001now uh covet 19 as well as racism in this country um and so our mantra along with the district's um educational bargain under the direction of dr cash i want us to look at what a community to know that equity is going to be a real focus this year this is the 2021 school year that started yesterday along with little glitches but this is where we are i think uh uh myra i'm our chief technology person hit it caught it right away um and um resolve those those glitches so with that said um who want to go first uh uh ann or fatima and or tanya which one want to go first because i wanted to tie all of this up again dr evans dr cash usually goes first to really um you know highlight
002what will be presented so uh put it over cash first [Music] yeah i just please the colleague staff so that's dr brown that's kind of evans brown is kind of what we do because i've been working with them today to get them ready for you and then i'll just do a brief 30-second introduction and then they'll be ready to go colleagues uh thank you for um asking us to present on this topic this is this is a really important topic here at the beginning of the year and our excellent staff have been working hard to uh prepare for you they only have five short slides so it won't be a long presentation but it is substantive dr fatima morrell will start off with the culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives uh work that is now such
003a staple uh in our curriculum and uh we're very proud of that and then uh ann botticelli will follow with just sort of a highlight won't be information you haven't heard before but what will we focus on across all grade levels uh in the first several weeks of school and then we'll come and conclude this presentation with dr tony williams talking about the social emotional learning curriculum which we know is so so essential for our students uh in these days and times and how we may have some implications for our student code of conduct that we need to consider and some of what that is and of course we'll be bringing you some of those changes and recommendations and subsequent meetings so five slides three expert presenters dr fatima brown will leave dr fatima morel
004will lead sorry for this okay good evening um esteem board members uh superintendent cash um my fellow cabinet uh and community thank you for having having us here and allowing me to talk a little bit about the first weeks of school um the opening the opening curriculum that we are using and what we hope to uh gain in in using um the lessons in the various areas so if we can please have the powerpoint for this is is he on yes mike lucci is there he should be um loading the powerpoint right now there we go my apologies thank you so much please advance live thank you so um with the first with the opening of the first weeks of school we did focus on um there are six major areas that we focus on
005um culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives being one of course social emotional learning um being another technology and remote learning also being one and um health and appropriate uh use of mass and health and safety awareness being another and we also wanted to ensure diagnostic diagnostic assessments and i'll touch on those a little later i'm gonna first specifically focus on the first weeks of school lessons regarding the culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives so some of the um tenets or the major components of these lessons include the black lives matter guiding principles diverse literature explicit vocabulary instruction and writing activities and also strategies and activities within the lessons where there are connections made to self uh diverse perspectives social justice activism and anti-racist practices um i want to thank um uh vice president dr evans brown for
006bringing up the fact that we still are dealing with the twin pandemics of coronavirus as well as systemic racism and not only are we aware of this but our youngest learners are also aware of this and have been keeping up with uh the uh you know the social media uh newspaper and um television reports on everything related to both covet 19 and and on some of the um racism we see in the forms of dehumanizing black and brown people and police brutality so we want to get our uh lens on them where with our young people so we're teaching them from a platform of veracity and not uh they're not just getting a lot of materials that are developmentally inappropriate for them um that you know they it has very slanted views and um are
007very political in nature we want to stay away from that and really teach the best attributes and tenants of all of those all of the um different uh uh components of the first weeks of schools lessons that we created in the culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives so um all of our lessons are development developmentally appropriate and standards aligned and some of the resources that we've used um are also the culturally responsive resources um that we've been using and infusing um all last year and this year so the 1619 project again um we're using that to have a uh alternative lens and a voice around the legacy of enslavement and it's enduring uh racism that is causing some of the outcomes that we're seeing today with mass incarceration and police brutality also looking at the brownie
008stories because we know in our lessons we also want to always center joy and we want to center empathy and that's what both the brownie stories and the black lives matters guiding principles do in fact and of course we continue with inserting and infusing the new jersey amistad curriculum resources which offers over 2 and secondary resource documents that students can do at home um all of these um platforms are digitized platform so our google price platform so um students and parents have access um we continue to build and infuse anti-racist teaching resources and what for a young person does it look and feel like to be an anti-racist how are we empathetic towards people who do not look like us or who may be having um experiencing a different social economic experience because of the
009color of their skin and how how do we have empathy for them and how do we understand um what racism is and how do we stay away from that and we had a awesome opportunity to train about um 3 500 teachers on superintendents conference day of this year um with the professional learning and it was a really positive uh appealing opportunity for many of our teachers and administrators jumped on it was just so great people wanted to be heard and we allowed that they wanted to express their views and um we also allowed that and three hours just wasn't enough time but we got really really really great feedback that you will also be able to see uh we we actually memorialize the chat and um that will on our website very soon those all
010these hair resources can be found on the clri website and i just wanna um mr lucci can you click the link there culturally responsive lessons i just want to give an idea because i know that sometimes when we see things like black lives matter guiding principles we might get a little like oh what is this um you know is this is this teaching for all children um is it is it is it uh biased in any way and i just want to show you how these guiding principles with this lesson um developed at grades seven and eight and how these guiding principles are good for all children and the guiding principles that we are using specifically discuss diversity and loving engagement and restorative justice and collective value um so is that going to open or
011not so um we also uh we also want to well i'm sorry i apologize i couldn't i couldn't see you for one moment um that's okay um mr lucky that's fine if it a little bit that's fine okay so um really um those values and those principles are good for all children and so when we talk about being able to raise voices of black and brown communities that are that have really been historically marginalized in the community and we want to talk about teaching all of our children how to be uh empathetic towards one another how to be to realize we're all part of the human fabric the human race and even where we all come from um as as part of the human race right because we know that the beginning of all humanity
012begins in africa so it really is important that um we center these here voices and that's what we did during these first first weeks of school lessons and then fighting and addition in addition to the um culturally linguistically responsive initiatives lessons we also have the technology more sense because we want to ensure that students understand basic commun computer use uh remote learning um using the schoology platform and real engagement and participation with teachers on the microsoft teams platform and getting what i'm kind of allaying fears and anxiety around technology use because we know that technological platform isn't always the best platform for all learners and all modalities so we want to ease those fears and really give them the con you know the basic computer use exposure so that when we get as the year
013moves on not only are we amplifying these critical 21st century skills but we're also preparing them on this remote environment for the lessons they will have to achieve um and we also um you know can't forget about health and pe in the community the first weeks of schools committee um which included you know my colleagues dr wright miss wilson and um dr williams um participated um we we really did think about the screen time um as was ann botticelli uh how much time are students in front of the computer and what is the research based around screen time and um are they getting you know pe and health and breaks and so on and that's when we really begin to delve into thinking about what uh our synchronous and asynchronous learning looks like but also
014the health and physical education lessons and the mental health breaks in the computer breaks that the young folk would need to be successful so the um typical education lessons do provide that screen time break and the activity does bridge health uh with learning and mental will and mental well-being and the um my name my identity lessons come out of the department of multilingual education and are also culturally responsive uh teaching lessons that support the development of a welcoming and inclusive and respectful learning environment so we really want to not only be for uh anti-racist best practices but um we also really want to create the learning environment of identity development and um showing how important a name is to connect to self um and the empathy that goes into a name and your name is
015beautiful and you are wonderful and we're centering joy and love in all we do and then the social emotional lessons dr williams to get into a little more but just allowing the students to process their emotions and build confidence with success and a year ahead um but giving them that platform on those morning academic circles that can be found inside of the lessons the mindfulness activities that allow the students to take deep breaths and read and think about all the wonderful things that are also happening in these very serious and traumatic mind you're only experiencing and especially our students and our teachers and then looking at diagnostically where our students are because we want to know you know where the reading and math skills are in these first few weeks so that we can gauge
016what interventions are required uh what students already know what can they already do because we know that of them will not need interventions but then there will be some who really do and so we want to be very proactive in that regard as well so those are all the lessons throughout the day that the young our scholars are are getting daily for the first 14 uh is i think he's frozen i think her screen is frozen um i i can move this um this slide through um while we get her because yeah we just actually just lost her but anyway we know that um with the remote learning that actually what we're thinking about is what what do the students experience and what do the teachers um actually experience so participating in whole group class
017uh meeting on teams um also meeting um with with teachers uh students meeting independently um during the office time also um meeting with partners on the schoology platform so there's um that opportunity for the teacher to small group whole group or one-on-one with the with the students on the team's platform as well so we actually have in this remote learning piece we have the two pieces going on um platforms but really here we're streamlining for parents so everything is going through the schoology platform so that parents don't get lost and thrown off by these various guys she back i am i will marry go ahead i didn't get far please okay i apologize i lost my connection um can you hear me yes yes yes that's that was really well done thank you for that
018but i do want you to see if you can get your lesson uh back up so that at the end the board can see that lesson i think that's really important the point you were making to show what the substance of those lessons are going to be like and how they're really about inclusion and equity and and you know not not to just create another way to divide our culture and our society so if you can work to get that back um we'd love to kind of finish with that at the end okay okay i'm going to send that lesson right now via email to mr lucci um and then he can pull that up whenever we are all ready for it mr lucci and mr admir i just emailed you the lesson and we
019can come back to it whenever uh dr brown evans and dr cash and the team are ready there you go perfect thank you you're welcome um so dr morrell did an excellent job of explaining how we're establishing that important foundation in the first few weeks of school because we know that we can't dive right into incident as usual right now with all the trauma that so many of our students have experienced we need to ground them in that social emotional learning and that understanding of self give them some of the basics of the technology that we expect them to be using throughout the year and really make sure our foundations are solid after that foundation has been established i just want to talk a little bit about the student experience moving forward so even now
020during the first weeks the students are experiencing whole class meetings or synchronous instruction through microsoft teams so when a student first goes to school they log into their schoology account and then inside their schoology account they'll find a link to a teams meeting if the instruction during that period is going to be synchronous they'll click on that teams meeting and they'll enter a meeting similar to what we're experiencing through teams with their teacher so their teacher will lead whole class instruction on times during or periods when they might be working asynchronously the teacher has provided work for them in schoology so there might be links to other platforms so perhaps the teacher has given them an assignment in moby max in math or maybe an assignment in for intervention in reading so there'd be a
021link there that they could go to clever and that would take them into the appropriate technology platform or the teacher could have assigned a project she could say you know the three these three students are going to work together um to do some research and and come back to the class and tell us about john lewis or she could assign independent work for students so it would vary depending on the class depending on the grade level but work would be posted for the students in their schoology courses and then while the students are working asynchronously the teacher is also providing office hour time in her office hours the teacher might invite students to participate in small group instruction so she could say u4 students are going to meet me tomorrow at 8 15 and we're
022going to go over the lesson that we just worked on today i want to i want to just clarify a few things for you or she could say i want to pre-teach vocabulary to some of my l's so tomorrow during their asynchronous time and my office hours i'm going to invite four of my students to come and meet with me and i'll pre-teach the vocabulary to front load them for our next lesson she could also have open office time when students can come in and ask questions and get feedback on their work she could respond to family calls at that time so it's going to vary but a student experience would be synchronous instruction through teams so that's whole group instruction with their teacher they would also have asynchronous or independent work or partner work
023and then there would be times when the teacher would ask them to join her in her office hours to do small group instruction to provide one-on-one tutoring or just to answer questions the students might have the teacher experience parallels what the student is experiencing so while the teacher is facilitating that whole group lesson in teams the teacher has assigned work to the students in schoology for them to complete it independently and the teacher is facilitating office hours when a student's schedule says asynchronous time so anytime the students are working independently at simultaneously at the same time that teacher is offering office hours so again during her office hours she might have scheduled one-to-one tutoring for a student she might have scheduled small group instruction for certain students she might be running an open session where
024students can pop in and pop out with questions and get feedback on their work she might be taking that time to respond to student or family calls or answer student emails um so during the course of the office hours one student who's working independently might have had a couple questions they might have emailed those questions to the teacher and gotten a response or they might have gone into the teacher's office hours to get a response over the screen with the teacher so there's a lot of opportunities to provide feedback to students to provide that more intimate small group support that a student could need or that one-on-one tutoring that a student might need next slide thank you i just included a snapshot here of part of a document that we've created for teachers to help
025them as they plan for their synchronous and asynchronous instruction so this is just a small snippet off of the math grades one through five document but we wanted teachers to help understand to help plan and help them understand what elements of their curriculum would be best suited to synchronous instruction over teams and what elements would be better suited to independent work that the students could complete and then what would probably be best suited for small group instruction during the teacher's office hours so this is just an example so in grades one through five there's fluency practice built into the math modules we're suggesting that that fluency practice might be optional work for whole group time if the teacher wants to time the class and see how quickly they can get through an activity or she
026may decide to offer the digital fluency experience from cern during the independent work time for the student so instead of taking class time she may decide her time is better suited doing something else and she would assign the fluency practice for the students to do when they are independent when they are working asynchronously the same with concept development so concept development is the new instruction for math this is the new learning that students will experience so we strongly suggest that that takes place during whole group time when the teacher is delivering it face-to-face with the students then during asynchronous time she can provide reinforcement using zern activities and mini lessons from cern so that it reinforces what she taught when she was with the students in whole group then there might be some students that
027get pulled into a small group period um during the teacher's office hours or during the smt the support math people time or the co-teacher could pull kids into a smaller group to reinforce what the learning of the lesson was there are application problems in our math curriculum some come prior to teaching of the concept development some come after doing the concept development so the math department suggested which type of problem was better suited to whole group synchronous instructions so live with the teacher or which problems were better suited for the students to tackle independently and then come back and maybe discuss them in small group or revisit them the next day so this is just the sample of one of our charts we've done these for every um subject area from cte to world languages
028art music etc um the email the multilingual department has put it together for standalone enl but we thought it would help teachers better prepare their lessons if they had a sense of what elements would work best with the students and then independently of the students so i can send you a sample of that if you'd like to see more but they're also going to be posted on our website now i'm going to actually turn it over to dr williams and she will wrap up for us she's going to talk a bit about the work that her department is doing mike if you want to advance okay good evening i'm going to talk through um a little bit about um some of the work that we have been involved in with respect to social emotional learning
029and how it aligns to the work that we're doing with our code of conduct and updating that um i think that sometimes when um social emotional learning is thought about it's um thought in terms of you know it's easy it's nice it feels good but what is it really and i just want to say that you know the work that we've been engaged in with respect to social emotional learning and thank you dr cash for this summer ensuring that we had time every single friday a nice chunk of time to begin this work because this work is hard work and you know the curriculum that has been developed was developed based on many factors we worked very closely with various departments our curriculum assessment and instruction department our clri department of the health department we
030work closely with ms burton and technology and of course we work very closely with our associates of school leadership so we're expecting some good evidence will come from the curriculum that was developed and we've gotten really good feedback from this summer from the teachers that began this work so currently we began working with the subcommittee to talk about at this point in time it cannot be business as usual this work is real personal our children many of them many of our staff and teachers have experienced grief loss concerns there are questions anxieties sadness that even our littlest learners at four years old hear about whether it's on the news whether they hear about um relatives speaking um if perhaps you know they've seen something over the summer we've had quite um you know a violent
031summer in our city and so our little learners although they're four years old maybe they can't articulate a lot of what you know they're experiencing and feeling but it is impacting them and that goes all the way through uh until 12th grade so i'm really excited about this social emotional learning um curriculum that we developed we also trained um about 3 500 teachers on superintendents conference day and it was very moving because um you know we have the teachers actually go through some healing circle discussions we don't want to leave our teachers out yes you know we know that the curriculum is primarily for the children but many of our staff also need a space that is safe where they can talk about things that they're processing too and we got to do that during
032our um trainings and it was very impactful but basically we are providing about 80 minutes every single day where we're focusing on social emotional learning um and or covid health and you know how do you properly wear a mask why is that necessary it's about more than just you it's larger than just um you wearing your mask properly not sharing masks so we're doing some proactive things so that when our children come back because i'll touch on this when i get to the code of conduct piece they have a firm grasp and understanding of why these things are really important we didn't want the lessons to be such that we are talking to the children this is their time to process and to also talk to us and so the lessons are interactive we make
033sure that they're engaging we have an equity rep and equally equity regulation and so we wanted to make sure that every single lesson was inclusive that children saw themselves in the videos that we're showing we're focusing on five competencies and the five competencies are self management being socially aware looking at building relationships developing self-awareness and then responsible decision making we also knew that for some teachers this was different this is different and so we scripted a lot of um the lesson but we did give space and room for teachers to make it their own but for some um we helped with the language we helped with if they ask a question because when children trust they will open up and they will tell you a lot and didn't want for children to open up and
034say something and for any staff member to feel uncomfortable about how to respond so we provided scripts on how they can respond and where they can go to get support or to refer children to so that they can continue the conversations we've created circle prompts that are developmental we don't use the same circle prompts to to initiate discussions in a pre-k through grade 1 band that we would use for 11th and 12th graders so it's um it's a developmental circle prop piece that we have created um we did a lot of research and we looked for videos that were meaningful but that also aligned to the four cornerstone trainings that dr cash began really a couple of years ago the restorative practice piece trauma informed care cultural and linguistically responsive initiatives and disproportionality so everything
035that we're doing within our social emotional learning framework really centers on those four cornerstone trainings as well as those five competencies that i mentioned in addition to that um we're looking at providing telecoaching and support to teachers that will be ongoing so after this two-week period where we're giving all of this support and all of that we want to keep this going social emotional learning and teaching is just good teaching it's just good teaching and we want to keep it going it may look a little different but certainly we want to keep that going and so we have coaches that will be prepared to support teachers to continue whether they're teaching ela or math or science or technology or home and careers that there will be opportunities and times for them to infuse some of
036the social emotional learning um that um they began at the start of this school year so um we didn't want social emotional learning to feel like it was just one more thing it really is integrated in everything that happens and so we know that the code of conduct drives a lot and um the children that you know oftentimes find themselves receiving out of school suspensions or detentions our children that are experiencing hurt that are experiencing confusion and sometimes the children who need love the most ask for it in the least acceptable ways and so i look at you know the work that we're doing in social emotional learning as a proactive way to mitigate a lot of our children getting caught up in a suspension cycle so for the code of conduct there's a large
037document and then we have a smaller more parent and student friendly document and we've already begun the work of meeting with um stakeholder groups and really kind of delving into it because the reality is that we're in a very different space right now than we were even a year ago and so when we're looking at the code of panda when we're looking at the code of conduct right now code written routine has to show up i think someone has to knew okay covet 19 has to go up um you know we're in a space right now where mask wearing mask um is it could be you know the issue between life and death and so that has to be a part of our code of conduct um students adhering to social distancing that's got to
038show up in the code of conduct the language that's in the code of conduct has to reflect those four cornerstone trainings that i mentioned earlier there has to be discussion about restorative practices trauma informed care what does that look like the language that dr morales spoke of earlier um inclusiveness and equity those pieces have to show up in the code as well as um what happens when it doesn't and disproportionate outcomes that um are the result of um you know if if we're not careful and mindful of you know how discipline is happening so the language in the code of conduct has to be really scrutinized every single sentence every single line matters and so we have to also ensure that we're looking at board of education approved policies we have to look at regulations
039we've got a new equity regulation that we didn't have when we you know updated our code the last time we have a wellness policy we've got an attendance policy we've got a parent and family engagement policy and so we've got a crosswalk what's contained in all of these policies and regulation to make sure that whatever we're putting in this code aligns properly and finally you know the digital appropriateness that we didn't have to think a whole lot about uh when the code was created we do now so we have to talk about issues like you know the draft code and if you are in a remote learning environment what does that need to look like does it look like it would if you were sitting in in school or you know does it look a
040little different we've got to look at digital citizenship and really really look at cyber bullying pieces um being you know um proactive and photographs and and what's appropriate for you to send and not send and protection from viruses um looking at passwords looking at you know um students and personal information and how they protect all of that and again you know some of that is showing up right now in our social emotional learning lessons teaching children about why these things are important so that you know when they're in the code of conduct they'll already have an understanding of what this is why this is so serious why this is so important we have to look at progressive discipline you know there has to be a continuum i think that restorative practices is really hard work
041i think suspending students it's a little easier a student does something and it's easy to say you've got five days for a suspension what is not easy is really doing the hard work and sitting pulling students together to sit together to peel layers to have students take accountability for their actions and then take steps for them to make it right it takes time and it's not easy but we're working on training and um shifting minds and shifting hurts to have that done and if it's in our code of conduct then it will drive some of that happening so that's kind of where we are with respect to the code of conduct i'm very hopeful that we will in the near future because uh we've been meeting with stakeholder groups that include teachers we work with
042union leaders to identify teachers and um administrators we've got members from the security division that are on their parents students we've got some city of buffalo youth services um folk that are on the committee and so i think we've got a good group we've got community partners that are also a part of it and they all have a different lens and so we're working with them to collaborate you know we want to hear all voices at the table and we're working to collaborate but but at the end of the day we have to make sure that the work that's already set foundation is what is framing how we move forward with norco well thank you very much for your time and um i'll turn things back over to dr cash all right colleagues that was
043the end of the presentation the intent wasn't to go over the code of conduct today i just wanted dr williams to tee it up for you uh what some of the concerns or what some of the new implications for the code of conduct uh might be as as we see things emerge at the at the beginning of this school year uh so thank you for the cop to you colleagues for your for your presentation and president common i'll turn it over to you and dr evan brown now for more questions comments and discussions so you heard a very worthwhile discussion um anyone have any questions at this time okay sharon terence's hand was up first i believe and then i don't see hands sorry guys okay in that order um terence unmute okay um great
044presentation guys i i just see that um the instruction with the department of clri has done a wonderful job dr uma morel uh moving forward with the district about um rethinking and reimagining education and what can we do doing this copic to to change some of the things that we talked about things that we believe in and um in a manual education and um it's not too much i want to say i know some of this stuff um actually goes on to the educational support committee meeting so some of the things already have been addressed and um briefly i'll briefly go over that when we um get to the next committee but a wonderful presentation thank you dr ron williams uh for your presentation uh moving forward thank you terence diane dr revere thank you
045very much for the presentation and the overview of what you're doing i also just wanted to say that i appreciate the focus on social emotional learning diagnostic processes and taking it slow as we go into a really unusual environment i just have a couple questions the first is about virtual expectations is that going to be a part of the conversation about the code of conduct as you move forward yes um it act absolutely will um so again we're in a very as you shared very different space right now and um it's causing us to give thought to real serious thought to some of that um so what does what do virtual expectations look like as opposed to face-to-face expectations and so we're having those kinds of conversations with stakeholders and we're doing the research to
046see you know what do best practices say about that um particularly for urban school districts and urban children and and you know some of the experiences that um they are you know having though yes absolutely we will thank you and i have a related one is do you have a sense of a timeline on which you're going to roll out the code of conduct so um and speaking with dr cash you know he wants he is virus set very high we don't want to rush and just you know put something together for the sake of putting something together because it drives so much but we do understand the urgency that's involved in um you know putting together a strategic and well thought out document so you know i can share that you know we're meeting
047frequently and we really are trying to as quickly as we can get this document prepared and then this is my last one thank you for that i understand not wanting to rush and i certainly wouldn't want uh to rush the process in a way that would be counterproductive to our students is there any interim guidance for teachers and for administration about how to handle any kind of issues that might come up between now and the revamping of the code of conduct to reflect our current circumstances so yes um actually uh we we've had a few a couple of um situations and um it really came together kind of organically and uh you know um i've had principals and associates of school leadership contact me and we've worked together to peel layers particularly in the digital
048piece and you know with respect to students engaging in things digitally that um you know could violate the code of conduct and so i've worked i'm working with miss burton's office um to address those things and so it's really like a cross-functional um working group the associates of school leadership the principles for myself and we're addressing as issues come up diane thank you colleagues one thing i wanted to insert here to and and i know others of you may may share this but we have talked about as a team making sure that we can provide an app where behind students they can put whatever sort of background that they want to put behind them while they're in class because one thing to get sensitive very quickly among children is if you're in a group and
049people see your home and your living situation then they get on social gram or social media and start to start cyber bullying and cracking and making comments and so forth so we want to protect students not only their privacy but their their their backgrounds their home uh situations whatever they may be whatever they may be and so there's an application that we uh can make available and i think we're working on that so that students can use those i think it just it makes a world of difference from what i'm reading and learning about across the country on this issue when we're in a remote learning environment so just i only insert that to say because sometimes that triggers behavior then we end up punishing students for behavior maybe we could have done something at
050the outset to to offset uh anyway uh we'll get back to i think maybe a month or two hopefully by the november session will bring you a good advanced draft of the code of conduct thank you for that i i feel really strongly about privacy and synchronous learning because it it can be very problematic as you pointed out it also is difficult for students who have trouble with being on camera and the ways in which that can trigger anxiety for them right so i appreciate the careful thought and just as a board member i encourage you to continue thinking about ways in which to catch students proactively help set up a condition where it's more comfortable for them and also have this web this way in which to catch students who may be struggling early
051on to prevent prevent issues so i appreciate that there's three hands um jennifer followed by hope and then sharon you been discussed about utilizing um this interface and how there may be an increase in students abusing it so we're all aware of um we initially just right before school started that some students were able to hack into our system and send out those uh disgusting emails um were we ever able to determine how that happened and um were there any consequences for that as my first question or myra do you have an answer for that i know you had worked on that so um as far as how it happened i will leave that to myra to see if she her department has been able to determine that but i am working very closely with
052her department um you know we've identified who the students were and you know we want to make it a teachable moment but you know we want to walk in the progressive discipline piece and so for some you know we don't want to jump to the far end of the continuum we do want to kill layers it's going to take a little time because there were many students that were involved in that situation but what we're committed to is following up with every single student and family that was involved and looking at each case individually and using the restorative practice piece where we can to make it a teachable moment for them i mean the reason i bring that up is because i think that that's something that we're probably going to see a lot more
053of um just because we are now all relating to one another predominantly in this forum not just not just with regard to education but with regard to life right so uh you know it's something that has always been on my radar as you know tanja because you and i have worked very closely together on this initiative so my second question was if and how we're going to collaborate with the wonderful minds that we have who helped us you know develop the the policies for the anti-bullying task force and how we bring them in on on this initiative so um this code of conduct stakeholder group i would love to have some of the great minds because i think you're right we've got some experts that serve on that committee and i think that certainly you
054know the expertise that they could lend to looking at the code of conduct and looking at these nuances that we're experiencing now that we weren't a year ago would be really helpful so if you want to reach out to me privately and let me know then what i can do to help facilitate that absolutely yes colleague let's consider that a dude or do now okay so go ahead and follow up on that dr williams thank you thank you for that good good suggestion absolutely uh jen or sharon [Laughter] um i'll go real quick i i just wanted to bring up number one that uh i'm very i'm very i guess excited to have conversations that clri and and what we're doing with that has been bringing to the table it's it's happening more along the
055lines of like just today literally just today what is this that we're going to be talking about whiteness and how we're not going to talk about whiteness and only this in schools now and i should be able to tell my students and my family what i want like these type of hard conversations is what i welcome and i'm just wanting to be sure that um as we're approaching this work because i again i have no issue with having conversations along these lines but as we're approaching this work i would you know instead of just referring folks who bring this to me to like you dr morrell or someone else if we can open up spaces where people can really have these conversations you know just the thought of what we're trying to do in this
056district and in the city and of course everywhere is starting to you know really trigger some people and this this should not be this is just the way it is because this is what it needs to be even though that should be self-explanatory it's you know you have enough fact and data and history to prove what we're doing and why but i really believe that the spaces are necessary to be able to have people really come to the table and and you know put that out there i know we have them but i'm asking if we can do maybe more or if you know as a board member what can i do to help facilitate some of these conversations i don't want you know these folks to feel disrespected for asking but some people they
057trigger me with how they come about with the you know what is this all right you know so i i number one applaud the work that we're doing i applaud you all and take run and help us to help you make sure that this is successful and not just something we're complete we're always world blocking against i can't imagine the the struggles and the barriers that you go through putting this together i didn't know how else to put this i'm sitting here trying to word the question but you know as a board member help me help you as you know someone who has these conversations you know with the social just support that i do and in life in general i would love some pointers so that when i feel triggered i'd be able to
058kind of address these things without also contributing to some of what you know might be something that sparks negativity instead of doing what we're supposed to be doing is promote how great this is that we're bringing history to the table so i i it's deep it's huge we don't have to attack this now but i just want to put that out there publicly that i hear people i want to respect where they're coming from and i also you know i also 150 believe in what we're doing and i'd like to see more of that since it's really kind of key as to where we're going with everything we're doing around equity i think your point is well taken um jennifer and it may be a good point right here for tema to uh to share
059that lesson or some elements of it because i think that would give some of the points to the board that they've been asking for if you get that uh yet yes uh mr lucci thank you dr cash i hear your point um and see your point exactly um mrs mccalzy and we are um focused on bringing um more opportunities for voices to be heard uh it was just like a catharsis when all the teachers were on the platform and they just wanted to get it out and i mean there was laughter there was tears there was you know everything was in there but we were able to talk about it and get it out and that was i think we need more platforms like that and i know we're going to be having parent trainings
060around what we're doing with culturally responsive lessons so that would be another opportunity in addition to our book studies but to share this particular lesson because sometimes language scares us and we don't know like without even looking at it sometimes we can get put off and i just want to talk a little bit about um what some of the clri lessons are about so we wanted to start in grade seven and eight with the story and legacy of you know the consciousness of america uh john lewis and so in all of our lessons we incorporate the bps instructional priorities that all students read all students write all students explain their thinking the title of this lesson um is entitled uh center to louis it's centered toward uh lewis in good trouble um it's less than
061number one for seventh and eighth graders um we start okay um we have the lesson objective um and you know where students are working with partners and groups to discuss concepts of good trouble um and what that means taken from the literature around john lewis and exploring ways that they can make a difference in our society based on the life and work of john lewis some of our essential questions for this lesson is what is good trouble and why is it important in our society how can we cause good trouble in our lives and local community and how can we be agents of change why is it important to stand up for what you believe at and of course we're always developmentally appropriate in new york state standards align so this particular lesson aligns with
062new york state standards as well as new york state english language arts standards as well as new york state social studies standards and um these lessons currently are all being taught by every english teacher in our district um but you know some of the some of the um you know the standards that we're focused on are rolling through now you can keep scrolling there and then we have also two black lives matter guiding principles and for some people may say well you know what is that is that a political statement so slow down please so we're not kind of but these values that are teaching to our children they're good for all children about collect collect value and it means that you know black lives regardless of actual perceived sexual identity gender identity gender expression
063economic status ability disability immigration status and so forth that they matter and why do we do we have to say this because we know our youngest children right our watch intelligent social media and each of the the around the table conversations around racism and how black lives for some people are not mattering and we have a huge of killing um so these principles are really good for all children empathy one's ability to connect with others by building relationships built on mutual trust and understanding diversity celebrating acknowledgement of differences and commonalities across cultures and teachers are responsible for taking one of these principles each day and teaching it as she teaches the lesson or he teaches the lesson so for this particular lesson um i would probably focus on uh restorative justice which is a commitment
064to build a beloved and loving community uh that is sustainable so we also have focused explicit instruction of vocabulary so the um and mind you these lessons were written by teachers for teachers in the buffalo public schools and so i want to give a big shout out to jason hall and uh danny woods uh but senator congressman um embodied um and there would be lessons around um the teachers would it would teach that explicitly sometimes we you use the frayer model or foursquare model to teach the vocabulary in launching we would launch with an academic circle and this is where the social emotional learning piece comes from because not only in that circle are we going to teach about john lewis and talk about a quote that we're going to focus on but this is
065also an opportunity for check-in with kids how are you doing what's going on for you today everything good and all of this is on a digital platform um so this is just the launch and then that launch um you will see in attachment a he has this quote get out there and push and stand up and speak out and get in the way the same way that my generation got in the way get in good trouble keep rolling and so students would students would be able to respond to that quote in addition to and have academic talk in addition to their their their checking in for the day so here goes some discussion questions give one word that you associate with this quote senator john lewis introduces the idea of getting into good trouble necessary
066trouble what does this mean to you how do you relate to this uh give an example of what you would consider good trouble as we discussed in class and then note for the teacher you know discuss good trouble and then we have always text and in this particular lesson we have text for the various lexile levels so if uh in the reading dance so we we understand we have our multilingual learners um who are um who need linguistic support so we have text at varying lexical levels and we know we have some of our uh students uh you know regular students who just need intervention with some of the um language in the literature that we are offering um so procedurally you can keep strolling please you can you can scroll a little more thank
067you and so procedurally you know we would have students first read it silently and then turn and talk with a partner highlight keywords and phrases of course they could always highlight the vocabulary because all the vocabulary we chose in the prior uh prior strategy we it's actually in the reading um and they bump into that vocabulary and then they can talk and highlight those words turn and talk to a partner what do you think is the main idea of the reading what is good trouble according to senator lewis what helps senator lewis succeed you can go down um quite a bit to um in what yeah go to procedural four and what we do we give each step by step so teachers don't have to um you know grapple with uh teaching concepts that they've
068not been really uh you know accustomed to teaching and so we want to make sure that everything has a step-by-step uh strategy and procedure that the students should the teachers can do with the students and for our closure piece um teachers will ask students what they know about social media outlets and then we have a twitter piece because we're being this is seven eighth grade uh relevant with the kids and now their day and age and their time taylor and teacher will discuss how social media is used to cause good trouble in our society and the teacher will then ask students to write their own tweets so this would be their writing piece they would think about strategies let's go down please for differentiation teachers can use cognates to help elves with comprehension and and
069and um when apple cabal so using eff with effects communicare to communicate investigar using uh words that students would know in their own language already and for our multilingual learners of course we break down sentence starters that teachers can make and use and then we have a space for our special education teachers to include their part and what they would add to the lesson and we do have the lesson down all by these lexile levels on the technology piece we want to all teachers to ensure that one-to-one devices and they also need to be able to have those technology lessons we talked about daily so that they're accustomed to the technology if you can scroll more there's and keep going there's an opportunity for a teacher to reflect on the lesson prior to the lesson
070and his or her reflexes after the lesson and if you go all the way down to attachment d there's attachment a that's the first quote they looked at the academic circle here's in this here's the reading for lexile uh higher level readers down please the same reading at a different lexile level for those requiring intervention an attachment c and another lexile level and then down at attachment d this is the closure piece that's the higher lexile level last last slot last page please i'm sorry roll on down talking about the great john lewis and i would even say as the next step with this lesson we will be uh doing project-based learning with the students where they do a real deep dive into uh the work of the big six uh civil rights uh movement
071leaders the other ones that were with dr king besides uh john lewis uh could you go on down please a little more it's almost at the end those were all the readings and then this piece actually but um let's go part of the reading that you can just please all the way to the bottom an attachment okay right there up a little bit just move it okay this is the closure for the kids because as they talked about how social media can be used as uh to make good trouble so part of it would they would we would uh review one of john lewis's tweets which is right above this oh no it's right here he wrote thousands of protests 45 arrests 33 years of congress sometimes caused for a little trouble john lewis wrote
072that on may 11th and down and then we say to the student now your turn write your own tweet your own tweet your name you know the username you would want to use the date and then you write your own tweet uh that shows that you're starting good trouble [Music] this i'm sorry thank you so much dr morrell uh it reminds me of an example about a month ago the young lady uh 15 years old caucasian i think it was in georgia she took a picture of a crowd her peers in the hallway and the last thing she said to the reporter was i was in good trouble i was like and those children got sick too in that school there was a there was a spread of that virus in that building yes and
073he may have saved lives by causing good trouble yeah absolutely uh thank you thank you so much dr uh morale that was wonderful but i want to i want to say kudos to you kudos to you and your staff and dr cash for this work uh this is huge i am thinking of uh those who are not with us i'm thinking of the joseph murray's the bill bennett the helena lees uh who were um people who made sure that we received an education in uh african-american history and i'm also thinking of mother uh eva doyle who us uh really has been an advocate of this and one of the things i've always cautioned our community to understand is that the work we're doing here is equivalent to eggs we are building a solid foundation here
074that will not erode so before when we were we were using what we had we were able to do dittos and and our flyers and stuff now we're at the point where we're really doing this my question is how how are we guaranteeing that the administrators are using these tools because um i have had conversations with people over the summer who are saying that they have not been exposed to um the uh culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and things like that through their their principles and things how are we holding them accountable you have great work that and better telly has done tanja williams has done dr fatima morel how dr cash are we ensuring that this work is being for to our children i mean it's one thing to have it out there it's
075another thing to put it in practice how are we monitoring that i guess question i'm asking yeah it's a great question and what what i do know is this is not an all done in a week or two this is sort of a cycling process that we're using colleagues starting at different grade levels different populations of employees so fatima i know you've been leading it um you could at least start with the response my expectation my charge has been that all principles all assistant principals uh all teachers teacher assistants uh parents whenever we can uh be trained in the in these curricular processes and then and then of course that they teach it but sharon's question is the right one from our lips to their ears how does it get into the heads of our
076students i think that's really what what our question is so say a little bit about what we're doing systemically over time to uh to get all of this work across to our seven thousand plus staff well um we're actually through the great efforts of the office of uh staff development we're actually on our uh second wave of training um all the teachers and culturally and linguistically responsive practices um you know so they had it at least two doses already now we're going into year four and we're looking at two additional doses um for training um i think and we also through our administrators we also um have our uh culturally responsive education trainings monthly we meet five times a month with every building principal um in our district one of the things that we um
077we we did uh uh ann and dr wright and uh mr samado when he was here we sat down um together and developed um the current um evaluation instructional evaluation and support tool we uh inserted culturally and linguistically responsive practice so that we could monitor the level of cultural responsiveness and linguistic responsiveness in classrooms and materials and instruction and environment when we do our classroom walkthroughs so that work uh really is already embedded but um you know with covet a lot of things kind of um got derailed but we're ready to get back you know into the swing of getting into classrooms as soon as we get our kids back in the classrooms and getting um and getting into monitoring these uh these practices but um it's going to it can't be you know two
078trainings a year so uh as miss mccosy said um we have to have more opportunities too for the courageous conversations and letting um our our teachers and our administrators know what is available because one of the things that we did find with this superintendent's conference by training a lot of many of our teachers wanted to know well where is where where how do i get access to to this or that and we're like this stuff has been here uh so i think it's it's like the amazon that like it has been here and um it just 1619 has been here um so um they wanted to know so i think um sometimes we forget that we have access to resources already and i think we just need to continue to have those opportunities for professional
079learning and um awareness and building you know building the the platforms like on our websites letting teachers know letting principals know um and working continuing to work collaboratively with the office of school leadership and fatima you also you also made a point to make sure that we got the clri uh work embedded in each school's school improvement plan yes that's that's really important to know because school improvement plans are required by the state and they are and you each principal's team has to say okay how are we going to reach our achievement goals and you and your team along with the asls and they made a commitment to put a plan as part of that school improvement plan a cer live plan so that asks that also answers miss copman's question well i i just
080want to say you've done great work you're just doing phenomenal work and this i want to give you a shout out this summer for that book that book about that punished book i feel that it's mandatory reading for everyone in education enforcement the extra work you're doing um i don't know how you i mean the work it's just be happy i'm really happy tonight about the student achievement um agenda and the work that we're showing uh uh if there's any doubt that our administrators are on top of it this is your proof today sit back and look and uh nip it in the bud because they are doing great work in here and i appreciate each and every one of you thank you thank you and i just want to shout out toyah wilson for
081recommending that book this summer that we have implemented i want our children to read that book so can we talk about maybe a book club for our kids dr cash an area that i want to talk about this year we haven't had a chance to discuss it is our uh young people and their community credits i'm not quite sure what it's called but i call it community credits and uh in which they need 30 to graduate and so is it possible that we can include reading books relative books and that to try to give them some credits for that as well i'd like to have that conversation because we're in a virtual learning situation and if our children can read books and that book punished is mandatory reading for everyone who wants to work in
082an inner city school just absolutely thank you so much about that i understand i have to start with uh woody uh bradley brandy randy have to start with him in regards to that conversation or something about the state the credits for our kids that graduate yeah and fatima i i know you because you've got a lot of traits like me you get impatient sometimes but that teacher that was asking you about well where are these resources and you said they've been here they've been here it could have been a new teacher remember we got a lot of new teachers this year so we will give them the benefit of the doubt they didn't know well we'll give them the benefit of the dialogue you're probably right on dr cash yeah you're probably right i missed
083that one all right now i know kim hernandez has been here a long time uh president cottman so i do want to try to transition to her as uh as soon as we can okay there's two last questions one from paula if you could you know minimize it as well as terence and that will you know end this particular session all right it's my uh i want to commend a fatima and the staff for this wonderful program it is absolutely critical the community is well aware of it they are very supportive of it as well as the board is very supportive of it because in this time when our nation is being so divided that you are building understanding that uh will unify this nation may save this nation and you're building the leaders of
084the future so my question is what do you have adequate resources for this important work and what do you what else do you need to grow this work because it is just critical to survivor of our community our nation and the self-respect and esteem of all students commend you but i'd like to know what you need yeah well i would like to um i mean there are a lot of needs there are great needs but i i haven't had an opportunity uh to really sit down with our chief here uh to kind of talk about those so i would like to um i mean you know with everything that um went on so i haven't had an opportunity to speak to uh dr cash about those so i would like to get back to him
085first before i make a statement like that i'm sorry your efforts are important and we know we need to grow these efforts and the community is anticipating that yes thank you so much for your support miss blends okay and then lastly on this issue is parents heard first i'd like to say uh thank you um dr fatima morale for all the work have you done and i just want to personally thank you quick you uh dr morales and um daphne bell have done a lot of work and working um with myself and my son and my son uh he has improved greatly um over the last year and working within your program and i can see the growth in him and other other children as i'm listening to um as he speaks and i know
086the board knows the specifics of it that they talk to um leaders and students all over the state so you have somebody from albany's new york city it'll be somebody from um kids from rochester and it's just give them the input and encouragement to move forward learn more about history and um and being a role model and guide the others and i can see the growth in them i just want to thank you so much and this is punished everybody talking about uh rios is the author and it's an excellent read i'm gonna be honest i got the three quarters of the book when life got real busy with the coding and everything and i am i am going to finish it and dr kaz for um pushing this um program through the clri department
087and i'd like to thank you guys so much and um anything that we can do to help just please um don't hesitate thank you thank you mr hurt and and it's such a joy working with your son and reading any uh reading one chapter of that book is powerful so keep going thank you yes thank you we'll shift to our cpap department good evening colleagues as dr cash told you my name is kim hernandez and i am the chairperson for cpac and cpac as you see stands for special education parent advisory committee i just wanted to thank you for allowing me just to go over give you an overview of what cpac is all about next slide please some of the responsibilities of cpac is to direct parents to appropriate personnel many times it is
088kim hosher sometimes it's the coordinator of parent services vanessa carrera other times it's not it's not even a special education department it can be um miss daniels who is placement and registration so we try to direct parents to appropriate personnel to when problems arise we also identify major problem areas and seek to uh remedy it by working with the district we have input on communication to and from parents if they're having problems and it's hard for them to communicate we take it to the source which again is usually kim hosher or vanessa guerrero we provide assistance to the staff and board of education members where needed and when we request it we provide support to parents grandparents foster parents of students with special needs when problems arise we receive and provide training and education of
089families of children with special needs next slide please camera are we supposed to be seeing the slide yes you can't see them maybe okay it's probably me it's me sorry i know you're fine as members our members are parents foster parents guardians of children with special needs receiving services and special education programs of buffalo public schools this includes families who have a 504 and an iep board of education named liaison first package here this year dr ann rivera was appointed to that role we we meet monthly at different schools sites from september through june and provide the board of ed with minutes of the meetings during closure meeting during closure meetings will be held virtually we collaborate with local parent groups community school parent network of western new york say yes parent liaison student support
090services and medical facility next slide please and excuse me um you guys have to be quiet please thank you some of the activities are first of all as members of cpac we represent the whole district um locations of cpac meetings will be virtual in 2020 21 school year until we go back in person and meetings will be held alternately in the morning and evenings to accommodate family schedules so one month we may have it at 5 30 in the evening and the next month we may have it at 9 30 in the morning we active we have active participation and collaboration in cpac of cpac members on all btb buffalo public school reopening committees to help voice the needs of parents and students we have identified the need to update cpac bylaws for the new
091school year the last revision was in 1995. initially bylaws were approved in 1992 looking to complete the first two months of the school year so right now we're looking at our bylaws and let me make a correction the last revision was in 2015 not 1995. we look to continue to support and communicate with the board of ed and attend committee meetings we would also like to recommend a joint orientation on special ed education for the board of education and cpac members cpac will continue to support the community school academy virtually in collaboration with parent network of western new york and parent liaisons we actively participate in parent congress meetings and activities such as the parent summit next slide please plan for 2020 would be to continue collaboration with this federal special education department we will
092have monthly meetings which are scheduled with the division of special education to continue to communicate and share updates we will continue participation in the bps reopening committees and we will have training with cpac and the community on mobile cpac collaboration with parent network will also offer multiple training opportunities including parent number training which we have on studying this september all trainings will be available to both cpac parent representation as well as any parent caregiver in the community that is interested next slide please we are trying to reach our parents currently cpac is using virtual platform that gives parents the ability to participate via computer or phone to help increase participation in monthly meetings with this virtual we've been um having parents that we never had before some people um have problems with computers so they
093call the cpac members on the phone and they listen to the virtual meeting that way cpac will continue to maximize outreach efforts in our community to reach all families who have children with special needs so last year we started going to saturday academies we just wanted people to know who cpac was and that we were out there to help families with kids with special needs cpac continues to partner with parent network of western new york to provide parents with guidance and education on how to effectively participate in their children's special education program throughout to continue throughout the continued closure of schools we created a facebook workplace and maybe in the future we might even have just a regular cpac facebook page this is to help members collaborate and work on cpac goals we continue to
094partnership with the division of special ed office of parent and family engagement to promote surveys communication and education to parents and caregivers next slide please so t cpac's vision cpac is committed to buffalo public schools and the board of education to help to work collaboratively to help benefit the needs of students with disabilities cpac rex recognizes the complexities of these times and we wish to continue to work i'm sorry continue the work that has already been initiated cpac will work with all stakeholders to represent the diverse needs of our community and ensure all voices can be heard and accounted for thank you for allowing me to give you an overview of what cpac is all about thank you kim uh do we have any questions i don't see okay sharon president cotman q uh kim
095hernandez epic leader my question is simple um in the past um uh cpac i uh has stated that they are that their voice is not always heard when decisions are being made by by the district and i want to make sure that that process is improving because i am committed to not uh signing or of uh or voting positive or for something that you guys have not had a saying that you feel that you should have had a say in i feel this is necessary in order to maintain the um integrity of this group as well as to maintain uh make sure that they're respected and there have been a couple of times that i've heard from cpac members that we weren't included in on that decision and i want to make sure that staff
096understands that it's very important that uh our cpac members feel respected and and that's you know what it's just a statement i don't necessarily require an answer but i do i do need to know would be a requirement uh for you um i would think when they're changing something uh fundamentally or structurally with an impacting your uh our students with special needs so i just want that to be clear that it you know it cannot continue the way our cpac people do not feel that they're included in the process i'm just not for approving that and i think our board members would agree with me on that that you have a voice um in some of the decisions that you feel need to but with that said what i am very concerned about is that
097it is cpac's voice and not the voice of other other parent groups uh leading the charge make sure that when it's when the cpac stands up that cpac is standing up representing their membership based on a conversation that they have had with their membership and not part of just supporting other parents because you say in this last sentence cpac will work with all stakeholders to represent the diverse needs of our community and ensure all voices can be heard and accounted for at a cpac that's an admirable um cause or a goal but i think in so in some of these times sometimes that cpac has been manipulated or part of a manipulation that i don't necessarily know if it applies to them but to other people who are in the process of of of moving
098their own personal agendas versus what your group wants to so what i'm saying to you uh mrs hernandez is that we are i am interested the board is interested in supporting you we just need to make sure that we are supporting the cpac's vision things not other uh groups visions of what's going on and that you are that we want you to be your voice to be heard but we do not want to hear their voices we want to hear cpac's voices you understand what i'm saying i do thank you thank you thank you there's a couple questions i'm going to start with because i can't see the hands wet raised so i'm going to start in the boardroom with lou followed by larry scott and then i'm going to move up here uh thank
099you uh very much dr evans brown uh uh miss hernandez thank you very much for all the work that you do i know that you've been dedicated for as long as i can remember to the cpac cause we truly appreciate all of your efforts you've really made a difference in lives of so many students in the buffalo public schools along the lines and what's happening currently i'm wondering what you're hearing from parents regarding remote learning with with the cpac population of students i know that's one of the big question or one of the big comments i keep hearing from parents i'm wondering what you hearing among parents or volunteers at cpac so i i've heard many things as as you probably know yesterday i got a lot of phone calls texas about the technology and
100i only had one phone call today so um things are definitely looking up in that area um families some of them feel like they weren't heard as far as they need in-person uh learning and i know it's hard i know it's difficult i know we're in covet but there are so many people whose kids may have uh better behaviors if they were in a structured program in school there are um you know people who have to work there are families who had to quit their jobs to take care of their kids um it's hard to find day cares in places who will take care of kids who have some disabilities they can't handle the disabilities they may not be able to handle their behaviors um i've gotten calls that i don't have laptops and so
101they can't do the work um you know some of the some of the families their kids are struggling readers so they need some kind of device that may help read to them some kids are used to their aids helping them as opposed to their parents i know i'm not a teacher i do my best but i work full time too and um you know so i try to help my kids but it's a struggle so in in any area that people without disabilities are probably having issues um it's probably 10 times more with someone who may have a disability so thank you it's one to go would like to go back to school gotcha thank you i appreciate the comments thank you mr scott you have any questions thank you dr rivera anything you want
102to add no other than i look forward to continuing to be cpac's liaison and working with them to connect and support the community of students with special needs and their families thank you uh miss makuza kuzi thomas no um questions right now i do want to just put on your radar mr fernandez and i'd like to have a conversation with you and maybe um miss botticelli or folks around how we can better schedule our therapies for our students and figure out ways where they're not taking away from the classes that they're in um you know math or science or whatever how we can figure all that out um and just want to know if that's an issue for many parents as well i know it's it's been one for myself but i want to see
103if that's also an issue for others and what we're doing around that i'm available anytime um as far as my own children um my children are in high school and they they kind of would like me to discontinue some of the therapy because it's embarrassing um i have a lot of families who like the therapy to be in person because it's hard to get the true benefit of the therapy uh via you know virtually so yeah family struggling i could address it a little bit too we have directed our therapists to really look at the schedules to make sure that students aren't being pulled from the core subject areas there are times if they're students that receive multiple therapies that it's very difficult to avoid pulling them out of some of their core subjects but
104for the most part they're trying not to do that as far as in-person surveys or therapies go we're in the process right now and have been for a few weeks now of getting parent input as to whether they would like in-person therapy or not tomorrow we're sending home a mailing with a link to the survey to the approximately 3 500 families who have not yet responded are actually 3 000 families we've had about 1500 families respond to the survey um currently as my last check which was late this afternoon we had about uh 60 percent of the families that responded said that they want teletherapy and do not want their children to have in-person therapies and 40 percent do want in person so we're looking at a plan of how that may be possible um
105parents who are opting for in person don't necessarily want the district to transport their students they're not loving the idea of their student going on a bus but we're asking those questions and we are hoping to get a much greater response after this mailing that should be going home on friday afternoon miss holster i'm sorry one more question when you decide um for those who have multiple therapies when you decide for those children what classes you know is best for them to be taken out of saying from sixth grade down can you go with like okay we leave math alone or is it for like as an individual in particular because i think that's where my struggle is because um you know having math and social studies and ela with the schedule the way it
106is there's almost no time for three therapies to be put in without you know taking away from somewhere i understand teachers understand but i'd like to know the process do you look at you know a particular child and say this is the the subject they're struggling in so we will not pull them out of that subject sure so we've advised the therapist to talk we've advised the therapist to talk to the teachers to see so our first thought is not to pull out a core if at all possible we'd rather that we were pulling them um maybe during a independent period or some asynchronous instruction where the student was working independently so we're really trying to avoid any synchronous times or on core subject areas but in the event that that has to happen the
107therapist should be talking to the teacher to say really what is the best time to pull them out because yes you're right for some for some students it really depends on what their where their areas of strength or um weaknesses thank you so much thank you um mr hurd no i'm sorry pump miss woods thank you to both kim's for all the work you do for this very important segment of our population i also been hearing that they want to come in person and get receive the therapies is more effective so you articulated their con the concerns of this group very well thank you both thank you this was on mr heard yes um thank you mr hernandez for the work that you do i i do have one question though um your your um
108your students students with therapy um what type of therapy programs are you working with maybe if it's peer-to-peer therapy or sports therapy are there any programs like that that you're working with right now you're asking me i'm sorry or kill her uh clamor holster who did this i personally don't work with any therapist i mean in my in my work that i do outside of cpac i advise families of different things out in the community but those things are mostly when we weren't um virtual um i direct a lot of families to compare for different things and different issues which can help them with their therapy questions i direct them to um beyond boundaries you know places like that but uh i don't during this time you know i have to talk to kim hosher
109and just see you know what's best for our families what's out there virtually you know are the companies willing to go meet the families because i don't know what kind of contract they're under either interesting you can agree only was because um you have uh like a breaking barriers program here and and my brother's keeper to where we we talk with youth and youth groups you know they mentor one another and they uplift one another i like to know is any programs like that you was working with or any type of sports program you know that sports is a it's used to build morale within students and and belief within one in one student himself or herself so um if anything like that that you know of or that was consistent with your program no
110i would i would love i think peer to peer is so important and i know my own kids have used it when they were younger but i don't really know of any i have had the presentation that you're speaking of beyond boundaries and it was really a nice program for kids but i wish we had more of those kind of programs dude thank you thank you so much you're welcome thank you so that really concludes this portion of uh student achievement can i ask one more question please this is burning in my mind president cotman sorry so please tell me um if we know that 40 of the parents currently already have admitted or have have agreed that they want the therapy to be um one-on-one in person is it is there a possibility of
111changing the therapist hours to accommodate the the families so right now the children don't miss study is what i'm saying yeah so um our speech therapists are buffalo school employees they are working under the btf contract so they have those hours contractually otm pt is offered through a contract um through apot which is associated physical and occupational therapy um at the current time we've only ever asked them to do school hours but that is certainly something we could um look into and is it possible to ask for mou uh the speech therapist so that x amount of days a week they can um accommodate these children because even before um that i was on a statewide conversation about this and actually it was a legal conversation as i started recalling it it's an issue associated
112uh a big issue associated with liability and for our children if the need is expressed i believe that we are under obligation according to what we were told in this law seminar um that was held by new york state school board association that we have to accommodate them so i really want us to look into that because i don't want any surprises down the road and new york state association can provide you with any information you need on that but i really am concerned about the liability that's exposed to us not um meeting the needs of these children in a proper way okay thank you thank you may i say something please yes i'm sorry um [Music] cpac at first we've been at the table in the reopening committees but a big ask of many
113of our families is that we work hard to try to get our families in school so i think some members have felt um that we didn't really talk about getting in school i mean i know we talked about it but there there's not a a clear plan that's going to keep our kids safe and allow them to go to school so that's part of what i was speaking on out as a cpac member and on the therapy side there's a place called sensational fun so i'm changing the subject sensational fun and also community health workers has peer to peer i believe okay thank you all right well thank you so much uh that does conclude the student achievement portion of this meeting thank you yes president cotman okay we'll turn it over now to uh
114educational support mr heard so it's 7 12 so let's try to make sure we don't do a lot of editorializing today and let's try to get as much as we can done in within an hour okay thank you well everyone thank you for um the educational support committee meeting has begun um to start it off uh i know that um we have a lot of organizations that come and help with the city of buffalo and buffalo public schools and partner with us but i would just like to say um a special thanks to my old comrades um and um to the buffalo bills and jerry jerry hughes with the announcement that um came and helped with over 4500 um devices that we need in the buffalo public school district so i'd like to say thank
115you to um their efforts and to help in our district looking to see our needs and um and the pegula family and on jerry hughes for being a vocal person for help establishing this um so my personal settlements go out to you once again and um thanks to buffalo bills for helping out the buffalo public schools [Music] thank you okay now um the beginning of education support committee is the instructional remote learning presentation and um i'm going to um the reason why we thought this was necessary was because uh um we have a lot of tools that parents need to understand about going forward how to do remote learning and we know that's been an issue for some parents here in our district and across the country about remote learning how to utilize the material
116how to access it so um what we have today right now is a couple of students here in the buffalo public school district and i'm gonna let the staff member introduce them but i'm glad to have you guys today to come and um give us adults and other parents and instruction on how to access the remote learning tool and also how to um also how to um access your your school work how to um go back and review videos um about classwork that a child may have missed and also how to look at the grades and see where the child is at so i'd like to thank you guys for coming on today and giving us this display so everybody please give me a hand and allow them to introduce itself let me start with
117that please uh because i set it up with my staff uh terence that's how we do that in the committee so i appreciate it um myra burden as you know is our chief technology officers done a terrific job with a compared to other large school districts and scaled back staff so she doesn't have nearly the staff numbers that many large urban school districts have in this important department but he has a lot of great great soldiers and then she's done something very smart very intelligent and begun to train students in helping uh staff and helping teachers and so forth so that just to me is a brilliant idea because students in this technology era are extremely bright they're genius in this area so without further ado if you would introduce your students and tell us
118a little bit about what they pursue thank you dr cash um good evening mr herd and president cottman members of the board um you are in for a delightful treat tonight i'm so proud and elated to introduce to you three of our superstar um participants of our student technology we have sahara sabiha and nigel and tonight they are going to provide you an overview of schoology which is our learning management system they're going to show how parents and students should access schoology and then they're going to give you some information on how to connect via teams they have done this presentation i know at least eight to ten times in public sessions for our parents um in the latter part of august we also had them featured in our august 26 instructional technology the live
119community meeting so it's our pleasure for them to be here tonight we appreciate you giving us this opportunity and without further ado i will turn it over to our fabulous students mike if you could launch the presentation good evening everyone my name is sabiha and today we are going to be presenting um introduction to skoji for parents and families today i'll be joined by sahara ali next slide please so what is schoology um so schoology basically is like a learning management system which allows students and teachers to connect and engage digitally next slide please so the purpose of this session will act as an orientation or introduction to schoology from the perspective of a student the topic that we are going to cover through this session will be schoology navigation basic features courses materials and
120communicating with teachers and so on so how do we um how do you actually access schoology to access schoology you need to know the student's username and password which we call it active directory so if you are confused here are some hints you could use the first is a student username will be their 900 number second is all the letters in the password should be capitalized third if you do not know your um if you do not know the username or the password you can contact the teacher or call 716-816-7100 and then you're going to press option one make sure you're like ready to prepare to um provide the date of birth of the student next slide good please everyone my name is sahara and i'll be showing you ways to access schoology next slide
121please there are four ways to log into schoology the first way is by using the school gqr login badge on an ipad the second way is by using the schoology qr login badge on a computer the third way is through clever and the fourth way is by visiting schoology.buffalo schools dot port in the web browser preferably google chrome next slide please you may be wondering what is gold gqr login badges the schoology qr code makes the process of logging into schoology way easier for the student your child's teacher will provide their school gqr code the first way to access schoology is by using the school gqr login badge on an ipad keep in mind this is a great option for students who have trouble remembering or typing in their active directory step 1 find and
122open the schoology app on an ipad step 2 click continue and step 3 is to scan the qr code next slide please the fourth step would be to allow schoology to access your camera by clicking ok once you receive a notification then take a picture of the qr login badge the second way to log into schoology is by using the qr logging badge on a computer the third way is by i mean the first step is to go to google chrome browser and visit apps.oology.org then click scan qr code after you allow schoology to allow spoolies to use their camera by clicking allow once you receive a notification then take a picture shown in the picture below how you can take a picture of the qr code and you'll automatically be logged in the third
123way to log into schoology is through clever keep in mind clever is a one-stop login shop for many of the buffalo public school apps available to your child step one is to visit the student resources page on the bps website then click the clever icon the third step would be it'll ask you if you want to log in with active directory or the clever login badge if your teacher has given you a clever login badge if you chose the active directory credent active directory then log in with your active directory credentials also known as the 900 number if you click the clever login badge allow clever to access your camera by clicking allow and then take a picture of the qr code once you're logged into clevver scroll down to bps app and then find
124the schoology logo click on it and you're automatically logged into schoology the fourth way to access schoology is through schoology.buffaloschools.org the first step would be to go to google chrome or a similar browser visit schoology.buffaloschools.org then log in with your active directory credentials so there are different components of schoology next slide please so here this is an example of the main page of schoology this is what the schoology looks like when you log into it so number one is courses this usually lists all the courses that the student is in right now number two is group groups is usually when the student is part of any clubs or as any members of any group in the school it's going to show in that number three is calendar it shows any assignments or events that are
125coming up soon number four is messages it shows any messages to you from the teachers number five is notification it shows any new activity in your courses for example the teacher has posted new assignments to the student number six is reminders it usually reminds the student of any upcoming assignment number seven is upcoming it usually lists assignments due dates and events that are coming up soon slide please so here in this slide um we are going to talk more in depth of what an upcoming is so first of all you could see that upcoming also shows if there's any events that are coming up for example virtual class meetings after school meetings pep rally etc it also goes for assignments as well if the teacher assigned for example english essay math worksheet and presentation and
126etc it's going to show when is the due date and the time as well hello you anybody hear me yes yes nigel okay thank you um good evening everybody my name is and i'll be presenting this section of of the slide schoology courses schoology schoology courses are just like your everyday classroom however it's online schoology contain things like materials links to websites and virtual meetings it also includes things like discussions you can access your teachers from the members section etc accessing schoology courses on a laptop you see a top bar that says courses groups resources and grades you click on courses and it shows you a brief amount of your courses and if you're on an ipad you click the three lines on the top left corner and if you show your drop down menu
127then click courses and you see a list of all your courses now let's say you can't see all your courses on a laptop well you can just press my courses on the top right corner i let it in blue and to show you all the list of all your courses however it's in alphabetical order schoology course materials materials include things like assignments tests and quizzes worksheets links to websites for example let's say your teacher wants you to watch a tutorial on youtube they'll post it as a link oh it also contains things like virtual class meetings we're using microsoft teams for the 2020 to 2021 school year and i just like your facebook feed or your twitter it's like where all the teachers post an update or when quick announcement let's say a rough draft
128sets you tomorrow morning but you don't have to submit it as an assignment it's just like a reminder members the members section of schoology shows you a list of all the participants in a course or in a group you can message your teacher however you cannot message other students you can message your teacher by clicking the little gear icon on the right hand side next to their name then press send message next slide please and let's say on an ipad and you can't find the gear icon you can just press the profile picture and then and then it show you a box where you can type in your message and please don't forget to create a subject what would let you send anything here are some ways you can join virtual classes using the microsoft
129so this year the students and the teachers are going to be using microsoft teams so microsoft teams is a video conferencing software that all the bps students and staff will use for their virtual class meetings this year next to access virtual class meeting what is going to happen is the teachers are going to provide links to their courses in schoology it's mostly going to be materials or updates and then the students have to click the link to join the classes logging into my logging to microsoft teams meeting using district issued i devices district ipad with teams app if the student opens the teens app before joining a meeting and signing in and they don't know their school email address they can use their 900 number at buffaloschools.org and their district password once they're logged in
130the teams app it will stay logged in students will not normally ever have to open the team's app themselves it will open automatically when they click their class meeting link in schoology if the student has a district laptop with teams app the student will automatically be locked into teams once they sign into their computer students will find their team's meeting link in their schoology courses if the child has a district laptop without the team's app then the student should log into microsoft office 365 and check stay signed in after logging in they will be able to join teams meeting by clicking on their class meeting link in schoology if you're having trouble with microsoft teams here are a few things you can do first reset your device then if you have the app installed on
131your ipad or laptop log into microsoft teams thank you for joining our presentation i hope you enjoyed if you have any questions you can let us know okay wonderful presentation um did anybody have any questions i'm looking for a hands raised this time okay i don't see any hands raised but i'd like to say uh a wonderful presentation i like thank you josh barnes has very happy okay i'm sorry just uh i just i just want to make a quick comment um that i brought my voice to the technology hub on south park ave where the student technology leaders were also assisting uh students and families and exchanging devices and getting set up on those devices and it was just it was very well organized and the students did a phenomenal job um so it's
132your your work and what you're doing what you just presented today is absolutely necessary at this time and certainly appreciated um and i just one thing that i would like us to consider over the past few days i've seen something remarkable on the buffalo parent teacher organization facebook page parent teacher organization facebook page um with teachers and administrators and parents just really supporting each other and helping each other guiding each other and a lot of it is related to technology and you know ms sarah edwards has been very helpful in jumping on and providing parents with some guidance and i'm just wondering if maybe down the road an opportunity for our student technology leaders to have sort of a chat room where parents and other students perhaps can go to um to get direct feedback
133on technology issues that they're experiencing mr scott um that is a wonderful idea uh duly noted and we will definitely take that back and um make it a reality okay eight minutes can i say thank you to our children on behalf of the board thank you young people for your excellence we appreciate you so much thank you okay i think that's the end of the comments so i would like to say um i'll just just like to add that um you guys are doing wonderful work um um dr um burden um i'd like thank you for working with our children especially who um gave us leadership today and been given leadership throughout this um throughout this uh remote learning phase that we're going through i know that um it's a phase and uh it's something
134that we all have to go through and i'll discover a lot of phone calls a lot of emails about parents who don't understand how to utilize the um the equipment the program don't understand what really schoology is or understand how to access it and a lot a lot of the children are actually taking the role you know being their own educators uh as logging in and trying to keep up with work and um trying to stay awake during class time and and you know and uh something we talked about the code of conduct earlier i don't know if you guys heard it or not but we talked about the code of conduct a little bit and uh you know how to use proper adequacy you know while being online and and things like that so
135not going too deep into it but um you guys are leaders um you know to your to your schools to your staff and i can mention you know for the work that you're doing and working with dr ron burton with this so i'll thank you again and i guess we'll um let dr burton finish off with this thank you mr heard um and thank you for the support um i obviously would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the support of dr cash my colleagues my team and everyone that has been supportive and assistive as we've gone through supporting remote with technology um the asls have been tremendous um the principles have been amazing i've been being creative when we've had those technology glitches and and botticelli has been tremendous in um assisting me from
136the instructional site so i thank you for the comments i thank you for the support i thank the board for the support but again i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge my amazing colleagues on my team who are boots on the ground every day and then obviously the support of dr cash thank you and pat yourself on the back too you deserve it yes thank you absolutely i would like to also say uh be patient to the parents because you know we don't learn everything in one day so take your time with learning technology i know it's um it seems like it's throwing on you and that um but we're all in this together and we have enough support here with the district um that that can uh help you too whatever issues
137that you're having and i i did want to speak about some of the support things tonight but uh i don't know um if we can you know we have time at this time but uh be some support mechanism that's made for the parents so that that you don't give up or your children don't give up that um if um actually dr darren brown hall if you can just talk about um the parent receiving on help from the school that someone's gonna be assigned to them from each school yeah and body kelly went over that in detail last week about the family liaisons that we were assigning um all board members asked questions about that we went into detail about that so every school their principals are signing family liaisons and those family liaisons have been
138reaching out um to those families to see if there's any anything they need support um along those lines so that is in place and that um uh has has already started okay and i know that board members are still taking questions about um children k through one by receiving tablets that that's going to be in late september just to hurt that so if that's that process is being worked on right now so by late september do all the questions being asked that those children will receive um packages until until the um tablets are available for them [Music] so we moved down next to an agenda which was uh implications for the code of conduct during the colvic 19. i know dr chandra will touched on that earlier during a student achievement committee meeting but is
139there any other thing that um dr williams would like to add to it um i don't have anything uh additional that i'd like to add but certainly i'm open you know if there are more questions about it i think we'll have more to share next month um after we add more time to me yes okay uh i think one of the important things at the discussions district is um yep hands up okay let's go to uh larry scott just just for clarity um it sounds like the entire code of conduct is being revised so that it's in line with our world our covered world right now we're not considering an addendum that just addresses the the kovid remote learning the mask wearing on social distancing is that am i understanding that correctly actually we are
140looking at the addendum for the november deadline the code of conduct that's a huge huge task that i wouldn't want to say we could do all of that in two months but the addendum certainly uh we would be able to meet that deadline and make sure that it is aligned to everything that i mentioned earlier okay great and i i think that that's actually better because it's it's kind of stands alone that this applies to this this school year with remote learning and when we have in-person um instruction begin it specifically addresses the mask wearing the physical distancing and everything else that is required in this new world right now so thank you that's all i wanted to clarify yeah i i know that uh board member scott was exponential of bringing this to the
141committee and i know that keith frisk i also was working dlg on the code of conduct here with city of buffalo and um and the buffalo public schools to make sure everything is going to be coordinated when we represent so thank you guys for your work and everything that you're doing and um there's any more questions for the code of conduct if there's no more questions we'll move on okay so we move on as we quickly move through the um the brief update for the effect committee and research and then the superintendent will give us recommendations regarding fall sports so superintendent i'll let you go first with your recommendations if you think that order is uh is helpful then i i have no problem with uh sharing with you what i wanted to share with
142you tonight um but i wanted to hear about your report from your committee so that i can see if it you know so we can connect some dots so if you could do that and then i'll be happy to follow okay okay thank you sir well um briefly going over what we went over the the origins of the buffalo public schools approved the motion presented by myself uh with the anonymous vote of eight seated board members to form the athletic aha committee vice president and park district board member lou petrucci and former vice president and west district board member jennifer mccosey both volunteered to join the ad hoc committee um the board member seated as the um board president the mission of the ad hoc committee is review history review the history the current and
143future status of the buffalo public schools athletic department um two to examine the strength and weaknesses of the buffalo public school athletic department and three is to help structure develop and present new visions and goals for the buffalo public school athletic department which will be voted upon by the school board and presented to the district for to administer overall the athletic ad hoc committee is designed to create a collective vision for the future of buffalo public school athletic department that will provide rigorous coaching training mentoring and tutoring um doing uh um for the youth that will result in collegiate and collegiate opportunities for all buffalo public school students the athletically and high committee we are looked at on bylaws and um we looked at uh the creation of it so we wanted to uh create
144a shared vision for the future of the athletics and education to set the direction for the school district to achieve the highest student academic and athletic performances to provide a rigorous accountability for student achievement results to work to develop the budget for the athletic department and and align it to the district resources to improve achievement to supply a healthy school district culture for work learning and athletics also to create a strategic partnership with the community stakeholders to build the district graduation rate collegiate opportunities through continuous improvements of the athletic department help develop and ratify collective bargaining agreement with unions and to maintain a strong ethical and equality standards throughout the district and western new york now the brief overview for the modified force program is that the ad hoc committee reviewed some of the strengths
145and weaknesses of the buffalo public school athletic department while examining the past and present future outlook of our sports department and overwhelmingly we found that the need for a robust modified sports program that will support um inter interscholastic opportunities and competition for the buffalo public schools uh the section six modified sports handbook philosophy philosophy um is extremely important to all students involved at this level and instagram scholastic program have a positive and meaningful productive experience for each student it is also important that all students have a reasonable opportunity to test learn skills in a competitive situation and such competition be equitable as possible to provide a broad and very athletic program as in the possible as an opportunity for competition on an equal basis for all students a desirable program will encourage participation in intramural
146competition at several achievement levels to provide inter-school competition in the modified sports program for the more talented and the large a variety of sports as possible to realize that the individual schools have a have the final responsibility to equalize this competition and must administer the program so that no over-matching of teams or individuals shall be permitted also to conduct the athletic program that is educational objectives shall be achieved so that no single phase of educational program is promoted at the spencer or the equality of important programs to realize that the athletic program must be integrated with all other activities essential to youth including those that may be conducted out of school groups to avoid excessive flows of any students to administer the program in such a manner that participants are properly examined approved equipped insured
147selected classified instructed and supervised so as safe program is possible as possible as is conducted to administer a program so there would be no over emphasis on minimum loss of school time with limited publicity component officiating limit awards as paper certificates and ribbons and efforts to to make and keep a proper perspective to provide a qualified facility leadership that understands the teaching of sports to age groups the objectives of this modified program and emphasis on safety procedures to incorporate the schools in the area providing interschool scholastic administer administrative unit that will achieve the goals and will aid the development of the highest and cordial um inter-school relationships to conduct a program that is properly respected for authority and is achieved and so that all evidence and undesirable athletic mannerisms are avoided to compete within the
148spirit of the rules and give every opponent due credit and respect to win honorably and lose gracefully and also to uh to corporate the sectional athletic council and its efforts to provide strong leadership for all middle school in this section no league or sectional team or individual championships are to be conducted now establishing and revising this program within the buffalo public school is relevant to remain uh compliance with the district equality resolution that was presented by the school board president and approved by the buffalo public school board in 2020 of this year the athletic ad hoc explored the current accredited athletic programs that is governed by the section 6 athletic council which are baseball basketball cross country field hockey football lacrosse soccer softball swimming track and field volleyball and wrestling the athletic act committee also
149filed it necessary to explore a non-accredited athletic and adaptive programs such as bowling music band arts creative drawings journalism boxing cheerleading golf ice skating drill team and tennis these non-accredited programs could become accredited once four sections um four section six districts um request these programs in their district and we have found we have found to have some very friendly and charismatic allies in western new york district who wishes to work together to expand their programs also the buffalo public schools can still offer these programs on the club level which means that we can offer a sport and have an entry league competition within our district the athletic hockey committee also exploring having introduction to athletics which will incorporate coaching training mentoring and tutoring programs starting at the sixth grade in which buffalo public school students
150will start acting as a start taking ap classes in preparation for their collegiate opportunities and the seventh and eighth grade programs will strictly follow the new york state high school athletic association and the section six guidelines also the the modified sports program operate out of every division in the state section programs and that is represented within the section 6. the athletic ad hoc committee board has weekly meetings and have consulted with state and school officials committed research and utilizing the input of literature from coaches community achieving these goals the buffalo public schools will aggressively work to create a junior high to collegiate pipeline that's the junior high tech collegiate pipeline the atletico committee feels that this program is necessary for buffalo public schools to help the student retention collegiate preparatory and advancement and higher academic
151performance goals higher graduation goals community involvement and build morale within our school and our teaching population to help stop the school to prison pipeline that concludes our brief statement what kind of statement uh is there any questions or if you'd like to move forward now dr cash i didn't take questions um i was wondering if uh lou or jennifer could say something about this sometimes jennifer asked me to break things down and make it clear for the public uh i kind of would like that to be done for me so i can understand kind of what was what were you getting at as a committee uh jennifer and lou and what what's the bottom line here what do you what did what what was just said uh sure doctor first and then i'll i'll sum
152it up how's that thank you very much uh jennifer and dr cash uh so basically the ad hoc sports committee is looking at development of programs the continuation and the improvement of existing programs that we have right now with respect to our varsity and jv programs the second phase of this would be to supplement and to improve it as uh first stop would be modified sports programs that we find in many other of the districts of the big five so you start with modified you go to jv you go to varsity each one builds upon the other with the skill set however one of the things that we're looking at is that we did not want this to solely be about um about about being about athletes about what else can we do to broaden
153uh the engagement of other students so we looked at our special needs population see what we could do to get them more involved in sports and athletics we looked to try to see what we could do to develop programs and training for children that may want you may not want to play junior varsity or modify but just may want to have like a six-week course where they do jazzercise or whatever it may be something along those lines but also realizing that oftentimes sports touches upon many other things such as music and production and coordination and and journalism and interviews and putting things out and whether it's the printing up of flyers and planning and coordinating all those things together think about and i'll use terence that mentioned the buffalo bills think about all the things
154that happen when you go to a bills game you go there and there's a flyer and there's a brochure and you see the stuff that's up on the marquee and there's music and there's a coordination of all the different efforts and someone's writing up the press release before and afterwards and the achievements and someone's keeping stats and what the children have achieved and someone's designed t-shirts and someone's designed a hat and then during halftime you had a production for the band or for the music for the dance whatever it may be and that's what we see in a lot of other schools or other districts and we wanted to bring this kind of overarching thing that that saw this that saw athletics maybe as a medium to expand and give opportunities for kids in all
155these different fields to participate to give them the experience hey um during my time at the buffalo public schools i posted all the results the buffalo public or to the buffalo news and we other media regarding the results of football or soccer across country during my time i did the press releases sorry elena during my time i helped to do the brochures you know i helped earn a hat for the team that won the championship those are type things that we're looking at thinking looking athletics through a different lens that incorporates more of our students i see thank you that was helpful jennifer um so yeah what lou said but then also i i want to point out for sure is that that document and and thanks terence you know reading it out loud and
156stuff but everybody kind of look at it it's a little bigger than where where we're at right now right there's a lot of goals in place and there's a lot of things that we're trying to accomplish but the one thing that i know my missioning goal was to be on this was to make sure that the athletic committee that is currently in place the the what's happening with that what is the relation to the athletic committee that this ad hoc committee has that has to be clear right and then um we need to we need to make that happen because the mou in place you can't do much if you don't have the coaches and the coaches are tied to the to you know the mou so that that was you know that's what we
157all decided and you guys correct me if i'm wrong that's like the nitty-gritty right there right so that has to happen before anything that terrance read or anything that we have going on and thinking about you know goes down and um what lou is really correct on is as we started looking forward to you know a modified sports program would be great and it works well in other districts how does it work here everything that lou mentioned became really clear that there's other avenues other than physically being on the field that people can you know that students can get into and can start early on where you don't have to be you know freshman or start at a university level so for me just based on where we've you know where we've been and what
158we've been talking about um i'm you know starting to see that the number one goal in my eyes is that we need to really collaborate with the district again around uh getting this mou signed so that we can start any type of process around athletics that we connect the current athletic committee which is working on just the basics of how we're hiring coaches where we're hiring coaches from you know how we go about it making sure all of us are on the same page with you know the rubrics that were in place the makeup of the committee being of both the btf and the district and how we collaborated so well in such a short period of time so to me the modified sports has to happen needs to happen with the district's idea of
159what they've been doing or what we've already currently had in place is scattered uh we found out you know some schools do it some schools do not make that a universal thing across the board i think we talked about where the community is concerned how do we tie in the efforts that we're trying to make into our current little leagues and uplifting the little leagues so that they are you know when they're starting their t-ball at five and six years old and they're starting to go through that how do they get into these modified programs and really take that succession all the way to the top so um these are what we're touching on but we can't do it in a silo and i'm you know making sure that we connect well with um what
160the district has in place putting a plan together and and again getting that mou signed and again everything that lou had stated we took into you know we took into account that if you mention athletics there's a there's a narrative right you can't just focus on athletics we have to look in the arts and music too well they all kind of come together the way that we're looking at it the way that lou put together and hopefully we can work with that whole aspect of how everything kind of intersects right um it's a lot all at one time and we're literally uncovering all these things as we meet every tuesday for what at least a couple hours um we're meeting and we're talking this through so it is very it's productive but at the same
161time we need structure and clarity and we can't do that if we don't have the connection with the district and we don't get that that mou signed so that's my take on it i'm not saying that i'm not speaking for both the other members but i'm still you know where the athletic committee and the ad hoc committee come together with the district that to me has to be you know and with my logistical mind has been on fire behind trying to figure out where that comes together okay so colleagues that's very helpful and i understand better now um so here's what i like i like the big i like the big vision i think that's a very broad and big vision for the district going forward um and it has a lot of high aspiration
162goals uh which i like i like the emphasis on equity and all the students are participating in something to engage them in physical activity you know it doesn't all have to be competitive sports but just engaging more students i like the idea of a pipeline or what we used to call uh away from like you say from t-ball to varsity if you're interested in in a particular activity or a sport how how does that change look what does it look like what kind of coaching what kind of training are you going to get along that continuum so all of that is is positive in short i would recommend that we start to now since you've kind of sketched out your big vision you have a lot of goals there you have a lot of things
163specific uh strategies and and ideas that now we've got to connect that to what i what i like to call a program of work how do we how do we execute uh the vision and that would have to be uh with staff and so what my goal will be is not to make it go divergent but to make it convergent how do we make it so that it comes together as something that we all uh want to want to focus on it does to me look like a goal up ahead so to speak i mean some of it we can begin to work on um you know this year hopefully but it does look like a little bit of an up ahead uh kind of an approach when you when you consider the crisis that
164we're sort of in right now uh and then trying to get so so the planning part of it can begin uh immediately but the actual you know execution and starting to get that we we're gonna need some time to work to work on that but i do thank you for your work uh your hard work and your your interest for the children i certainly support that now let me let me sort of go to a uh short circuit piece tonight um because i don't i don't i just think it's something we ought to talk about i'm not asking you to vote on anything tonight or to to make any decisions but i just i just need to get it out there because it's sort of confusing to children in my mind and it's actually it's
165actually cruel having been a former athlete as a student and a youngster that when the administration kind of leaves us dangling on what's going to happen with sports you know a lot of kids that's a big deal for them in their life many go to school first and foremost to play to play a sport for example male and female but this year is a different year it's a deer unlike any we've ever experienced and as you know the governor sort of uh through through it back to the local districts uh we had a boces one meeting today from all of the western new york uh superintendents and frankly they were all over the place with where they wanted to do what they wanted to do how they wanted to do it and this this thing
166is this thing is political it has it has a lot of implications for funds in a district whether you get a levy passed or a bond rating passed if you're a small district for example friday night football is a big deal all over america uh always has been you know and then the other sport soccer is a rising sport uh all of these things that happen in america traditionally with high school sports is now at a decision point if it were left to me uh for a whole host of reasons uh particularly our population i would have canceled um fall sports right out right outright wouldn't have had a lot of thought about it and i would have said to the committee come spring or come after january let's see if we could do a
167modified 10-week schedule for some of these sports and see if we can see where we are with the with the pandemic at that point uh and and that and likewise because i don't i would like students to have an opportunity to participate if they can but there are certain sports especially that are high risk and many of them happen in the fall so there were two things that i asked in the meantime since the governor made that uh decision to hold and you know if you if you're a district you want to do it you can do it if you don't want to do it you don't have to do it that's kind of what he what he said but let me just say this to you we always said that we were going to
168lead with science we said that we weren't going to leave with emotion we weren't going to lead with um you know sort of psychological emotional feelings about these things for our kids you see and the science is is pretty pretty heavy uh the other thing is what would be what would be needed so there were two questions that i asked what do we know about covid when it affects student athletes because the reason i wanted to know that answer or that que i had that question is because a lot of the uh colleges and universities have cancelled uh football for example they've canceled it all across the country the big ten is a big example and they've done that for for some scientific based reasons and one of the things that we're learning because there's
169so much we still don't know about covet but one of the things we learned i'm just going to break the science down to you is that if you have had covet as a student athlete whether it's mild or a more serious case of it that does there's some evidence emerging that it does damage to other organs even after you've recovered so the heart for example myocarditis and pulmonary damage is not uncommon in athletes who have had bouts of covey it only takes one and then what we've done we were rushing them back coming back to campus to begin play and so a lot of the campuses canceled not because of just the general issue of code with being still present in the population but because student athletes were being rushed back into play and their
170they had comp the pulmonary issues were still um questionable and and they had not recovered and so now you have your student athlete at risk of some very severe uh outcomes if pushed back into into play so that was one issue the next question i had is well what would it take if we did if everybody did say they wanted to play football soccer sports where we know there's all those fluids coming forward that's what happens in football everything comes forward and uh what would we have to do and and our health council advisory physician said you would need to test twice a week minimally you would have to have a very strict testing protocol for all of your student athletes for all of your coaches and for all of the assistants and so forth
171twice a week for for the duration of the season so let's just say that's 12 weeks and when we started when i said well how much would that cost and it just it's just prohibitive it's just prohibitive and then the same issue is for all of our staff and all of our students because if we haven't come in to school in person we're starting the year virtual then how do we risk having students start to contact and play amongst each other and so forth uh that's sort of the the overlap laughing question so long story short this isn't emotional for me it's emotional in the sense that i i hate to see kids deprived of playing something they love but we if we were to lead by science we would cancel fall sports and wait
172until this uptick that is occurring in our community now and wait until we get through flu season and try to see where we are on the other side of january and we could still have because the section six people and all of the new york state athletic association has have put together a plan b and they are trying to work it out uh with that but we really as we we don't want to do it but i wanted to see a a consensus about it you see because i didn't want to distract at the beginning of the school year something like athletics and you know it will be a big issue right here at the beginning so i just want you to think about it colleagues uh those are some some some concerns that i
173have if it were just left up to me you know i would have canceled this a long time ago i'm disappointed that the governor didn't do it like other states do where they make a decision for the whole state they don't leave this to individual districts i i think that's a a terrible sort of decision to make you make a decision one way or the other you don't leave it dangling like this so those are my thoughts i didn't want to get out ahead of the board section six have been asking me what's my decision what do i want to do what is buffalo going to do what is buffalo going to do and i said i'm going to do i'm going to bring it to the board and let them think about this put
174on the table what my concerns are and then hopefully we can we can get to a decision on this within a week or two that represents consensus among western new york uh sports i don't and i don't want to pick at it well cross country you can do but football no soccer no well maybe this and maybe that and then here we go with one case and in our district our district where we know that the disease affects us disproportionately we go home to fragile relatives living at home and and you have a case that then runs rampant to a family uh would be something that i couldn't live with i frankly couldn't live with that so i just want to put this very serious we have 180 000 deaths behind this disease six almost
175six million cases in this country alone and i just think we have to err on the side of being extremely extremely cautious this is not a normal time under any circumstance um but that issue is going to start to grow in intensity now is what i'm suggesting to you i want to lay out my position tonight and then think give you some time to think about it as we as we head over these next couple of weeks so terence thank you for that opportunity uh you have board members that may have questions or comments uh thank you dr cash um right now i'm gonna leave the leave it up to any questions from board members i see uh uh board member scott with his hand up so dr cash as you were speaking we received
176breaking news that the new york state public high school athletic association is postponing high-risk sports until march 20 21. i don't understand what is that saying that includes football volleyball competitive cheer high risk sports being moved to march 2021. what about soccer what about all the other softboards soccer is a medium risk sport most of their they classify them by low medium high i know soccer was a medium risk well how do we know we've never done this who's making these classifications i play new york state department of health makes the classifications yeah well they haven't they haven't uh been through this either frankly i think i think that superfluous classification but thank you for that anyway like i said i would cancel all of it until we until we know more about it but
177thank you for that breaking news mr scott i think at least that resolves for those sports how you get volleyball in one classification and soccer into another is a bit beyond it to me that's why i say all these these are not scientifically based um mr hurst last word is yours and thank you for your attention and and kind consideration i have a hand raised by um president cotman thank you so my question is um has there been a conversation about uh coaches uh putting together virtual exercise program to keep these children engaged and physically fit to keep their minds occupied wondering if that's not a possibility to do um to help make sure our young people you know our minds are active because this is a concern there's nothing for them to do and
178so i'm wondering if um some create very creative things on tv people using cans of uh food as weights sorts of things and i'm just wondering at least talk about or you can consider what a virtual exercise program to keep our young people fit would look like for our athletes in our district at least to get them ready in the event maybe in the spring open up or whatever i just don't feel that we should just one is we have pe in built into the schedule so those pe and instructors are supposed to be creative and making sure that our kids get 60 minutes i i argue 60 minutes a day of physical exercise movement exercise activity and so forth that's absolutely essential in our in our time um as far as student athletes they
179you know they say they can practice and all of that but i just don't know i don't know what that what that means and we have to be we have to be careful there uh and and watch watch out for that i i hear you said virtue i said virtuo our coaches would would put together an exercise plan for our athletes they typically would do it they would work out with them an hour a day or something like that in addition because if you're an athlete you're doing more than what most people do as far as working out i'm concerned about our children and their and their minds and i know that young idol minds is a playground for the devil as they say on the old school so i'm just trying to figure out
180how do we you know provide resources for these children and compensate in some way or another there's a need if somebody wants to be a part of it i think that we should look at what a virtual exercise program would look like for our athletes and keep them in shape that's my that matter for that matter colleagues i'm i'm for something like that for everybody you know for the staff i think staff need it uh i think all of us uh could use uh a virtual hour every day where we were working out at our level of capacity see for me i'd be doing something like this i'd be moving my hands like that everybody should should do something today no we i'm serious and because you have what's called the covet of a problem
181and it's affecting our health so i agree with you we'd have to look into it i mean my son for example is a nationally recognized fitness expert and he works people out all over all over the country and he would do something virtual he offered to do it for buffalo he said i'll work buffalo out if they want to work out it's that kind of idea that you're after uh you know getting online and and doing something structured to keep people uh keep people off of off of doing other things well i'm just concerned about our kids absolutely mr herd uh we have another hand raised i believe it's um uh mrs mccosey forbidden cozy wait so um i just want to point out the importance of the mou because if we have right now
182without the coaches that are supposed to be in place for some of these sports anyway how do you navigate what that looks like if you're looking for it from an athletic lens right if a coach is usually the one who works out with the football team we need we need those type of things in place so support for that is like key but i do know um it isn't you know the the physical education department aren't they doing something around making sure i know we have regular gym classes but isn't there more programming that has been invested in how we move the kids around the last time i asked a question around that kind of where what are the kids doing so they're not sitting you know still majority of the day if they don't
183have gym i was told we have programs in place that you know or we're looking into programs so i would i'm down with the idea of getting us all you know how we can how we can do that but i i do feel like we touched on it but you know it's a good question to bring up again president cottman because i'd like to know like exactly what's happening um other than just the physical education piece that we're that the students are getting maybe two three times a week in the school so yeah consider considering that the coaches have an intimate relationship with these guys you know i think they can continue to work with their minds that's what i'm concerned about i mean this year has been crazy with the amount of shootings and
184the amount of uh people that have heard that have been harmed in this city um i'm just concerned that if we that there's a need there and and i mean it possibly could be a need there where at least from six to seven these kids are engaged with their coaches you know what i mean that's what i'm talking about yeah we know for at least one hour we got him off the street meeting other coaches see what ideas they have ask them thank you about that and and some good good ideas will come out of that so we'll we'll keep you posted on it all right okay um no more questions no more hands are raised right now so i'd like to say first of all thank you dr cash for your um support with
185the modified sports program the committee's been working very hard with it and um been um looking at different avenues of how we can better our um our you know projection of our youth you know going to college and getting better grades and keep them interested in education in school and also retention keeping students here in the city of buffalo public schools and not going to other different other um other uh departments for education so um i believe this is very important and moving forward with that and uh next talk about how we can work with the athletic department and your administrative staff how to get some things established and and um get moving on that so thank you for that another thing you know i read a story the other day about a university of
186houston defensive lineman who had kovic and all the heart and the concerns that he has with his heart right now he's i'm unable to play to share um in a division that's actually playing because of the things that jesus spoke of the um the mitocardial issues um the heart element that that for trees after um then copic infection so um and i think about my son who has division one aspirations visited a lot of division one schools and this summer was supposed to be the year that we will go visit all these other division one schools that we receive letters from and and see how that was going to go but that never happened because of kobe and um you but uh as i heard into the kids disheartening to the kids you know that
187that would be graduating this year that was looking for college um um sports and um i'm glad to see some coaches are reaching out to the children but you know never going to get that full spectrum of you know areas that they could have went to you know or or missing that senior year but it is a tough situation but i also believe as you believe that supporting our families and making sure each and every child is healthy and that you know they remain in the exact same way that they left home you know that they come home safe and without having to deal with those type of illnesses or risk i think that's a wise choice um so thank you for your support and um and uh one thing that jennifer talk about the
188mou whatever we need to do to try to push the mou i know that the district submitted it to the union but whatever we can do to get that mou moving on it'll be a lot easier wait for us to you know move forward you know as we plan you know for the future so thank you okay okay okay thank you so we have one more one more discussion um on the president kathmandu brought up uh the robust communication with parents and since you um brought that up for the educational support committee meeting i'll go ahead and let you leave that are you talking about robocalls robust yeah robust plus yes yes um i'm not sure who doc uh uh exactly [Music] mrs cottman this is when you and i were discussing about i know
189i'm trying to i know i remember i'm trying to frame this okay so uh dr cash um the board feels that there's a need for us to um uh parameters or have um our robust plan in regards to communicating to our parents literally it will grow into the community that conversation many of board members have volunteered to work idea along with your staff but we feel that there's a need to expand what's going on district and i mentioned to you um the possibility of using uh interns um senior uh college interns member pointed out that we have um students in our district that are also studying communication and so we want to expand the community the roles of commun uh uh or the lines of communication in our district and we want a a concise
190plan and we want to have input in it uh dr anne revere stepped up to assist us in that area we have um rachel diminished six or fixed diminished on there also volunteered i remember right lou petrucci had some ideas that he also wanted and i'm sure every board member um dr brown has some ideas i'm sure that they can contribute but we feel that the time is very important that we uh elevate communication on every level but and and we uh for this meeting today we're talking about um our parents and our students so um they and board members can chime in if they so desire but that's basically where we are we want to um uh be a resolution put together a resolution instruct um the possibility or the ability of our district
191to use students who are work who are uh being educated to help us expand our our communication right and so that's what that's this is about he had a brief conversation and you were in favor of talking about it so um that's where we are we've had that conversation it's just a need to there now more than ever yeah in the era that we're in you can never error on the side of too much communication so any ideas that that anyone has i'd be welcome to join uh elena kala myself uh probably a couple other members from tonja's department and and just brainstorm uh how we can expand and and have a more robust uh communication uh plan we're in a permanent campaign now colleagues on a whole number of fronts and we've got to
192get the message out in in lots of different and creative ways and then it has to be a almost a 24 7 kind of a campaign so i don't i don't disagree with you at all and i look forward to hearing hearing your good ideas sooner than later so we'll we'll call a sub meeting of any of those board members that want to uh meet with us and uh we'll get we'll get get started on that right away i think that needs to be started right away so let's let's try to have our first meeting next week uh early next week and uh and and then report out on a regular basis sound fair enough yes i think the board is happy with that dr revere are you i'm very happy with that and i
193look forward to working and supporting in any way i can to improve communication and to help the district move forward with it i think i think the bottom line is a lot of people are doing a lot of different jobs and they could use some support and some expansion and some help and so i'd like to be able to help out with that excellent thank you so much what about you jennifer that's good with you i i am so ready to be on that committee or however we work it out so thank you dr cash that support means everything and let's do it absolutely i think the board is unanimous and that i i really love that thank you so much that's that next week okay well there's no more questions and um i'm happy
194to see a happy board and uh and uh we're in a great place we got a lot accomplished today so i believe that we'll conclude our meeting for the educational support committee meeting um everybody have safe travels home hold on we got one more we got some business to do one more act of business uh terence okay we need to go into executive session and we need uh nate needs to talk to us so i need to um move forward forward a motion and i need it uh uh moved accordingly i have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing lease negotiations with duvall college let's thank you paul edwards may have a second so moved [Music] so moved to executive session right okay uh the board went into executive session
195to receive legal advice in regards to a contract with duville college no actions were taken uh may i have uh at this point if the all mines are settled we will end this committee meeting conclude there's no need to uh take a vote we're out of committee thank you very much thank you have a good night everyone have a good night everybody good night everyone parents hey everybody