001a petition regarding the state of education and instruction right now as well as I look forward to what some of the reopening plans will be for the Fall and so with that I'd like to hand it over to the presentation prepared by our district partners after that I'd like to have addressed some of the questions that were sent to me by email if they're not if they're not answered in the session and then we will see about starting the discussion but with the knowledge that we can continue discussion at a later date if we need to as well because this is going to be necessarily nuanced complex and deserves a lot of consideration but in order to even start that discussion we need to hear what our partners are telling us now and with that
002I'll hand it over to our district so good evening colleagues I'm very pleased to provide this update to you this evening this is the heart of our work the teaching and learning process and our staff has been working literally 24 hours it feels like but certainly seven days a week sometimes oftentimes since we closed on March 18 some really leading-edge work has been produced and now we are executing it into the field at full throttle so in about ten slides or presenters we'll share at a high level the progress that is being made and some of the challenges that still remain first we'll have several slides from the technology department that talk about the device distribution and Internet access and Botticelli and her team will talk about the guidance that has been giving to teachers
003how that guidance is faring and the grading practices that will be implemented for what is in effect the third and fourth quarter of this year order will be will combine fourth-quarter to be one third quarter that will count face and you'll hear about that also dr. Fatima Morales been busy and keeping our young people engaged at the state level and various activities with the my brother's keeper initiative and a lot of cultural infusion work into our curriculum even though we're on shutdown period or closed at school that work is all the work as has all the work continued with gusto so I'm very pleased about that of course some of you have heard about the Pulitzer Prize that was won by the 16:19 project it seemed fabulous and out there but demas say something about
004that and of course last but not least tonight dr. Kahn's of Williams and her incredible staff have focused on the social emotional wellness of our students and health of our students we always focus on the whole child here in the Buffalo Public Schools and so one without the other is not it's not the full complement of our work so you'll hear about all of that as well and then we'll open it up to discussion certainly welcome colleagues questions at the end of each section so technology will be a couple of side of slides let Mara do those three slides and then ask questions the instructional learning piece will be three slides let's let n do those three and then certainly ask questions and then konjam will have the last three slides and then open up
005for discussion after that that seemed fair let's think - okay dr. Rivera thank you very much Mayra if you could lead off and colleagues do you have your slide deck in front of you your slides yes I do it well alright so go ahead Mayra thing is not okay thank you dr. K good evening and good evening board members I'm gonna lead off with the device distribution updates so since March 17 or 75 hundred devices have been provided to our students in grades 9 through 12 we've achieved about an 80 percent distribution rate for high school students through the efforts made since that time to ensure that all of our students have ample opportunities to pick up a device we've developed a high school device pick up form that can be completed for the requesting
006parents or students by our associate superintendents by our principals and a note that's associated they were to call into the 7100 line in gathering that information we have mailed letters we've sent emails we've made phone calls and sent text messages with the pickup information for those devices and we have also engaged Ras ELLs and principals to assist us with identifying and reaching out to those students who still need a device and may not have picked them up from the information that we've been sending out today out to them so through engaging with our ASL and principals to assist with that outreach we've learned that many students have chosen to not use the bps assigned device for various reasons and we've also been able to better pinpoint those who still need advice for grades 3 through
0078 as of April 23rd which was the completion of our first round of distribution 10440 devices were handed out we've made several districts we will make up I'm sorry distribution baits which resulted in an additional 1,200 plus devices that were picked up for a total of eleven thousand six hundred seventy-two devices that were distributed for grades three through eight and we still have one more makeup day this Friday so as you can see we're achieving an approximate eighty percent distribution great for the three three eight devices as well and we do it anticipate that number to further increase with the assistance of our principals who are volunteering to deliver those devices to student homes on our next slide about internet access on April 4th we had a mobile hotspot survey that was posted to our
008district website for our bps family community to complete via mobile phone or a computer to request a device for internet access letters were mailed to the home and those letters had a QR code so that they could access the survey directly from a mobile phone when if beyond that they needed further assistance on the requester could call the bps helpline and someone could complete that survey on his or her behalf to date we have received approximately 900 unique responses and what that means is we remove duplicate requests and we've done across the body one hotspot per student household and gathering the information via that request survey was essential because it provided us enough to collect the most current contact information to ensure that requester was reachable when the hot spot we've configured and ready to
009distribute so we sent a notification to our first group of students which were high school 80 students who were contacted to pick up devices last Wednesday after life is a notification to our second round which consisted of remaining high school students from the survey and they picked up today and so far we have about 76 devices that were picked up I'm based on the notifications that were we've sent out so far next week we'll sending out notifications to our 3 through 8 device students for them to be up device and it's next week as well so we've also engaged with charter spectrum to prease transparency and opportunity for households to obtain free or reduced cost internet access the new subscribers can get a 60 day free internet access but they must cancel prior to the
01060 days in order not to roll into the normal billing cycle on top of that dr. cash has provided a statement letter that indicates the Buffalo Public Schools participates in our in the community eligibility provision of the National School Lunch Program that makes all of our students new school system eligible for free and reduced lunch this helps the qualifications that remediate for spectrans program that provides that reduced cost internet accident so the survey is full pump it and we're still collecting requests and we'll continue to make strides to reach out to parent community and student community to ensure that we're providing them with Internet access from the next forum to talk a little bit about our school tracker form this forum has been designed to provide a way for teachers to capture information regarding student
011contact on a weekly basis instructions on how to complete the form access the form the user ID of the teacher is going to the teachers rosters can also populate down near the bottom of the fill and they're going to populate with the default indicator of contacted so the teachers will select the grade or grades and from the drop down field and then here she'll enter the week ending date which is going to be the Friday of the previous week the number of students I teach and the number it's contacted this week also Auto populates with a quantity based on the number of students that are in that futures roster so any students not contacted in order to indicate that they have not been contacted the teacher will deselect contacted box and in doing so additional
012officials are going to appear on where they get their information about the number of contact attempts the contact method and the end result of the attempted contact and so that process repeats it so for each student that the teacher not able to contact and in doing that students contacted this week the pieces based on every student that selected has not contacted and then once they finish that work they click Submit survey and the survey is submitted and it's done so that concludes the size that I have related to technology colleagues with any of you have questions about technology devices distribution access anything I have questions that you want to ask them at this time but you want us to continue and can I hear ya so things that I would like to suggest at this
013point first of all if you're not thinking if you could mute your microphone because we're getting a lot of feedback that's interfering the second thing is if we have multiple questions and we don't see you you may need to identify yourself by name because the screen is minimized or you could use the raised hand function if you hover over your screen there's a raised hand button we can see you that way so please go ahead and ask your question I believe that was Sharon yes I spoke on it excellently done I saw your hand okay okay thank you okay so I have a couple questions the student contact survey is it possible to expand that to cover how the children are doing if we are reaching them as far as if the social-emotional need is
014there a possibility for the teacher to you know add you know the children if they need food or if you know in their warmer or whatever and what I'm trying to get to is yesterday I attended the mental health and the health annual of my monthly meeting of the district and one of the things that was brought up is that many children needs are not being addressed and they have no one other than you know that the teacher has a rapport with them and that they may share with the teachers if they are hungry or things I said and then from there we would give that information I would hope to the principal and they would provide support for the children that was a concern a question that I had regarding the student contact survey
015if it's covering the social-emotional need that's my first question the second question was a conversation and maybe you're going to do this later about our connectivity our community connectivity grant and what what's being done with that and what timeline is are we on to complete that so am I to question Myra thank you I would like you to talk about the tracker because I think we're it's not quite responsive to what this continent is talking about this is just gathering data and income you know no numerical kind of information the issue of enjoyment and talking directly with students comes in another way through dr. Williams his office and and I work there but but Maura and in any others colleagues if you want to jump into the question of how we are doing what's an
016effect of wellness check on our students so this is Tommy and include in my slides I will address I'm kind of what that progression look like when we become informed that there are students that have needs whether they are sheltering needs or food needs that we do have a process in place to address those things so I could talk about it now or like I can talk about it when I get to that place well you can leave your complete you can where we can wait talking just about what information and we glean from this tracker survey right so from the tracker survey the the output of the results will be exactly what number of students have been contacted and what number of students have not been contacted and which students have not been contacted
017from the information in terms of the end result you know will be able to gather if it's an envelop so it gives us information so take the next step in terms of how to I mean we're flexible enough to accommodate this was just our first phase step or approach in terms of getting some level of data and information with regard a new contact and then we can go deeper based on that we get and and the need that sort of results from this form in terms of how far we need to go and modifying it and expanding it in its functionality but it is flexible enough in the development that if we needed to add fields or add the capability to capture more information we can certainly do that thank you very much so I
018had a question from mr. Trucy I'll briefly have one from dr. Evans written on and Miss McCauley if you're still interested and then go ahead and click your raised hand and we'll go straight mr. Patricia are up thank you very much vice-president first question I have is so we're looking at about you know prior to our third round of outreach somewhere in the round range of 2500 devices that still need to be distributed that that's a little concerning to me and we do the outreach who's going to do this final outreach do you have someone identified because it's going to be very personal almost to the granular level of knocking on doors if they're not answering phones if they're not answering emails I just want to know how we're doing the outreach and the second
019thing I'm just kind of curious if there's an overlap or an outreach between our hot spots our devices I want to make sure that people have both below let me answer the first question and Myra you answered a second it's Myra indicated that this survey that was getting about whether parents need internet service and whether they are going to receive our devices in other words take them the finding some interesting data quite a few families are not taking the computer so if you put 11,000 over 14,000 that difference does not mean that all of those devices need to be distributed there's good percentage less than that because many families have said they don't need the device they don't want to take the device and so forth so Myra yeah did you say a little bit
020more on that issue and then answer the question about the hot spot overnight right we have engaged the mas else who have helped us engage the principles in terms of trying to pinpoint better those students or households still need a device but have been unable to pick them up again through the course of engaging principals at the high school level and even some of the requests that we've gotten in and the principal's have reached out we found that some of those households just do not want the device they have go to a family I'm or mother of a student just the other day who was having issues using her child's device and we needed to try to troubleshoot their personal device I offered heard the BPS device and she completely insisted that she'd rather use
021her own device so you know there are lots of instances where they're just not using them but we are you know trying to leverage the principal's who are much closer to the family households to help us identify where that need still exists at the elementary school level principals are volunteering to take those devices to the homes of those students they absolutely no still need them but they may not be able to come pick them up and we are now offering the same opportunity for high school principals to make home deliveries to students or households that need those devices with regard to the internet access the purpose of the survey was so that those people that need it that could be intentional and purposeful about letting us know that they needed the internet access and while
022it is a web-based form and it's kind of you know contradictory that you would ask them to take a survey that's internet-based we try to make it convenient so that they could take it via a cell phone because you know most people have cell phone gave them a QR code they can call the 7100 number and if they're requesting and serve an internet or hotspot I'm sorry we can actually fill the form out for them on their behalf someone else can fill the form out on out for them on their behalf because it is posted via the public facing our website or web page and we are going to engage principals to help us with that outreach as well our approach was to try to make sure that we hit those people that have been
023intentional again about letting us know they need that internet access and we've also socialized the information about the spectrum programs so our hope is that some people are taking advantage of that some people actually have internet access and some people are going to pick up those hotspots and hopefully with all three of those things in play collectively we can more effectively bridge the digital divide thank you thank you let's see how this all shakes out when you're finally done my concern is just a child not having the service to participate fully and completely in the educational process right and and we'll you know I mean we're gonna continue as long as we can you know with the devices that we have on hand with any funding that's granted to us to help us with five
024additional hotspots so you know the service and and the provision for as much as we have inventory to be able to do that will always be available to provide them with what they need when they request it or you know or need is brought to our attention very much so I what I'd like to do is ask one follow-up question that I'm going to move to dr. Evans round misma Cosi mr. Hurd and then miss Belton Cottman with questions the follow-up question just expands on the one that mr. Percy just asked which is that is there a way in which that we can use that survey form and the fact that students are not responsive to be able to do a reach out and see if perhaps they were either they weren't confident or they
025didn't think they needed the technology and then change their mind is there is there some sort of potential there absolutely I think there's a lot of pitching potential there with the hot spot request form and the information that we've gathered from from that survey and the same with the device pickup form the as you know we're going based on the assumption that that is the most recent and current information that we've obtained and that too is the information that we shared with the high school principals in terms of here's a list of people that have requested that have not picked up so that's how we were able to get a lot of the information in terms of you know well I just go eat anymore or whatever the reason may be that that device is
026no longer required for that student thank you a third way to use the student contact survey for them as well that information is being pulled directly from the student information system so you know I mean we could go deeper into the address and phone number information that is on the student record and we could potentially crosswalk that with any information that we have from our surveys for instance if there's somebody on the survey list or lists and then there's some student that's on the student tracker results is not contacted we could have absolutely crosswalk that information and hopefully if they are on one of the other two lists with current information that could be a means of reaching out to them you know under the assumption that that is the most current information mostly I
027was asking to make sure there was more than one available more than one avenue available to the district to contact students you know who may not be able to access Women's Forum whose situation changed and what I'm hearing is the answer is yes there is your small happiness thank you very much so I will turn the next question over to dr. Evans Brown if you still have one myself can you hear me I was really excited to see the tracker the student contact tracker survey because it is a gauge to find out who's been contacted who has not been contacted and like and I think it a instrument that could work in many ways for example I've heard I think I hurt you saying that you'll look at the next steps how to fill the
028gaps and so if we if we find the gaps early since school is going to be closed what do we do with that information who gets it how do we reach out to those kids who have not been contacted at all within this last five to six weeks for example because from my experience and from my staff experiences working for the Buffalo Billy we to have contact with these families and you're absolutely right some of these families do not need the district's devices because they have their own for example so you hear all kinds of different stories but you also hear that some of these families don't have the balance they don't know how to home-school for example you know their children and so they're not getting information from well the simile they're not getting
029contacted by you know teachers for example I had spoke to this one teacher and recently who says she had 96 children that extra just arbitrarily so out of that 96 out of the 96 children I mean I was servicing and her statement was that was pretty concerning so I think this survey is a really good start this factor is a really good start and we need to branch off and figure out how we can also use it in other avenues that was a statement I guess thank the doctor Evans Brown if there's no responses to her statement I'd like to move over to misma cosa this question yes hi everyone I my question is and I think we're dog dancing around different ways to use this data I really appreciate the efforts because this is
030so key in trying to balance you know the gaps as you said but I'm looking for you know the specifics around not only who are not contacting in the past few weeks but then also by schools if you know certain schools seem to have an enormous amount of folks that they cannot get in contact with no matter what the issue is I do appreciate blue your statements around you know of knocking on doors whatever it takes but when we get those large numbers and it starts standing out by schools I'm wondering how we're gonna use this moving forward to be able to allocate the right resources to these schools knowing that number one just graduation rates but just all kinds of numbers are gonna be off balance right and those are gonna count against so
031many different funding sources that come into play so I'm looking for how we're bringing this data in but then how and what avenues not only were using to make sure that these students are contacted but that we're also garnering this as an opportunity to really gauge what we mean moving forward something that we have to work with and we're working with operational contingency living there are also some opportunities for some more insight into where we can allocate more resources where maybe we need more support with any of our district colleagues like to comment on that well yeah this this is this is a new experience so we're gathering data every day when we hear that their families if we don't contact or haven't contacted we need to know that we need to know that we
032need to know who they are you know when we're in school we can take attendance attendance for some students is egregious it's severe chronic and you know we have four categories of attendance so we know that there are students even when school is in that we don't get it good a good attendance rate and contact so we're gonna learn and see what the data show and then that will help inform our summer school work it'll help inform our reopening work and and what we will have to do to try to bring students back up up to level but we're also learning some exciting other news during this time we're finding that some students are actually thriving under this condition and in our timing that working alone and and being able to move ahead at their
033pace without some of the distractions and the behavioral incidents that occur during regular school there's two sides of this coin and so we're taking all of that in so that we can help teachers when they come back I don't want teachers to have to spend the first twelve weeks of school that's trying to get them back back in track and far as managing and learning how to reorient towards school so there's a lot of trap work and free work we'll be going from now on that's why we want to perfect this technology remote learning system we want to perfect this student tracking system and that will yield more and more data for us to begin to build plans for reopening and plans to help students catch up but also help students go ahead I don't
034we don't necessarily have to be in a lockstep grade pattern when we come back there's a lot of innovative ideas that we have talked about later or at another time even then I can we're reimagining school all together during this process and it's been it can be quite exciting can help some students go much faster and go ahead quicker and they don't have to get tied back tied down languishing you know behind in classrooms where where other kids are struggling so there's going to be a lot of new ideas that emerge during this process but they you for all of those questions anyone else on this section because we want to move to the other sections as well I saw that mr. Hurd and mr. and Miss felt incontinent for questions thank you doctor for
035talking about the opportunities as well I look forward to that conversation so I'd like to move to mr. Hurd yes working with several youth groups um you know I I just think a lot of different personalities about the about the home instruction I'm glad to see that we have over 2200 hotspots that's available when my questions were we identified the families the Pacific families who can't afford the rates so after 60 days if they were to get shut off if you know they exist in poverty or in that poverty level to where they can't afford internet service after that point what can we do for them if there's gonna exceed over twenty two hundred and forty two hotspots well they still be in line my concerns are those that that may be left out in
036the future or maybe for the summer programs also I talked to a couple of families who had children were suspended during the time period to the family said that on one child which for me oh no child was suspended and they have had access to material but I did give them the the helpline number two system do that but we have some kids that this is themselves also they feel that they already some feel that they already caught up that they got enough to pass the class and what kind of invocation with the technology are we giving them to keep on you know consistently learning and the other thing is our dr. Cassidy's talked about the left my grade pattern you know we want to you know some of the kids said that they love
037this system it's a lot better you know some of them had no issues of bullying within their schools or in the buses or in a neighborhood and so this alleviates the bullying they can learn on the level that that they can you know progress or without you don't have to go through you know different types of emotional barriers so I mean it has pros and cons to this thing but my main concerns right now are those has been left out maybe I've been formal or suspended and those families that maybe 60 days after received internet service where would they be if money's run out in the family and they can't afford in this service or a hot spot may not be available students because we had a pretty extensive process on making sure that every
038attempt was made to reach every single student especially those that were on a long term suspension and so mr. Fisher's office contacted I'm told every single family that was currently on a long term suspension to let them know that they were to receive the same services and supports that their non suspended peers were receiving in addition to that I had him then send a listing to principals even though I know principals knew who was suspended in their schools but to send a listing to principals to ask the principal's to then have their SST teams because we know those are our most needy students and even if they call it sometimes they might not follow up and do what needed to be done so we had each principal that had students out on long term suspensions
039have their SST teams those certified counselors and social workers who could facilitate those kinds of conversations with families to also make sure that those students received everything that they needed now I just got a call this week on our seventy one hundred number from a student who said that he had a short term suspension but that he had not received his laptop and when I called the principal and she said we just spoke to that student yesterday arrangements have already been made for that student to come out and to pick up the laptop from whatever the site was where he was told to go so I know that we've done you know quite a bit of work trying to make sure that there are students that are not falling into those gasps so if you
040have any names of students that we can follow up on and you can share those I certainly will follow up thank you thank you those students I saw maybe have dropped out of school that's interestingly coming back that's one of the ones I was referring to it's really coming back to continue education is there a avenue for those students are you broke up and I didn't hear the well the question was of those schools that had students that have dropped out of school but wanting to come back to school is there an avenue for education for those children also all students would need to be enrolled into a bps school in order for us to do that yes okay thank you so apparently depends on their age if they're still within before 22 years old
041you know and how depending on how far behind they are we have some options for them but but it's not as many as we'd like I understand colleagues I just want to make a comment I'm hearing two things respond to the judean one is the internet access piece if the 60 days runs out still can't afford to continue with you know if they have to get back on as a paying customer this is something that we could approach philanthropy about and business entities about because we've had calls and people asking what can they do and I'd like to see sort of a program that maybe incentivizes families to be able to get a long-term discount substantial discount in their internet access let's work together and figure out a strategy to approach the business and philanthropic
042community as to help with that and we're side by side with spectrum now I guess that a provider region and see what we can do so that would be one response the district can't afford right now to be adding costs to its budget when we have such a difficult road ahead determining what our budget is actually gonna be what I ripped what our source of revenue is gonna be the other question was asked by dr. Brown about a 1:1 teacher and my concern about that is the ASL czar on the line and I'd like to a sales to respond a little bit because no school should have a really low that low in one class reach out they shouldn't because we've been working and talking a lot how all of this drills down to the
043level of the school the principal then bills down to his or her roster at his or her school and then each teacher and so if they're unable to reach or connect by this time the principal gets involved and in his or her staff get involved and do reach out to their kids everybody should know their kids in their school by name and know whether or not they've made contact with them on that so ASL could you say something about this 20 only 20 percent of my kids I was able to reach I think that's what I heard from dr. Brown 20 out of 96 for something like that could could one of you step up in talk talk about how you're working with your principals and how they then have the responsibility of connecting with
044their families so I hope miss Wright and Mistress moto ready to go miss Wright Tish you want excuse me talk to Wright would you like to start yes I would so before I get into details regarding the response to that question I just have to take a moment to give kudos to our principals and our teachers who are in the field really doing an exemplary job navigating that space of Paulette one day they were in brick and mortar and the very next day they were operating in a virtual reality so I do know that that has created some dissidents and quite a few people they think that that's what we may be hearing from the one teacher by and large every single teacher has done an outstanding job reaching a vast majority of their students
045I know this to be a fact because on a weekly basis of the ASLs meet with the teacher there are principles and the principles we we put out on their grade level meetings and at the grade level meetings they discuss how they are able to touch faces with students whenever there is a concern that a child is not being reached I have to tell you the teachers organized the principal organized and they have already made home visits they have performed in a way that I could not have ever imagined so putting themselves in personal risk going to homes knocking on doors has been an afterthought for them they they put themselves in harm's way on a weekly basis to ensure that the needs of your children are being met now there are always one or
046two teachers in a building that has their own personal struggles more challenges moving out to the student population but it makes me wonder if that was already an issue before we have this new virtual reality so if a teacher has strong relationships why would they were in brick and mortar they have even stronger relationships now that we're operating in the virtual reality if they had disconnected relationships they're absolutely going to struggle I'm not saying that that was that that one teachers issue I am saying there's a lot of validity to that statement now if the teacher was having trouble I would suggest that that teacher go to the principal and the principals of rallied teams so there can be sick relations were in there's a teacher that was out on maternity leave the principal's have
047emailed Jamie Jamie has allowed principals to hire substitute teachers because they did not want that break in relationship that break and connections we worry so much about not being able to see our kids that the principals and the vast majority of the teachers to whatever it puts in order to maintain those connections so I just want for people to rest assure that the teacher with the 20% contact rate that is a severe anomaly the vast majority of our principals and teachers know exactly where most of the children are and for that small very small percentage of the children that we have not been able to connect with we were working with timejust office we're working with IT we're doing all sorts of innovative activities so that we can try to maintain connection or gain connection
048but I don't want people to think that principles are being passive in this they're not the teachers are not being passive at all they are going above and beyond to ensure that they are maintaining contact with their children that they worry so much about on a daily basis thank you for that sandy that's great comment thank you mister smote oh you know sure thank you and and I'm not to get too repetitive but to piggyback off of my colleague dr. right you know since the beginning and and dr. cash has been very explicit with how we're leading the principles the principles have been very explicit and leading the teachers the number one priority has been engagement so aside from grading and just progress the first priority has has continued to be engagement when it comes
049to this now he is when we meet with our principals weekly what they're getting excited about when it comes to the grading procedures as well as a tracker is that it gives them an avenue to be even more strategic with that tracking so they've had team meetings weekly as Cassandra has indicated as dr. cash has indicated and now it gives them that Avenue to track week to week progress in many different forms that student engagement from the assignments being completed to also how they've teachers have connected with students anywhere from the assignments to phone calls to those visits said that Cassandra was talking about so all these things that are implemented and continued to be implemented just continue to one-up everybody's game in that level of engagement thank you for that dr. right mistress Amato
050I understand what you're saying about it being a small proportion and I want to ask this question with a real recognition that everybody is struggling right now that we have asked I mean this is really a serious crisis I don't think that can be overstated and we've asked our teachers and principals our students and our staff to our administrators to to operate in the situation that's completely unprecedented and I was wondering if you could say a little bit about the process that you have in place to support those members that might be struggling not just the students but also our our teachers and our administrators yeah could we I don't know I think we're getting into a little different area from this technology we definitely can put that question right over here that'll come up
051nicely as we move along thank you good idea that's totally fair I'd like to give mr. Scott a chance ask this question then we can move on okay so just a side comment first dr. cash you mentioned needing funding for continued internet service for our students maybe we could have the governor reach out to Bill Gates to help us fund Internet service for some of our students but my question I had requested an update on our students being connected and Moira I commend you and your team for all the work that you've done and vices out and getting our students connected you've done tireless work to do to get this done but we hired a provider to connect thousands of our students harp data in the fall and it was to connect students that are
052in our most vulnerable communities and that work stalled and I'm not so much looking to dwell so much on where we how we got here but looking at I want to get an update on where we are now and where we're going with hard data and getting this work accomplished so that all of our students are connected at length this morning because I wanted an update on when this was to begin and I thought if I recollect my recollection we were somewhere around May fifth or six we were supposed to begin this this design phase so could you give us an update on on that process with hard data yeah comment that this is part of what miss Belton Cottman asked as well so thank you for the timeline so actually this dress this past
053Tuesday the walkthroughs of the schools began and the purpose of those walkthroughs is to identify the data closets where the racks and the wireless access point should be mounted where the electrical should be laying in pathways to understand how we we are going to install this framework for connectivity on the eighth selected school sites so three of the schools were completed yesterday one had to carry over to today and then tomorrow they will do the other for hard data should be looking at the community partners sites this week and within a one to two month period of time we should have a full-blown design now it is our intent to identify which schools ready and with one we can fast-track along with corresponding community partner sites even if we get one school site up and
054running the efficacy of that connectivity is going to be compromised because it is a mesh network and it is it is designed to work in partnership or collaboration with those community partner sites to hopefully promote the best connectivity to those communities so the output of this design is to try to identify one what the overall framework or look is going to be in terms of the installation to get the fastest bang for our buck you know which school can is the most ready that we can kind of fast track so that we can realize some success in this space of work to our communities excellent sign just so I can clarify something did I hear you say one to two months we could be at full capacity no mr. Joe right in one to two
055months we would have a full-blown design now I'm gonna try to push them along in terms of building out our design and what that design is going to tell us is where we place the rats where we place the wireless access points which holes should they be using do we have the pathways available to lay the cabling and the electrical in order to build this out some schools may be more ready than other schools and we have our facilities people you know tied at the hip with our IT team to make sure that we are identifying you know where these pieces of equipment should be installed so that we are not in a swirl or we're spinning our wheels in developing the design so our hope is that the law will give us enough information
056that we can say here's what this is going to look like and let's start the work because the last thing you want to do is start the work without having a design that you're confident in and then you have to do rework and rework rizal and change orders so you know we're trying to do the due diligence up front with the correct planning and designed to make sure that we're solid when we begin the installation so hard data has communicated to months my hope is that we could get it done the design that is faster than that and we can fast track one of the schools that again is the most ready but I won't have a full-blown picture of what that timeline looks like until the walkthroughs are completed and we know what the
057shape of the school is in terms of accommodating this work if that makes sense okay so at what point do you expect potentially this all of this work could be done right now the high level timeline is about the end of this year beginning of next year but that is that is very fluid it all depends on what the walkthroughs and the design tell us okay Thank You Martin Condon thank you I wanted us to correct one thing the contract for hard data was not signed until January this year and I have a meeting tomorrow I'm glad that the question was answered because tomorrow I have a meeting with some of our community partners I will bring up at that meeting the concern about the students being without internet support after the 60 days and
058I will ask that that meeting to see if there anyone any partner that will help us in regard to that so other than that my question was answered by President okay thank you thank you yeah who's managing the slide set me Mike looky okay make sure Mike stops on the last slide of this portion of the presentation so for example we've been good to stop on that last slide with the theta tracker student data tracker so that everybody could absorb what that looks like while we're in that part of the conversation okay he's upstairs in 807 city hall so any time you want to say go back a slide or forward or slide or something like that he's able to do that in City Hall sometimes I can just speak to it okay okay board
059members and you can let us know as well so and you're up and if you could could move through your your slides and Botticelli and her team colleagues have done a fabulous job in a very short time as dr. Wright indicated on something we never even imagined we'd be we'd be at this stage so appreciate all the hard work of all of our staff that's just been fabulous and I'm sorry we lost you you're probably gonna have to call in unmute maybe she's muted or she needs to get from problems I had earlier might be let me take a look and see no you're on I mean you did it's gonna need the call in log out and log back in the problem that might they might know that there the problem with and better
060telly please can you assist her thank you if you would like we could move ahead to another portion of the presentation well that gets worked out yes can you hear Fatima everybody I guess alright I recommend that we go to the slide that deals with culturally responsive curriculum and colleagues and dr. cash thanks for this opportunity to share how we are continuing the work in the office of CLR I this is an important enzyme as dr. cash calls it for our district and we most certainly weren't going to stop this important critical work during this cause additionally as dr. cash mentioned earlier this is a great opportunity for us to infuse culturally responsive curriculum resources and materials while stupids are at home so we're looking at this as an opportunity to really get on board
061with the technological platform as well as providing hardcopy material to our students who may be you know every you know needed in hardcopy so it is a great time to develop family baracy and concepts of culturally responsive teaching around family because we actually are all home together with family members most cases and so we saw this as a great opportunity to move this work forward having a real strong focus around and continuous engagement for our students so one of the high-level pieces that we are working on is the MBA fellows and our scholars are continuing continuously engaged with the fellows we meet with them bi-weekly their mentors which are provided by say yes meets meet with them virtually of course weekly and we have state meetings and our fellows from the Buffalo Public Schools from
062East High School as well as McKinley High School were featured at New York State village meeting just a week and a half ago I believe and they spoke about how this pandemic has infected them as burgeoning young men in this time period this historic time period and there were about 400 little shy of 400 participants on that virtual call including our Chancellor Betty Rosa and our Commissioner Tahoe and board member Regent Catherine Collins and Regent young so there were quite a few people on our young men really shines and really were engaged around how they're helping in your community because a huge component for MBK follows this community service and how this demmick has impacted their ability to do community service or if they're thinking about it differently so really some high-level rich work is
063going on continuing with our MBK fellows and we just brought on two additional MBK fellows one from middle Early College High School and then another from international prep so we're moving we're growing with these young men they have mentors they have a book study that they are reading called mad truth by dr. Wyatt and really talks about being a young man and growing up and and learning how to navigate these try you know being that just a young man in America so it really is a great opportunity happening with them and we have our meetings with some ongoing additionally some of the curriculum that we are infusing currently we're having quite a bit of success with just from feedback that I'm getting from some of the parents that are in contact with me around the
064brownies books and so what we have developed we were able to look at some historical literature pieces based upon the work of dr. Goldie Mohammed which her work will be featured in our district all of next year during the odd 2020 2021 school year but she pointed us to the work of the brownies books which were edited in the 1920s by wev the boys and with these books it really is about Family Literacy and we're servicing pre-k to 12 which means we're rolling them out in each packet so we've we've we've rolled them out and packaged - and they'll be coming out again with another set pre-k to 12 and package three and really it they're designed to really read as a family but students of course can read them independently and then there's a
065critical analysis activities that get the kids in the family members to think about this time period and how its shaped thinking for black Americans but really how it shaped thinking for all Americans because the books are they're diverse authors with these books black people indigenous authors Native American legend X white authors and really raising awareness of how we all are connected as a human race and I really really like I really like the stories and I'm learning so much as well as though I know this is a great piece for family members just looking historically at literature with an african-american community and how how that helped to shape on thinking around the receipt for all of us and of course we continue with our New Jersey Amistad now that we really you know that we're
066on this technological piece that just became even more important and also my on so what we did as a offices we begin to research what's on my on what's on the platforms that we already use that are culturally responsive that can be easily accessed by parents and and our scholars and and with the brownies books as well we want things that parents can do so we didn't make these huge just you know out-of-the-box kinds of learning modules that would you know that take a whole lot of engagement but really just making things layman's turn plain language that parents can do with kids and it's powerful and impactful in terms of critical analysis likewise New Jersey Amistad and my own resources we're using books and materials where kids actually can see themselves such wonderful opportunities for
067our pre-k learners and our kindergarten learners to have books and materials where they see children who are black and brown children and they're reading that and they're at home with their parents and they get to you know really have these books read to them and they get to see these visuals where they're seeing themselves it's just such a great opportunity and the 16:19 project we have our first roll out with package number one on March 17th and we'll have our our next rollout will be in package number three and that that will be at grades seven through twelve and we're so happy as dr. cash mentioned that Nicole Hannah Jones the lead author in the lead voice for the 1619 project just receive a Pulitzer Prize for commentary on the 16:19 project work and in
068their recommendation who do they mentioned as a district for having brought use of the 16:19 project that was in consideration for her to receive that price none other than Buffalo continuing with this third package roll out looking at the literature on the later resources from the Pulitzer Center because they actually have their own body of work and lesson plans but we're also working with Anne Botticelli and Tim led from new visions and we've also created a whole deck of lesson plans and my pushing out to our community let's make our copy roll out as well as everything will be online on our website and on Schoology our Schoology platform and enter we also we employed a few teachers outside of our department to begin reading with us dr. Golding muhammad's cultivating genius which really talks
069about looking at the promise of children of color and looking at how they learn best and this is going to be a book that we're going to be real of it it's a great read it's a quick read it gets right to the point around culturally linguistically responsive best practices it looks at historical literary literate literature and contemporary literature and how we engage our kids in the classroom and so we're excited about this book study and we look forward to rolling it out to everyone and and either this summer we're still thinking for this fall but of course you all would be having a copy of that as well or hoping you'll be reading along with us and all of these things can now we've had time to really really beefed up our website so
070when you get an opportunity go and look there and you'll see we're featuring our resources literature our booklets programs what our programs are about professional growth we've done and what will be coming in the 2021 school year so we've had some time to get back going and then we want to make that very public for our parents and everyone else and that's being continually updated so again this work is still ongoing it will continue to grow in this new virtual reality this new platform of life and I just look forward to this opportunity for those students who actually are at home in our life saying feed me more they need me more oh yeah and we also have global scholars relaunching that platform as well so that's what's going on thank you okay mr. continent
071thank you dr. marell for the work that you've done over the past five years dr. cash dr. marell district area numbers this is legacy building workers this is setting a solid foundation and I'm very proud of this I'd like to share that last year when we started working element Carla and myself we started working on the Buffalo public school calendar we wanted to make it more culturally relevant and we were able to have a little subcommittee conversation and April because it was one year to the date of our resolution that the district be retired making April their American Heritage Month and we were able to get Nadia dr. Nadia and the fire was able to provide us with some educational information and dr. Fatima and Ellen I'm going to be sending over the next place
072that John Messire had done Etowah I'm sorry Nassar has done in regards to the month of May which we celebrate our Asian Pacific American Heritage Month it includes our generous American Heritage Month it also includes a better hearing and speech month and it also includes our grandparents our senior adults many of our children are parented rights their grandparents and so there will be a each month the goal is to add more and more to our calendar to let our children know about our diversity as a community and we're prepared and the international citizen so that when they leave our public foods they're not locked into a box they're they have been educated and my ultimate goal is to expand each one of these what I am going to try to get some community partners provide
073some incentives for our children it may only be a $10 gift heart or whatever they write an essay or something but something to help them to stretch beyond themselves to see what other people and their cultures are one of the things I learned after using of reading Nadia desires their American heritage is that I always thought the majority of Ferriss Americans were Muslim and only to find that they are not there Kristen so that was mind blowing for me because over the years the amount of looking people that I have around me I always thought that they you know the majority of them but that wasn't the case so even at my age I'm still learning about our cultural diversity and I'm excited about that for dr. cash well he's just we talked about this
074last year about expanding the calendar each year and this is what we're going to be working on moving forward from this summer to expand our calendar so it'll be a little bit more inclusive okay but there's more that serious with the board and it's easy work these people are really excited about doing it thank you thank you thank you mr. Hurd you had a question mr. Scott mr. hurts that you still have a question thank you dr. marell I'd like to say congratulations I love all the work that you've done with the MBA program and working with our youth and the programs that you have set up for them this is a program of this magnitude be be exhibited here in the City of Buffalo I remember coming up luckily we never had a program
075like this before or any programs for youth that that were on that was teaching our about history teaching about our future helping education on reading math I mean all the subjects that you touch on the base that you touch you know I'm being at a number of your arm I just see the attitudes of the children and it change that they have you know 178 grade you know and as these groups come into high school I can see a different freshman class coming into our high school system that's going to be more more endure towards education learning and it's a certain about their future as well as others well we also have my brother's keeper program that we run also what to say yesterday I was just like working with a BK program today we
076had a today we did Wednesday workout where we have a group of kids I believe we have about 60 kids online and we did workouts today so push-ups sit-ups dumbbells barbells working them all together so I mean it's a direct coalition you love the things that we can do with our kids and working with our kids and I know we got on Monday we guess speaking and Friday yeah I guess speakers and also over our lesson plans from class work so to do with your work and not just one of your biggest Meyers mr. Scott you had a question just a quick question for dr. Morell along the lines of Sharon mentioning the calendar being more culturally responsive and we have an update on the student project to rename what was Columbus Day has the
077closure or stalled that work or we because I want to be I'm gonna be real about it once we got into the kovat environment that took a that took a back seat we were not prioritizing that work at that time certainly there are certain students and some students that that could be reengaged around this talk to an and dr. marell recently about it and you know we'll have something ready to report to you about it but that hasn't been a consistent pipe during this time we only have so much staff energy and focus and I'll take the blame for that I've had them full speed on all this other work but we'll get you the report probably next month and see where the students are and think don't blame intended just ask just inquiring thank
078you for the question and I think it's fair to say that there's a lot that's been done cause right now but I know that I personally really appreciate it still on the list and that it's still being moved forward as or at least it's it's there and we're going to work on it when you can can we hear you now did that get resolved and is on the phone I'm on the phone can you hear me certainly can yeah okay so if we could back the slides up to instructional guidance I would appreciate it thank you one more the other way Mike there you go okay so I hope everyone can hear me I've got I'm still in a picture but I've needed that and I'm on the phone now so there's no feedback so
079I just wanted to say this is this has been unprecedented event and I think we've we've all agreed on that our teachers have risen to the occasion our administrators have risen to the occasion and our parents have risen to the occasion as a parent who is currently homeschooling to children I can agree with with all the sentiments that this is not easy work so trying to have your own job during the day while your kids are also online with their teachers and asking questions and needing support it's a lot and so I understand all the sentiment that has been expressed across the county I think because this is just across the nation really this is just nothing we've ever experienced before but I want to say how wonderful parents have been and how wonderful our
080teaching staff has been they have adapted to this new environment in ways that we could not have anticipated so I think someone earlier asked about support for teachers in this time and I do want to say that we're offering a lot of technical assistance and professional development to them so if you login to our school t-accounts or you look at the workplace you can see any question that a teacher poses is immediately answered by someone either NIT if the technical question or someone at the other end multilingual or curriculum or special ed because we want to be as responsive as possible knowing that teachers aren't used to this environment right um best practice is still really emerging for remote learning nobody was really in that space to such a degree in the past so as
081we learn new practices we're creating professional development sessions so for example over the past couple days we've had a 60 or so teachers who have logged in and taken our new professional development opportunity for remote learning so we start that by asking teachers to take a pause and just consider their own health and wellness and really Center themselves before moving to the rest of the presentation which is about how to connect with kids through remote learning so we're trying to be really mindful of everyone's space and place right now as we move forward so anytime you have additional suggestions we appreciate those because we'll continue to develop more training for teachers and administrators and we'll continue to offer technical assistance in the beginning it was really important for us to get teachers to a place
082where they knew the technology well enough to operate it so it at the very outset a lot of the work that we did was about how to use Schoology effectively how to use Infinite Campus effectively how do you use life-size I'm sure we had people that had never heard of it until this happened and now it's sort of a piece of daily life in Buffalo but that was a big focus and now we're moving more toward the pedagogical in the content areas of the instruction so that being said when you look at our instructional guidance document which I hope people have had a chance to peruse but there is a link toward the left bottom of the slide if people haven't had a chance or they want to just revisit the document we kind of
083laid out our expectations for instruction knowing that there was a digital divide so that some students would be using the hardcopy learning packets we provided while student might be using remote instruction practices and some are probably using a combination of the two so we wanted to be mindful that it wasn't us one single way that students might be connecting with their teaching with their teachers so for example we've already distributed to learning packets at this point we're preparing the third to go out which should take us through to the rest of the year and then remote learning we've got a lot of teachers using schools you can see some of the statistics to the right of the screen so you can see the assessments they've created assignments they've created discussion threads but you can start
084a discussion with students and they can respond on sort of a chat board to get their input if they've read the article what their thoughts were about the left hand etc and then you can see how many students have participated in those opportunities but I do want to emphasize Schoology is just one of our platforms so this data doesn't capture everything that's going on with teaching so a lot of our teachers use class dojo many of them use remind which is another app that allows them to communicate with parents for our multilingual families we also make use of talking points and I know we've discussed it before but just as a reminder at the two-way communication device so the teacher can speak you know can discuss things in English and the parent hears it in
085his or her own language and then when the parent speaks in her own language it comes back to the teacher in English so that's one of the many ways we're connecting with families so there's just a lot of different methods people are using right now we already had purchased Nearpod which allows us to design lessons that can be self-paced so a teacher can design the lesson release it to students through Schoology and students can complete it at their own pace and there's embedded questions that they respond to you can embed videos you can embed virtual tours but teachers get the feedback from the completion of those lessons then a lot of teachers are doing readings or taping themselves teaching a lesson and asking kids to respond to that a lot of our math teachers are
086making use of the eureka videos so Eureka is the original vendor that developed the math modules that we use and they've branched off since then but when kovat broke out they started videotaping their own lessons so our teachers can link to those expert lessons and have students participate in the like watch the lesson and do the activities and then our teachers can ask the kids to complete an exit ticket so they get a sense of whether or not the student understood the instruction but some teachers are taping themselves doing lessons and then they release it to the students and the students complete the activities that go with that videotaped lesson other teachers are doing virtual office hours so the kids come in they have sort of a meeting together and the teacher can answer questions
087about what the kids have been working on so I just say all this to let you know that if there's a very broad group of or wave methods that teachers can use to connect with their students for instructional purposes and in many cases they're doing it over the phone so they might be calling the student directly knowing that the student doesn't have a strong internet connection so I just would like it to be understood that there's no one way that we are reaching our kids when it comes to instruction and sometimes teachers are using all of these methods at the same time because they know that every student's in a unique circumstance and then we also can look and see how well our students are engaging by checking to see if they've been submitting assignments
088and that can look different they might be submitting them through Schoology they might be submitting them through class dojo they might be taking a picture and emailing it to their teacher because they might not have the technology sometimes I actually just watched in workplace a student opened up the math work that they've been doing and showed the teacher page by page all of the completed assignments so that they could verify they've been working on it so the kids are getting creative with the ways they're able to submit work as well a lot of it right now is virtual but it you can't capture everything by just looking at Schoology even though that is probably the number one platform so our guidance the methods of instruction ways that we can look at engagement with students it
089also does discuss things beyond academic engagement because we know a lot of our students are receiving teletherapy they're they're participating in CFC actions etc so there's a lot of other venues to know that we are connecting with our students Mike if you can go to the next slide Mike Lucy thank you and then integrating two issues in the instructional document we also talked about our grading procedures and I imagine it would be simple simpler for this conversation if I just sort of walked everyone through the basics unless you feel like that's not necessary board members what are we thinking with that I'm good walkthrough can we move on move on ok run move on ok ok you can go to the next slide Mike if you can't there you go thank you one of the
090other things that we did want to briefly discuss is our conceptualizations for summer school I'm sure you're aware we're waiting to hear at summer so in July we're not sure yet we should hopefully here in the next week or two but in the meantime we're trying to plan creatively we know that we need to refine our 712 program because it's highly likely this will be a remote program and so what we already had is a brick and mortar program with some remote so we're going to capitalize on the practice we've had with the remote learning piece in the past and refine the existing 712 program and then we're developing a pre k-6 program because we really haven't had anything for summer school partly in the past ten years or so and anything we had before
091wasn't even the same set of standards so now we are talking about programs for reading and math and we are also partnering with say yes and we want to provide as much as we can in terms of a whole child focus so thinking about nutrition thinking about students wellness thinking about the social emotional supports that they might need to be successful because we know how traumatic this experience has been for many of our students so we want to make sure we're taking those things into account as we develop that pre-k 6 program which is not to say we won't also consider those things for high school but I just want to make a special point of it because say yes we'll be partnering with us to develop some of that so then we have two
092possible plans in the works one is entirely virtual so in that case all students would be accessing remote instruction we continue to research best practices right they're all emerging and for this research all over the place right now and we've been trying to pull that together and really think about the best ways to reach our students will be working with IT to talk about pre-k 2 because if this is remote we know that we had not deployed one-to-one devices to those great bands so I think has a few creative thoughts about what we might do to service those students so that they have access and we also are looking at other avenues to see if there's funding available from other sources to pay for some of that and then we also know that we'll still
093have to have some hard copy packets because there's just going to be situations where we aren't able to connect with everyone remotely so we'll have that as another option for students if we're able to go with Plan B sort of a blend we would pilot a very small program with students on campus and then most of the instruction would still be remote but that would allow us to help some kids who might struggle with access issues again we don't know yet but if we are able to go back in any small capacity we make sure that we are following CDC guidelines and applying all the protocols as appropriate okay thank you these are just concepts of ization and I didn't want to give the impression that these were what we were going to do but
094certainly I have a team form that's working hard on scenario age scenario beans and scenario see if we are able to safely open up one or more BRIC facilities we certainly would would follow all of the safety protocols and and make sure that if they weren't in place with testing and temperature and PPE equipment and all of that then we'll stay away the governor may in fact in a week or two say that we can't its that buildings are out for summer school so this is all fluid right now we just wanted to give you how some of us think it has been up to this point I appreciate that I have two questions one from mister Petrucci and one from mr. Hurd but first I'd like the ask just two overarching questions one is
095about taking into account what you just said dr. cash about needing to work with New York State and gets more guidance about whether or not buildings can be open we'll have a sense of generally when summer school might take place are we just waiting on New York State and then figuring planning out from there we we have established states which we would have to be flexible with if the state changes something but we had already released the summer school dates for July and August okay thank you and then it will be flexible if we need to we know that we have to otherwise from the state is a more accurate way of putting it fitting and then second question is how works with students with disabilities both in terms of the supports that they receive
096right now in this in this disruption period and also how they would be their needs could be addressed in terms of summer school and how with grading particularly it becomes complicated with students with eye AP's how that point because your document also that says satisfactory progress not says barry notes still developing I can't remember the exact titles off the top of my head and I should can you comment a little bit about that and then I'd like to go over to the dance from mr. Patricia Walker heard at least so far sure so there was several questions but the engine was promotion for special education so we always take into account k-8 we always take into account the evaluation of whether a student has met or is making progress on IEP goals then part of
097any decision that is made regarding promotion or retention so it's not strictly just the grade that the student in because that has to be that has to be taken into account and then you asked about yes why are you asking about specialized in the Hummer in general I'm talking about I'd in this summer in general and just to clarify about let's do it one at a time because you're ready I did bombard you sorry but I'd like to find out a little bit is about that promotion because it's difficult for students who may not be able to receive the same amount of support or who are more at risk in terms of just reference to their schedules in their environments is there some leeway that we could do in terms of at or making progress
098in making those determinations about promotion if students aren't making progress on their IEP s will we be able to take into account the circumstances I absolutely we would be taking that in circuit I think teachers would be understanding that as they assess whether kids are making any type of met them 100% case-by-case decision and discussing at the building level so today I would prefer that they not move forward so again it's always a discussion it's CSE meeting as well so I appreciate that because some of the parents of students with disabilities vary with that so I appreciate that it would be looked at in an individual situation and then the question about placement and how summer school might be run for students with disabilities sure so there's two types of summer school there's general summer
099school and then there's esy which is our extended school year and we had already captured the potential regression formula before we went out so they actually have that information about who would qualify pretty sy and then we're still a little bit in the thinking phases about what yes why I might look like because if we don't come back I would still continue to be things like teletherapy so they're still trying to work through some of the scenarios for that program and then in terms of special education in general when students attend summer school they do not necessarily get all of the modifications in the summer school program but we would address their needs as as appropriate so we would look at it again it's always a discussion pre-k to 6 it's a new program so
100we would have some flexibility to determine what is appropriate and not appropriate in terms of the supports and moving forward for students promotion and/or retention and then we are actually revisiting some of our seven eight protocols in light of the fact that it it's going to be remote so will those will be ongoing discussions but we always want to support our special education students during the summer so we work with them as much as we can in the past we've tried to provide every modification that was available to us etc so again if there's additional thoughts we appreciate the feedback absolutely thank you very much for your answers Thank You mr. Patricia and mr. Kirk for waiting mr. Patricia you were up and this Dalton continent you will be asked mr. Hurd thank you dr.
101Rivera so just as a point of clarification so we're talking summer school for children that that haven't passed during the school year are we talking a summer session for all students or students that volunteer to go to prevent the Summer Slide and keep them on grade level going into the fall I guess that's what I know some districts are talking about starting school in August or having something during the summer because most kids haven't been in school since March I have been doing great our teachers have been doing great but but there's that concern that that this is new and unique oh and we don't know the results that we're going to get so I just want clarity that worked in specifically summer school and not a summer session second question would be for I
102know that oftentimes our children that struggle the most are often those that are most distant the district so if we have a child in an individual classroom of just is sporadic lioran consistently handing in their work assignments who isn't engaging on some of the remote videos and remote learning opportunities is it up to the individual teacher to reach out to our principals reaching out to them how are we kind of doing outreach and making sure that they're engaged at the level that they need to be successful thank you okay and let me say something about the first one and maybe even the second one so thank you for those questions those important questions the first one is all of the above I didn't want this summer school concept to be just for a particular group
103of students who are struggling that that's historically and traditionally but summer schools of our four but if we have virtual which would be the main delivery system still boring through the summer and in many ways into the new year so many unknowns I want something for everybody I want something for everyone doesn't have to be required but as you just saw on the prior slide for example where we're building more and more resources for kids all across the cognitive spectrum so I want kids who can accelerate and go fast and what you know just like a sponge and soak up knowledge and soak up information I want them to be learning and moving throughout the summer vertically and have access to a lot of resources and I'll stand then also the other the other groups
104as well students or struggling students who who got an incomplete on their report card for the year though that we're going to try to have programs matched to the needs of all of our students but maybe in two or three buckets or two and three main categories so that's that question on the second one could you repeat what the question is sure dr. cash I just worried that I just know historically our kids that have struggled the most I've been the most disengaged so I'm worried about those that either are randomly or sporadically handing and excitements or not having been engaged at all just what we're doing to engage those kids the type of outreach does it fall upon the teacher is it the is it one of the you know is it a clerk
105in the office is the principal is one of our attendance teachers I'm just kind of curious to see what kind of outreach we're doing to make sure that these kids are engaged yeah that's a great question I think and you can deal with some of it as you know that your staff the efforts they're making and I think will also have a really nice elucidation of that question in her sweat set of slides so and you take do the part that you like to respond to and then when we get to dr. Williams set of slides Lou you will elaborate on that even more absolutely so we are able to identify now students who may not have connected because multiple teachers are reporting like I haven't reached this child or you know I haven't but
106so-and-so has so we have a better handle and the student tracker on which particular students need the most support but I would safely say that principals already new interns already new students who needed a better connection with us in general and I think that they have acted on that pretty expeditiously I know principals and teachers are constantly engaged in discussions they're in grade levels at faculty meetings private conversations about ways to connect with students and the social workers psychologists and counselors are reaching out all of our special education teachers are constantly reaching out to their students our ENL teachers are constantly reaching out for additional supports so yes I helped with that I know times it will speak a little bit to it so there's a lot of different ways and different people who are
107trying to next with some of these kids and I and I can speak specifically to multi lingual right now because anyone who reports that someone is struggling making contact with the student the multi lingual Department immediately contacts the school talks to the principal the teachers figures out the best way to reach that like what the phone number is etc and then they're having the academic coach assumptions and actually contact those kids and potentially visit them if needed because we know that one of those populations that we struggle with in terms of connecting can be the multilingual population for various reasons but we don't want to lose sight of that so between using talking points and teacher connections and principal connections we also have our central office departments who are trying to support that work as
108well thank colleagues I always think it's I think it's useful to give some granular examples on the ground Toya I know for example at MST before we went into the shutdown period there was one staff member one of Kevin's assistant principals I believe that had come up with a really innovative program of outreach and connecting the students others of you are doing some fabulous work around connecting with seniors make sure that they're getting all their work done even while senioritis is taking hold and many of our young people and then the content and Darlene if you have any examples of how we're connecting and reaching out I think it's important sometimes they give a specific example Toya do you know what I'm referring to yes so good evening any other thing you want to say
109to it I didn't want to catch you off guard MSC has been working with Annie WI and early warning indicator facilitator who has really been what I've been calling what they've been calling the connector she has been that glue that pulls everyone together breaks down the silos make sure that whatever a student needs sometimes one staff member know about it and the critical staff member who needs to connect that student to a program or another support may not be fully in the know we have been seen as that glue and really supporting the whole team it's been a team effort but recently MST also works along with they've been working on the school redesign and they've been doing they've been engaging in this work of really reaching out family to find out for sure which
110attachment it earlier so they're tweeting their students to say how are you feeling about this so this could this model work for you going forward what could we do to add you when we returned to school and there's new normal that we're all living in right now how do we support you as you return and engage you in some of these things that you feel like worked well free so that some of the work that's happening at MFP that's a good example anyone else have a concrete example from the schools did ask this good evening doctor cast and board this is Conte and Dabney I thought there I can't so I just want to echo some of the comments that were made earlier the AFL and I with weekly but we talk to them daily
111some of those connections that principals are making and ensuring that their school they're making go to outreach we have principals that are visiting homes I know that was mentioning earlier principals are doing the delivery of the materials like the devices and the and the packets but they're really making an effort to make sure that each and every one of their students are being connected so before the trackers system principles already had in place systems where they were ensuring that their teachers were reaching out to families this is our lien Jezza now P good evening board members and actors named s me I just I want to reiterate exactly what science man was doing in my County what else might say I know how do my principles that she was she one of our E&L families
112to drop off materials because they didn't have it and the family was so thrilled that they came they couldn't believe a principal came to their home with materials to ensure the dead child was getting exactly what they needed at another school a principal has been monitoring contact with every family she's reached out to families were prepared they weren't workers weren't able to do that and ensuring that she is making contact with them on a regular basis and ensuring that her teachers are and that's district-wide with our principal they have this tracking system since the beginning soon as we went into our Corbett 19 practices and they've made significant impact and working with our families ensuring that they have everything that they need as soon as I hear anything we'll make sure they reach out to
113the SS you need to reach out the family of two tangents office to provide the support that they need and even to some of our partners or say yes partners are working in the school do they take notes or something Darlene and others when they go out to the schools the principal's or they take notes when they ask questions and have conversations with the families you know to say without trying too much because it's a it's a delicate balance but you know are you okay are you well anything we can do for you that kind of thing talking to the parents often to the student body absolutely and then they make sure that anything again if any family convinced them that they need additional support we make sure that they get a whether it's through
114our lunch program letting them know what's available if they need additional materials making sure we get it to the families if they need the last house may be sure they get those to the families so in identifying the social emotional supports they make sure they reach out to Tanja's office to ensure that the families get that Matt oh there you go thank you and I can't see it yeah I can so doctor right and mistress motto I want to give some examples and then I want to move to the question for mr. hurt and miss Belton cotton okay I wanted to amplify the fact that it's not only the academic supports that the principals are ensuring that the students have I have a principal who's been delivering groceries because the the lunches in the breakfast
115that they collect that is a huge help but some of our families have large in extended family members within their households and it just wasn't enough so we have principals who are purchasing groceries and delivering them to homes we we know that some of our children have been dislocated and now they are living in homes of relatives and they've needed clothing so principals have bought clothing for families so - dr. Cash's point about taking notes they take exception notes and then they act on them so we have groups of teachers who organize when there's a birthday and they go to a child's home with crying singing birthday wishes to them so they've been doing innovative and extraordinary things to maintain that connection because this is a very hard time and it can be hard for
116people to express their deepest needs but the more you communicate with someone the moment you maintain close contact the more they know that's what we're finding is happening Thank You sandy thank you you know mr. smart okay I think we may have lost him I if you need to jump in again let's just charge I our principles are working even we've mentioned the motorcades even with community school navigators and going to homes where they can use some translation services and social distancing from a sidewalk to make sure that that is occurring you know communication and engagement as I mentioned before have been ultimately the the key point for everyone including with the teachers you know principals are organizing staff to make sure that everyone's take it home so they could take care of the kids
117as well so it's really been a huge community effort across the board and just making well it's the top priority Thank You Tina thank you very much mr. herger up what's your question I also have on list miss Belton common in miss woods okay my heart goes out to the principals and teachers as that go on beyond the call of duty to to help out with the children on health education and the food program the food program was one of the Soniaji the next week for the educational support we will talk more about that again next week and is it I mean just hearing that the principal is actually going out for the PS birthdays is phenomenal it's a credit to where our district is doing I like to backpedal a little bit I had
118a parent that that spoke to me with concerns and I don't know if the district's already doing this or this is up to the individual schools but they would like to see a parent-teacher conference day so they can find out where they Chawla is educationally I know that on the teacher that reach those parents on a daily basis but they would like to see a parent-teacher conference today if that's not being done I'm not quite sure of if it's different from each school from school also on these in it as a you can receive a report from the turnout of the report with the student and also if they're not have any contact with them another another reason was because of the kids that's graduate you'll be going to college they can have a understanding
119and with the district and also with the board about our by the context with college and I'll find out where our kids are going on and that they went to uh to another educational program after high school which we all glad that the second question is uh backpedaling just a little bit was the grading process I know we skipped over it and we just started skip over it but I would like also because we have parents who have children in a class I mean at a homes that that's in Moscow different classes that's uh maybe K to twelve so maybe three to six so maybe seven to twelve there's kind of confused and to them to find out what the grading pattern is so someone can actually give if somebody listening online they can actually
120tell them where they can find out about the grading about the grading structure that we use because these are three different structures for three film bubble children so that there could be maybe on a webpage or direct them to that or they can find out where that PowerPoint will be it helped Michael okay can we go back to slides Mike oh if you stay here you're gonna thank you so I linked from this PowerPoint but you can actually find this on our website if you go to the main page and scroll down to district news the document is called bps instructional guidance document during period of extended closure and it is it is available to everyone and then I think some schools have links to it from their own web pages etc but we're planning
121to do one mailing to just capture the grading practice and send that to parents as well so they have a hard copy of it but teachers can also answer questions about it and administrators can answer questions about it if they want to call as well you know thank you and thank you thank you so much and the last question was about summer school that's also going to be addressed next week when educational Support Committee I know that we might receive a report from the governor by that time where we might have a better understanding about location it's gonna be virtual also about on students are struggling with dr. Cass said you know he wanted to work with Austin this is as soon as that's incomplete so that's some of the things that we have concerns
122about and there's a thousand questions about summer school that's lying out there so we can get a better than standing what direction that we'd be going in and and also love the enhanced landing learning so that we can try to work with students that maybe took a test or exam before and they can um better their grades I know this district has worked very hard to try to format it but also that this kid can better their grace and other districts across the country are utilizing this tool right now and I don't want our kids to be left behind and because other other states are practicing where they can better their kids grace making it into a challenge pilots institution and before our kids can so that's one other things and and and so you'll
123be addressed to some of the other things next week Dustin sir miss cool if we can now receive a another report on that next week and that'll be great the last thing was apologize last thing was though some some of our kids receive traumas in a life you know from the from this coronavirus and so some things happen in lives and their families so that uh I know we talked about special education IEP s but can we find something to address the kids that may be visiting our for mental distress also and might be affecting their grades and learning at this time also for a summer program as well in tanja will have some thoughts about it in her next set of slides mr. haire that supportive senator mentioned you mentioned bettering your grade in
124the Regents but right now they've cancelled both the June and the August exam so a student that wanted to try to improve their grade would be the first opportunity would be in January okay my own thank you madam chairman my question is I hear teachers are doing a good job throwing themselves out to the students and this whole environment and I hear I hear the Front's of both trying to follow up but my question simply is if you just if just gave the students though so the laptops and you're just just visiting with of April 23rd it's you saying you made 80% and you said 77 students high school students did not even have any internet and access or they didn't have the hot spots but the question that I'm saying is what's the reality
125of that monitoring piece I want to know what is the reality of are the kids children actually getting me getting the education are they actually listening logging on and getting the classes that the teachers are presenting I know teachers who are saying I may have 18 children in my class yes I called the parents the parents said they were going to log on but the children did not log on only five out of the 18 logged on and I know some parents that say well my I'm not home and the kids the children are playing games on our and her laptop so they're not logging on so my question is what about the reality that a lot of children for Mark Burnett wouldn't have any way of log me on and we do I agree
126with you dr. Katz we need summer school so that those children can catch up and that we can give them a quality education but also the question is doesn't attendance count for anything I mean if teachers calling doing best and only five out of 18 children actually log on to get the education went into attendance teachers logging what real attendance is and maybe even somehow testing whether the children actually learned anything because I think the summer school is going to be definitely necessary but a lot of children fell behind gave up hope I'm getting this some parents and their we're not doing as great as we think we are I guess what I'm saying well let me let me say this today that this is a two-way street when we're in school we have the
127heavy lift we're out of school the parents have a heavy lift that's just a reality of it and what we're doing is to do everything we can just to help so you know about something like this we have a help line you can take names you can pass them forward to us we have a big small district so what does that mean it's not so big that we can't reach out and make a connection even if it's driving up to or knocking on the door we'll do that principals are trying to do that so so folks have to reach both ways it's not all on the district during something like this it's teamwork I want to hear what parents are trying to do what they're trying to do and how they can reach out to
128us because we're right here every single time every single it so no we're not resting on any laurels here this is hard work and it's gonna be hard work for the next several years and it's going to get really really hard if we get a 20% cut in my federal aid in our state aid okay so I want more attitude reporting that we can I don't think but I'm saying it portion to be worried about and that we need some got a keep working at it you gotta keep trying you fall down seven times get up eight keep trying keep working we're here we're going to help you keep working keep trying to get through I have to say Oh lighten up bro I love you guys know the data from the contact form because
129that'll that'll give some insight into what may be happening you know it's a difficult time says about thinking what the conifer how were responding now but also how we're going to be responding the next four to five years is really important because this will have a lasting impact across the nation for students who are in full now thinking about long I really like the idea that you brought up about looking at Miss Harris as a full year not as a separation but in terms of continuity about what needs to be done and I'm looking forward to hearing some more insight and correction both from parent groups features of units trader support members how to move forward with that well I also believe in this mountain apartment had a question and that's the front have acceptance
130yeah we're starting we're starting to kind of run over at 7:09 already and I know that we've not much a Deathstalker cast pointed out right we need to take time and get these questions answered also though my attention back we're not doing anything that could keep the AIDS and teacher assistants do we have any plans to incorporate them in to helping with our children and their keep it accessible part of their day to day activity prior to you know clothing fooled um how can we better use them to help us I get my question an item necessarily have to have an answer now but it's just the thought since they are part of the process and Kelly you are years ago you had and I don't know if it's on the website but you had
131for each child great school great year what their accomplishments should be who usual have that rule it was a beautiful you pulled it together it had that agrees you mean about the grade-level expectations website there under the curriculum division okay I can send you a link anyone thank you know you think that we should provides that again to our parent so that they can understand where their children should be at in this cycle you know I heard the conversation about having parent-teachers conference it'll I don't know if we things are actually do that but I would like to serve them that leads know that this tool is out there because it was a great tool and I was very impressed with it when you presented it to us and so I just think that would
132help parents understand if you have children on target you know or where they should be or not I think there's a great suggestion thank you I don't know do a mail out I don't know it's in that package Mel out you were talking about doing in regards to the great that you include some tools now back to cash this is not new I've been trying to get you at doing some sort of a superintendent Academy for the summer what about a Virtual Academy with challenging ideas and things for children to do the superintendent corner of something that takes those children to the next level you can your presentation you talked about your two examples and what I'm concerned about are the children who are who are have achieved what they were supposed to do this
133year and now they're trying to get to the next level just some websites or things to take it to the parents can go to just providing some additional support is that so right and I like that okay thank you and and I guess the final thing that I want to say is that when I looked at the summer school I really felt that there was a need for a conversation about a third option and from my perspective and I'm thinking that that perspective would include the virtual doctor caches or the superintendent Virtual Academy or challenge and I did or with connect kids the different website there are a lot of free math web sites out there and things like that that would help the parents particularly the ones who are really engaged and want to
134see their children excel because we do have children that are doing very good in this environment yeah we have seniors that have moved them that have really finished up curriculum it's I've talked to several teachers who told me that they finished their curriculum already for this year so those are just a few ideas that I wanted to throw out thank you mrs. Cottman thank you for saying that I'm actually a person who's the director of the summer school program she has been combing through different websites to look for enrichment activities so she's been looking at NASA to see some of the programs they have the museums programs that they're offering so those are things we talked about directing kids to ask like after the main English and math programming at the elementary but giving them
135these additional opportunities to do interesting well I know of two math programs that are out there that are virtual and they're free and of course you know that's what we want to focus in on providing as many resources without cost our children's is you know that's right thank you those are all good miss dr. Rivera do you have any more thank you for members for this section I have one last one from mr. Scott one more question for mr. Scott thank you very much I appreciate that I see I'm sorry mr. Petrucci not a question not really a question but more kind of a comment and hopefully something we can do a retired teacher reached out to me because it's the appreciation week she was trying to come up with something we can do this
136show that the students can do to show appreciate further teachers her suggestion was that we asked her students put a star in the window and let them know that the teachers are you know rock star rap stars movie star superstars something along those lines that we can get the kids engaged and to show their support for their teachers during this during teacher appreciation so I thought I'd put it out there for the board for its thought and consideration Thank You Lou thank you very much I appreciate that - appreciate teacher go into the social emotional wellness aspect of our work arguably the most important part of our work during this time so dr. Williams if you could take us through your three slides please I sure will good evening board members superintendent and colleagues this
137would be the better side or this particular presentation by the certainty is no less I think that social emotional wellness sometimes can be invisible and it can be difficult to measure but I think peace is probably what keeps many of us I think we are all invited as a common thread and questions that have been asked tonight I think that we are all intensely concerned about all of our children and making sure that we're meeting the needs of the certainly does include ultimately well they certainly are better positioned for academic success so this is a really important section I think it speaks to the bargain when we talk about the whole child there is you know a huge component that deals with social and emotional wellness in addition to the academic achievement of students so
138you will see sections throughout this short presentation that talk about the importance our community partners and our parents partnering with us to help to ensure that we're meeting the needs of the whole child can move forward please so my team has been working really hard we're meeting several times a day each and every day and what we've created a three tiered approach and we know you know some of you are familiar with the triangles for PBIS where we talk about all the children and what all children get it's no different in this approach there are some supports that we provide that are accessible to all of our students families and staff and then there are some that are more targeted and those are the tier two of interventions and I'll talk a little bit about
139those but then even when we're doing 1 & 2 there are some that will require even more intense individualized support and I'll talk a little bit about our tier 3 piece what's different here than normal is that we've included staff and so we're concerned about the Wellness of our staff HR does a great job I think with the EAP supports that they provide students support typically and thorak Lee has been concerned about the Wellness of students but there's some supports that we're providing for our staff which I'll talk a little bit about yes okay so for Tier one these are again the supports that we're providing for every single child and family in our district and parts that are more preventive in nature they're informational and they help to reduce the anxiety of students families
140and staff so when you see things listed on this side and I'll talk a little bit about it like student plays and assignments you may wonder why does that have anything to do with wellness but it certainly can be an anxiety provoking time when parents don't know where their children will be assigned in the next few months we do that as a part of meeting the need of a whole child and a whole family so to start at the top we all know that we have the hotline number it's been working it's been working quite effectively and they don't all deal with wellness which is what unlisted as the contact for but whatever I get a telephone call for because parents sometimes just press you know wherever they think they will be able to get
141it I'm able to navigate and to call my colleagues and to answers almost immediately for families we try to keep our website as fluid and up-to-date as we can we're constantly looking at CDC updates we're looking for best practices research so we're getting our website almost daily we have been I'm proud to say providing professional development online and as a new office for my particular division but we have trained close to 2,000 teachers on things like what mindfulness trauma-informed where we recently created a training on anti-bullying and everything that we do you really infuse the work that dr. morale is doing and so I'm always looking at whatever trainings were doing and making sure that they are inclusive and that they are cultural and linguistically responsive so we're getting our trainings translated working with Nadia
142and her team and just making sure I'm sorry did you say something get some feedback so we're always making sure know that the photos that are in the trainings are responses that any scenarios that we set up are relevant and those kinds of things but I'm very proud because again this is a nuance from my department and I had a meeting yesterday with our supplemental health partners and they are creating a training for this summer specific to covet 19 because whenever schools open back up we want our building leaders trained on you know all of the safety precautions and measures that they need to take we want our teachers to know and we want our parents to know and so they're working on that piece right now getting that kind of training we started last
143Thursday I'm very proud our parent and family engagement department started doing something a little different with respect to parent centers and we are now every Thursday at 5 o'clock conducting what we call virtual parent Center Suites and it's dealing with various issues or supports that the district has and we're the word out it's a live stream and so parents and the community can access it they can send in questions live we found out that last Thursday we had close to 1,000 folks that viewed that particular training I know that miss Botticelli and her team next week are scheduled to roll out the grading piece and so I heard heard ask a question about how can we get the word out to parents that certainly is one way we're using social media outlets we're using the
144website robocalls to try to get the word out so that parents know that they can tune in this Thursday we have a couple of our school counselors that will be talking about supports for seniors and you know how that is rolling out so we're excited about that piece that's every Thursday at 5 o'clock on Facebook line we also have had I mean the donations and the books that this community has you know rallied and provided for our children has just been you know unmeasurable it's just I mean we've gotten brand-new books Disney books because we know that our children right now this is difficult and that's you know an escape it's some enjoyment for our children and our families just love getting these books we've gotten score card games that help the children continue movement
145and wellness and all those kinds of things it's really a family activity and so those are handed out at our 28 sites our middle delivery we're delivering meals to families that express that they have that kind of need if transportation is an issue we're delivering meals we've got hundreds of volunteers that are helping us to get that done at every site this is another nuance and I'm not so sure that across the country that this is being done but we have RNs and LPNs who are school nurses who are at each of our sites where we're giving out meals and you know it brings a certain level of comfort certainly to all of the staff that are at these sites but I think even more than that it's providing some preventive health measures so safety
146and wellness to make sure that everybody that sat on sites is engaging in safe behaviors this week dr. sue Baldwin has secured with independent health 10-thousand wellness bag giveaways that we will be giving away to families there are things in these bags like these inflatable soccer balls and chalk but also thermometers which we know you know are very difficult to get mass gloves so those items will be available next week at our grab-and-go sites we're doing temperature readings another nuance so the nurses that are at the 28 sites every staff member that comes in every morning before they begin to work they are taking their temperature and that's not just the cafeteria staff that includes the principal the engineer the security staff and so again it's a wellness measure that's really proactive and preventative we
147want to make sure if they're there that they're well and ready to work we have supports for all of our seniors we really have wrapped our arms around our seniors in particular and so Miss Younger has been working closely with principals high school principals to make sure that not a single senior is going to fall between the cracks and so we're working with say yes and gear up to make sure that FAFSA forms are being completed for our seniors credit detail reports are being done and when students are looking like they're veering into some difficulty or some troubles the counselors have been sending those reports to Martha and she's working with principals to do whatever they can do to get those students back on track we also with respect to student placement I'm very very
148pleased about the work that has been happening at student placement there's been a reduction and telephone calls and I think that some of that is happening because the work is continuing to progress in spite of kovat 19 we have placed all of our high school students that's a couple thousand students actually it's more than that that are moving from eighth grade to ninth grade we're placing our gifted and talented students we're working right now on getting our kindergarten placement solidified and so that work is moving forward we have put up a biweekly update on the website so that parents can go to that website and see what's going on with their children's assignments so those are just some of the tier one supports that we're doing for all of our students should I take questions
149now on that piece or do you want to wait colleagues that you want anything on tier one or you want to wait all right let's wait till the end I suggest I just had one question for you move forward sure dr. Tyler Williams you said that you had a established mass and clubs I'm grabbing go sites could you please tell us where that be located at yes we have 28 sites yes okay we don't necessarily have those for everybody Rhonda right we just have 10,000 Wellness bags that has that or do we have other sources of CPE equipment right now and so you know we're not going to turn anyone away so the families that come and that need them but we can't you know we'll have to develop a system so that we're not
150giving out ten bags to one family because they mean that other families might not get as much but we do have nation of ten thousand wellness bed which is very important right now we have a lot of people who's making you know makeshift mass right now and they have access to mass and from the studies show that they're very ineffective as far as spreading Kovach virus and we find other avenues or we can work together files the apples get more masks and gloves for off for our students case families no here with you also thank you I'm sorry for your senior support are you also including or is it required at this point in regards to these qualification for the support requirements the n-c-double-a and things like that I think that's the proper acronym are
151you are you providing support that you know there was normally in the past there have been timelines that basketball players have to get their paperwork in by certain times for these two clear houses or whatever did that also include it in your senior support I will have to follow up and get back to you and let you know that so for tier two even when we're providing all of the Tier one supports we know that there is still you know about 15 percent of our students that may need some additional support and so this is really where the real the real work begins we know that when this Kovach crisis hit we have some students that we're serving either short-term or long-term suspension and we also have a signal number of students about 300 plus
152that medical home instruction some in hospital some home and so you heard me share earlier that we've worked real closely with our principals to try as much as we can any that we are aware of to make sure that they're receiving the same level as non suspended students that's really important because we know again that these are our holes so we're doing a little extra there and the expectation is that you know even when they are receiving the instructional support and they've gotten their laptops we're continuing to the self to make sure that they stay on track we connected to mental health counseling and so we meet every other week you know how we're going to drill down and make sure that those supports happen but sharing some very innovative things that you're doing they
153even offered transportation for their family to come in and they will tour that that counseling continuing our wellness team survey and the principal was very supportive of it they worked with all of the delegates in the building and so we're going to take a look at what that well mr. baby feels and see if it's a best practice that can be rolled out some of the other school and a PowerPoint just disappeared cool can you see it no disappeared well it definitely disappeared well yeah we still have students unfortunately that you know have been placed in foster care during this Kovac crisis it's something that you know we did not not expect and so we've had some situations where the stration office has had to do some enrolling we've got students that have relocated to
154the Buffalo public school district because they are now residing in a foster care home that's in Buffalo we have some students that have moved to the Buffalo public to move to the City of Buffalo and so we are registering students feel during this co-head pandemic we have mckinney-vento students and we have more than 1,100 students that currently are McKinney Vento student and that Department has been making sure that those students also because again these they're our most needy students have what they need and so there was one shelter Viva La Casa that contacted us and said that they did not have laptops and my routine move real swiftly to make sure that were delivered to the people across the site where we have homeless - many of whom are refugee student and able new country
155we also want to make that fast for support that we talked about they get information on college applications their student record reviews are happening everything that their non homeless peers are getting the expectation is that they're getting that and more one of the things that has been a little bit of a challenge for us has been the virtual physical examinations for our students to get working papers again wellness when we think about wellness being financially well is important and so the mayor has a summer youth program and securing the working papers and working with the mayor's off that falls under my division and so we had I believe more than eighteen hundred students that qualify for mayor summer used to us we want our young people to have that experience working have that opportunity getting
156physicals to get the papers as a bit of a challenge because when we look at getting physicals and what that entails it's you know looking at a heart and lung and during you know kind of a health and wellness assessment you know has there been any history of certain things and so we would be having to take the word of students or parents but we're working with those are some of the tier two interventions that we are providing any questions I think it would be good if they go to tier 3 and then we can just wrap up with any final question thank you very much very comprehensive okay 4:43 this is really about 5% of our students and really in a real organic way we've developed a pretty aligned system of support for those
157students families and staff that really are in uni and so that's a school based on support there's something that comes to the attention of a teacher counselor principal within the school building that is essentially trauma from crises they may not have been able to contact the student there may be some involvement of CPS or a staff person has reported 100 or more case where it can be handled within the school the principles are pretty proficient in doing that and handling you know many of these situations and so document intervention or support that needs to happen then that's when at the district level folks get involved and so the principal will contact their ASL they may need to contact 99 1 1 if they I've heard of all the child that's an imminent home and they
158need to always the first concern if a staff member does report that has a temperature of 100 degrees or more the principal have been empowered to have that person to go and to think medical attention and to provide a doctor's note before returning to work to keep them safe so again it continually progress if a child or staff member continues these supports then that's when we get into cross departmental systems and when I ask departmental systems I know that dr. as expectation is that we are all working on all of this together everyday and we really do and so it's not unusual for me to get a telephone call or a text message whatever time of the night it is from one of the associates of school leadership that there is a situation that requires
159immediate attention and then I go into a full-blown you know investigatory mode and I may need to reach out to multilingual if we're trying to contact a family nadia has been very helpful that I may need to reach out to Fred Wagstaff I may need to reach out to Kim Hoelscher and the student that you know is getting into some you know some issues and needs mentoring I may need to reach out to dr. morale our crisis team realizes that it's not an 8 to 4 job it is 24/7 especially in times like this and so just last week we were you know working until 10 o'clock at night to get some support that was needed and so we get very individualized when we get to this level and it takes some peeling of layers
160to get to the root of you know what's really going on and when we get to that level in addition to the cross departmental systems oftentimes there's a need to reach out to the community and we have more than a hundred partners that we're working with in our schools and it's not unusual for us to you know call on those resources when we need them we're working with parents that parents become aware of issues that's proud of the bargain that they share with us what those issues are so that we can work to support and there's really this A to Z methodology with this so we don't just make a referral and drop it and leave it we follow through and we make sure that when we make the referral that the family follows up
161or that the agency follows up we've agency that have had to make home visits wellness visits and we then make sure that even after that if a child you know needs to go into care or if not we make sure we follow through to make sure that that child is connected every single one every single one so those are some of the things that Student Support Services has been deeply involved in you know it's challenging work but we love the work because we know we are saving lives also thank your definition you and your staff and I just want to say thank you to everybody here as well for being so so dedicated to working with students especially in such a difficult time I really I know I appreciate it I I know my colleagues
162appreciate it I thank you so I really can't say thanks or not thank you oh I wanted to see if we do you have any last questions before we wrap up this work session mr. Scott more of a comment into second what you just said dr. berry I think all the staff had been incredibly responsive to the concerns that I brought to them from parents from teachers from other staff you know in being able to provide child care being able to provide meals to a daycare connecting students the internet providing devices I think the responsiveness has been really impressive and just dr. Williams I think your work your team has really made it clear that there's a priority for unsocial emotional wellness during especially during this time I watched the trauma-informed webinar I tuned in
163to the parent Center virtual meeting last week both were phenomenal and student placement you've been extremely responsive your team has been responsive to the needs of student placement I think the work has been exceptional during this time but bi-weekly updates that I you know we spoke earlier today about they have been a game changer in being able to communicate to our parents keep them informed and decrease their anxiety and that uncertainty regarding their child's placement and I I've received compliments from parents about that practice and being able to have those updates so that certainly I think a practice that needs to continue beyond just this this period of closure and remote learning so thank you thank you to everyone that's that's you know doing everything to meet the needs of our students and our families
164okay before I wrap up this work session I just did want to mention to the fellow board members to look forward to an email from this mikaze based on some of the conversations we've been having regarding charter schools and some possible subcommittees for other buckets of work she'll be reaching out and then we'll be moving forward next week at the executive affairs work session unless there's anything else I'd like to move to close this work session and move on to our budget one nothing else okay I declare this an accession plus again thank you very very much to everybody I'm your work to support our that has proven the extent to which that the schools are the very center of our community Thank You team thank you everyone mr. staff is phenomenal take a break
165do you want to keep going whatever the body says I think we would probably want to use everybody want to move forward to the finance and ice committee or do you want to find in a break wonderful yes are you there yeah I'm just trying I'm trying to get on on the screen I'm on the phone right now line yeah I'll be in in probably less than a minute okay either way colleagues if Mike could put the screen up for this committee we have a set of end slides and I want to introduce them good evening needless to say we're doing everything we can we have to be cheerleaders during this time as well we've had National Nurses Week this week we have National Teacher Appreciation Week we have principal appreciation as frankly everybody should
166be appreciated food service workers security workers Buffalo PD hospital workers every night we clap at seven o'clock for our hospital workers front line who are saving lives in a very real medical way but I don't think it's understated to say that many of our food service workers a custodial staff our security team led by Fred Wagstaff who seem to be everywhere all the time and our teachers have been fabulous our team our executive team our principals everyone they also in many ways of frontline workers during this time and our student need us we need the support of the community continuing and we are at a really tough juncture right now we're at a tipping point colleagues I've never seen anything quite like this at my 42 years in leadership positions in public education never have
167seen it I hope we don't have to see it again but what we're facing now is some very real threats to the Buffalo public school very real threats and we don't want to be distracted by working on this over here and neglecting some of the threats that are right before us right now right today then one of those is the fiscal picture picture the budget picture for next year and beyond and beyond as I've said before we look at this as one continuous year but we also have to plan and be smart enough to anticipate that yes we will get on the other side of this in some fashion or another but will we have the resources to continue where we have the resources that our children absolutely will need for them to continue their
168academic education but also the whole child focus that we know is so important to one of the most impoverished school districts in the nation we ranked in the top 10 in that category so the budget picture is by our colleagues I can't paint a rosy picture picture about the budget this is just not there not at this time and probably not not in the future and hope is not a plan you're gonna have to be very aggressive in lobbying at the federal level at this time for the funds that our states need municipal minute municipalities will need funds hospitals will need funds school systems and school districts would a much larger influx of dollars billions of dollars across the country if we're if we're to survive so tonight will be will be concise but we
169want to get you to start getting your headsets around where we are and where we are is in the first phase of what I call the knowable fiscal picton this is what's known and so we have budgeted to what's known at this but alright this is only phase one and there be other phases in the in the near future so I think Jeff has been concise he's always concise he's very clear in the way he presents we work very closely together make sure it is understandable for the lay public as well as for you as a board so you can do your fiduciary responsibilities and that's what we're going to present to you tonight ten slides that show you that we have balanced this 90 million dollar deficit that we were in when the legislative
170session in New York State let out nearly two months ago but that is only where we are at that at this phase and so I will caution you that this has got to be fluid and we've got to be very very very smart to do what we have to do be able to help the children when we when we get on the other side of this so Jeff's start start with the picture and the where we are and let's go through these slides so we can make a few main points about each one I would recommend colleagues that you wait until we go through all of these slides and then let's ask your questions at the end Jeffrey okay thanks dr. cash and good evening board members so you know I guess so if Mike
171can you please up just push us forward to the next slide okay so I'll try to get through these as quick as I can the format of this presentation is in a lot of ways similar to ones that we've seen in the past so you'll probably recognize some of the charts and things like that but you know just want to go over you know these highlights so again this this particular budget that we're looking at here is what we call our survivable model so this is this is using the current state aid runs that were in the adopted state budget so you know another slide will see the potential for further reductions but this is this is basically what we know right now based on published data so we have budgeted expenditures of nine hundred
172and fifty four point seven million it's an increase so I mean you know when you think about that where we're in a tough year tough budget year but we are actually increasing year over year compared to the nineteen twenty budget our budgeted expenditures by twenty seven point three million or two point nine percent the biggest factors components of that increase is transportation which is up eight point eight million or 17.1% so this is the new transportation contract that the bus contract that we have with first student we for the last five years had been well below market in terms of cost and this brings us back closer to the market or what the market was when we bid it out I mean things may change but but this is essentially assuming the the current transportation
173system for next year up eight point eight million or 17.1% salaries and benefits up eleven point nine million or two point three percent so that is essentially our our current current staffing that we have right now with steps or any the any salaries any contracts that still have you know they have incremental increases based contractually those are in there The Associated benefits it does include and we'll see in a little bit this does it include the assumed reduction probably of about forty five positions we'll get to that in a little bit and charter school tuition is up four point three million or three point two percent now a couple months ago chartered school tuition projections we're up by about fourteen million this this is much less it's still an increase and it's it's an increase
174because we're projecting more charter school pupils but the mission rate has been reduced based on the final state the final state budget that was adopted it actually changed the the formula for for charter school tuition how it's calculated which actually is a slight decrease on a per pupil basis so that was certainly welcomed and one of the things that we lobbied hard for because it you know we can't continue to have both the tuition rate substantially increasing every year along with the number of students so that's really where you know that's really where our costs are going budgeted revenues this is where it's it's quite a bit different from prior years same thing nine hundred and fifty four point seven million because we have to have a balanced budget but state aid is down on
175forty six point four million or five point nine percent and federal disaster aid is new this is a new amount and this is put right in on the state aid run so the the amount that the state calculated as owing to the district related to disaster aid they use to essentially offset one-for-one a cut in state aid so that state aid reduction includes twenty nine point six million reduction for the coronavirus crisis and then they're intending us to use federal aid to to backfill that we might make the point that we haven't received that and don't know if we're gonna receive that so correct we've not we've not received you know we have not received anything yet on this the the twenty nine point six million is based on stimulus 3 package that was adopted
176in in April we don't know for certain what the exact amount is this is what the state has calculated and ultimately there there's still an application process and so forth that would have to that would have to be undertaken for that 30 million dollars unspent funds that's our projection right now for the 1920 budget so we we intend to as it was superintendent mentioned earlier we're really essentially saying here we're going to carry forward into the next year and that's thirty million dollars is what we anticipate the surplus to be in the 1920 budget the most of that surplus is related to transportation since we've not been transporting students since early March and you if you project that out for the rest of the year that's about 15 about 15 million another 6 million is
177related to health insurance we've been told that a lot of medical procedures that folks will be doing are delayed because people are essentially quarantined or they're you know they're they're they're stuck at home and hospitals aren't performing procedures appointments are being canceled things like that we are self-insured so we actually pay actual claims so about 6 million in there we also have some you know salary reductions over time is is lower extra activities and things like that so we're planning on carrying over 30 million 20 million so this is again this is another component of our fund balance 20 million is related to using existing fund balance that we have right now so we have a two hundred and two hundred and twenty point six or 223 excuse me two hundred and twenty three million
178fund balance at the end of June 2019 this would be used using 20 million of that bringing it down close to two hundred million I also have in our revenue use the recognition of the six million dollars of recovery of the prior year overpayments from charter schools so we have been the last two payments we've been collecting those funds we're all aware now of the tapestry and in Elmwood village had both tried to get a court to block the district from taking those funds so and the courts would not intervene they are still going to be doing an intercept request with the Education Department but we you know one we need these funds it's pretty clear based on the budget until we you know we believe the district is obviously entitled to them as as
179it was an overpayment so that that is a component of our revenues right there if we can go to the next next slide please so here are just a you know we we need to make sure we frame our budget situation around what what is happening right now we don't know ultimately and this is pretty much nationwide because I'm in constant contact with my colleagues around the nation no one really knows what each state is going to do so different states are approaching things differently but in New York State the governor has three periods three time periods where he's able to reduce state aid to two school districts and other municipal municipalities the governor has already announced a potential 20% state aid reduction after this April period that just ended so we've got grow in
180two more months we at the end of June he's got another period where if revenues or expenditures are out of line can make further reductions and then at the end of December 2020 but in this case 20% state aid reduction and I just multiplied this by our foundation aid so we foundation aid 20% of foundation aid is a hundred and ten million dollars that that is possibly what the worst-case scenario maybe it could even be worse than that but this is a significant amount of funding that if if this was lopped out of the district right now would totally change everything that's not in our budget right now but based on what happens over the coming weeks and months that is a distinct possibility we are also waiting on an announcement of additional federal disaster
181relief so a lot of I think what the governor is speaking about is trying to make a case for the need for federal disaster relief so we don't know what those amounts are or could be and they're not they're not in this model either but depending on you know depending on what the state aid reductions are what the federal disaster relief is there could be significant reductions forthcoming in in our budget and and these are things that aren't going to be just one year it's likely going to last the last time the state had to do reductions these overall reductions in the budget it took about five or six years to phase those out so we may be dealing with this for quite some time hold on that's so you can understand the devastating nature
182of this we're calling this the second model that we are presenting is the devastating model 110 million dollar cut for us translates into about 1,100 people 1,100 and and you got to understand that that bad that would definitely devastate us at a time when well nice I sure wouldn't actually me he more somewhere to make that clear Jeff next slide okay thank you Mike elf nearness so the next slide this now we're going back to our survivable models so this is where we are now and we want to do a little recap here this this was also part of the four-year financial plan which we sent out earlier so in equal the state was adopted we had an eighty nine point six million dollar depth that we were dealing with we already talked about 30
183million rolling over 2019 any funds into the into the next year budget 20 million utilized existing fund balance six million recovery of charter school overpayments we've got a two million dollar item in there for the tuition tuition calculation so in order to come up with the eighty nine point six million I had already taken the change in the tuition rate but as we as we've gotten towards the end of the school year and had another another one of our charter school invoices I felt comfortable reducing based on attrition that next year I could probably based on I think it was about a hundred hundred and fifty pupils that I could reduce from the model to save about two million dollars the budget Department has went through kind of did a thorough review of the budget
184looking for errors duplicates one of the one of the big things that district did this year for all the transparency reporting and data that we have to do now we we had to create essentially we went from twenty from two thousand account lines to close to twenty thousand and that takes into account all every every type of expenditure that could be at every single school where at one point these were all accounted for in a holding account now we can account for this these expenditures at the school level so that that created instances where we had we have things possibly budgeted in two different accounts the old account in the new account and when we did our analysis we found those some obvious things so now these the next two items on this list as
185part of the the existing budget there is you know there's often new requests that that come about some of these new requests are in schools and these are requests that may have been added to the school school-based budget last year and when we you know when we run the school based model based on the current you know current current student counts the the proportion of different different student makeup of each school based on the information we had some positions would be removed now these are typically ones that we that we look at through the superintendent's hold back and those so right now those are not in our school-based budgets those are still things that we're looking at but they they've been they've been removed from the actual budget and munis that we used to do
186this balancing so the superintendent has an amount that he can that he can allocate back in they're looking at those now so that's that's ten point two million twelve point five million are certain areas that the superintendent is having us look at and these encompass things like you know coaches aides assistants some of the programming in schools how the schools are structured and designed and has given the cabinet the direction to find through you know through through our work with everything else that we're doing to try to find certain in certain areas certain certain items that we were able to reduce we believe based on you know based on what what the direction is that probably would encompass about forty five staff that would encompass reductions in a lot of currently done extra activity over
187time things like that it's it's better to reduce things like that and it would be regular staff and also some contracts and and other non non staff spending so that that that's that's sort of the amount right now that we are working on to try you know to try and come up with the exact detail plans for how this gets gets incorporated into the budget to maintain that level of balance I also have in there all of the miscellaneous reductions these are this is some rounding things transportation fuel costs are lower you know gone through looking at travel and other discretionary things and will make reductions there that don't really impact don't don't impact anything so that that is essentially a rundown of how we got from early April from that close to ninety million
188dollar deficit to where we are right now and then Superintendent I don't know if you wanted to add anything on that slide no no colleagues these are difficult decisions we've got to start making them right now the next slides are graphs that that can also illustrate kind of where we are and how we've gotten here the first two are just the expenditures and revenue and how it ties out how it balances out then the following five graphs I believe it is Jeff maybe four those are illustrative as well so take these two and then the last several flies and I may annotate one or two of those okay yeah the so this slide here this just provides a little more detail on the revenues it's not it's not at a high level but it but
189it shows you total state aid non all the non state aid and then the fund balance amounts that we have the carryover so I highlighted in pink these newer things so that state pandemic adjustment of twenty nine point six million and again we're the the budget year we're talking about is the 2021 balanced and that's highlighted in yellow so you can you can see in their foundation aid totally flat with with the prior year budget actually it's a little bit under pandemic adjustments so that's a negative amount that we'll have in our budget and then other state aids down a little bit too that's that's due to the transportation aid we're not spending transportation dollars now so we will not be reimbursed for all of them next year I do have in there flat so
190the city property tax is flat right now the county say tax is at a 10% reduction from the projections that we had its back actually it's a little more than tonnes probably duction from the projections that we had back in February that that's another area that possibly that may need to be revised going forward as well when we get more information federal disaster relief sin there and all other revenues so that's really all I want to go over on that slide and it compares to the prior year budget and also the four-year plan numbers that we had so the four-year plan in that that salmon or orange e color is what we had thought the budget might look like this year a year ago so our projection for the next year so you can you
191can see some of the variances where we are at I do want to point out that historically our four-year plan projections for state aid in our actual state aid have been usually within about a million dollars this year it's short by sixty five point two million that that's really that's really the the tale that tells everything at sixty five point two million this same analysis last year would have been within about a million dollars Mike if you go to the next into them so same type of presentation format the yellow one in the middle nine fifty four point seven million that just shows the the spending by by the major categories so compensation the different benefit types that we have it's probably worth noting the pension contributions for the Teachers Retirement System they increase this
192year that's why you see seven point six percent increase in the teacher retire and the pension contributions so that that was a you know I hit that we had to deal with this year as well transportation of course is is up substantially as are the charter school tuition so we really had no no control over any of those and those are all major drivers in costs and again if you go to the very the yellow column and you'll see in purple 0.0 that's that's the the deficit after we take into account revenues the rollover of last year's 30 million 50 20 million in fun balance and then these expenditures so that that balances us out Mike if you can go to the next slide so this this takes our expenditures again still in summary form
193and I've got a pie chart and I've got these bar charts so these are these are documents that I prepare every year I know the writing's probably a little bit small but basically I have the the various funding function so we're where the funding goes is shown on this pie chart and you'll see that the two biggest pieces regular student instruction the blue and the orange is special education right after that you've got school-based supports and school administrations so about half of the general fund fits directly into those school school costs school staffing costs after that you can see transportation I've got charter school tuition the the green pie chart slice so that's that's a big component of our budget 14% general and instructional support that is our central office staff central office administrators so
194that that's three percent you got facilities and central services so this is your plant department and your IT department so plant an IT fall into that category and those costs are everything from the building engineers to leases to utilities all of the costs of IT and also central mailing in printing and then after that finishing out the pie chart you've got debt service which is another big component and you've got retiree health care so that that's a piece that you know we have is sort of a legacy cost the the bar charts on here I've been doing this for several years we've been comparing to the 1315 budget that was sort of a point at which a few years ago we were given as a reference point to compare to and the each one of
195these categories these functional breakdowns of our expenditures I have a bar for each one of them that tells you how much the funding has increased in those areas since 1415 s budget and I further break it out by having the top of those bars just showing you what the current year the 18 night or the 1922 21 budget is so you can see if you look at transportation the transportation increase in this current budget exceeds the total increase from 1415 through 1920 increased about 8 million in here it's increasing about 8 close to 9 million in one year so you can kind of see that comparison for each of these debt service is down retiree health insurance is down although it's a little bit up this year charter school tuition is of course up and
196I mentioned this as well because I always like to I don't have the the previous chart but there was a time when in the past the only thing that was growing on this chart was retiree health insurance and charter school tuition over the last several years we've made a lot of investment in in in our schools and that's clear in terms of the number of teachers aides assistants and other administrators in the school so we we've done a lot of investing in these areas and this chart really shows it I think that's just a way to show it if we can go to the next the next page so this one the pie chart on the left is the same is what you saw on the previous page the pie chart on the right only
197looks at the actual staff counts so if you strip away the non and staffing items anything that is not related to to our personnel the teachers administrators white-collar blue-collar if you just look at the staffing you can see that in that right chart so fully three-quarters of it is regular student instruction and special education and then if you go a little bit further school-based support school administration and then the last portion you've got transportation general and instructional support and facilities so that just kind of shows you a little bit more of same functions but now we're just looking at the number of staff not looking at the total dollar spent next next slide please okay this is a new chart that I hadn't hadn't shown before but I think it's important to see now and
198what I did here is I've got the lines are our general fund staffing the foodservice staffing and the grants staffing and though they're stacked on top of each other so you can see if you if you want to know the total number of FTEs you you'd take that gray one the grants because the grants includes food service and general funds so you can but basically what I want to show here is that where I have these recessions marked in Oh 8 oh nine and nine ten after that because of the state aid reductions and other disruptions we had it was roughly 650 staff from our budget that were that were that were reduced during that period of time subsequent to that we've been growing them back but now we've just we haven't I think technically
199entered a recession yet because I think it requires two quarters of reduced economic activity however the government measures that but it's going to happen so in in what is likely is that we're likely to be in a similar situation where we're going to have to reduce our spending significantly to account for and accommodate the reduced revenues that we have for a period of time so that chart I am fearful but it appears likely that we're going to probably repeat something like that chart and you know how we do it obviously is still to be determined but it's quite likely that we'll have some substantial reductions that are because of that unless the economy turns around very quickly but it seems with the disruption and the fact that the state has been running deficits anyways you
200know we're not likely to see the level of state support that we have in the past I think they're going to need some time to rebuild reserves and things like that next next slide please so this chart is kind of similar I'm plotting out the but what I'm doing here the the line chart the the red or orange plots out the general fund staffing and the blue shows the the total beds count so our our beds kinderga-- and I have you know the the axes are on opposite sides but what we're trying to show here is that over time and the superintendent went over this I think earlier last month that we've you know we've grown staff and for good reason and in many of its compliance-related its new education bargain investment in things where
201we were probably under and we need it we needed it because the student needs they're that high but on the other side of the coin is that we've got a declining student population in district schools largely due to the charter school issue City of Buffalo has same number of public students since oh seven oh eight but the the make up of those students now is shifting more and more towards charter schools and while while you know in often times it seems like they probably cherry-pick and we have a it's more difficult for the students that remain because there's there's fewer dollars and so forth for them but that that's the type of chart for long-term can't can't sustain itself because the students drive the revenue and the staff drives the cost next to that I
202just have a comparison showing in the general fund the the growth that we've had in our various bargaining units I didn't break it out any further than that but you can see that we have grown roughly 720 staff across all these areas and I'm showing the dollar the dollar cost of that staff so a teacher with the salaries and benefits is roughly a hundred thousand dollars on average and four hundred and forty teachers works out to about forty three million in staff costs so that's the cost in our budget to the growth over that period of time and that's that's just the one-year cost so all these together adds up to too close to fifty nine million dollars next slide please this last chart you've seen it before but it looks a little bit different
203now this this shows our it's a plot of our actual and budgeted for the future revenues and expenditures so revenues are in green expenditures are in red you you want to have to the extent that the the green is above the red you are in a surplus position when Green is below the regular and deficit position I also have on here something new there's a line that's in blue that line in blue is what our revenue projections were prior to April so we we were at a position where our expenditure and revenues were within striking distance of being structurally balanced if you will but you can see that as you get towards the the right side of that chart that blue line which is our old revenue projections in the Green Line which is our
204new ones are very much separated and I have I have in there that little that black doubles two-sided arrow that's our gaps we've got these in our four-year plan so we covered the 2021 budget based on the information we have with 50 million in fun balance do expecting to do that every year for many years into the future is it's not sustainable fund balances is cash in the bank if you will and when that's gone it's gone the only way to replenish it is to run a surplus so you know we we we've strategically used it this current year as we try to transition and as we try to you know to figure out where we're in and how this year is going to work out but longer-term we're not going to be able to
205do that we're going to have to either find new revenues and certainly the the idea of and the likelihood of some federal aid it probably exists additional cost reductions may be necessary as well it's you know because we're so funded by the state you know we're really at the it's the will of the state is what drives us we don't have the ability to generate our own revenues like you know suburban districts do with taxes so we we have you know we have that to grapple with so this is something when you take it out a couple years we're going to have to deal with this and if the state decides to make further reductions in the state aid that Green Line that I have is probably going to drop as well and typically again
206when they make reductions those reductions tend to stick around for a little bit it takes time for them to to pay those back if they do some sort of a reduction in our budget so this this shows the the need for you know more than ever to follow our four-year plan and to make sure every decision we make and that we do going forward is always cognizant of that and that we could be we could find ourselves in a very difficult position you know in a very short period of time if we're running deficits like that so that's really all of the the primary slides with data on them thank you Jeff that was very helpful saw that I'm turning it back over to you okay just basically painted a very grim from Jeff I
207think your your projections on the sales tax as you put it in there it's going to be worse than you're expecting Yuri County just announced uh thirteen percent cuts across the board cuts to try to rebalance their budget because sales tax is just not fair so it's not looking good I just have a question about the unbudgeted request that that you're talking about not included by including when when you gave us the projections for this year's budget in the latest report April 27th you had included 2.3 almost 2.4 million in unbudgeted requests for teachers can you can can you explain is that what what was that and then what's in the 10 million unbudgeted are you saying it's a 2 2.3 2.4 million that you've taken out from this year's budget is is that savings
208until position you say it's unbudgeted request can you explain more about that yes so the the ten point two million that was on that that I think the feds why don't we went over that included that included a few different things so it included departmental request so these would be City Hall departments essentially non school requests primarily for non staffing items within the schools and I think I don't know if there's two point three or two point five but I basically we had to two point five requests for teachers and support staff and I don't have that I don't have the support staff broken out on there and then another one point four four assistant principals the other piece that we have right now is that many of the reduced class size teachers that were
209in the title one grant title one is is at this point saying they cannot support those anymore so we've we've included a portion of these in in the budget that in the balanced budget and also the superintendent has an equity hold back as well for a portion of these not not the whole amount not this whole ten point two but you know decisions have to be made on exactly where you know where best to allocate those and some of that still to be determined you're saying the equity piece that the board was trying to make sure that every school is getting a baseline of budget items that things that they need that not in here and you're saying that ten that's a ten point two million dollars and you have it alleged somewhere else as
210a contingency or something I don't know you can't it's not ten point two million dollars it's just a request that came in for this year about thirty eight staff and cut a cutting across about five if I recall non support like three pack two two aides nineteen teachers and eleven assistant principals and so some of those are in and some of those are out of assistant principals and then all of the new requests at this time are out and I have a several million dollar whole back that once all of this shakes out and we know what our picture is going to look like going back into the school year I will make an effort to equalize all of the schools and firm the basic needs and services basic needs and services that's the goal
211out of this budget but if it gets worse than that then and then all of that out the window I guess I'm looking at that you charge up and it's saying that we're still the overall budget is still increasing right we're not going back to the budget expenditures right expenditures increase every year cost the cost of doing business you know electricity salaries transportation costs every anything you can think about usually increases what you got to do is find more revenue to offset the increased and that's that's gonna be a huge huge challenge but so far we've done it in a general way and we believe we can do it make it more specific when it comes time to approving the budget but only on this eighty nine point six - that's what we called a
212survivable model we can live to fight another day if that's all it ever happens to us but if more than that happens it's just gonna it's gonna be a really really tough challenge and that's why I recommended an ad-hoc committee be formed s for budget and that we begin to meet and talk and look at things five different ways to Sunday you know well I think that's what are concerned about that if we even if we have to do cutbacks they want them done in an equitable manner and they want us to review what the cuts what cuts and reductions are going to affect their schools am I am I correct board members yeah so I would recommend you get a an ad hoc or some kind of committee beyond the committee of the whole
213to look at this as we go forward and then we bring it to work session then we bring it to special call meetings and and all of that so equity is at the top of my mind as well but you're not going to be able to answer that question immediately it's gonna be rolling out as Jeff said well into next December we can y-you know an intelligent professional approach to this at this time we've given you our our best effort at this time but we should continue to talk about this and and you know communicate about where you'd like to see things be for just this survivable model and then we'll come back to you just like this if we go to devastating or beyond and I'm hoping we're not if we sit you know
214we're all been working hard to try to get additional funds in here I'm working to try to get additional grant funds and an extra mural support to try to offset the the O&M budget we have to be very aggressive and active there in this period but I have no simple answers I have no easy answers that's for sure number four members of okay um yes see on here Oh duh I can't see the cheering okay Karen and then Jennifer thank you so dr. cash have you had any conversation at this point about hiring freezing of the free hiring and individuals or any other just basic stopgap in order to just try to slow anything down has that conversations been had yet with amongst ourselves absolutely the administrative openings are frozen for the time being and
215in terms of hiring for the for the new year for staff i've also held that for at least another couple of weeks i don't want to i want to hire new staff that are high potential and high quality but with some kind of condition that and i think jamie can answer where we don't you you get a you get a letter of higher but it's conditional upon upon budget i think a lot of districts because i don't want to lose during this time but yes for administrative positions i have okay same at the carrot or that something different it's it's one cares is one of the federal stimulus bills I think there's three and there's a fourth one that's being considered close enough yes that's in there ya-ya-ya-ya-ya that so that yeah that is the
216cares act it was the third stimulus package released about a month ago so that that that's what we have in there right now so that that is to the extent we know known the amount that's in there is is what the state has estimated our share will be and they actually put it right on the state aid run when they release their their their budget I suspect that number may change a little bit but it does not include anything that may be forthcoming and that that is one one area that like I know the Council of great city schools and as are we pressing for a you know a stimulus package that focuses much have a much more happy on on education similar to what was done you know after the last recession okay so
217you say that title one cannot support these positions its and why is that is that because you're saying that the reduction in in the eighth it's going to be to left or there's something that you know already about title one and I do believe that to the extent that if title one doesn't cover all of them that it can probably cover other items so we're still looking at these grants right now title one you know is almost in a little ways it's it's it's our you know it's our biggest grant and it's very similar to the general fund where they're doing an analysis right now on what is the carry o we're going to be for next year if that carryover because maybe we're not spending all the dollars now it might be able to
218support that or other so I believe and I'm very hopeful but I don't have the data right now that a portion of that will be will be covered by title one or put potentially other grants where we're trying to analyze that right now the state recently released guidance on carry overs for grants so we're going through that right now because similar how the gen fun is going to run a surplus because we're not spending a lot of grants are in not saying ok so my final question is have you had the conversation about offering or or my understanding is there have been anticipated rush on retirement that's going to happen this year have you guys had any conversations around that and what that may look as far as cost savings particularly if they are replaced
219with staff that you know for staff that are making less money we haven't really have an act that's a good question miss common and we've been wondering about that ourselves ourselves we haven't actually we haven't actually had the number of retirements come in at least at this point that we we would like to see so that we can plan accordingly but I do anticipate that that to come and I think we may see a large number of them once once we get past this point where we're actually going to go go back to a school environment okay thank you thank you I can't say did Nick fan up so we eating a brick-and-mortar environment his hand up for a while okay thank you Jennifer I would like to just a couple of questions one of
220the questions that we have is I be received looking at the report the funds that we receive from the city and Anna and the county second thing is how does this affect our title two three and four grants for the City of Buffalo is any funny from there that that's going to affect our kids that we should be aware of right now and our standing with the State Fair is like our music and arts department and the third question was how much are we spending right per dollar per student and after the projected budget cuts what will be looking to spend per student after that be difficult the answer right now because we don't know what the objective cuts are going to be we're somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty twenty-one thousand dollars per pupil
221right around now that's just rough estimate what was the first question yeah I mean parenthetic that escaped me about the city in the county what was the question our funding is coming from the city and county to Texas that wasn't why didn't see that on a chart on the revenue chart the city the City are the same as last year so no change seventy point eight million okay County sales tax I am I have a projected reduction of about eleven percent and that is that you know that that's from where the current projections were so it's not it's not quite eleven percent if you compare it to the prior year budget however we have been notified that that might that might come in worse than that so that's another area that we may have to
222revise that revenue reduction downward if it was if it was another 10% downward that would be about five million dollars more so if we were to budget a 20 percent reduction instead of a 10 or 11% percent reduction that would be another five million dollars that would be reduced from our revenues for sales tax okay and the third question about our title programs title to title three in title four we know that we have a big question you know about I try to fund about there arts and music programs and I'm going to make sure those programs you know state funded so we could be in corners with the state with that also Oh subjected to be to be lobbied or unless we talked about our title month when I was referring to our title
223to three or four funding revenue I'll be looking at like you said twenty million from the state right now in twenty million federal and cuts which goes to about ninety million dollars that we're looking at right now or more according to what the state and the county is going to do how can we look to secure our funding for our arts and music programs also enhance those title title to is professional development I know three is that's like you know multilingual title for the title for program was where there was there was some our art music we're in in some of the title fours I don't have that handy right now I have let me just see if I have the details on title for next year there may be something we have to get
224back to you most of the you know most of the art music it's part of just the general fund general fund budget not not specific to a to a grant well Marta spending we pull from both of the the general grant and the title fund budget for the battle for us and where they get combined right there's a component there is a component of grants that are part of the school based budgets so we we don't have those today but if you look at the school-based budgets you you'll see like a pie chart on them and that's maybe what you're referring to where you you can see the funding source which includes the various title programs okay okay thank you I'll wait thank you sir thank you Jennifer did you have your hand up I
225did thank you I just wanted to touch back on what dr. cash had said around concentrating on you know this is a board we're doing a lot of at least I find myself doing this I have been talking with the district we're trying to feel so many different concerns and questions and from individuals in our constituents because that's our job but I wanted to I was talking with the district quite a bit and what can the board kind of focus on in the here and now because we knew this was coming as soon as this pandemic hit and like what buckets of work do we need to focus on so what I was gonna propose to you what Anne was talking about I just want to make sure we cover this again under their three
226buckets of work that the district has kind of been you know pushing forward and again this is for us to discuss if we want to create these subcommittees but in executive affairs putting the committee's themselves together but then they go into whatever committees they fall into one being formed around federal funding grants and other supplemental funding opportunities one definitely because that chunk that green charter school chunk is really got me heated right now and I really need for folks to realize that when you put that much money out and we can't even see where it's going or how it's going because it's not our information we're not privy to know how much that money and where that money is going and we know exactly where it needs to go in the bps so I just
227want to put that out for the general public but um you know charter school trade strategies and how to neutralize officials fiscal impact on the district and going back to some preview in student achievement remote learning in summer school in the age of the coronavirus and beyond better faster smarter cheaper whole child focus so those are the emails I'm going to send out but I really wanted to touch on them because dr. cash put it so eloquently like this is a time this is the work and if we concentrate all our efforts maybe two or three of us in each of a committee each of these committees then we'd be able to cover a lot of the concerns that are coming at us so just look forward to that that's kind of what Ann was
228talking about and it will be the focus of my executive Affairs Committee next week excellent women get to model form online totally brick-and-mortar would that give it to my personal assistant and various staffing we could see efficiency there but it's it's this that's about really saving what I think we'll see as a growth in this whole area that Tanja so eloquently described we're gonna need more support in that area for our families coming out of this so it might not be that we save holistically on you know the whole budget but we certainly could save in some areas if we get this technology piece put the very best use that it can be put to so it's an interesting point but we won't know until we refine it a little further did you apply for
229grant for computers so that we can move forward with making sure every child had a laptop if your progress report is sitting on that right now I asked about that today from the big five and we've got our application in and I've asked Jennifer files and try to move that get that move we need those dollars now for our students my hands up again 'harry anyone else whose hand was up before mine okay I have a question okay have you talked amongst yourselves about what type of services we can sell the things that we're doing in this district that we can market have you have you guys had gone down that path yet to create revenue if we can sell oh then we can mark it right I haven't thought so much on that line
230as much as I have on three main areas that we always are looking at and that is all saving cost avoidance and revenue generation of where we can get further revenue yes I have believe we are looking at that all the time ever a theme that looks at that on a regular basis is in Jeff's department okay has they come up with any ideas yeah four year plan we were yielding on about 18 out of 20 21 was it Jeff or 20 for areas that we had in our four year plan to call save cost of weight and generate revenue we were making we were making some excellent headway there def your team can put together some of those some of those items but what the answer is absolutely yes page 25 of 68 and
231our four year plan we we outlined a lot of the revenue generating that we've done in large part at state aid and federal aid not so much you know any other sources but at least it gives you an idea of the things that were that were thinking of well at one point Jeff we had we had said we're gonna out take out all the light bulbs in the district I thought we were doing that and that was going to be him one to two million dollar saving but no more energy efficient with the 50 lighting all across the district for example we had done something with that aid when that there was some kind of Medicaid that was was popping in the creases and you put a staff member on that million dollar you remember
232that yes yep that's one of the items that we have outlined in the four year plan and you know we have so we have sweat started swapping out some of the lighting for LED lights and department has that we're really in the final stages right now of an energy performance contract and what that is it's it's basically that we will we will essentially get funding to building aid to swap out the you know more expensive lighting and that will allow that'll basically allow us to save dollars on utilities and also get building eight in return so that's that's another area we're working on right now thank you years around that that's an important area to be working on at a time like this so thank you for the question miss Carmen who's next Naegleria on
233record that I thought I heard the suggestion of technology and remote learning replacing staff and I am totally opposed to the idea of us using technology to save cost when our kids returned to these buildings when it's safe they are gonna need more one-on-one contact with an actual human being and not less and so we should not in any way in my opinion be considering replacing staff to save money with technology remotely I'm in complete favor of it using remote learning and the skills that we've acquired in this crisis to supplement education in a school building but I will be opposed to it replacing the work and the staff in our buildings that they deal with our kids on an individual basis every day well I think I heard that I don't know where you
234go you quite heard that I don't know but what I was talking about because we are gonna have to be innovative about this I don't want to take away any staff I'm hoping I don't have to reduce staff that provide direct support to students but if we get really good at some of this work like like if you're doing video conferencing or video lessons like they do in the business world where you have TED Talks or you have really succinct but excellent presentations around a concept or some professional development for employees you know there may be a time that we need to start looking at how we deliver instruction is what I'm trying to get with what I'm getting at there we may not need all of the you know all of the ways that
235we deliver instruction to be you know five thousand six thousand teachers so we need to take a look at it I don't have all the answers tonight but if I could have the very best teachers teaching certain subjects and delivering lessons and videotaping those so that all the students got the advantage of that lesson and that approach to it and then we got into smaller groups to talk and have students be engaged with answering questions digging deeply into the material I don't know we may we may have to reduce that along that line we'll have to talk about it I want to keep an open mind about all of that but certainly if we have students and have social emotional supports you know you don't cut into you know counselors and social workers and special
236education support some teachers so forth and so on and it is gonna be getting better and better because innovation is going to come into this face now during this time that we have been off and will need to keep up well we'll lose out I know that arm in the past the bill revenue I know that like programs like McKinley High School had a development project where they actually built homes fabricated homes and sold it out to the community I know we had some nuts in the fruit belt and um and over on Sycamore neighborhood and that was a great revenue source using our utilizing our students also reminder that know that McKinley is having a flower sale also coming up this week I know next week I believe and then also we have property
237dr. cash that was also right now we're not presently utilizing can we look to probably sublease toes out or or to gather those contracts or we move forward projects like that we're getting ready to bring a project over to the Tri main building you're talking about the one where the Tom Batali program is I'm not quite sure where you were on putting the program there I haven't received a report about it good well we can send that report out it'll be would be greatly appreciated so we couldn't be updated about what's going on with that facility we just have ways of revenue savings yeah we may have to close school buildings college we may have to close school buildings if we have them to sell we'll sell them I don't know what we have to
238sell but I'm open to hearing what you think we could sell and we'll have to find revenue any way we can getting into this next REO so thank you for your comment but we talked about when we were talking about the situation with the charter schools so we talked about recouping any of the money from the Edison property that particular venture costs us upwards of about ten and a half million dollars I think that's something that the board needs to look into and see about recouping some of that money that was lost in regards to that property I think that's something that the Charter School Committee can do at that point we need to talk about getting some of the money back that then basically taken from our district at this point that we lose
239the cash is there any other hands better off any other hands but dr. cash miss cotton was asking about Edison project something about millions of dollars that we need to be smooth well well that's something that we would have to deal with with the ad hoc committee for the charter schools that's something I'll have to address other questions dr. kay that's not we were going to at least have a meeting and have available all the school based budget so we could see what your what you're proposing yeah we can do that I don't I don't think they're prepared yet if they're prepared we can get them out to you madam chair what did the press what is the deadline for the submission of the budgets on mr. dr. K do you have a deadline yes
240has that been adjusted are you on the line yes I am when sort of our our deadline we we're not so we're not one of the suburban districts that bow down there there you know they'd have a public vote on that on their on their budget so our our deadline was essentially to submit to the control board that four-year plan along with the associated budget it's not the detailed budget but the associated budget that goes along with that we you know we obviously try every year to adopt the budget by May it can go into June the issue that we run into is that if we don't have an adopted budget we don't have a budget that we can then spend on there's certain things that get delayed you know but this this year is
241obviously different that you know we may still be working on this budget in June depending on what you know depending on what comes in the next several weeks okay thank you you don't have a right here what what I would recommend is that you you ask for any detail you want or would need in order to pass this budget because this would be our survivable budget we can give you school based budget size based budgets and any detail that you would like to review we can probably give that to you but there in the next couple of days I'm sorry I may take a little bit longer to pull everything together we you know we're pulling together the school-based budgets right now and our detailed budget but we have to do some internal reviews first
242before you know make sure there's no shoot for the top of next week to get that to the board and then let's let them review it intensely you know for several weeks if need be call special special call meeting whatever you need to do to try to get this piece passed but I got to tell it will it will likely have to change but we do have some kind of we do have a time frame so we illipe have to get something approved it's a tricky year it's just a tricky year this year like to be able to see what is in there the budget this budget if you want to surpass it I think everyone like to see what is in their schools if there's reductions if there's teachers what's actually in it I'll
243be happy to get that ready okay you have kids or not but so okay thank you [Music] [Laughter] thank you the meeting is now adjourned thank you hey