public money that they receive the public tax dollars that they receive tax dollars that they receive uh annual basis without any accountability i have a board member um i have a hand up for uh uh uh jennifer board member macuzy and i'm not sure where the other hand is i can't see it the top terrance hurt thank you so i just wanted to clarify because i went through the names and unless i missed it um i didn't see lou's name is he is this unanimous didn't see mr petrucci's name was it a misprinter oh well i'll take a vote everyone will get this get the vote when the boat comes okay i i just you know i when you had said unanimous i was like okay and he seemed as i thought

146it was unanimous i stand correct i think it's a misprint but i just wanted to point out i didn't see his name and maybe i didn't look at it close enough but just take a look and make sure gary what do you say i was conducting the hearing for the charter school as such i thought i wanted to hear what the charter school had to say i didn't want to pre-judge anything um that was the reason why i asked not to be included as a sponsor to have something that had my name before we had conducted the final hearing i did i wanted to give a royal charter you know the the right uh the ability to make a presentation but i am going to vote for it jennifer i just didn't include myself for

147that reason i just didn't know if it was that's why that's why it's a late item on the agenda colleagues because i think that the board needed to hear from that charter school first before he even considered this absolutely absolutely that's that's absolutely correct mr petrucci mr um i'm getting reports from charter schools that even charter schools are struggling right now in retention of students because of the rise of other charter schools and and then pulling not only from the public buffalo public exclusion but other charter schools they'll pull the students from them so um it is this became a huge um battle and and and affected our district immensely and even the words that larry put down that doesn't it doesn't reflect you know the the punishment that's coming to our district and to

148our kids that that seated in in our school buildings and um and the best i see the the last paragraph about legal action it was very important that he moved forward and always stated that you know that that's the way to go because um because if you know if this continues we need to take a a larger stand we need to take a higher stand on on what our future going to be for our kids and and and constantly a pull from our budget and and and how that affecting our kids in seating and kept affecting our programs and teachers and hiring um i think that we really need as a district as a board to take a a more prominent stand on uh legally to stop this charter school and and support a cap

149here in western new york and the city of buffalo and um and i think that cap has been over overreach i know that is like a consider a soft cap from my time in albany uh they call it a soft cap but the soft cap is really um ripping our district apart and um and i appreciate larry writing this and and and i guess what i have the uh mr uh scott is that a saturation or over saturation that last paragraph because when when i look at what the original statue if i remember right we never were supposed to be more than uh 15 or 16 schools that were supposed to be charter um and now we're at the point where we are oversaturated with charters and uh uh i'm being told that a lot

150of parents have moved their children into charters uh because they are open but as we're seeing uh the reports are coming in that the covet packing these buildings one by one on it all we need is to have one child lose their life behind adults making uh decisions uh not making prudent decisions and that would be a tragedy for all of us so um if all hands are down no additional hands are up right somebody didn't take their hand down if if that's if all discussion is closed and we move forward with uh going ahead and uh moving forward to uh accept this as a uh item that we will vote mr uh approvement i do need a a a uh second vote or not can most yeah well you'll actually need two votes um

151the first is just to put it on the table and vote on it because it's a late item so we need six okay so we did that we didn't have we had six okay you had six vote for that okay so go ahead move it forward for me nate please thank you okay so when are we making any amendments though and do we have to have a motion to amend it i don't know if it's not substantive if we need to if we're it's just format just format okay mr kuzma yeah that's fine so if there's no objection to it being on the table from any board member then we can move forward to a vote a roll call vote on the resolution and that will require six votes okay so how do you vote

152on the resolution uh dr evans brown yes mr hurd yes miss jay yes miss mccosy yes mr petrucci yes dr rivera yes mr scott yes miss woods yes and president yes thank you resolution passes um uh pope j was kind enough to uh for me i hope do you want to do you want to talk about it uh what you sent what you researched since you've been here and what you discovered yeah well after you mentioned that you thought that the um national anti-bullying prevention month is coming up it actually is starting in october so i sent around an email to the board and to dr cash so and the dr williams who she's uh the person that i've been working the most closely with in the cabinet on the anti-bullying task force initiative so

153i know she's well aware of it and i i just would like to touch base with dr williams to see what if any initiatives are planned for the district and that we can publicize that and make sure that everybody is aware from the board to the parent groups to administration to everyone i i darren you look like you want to say something no oh no no i mean i mean perhaps this is something that's already been addressed and we're just not aware of it so i don't know because it wasn't addressed with me but i'm happy to be involved in any way that is helpful hi board member jay this is dr william hello and we certainly hi i certainly will of course keep you informed i've been working closely with nicole by cena and

154um my win and we are planning um a bunch of robust whether they be virtual or face-to-face um activities for the month of october and i believe for november but we are looking at moving it to november doing some kind of a student forum a student-led forum so we certainly are and we will share with you you know where we are in that process thank you [Music] so thank you we're glad to see that because uh bullying is a big issue and and we want to make sure our children are exposed and educated on that so that's great okay so uh board members uh we do need to uh i'm sorry i have one more item that should be quick um but before i get into that item i just want to close out on

155the resolution um staff are prepared to send this resolution not only to the board of regents um suny but also to our city elected officials our state delegation as well as our federal delegation um and we'll also send it to the conference of big five um the other other item i wanted to just quickly introduce um i said something i think yesterday mr petrucci serves on the i think it's the legislative resolution resolution committee for the new york state school boards association and there's a resolution on there regarding charter schools um and after reading it um it only really addresses the charter school expansion here in new york city and not elsewhere in new york so um there we have an opportunity to submit a late resolution it has to be submitted by friday and

156i'd like to read the resolution that i'd like to have submitted for us to consider voting on right now it's very concise the resolutions are not very comprehensive very concise mr kuzma do i need um a vote to also move this forward you will you should read it first and then before it's put on the table we can take a vote as to whether the board wishes to put it on the table okay so resolved that the new york state school boards association support amending the new york state charter school statute from 1998 specifically the issuance of a charter school to cap charter school student enrollment at 10 of the total school district enrollment for a given year and require new charter school and charter school expansion to be approved by the board of education

157of the district in which the charter school will be located when charter school when charter student enrollment exceeds five percent of the total school district enrollments okay all right so board members you've heard that and i have a motion to bring this to the table as a late item so move by lou petrucci may have a second please second by dr kathy evans brown you like to uh have any comments or talk about it a discussion in regards to this or are you comfortable with moving straight to a vote please advise no one has a comment on it no objection to having it on the table tend to have i'm sorry no objection having it on the table no objections no objection hey everyone's good with that okay so nate next thing we do is

158uh bring it forward uh no one has a conversation on a discussion on it so we're forward with our vote um the initial the resolution that is currently before nisba um i did not have an opportunity to send this proposed resolution by email i just put it together before i came down for the meeting we'll get a copy of it uh we'll have it sent over our secretaries can send it to us by tomorrow no problem okay okay any further discussion or would you like to vote miss madam president i'd like to move forward with the vote how do you vote on the resolution proposed by mr scott dr kathy evans brown dr evans brown that technical difficulties but yes okay no problem i understand uh mr hurd yes ms jay yes i had muted

159before yes yes okay mr cozy yes mr patchucci yes dr rivera yes mr scott yes miss woods yes and president belton common president common yes okay yes resolution passes okay so um so you need a uh before we're going to do our bereavement our list of bereavements and then we are going to move forward and we will go into executive session after that so uh mr petrucci all right thank you uh madam president could we all stand for a moment of silence uh while i read the uh members of the district and related members who have passed away since their last meeting uh yasmin young who served on the cpac committee for more than 20 years and represented the ferry district august 30th tina giordano typist in the transportation department for other apology or donald

160typists at school 18. september 1st eddie clavoon senior father of eddie confluen research aid in the office of federal and state programs and katherine clavun are a food service department september 6 sally ortina lee sally daughter of michelle rodriguez typist spanish speaking in our adult education department let us hang our heads in a moment of silence thank you everyone thank you uh vice president petrucci moving forward need to go into executive session i need um may have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing the discipline of specific district employees her so moved and jennifer mccoozy second thank you uh uh any objections okay thank you all right so we're going to uh come down um a motion to authorize the superintendent first section 75 disciplinary charges against employee g.d and

161appointment of ann ivanko current officer to preside over the case wrapped up we have some unfinished business oh i'm sorry i forgot to vote i'm sorry my bad i'm trying to wrap up people i'm sorry uh mr um when can you take a roll call vote please do you like a roll call though give me one moment yes mr hurd yes miss jay yes miss mccosy yes mr petrucci yes dr rivera is that a yes yes that's mr scott yes miss woods yes and uh president belton cabin okay thank you motion passes okay so uh we can do our unfinished business section now uh there are certain things that board members have asked me to bring up at the table um i'm not sure is dr cass still in the uh on the uh call

162uh uh is available or not no he is not here be excused um has to be excused wants to talk about darren and i guess you're going to uh talk about darren and i guess you're going to have to fill in a gap they want to talk about um the action that was taken as far as a suspend the fall program my impression as of monday that that decision had to be made i uh tuesday i'm finding out now that the decision did not have to be made by tuesday it had to be it could be made by today which would have given this board time to uh and what section six was doing and so uh several board members have concerns about you might sit over there no please means to our student body

163so who wants to start jen do you want to start just for clarification mrs cottman it is our understanding that that information had to be submitted by noon on tuesday so i'm not sure otherwise if you can let us know we can correct it for whoever told you that time did section 6 turn their information in i'm not sure but the districts i believe it was noon on tuesday we were required to provide a decision before section 6 decision that's what you're saying all right what i'm telling you is that we had to provide our decision by noon on tuesday i don't know exactly who did it have to go to darren i don't i don't know i just know we had to submit it but i do know section section six had meetings prior

164to that also okay so who did you submit our decision to and and i don't know because i did not submit it so i don't know who it got submitted to all right uh jennifer are you ready so my concerns with this is beyond just the fact that sports you know may be played may not be played my concern is the relationships that the coaches and the coaches staff have with these students these are mentors on a whole nother level um these you know just you know having daughters who were very close with all their coaches um it was a very integral part part of my um you know my growing up as well coaches stand in mentorship and help guide and motivate and i'm wondering how this affects that relationship i understand without playing

165these sports um and that's a whole nother thing because if we're if we're allowing this on a statewide level and there's certain sports that don't coincide like cross country or sports where you really don't the the issues aren't as prevalent but for me i'm wondering if we're choosing cost of paying coaches and and this supportive staff um over the impact that it has on students a lot of our students don't you know would much rather not participate you have students who use the fact that they play sports and have to keep up a certain average just to come to school that should affect and it's more than anybody would like to think if i don't pull that 85 i can't play basketball i can't play softball i can't play so that's their motivation so to

166me i'm wondering what the support system would be if we take sports out all together do we keep these coaches as mentors are we coming up with some type of agreement where cost is concerned what are we doing as far as that mentorship piece number one and number two um knowing that um you know districts around us might be con may be competing you know what's our narrative what are we telling our our parents and our caregivers and our constituents around why we're not competing with them so well i i do know during the work session last week dr cash gave you the reasonings around that and the recommendation of not having sporks and he also put it in the statement about the safety and welfare for our students i mean like right now we're

167completely remote learning right now you know there are unfortunately cases of covet popping up in other school districts at this point in time so as right now we don't have any fall sports and that was because of what dr cash mentioned last week and the advice of the health advisory council as he explained last week during the work session so i and and this is why i said with the decision that's made today right so i i'm with the fact that we don't and this goes back to my original point if we don't have spot fall sports because of that one of my main reasons for even bringing that up is for the folks who weren't privy to the work session last week i'm glad you brought up what was brought up i'm not trying

168to contradict i'm saying what is our narrative so thank you because that would be the narrative we get correct that the wellness the fact that we have a health advisory committee that helped us along with that this is what i want the public to hear my main concern is that mentorship that peace are we a limit because we don't have false sports are we eliminating that relationship um it was brought to my attention that coaches are not to contact students i don't know if that's rumor or hearsay you know i don't normally play into that but i heard it from multiple folks that coaches are no longer um able to connect with students they're able to have that all that back and forth um and that's and that was no and and dr cash that

169was brought to dr cash's attention today because that rumor was brought to dr cash's attention and i'm not sure i mean as educators that we would ever tell an educator not if you have a relationship with a student you want to see check on that student see how they're doing we always encourage that we have teachers that do that that don't even teach the students anymore when i was a teacher you know one year i taught all freshmen but i also followed them through how's it going how's the family you check on your students and coaches do that you know regardless and so dr cash did look into it there was no directive given that coaches can't contact students that you know to me that doesn't even make sense because it does make sense i'm

170just disagree with you and that's fine i disagree with that but what we always encourage in this district is the relationship between students and adults because we know that many students are looking for adult role models and other adults to fill the gap right and so that's what we do encourage in our district okay so something was said jennifer let me just put this in here because this rumor okay the rumor if three or four people hear it source it's not a rumor okay it's not a rumor it's three people tell you the same thing that they were told then somebody is not communicating something clearly because why would four coaches say the same thing suppose is this not true did they say who they were big on we're big on cleaning things up somebody

171made a mistake in directing those cultures mistake because four of them said the same thing can you tell me who told them that don't do nothing because of you and your women because they'll be punished and you know the game that's being played up you know the bullying that's going on in this district has to stop i'm trying to figure out why would the coach tell the person the same thing i'm not trying to figure out who told you this is right here i'm not trying to kick you over i'm trying you know who they said told them that i don't need to know who the cultures are i believe it came from house is what i'm being i heard i want to put people on the blast okay now and and that was i

172think a cost-saving effort because if they stop or or don't use the system i don't even know the support the name of the support system and reaching out to these people and because they're not going to uh be hiring or put putting the coaches on hiring them this year that that type of relationship should stop and they should stop uh uh working with their students and stop talking with their students and i don't believe that four coaches said the same thing and it didn't happen i'm sorry so can you i just want to clarify thank you darren no i didn't baby go ahead i just want to clarify that that you know that is being considered a rumor that relationships are still to you know if you have a relationship that teachers and coaches should

173still check on these students that was my concern i just want to make sure that that clear for the public um that that is not the case and uh and again when because they're not actually physically coaching um i don't know you know compensation no compensation whatever but i just want to make sure that there's the the protocols in place for them to be able to really not just check in when they feel like it but maybe not a directive but real encouragement from us as a district for folks especially coaches and especially those folks that are working in our music department in our department have relationships to make sure that they check in with their students who count on these you know curriculu extracurriculars what is the plan b in other words that we

174have students that have high needs that have a that have sports has been stripped from them the board last week in our committee meeting was expecting that the superintendent would meet uh the coaches and come back to us with ideas of how the coaches could continue to support students during this period of time and that did not happen from a conversation you and i had earlier concern is is that these are high-risk students that did that the coaches had them easily for two to three hours a day kept them out and off the off the streets out of trouble and now just uh cold turkey in them and not uh even uh providing them with any type of additional support acceptable to me as a board member some sort of mentoring i expect some sort

175of support for those children these are high risk individuals who in most cases sports is what's holding them and keeping them together and but up here to this is that her son is losing has lost interest in coming back to school because that's what you know that's what he was his driving force you know and that's what kept him there so i'm concerned about it and you know what amazes me is how the message and then when it comes back to the board somehow or another it's a rumor but four people don't say the same thing and it's a rumor i'm sorry rumors don't work like that not from four individual people in my book didn't get together and start singing a song together they were told that and i'm concerned about that yes mr

176herd okay from from listening to the conversation it seems that nothing was submitted to the section six or to the new york state high school um athletic association so if something was submitted mr hurd we don't know by home yeah because that's not um my area but i do know that it was submitted prior um uh right after i believe they sent the doctor cash with the press conference or the press release out it was submitted that same day okay so um september 21st is a day that teams can practice across across new york state for for uh fall sports um sports i believe it's football volleyball football march 20 football's not till march 2021 my impact sports aren't till the spring it's very few sports actually very few sports soccer field hockey volleyball lower

177moderate impact sports swimming right okay it look like winter sports is going to start late from november 30th that includes basketball wrestling hockey bowling skiing indoor track cheerleading swimming and diving we are we we have to look at the winter sports also um as we go into this conversation see what's going to happen um down the line if we do reopen schools uh if we find that and by looking through our health advisory council that's that we can have some form of impersonal school uh we need to look at our winner programs also and see what we can do with that i think that um despite narrowing it down um we should always have relationship um parents have relationship with their with their teachers coaches trainers etc and um and that should go through the

178parent to to the teacher with permission or to the coach with permission because um overall you know there has been um coaches who always train the kids they always work with kids you know throughout the summer months throughout the winter months you know they're constantly working with our kids and i believe jennifer has a great point when she says that um that um that relationship need to stay intact you know we can work with relationships and that's what our whole program for um learning is about building those relationships and helping our children out so we should really pursue those goals and also concentrate what's going to happen in the winter goals since the district already decided that this year we're not going to um look into our fall sports programs [Music] okay what are what

179what fall sports actually were canceled the you're talking about football what else soccer soccer cross country country are you saying bps or section six it's new york state um high school school board association and they have the governing body that that delegates to the section six but they're allowing fault low risk false sports right we need clarity on what sports is not going to be allowed and what sports are being allowed and how this reflected to the winter sports regarding see if we're if we're in a position to allow impersonal school to open back up this also affects modified sports programs so what so what questions you want me to follow up on mrs cottman the question do i want you to follow up on i want you to find out why coaches were instructed

180children loose standing is because we're not going to be coaches and that they should not be doing a coach job my understanding was that's what so i want to know what programs or what supports what type of mentoring are we going to do for these children who have relationships with these coaches and we may not be able to bring them on full time but we certainly need to provide some sort of uh hours for them to work with these children and during a given week these children need the guidance of their coaches and i don't think that it's fair not to at least do something virtually with them or have children um meet with them or something i'm just not feeling comfortable with just leaving these young people out there without any uh support and

181of course would work with children that goes without saying they went into the profession to do so but if you are given a directive that you cannot work in a certain function and the fear might have been because of retaliation from the union or whatever which you're not paying them i don't know where it came from but it was expressed okay i want to know when we put a plan in place why we don't have a backup plan why the conversation did not exist that says if we pull these coaches away from these children what is going to be the impact them in their life just for me really is okay thank you very much okay what i have is a list of the fall sports and the winter sports in spring the fall cheerleading

182cross country field hockey football uh golf gymnastics soccer swimming tennis and volleyball are considered our section six fall sports and then as we look into the winter we got basketball bowling cheerleading hockey rifle skiing swimming winter track and wrestling so better there's a lot of um occupation by our inner city youth in all these programs already i would definitely um share those concerns with dr cash also thank you the manhattan project is what else is up for me um that's best self i said uh is part of a initiative to use the green space between all high and the charter school and to put a housing unit there are four that's for recovering of people who are recovering um i have major concerns because uh of what i've been told that is uh anticipated in

183that corridor and i want to make sure that that green space remains for future use all night there is a meeting i am going to go to it it is a a meeting that is going to be held outside at uh 6 p.m at 390 manhattan which is where the location is supposed to be and i have intentions of going there i sent you guys a flyer it talks about uh these this is a transient thing complex from for the people will only be there between six to nine months and that uh there will be a constant flow of uh people who are dealing with uh substance abuse in that vicinity and i'm very concerned about making sure that um district is uh protected and here's what i have thursday september the 17th at 6

184p.m at 3 90 manhattan outside under a tent the manhattan project meeting is tomorrow so i do intend on going to that meeting to learn as much as i can so i can bring it forward but i'm very concerned i've also been told that a 900 unit apartment has been proposed uh for on the other side of bennett high school and so uh i want to find out more about that as well uh lou do you know anything about that has it gone to uh a planning board is it through the zoning or anything i i don't believe it has sharon i i was unaware of anything 900 the ones that we were discussing were smaller and they hadn't been the the only thing i would just say is that there's been a series of

185court decisions that uh pertain to people that have uh substance abuse issues that new york state considers that a medical condition we cannot discriminate against people have medical conditions so oftentimes homes for people that have substance abuse or alcoholism whatever it may be it's it's very difficult for local municipalities place any type of restrictions upon those types of housing situations do understand that there's also a law that says that uh uh uh within 500 feet of a school being dropped yep annelia very familiar okay i'm just is it 500 feet or more it's more it's more for the sla and the distance and how they measure it correct there are a variety of different um regulations uh with respect to where alcohol can be served in relation to a uh to a school or other

186institutions i'm gonna i'm gonna go to this meeting i'm gonna find more about it the uh i am concerned about keeping that green space around uh all high and um especially with this big apartment complex that is being proposed uh in the very near future i think it would be a big mistake to put anything on green space at that at this particular time that's all do that and the hispanic heritage month uh started yesterday sorry i have my hand up hurry um who owns that property i don't know no because i know that i know that we parked on here for the um football games so i'm not i'm not quite sure who owned a property there is a parking lot there and this is not the parking lot it's just the gravel area

187the green space is a large lot between the two between all high and the school is sitting right there on the corner there's a lot of travel where the old nursing home used to be the nursing home years ago there yeah yeah your nursing home okay um uh we i have property over there and we never received any um notice um from the city that there's gonna be um any type of development up there also so i wanna check with the city on that also well the letter there was a letter sent out i'm being told by the community but it had the wrong date they were able to find it mercer was the only street that they believe was given any information about it okay so you're probably right okay all right so the

188hispanic heritage month started yesterday i meant to uh talk about that earlier um september the 15th through october the 15th is uh spanish heritage month and if you go on our website there's a lot of information out there in part of the culturally inclusive efforts of uh the clri and the final thing on my plate um is the um equity resolution just about completed and i'm not not not the policy foundation for nate be forwarding over hopefully within the next day and for the board to take a look at and have your input and things that you want to see put on that uh i did just the administrative piece i did not try to write a policy for our attorney but i do feel that there's a need to do an administrative piece to

189make sure that the directive is clear from the board and i'm asking for that um the superintendent evaluation is due uh lou petrucci is going to be working that piece and you'll be hearing from him in regards to that and the only other thing is uh the um and uh dr revere uh we had talked about the communication um and um will you be able to report on that sooner at a committee meeting or something i'm hoping so i'm waiting to work with staff on on their end of it to talk a little bit about what their needs are and i will pick that up tomorrow get some information we'll move forward with it thank you is there anything else that the board would like to talk about at this point i am i just

190wanted to bring up something so i didn't forget and it's nothing we have to really discuss now but i'm curious and darren maybe we can go over email uh with the saturday academies i'm hearing from folks that when saturday academies begin there's a real you know discussion around how there may not be a lot of folks present and maybe what other services can be offered with them say yes you know in conjunction with the saturday academy how can we utilize that time that money that space um if we do something that's more i don't know that we know we're covered in case a lot of people aren't able to utilize that time people are on virtual all week long for school maybe they don't want to do that on saturday morning like it just you

191know it's been a concern that's been brought to me multiple times like you know i'm not going to be able to physically go there why would i do that you know there's no matter how much i kind of uplift what the saturday academies might bring and try and encourage people to give ideas it's more around what else can they do other than make a sign on on a saturday so i just want to bring that to the table publicly folks know i am addressing it and then we can go back and forth over email and i can update people do you want to reach out to david um russ or do you want staff to reach out to him what are you do you have any ideas of what that would look like jennifer i

192can find out the folks who i have contact the folks who have been contacting me it's now seven people um who have like been bringing this up consistently so i can solicit um suggestions or give it to staff i'm i'm looking for guidance i don't want to overstep my bounds and and um you know try and discuss what that looks like as far as curriculum and things like that but i just wanted to if you have any ideas or if the community has any ideas the beauty of it is is that there are there will be virtual saturday academies and now people aren't bound by geography right so it's not really a having transportation to get their issue anymore you can visit any of the saturday academies because they are virtual and if this one

193is doing something you like you can log on to this one if this one is doing so you can log on to that one so i know they're i'm soliciting ideas also of what families and students are looking for right and i'll be completely honest i feel i'm glad you said that because it makes me feel better about me saying that that was kind of my you know but it's going to be great point you know i mean that was rebutted with i'm online all week long with my kid i don't want to get out on a saturday that was you know more of the conversation so i'm just looking to see whether or not that was something that's come up with these conversations around saturday academy all right and um you know just whether

194or not there's a plan in place i'll dig a little deeper and see what suggestions folks have as people just bringing an issue to me i do try and get folks to give me suggestions but again i didn't want to prolong this meeting i just want to make sure the public heard me say this because multiple people absolutely absolutely we appreciate that on both counts okay well certainly bring ideas forward i'm sure they're receptive okay any other things that needs to be shared at this time i have my hand up yes i'm sorry you have oh two hands up dr uh brown and uh terence hurt um i just basically want to get on a bandwagon about the importance of the coaches being involved with these young people um we can you know we're reimagining

195education it's been here before and so when we look at this when we decide to make decisions you know based on science with the covet in context sports that's one thing but the other thing is how we're going to close that gap with these young people who are at risk they need these wraparound services and to so my opinion along with my colleagues here is we have to reimagine how we're going to keep that carrot um with these young people so when we talk about reimagining that it has to be a way to get it done so we need to talk to these coaches to um brainstorm how that can happen that's my take on it okay uh terence hurt uh no i apologize uh i took my hand down okay thank you all right

196so um i guess um board members if lou does not reach out to you he's a very busy person does reach out to you try to take his calls because um i have to talk to nine board members and come up with um to do um and moving forward with the uh evaluation superintendent's evaluation okay please be mindful of that thank you if nothing else um may i have a motion to an agreement no disagreements we will conclude thank you very much thank you