001good evening let's call this meeting to order with beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and I have a motion to for approval of the present agenda second are there any questions or comments Okay so all in favor aye aye any opposed so now we get to our public comment section where the purpose of this public comment period is for the Board of Education to hear comments that are specifically related to items included on this evening's agenda during this public comment period which will not exceed 20 minutes in total duration and three minutes per speaker the Board of Education will hear comments from students parents
002employees District residents District property and business owners other individuals who have received prior approval in accordance with CCD policy 15-10 will also be heard at this time is there anyone here who would like to speak okay who you are okay okay um my name is Jennifer Callier I have three um young students in the school um they are new to school this year to the pre-k program um I do did see on the agenda something was related to um hiring a bus attendant and a couple other things I'm having a lot of trouble with the events that have happened recently at school um with the bus specifically um not only just the bus but also the whatever whatever it's called the attendance system that calls parents um when their child's absent that sort of thing
003um the fact that a um such a significant event occurred with the child being left on a school bus all day long was not communicated to anybody that any sort of incident occurred is very discouraging to me um and I know that a lot of other parents feel the same way um yeah I mean I didn't find out until a week later and we had multiple bus drivers because my kids were on the same bus that this occurred on um had no idea why I I couldn't get them to get on the almost couldn't get them to get on the bus the one morning when a new person came to pick them up I mean they're you know they're very young and they're just starting this routine and I don't even know what to tell
004them what's going on um not only that it was sort of taken out of the parents hands to decide for themselves if they felt it was safe for their children to continue to ride the bus or what not um by not telling us anything about it um it's kind of convey to me that some of it was privacy reasons Etc and we decided not to startle other parents but I think this is something that should have been absolutely brought to parents attention nobody asked who the child was or where you know anything like that it was about what happened and why it happened and how is it not going to happen again not only the school bus there was a failure in the system there and the thing is the the um the whole thing
005with the button on the back of the bus that is supposed to alarm so that the driver is more or less forced to walk to the back of the bus and check um to make sure there's no children remaining on the bus has been flawed for a very long time and it's been known yet nothing has been done about it as far as I'm aware because it still was able to happen where a once the um buses turned off which is a likely case that occurred the bus was turned off while they were waiting you know at the med or wherever to drop off children in the drop-off Zone um possibly the bus was um then the bus was if the bus was turned back on if the driver never signaled their stop sign flashes
006which they would not in a parking lot um at the school the the button no longer triggers it triggers when you turn off the bus after your flash isn't been on but now and this has been a known thing and it's also a likely scenario that a child turned off the the alarm in the back I don't know for sure but I know this has been a problem in this system for a long time and it was sort of possibly ignored because nothing's been done about it to prevent this fault or loophole in the system um not only that but where's our other you know Fail-Safe oh if the parents have been notified hey your child's not in school today they would have said what do you mean and that child would have been found
007within a reasonable amount of time not what what six hours later um I think that's a pretty uh pretty egregious occurrence that's that's really not I don't feel like that's being treated very seriously also the bus driver was at fault the system default the the school district is at fault who's checking in the system we didn't know wasn't up and running for days how was that not checked how was that not something important how was there not you know I I feel like that we are instead of being proactive we're being reactive at the school and it's really it's obviously becoming a significant issue look what happened if some of these issues have been looked at beforehand when they were known to the issues this may have never happened and also the communication of the
008parents I I really don't understand how it was thought that it was a good idea to not tell parents this I mean it's pretty this is a pretty significant thing that happened and how are we supposed to trust that our children are going to school when or going to school and are going to be safe and taken care of when something does happen it was a terrible mistake yes but then sort of hiding it from everyone and not telling anybody about it how am I supposed to trust you when you're not even telling me things you know I I shouldn't I shouldn't be finding out you know from a customer at the restaurant where I work a week later um but this occurred okay thank you thank you for bringing that to Europe so to
009the board Marion yes if it would help I'm happy to make a point of order here is that helpful that would be fun so um as a rule um first of all we love um participation in these meetings and we always want to hear um and we take all public comment really seriously we do we are constrained in time and so we set aside these two blocks of comment one at the beginning of the meeting which is for today's agenda and we try to get through the regular business agenda as fast as possible so that staff members that have to stay late they've been here all day they can leave and then at the end of the meeting we have an open public comment for items not on tonight's agenda um so while there while
010there is a um a motion to appoint um some bus attendance on tonight's agenda um we are looking in this first comment block for comments that relates specifically to the exact motions on tonight's agenda so we can move through it quickly and then when we get you know when we get to second public comment we then receive open public comment and at that time we just want to be conscious of everyone's time and make sure that we keep these comments to to three minutes so we can give everyone time to speak and then in addition to that while the board and District does sometimes respond they don't respond during meetings to questions um is that sound good yep that's correct um I just want to say I was the question I was going to have
011was I was going to request that possibly in the next meeting um it be brought up of how are we you know working towards fixing these these things and um you know what's being done what's planned on being done that sort of thing so thank you okay thank you thank you for coming next next we will be heading into board member comment but before we continue it did we was there just that one person do we have no that's true is there any virtual hands nope there are three attending three and we're currently there are three of us re-attending virtually and there are currently No Hands Up okay so we could move into board member comment s uh I'm excited that all the children are so excited about the sports season kicking off um and
012they're clearly like trying to figure out how to get rides to games and they're talking about all the games after um and they're uh it's just really great to see that that energy in the student body so that would it's something I want to note anybody else and let you get going thank you uh homecomings this weekend so that that's always a nice event for the community uh looking forward to that uh thank you just saying I want to thank you for coming to speak to us and I want you to know that we're listening to you and I just couldn't let you leave without thanking you okay yeah myself we have this we've never used it I apologize for uh being tardy I'm also a coach so we just played our game um okay
013moving on to building and Department reports uh we have a brief introduction to the American Institute of research personnel um Dr root I believe you're gonna introduce them sure so Deb can you maybe we'll have everybody come up along here um really pleased to introduce a research practice partnership that we have um with the University of Albany and also the American Institutes of research who you see on the end here is Dr Tammy Causey and next to her is Dr Beth Howard Brown or I'm getting your name correct and Dr Kristen Wilcox um so I I thought maybe we'd start with just a little bit of what is a research practice partnership and then briefly speak to our our work and then we'll we'll send them on their way good evening within the context of
014the work that we're doing at American institutes for research we have a covid and in education initiative which is a research practice partnership Network the research practice Partnerships as we envision them are solutions focused community-based initiatives that bring together local Educators researchers and members of the community and we do so to Envision together research possibilities that will change the trajectory of students and communities lives we we hope to change those trajectories in ways that are transformative for the good of the students and the larger communities particularly in the aftermath and and some would say the continuing pandemic and so in short that's what we're doing and we are delighted to have had the opportunity to work with Chatham and we had a lovely visit today we got a chance to see students faculty members and
015administrators and the this district and the schools that were represented therein have been very very um delightful it was just really informative and we thank you for inviting us uh one more yeah okay yeah and thank you so much for having us I'm Kristen Wilcox I'm an associate professor in educational policy and Leadership at the University at Albany and I'm the director of a project called New York kids and we connected with Chatham a few years ago so we're really happy to kind of throw what we can um in your direction in terms of organizing these kinds of events where we can connect with other Educators in our state and across the country through air New York kids is really functioning to do our primary work of research around New York state so um actually
016Elise has been on some site visits with me in the past and Fred I think you're aware of our research too um our our core research is around finding pockets of excellence in our public schools in New York state so we've been bringing what we know about promising practices um definitely with this focus on Equity to bear on some of the things that you're you're doing here in Chatham we also partnered with tech Valley High School to share ideas generate kind of innovative ideas about what we can be doing in the future most of our focus and the work between Tech Valley and Chatham has been trying to kind of unpack the idea of belongingness and how you promote a sense of belongingness for children youth families Educators especially as we're coming out of a
017very a difficult time and in some places and some for some people very traumatic time during the pandemic so I'm very happy to be here right in your backyard so we are always around here to kind of be that conduit to bring research to Baron what you've got going on here so there's a lot of work that we've done in the space with these two organizations and our goal is to present that it's not not for tonight we just had this opportunity where we're really fortunate um to have a site visit and that we could have everybody in person um and very selfishly I asked for it to be a board night so that you could you could see some of the people that we partner with so they very graciously agree to to say
018hello so with that I don't know if anyone has any any brief questions for them I want to try to keep it tight to five so when we do the full presentation um we'll talk about some of the work that that we've done but any any comments or questions for our group before I move them yeah I have a question um or I I know Dr Wilcox I don't know the other two's names I'm sorry I did not write them down um so your focus is really the aftermath of covet what do you find to be the drivers like what's really so we started this work in the midst of covet and what we've looked at um across the districts that we have seven districts that we are engaged with across four states and we
019looked at innovations that were being employed but that really had not been systematized and we also looked for opportunities where there were stubborn challenges that needed to be addressed and and we brought research to bear and those experiences and so we found um across the board that students have in many ways needed outlets for expression that kind of dipped during the pandemic and so and our research practice Partnerships have interrogated their own hunches in the way of hypotheses and they've used data to explore those in some instances they're finding that the dips were really within their control things that they could change maybe counselor education for example having counselors who needed a little bit more support and a little bit more guidance in in light of the pandemic and so a range of possibilities exist
020but those are just thank you ladies we greatly appreciate the update I just wanted that I'm I'm happy to see you here and thank you for inviting them thank you thank you for your hospitality uh moving on to the audit report we have Western co uh CPAs I'm going to turn it over to Mr chatty to do the introductions great thank you we have our auditor with us yeah we have Amy pedrick so this is our external audit that's done every year and then she gives us the report and then we send it out to the state take it away Amy all right sounds good so um good evening everybody um you all received I think it was on your board docs a PDF of your final audit report I did meet with your audit
021committee last week and went over the document into in-depth quite quite in depth um so I'm only gonna just talk about a couple highlights but then leave it open for any questions um just to kind of summarize what we do as your auditor uh we we come to the district twice for the year we come early May or June time frame we do some risk assessment we test your controls we look at what's going on in the business office then that kind of drives what we do and all when we come in August to do our final testing when we come in August we get the books and records for management we verify the numbers we um confirmed with third parties State education department Banks things like that we do significant testing on the balance
022balances and the culmination of that is your audit report the format of the report really is set up the same as it has been in the past the most important Pages um would be really your independent Auditors report it's the first couple pages of the audit and in that we say that the financial statements present fairly so that's a clean unmodified opinion and it's the highest opinion we give as a profession and what that's saying is the books and records are in really good shape when we come um we're given everything we're not proposing any journal entries everything's in in good working order um so that's a clean opinion then after that we have the Management's discussion and Analysis that's just a few brief about 10 pages to be able to provide a snapshot of
023what happened at the district during the year it allows management to put some narrative into the financial statements talk about what could affect the future of the districts things that are things that are happening that'll affect going forward and then we have the financial statements themselves they're presented in two different formats um the first being the long-term look it's not really how the district operates it takes into account all your long-term assets your buildings your buses your equipment and as well your long-term liabilities things like your other post-employment benefit liability that's the liability that your actuary calculates and ensure health and dental insurance estimated out into the future for your current employees and retirees so that's a long-term view of the of the district um then there is the shorter term than modified accrual and
024those are the funds so those statements have your general fund your special Aid fund your library fund Etc and those are really how the district operates daily um and those are really the numbers you'd want to look at um in terms of where we are with general fund and where our fund balance is and what our assets are at the end of the year then we have our supplement our footnotes to the financial statements they'll get those give some more information on the district it explains the different funds it explains the different reserves it gives some more support for some of those long-term numbers in the financials so they're just more pages from some more explanation then we have some supplemental information that's required to be in there or required by either the governmental Accounting
025Standards Board State Ed or osc and then we have one other audit which is your audit of the federal programs so because the district spends more than 750 000 of federal money we do a compliance audit with the grants your grants have been substantially higher as they have been in all districts over the last couple years with the Carissa and the art funding the covid funding that's happened we'll see that kind of start to slow down but you will still be over that 750 000 threshold um we had no findings associated with those Grant audits as well it was a clean opinion no significant deficiencies no material weaknesses and we also issue a third opinion which is our report on the internal controls over financial reporting and compliance and again we had no findings there
026like I mentioned earlier the books and records are in great shape um your controls are operating and operating well so we don't have any issues to to report to the board there as well and then after that we have the audit of the extra classroom activity funds so New York State education department requires those funds to be audited separately those are presented on a cash basis so when the money comes in it's a revenue and when it goes out it's an expense and this audit just lists out all the clubs that the district has and the the ending balances with those clubs and then one thing we don't have in the financial statement is a management letter sometimes we have had in the past things that would never rise to a level of a finding
027or a modification to the opinion um things that would improve controls or improve efficiencies this year we don't have any of those comments to report everything really is in great shape and we didn't have any issues that we found when we did all of our testing so that is the one thing that's not in the report this year so and that's a very quick overview of just what's in the audit I didn't know if any of the board members had any questions specific to the audit or if any of the audit finance committee members had any follow-up from our meeting the other week uh well we've met in committee and uh as a group uh you know we we had our community representative um Don was there we had vet over and we all agreed
028to recommend the audit for adoption so the only comment we had clean finding this year okay uh doesn't sound like anybody else has any questions uh yes before you go on to the next item I'd like just to recommend that we bump up the C plaque report we have some lovely people here to provide that and oversight was we should have put that probably next before Mr tuddy's Sure report um so if if that's not a problem um Debbie can we just switch that okay but thank you very much thank you so much come a long way to be with us so it's good to see you in person there were some years where we had to bring you in virtually but that's not the case anymore so thank you no problem thank you have
029a great evening so we will move on to the C plaque report the Motions later on in the agenda just later on yeah this is just a presentation yeah we now would like to introduce John McGowan um from the cflac committee our chairperson who will give you a brief I think it was about last spring where I know we get our monthly reports from our board members who are on the CPAC but the board had said you know we've never met John we'd like to put a name to the face or at least some people don't know who you are and we said great we'll bring him back in the fall and um and talk about some of the awesome wonderful things that are happening in our library it's so impressive what we've got going
030on sure so I'm going to bring up Mike is bringing to our attention Debbie that that is r21 that Matt is usually right okay yes can I have a motion to accept the auditor's report motion second uh any further questions on this all in favor hi hi thank you Mr Fish now with further Ado my apologies John okay I'm gonna bring up your your presentation bring up the first one yeah thanks well thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to come and talk to you about uh the Chatham Public Library advisory committee as we call it C plaque uh so I appreciate that chance uh I also wanna I wanna forget I don't want to forget to uh thank Amanda Merck and Kate Clark over at the library who prepared these slides uh you
031wouldn't want to see the slides if I prepared them so uh I really appreciate appreciate their help uh next slide okay the the C plaque was established in 2011 uh by the Boe and the superintendent at that time uh the um Library Public Library is under the school district and that's by uh Act of the legislature back in uh the early 1900s 1910 I think I'm not sure about that but um the library employees are part of the school district and so uh the whole thing falls under the uh uh supervision of the superintendent and the Boe or it was felt in 2011 that maybe there needs to be a closer look at these uh at these activities over at the library not that there was anything wrong but that uh the board and the
032superintendent's office really didn't have a chance to give any uh kind of uh close supervision to what's going on uh on a day-to-day basis um C plaque provides a greater oversight to answer that need and it's empowered to make recommendations to the Boe and the superintendent in other words anything that has to be approved isn't approved by C plaque but we make recommendations to the uh either the superintendent and ultimately to the board okay next slide the membership uh there are five voting community members uh me of course and then then we have uh Jane hershauser and Sheila stump and today with me we have Nancy Jackson and Gene Northrup they were kind enough to provide me support tonight in case I forgot to come no uh the five community members serve a three-year term
033and may apply to remain on the committee uh some people uh serve two terms uh some people only serve one some people serve every term there is going so uh there are also two Board of Education members Mario Faxon of course it's been a long time representative of the board on C plaque we uh just lost Beth over and I'd like to publicly thank Beth for her efforts on the committee very much appreciated and I understand that Dawn Friedman has been appointed to uh to take Beth's Place so that's very uh very encouraging uh the the uh the efforts of the Boe members on C plaque have been wonderful over the years and it's uh it's really a good working relationship I think the board members uh basically keep us uh citizens out of the
034uh out of uh getting messed up on anything so they're very good um it's interesting to note that over the years uh there's been 14 different community members who've actually been a member of C plag so that's a good representation of the uh in the in the 12 years uh from the community and there's been seven different Board of Ed members on the committee so again it's it's a good it's not like uh it's a uh it's a club where people just keep the showing up there's also three non-voting members and that's Amanda Merck the library director Mike chutty uh who is the superintendent's representative and uh Damaris uh potwick who's the friends of the Chatham Public Library representative the the superintendent of course is always uh welcome to come to the meetings and once
035in a while the superintendent does come but uh Mike gives continuity and it represents uh the school at all the meetings so that's good next slide please okay what's the role of C plaque it's actually to provide a general oversight of the library and we do this through directors monthly reports and also through regular meetings usually about six meetings a year sometimes we add one or two if there's something urgent going on it's important to remember that c plaque does not try to run the library C black has an advisory role not a governing role we bylaws say that we can't even uh ask somebody to get us a book you know we're just like the public in terms of the operation of the day-to-day Library business so that's a that's a uh an issue
036that sometimes people who have come on C plaque don't understand at first they think well we're gonna we're gonna direct the library but that's not it at all uh next slide uh what are our duties okay in concert with the library director we formulate and make recommendations on the following areas policies there's about uh 12 different Library policies these are a subset of the school district policy they're in the manual and uh periodically we review those policies and uh look for things that have to be changed um budget uh the library director and Mike chutty prepare the budget every year and uh C plaque uh has a review uh Cask in that in that effort uh let's see strategic planning uh we're right at the outset we're going to uh begin our strategic planning update
037process to get a new five-year plan in place uh we were a little bit delayed because we had a director who left last year and so we had to give the new director uh a chance to get up to speed uh but we're starting to work on that uh book challenges if there's a challenge uh c-plex responsible for doing research and writing a report of recommendation to the board how to handle those challenges and any other issue that may require Boe or or superintendent approval in other words uh if something comes up and uh the board or the superintendent needs more information we're gonna we're gonna provide whatever we can in that contest context uh another role assists the library director with community outreach last year we conducted several um listening sessions or or focus
038groups if you will with the community members in preparation for the strategic planning and uh anytime there's some kind of an Outreach that needs to be done the members volunteer to help with that effort next slide uh another thing we do is evaluate the performance of the library director uh uh the library director obviously evaluates the performance of her staff but we evaluate the performance of the library director we established some years ago some standards which were moved by the board at that time by the board at that time and we use those to review the performance over the year with the with the director of the director so um we give a thumbnail to the incumbent director in January and then in June uh in time for the general School District evaluation process we
039give a a complete formal evaluation uh the other thing on there uh it's it's uh it's a role we play uh it says interview candidates and recommended appointment when the director position becomes fake and that's that's a a duty that's uh had various uh uh scenarios over the years but right now uh in the past two times it involves the director uh or I mean the uh chair of the C plaque with Mike and Sal sit down with the candidates along with one or two members of the library staff and we it's very efficient and we can uh interview the person and and come to a conclusion right there so that's all I have uh and I'm uh willing to uh willing and eager to listen to your questions foreign [Music] who does is my
040representative on the committee and Kennedy doesn't know this but he's a much better representative because he he can come up with the money so you're you're in good hands with Mike and you know my and Amanda um we're just so fortunate to have an amazing director um I've been here this is our third director and um the work that's coming out of the library is so impressive with the types of programs and diversity programs that we're seeing it's just I I'm so pleased with with their work so thank everyone involved and thank you for the generous gift of your time to serve on the cflac board we greatly appreciate it I just want to make one comment I've been with John since 2012 so since you started 11 we've been together the whole time and
041I just want to thank John for all you know his work and Leadership and really you know all the people that have come and gone the directors we've had members but you've you know kept the ship going in a good direction so I want to thank you for all your hard work please also the mystery voice of the phone system at the library so when you call press one that is so he has multitasks I also want to say that um I'm sorry I'm not on the committee anymore obviously but more than that as I'm sorry I'm going to be missing all the preschool programs now because Grayson entered um preschool himself this oh so he's going to preschool instead of to the library Grammy yeah that's great yeah but they have phenomenal um preschool
042programs run by yeah Becky oh I didn't even get into the program so just amazing the director is amazing the things she comes up with and uh we're very very pleased we have to treat her right so she said yeah and we'll have Amanda back during budget season February March to give you her annual report which is required but this was kind of an opportunity for you just kind of a closer uh more focused view of the committee itself hey John um well first of all um it's my fault you're here because I really I wanted to meet you in the room when I was president and uh so thanks for coming yeah um I yeah I'd like to reiterate all the my my observation that the the quality of the um you know it's
043a lot of new programming work that's churning out of that tiny organization is pretty amazing um and the community impact is is really great um and we get we get reports from the library director but you've had you've had some continuity um in your position um and I'm I'm curious if you have any observations about um maybe let's call it medium term where we've been and where we're going and not just what is the library doing new this year but what do you see the role of your group in the community and steering that like what we have to figure out how to Resource your program right so that's why I wanted to hear it from a lot of a lot of it depends on the library director we have at the time and we're
044very excited and you can correct me if I'm wrong uh we're very excited about this director that we have now I've never in my uh 12 years I've never seen anyone go out for Grants as much as as Amanda has she's really uh great at that and her interaction with the community is phenomenal too so we can build on that and that's one of the key components I think of the Strategic plan that we're uh that we're starting to work on to get more involvement with the community not to I mean in Prior years we've been uh trying to get the community aware of what we have but now we're trying to think about the way the community can contribute to what we will have so that's that's of difference in Focus I think well
045I appreciate that that focus and um Good Luck well I just uh appreciate the support of the board and uh this was a New Concept 12 years ago and we've uh we've tried to go uh make it a living grieving committee as they always say and I would like to uh thank not only Nancy and Jean uh but the other members over the years it's really been a a a rewarding experience for me although this may be my last term I don't know oh getting a little old whoa whoa whoa can we amend the term life here there may not be a simplicity okay anything else no but on behalf of the board thank you for the work you do okay all of you um I think that our library has a reputation that that
046goes well beyond the bounds of our community and that's in large part if not almost entirely as a result of the sea blacks thank you thank you thank you very much thank you sir okay thank you thank you uh next up we have the um Mr Teddy we'll update the board on the district's response to the office of state comptroller's recent audit in just a moment night it's Mr Jetty all right so before I start out I have uh our Treasurer Pat Giuliano here I want to personally thank her for all her work on both the external audit that was just approved with the clean audit which was great because there was no findings and then all the work on the state audit and it was six months of two people every day asking for
047so many things so I thank Pat and I also want to thank the business staff uh in general for all their their assistance with this click on the next slide so pretty much the way State audits work usually it's five to five to seven five to eight years they'll come out to your District they try to hit you know hit 700 districts in the State uh the last time they came out was 2015 and then so it's been seven years so when they came last school year and it was about six to I think six or seven months they were here every day two guys um every day at you know checking over everything so if you look on the slide they looked over pretty much everything in the business office purchasing Information Technology payroll
048banking internal controls Transportation cafeteria inventory fixed assets pretty much everything that the business office does they looked at a three-year period they looked over you know numerous bills numerous you know check pretty much everything so the good news is there was no findings of fraud or malfeasance and actually there was really nothing much to find in all those areas so but they did write us up on is the same thing they did in 2015 was our focus on um on our our financial reserve so our savings that we have uh and one other note before I go to the next slide so in 2015 about 2012 2013 Cuomo publicly stated that you know districts have savings accounts why should we give state aid if they had they should use their savings accounts you know and
049then we could get more Aid so they went around and they wrote up I know their 700 districts probably a few hundred districts that were financially sound with you know had savings they wrote them all up saying you shouldn't have your savings pretty much you know give it back to the taxpayer or pay it down um fortunately for us in 2015 and same as now we disagree we respectfully disagree with that audit uh numerous districts did that the ones that did not do that that gave the money back had serious troubles when we had some financial crisis a couple years after and they either had to lay off a lot of Staff or try to raise taxes 15 20 so thankfully we didn't follow that advice and we're not going to follow that advice again
050um so I'll go through what the what the next slide what the findings were so I saw pretty much what happened is when the audit came out we did about a seven page rebuttal and we don't you know some of the stuff we're gonna review and find our Reserve plan so we are going to look at parameters and things but we did have a rebuttal to the audit and then we have a two-pager that's going to be on a corrective action plan but I'm just summing the two-pager up right here in a couple slides so audit recommendation one we should adopt realistic appropriation estimates so expenses and the amount of fund balance we're using so as we stated last time this was written up in 15 we look at every line and we build we
051build the budget every year but we build in contingencies in our budget um which is some fiscal planning so the contingency allow the district to be prepared for unforeseeable increases example special ed utility health insurance and we also have reserves for some expenses if we have major emergencies in our financially hard times so we built contingency in the budget and we build up reserves per our Reserve plan that is officially adopted by the board every December next slide next thing is to discontinue the practice of appropriating fund balance that is not needed so as stated in response one we do build contingencies so they really don't want us to have any contingent money built in and then this allows us to be prepared for unforeseeable expenses and then during difficult Financial Times that appropriate balance
052that we use would be utilized to off uh to sign you know to offset significant negative impacts on instruction so pretty much the way it works and I stated and I want to make it clear that we built contingencies in the budget and this was built years ago and we put savings that we have to apply to those contingencies so in essence there's no impact on taxes if I took the contingencies out and I took the savings that I applied to offset those contingencies the taxes would stay the same so we're just building you know we're just preparing for any difficult times but we're using savings to offset those contingencies the last part of that slide says any contingent money that is unspent is used to reduce the taxpayers burden the next year or if
053we have some excess Surplus we put it in reserves offset future expenses the next recommendation so three and four they basically said we they thought we didn't have reasonable funding levels for unemployment insurance workers comp and employment retirement contribution reserves and we should and then the next four was we should reduce those balances in those reserves so first point we stated that there is no requirement for amounts in these reserves we believe they're reserved appropriately as per our plan they don't have any Targets or maximum amounts Allowed by the state the two that they do have is the TRS Reserve does say you can only have two percent of payroll from the previous year up to ten percent we follow that specifically and then unreserved uh uh fund balance or savings is uh four percent
054of the budget and we follow that right at the four percent line so we said reserves are saving accounts they're essential for long-term planning and future Financial stability the district they have been instrumental for our creating Reddit credit rating upgrade that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest savings on the capital projects we also save hundreds of thousands of dollars on our refinancing of our debt uh in 18. we'll also be going out with another project uh this year so when we issue debt we want to maintain that high rating and then the goal of the reserves is to keep taxes at or below the tax cap and maintain our strong educational program for our students I did state in our plan we will review the levels um of the reserves during the
055next uh Reserve plan review so we've been fortunate to be able to keep taxes at or below the tax cap actually half the time in the past 10 years I've been here 11 years we've been under the cap and last year as we stated we put some extra savings towards the taxes so we were it was the biggest differential between what the tax cap what we were allowed to go out with and what we went out with our next slide so number five consider whether an insurance Reserve is necessary actually we have a very small Insurance Reserve I was I was surprised they wrote this up but we do believe it's necessary um what we did is we increased our deductible a few years back to 25 000 with our insurance which resulted in about
056eight thousand dollars a year in savings but if we do have you know any catastrophes and we had the one we we have to pay on the deductible so that's used for this and the other issue is cyber Insurance costs have increased significantly and if we have any cyber insurance issues we can utilize this Reserve so it is part of our long-term financial planning next recommendation so the last one was the same as last in 2015 and and actually if you look at any districts or that are written up for reserves this is in every single one it says you could reduce real property taxes you could increase other reserves pay off debt or Finance one-time expenditures so what I stated is we we do use the reserves uh we use it for the capital
057project so we utilize 6.9 million for the 2022 Capital project which offset interest costs for the taxpayer and we could go out with a much larger project you know the 22 million so we can get a lot of things that we need done at the district so when we had that Surplus and we put money in capital you know for savings we use we utilize that back to the taxpayer we did reduce taxes last year like I said we went well under the tax cap by using some of our savings finance one-time expenditures we bought Chromebooks before and other purchases big large purchases through our savings and long range fiscal planning is really our goal uh 10-year plan so our when we look out 10 years we project challenging Financial Times with the limit on
058the revenue that the district receives so we will be utilizing reserves uh to balance our budget and preserve our program and last point we stated last time is we have not exceeded the statutory four percent unallocated that we addressed that every year by the board resolution that the one target they say you can't have over four percent we never go over that next slide so in summary you know I thought actually you know the audit was generally positive they looked at all those areas for six months and really didn't find anything and the board and the administration we deliberately thoughtfully and publicly you know used budget cheating practices that have helped avoid fiscal stress or drastic cutscene in other districts uh you know with when covid hit we were looking at 20 reduction in state
059aid about a million dollars but we didn't have to cut any jobs other districts neighboring districts had to cut jobs because they didn't have the savings to withstand that and the district will carefully consider all recommendations by the state and whether they benefit our taxpayers and maintain the quality of educational program over time so we'll do that as in finance committee on the board you know we'll do what's best for Chatham in our district and that's all I have tonight on that any questions um we met with audit committee last week and we went through the state audit and Dave levo was there you know we went through this corrective action plan what we're going to submit to this state but any other questions on the state audit Chris just more of a I guess
060it's a question but um you you touched on um the the Savings in the Moody's rating but if you could expand on that and explain um the benefit and and how that actually worked yeah sure so our our rating uh was an a83 on our debt and you know for actually it was lower before but we got it up to 83 and so the way Moody's investor service Works Triple A is the best uh no school districts have that but that major large companies sometimes have that and then it goes down a a uh one two three then there's B there's C you know then you get into so one of the things that we worked on um and I worked with the financial advisor when we went out last time because we built up
061our Reserve plan we had our reserves we we we sold our story of what we've done you know we've called Moody's we have a call and they then they rate our debt and so we they if you want a rating upgrade you gotta you know kind of put your position forth why and so we talked about you know our you know we've had 70 plus uh um the taxpayers supporting our budgets but the reserve plan was the big thing the planning the long-term planning the reserve plan was what they stated gave us the upgrade so what that means is when you went out for the debt our interest rates were much lower so that's where you save hundreds of thousands of dollars um because of that upgrade and then when we refinanced also that year
062a lot of debt so we got a lower rate because of that so that's where we got close to a million dollars in savings the last time so that savings that million dollars in savings is that we're going to see that realized going forward as well as long as we maintain that that's correct when we issue our new debt we'll see you know we won't save a million on the new debt but we could save hundreds of thousands again on the next next goal run if we can maintain that because we're going to be issuing that you know debt soon in the next school year any other questions uh I'm curious with the current monetary policy how is that impacting um Bond rates I don't understand um you know our is this getting more expensive
063you know rates have gone up but actually when we when I worked with the financial advisor hey we have a very strong rating so the municipal and government debt which if we maintain that rating we won't be impacted much and we did conservative estimates for the for that to incorporate if there was raises so we'll we should we should be fine with that when we go out to issue debt and by comparison it's on the same it's on the same bell curve right where other schools that don't have that high of a rating you're going to see uh a higher impact the schools that do have value that's correct lower rating you're going to pay more in interest which the taxpayer has to have to call them yeah the entire thing lifts everybody's going to
064go up a little bit but it's by proportion we can any other questions okay so we have a motion to accept the district's uh corrective action plan in response to the comptroller's report motion second uh any further questions all in favor aye aye any opposed uh we're gonna move on to the report from the student representative how's school going on it's going good so far I wanted to start with um talking about Student Government that's currently up and running um officers are also being elected right now I'm pretty sure that the class officers have already been elected but for the school we have the secretary treasurer uh vice president president so that's um currently happening right now and I believe that people will be um I guess running currently in um campaigning around the schools
065is that grade level Associated so the president has to be a senior um yeah I believe the president has to be a senior but there's also the class um officers which have already been elected so um also with homecoming is spirit week so we have the um different theme days throughout the week that we've been doing um like PJ day twin day um soccer mom cookout dad day and Ken and Barbie and I'm black and red for the uh Friday and then the homecoming game will be on Friday with the other sports games being on the weekend um and then the on Saturday night there's going to be the dance so um for clubs too um there's going to be advertising during lunch I saw some of the boards out of full-out boards for different
066clubs so people can join and there's also going to be a club fair in the library and I believe that's going to be out on Thursday night um when there's the open house for parents so students and parents can go to the library and look at the different clubs that are available um and then that's a that was kind of a big issue for you right like that was getting kids involved in clubs and student government and this participation component that was something that you had said early on that you were yeah specifically the senior class has been um it's hard to get some people involved but I think um there's been more involvement recently so that's good okay good yeah um and then the last thing that's um happening like I guess soon would
067be the end of October there's going to be a blood drive so I want to remark on that as well okay uh remind us again in October if we have a hopefully we have a board meeting right before then foreign representative did I hear that did you say canon Barbie day yeah the Barbie movies like a big okay that sounds really Innovative my my kids bought like wardrobe before this day [Laughter] are you going beaching Dr D'Angelo no I just I thought I heard that right my hearing is not that great so I have to do a double take yeah thank you all right thank you uh time for the superintendent's update well I'm just disappointed I even think of Canada every day but now but um I'd like to invite Justin I I think
068you're going to join us for a few brief moments um I know I did have a question from at least one board member um as you know I think I think as you know we've um made some changes to the cell phone policy we are uh Not Alone um you're seeing this throughout the region and throughout the country and um I thought I'd invite Justin to just give you a couple moments in terms of um what uh an overview of the new expectations that we have at the high school and kind of a few weeks in how it's going I've talked to a few teachers so before uh oh yes I know where you're going to go with that we sorry about that um we use that word sometimes in school Loosely policy it this
069is not this is a new um uh cell phone guidelines that the high school policy is reserved for board action so we've got to be careful with that using that synonymously so um I do apologize um could you share with us the new cell phone practices and guidelines at the high school sure I mean the you know the cell phone issues have been building up since cell phones have been around especially with smartphones um you'll get back to conversations in school with students with parents with teachers um we started up a think tank this summer for the high school and you know we established a number of different uh priorities and uh this one the kind of was the cream that came to the top um so a group of teachers Administration guidance counselors he
070said well let's work on you know a cell phone guidance or guidelines um we looked at a few things you know social emotional Wellness um uh engagement in school we also talked about you know a disciplinary students using cell phones to you know for reasons that they shouldn't be especially in school so you know we we had some discussion and we came up with a plan um that cell phones are not to be visible in instructional spaces um cell phones can be out and used during in between classes during a regular study halls and during lunch but in classrooms the library um structured study halls they're they're not to be out um so far it's going very well uh when we talked over the summer you know everybody's saying you know Justin this is going
071to be horrible for you you're gonna have 50 on the first day so we're you know over two weeks in and we've had um cell phones surrendered and actually one of those there was a substitute in and uh three three students had their phone out in that one class because they thought they could get away with that so there's three right off of that um very minimal pushback from students um there was a there's been two students where you know we had to you know they didn't want to surrender at but the um we called home and the parents were very supportive and you know had their students you know hand over the hand over the phones um logistically um you know basically the first time is a warning you have to surrender your phone
072anytime it's out um and then it like progresses progressively builds up um to you know the detentions and referrals uh to parent meeting to lost the phone for a week to lost the phone for five weeks or lost the phone to you know indefinite when you say lost the phone how does that so who governs that um so what we do is um the student has a phone out in class they were asked to go down the office um we have a log that we keep and we have a it's like a shoe rack that cell phones will fit in um but we also have um envelopes that fit smartphones and we put a um like a label across the where the glue is and they have to sign over it so that way there's
073no issues with oh they went through my phone while you know we're protecting the Integrity uh of the phone at the end of the day uh they're able to come they come down to the office they pick it up and they go on their way so but uh for a longer um revocation of uh privilege around that is that phone does that is that the responsibility of the parents at home or did the kids because you can't keep I would imagine you can't keep a phone for five weeks in the school already yeah so they would still pick it up every day so we have one student right now for a different instance every morning he surrenders his phone um and then he picks it up just because um at the end of the day
074sometimes he has to call home to get a ride so he's able to bring it in for communication purposes before school and after but while he's in the building um it's kept in the office so and I know Chris you're uh sitting at the Mike's I think you probably have a question I just have one more um it came up in a conversation a casual conversation I was having uh with somebody that said that they were concerned and I I can see the concern their child said that now everybody walks around the halls with their heads down do you think that this is is there an impact on the socialization of students in almost an inadvertent or unanticipated impact on the socializations of students because at their free times uh is there an increase in
075isolation so um actually no you know I'm in the in the cafeteria a lot I'm in the hallways almost between every period um in the cafeteria it's actually been way more social um there's less phone usage um in the hallways too it's not I I don't notice anything different but definitely the cafeteria I see more socialization than I had in the past um I've been in a few classrooms in the engagement in the classroom is by far better um one of the students that had an issue with taking both of us taking the phone she actually made a comment that said did she like the cell phone policy I shouldn't say that she doesn't like the cell phone policy but she admitted that she was more engaged in class I was like wow okay this
076is a step in the right direction thank you uh Chris you have a question yeah um can you walk us through in maybe like a day in the life of a student arriving to school and and how what they do with their phone and when and how it works like literally what are they you know what are they doing with their phone um you know so generally you know lots of times in between those or before classes began before homeroom they're not allowed in homeroom either um but when you say not allowed that's trying to understand what are they doing with their phone they're you know either put them in their pocket or their backpack or the signs that are posted are phones are not to be visible Beyond this point so it's on their
077body still it's just not out it's a usage practice correct I want to bring something else up there are probably five or six of our you know offenders you know they came in you know maybe they came in from the bathroom and they were looking to sign in and like oh you got me you know just not a habit I think we all kind of do that okay so so this is the policy of basically if I could summarize it and you know dumb it down um don't take your phone out you're not supposed to take your phone out in these instances correct and that's pretty much it and these are the what happened that you do yep and uh and based on that you're getting that much response like people are actually students are
078actually responding yep and I think uh another big piece of this too is we we um push this to the adults as well if you're monitoring a study hall if you're even if you you're not teaching in class somebody else is teaching in your classroom we ask them to step out of that room because it's an instructional space and they shouldn't have their phone out either um so it's a it's also a cultural thing you know that we're all in this together students adults Etc that's good foreign it was time right and I think everybody is appreciating the refocus on why we're here um I also have to say that on day two when that young man brought in his bag phone to Serenity you didn't fall for that that's right some of you aren't
079old enough I I heard a story in a different District that where um I shouldn't give our students any ideas but they someone forfeited a uh no a TV remote [Music] yeah the uh the black tanks are sometimes only as good as the practitioner right so the thing to include meeting and I'm sure this is just beginning you know things are going to happen we'll have to tweak and figure it out I mean but so far so good so I'm sorry go ahead man yeah I mean I I think this is great first of all um I wish you luck in your Endeavor as the entirety of the tech industry is working against you um because they all report to public stockholders who insist you have to make these apps as in addictive as possible
080um some education about that fact and [Music] um the types of steps you can take like turning off notifications being in silent mode stuff being selective about notifications that can reduce that addiction might be required for long-term survival of this type of guidance I'm not this is going to be hard to sustain and that's why I'm wishing you luck yeah thank you I'm a little surprised I guess pleasantly perhaps that the parents are receptive um from my experience they can they can be very challenging yeah having been in your role you know that one of the parents actually said well then I'm gonna have to come down there and take it from you so you won't surrender it you said that's exactly what I want you to do to take it home no it's been
081supportive so this is just in the high school yeah uh something similar I believe is similar but foreign our last meeting we had a really interesting conversation about board goals and looking at metrics um I can see you know the easy ones are academics right are we seeing grades improved because we're getting greater focus in classrooms um I can see are we seeing better uh engagement in the clubs and student you know sort of functional positions what would you what are you going to be looking at what are you thinking of in terms of metrics going forward to see how this works and how uh how you can sustain it or even improve it over time you know we haven't we haven't dug that deep into it but obviously you know the grading um one
082of the big concerns for me is the the mental health [Music] um how to assess that you know I guess this little TBD right now all right I'd love to hear that uh as we go forward I think that that's um you know I know you both uh as professionals so I I I'm interested to hear what your insights are on that going forward yeah that's a good metric to look at too yeah yeah okay thank you thank you Justin greatly appreciate it okay went to sleep hold on the only other um thing that I have for you is just a very very general ten thousand foot kind of comment and just to reassure the board that when other whenever the district goes through something that has an incident related to it that um we
083welcome um parent feedback I do receive calls and emails and uh that I want to reassure parents and my board that we do everything within our power to make sure that our students are safe from the moment they get on our transportation to the moment they arrive home so um please know that um any incident is taken extremely serious by the entire administrative staff it's thoroughly investigated and we put corrective actions in place so that when unforeseen things occur we can assure each other that they don't reoccur if it's within our control so I just wanted to make that journal comment okay I think we have the uh academic update uh Dr root I'll keep my comments brief since we have the American Institutes of research on here kids come in um I did just
084want to quickly mention that um we had several listening sessions with uh some with students some with teachers who represented committees focus groups that we had last year um as well some administrators and just had a listening session with our guests earlier and um it was really powerful to hear what students had to say about their experience of the pandemic um and I I think that we often look at the after effect and we're still thinking about it and digesting it um but to hear from students um what teachers did for them during the space of time I think we all felt like we couldn't do enough and um it was some some really positive comments that came forward about uh teachers and how impactful teachers were for them during that time so um again
085you'll get more information as we collect more more data and bring that forth to you I did want to briefly mention that um they're still embargo but we do have our three through eight assessments and um we are also now embarking um you know in the midst of with Elementary and Middle School um on benchmark assessments so I'd like to put those two together um and we'll we'll find a over the next couple of meetings find an opportunity to present um that data and give a sense of uh where our kids are at right now and um some strategies for this year so that's upcoming thank you um Mr chatty with the operational update not much on the operational side um just getting ready you know the maintenance everyone's working for homecoming I want to
086see the grounds in excellent condition you know we got all the events Friday and Saturday I do want to thank the maintenance staff yesterday girls had a huge soccer game at home against Maple Hill and uh it rained all weekend and it rained a lot of the day and we got the game and um they went out a few hours before and put that Speedy dry stuff in the gold boxes and line the field and actually you know the field was great for to be able to play on so and our girls did win 4-0 so that was a huge win but I'm happy they the other Maple had to cancel so most area schools had to cancel their soccer we were able to have it so I want to thank the hard work they
087put in for that did we play that on our Varsity soccer field yeah yeah I'd like to it's not a new business section but I'd like to be reminded if I can when we get to new business um we invest a lot of money in our Sports programs at least if it goes to soccer but I think that uh our our girls and our boys over the years have proven that they deserve a little acknowledgment a little work on that so um so thank you also Facebook go on Facebook and vote for Mariana Chetty for Athleta we can only do it once right uh it depends how many uh yeah of course Mike has lollipops if you vote Yes holy male accounts and then oh okay that's just one quick question um the speaker um
088for football was that fixed it was all distorted uh last week did they fix that I will check on that I actually missed that last game so I'll make sure for homecoming that that's fixed yeah it was really distorted thanks for bringing that out okay uh I think we've gone to board committee reports uh Public Library advisory committee we did hear from the C plaque folks but is there anything that the committee wants to do include well we did have a meeting uh elected officers there are there are 24 scheduled events at our library the month of October I'm telling you I bet you're gonna see for the year for the rest of October go on the website and take a look this place is uh uh summer was very busy um both in Chatham
089and Canaan probably the highlight of the summer was again she had the band coming to a concert we had over 100 people there at the concert um strategic planning as John said were um starting that and I have such a good feeling about this I went through a strategic planning with a library probably five years ago this one is I have a much different feeling about it it's going to be um we're also going to use the staff and it's going to be just I think it's going to be great it's going to happen it's going to happen Friends of the library are very big contributors they've bought some lovely furniture and if you get a chance go in and look at the married artist desk at the they've moved married artists big desk in
090the library it's a wonderful addition and we're glad to have it there that's it okay I think we had a photo posted on our website with the desk yes uh audit committee are you on first we met for the first and probably only time uh this year to cover last year's finances uh the the um uh on the financial statements as well as uh the uh response to the controller audit and the the findings there um we made some recommendations I think we've gone over everything today unless there's a new audit um something ad hoc that comes up um we will not be meeting again until next season actually Matt we will meet for uh the external audits every five years and then you have to come up and do an RP so in February
091February again okay so not until February all right thank you uh new business so uh first on the uh list here is discussion of nisba resolutions and voting delegates so I did send an email out to everybody um with the link instead of Debbie um so that we can take a look at what those resolutions are I did get some feedback from some Marianne did you want to speak to some of the ones that you had brought out I I have one comment go ahead Matt for any board member that has not participated in this process before I highly recommend it um but other than that I don't have an opinion on the proposals who Marianne had sent me the email I'm looking forward now okay so I just basically wrote read through yeah I
092read through all the resolutions um proposal number one um which opposes unfunded mandates that's a slam dunk I think everybody should support that um when they pass down things that they don't actually follow up any money for and say you have to do this and don't come up with the money for it I really think that should be something that everybody would be on board with um the other one that stood out to me was the proposed resolution number seven which opposes shifting financial responsibility for preschool special education from counties to school districts I wasn't aware of that that could happen um and let's see so this is these are proposals that nisba supports which I agree with um resolution 10 legislation that would substantially increase the earning limitations for retired police and other law
093enforcement for serving as school resource or safety officers I thought that was a unique idea um there's always that challenge of finding a school resource officer the you know every time we go back to the county they're having trouble finding people that can build that role um I know we're okay right now but I think it would be a great idea if you had a retired person that um you know they have all the skill sets and the time um so I think that's a great resolution okay there's half of ours you kind of taste that right right but so so once you retire from the um from the government yeah you have earnings limitations you can't go right find another job and and so this is wants to increase that so that they would
094be more attracted to the idea of of jumping into a rule like that I just I just thought that was interesting but these are all my personal opinions I'm just I'm just relating that um resolution 18 State support of local grow your own teaching programs um I think that is going to be important we are having problems finding teachers and if the state could help local school districts um help with some of the funding of that to get local people interested in um and helping out at their school districts I thought that was great um it's generally just to figure out where your information also occurring at the BOCES level um there's a lot of um advantages to have it be more Regional but certainly keeping it more localized I think that's great you know
095grow your own is it's a great concept um let's see Okay resolution 19 was for the state to conduct a feasibility study or review regarding utilities infrastructure logistical and fiscal aspects of the Euro emission School vehicle mandate as the reviews and studies deem necessary um I think that's excellent because they kind of said hey we're doing this uh you guys figure it out I really think the state should get involved and say how is this actually feasible in relief some of the burden of the school districts of trying to take this idea and figure it out on their own the state should jump in and definitely help with that so I agree with nizba on that one um I don't know I don't know how I feel about this one the resolution 20 was to
096eliminate the Regents in favor of State final exams um don't have an opinion on that I need a lot more information to actually think about that but I just flag that because that's kind of an interesting discussion probably something that we'll be talking about at length Lisa I'm sure has opinions on that too um resolution 43 so the newsba committee opposed this one but I think they make a good point to us talking about the tier six in the teachers retirement system should be modified um I am very new at this whole system but it did look on the you know the surface to me the tier six it was not great and if we're trying to get some of these teachers in here um we should probably look at that but again I'm speaking
097from having no idea this is just how it was presented thought that was interesting um okay so the committee uh resolution 46 the nisba committee opposes this but they brought up this idea of returning the religious exemption for the vaccines um and you know as you guys well know from my past I'm all about parental rights and you know so well I did not agree with committee but this is again my personal opinion they also oppose the parental rights legislation they oppose number 48 mandates from the school educate State education department regarding matters not pertaining to academic standards subjects have not been approved by up and down vote of the New York State Legislature I don't even understand my note on that um they oppose local control by school boards I don't know what that
098would look like but that's something I would like to love to look into a little bit more I mean so here we are we know our town we know our community so that was resolution number 49. local control in regards to life yeah uh and or County Executive so um that was just a cliff note I had okay so those were the ones those are the ones that I just earmarked that I thought that we would find interesting here in Chatham so so when these um this is not at the conference they're doing this virtual again right correct yeah so any almost anyone can propose something to get on this list um it's a very short list of um you know the petition requirement's very short to get on the list so there's a lot
099of strange positions um that they just don't pass but if no one shows up to vote for them um you know these end up being lobbying priorities for for nisba um it's important to make sure the positions uh well thought through and there's supposed to be debate although when I went to the virtual one um it there was not a real opportunity to speak your mind on these so All You've Really Got is that vote that's true I would agree with that I did virtual also when it was I think when these were in person people would get up and speak and it was like there was a lot of feedback but I had um well I read yours Marianne and you know uh Greek my son of your perspectives uh agreed with many of
100them um I had some questions like you did especially around the local control one um I also thought that uh resolution number uh five um where the school boards Association supports the additional state and federal funding which would be dedicated to school safety programs staff and Equipment um I I think that that's another thing that we have to really I would suggest we support it's gonna it costs money and it's it's essentially an unfunded mandate it's a moral one it's an ethical one but it's still going to cost money um so while we would do best for our kids no matter what I think it's kind of a Twist of the arm for the state to make uh to propose leverage and and not support it financially anybody else on the gender uh so we
101do have um an opportunity to have uh voting delegates um so uh R23 be resolved that the Board of Education designate uh do we have anybody interested uh we can only send one delegate yeah I mean I I had in my email it said that I would be willing yes um so I I don't know if uh how we want to go about doing that I don't want to assume anything um but we should have a delegate I'm sure we have a few people that might be interested sounds like both Chris and Matt have been before um I would guess that one or both people would be interested so um but I don't know maybe I'm wrong um so yeah I think I think for me um being that the um there's not a great
102opportunity to um communicate your Viewpoint unless you participated in the early efforts to put statements on file right because you can put a not only do you put the proposal but um sometimes people have alternate positions on that proposal so when those get put in writing they get circulated and I think those are really powerful being that this is just a basically up or down vote on each one I don't think that there's a lot of value um to me as or or really to the Local District here these are going to pass they're gonna fail and it's probably not going to come down to one vote however I think for new board members um the amount of the education you get on the diversity of viewpoints and the um diversity of issues that are
103being lobbied around the state is really valuable so like I said I think that if we can get the new board members through that at least once super valuable if we don't find new board members that want to do it I'm not sure representations that important to Chatham yeah I I don't know I think um when you think about resolution number 49 not sending a delegate is is silently accepting the limitations of local controls uh and you know this is the last place where the community has direct vote um and the last place where where we impact our own um correctly so I I think I disagree with that point I think it's always good to have a delegate on there um it may not be a powerful statement um but it's not silence either
104so um and I I dones our newest member um I also have not done it I don't think Marianne has done it um so yeah I mean would anybody else be interested I think I think since you have offered that we would like to take you up on it it's like a 60-minute slot or something like that it's longer I think it's longer than that yeah I'm sure it is yeah there's a lot in that in that resume yeah that's longer than that you have the time to do it yeah I'll make the time yeah uh so be resolved that the Board of Education designated Fred Hutchinson as the voting delegate and as the alternative for the annual business meeting of the New York state boards Association all in favor I probably should say I
105at that point but all right so we are into new business uh we have a motion to approve the uh MOA with the Chatham Central School Teachers Association dated September 12 2023 the Moa is in executive content and attached um this one is oh this has to do with the high school schedule change and the number of minutes of instructional minutes um as many know last year we ran close uh because of various uh things beyond our control we lost power for several days early on in the year uh the weather didn't cooperate with us as well as you may have wanted to um and so we I believe the district has chosen to change the schedule just a little bit to ensure that we have those extra minutes uh so build a little buffer
106in there mine's balloon that's right yeah the um instructional minutes were changed uh in alignment with the ccsta contract of 42 minutes per period but then that created an unattended Consequence the supervisory period had a discrete number of 41 minutes listed in the contract so there was uh there was a lack of consistency there so this MOA allows us to increase the supervisory um period to match an instructional period and uh and we're going to keep a close eye on this um the ccsda asked that we gotta take a look at this about 20 week Mark to make sure everything was going okay is that I just have a question on it I'm just curious how was that picked up it's like a it seems like a minute I mean it's just wondering uh some
107teachers are very focused on their their prep time um their like one of the only things they care about the contract but I don't think you'd end up with unsupervised students for you know eight minutes in a day yeah it wasn't the the um language is right next to each other in the contract so it wasn't and we were pretty proactive with this yeah when we verified that we could make the schedule change without a contractual negotiation for the instructional minutes we realized that we were going to then impact these supervisory minutes and we approached the ccsta who's been extraordinarily Cooperative with us and always is and uh to come to a mutual agreement and a solution that doesn't negatively impact students yeah we do this on our own with our teachers union we didn't
108have any Outsiders oh no many of the moas um are a discussion uh this year um our Connelly is the president Sarah Murray's vice president I meet with them on a regular basis we met today and uh you know we go over um certainly certainly go over any labor concerns and this is course of doing business yeah for the most part we we take a crack at writing the Moa and then we have our legal counsel just verify that we're doing well okay um so do uh can I get a motion to approve the Moa motion motion second uh any further questions all in favor aye aye uh any opposed okay uh we have a second uh MOA with the uh Chatham Central School Teachers Association um this one is I'm gonna close some windows
109here and get lost yes this is the in relationship to the dean of students at the med um dean of students at the med creating the temporary dean of students right right we had discussed we had a conversation about um viability of hiring a vice principal at this point um and elected to go as a board we discussed mostly in favor of doing I don't think you were there for that um you were here for this um and then um pick up with the dean of students uh which we had done in the past and worked out pretty well um so this is a motion to approve that uh the document is in the uh notes but essentially the med dean of students shall be paid um 18.4 of the uh ba what is that
110bachelor's step one thank you um prorated for the time worked upon appointment at the association unit member to the position of IBD dean of students such employee will be granted leave of absence from his or her current position to which he or she shall return at the conclusion of the temporary appointment the association member will retain his or her tenure and continue to accrue seniority in his or her current tenure area while acting as tosadino students yeah Sunset upon the termination temporary employment our appointment term um but no later than June 26 2024. uh are there any questions the only thing to know is that that compensation percentage is consistent with the pre-existing percentages that are in place in the contract for both the middle school dean which is currently not a position that we
111have and um a high school team should we in both positions which we currently don't have okay uh kind of a motion motion second uh and no further questions I guess uh all an agreement hi uh any opposed okay all right pause just for one session it reminded me that I just wanted to shout out to Stacy Moscato who served as our uh assistant principal at Med this past year we're grateful for your work we thank you and we wish you well in your new District thank you okay uh and um it looks like we have a uh an agreement with the administrator's unit uh so motion uh be resolved at the Board of Education approved the agreement with the Chatham central school principals Association for collective bargaining agreement for the period of July 1
1122023 through June 30th 2027 it authorizes superintendent to execute the agreement and approve the payment of money provided therein and that agreement is also in our notes um motion second thank you uh any questions all in favor aye aye any opposed we are on to consensus agenda motion to accept the consensus agenda K through m are there any questions on the agenda itself or in relationship to the agenda from any board members I am one related question um now can you just sum up for us our current Staffing situation for Spanish just K-12 because I see that this was a a long-term sub and that had escaped me um in my memory um it was a long-term sub because that individual um was in the process of receiving certification okay so they could not be
113appointed they've been with us I think now four years um they've moved on to another District um we have posted that position uh that position is for uh the middle school I think it's great seven eight we offer um kind of a stretch Spanish alternative and um as you probably are anticipating um I don't believe we had any viable candidates uh in a loss at this point so we will continue to search for a certified or close to being certified Spanish teacher very very hard to fill area are we using any other search sites like indeed or any of the others that are out there for stuff we um not indeed specifically but we've um at various times depending on the position so instructionally um there's some others like that we were investigating that we've
114seen other districts use the the the secondary one escapes me but um one of the things we've done with the non-instructional areas is we've been reaching out to places like uh Columbia ring Community College and some of the other uh affiliate programs that are graduating students and are offering um uh courses within those areas so we're I won't say it's an extensive recruitment effort but we're trying to get the word out there in other places so on on October 6th which is rapidly approaching um presuming nothing changes from today uh we're in just building sub territory we're also exploring um and and there's some challenges fraught with this as well but we're also exploring what distance learning options we may have um for Spanish they were coming I want to see more plentiful but they're
115they're starting to pop up Westar is starting to offer um a Spanish program unfortunately I believe that's uh Spanish one so it's kind of slated for the high school this is a unique situation where we teach Spanish one over a two-year period so it's kind of unique to Middle School um Dr root I don't know if you have any other tricks in your bag um we've had conversations with capital region um Discerning Consortium uh you've heard me mention in the past um Burnt Hills um has had some good um luck with generating some programming from that school to other schools but again some of the challenges are relate to high school schedules and aligning schedules there's a pilot program going down in the capital region where several districts have put together an effort to align
116their building schedules so they could take advantage of more distance learning offerings and so all that's kind of evolving as this teacher shortages um at our at our doorstep and we're looking for alternatives to you know in person and um certified certificated individuals in our classroom so I danced around that for sure um because I just don't have a really good answer to be continued I got it yeah but actually it sounds like our worst case scenario would be compressing that stretch program into a single year I I think right now I'm not sure what all of our alternatives are I'm a little reluctant in um offering a Spanish one program at the middle level as to whether our students would be um prepared for for that kind of um rigor if you will yeah
117we wouldn't be the only school and it's better us than not offering it yeah so I'm curious um what the viability of moving Spanish one to seventh is there a reason why it's is there is there a a fundamental like curriculum related reason why this is stretched over two years you know I I mean typically um our accelerated program has traditionally been um math and science so you know offering earth science and uh algebra in eighth grade um I'm not quite sure why um Spanish was split over two years is it well I didn't I'm thinking back to a time this this program was introduced at a time when Spanish was not a second language in the United States and it now has 25 home adoption um and I'm not sure that that whatever assumption
118was brought to the table at that time is still about is still valid there's a State graduation requirement for foreign language and it involves Spanish one doctor would you want to talk to about that a little bit or it doesn't answer the stretch question but I assume that the stretching whenever we stretch a curriculum it's to try and make it more palatable and digestible by for students um teach it slower get a deeper sort of thing but um but did you want to address her what so I think um Matt's question about why it was a stretch program let me clarify it's clear to me earlier is better for language adoption and moving all of One into seventh grade would mean two could get moved into eighth grade and it would mean that they'd reach
119Spanish four or five earlier in the high school leaving more time for electives so I'm I'm wondering if there's an actual programmatic reason for the stretch because I'm not convinced that it the kids need two years to achieve a vocab list that's like really short I think that's something we could explore and get back to you um you know I see that Mr Fortran is on the call I I did also want to mention that we've had conversations and he's reached out to some teachers um the former teachers that have worked for us some retired teachers um you know we're pulling out um all the tricks in the bag to see if we can adequately staff that that position but one of your question is very valid and we should explore it at least investigate
120uh what that might look like uh Mr Sid I don't know if do you have any any insight um so I mean we do have a teacher leader for um uh low and uh enl and you know we can consult and um and I can get you some better answers that I can give you today yeah I mean there's tons of research that every year that goes on as a teenager that you delay language introduction it's exponentially more difficult to acquire yeah so I'm not convinced that the idea that stretch makes it easier it would be very hard to to when there's all this data that says the opposite yeah well it there's data for stretch programs that that say that that agree with the idea of stretching whether it's applicable to the foreign language
121I think the only prohibitive thing I could see at this point would be that it would open up the need for additional staff which we're having trouble doing because what you're suggesting is same number of classes isn't it we can't fill those now like we don't we can't staff them right now I think what Matt is saying and as I understand it is if we had one Spanish teacher at the middle school who's teaching right now teaching seventh n eighth yeah yeah what does that look like from a scheduling perspective I don't know what limitations we might bump into in terms of what you know periods we're trying to fill there I'm not sure how Spanish half one and Spanish have two is different than Spanish one and two I don't think it I don't
122think that that substantially is I just think that we're getting a resignation from a long-term no no I just want to take a moment because we don't have applications the reasoning behind this programming is probably 25 30 years out of date I I don't think that yeah that's absolutely heard loud and clear and Mike Lisa myself I think we all agree philosophically with it I think the only prohibitive aspect would be the fact that we don't have an applicant for a position right around it at the moment we certainly can do some more League work on it oh that was the only question okay all right so anybody else have questions on the consensus agenda uh so um motion uh rather r27b resolved the Board of Education except the consensus agenda K through M as
123written may I have a motion motion uh uh we did questions uh all in favor all opposed okay uh motion to accept the minutes from the September 12th board meeting second that's okay okay so I pick it up at n right okay uh future agenda items so as I said earlier I would like to add one and I would like to have uh some sort of a study perspective on um upgrading our soccer program um we have beautiful Fields uh for both baseball and football uh we have a good we've done some work in the softball field um our gym is more than sufficient for volleyball and basketball I think it's time to take a look at soccer can I suggest that we'll bring that to the facilities committee uh we're we're I think we're
124in the process of um establishing a meeting for next week um I'm going to bring your request to them for consideration yeah thank you anybody else have any future Generations you're going to get a new soccer field yes where they haven't had that's just you know that's a thorn in my side we have never had a our Orchestra teacher has a room backstage in the corner but maybe during this construction we may find a place for him okay all right so is that do you want that added to a future agenda or tabled after the um okay take the pistols very good anyone else okay uh we are back to Second public comment um we have a virtual uh Jen diorio has raised her hand and Sandy Fisher okay great so I'll begin with Jen
125I'm gonna promote you in a second here hopefully our technology works magic group TV Jen you should be able to hear us and well where did you go ah there we go it's uh hi everybody it's been so long since I've used Zoo almost thankfully that I kind of forgot what buttons to push here um so just a couple things I just wanted to to briefly comment on the on the cell phone conversation that uh Justin's presentation and the conversation that ensued um just a couple of observations from a teacher perspective one is that I think heads were always down in hallways on cell phones even prior to this this change in in procedure um I haven't seen it get any worse but what I have seen get better is um engagement and attentiveness and
126focus in class and I know that in my classroom if there's an extra few minutes at the end of the period when every kid would have whipped their cell phone out and started to engage with that since there are no cell phones that are allowed to come out physically within the academic uh setup uh they turn around talk to each other now so in those few minutes of the day it's actually Inc free socialization uh student to student and the other thing because I know you guys love data I really like to survey my students and I've done so at the end of the year for the last two years and I'll give you the exact wording of the question I've asked them so my classes are Algebra 2 and consumer math so it spans
127sophomore through seniors and high achieving and not as high achieving academic students the question I specifically ask them is quote I'm pretty tough on cell phone use in class do you think not accessing it in class improves your focus your understanding and retention of the material in class I have kind of always had a very strict no cell phone policy in my classroom that I I chose to enforce but I think the kids answers I know they surprised me and I think they might surprise you as well in terms of their perspective their choices were no difference some difference quite a difference and a significant difference only 18 percent of my students over two years and I surveyed about 125 students in that time said it made no difference 20 said some difference 28 said
128quite a difference and 34 said that cell phone policy made a significant difference in their focus understanding and retention and material so even the kids were saying um that they were not helping um and I've just I I've been really happy to see this policy I've heard not a lot of not I personally haven't heard a lot of complaints about it and I am just seeing tons of positives and I just wanted to share that with you all that's awesome thank you Jen and we're going to return Jen to the gallery don't be offended by being demoted to an attendee and we're gonna try to work on getting sandwiched and uh Sandy you're um you're up but your video is muted I don't know if that's intentional or not but you're yeah you can hear
129me okay it's my privacy setting and I don't know that I can fix it quickly um so I'm just going to start talking I because I have a long list uh number one um the Chatham Education Foundation is meeting next week and uh we are really excited to see what projects uh the teachers are going to bring to us this year um so stay tuned for for more exciting news about that one of the projects that they funded last year was the Sky Dome planetarium which Megan Perry wrote as her grants and the Sky Dome planetarium is going to be at the middle school tomorrow uh and grades six through eight will be partaking in that as well as my ninth grade science links class so that's very exciting um oh number three the microphones
130are fantastic you can hear everybody and uh that that's great nobody was dropping off into the into the uh abyss of of quietness so I love the new microphones thank you Harris uh number four Chatham robotics has expanded um I don't know if if you guys have have caught wind of it yet but my team last year advocated for and promised to be the mentors of the First Tech Challenge which is the next lower level of the robotics uh for grade seven and eight so we've started that program Kate Rossi who is a math teacher thought we school it's sorry for my dogs the Foster dogs he wants to adopt one I'm gonna go outside okay Kate Rossi uh the math teacher at the high school is going to be leading the charge on the
131First Tech Challenge uh so you'll get to see another robot um and we'll be doing competitions probably in December and January for that and also if anyone's around and wants to hang out in Boston spa on first Saturday in November I think it's the fourth the robotics team will be up there with our robot from last year and hopefully a new swerve drive we received a grant from IBM and some additional funding so that we can upgrade our drive train to the swerve Wheels which I talked about at the board meeting when we were there last spring which will make us more competitive which is hugely important if if we want to advance to the next level um what else oh uh next week next Thursday is day in the life of the Hudson also
132known as snapshot day and that is in its 20th year I believe and it'll be the 15th or 16th year that Chatham participates that's a citizen Science Program where students all along the Hudson River from the Troy Dam down to Manhattan usually over 3 000 students are out on the Hudson River collecting water quality they're staining for fish they're doing site assessments and all that data goes into the Lamont Doherty Observatory and all that data is available online and is used to to help um steer the direction of the Hudson River and lastly the mock interview event Megan Connolly and the senior team had that initiative last year and it was hugely successful we've sent an email out to the participants from last year and within I believe it was five hours 14 of those
133people uh responded that they wanted to be participate again this year it's on November 9th which is the Thursday before Veterans Day and so stay tuned for more information we'll be soliciting your your help and to make this another hugely successful event we had 30 right is it the right number 30 interviewers so approximately half have replied in just right yeah yeah yeah and uh so we're we're really excited um and and the students are really excited so we'll we're sending out uh invitations or we'll be I think I think Ashley sent an email to uh yep yep beautiful I think that's terrible so much support from the community yet again is is really great yeah I know it was probably unavoidable but that is also the Veterans Day celebration at the middle school so
134there will be a little contention um on a few people I'm sure [Music] and then lastly um to Matt's point about Spanish curious to explore why Spanish isn't pursued more at the elementary level you know particularly getting to the fact that the brains are much more malleable for language at the younger ages and by the time they get to high school it is much harder and I I have four Spanish Ells and one Indian ell in my classes this year and and as a teacher who does not speak Hindi at all in Spanish very minimally um you know having students come up through programs from elementary school I think would be a huge benefit to our to our ell students I want to say that in 2008 when I last time I served on the
135board we had a conversation about elementary Spanish we well I've been here we actually um had Jen Powell when she was at the middle school she had an extra session and we put together a uh program that was exploratory we began we began in kindergarten and we were going to expand that program and then Jen left us and kind of that kind of fell apart but also that was at the same time where we were starting to be constrained from a budget perspective and we were looking at how we needed to reduce um to Mike's earlier Point um potentially up to a million dollars from Staffing so some of those phase ones became less uh and of course now Staffing would be of concern too but yeah yeah it's hard to get people but it's
136you know again to Matt's point at the end as Sandy said you know it's really the as soon as we get them we should try and try and teach them as many languages as we possibly can afford to and and not for nothing um you know again getting to the point that somebody made you know you know if we can be more proactive and reactive um I think we'd be you know far ahead of the game and starting languages earlier I think is a is a proactive step and who would that be Dr D'Angelo Russia second second uh all in favor aye aye okay that's it