001Good evening. My name is Shrur and I'm the and the president of the City School District of Albany Board of Education. On behalf of the board, I welcome you to our meeting. Uh today we have u Miss Breml, our student board representative, uh Mr. Nyavi, Miss Crerachche, Miss Man, uh Miss Savage, Mr. Wolf gang um joining us in person and Miss Wilson is joining us virtually. Uh we have the superintendent and members of the cabinet both in person and virtually joining us. Um this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting as well as a link to the agenda including all the documents we will discuss are available at a schools.org. This is a good time for me to note that if you're here tonight to speak in public comment, you
002should sign up with Miss Timmons here to my right, while she's left, the board clerk. Uh, with that introduction, we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand up for the pledge of allegiance. >> Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the foryice for all. In addition to the pledge of allegiance, we always focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district of Albany, which is to work in partnership with a diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success. Superintendent Hawkright, do you have a report for us? >> Uh, I believe we're going to begin with our student board member. I picked my wrong notes, Miss Priml. >> Yes, thank
003you. I'll first start off with our operational success and re-entry. Since returning from break, Ali High School students have demonstrated a smooth and positive transition back into the school environment. In particular, students have adjusted quickly to the implementation of the new metal detectors, allowing entry into the school to remain efficient while maintaining a safe and orderly start to the school day. And then we'll move to our civic leadership, which was the Senator Fehee Student Representative Congress. Additionally, Omni High School students including myself recently participated in Senator Fehees Student Representative Congress. This experience provides students with valuable exposure to government and civic engagement while allowing them to collaborate with students from other schools. Participants work together to develop and present mock bills, strengthening their understanding of the legislative process, cooperation, and leadership. Overall, this opportunity served
004as a meaningful and impactful experience for students interested in public service and government engagement. And then to interd district communication and benchmarking to better assist assess our institutional standing and regional progress. We will be going on curriculum tours to two different middle schools with Miss Cumberford starting next week. In addition, we are going to have a lunch and learn to collect farther information within the high school. The objective of this outreach is to establish a streamlined flow of information regarding the progress, challenges, and specific needs of our schools and other schools within the district. This data will allow for more effective benchmarking and more comprehensive understanding of the educational landscape across the district. And then our strategic initiatives and student incentives. Moving forward, we are continuing to prioritize the two initiatives designed to recognize students
005and capture authentic student feedback. Our Falcon Pass continuation, the Albony High School Falcon Pass program remains in the final stages of completion. This initiative, as you know, is designed to regard reward students who consistently demonstrate exemplary attendance, academic excellence, and positive behavioral records. We are currently finalizing the operational framework to ensure the program is implemented fairly and effectively for the student body and our student voice survey development. We are in the progress of finalizing the specific inquiries for our upcoming student voice survey. This analytical tool is being carefully designed to identify the factors that contribute to a positive school culture. We plan to roll the survey out at both the lunch and learn and email it to all the students. And in conclusion, Albany High School remains committed to fostering an environment where students voice
006translate into meaningful action. These efforts ranging from merit-based incentives to regional benchmarking are unified in the goal of strengthening student engagement and institutional excellent excellence throughout the remainder of the 2025 to 2026 academic year. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Miss Brill. When I love the fact that you're going to go to the middle schools and talk to the school junior Falcons there. when you do go to these schools also try to build the bridges with their building leadership with the student body leadership so their voices can come up to you. >> Okay, now we can go to Mr. >> Yes. I'll turn it over to Mr. Leco. >> Thank you. Uh we have a Alb High School has a couple of important and fun community events coming up in the next few weeks.
007Uh the high school is getting ready to host its second blood drive of the school year at the end of the month. The drive is scheduled for Wednesday, January 28th from 8:00 in the morning until 2:45 in the afternoon. Students, employees, and community members are invited to donate. Donors must be at least 16 and are required to make an appointment by registering online. You can find more information and a registration link in the calendar of events at albonychools.org/alanyhigh. Registered community donors should use the main entrance on Washington Avenue when arriving. We recommend that everyone who is planning to donate drink plenty of water and a green leafy vegetables in the days leading up to the drive. Our students, faculty, and staff at Albany High also are getting ready to pamper you on the annual Valentine's
008Day spa day coming up on Saturday, February 7th. Students from our cosmetology and barbering programs will offer a range of spa services ranging from $10 for a child's haircut to $45 for the VIP package. Students in our culinary program also will have some tasty treats available for our guests. Valent Valentine's Day spa day will be from 10:00 a.m. until 1 p.m. on February 7th. If you have questions in advance, you can contact cosmetology teacher Laquita Love atl.k12.ny. us or give her a call at 518-4756393. We have several several reminders for our families regarding upcoming school schedules. Next Wednesday, all of our middle schools will dismiss at 12:30 in the afternoon to allow time for our faculty and staff to participate in professional development. This applies to all three middle schools as well as Tony Clement
009Center for Education and the secondary grades at Alb International Academy. The following Monday, January 19th, all of our schools and offices will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. day. That week also is regent week at Alb High School. Uh only students taking specific regions exams on certain days will be required to report to school from Tuesday, January 20th through Friday, January 23rd. Albony High's online success program will be open for students during its regular hours throughout Regions Week. Finally, a reminder that our second parent teacher conferences of the school year are coming up in early February, the afternoon and evening of Thursday, February 5th and the afternoon of Friday, February 6th. Uh please also note that all of our schools will be closed February 6th to provide time for parent teacher conferences
010as well as professional development for our employees that morning. And it is now my pleasure to introduce Dr. Stacy Dobs, principal of Delaware Community School, to tell us more about the great things happening there this year. Thank you very much. Good evening, school board members, Superintendent Hawk Rider, members of the cabinet and Albany community. Um thank you for giving us and allowing us this opportunity for um the chance to tell you a little bit about our fabulous school, Delaware Community School. And while this is uh our building is made up of a lot of leaders, all leaders, I have two leaders with me today. And on my um left, I have Dr. Jones Oliver. She's our new assistant principal. And on my right, I have Miss Jada Smith, and she is our new community site
011coordinator. Our school vision, mission, and goals align with the district mission, vision, and goals. Again, a hello from the the school administration. This is our demographics. At the time of creating this PowerPoint, we had 291. I think we're about at two at 300 at this moment. We still have 17 classrooms. Five of those classrooms are autistic support classrooms. and we also have two preschools. Our SEAP focus and highlights for this year are to continue to improve our instructional practices in order to really deepen the academic engagement for our students. Specifically, we're focusing on increasing the pacing um in making sure that the rigor is at a high level um keeping our standards extremely high and allowing for more student participation. We also use daily formative assessments in order to drive our instruction. We look at
012data constantly. We are data-driven school and we like to review the student assessments in order to drive educational practice as well as asking students to also review their assessments in order to drive their own practice. We are strengthening what's SGI which is small groupoup instruction and EAI which is enrichment um advancement and intervention and we are retaching based on those formative assessments that data that comes from those formative assessments. And so if our students aren't getting something the first time, then we retach it to them another time um during those times. Our attendance matters obviously and so as you look at our percentages um they're lower than what we expect obviously but what has happened is we've been navigating through the barriers which we uh realize our students are having in order to come to
013school. We're trying to reduce our chronic absenteeism. So as of December 25, you see 33%. As of January 25 is 37% and as of January 2024 is 35% in comparison. Thank you. And now our school highlights. When it comes to working at Delaware Community School this year, we have a lot to celebrate. Our cheetah chew food pantry program is currently serving 49 students weekly. That number goes up to about 54 families when we include the families that come in monthly as needed. We also have a cheetah coutour clothing closet and it is just the highest fashions. We have served over 10 families who've come in to um consistently grab clothing, jeans, shirts. We have a lot of donors in our local community and within our school. So, it's been really great to serve those families.
014As the weather gets colder, we've also given away um just under 25 winter coats to families in need. As well, we have a partnership with Grassroots Givers Feed and Read program, which has provided over a 100 books to over 50 families. We served with Sealless Smile serving 93 students in dental checkups and sealants, which has a really um high R uh return on investment. We were really excited and the kids were knocking on our doors to get into that seal of smile. So, it was a great time. Uh, we hosted a STEM night this year. It was drawing over 200 guests. It was one of our bigger events that we've hosted for STEM night. And we are consistently hosting this new initiative, Parent Pause and the Parent Mosaic Parent Alliance. And the purpose for these
015is to create more family engagement, getting our families in, giving them information so that they know more about what we're doing at Delaware and allowing them to really feel a part of our school community. The Mosaic Parent Alliance is a sister program to the original parent pause and that specifically targets our English language learner families. Um, so we have a lot of translators and we're working with community members to bring um resources in and help connect them to the resources that Albany has to offer. Uh, we've been hosting morning and afterchool enrichment programs, girls on the run, school of skills basketball, Cornell cooperative, STEM club, and partnerships with amazing athletes and a fourth family mentorship program. In addition to that, we do Monday daytime enrichment programs which serve more of the students at our school.
016Uh giving more people access to these programs. We've been working with building blocks empowers which has an SEAL curriculum that really aligns with the Delaware Community SEAL programming. Nelly's Treats which has been working with measurements and collaborative teamwork. And we had a bird exhibition come in that had some science enrichment. And most recently in December when we left off, we partnered with Toys for Tots, adopted 32 families and over 77 children for the holiday season. So it was a really busy time, but we had a lot of really happy families. There was a lot to celebrate. >> Thank you. Okay, so our school highlights um we are as I mentioned earlier a very data-driven school and so just to kind of highlight the specific area with the percent that met the mean RIT. Um you
017know we started off in spring 2023 at 24 and we were at 34 in the spring of last year in ELA and in math we started off in 2023 at 25 and we're at 34 um as of spring last year. We're continuing to look for ways um focusing on our SEP goals in order to increase that number and continue to watch that grow. Overall, we're looking for the growth of students in order to reach their proficiency levels. So, some of the challenges and next steps, we are continuing to build the capacity of our staff to increase student proficiency. And I mentioned some of those ways earlier when we were talking about how we were focusing on formative assessment practices. So we're not waiting until we get to a summit of ATS assessment like an NWA
018or a New York State test in order to decide or to see where our students are. Every single day we are consistently utilizing those formative assessments to see where our students are. And then we pivot or we shift in order to make those adjustments in order to meet the needs of the students. We're continuing to grow our pacing and rigor. Um we know that when we increase the pacing that sometimes they rigor increases automatically. So we're working on that. Um and then we're always working on student empowerment. How can our students have um an investment in their own education, understanding their own data? I often tell people about Delaware. If you come into our school, you can ask a kindergartener how they're doing and they would probably tell you how they're doing and and use
019a little bit of data. Um, they know what they want where they want to be and they're able to have those conversations. And all students at Delaware K through five set personal goals based on NWA data and they work to achieve those goals. And so we also are continuing to try and decrease the amount of unfinished teaching that is happening each year so that our students go on to the next grade level at a proficient level. So our successes we have increased student proficiency overall although it's not exactly where we want it to be. Um again our students are goal setting individually and as a class. Um we have utilized vertical common planning time between grade levels specifically third fourth and fifth grade. Um we'll meet as an ELA team and a math team to
020really talk and plan. The belt team which is our building equity and leadership team focuses on data. And this year, instead of saying that we are going to um move forward on our action items, we change that language to calls to action. So we make sure that when we're talking about something that we close that loop and we make sure that that's done. Creating a universal language for both our academic and behavioral expectations. We have had the highest math unit test assessment data in the five years that I have been at Delaware. um our beginning unit assessment and you can just see where it's going from there. So, we're super excited about that. Um and then we're continuing, like I said before, to retach when students have not mastered what is taught. Another thing that
021we're celebrating, and as was said, some of our successes is really empowering our student voice. even at the elementary level, they yearn to be a part of the program to feel like they have choices. So, this video was created um by both our cheetah channel, which has come a really long way at Delaware Community. It grows every year. It's more professional than um one could imagine, and also from our cheetah coalition, which is our advisory board student team, which is made up of seven students um who focus on school culture and student empowerment. Please enjoy Hello. Um, welcome board members and a presidious uh guest to the Cheetah channel. Today uh we take a break from the news uh to offer a very special community uh presentation. But first, let's talk about what having a
022community school really means to us. >> We surveyed the students here at Delaware Community School and asked them what it means to be a community school. >> Let's take a look at their replies. >> A community is that a a group of people does everything together. To be a community school is not only just to help the teachers and the students, but also to help the families in need. >> To be a community school is to support the people in your community, your teachers, and your students all in the same school. >> Community school means you work together. >> Excellent. Being a community school means we are building a community that supports our students, our teachers, and our families. But being a community school also means we have student voice at DCS. We have students
023leadership team called the cheetah coalition. >> Let's hear from our uh student stakeholders now. Hello Cheetah channel and hello to our Albany board. Welcome to the Cheetah Coalition. >> Our goal as the Cheetah Coalition is to build a learning community that is inclusive, supportive, and engaging for our fellow students. >> We talk about school spirits, peer support, and resources that help those in need. >> We help make important decisions and give a voice to our student body. The coalition is made up for fifth grade leaders who have expressed interest in building a community school that we can be proud of. It's a lot of very important work, but someone has to do it. >> Yep. Just a large group or coalition of cheetahs setting our school up for success. How cool is that? Back to
024you, cheetah channel. >> Amazing news. Let's hear some cheers for our cheetah coalition. >> Well, that's all for now. Thanks for sprinting by from our studio to yours. >> Thanks for listening. Have Have a great day. They did a great job. As you can see, everything that we do involves the cheetah in some way, shape, or form. But we just want to say thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to share with you tonight. Um, have a great evening. >> Thank you. >> And that concludes our district highlights. outstanding talent. We'll be seeing those students on the nightly news, I'm sure. A few updates for our board and uh community. We will kick it off with Miss thesis, our director of human resources, to give her monthly snapshot of staffing and hiring. >>
025Thank you. Um, so I made a few last minute changes here. So if you looked at this slide, um, an hour ago, there was a typo on it that showed that we had 313 vacant hall monitors. It's actually just 13. Um, so that's been corrected. But you can see from this slide that uh we've we we have the same number of TA vacancies today that we had two months ago. But the good news there is that we actually have quite a few TAs in the pipeline. The reason you don't see them reflected here is because they're still sitting in sublines because they're not yet certified. Um but we are making some progress there with getting people into the district. Um, we are also working with an agency that has placed five TAs um in our
026district and uh Bridget Dolan is working to get them certified as well. So, they will no longer be employees of the agency and will work for us instead. Um, we had an increase in hall monitors last month and then a decrease again this month. That's sort of the normal um eb and flow of those positions for, you know, every time we hire somebody, we tend to have a resignation. Um but we also have some folks in the pipeline there. Um so you can see the numbers have changed but not substantially. Um one other sort of noticeable uh change is that we had two resignations in the uh business office. Um but we are in the process of filling those positions as well. So you'll see that the MC number also went up from uh three
027vacancies to five vacancies due to those resignations. That's it. Hey, I'll finish my update and then we'll go back with uh with any questions. Um, last week marked the first day of Dr. Dorsey Ale's uh tenure as mayor of the city of Albany and she has been working with a number of community leaders and I'd like to thank her for including the school district in her uh transition efforts. Uh her team has put together a very robust community survey. Uh we have sent that out on her behalf and her team's behalf earlier this week and encourage every uh member of our school community especially students and families to um participate in that survey. It takes a little under 20 minutes and you'll be asked to comment uh on all sorts of uh initiatives from housing
028to youth services, communication, safety, economic development just to name a few. Uh the survey is available in multiple languages and we hope that folks will um be able to spend a few minutes and provide their input as she and her team uh builds a plan to continue the good work uh in reforming our city and uh making sure that all voices are heard and that her plan um aligns with the voices of those that participate. So um again, thank you, congratulations to Dr. her please and thank you for uh allowing her to allowing us to be part of her uh transition. A reminder that uh prek and lottery uh prek and magnet lottery is coming up. Uh the applications are available March 2nd. They are due a month later in early April. Uh and on
029April 22nd, the 4-year-old and prek magnet lotteryies will um will take place. The timeline is unchanged. If you are a three-year-old uh for prek, May 4th to the 20th uh is our application period and in midJune we will uh go through the lottery. Make sure that uh you check our website for additional information and even though it is it is going to warm up, we still have uh some winter weather ahead of us over the next couple months. So, uh, we want folks to be sure that they are checking out all of our social media venues and website. And, uh, we will also report any school related delays or closing to TV, radio, and our local newspaper, The Times Union. And that concludes my brief report tonight. >> Thank you, Superintendent. Board colleagues, as the
030as is our usual practice, I ask you to prioritize your questions first, and we'll start with Miss Breml. No comment. >> Okay, Mr. Almanavi. >> Uh, no comments or questions, >> Mr. Wolf Gang. >> Um, my only comment is just a thank you for the uh 3month look back period on the percents on the chart. That's really helpful. So, thank you. >> Yes, man. My only comment is um thank you um for the uh update and also I join with you um and encourage our community members to complete the survey. It takes um less than 20 minutes for some and uh I know I I did it today and it um it's very thorough. So my comments >> Miss Savage >> um I wanted to add my thanks on the threemonth look back um and
031looking forward to next year. I know that you had said that with the position control for firmly established that next year we'll be able to see alignment between a year ago this time so we can see how things are actually varying versus year-over-year. So thank you. Um I did also fill out the survey. I remind everyone that the survey has an free text field at the end. So that is a great place to encourage you to put things that are not necessarily um called out in the survey. And in particular, I ask everyone as they fill it out to think hard about what is the city's role um and what the city ought to be doing to make it better for our students because there are things the school district is responsible for and there
032are things that the city is responsible for. And the city's primary role is to provide youth services after school and outside of school, but also to handle transportation requirements. So, for example, streets, snow removal, um ensuring that we have safe ways for students to get to school would be great things for you to emphasize. >> Great. >> Uh thank you. I have no questions at this time. >> I have no questions either. Uh everything I wanted to say has already been said. So, please fill out the survey. It's it's your one chance, one of many chances in the future, I guess, but one one immediate chance to get your voice heard because as the transition team starts looking at your the survey results, it'll allow them to make an informed decision as to where to
033prioritize things. Okay, moving on. Uh, next thing on our agenda is public comment. This is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public. Um, today Okay, we have one person, Amy Wilson. While you're taking a seat, I just want to inform people that we do invite pe me members of the public to share thoughts on the decisions we are facing. We accept public comment in person, by voicemail, and through web-based form. Information about public comment and contact information is on the district website at albony schools.org/bee. The board always welcomes input from the community and uh we set aside 30 minutes. If there are more comments which we don't anticipate today, we will set aside a second period after the meeting. Um so Wilson >> everyone, thank you for the opportunity to
034present to the board. My name is Amy Wilson. I'm a former special education teacher in the Albany City School District for over 30 years. Today I am speaking on behalf of the Albany Special Education Parent Advis Advisory Council, CPAC for short. As we continue our presentations to share information about the 11% of our school district population who are served by the IEP plans or IEPs, we move to the autism spectrum disorder or ASD, a developmental disability that affects social communication skills and also may impact behavior. ASD affects about 12% of our students with disabilities. There is not just one cause of ASD. Many different factors have been identified that may make a child more likely to have ASD, including environ environmental, biologic, and genetic factors. Students with autism present with a wide spectrum of abilities
035and needs that are met under a continuum of services and placements from least to most restrictive depending on a student's needs. A student with autism could be enrolled in a gened classroom with accommodations like visual supports supplemented with pull-in, pull out or push in related services like speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, social work support and resource room programming. Some students with autism are served in self-contained or specialized autism classroom um within the school building with access to general education peers for parts of the day. These classrooms are smaller in size with specially strain trained staff. Most children in these classrooms receive many additional resources such as speech, OT, PT, and social work services. Students with intensive support needs may attend separate programs in area school buildings such as Wildwood Center for Disability Services, Capitol Region,
036Boseies, Maywood, and those are just a few programs for these students with more significant needs will focus on functional academics, daily living skills, prevoke training, adaptive skills, and transition planning. No matter their placement, student with autism benefit from evidence-based practices, including visual supports, schedule, structured teaching, methods derived from things such as ABA, applied behavior analysis, and social skills curricula. Students with ASD often have significant sensory needs. For students who are nonverbal, al alternative augmentative communication or AAC devices are often used to provide a means of communication. And because some of students with autism may struggle with behavior, self-regulation or executive functioning, many programs include behavioral plans, reinforcement systems, and skill building for self-regulation. If you know one person with ASD, you know one person with ASD. Autism doesn't erase a person's identity or potential. It
037just means their brain works differently and that their differences deserve to be understood, supported, and respected. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Miss Wilson. >> We ask that all commenters keep in mind that information about individual students and specific district staff cannot be shared. Not only is that a violation of privacy, but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be aired in public. For that reason, members who read written comments will pass over or substituted alternate words if individual names are mentioned. We will also eliminate those names and descriptions from recorded voicemails. Please keep in mind that public comment is not the best place to first alert the district to a concern you have. We ask that you share concerns first with relevant staff such
038as the teacher or principal. If you feel the concern is not adequately addressed, you may appeal that to the person supervisor up the chain of command if necessary to the superintendent. Decisions made by the superintendent may be appealed to the board. We have I believe one comment today and Miss Cree will read that for us. >> Thank you. And as Dr. Tour mentioned, I will be uh taking out the names of the employees named in this email. Um just as per our basic policy. This email is from Marcy Bousard. Dear board president Chhatau, Vice President Wilson, Secretary Crerachche, and board members Elman Yawi, Man, Savage, and Wolf Gang. My name is Marcy Bousard, and I am a district-wide behavioral specialist. One of my many roles is supporting our schools after a crisis, and unfortunately this
039year we have had many. The death of a school community member, no matter the cause of death, is tragic. When a staff member at a school dies, the impact is often far-reaching with students and staff also being impacted alike being impacted. I would like to comment with two points on how the district communicates the death of a staff member. First, a beloved hall monitor passed away on October 15, 2025, and no official communication ever went out from the district. This was quite disheartening for the school community and her co-workers. No matter the circumstance of someone's death, the notification should be given to the school community. Best practice would have the district follow the guiding principle that all deaths remain the same treatment. This past week, a beloved teacher passed away, and her death announcement was
040lumped into an email announcing the death of a former employee along with the death of two retired employees who last worked for the district in the 1980s, almost 40 years ago. Perhaps in the future, there should be a way to communicate the death of recent or retired employees in a separate email to show reverence to the school community who is mourning the loss of a current staff member. Thank Thank you for your time and attention to this serious matter. Sincerely, Marcy Buchard. >> Thank you, Miss Cr. We appreciate all public comments and we find hearing from community members very valuable. Once again, our contact information for both public comment and routine correspondence is achools.org. We now move on to the part of our meeting we call routine consent. During this portion of the meeting, we
041approve routine matters to the district. These include items like contracts, field trips, personnel matters, and the like. Each board member reviews each item carefully, but we vote on them together as a group with no discussion. This allows us to use a meeting time more efficiently. Nonetheless, each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion and vote on that item. With that introduction, I now entertain a motion to dub the routine consent agenda. Mr. Wolf gang second. Miss man, are there any set aides? Miss Crey, >> thank you. I would like to set aside this is allowed Mike. I'd like to set aside item number four, scholarship resolution and items 20 hunt with K LLC and 2024 second chance for adults LLC incorporated. >> Okay.
042>> Any other set aides? Miss ma'am. Hi, I'd like to set aside uh item four, the scholarship resolution, and um item five, the field trip. That's a field trip, right? That's a field trip. Five. Okay. All in favor of adopting the routine consent agenda minus items four scholarship resolution five field trip and number 20 hunt with KLLC and number 24 second chance for Dul Inc. Okay pass okay number four we have a motion to adopt scholarship resolution okay Mr. Wolf gang. Do we need a second? Miss Savage. Uh discussion. Thank you. I'm trying to refresh my screen. I know the agenda's been updated. Right now it doesn't show any document. Um at least it's not loading for me. Um do you know if there's still a document? If there are still documents >> it's showing
043me. >> Thanks. It's not showing for me anymore. My question regarding the documents though, uh, there's something in here that says that the people endowing this scholarship would like the ability to select the recipient of the scholarship and that's very unusual and I really commend uh I I really commend this family for wanting to provide the scholarship, but I think if they're going to select the recipient, I don't think I think it could be problematic for the district to accept the funds and have it be a district scholarship. So I wondered if anyone had looked I know my understanding is it could be a problem in that it's not a taxdeductible donation if the donor chooses for example but I can imagine other issues that could present for the district if we have a district
044scholarship where it's where the uh selection is happening by somebody else does anybody can that then that possibly be um looked into by our legal team >> can I ask a tag on question a related question Dr. um because it says that the funds are going to be provided to AF, not to the district. So, I'm not exactly sure why we're accepting this if the if the if this is a gift to AF and not a gift to this school district. So, I just don't I'm just a little confused about the process. Yeah, we can we can certainly table this and get back to you on the AF piece. >> So, we'll table item number four. >> I'd like to make a motion to table item number four. >> Mr. Austin and then seconded by
045me. All in favor to table. Well, that's unanimous. Miss Wilson. Yep. Chief Grace. Okay, >> I just >> I had this uh number four as a set aside and I just wanted to my comment to be on record that that was my question also about providing the funds to AFA. Thanks. >> Number five, field trip motion to adopt Mr. Wolf Gang second by me. Uh discussion. So perhaps I'm being reactive to um our uh the current political climate, but um I wanted to make sure that um as this trip is happening, and I know it's occurred in the past, that um that someone is double-checking all of the documents um for when our students um cross uh cross the border to Quebec. Um, and I also wanted to make sure because the rules change every
046day um if we have students that are not citizens that um that the most current information is reviewed and checked so we don't have our students um stranded at the border. So I just wanted to get that. >> Any other points? I mean I do agree with what what Miss Man said. Um and and in fact the documentation does talk about uh the um teachers will be looking at the documents for the US citizens as well as for documents from other or students who are residents of other countries. Uh but uh I agree with the fact that things are changing as we speak and so let's make sure that it's current as to the day before their travel because all bets are off. Um okay motion to adopt. I mean sorry if we have motion
047all in favor okay that passes unanimous I'm losing it today moving on to do you want to take number 20 and 24 together or do them separately >> I have one question regarding both of them and then I have a couple of questions regarding each individually >> okay why don't you take both of them together and then we'll discuss >> thank you uh the one question >> motion to adopt 2824 okay Miss Gr second by miss man uh discussion >> my question regarding both of these is they look like they're for they're both for uh both 16week one-hour sessions for North Albany Middle School and the question is is this for some sort of after school enrichment and are these two programs being offered at the same time and place >> they are both after
048school enrichment programs for North Albany so I just have to check the schedule but I think they're not based at the same time but I will double check. Thank you so much. >> Can you add separate questions for each of them too, right? >> Yes. Um should do we do we need to move to to discuss just hunt with discuss both of them. >> My question about hunt with K is that it looks like it's a a two part. It says it's a on one point it sorry maybe this has been revised because at one point I think it said it's 16 weeks but it only has like listings for eight weeks of activities. Does that mean that they're doing the same program 8week program twice with different students? >> I will double check but
049I think it's two eightweek programs. So it's like you do one set of students and then you'll do another set of students another eight weeks. I'll double check though. >> Okay, thank you. >> Number 24. >> And yes, number 24, second chance for adults. Um, the one question I had about this was it says it is single source. Uh, because there's no other provider that can do this. Um the nature of the course is let's see etiquette, life skills, dinner table conversation, cooking and problem solving and uh hygiene and dressing well. And I know we've had other providers providing courses like that. So I wanted to know if how this was determined to be a single source provider. >> I will work with Michaela. Um, but I believe this is a a I don't want
050to say a catered program, but it's a program that is strictly for middle school students to help them develop. Um, but I will get more answers for you. I mean, if you want to table it for tonight, then we can move it to the next agenda so I get you those answers. >> Mr. Same one, right? >> Yeah. Just a quick comment on really I guess on both of them. Um if we can just like summarize the attached work scope into the boxes instead of just saying please see attached work scope and then leaving like all of these pages of boxes blank. Um it seems kind of silly to have like all of these fields and then not actually take the info and fill it in. Um so that's just more of a comment. You
051don't have to. >> That's great. >> Thank you. And I did have an additional comment regarding the information that's been removed from the purpose of the contract. So originally when this contract was submitted, it was the second chance for youth empowerment program for females focuses on education and health and finance along with essential life skills, creating a nurturing school environment for girls to develop independence. Remember this is hygiene, etiquette, and cooking. And then it then says removed from contract. Vendor will empower all students. I'm glad to see it removed from the contract, but I hope the practice of the afterchool enrichment program is not guiding or suggesting that that uh the young women are being steered toward etiquette in cooking classes. That's a little bit of a that's a little bit of a concern and
052a red flag for me because I understand sometimes that single gender programs in areas like STEM for girls can be very advantageous, but this does not appear to be one that's trying to push beyond it. In fact, this one appears to be very much conforming to certain stere stereotypes. So, it was very concerning to for me to see that district staff are putting this forth as a contract even though we're catching it and I'm glad we're catching it. So, I just wanted to put that out there to make sure we're doing this differently. Thanks. >> Okay. So, do you want to We'll table 24, but do you want to move on 2020 or table that as well? >> Um, I'm happy to move on 20. >> I didn't hear you, sir. >> I would be
053happy to vote on 20. >> Motion to adopt number 20, Hunt KLLC. Sorry, we have the motion. All in favor? >> Okay, that passes. Motion to table number 24, second chance for adults incorporated. Mr. Holkang, Miss Cree, all in favor. Okay, that's unanimous, too. Okay. So as is our normal practice, we we have arranged our agenda with all action items at the beginning. Unless something unexpected happens, we do not anticipate the board to take any further actions tonight. The balance of the meeting will be items of discussion, some of which would lead to an action either at our next meeting or a future meeting. So next thing on the agenda is a discussion on pupil personal services division update. >> As Dr. Kenzone Ball is on her way up with her team. Um I want
054to set the table a little bit. Uh for the last um about a year ago, a little over a year ago, we had a communications audit from the National School Public Relations Association. One of their recommendations was to encourage the district um to continue to find new and different ways of communicating and telling our story by way of data and graphics. uh they call those infographics. And so um hopefully the board and and the school community have noticed some subtle changes in what we're communicating and uh different modalities that we're communicating and using data and graphics differently. Most notably um a couple months ago our our fall newsletter. We changed the newsletter format. We included different data and graphics so on and so forth. And so I um I first want to commend Carrie and
055her team for uh putting a fresh take on a standard presentation tonight. And if it doesn't go well, you can blame me. But um they uh uh they took their uh what normally is a standard routine annual update um and doctorred it up a little bit and used graphics and data a little bit differently uh so they can tell their story. So, um, hopefully this is the beginning of a of a trend with some of our updates and want to commend them for, uh, being first out of the gate in 2026. So, with that, I'll turn it over. >> Set the bar. Good evening, members of the board, Superintendent Hawk Rider, and cabinet members. Thank you for allowing us as always to present. Um, although Carla and I will share our work and our outcomes,
056we want to be sure to recognize our entire department. um their dedication and innovation of pupil personnel services. Um we're quite large and it takes u many hands um to do the work. Um Mike Petta could not be here this evening with us and we just want to also recognize his contributions to this presentation specifically because it was a little bit outside of our com comfort zone. But we do believe we've prepared some important information for you um tonight. So, we've decided to take a look back at a decade of growth, nearly a decade, and um next steps as we continue to move forward in our journey as a department. We'd like to take you through the transformative scale of PPS between 2016 and 2025. We will illustrate a fundamental shift um from a reactive
057discipline focused model toward a proactive systemic framework rooted in prevention and traumainformed resilience focused care. The data you will see highlights a significant increase in new mandates from the state um that have fundamentally broadened the department's responsibilities. The evolution can be described as a transition from uh putting out fires uh to designing extensive district-wide infrastructure to support a comprehensive student well-being. Ultimately, this presentation serves as a record of the department's expansion of uh regulatory burdens while maintaining its commitment to equity um as we strive to reduce racial disparities in student outcomes. Thanks, Carla. Since 2016, the department has absorbed a number of responsibilities as you can see here, um, including safe schools and violence prevention, health services, quality assurance, social emotional learning, curricula, college, and career readiness, and homeschool coordinators. All of these components have
058led to a more robust approach to supporting students, staff, and families throughout the district. We've created a consistent model of student support teams in each building and now provide supervision and professional development for all behavior specialists, social workers, um, school counselors, nurses, central registration staff, homeschool coordinators, safety and security staff, attendance teachers, uh, and McKini Vento staff. PPS is also responsible for creating and delivering much of the statemandated trainings around mental health, standard response protocol, suicide prevention, crisis deescalation, um, and for all district staff. We've launched vital new programs such as the family and student support team, um, and several new behavioral health clinics and cartwheel teleaalth to provide a 247 safety net for our students. The change represents not only a philosophical shift but a response to a massive increase in the volume and
059complexity of student needs. We will look at three critical areas which are supporting our most vulner vulnerable populations, managing district-wide emotional and physical safety, and expanding health and wellness throughout the system. Uh the data demonstrate a staggering increase in need. Since 2016, we've seen a 71% increase in students experiencing homelessness, requiring intensive coordination of basic needs such as food, housing, and transportation. Additionally, postcoid homeschooling requests have nearly tripled, often involving complex safety or truency issues that involve referrals that are intensive with case management. We're also seeing students with more significant juvenile justice involvement, which includes a rise from zero gun rellated charges in 2016 to approximately 24 gunrelated charges in 2425. Student court appearances have doubled in the past 10 years, requiring a higher level of support from our court leaison. We have built a
060robust safety infrastructure from the ground up. In the 2425 school year alone, we assessed 179 studentto student threats to harm or threats to kill using an evidence-based comprehensive school threat assessment guideline referred to as seaag model to prevent school violence before it occurs. We have also increased our crisis response training capacity, growing it from 50 trained staff in therapeutic crisis intervention for schools or TCIS in 2016 to 577 trained crisis responders. Since adopting the curriculum from Cornell University, we have created a standard response protocol based on the I love you guys foundation several years before mandated by New York State Education Department. PPS has led the suicide prevention protocol work in the region and was asked by New York State Ed to present our model to colleagues around the state. Following our trauma-informed, resilience focused
061model, our handle with care partnership with the Albany Police Department provides key staff critical information as they work with some of our most vulnerable students each day. The shift from reactive to proactive model continues to challenge us as we engage in meaningful short and long-term goal planning. Despite a more complex student population and drastic decline in openings for therapeutic settings outside of the district, our total reportable violent and disruptive incident reports or vaders decrease from 155 to 101 when comparing these two years. Most importantly, we have seen a 33% decrease in the use of physical interventions, which we always utilize as a last resort when students are in crisis. We have created our own indist mobile crisis model and enhanced our approach to supporting behavioral health by partnering with Northern Rivers to add a part-time
062psych psychiatric nurse practitioner who can assess, diagnose, treat, and provide medication management to our students grades K to 12. PPS has driven major improvements in student health. We expanded from five behavioral health clinics to eight and secured 75 cartwwell clinical health teleaalth slots. Furthermore, since PPS took over immunization compliance in uh collaboratively with families in strategic partnerships with health providers, the number of non-compliant students has decreased by 53% in the 2025 school year. We added a Whitney Young Health Clinic at Albany High School and are exploring a new partnership with Albany Medical Center to further expand access to highquality health care for our students. We expanded social emotional learning from a K8 program to a comprehensive K12 framework through Ruler. We also assumed responsibility of college and career readiness moving from Naviance to school links.
063Our reach of our evening tutorial programs to serve students on suspension has doubled including two in district sites as well as tutoring that occurs virtually in public settings and in students homes. To put this in perspective, in 2016 PPS functioned like a first responder, focused on immediate crisis response. Over the past decade, we continue to move from responding to enhanced planning. Our role now includes systematic design, building and training staff in a proactive infrastructure while responding to crisis through an evidence-based approach and protocols. We have trained with the suicide prevention center for New York State in responding to tragic death and suicide. Sadly, this year alone, PPS has provided support and two sudden student deaths and four staff deaths since July. Tragedies such as these are far-reaching across our entire school community and require a
064delicate multi-layered approach utilizing a clinical lens and community partners to assist with assist with grief response. PPS serves as a central hub connecting the district to the broader community. We maintain deep partnerships with the Albany Police Department, Albany County Probation, Whitney Young Health, and organizations like Northern Rivers to provide wraparound supports for families. We regularly bring our partners to virtual and in-person department meetings and professional development sessions to expand knowledge of local, state, and national resources. While we are proactive, the demand for intensive disciplinary proceedings remains high. We handled 163 pre- superintendent hearings this past year. While overall discipline incidents are down, the nature of these incidents is shifting. We are seeing increases in drugrelated incidents as well as material discrimination, harassment, and bullying which requires specialized expertise to manage. Despite our best efforts, disproportionate
065disciplinary outcomes for students with disabilities, males and black students, still presents a major challenge to our work. Though tonight we focused on certain areas for this presentation, we would be remiss if we didn't mention our ongoing regulatory work. This this includes the uh ongoing monitoring of the code of conduct and dignity for all students act or DASA, review of all applicable applicable board of education policies, district-wide attendance and residency um oversight of central registration as well as safety and security which director Davis will discuss in the next presentation. Looking forward, our focus will remain on the integration of tiered academic and behavioral approach to MTSS or multi-tered systems of support. We will strengthen the collaboration with partners to reinvision the prior Albany Truency abatement program and we're excited about the prospect of forming a new
066partnership with Albany Medical Center that can bring additional health services to our students. PPS will work closely with uh school buildings and our school counselors to support the new portrait of our a graduate. Um our safe schools and violence prevention team will continue their work in to create even more critical enhancements to our infrastructure. Um and finally, we will grow our partnerships to reach even more students through our behavioral health clinics and teleaalth services. And now we can take any questions you might have. Thank you. Board colleagues, prioritize your questions first. >> No comment. >> Okay, Mr. Mr. Wolfkang. >> Awesome. Thank you guys for the uh presentation, the overview of everything you do. I don't think I realized everything that you guys do. So, very helpful. Um question for you, and I'll probably have
067more after, but I'm going to start with this. uh the material incidents of discrimination, harassment, and bullying. I see the 0 to11 increase. What is covered under that? Like I know we can't get specific student cases in here, but like what is going on that we went from 0 to 11? I can't imagine we had zero when I was a freshman either. That's kind of what's going on. Can you expand on that? >> Which slide? I'm sorry. Um I believe it's slide 11 12 >> with the uh yeah the chart. >> Um thank you for bringing that up because um obviously we're going by the data that we were pulling from the 2016 comparatively to the 25 school year. Right. And um I think you're accurate about like I can't believe that we didn't have
068any when I was in high school. Right. Um but just to notice that um bullying, harassment, discrimination occurs, mistreatment occurs and so when it reaches a certain level um that the state calls material, it has certain indicators that must be met. So um the indicators of material is a pervasive um event in which the student um is impacted in such a way. And so there's a a series of uh criteria that we would go through and we would look to see if it met that material definition. Um I I can't say in 2016 if there were no incidents that met that material definition, but through ongoing uh staff development, through our trainings, we are trying to make it more known as to what to look for in student mistreatment. um what would rise to a
069level of a a DASA and then certainly what would qualify under the New York State guidelines for material incidents. >> Okay. Um and just quick followup these in this Vader chart this is all the substantiated allegations or like number of like is that the number that like actually students needed to be I don't know punished and you know what I mean like >> so it's re reportable right so again the state would have certain criteria and which what is reportable under each of those different categories and over the years the state has changed what they want reported to them and how they want it reported. So, some of it is that it's changed Whoops. It's changed over time. Um, but certainly, you know, if if there were follow-up questions, specifics you had, we could even
070go deeper into that. >> Okay. Okay. >> And that's it for now, >> Mr. Almanavi. >> So, thank you for your presentation. I'm sadly not surprised about the increase in the McKini Vinto cases. Um I am highly concerned uh that we're seeing 71% increase in those. And I would I feel like I've asked this before. It's like almost like deja vu, but do we um put our families into touch with folks that can help them, keep them in their homes or find them uh homes that's not necessarily, you know, temporary housing. Um do we do that? If we do, what kind of what kind of um programs do we direct people to? >> That's a great question, too. Um, you know, the McKitty Vento status um doesn't occur until the family is displaced in in
071temporary housing. So to know that a a family is struggling or um we predict a certain situation may be occurring um we are really are relying on our pupil personnel services staff and the guidance of our McKin Vento liaison um we wouldn't necessarily put the student um under Mckin Vental services yet if they were not yet displaced but where you're talking about is even deeper with prevention, right? And um I I definitely wanted to mention that we are in talks with um healthy alliance and unite us on a platform to provide um that type of prevention. So we we are in meetings with them about this and what the impact would be um as far as um our operation and oversight, but more importantly what the impact would be for our students and families. So
072right now it is a skeleton crew that would be assisting this lift and that's why we were reaching out for other solutions as well to see what we could do to provide these types of supports. And just to build on that, um we have we regularly feature community partners um at our department meetings which we um switch off every month. It's either a virtual meeting or an in person. We start it back up in person again and we bring um service providers to come talk to our social workers, our psychologists, behavior specialists, attendance teachers, um Mckin Vento staff about um service linkages, case management, um help for the basic needs. Um, and many of our community schools work with agencies such as Building Blocks that can help families make those connections and and provide that.
073Um, so we're really excited about making those connections. Um, sadly uh we have to report that we did not um get awarded the Mckin Vento grant um in this most recent cycle which is really disheartening um based on the numbers that we have of families experiencing homelessness. Um and so that's, you know, a big funding stream that we use to um fund uh those staff lines. Um but as well, and you just have to walk through here and see the cabinets and cabinets filled with um toiletries and clothing and school supplies. Um so, you know, we um did make an appeal to New York State um but we were just not awarded that grant. just to follow up with that. So, do we have um did that include things like transportation? So, are we kind
074of footing the transportation bill ourselves? And I'm sure this is probably a much more in-depth question than we can answer now, but is it multiple locations outside of the city that we have to coordinate pick up and >> Yeah. >> Um so, Yes to both questions. >> Yeah. And but our transportation expenses are still reimbursed for >> it depends on where the student originated from which district of um the original district residency. >> Okay. Um carry on. >> Miss man, I >> mean I could have a lot of comments on this. I I just thank you for your uh for your program and the leadership. You know, when I saw the Mckin Vento numbers, I was um I was stunned, you know, um given the uh increase um from 2016 till uh the end of
075last year. Um but I so appreciate the collaboration that um is occurring at the program with community partnerships. Um our relationship with Northern Rivers, I'm a big fan. um and um and uh uh many of the other uh partners um that we have to kind of tackle these tough issues. So that's pretty much what I want I and I wouldn't want to put anyone on the spot by walking through the process of why we weren't awarded the grant. So I'm not going to ask that question, but um that's um that's disappointing. It it really is because that means that children don't stay in their school of origin, right? as I understand it, >> it just we still have to follow the the regulations, the federal and state regulations. So, it doesn't necessarily affect placement or
076anything like that. It just um affects resources. So, now we're trying to look to other funding streams to um get resources and and assistance for families. >> Okay. >> All right. >> And we did lose a case management position because it was fun. >> Okay. All right. Thank you, Miss >> Savage. Um, I just want to take note of the loss of that case management position for when we're having some legislative conversations around the support, additional supports we need. So, it's just something we should make sure we understand better when we talk to our legislators or you all may understand it very well. I need to understand it better. Um, so I want to thank you for the new presentation and of course for the work of you and all of your many many people
077who work in your department. it is a very difficult um work that you're doing and so critical to the success of our students. So, thank you very much. I really like the new style of the presentation. I can see that it's really different. Um and it must have been like a whole mental shift to try and frame things this way and I really do think it it helps really synthesize things for folks in a way that people can understand. So, I really appreciate that. I was a little surprised that we didn't also get the like detailed report because we used to get a report and the PowerPoint. Is that going away now and we're not going to get that big data profile anymore? >> I mean, we could certainly uh do that and pull it.
078We actually have the raw data pulled. Um and we have a report that goes underneath this one. Um we just didn't attach it. >> Okay. Yeah. If we could get that as an attachment, that would be great. I don't like to create extra work for you, but if you've done the reporting anyway, um it's just sometimes >> it's nice to be able to dig a little deeper than just what's in the PowerPoint. Um, I had one quick uh data question, which is when you said 577 trained staff, Kate knows what I'm going to ask already because the same thing I ask every time about this question. Is that the number of people you've trained or is that the number of people who are trained who still work for us? >> So, not all of them,
079it's a moving target. Not all of them still work for us, but in fact, um, thanks to New York State, we've, um, become responsible to train every single person in the district. So, it's now part of our annual training, not in the full five-day course or the three-day course of TCIS. Um, but everyone in this district has now been exposed um thanks to our professional development time and days um to the components of crisis prevention, deescalation, um regulations around timeout rooms and um things that are prohibited within New York State and within our own board policy and school district. So we are really creating an awareness um and a more informed staff. >> Excellent. I do always want us to be moving to a place where we'll be able to quote the number of our
080staff who are trained rather than the number of staff that we have trained. Right. Because if they leave it doesn't count like it's good >> and it's that is something that we have and can pull in a different way. >> Yeah. And it seems like something that we should be systematizing. So it's not something you guys need to be pulling and tracking. It should just be part of the reportable information we have on all of our staff members. Thanks, >> Miss Grchie. >> Thank you. Before I ask my question, I wanted to follow up. Does that mean that there is a system that I can look up if I say, you know, for example, first person I'm looking at, Joe Harris, if I want to say, has Joe Harris had the five-day uh staff crisis
081intervention training, I can look that up and determine whether or not some individual staff member has had it. >> PPS has a system, so you can ask us. Um, but we have it and we actually just redid it last year. So, it's easy to um search and find and sort by year and it goes back gosh probably over a decade. Um, we've been doing TCIS, it used to be TCI for over 20 years, probably closer to 30 years, which again was way before the um New York State mandate came along several years back. >> Thank you so much. I really wanted to commend you on your presentation. I thought the data I thought the graphics and the use of data was really really nice. It's a great visual. It really was more engaging and I
082think the way it was summarized was excellent. So I loved that you were working with software to help get this done and I was really impressed uh impressed kind of almost it's amazing the the amount of stuff you do and the different types of stuff you do. I'll have more questions on the second round of some of the other things. But the first question I had because I'm going to ask my most important question first is could you talk more about what types of restorative practices and restorative justice the district is using and what we can do as a board or as a community to support your use of restorative practices. Um so we've gone through um several waves of training in restorative uh practices largecale and small scale. Um typically and years ago I
083think this is my eighth year in the district. Um we always started training student support team members. So behavior specialists, school psychologists, social workers, right? That's their wheelhouse. And we have some very very skilled restorative practitioners within the district. We've partnered with people like John Cutro. I'm sure you're familiar with him. Um, and Connie uh Fenton who have worked for many years with us. Um, we've uh trained with the National um Center for Educators of Restorative Practices. We've brought them in to do largecale trainings with entire buildings. Um, they worked with the high school. Um, they've worked with middle schools. Um, and so we have various different uh, it's almost like a continuum of people trained in restorative practices. So if you're familiar with the code of conduct, you'll read in there as part of
084our preventative strategies and in responding to um, disciplinary uh, violations of the code of conduct. Um, we know that punishment doesn't really work, right? So, one of our strategies in our toolbox or tools in the toolbox is restorative um conversations, restorative circles, um and many of our classrooms through the help of Ruler, our K12 comprehensive curriculum, um use restorative circles as a way to build community in the classroom before there are any conflict um that arises within the classroom. So students are becoming familiar with how to gather in a circle and how to make eye contact and how to hear each other's point of view and how to respond and what does good listening look like. Um and so we're building those in from from the little ones all the way on up. Um so
085I think restorative um practices look different across the district but we're really happy that we have um the curriculum from Yale which is ruler to help build that in in a proactive way um because in the past it was much more reactive like a largecale incident happened or a fight and then we were going to restorative um but now we're just doing it from the beginning so students are becoming more familiar with it. So, I'm hearing that it's more sort of baked into the SEAL curriculum, but there's not as much specific restorative justice practices after after like a code of conduct violation or there's still that >> there still are. Um it's it's but students are now all becoming more familiar with it. Um and then there are restorative practices in response um to any
086incident. Students might um write letters of apology. um they might have uh some mediation um or another form of a circle that's facilitated by a practitioner. >> Thank you so much for the explanation. I appreciate that more in-depth look at that. >> Miss Wilson, >> thank you. Yes, thank you for your presentation and I appreciate the duration of time that you um have put into this so we can see you know the evolving landscape of the work that you do and what our students have going on. So um and also what's difficult in going in this order is that um making sure no one else asked my question. Similarly to Hassan, my question is um not so much strictly about McKenna Vinto but about students who are justice involved and whether we have anything like
087from a social determinist of health standpoint at any point that we have contact with the student. Do we have anything um outside of the round table that kind of functions almost like Albany lead where it's like a diversion program sort of rerouting them into um other opportunities and you know more like a wraparound to ensure that they're not having further justice situations. >> Yeah, I'll start that. Um so we have really um grown our partnership with agencies like Albany Police Department and uh probation. We have regular Mr. Davis regular regularly sorry facilitates um meetings where uh we come together and we brainstorm and we strategize how to support some of our most atrisisk youth. Um, our school resource officers are another critical component. Um, and some of their colleagues that aren't SRO's um, but they
088are, um, they a large part of their job is dedicated to supporting our students like officer um, Luan Cancer works very closely. Um, there are programs throughout um, the summer where students who are at risk or justice involved um, link up with our um, APD colleagues. um they participate in field trips and um other programs um throughout the year and throughout the summer to help um provide mentoring um and build on good relationships with with our students. Um we also have a number of different agencies that were able to make those connections and and linkages for our students to provide that wraparound support. I was just going to add that um along with uh Superintendent Hawk Rider, we've been in conversation with um Albany County for the revision and the re-imagination of the um ATAP
089program, the Albany Truency Abatement Program. And um it's interesting because the conversations at the table have been to move towards a uh more of of course a preventative model. However, um we know that truency absenteeism is symptomology, right? It's a symptom that something else is going on. And if you can imagine, many justice involved children do not have very good attendance. So we were looking at even like a wider net and and branching out with partnerships with um DCYF, the division of children, youth family services um to try to see like how can we involve more partnerships per prevention and for engagement in school. I don't know if that's exactly your question, but I just wanted to also tell you to put that out there too. Okay. Um, a lot of my questions have been
090asked before, but I'm going to tag along tag on to Miss Savage's question. Um, because this is the time when we'll be doing advocacy through government relations and going to ask for funding and for our prioritizing what our needs are as a district. Um, so one of the questions, can you bring up slide four? So at the bottom of the slide it says FTE and it's got uh 1.0 leazison 1.0 homeschool coordinator and so on so forth, different positions. Right now, you you talk about the increase over the decade, but that FTE position, has that changed over the decade or is it is it just that one position that's always been there? The workload has increased. When you say you've gone from a first responder to a city planning commission and it's a 250% increase
091in the workload, >> has the staff also correspondingly increased in different titles or what have you as you've accumulated all these other responsibilities? >> So um back I want to say in 2018 19 we did a reorganization which is really an alignment of the work that we do. Um my first year is the first year that um Mike Petta was added as assistant director. Um Mike, as you know, has an extensive background in secondary um guidance and really takes the lead on all of that work uh with some master scheduling at the at the middle level um and really takes the helm of anything um that's related to our comprehensive school guidance program and MTSS at the secondary level. and the way we um kind of looked at that work with my background. I uh
092work in supporting the elementary schools um and Carla is really the anchor um to the the heart of PPS that uh manages all of the pre-upendant hearings and that really requires someone that's a constant, you know, back home in the office while Mike and I have the ability to go out and support buildings in crisis, the MTSS process and whatnot. We have grown our department for sure especially with the infusion of um the COVID funding. So you you know as well as we do that um the increase in SEAL support in terms of social workers throughout the district um homeschool coordinators, attendance teachers. So yes, the department has grown along with um the regulatory requirements. >> Okay. >> I just wanted to add specifically for the justice involved youth. We've always had one individual that
093was the person that was the um face of the district for any court related incidents and also for pins complaints filing. So that has not increased. Um and I did I want it in all fairness um the homeschooling has not increased in the FTEES and for the Mckin Vento leaison because of grants. It's gone up and down throughout the period of the 10 years as far as the services and most recently this is our current FTE which represents a loss of a person. >> Okay. With regard to um safe schools and violence prevention, um a third FTE was added. There were always two um there was the director and the assistant director. So, we did add um Mr. Webster's um position. So, um there are three people on that team who uh work alongside the
094hall monitors, which have also increased due to the expansion of the high school um and just the the behavioral needs that we're seeing throughout the district. Okay. I really like the way this this presentation is, but it will also be helpful to have that uh detailed report for some of us nerds who like to look the numbers up. >> Sure. >> Miss Bromel. >> Hi. A quick comment before I do ask my question. This was a brilliant presentation by the way. Um this is a two-part question just to for confirmation. Northern Rivers a partnership that is is the mental health program for the students. Correct. So, does that go as in there's specifically a team of mental health counselors or is it one person designated poor school? >> That's a really great question. Um, and
095I think I don't want to misquote uh I want to say we have at least eight clinics around the district. So, every secondary building has a clinic colllocated um in their school. So all middle schools um AIA the high school has one clinician. Um so everyone at the secondary level has a counselor dedicated from Northern Rivers. Um and then we do have some clinics at the elementary level like Sheridan Prep um Roots Academy. Um and I'm just blanking right now. So it's becomes more of a challenge at the elementary level because the buildings are smaller. So um in order to support a full-time clinician or even a half-time clinician, you need to have the case load represented. Our biggest challenge around that is um to have families buy into the the model, right? So instead
096of a parent picking up their child at school, then driving to a clinic across town or in another town, um it all happens right within school, but for the first three appointments, the family must attend with the child. So, it's a lot of um case management and followup to get the family to get appropriate signatures, um insurance information if that's applicable. Um but then consent is really important. Um and those first three meetings can be a challenge to have the family, you know, leave work and come to the school for those appointments. So that's why we um actually superintendent Hawk Rider brought us the cartwheel um the model of taotherapy um which we were able to secure 75 slots um so it's the same continuum of services based um online and it h can happen
097before school after school um and on Saturdays and that is available to everyone in the district. So we you don't have to have um somebody colllocated right in your building. >> All right. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Wolfk. >> Um, yeah. Um, that was a great question. Sorry, I'm just digesting that. I wouldn't have thought that. Um, okay. Um, you guys talked about how you're starting to move into more of a central planning preventative space. I'm curious if you started looking at, you know, like the young student identifiers on why we're seeing the increase in court appearances. I don't want to say violence because like I don't believe the numbers that are in here again based on my school year. Like I don't think it's an increase. Just saying that for
098you guys. Um, so but I'm curious if you started thinking about, you know, that preventative aspect in relation to the court appearances um and other aspects. Um, yeah, >> I think that's a really um fair question and we're just so happy that the district has invested in such a comprehensive uh social emotional learning curriculum. Um, and from a very young age, we're teaching children how to handle conflict, how to recognize their emotions, how to process them, um, and how to, um, get back to baseline if if there is something that they're experiencing, how to, um, speak to trusted adults when there's a concern about emotional safety, physical safety, or anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, see something, say something. So, it's really starting from right when they enter um and doing those circles and building
099that community of trust within our schools. Um and that's what I consider the biggest layer of prevention and that's that universal level um positive behavioral interventions and supports to really promote um you know students being respectful, safe um and responsible and um creating explicit lessons on what that looks like across all environments. even when we're not at school, this is what it looks like to be out in the community and go to the movies or go to the mall. Teaching those behaviors um are are really important at the forefront. >> Would you consider us universal screener? >> Oh, right. Thank you. Um we have other tools as well and um we use uh in most of our schools a universal screener um to for um the SRSSIE um and that's something that's given as a
100benchmark three times a year um for all students. So, the teachers fill out a questionnaire and then we're able to tear students out um for those who are at risk for internalizing behaviors like um shyness, withdrawal, withdrawal, shutting down um and external behaviors like students that may show some aggression um or act out. And then we're able to take our resources, our student support team members, our coaching, our consultation and help push them into different grade levels or different classrooms to work and consult with the teachers. >> Great. Thank you guys. Yeah, I just want to make sure that we're, you know, thinking about that. We're not just looking at the problems in front of us, but we're thinking about that because nobody's first time acting out ends up in a court appearance, right? There
101were steps. There were signs. So, I'm glad to hear that. Um, that's my question. Thank you, >> Mr. Gman. So, I've got a continuation of the kind of justice involved uh student question that um do we have a designated um court liaison and um I'm just curious how their you know what does their essentially like I don't want to say workload But um if we have more cases, if we're seeing an increase in cases, um do they have the resources to essentially handle all the cases and make sure they're, you know, staying on top of the situations of each one where there might be special rules or special um considerations that the students are supposed to be operating under, the district is supposed to, you know, assist with. Um, I just I I want to
102make sure that the resources are there. If if we're seeing an increase in activity, is this person still taking on, you know, more work or is the same level of work? Do we need more people in it? Um, the other thing just off off that is um I'm happy to see the work you guys have done with getting our students immunized. um really succeed. Um I think I've been on the board for six years now, about six years or so. And um I think CO did a lot actually for our benefit in terms of organizing with groups like Whitney Young and um setting up uh the immunization um services at our school. So I'm really happy about that. But that's not a question. It's more of a comment. um question is back to court liaison
103and how their work is is looking with more the the influx. >> So the court leaison position as Kerry had explained earlier was kind of a redesign and streamline for the work that was involved with a lot of prevention outreach um before a pins complaint is filed. So, she was working with um the district as an employee. She's been retired three years, I think, and has worked as a consultant. So, she's continued as a consultant. There's been conversations in the future of that position, what would best serve the district, how it would best serve the district. um and the level of experience and expertise that she has with the systems, a prior probation officer, coming into the district as an attendance teacher, um and getting to know all the systems through the court systems, probation,
104DCYF, etc. So, um when you say like her workload, um I it's it's enormous, right? I I mean I don't know if if you know when we see her reports it's it just it's really amazing the amount of outreach interventions that she's attempting. Everything from um contacts uh for letters for for meetings for um probation interventions. So everything that's going on with her scope of role um in regards to the prevention piece and then the followth through. Then we have another piece of her role which is students who may be in placement and who are returning to the district. So she also will facilitate a smooth transition back for registration for getting the student back into um the education system and trying to see what barriers exist to eliminate them. So there's a lot of
105coordination with our safety team with all of our principles. So as you can imagine like it's it's two different pillars that she or maybe more that she's operating and coordinating at the same time right so I see prevention role and a reintegration role um that seems a little overwhelming admittedly um especially considering she's a retiree and um not that that's a problem but she's she's already retired she's it's already been retired. So, um, and we don't have like an understudy for this person. So, I just would encourage you guys to keep doors open and consider um, you know, grounding that position a little bit more. Um, especially because this person does a lot of work. They're already retired. Um, so they have one foot out the door essentially. Um, I don't want to see that
106institutional knowledge just uh disappear. Um, and then us putting somebody in and then drowning, you know, or having to get three other people in. So, I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you, >> Miss Matt. >> I I don't have any other comments. Thank you, >> Miss Savage. I guess I only have one other question. I just wanted to follow up on I have about a million questions, but I know that we'd all like to go home sometime tonight. I was a little surprised that you guys also absorbed the school links program and the used to be Naviance. It seems a little bit um discordant with the bulk of your work, right, which is mostly about um student behavior and not necessarily sort of the pedagogical college and career readiness piece. So maybe I'm
107just not understanding the tool, but I was just surprised that it ended up with you instead of being with curriculum instruction where it used to be. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about why that makes sense. >> Well, and the linkage there is um the guidance comprehensive guidance program um plan and that's uh headed up by Mike Petta um who supports all of that work. he supported the um the research into um a new program because Naviance was kind of getting a bit dated um and stale. Um and so he gathered stakeholders and he manages that program. Um and the link there as well is with the um master schedule work that he does very uh closely with the middle level um works closely with um Trish Wolf um and our
108partners up in in you know data and technology. So um we have oversight u and co-supervvis all of the school counselors um and you know the CTE position is a new one for the district. So, um, you know, that is something that we're thinking about as, um, Mike is kind of coming to the end of his his career, um, with us and really filling that institutional knowledge gap that we will have upon his departure. >> Miss Grey, >> thank you. You know, I was going to ask a very similar question because it felt like when you went through and it was like some of these things are not like the others. homeschooling coordination and the college and career readiness do seem more curricular and especially with college and career readiness. I can see how there's
109fewer fires to put out and therefore potentially less attention paid to that. You know, when somebody's saying, "What course should I take in ninth and tth in 10th and 11th grade to get me ready for college?" It's not like, "Wow, there's a threat we've got to deal with uh right this second." But I'm going to pivot to my other question since since Miss Savage kind of already asked that and ask you mentioned stuff about homeschooling and your um oversight of that that I just didn't understand. Can you go into more detail about what you do with that? Because you were talking about homeschooling and then truency and I didn't understand it. >> Um I I'm I'm not sure. I was just saying about the FTEES. I was just talking about slide four because he was
110asking about slide four, but if um you wanted did you have a specific question about homeschooling or because the >> like what what do you do to manage homeschooling? >> Uh so on slide four it says postcoid homeschooling requests have nearly tripled and often involve complex truency or safety issues requiring intensive case management. And I thought it was more you submit a form and you submit forms saying this is how many hours of English and this is what you know roughly this is the outline of what the curriculum is going to be and then a quarterly report saying this is what I taught my kids. So what is complex truency or safety issues? What's that kind of intensive case management look like? >> I think we're talking about why it's risen in that comment like
111why it has increased so dramatically. And so what we were looking at here was the requests have increased because there often are some either safe perceived safety issues the family has for their child to remain in a current placement within a district or perhaps there has been a series of attempts and interventions for truent um for student student truency in which um the family has decided that they're going to take um their their own action and educate their own child versus coming to the school anymore. >> It's more like after intensive case management, some of the people that you've some of the families you you've done that kind of intensive case management wind up in, you know what, I'm filing the homeschooling. I I thought it meant that after they filed the homeschooling request, you're
112doing intensive case manage, but it sounds like that's not in response to the homeschooling request, but it's more like >> what's led to it? >> That's the end. And then um you know through the regulations we do need to have there's certain timelines and certain expectations in the regulations. And so our department does then track all I believe it's we have about 190 students right now in homeschooling. So we are working with each family to for that timeline making sure that all of the reports and um the annual assessments are in um and that then would be a lot of management but not necessarily the term case management >> and I think there's another um linkage there to guidance as well. We have a school counselor dedicated to um working with um our homeschooling process
113to review transcripts um and uh you know requirements and make sure that everyone is on track. >> Thank you very much. Is that when we say homeschooling requests and you cite the 172, do you track separately uh students who were attending Alb City Schools and switched to homeschooling versus just students in the district that were always homeschooled? Yes, if there if the student is considered compulsory, then the family has to um register their pro their homeschooling program with the district. And so there is a tracking component in which we will have to continually reach out and try to engage that family to either homeschool or to register with the district. Um so that is is that the tracking part that you're talking about? I think I was saying if there are datas and data and
114reports, I would be interested in that. And while I'm definitely in support of I'm supportive of families rights to homeschool their children and it doesn't concern me if there are families that have always chosen to homeschool their child. But when you're saying you're getting, you know, a lot of homeschooling requests from people that it's coming from not having a successful experience in the Alb city schools that that gives me more cause for concern. And so whatever data we have to see you know hey this year I don't know let's say usually we have five school five middle school students who used to go to hacket who put in for homeschooling but this year we have 25 sixth graders that put in for homeschooling straight out of hacket. What's going on? Do we have numbers like
115that or reports that we can ever look at to say while there's certain points pain points where people are leaving >> or in your experience are there certain like grades or points in the schooling experience where people do tend to seek the exit? It's an interesting trend analysis that you're asking about. And honestly, I I don't want to misspeak, you know, but I I would say that there has been nothing striking in the past couple years that would make us pause and say, "Oh, we have a problem here." You know, um the homeschooling journey for each family is is very different and their story is very unique. We have students that come from all over and they don't want to start their child in Albony city schools and they just decide they're going to homeschool
116from Pennsylvania or we have students internally like I was explaining before who have struggled with either safety attendance um or or social emotional I'm not I'm not even sure again it's that family's own interpretation of their journey and where where they why they wanted to make that change now um But you know I I don't think we have looked at it in a way of trying to draw to see if um there was something to come out of it because the number is quite small when you look at it's a grade 1 through 12 and 190 children. >> Okay. Thank you so very much. I appreciate it. >> Miss Wilson. >> Thank you. And just to segue, I'm wondering also about the indicators that, for example, people may not cite their source, but I do
117know that there are standards for homeschooling and then in their ability or inability to meet the standards could sometimes elicit what actually may be um their reasoning, whether ideological, philosophical, and also not to mention the barrier for people to homeschool is often economical. So those are other aspects. But I just have a question about I'm trying not to forget my question. Forgive me. Um, the question was about trying to remember. It wasn't the PPS. Um, sorry, it wasn't the justice involved. Just bear with me one second. I have it here. >> Looking if if you could come back to me because looking at the slide, it's going to jar my >> Sure, no problems. So again once again I really like the way these slides are presented. Um but when you talk about a decade
118worth of data it would be interesting to see if because co was there in this particular 10 years there's co was right there right. So when you show an increase or a decrease I I I doubt if it was a smooth decrease or a smooth increase. It was like blips all around that 2020 uh phase. Uh so it'd be good to have just like in one of I think one of the f follow-up slides you have things going up and then coming down so that middle year is is sort of like reflected and having that would be useful to see if you know what happened you know if if it's been consistently going up or down then there's one reasoning if it went up and it went down then that is great because then whatever
119we're doing is definitely working if you wanted to go down or up that is >> yeah I would say I would agree there were definitely a lot of spikes during co we know this whether it was around immunization compliance or you know different safety issues um behavioral violations um so definitely a spike >> and and talking about compliance uh the what was it slide seven when we talk about immunization is you know 13300 non-compliant gone down to 604 64 is still 64 students who are not in school right that means they're not getting the education that they should be getting >> there. When we're talking about non-compliance for immunizations, I just want to be clear. Um those numbers were from a September poll and we regularly give the superintendent updates. Um there are students who
120are non-compliant but still in school and then there are students who are excluded. So a student from within New York State um has 14 days. Students from out of the state and out of the country have an additional 14 days. So um it's a moving target. So that 604 could be 598 next week but a different 598 students because of the cycles and the requirements for each age and grade level. >> But one of the previous updates that we had from the open and I think the number was close to around 298 or 300. >> Yeah, I think we're closer to that right now. Again, those were those >> 300 students are not in school, right? And you're like half a year has gone by >> and so I brought this up the other day
121and I'm looking at that partners line. uh can we contact Albony College of Pharmacy and see if we can partner with them because during co >> they were bringing pharmacists out to the places and opening clinics. Right. >> Well, we were providing shots ourselves for COVID and running clinics. So, we have for years been going round and round with the state with um county department of health with the state department of health. Um there are some really strict guidelines. Um so we we'll continue to brainstorm uh addition Currently the challenge is also that the a third party cannot make an appointment for a family with >> right and they're just not appointments. Our students um get you know appointments that are weeks and months out um through through the county. So it's really a huge
122challenge. >> Um but we try to enroll as many students as we can in Whitney Young because anyone in the district can go to that clinic. Um and so we're exploring other options as we stated um within the presentation >> and as we're advocating once again assembly member John McDonald is a pharmacist right so he will understand the issue >> is a scheduling issue statutory or is it policy within the entities that won't accept the third party scheduling like why is it that a third that the nurse can't schedule the appointment do we know >> I would assume it's probably around HIPPA and different medical confidentiality. >> I'm just trying to figure out where the where to put the pressure to say, "Hey, maybe we need to change this. Is that a statute regulation or
123is it a policy within an individual organization?" And it's fine if you don't know, but >> it's a curious situation. >> Yeah. If I can just clarify real quick or you said that the county can sometime take weeks to months to get a student vaccinated. >> Yes. Albony County Department of of Health. Can we I mean I'm not on gov relations but can we maybe do some like gov relations with the county to be like that's unacceptable because that's insane. Months like I get weeks like things happen people go on vacation but like months is that's unacceptable. >> I think it's you know the medical field is experiencing the same staffing challenges that we do. Um Whitney Young u struggles to staff our own clinics in district. Um we currently don't have anyone over at
124the roots clinic and for quite some time. this is, I think, year two or three that we haven't had anyone there. Um, we don't have medical professionals full-time in in any of our clinics. So, um, it's just the trend that we're seeing and it's it's a struggle. >> Okay. Thank you, Miss Wilson. >> Thank you. It's back. Sorry, I'm in a different context. Normally, I write my question down, so I got it now. Thank you. So the question was around the avail a availability of mentors or positive um adult role models and whether um we're sourcing for example local entrepreneurs um people who may even for example be elected because I'm just thinking in terms of students and their motivation and kind of like the representation that would be of helpful and what stems this
125question was actually I was doing a visit and learning that um sometimes it's difficult to match match international students with mentors because of you know the various languages that they speak. So um and then there's also some mentorship programs that are academic based and um if you're missing school uh it would probably be difficult to be of the academic criteria, right? So I'm just curious if we have uh programs or connections in that arena. >> Um I you know I don't want to misspeak. Um, I do believe buildings have different um, mentoring um, strategies that they're using um, and people from community partner agencies, but I can't really speak to that. >> Yeah, we don't we don't have a formal mentoring program through the PPS department at this time. >> I think that should be
126all except for Miss Matt had one clarifying question for the immunization. >> It's it's it's quick. It's around um immunizations. It's not just about access. There are some family are there are there how do I say this? It's not just about accessing a provider. Um are are some families refusing to pursue immunizations? >> So there's no more um religious exemptions allowed if that's something that you were um hinting at there. Um there are um families can apply for a medical exemption which goes through a thorough review um by our medical director. Um and there are very very few um medical exemptions. So everyone is required to um get vaccinated. >> Okay. Thank you so much. Lot of questions for the new presentation. Right. >> Okay. Moving on to the next discussion topic on our agenda,
127school safety division update. >> You're on. >> Good evening everybody. Thank you for having me. Uh, first I want to start right off by admitting that I cannot compete with those infographics. So I apologize in advance for that, but uh that was that was pretty impressive. Uh so again, thank you. Thank you for having me tonight. Um so I want to go through uh kind of an overview of everything. Uh let me get a little closer to the mic here. Uh an overview of everything. Uh the first thing I want to do is to acknowledge all of our community partners that we work with. uh we have we have kind of a saying that you know safe safety is uh everyone's responsibility and I can honestly say that in the almost three years I've been
128here now in the almost one year I've been in this position I can really feel that culture within the within the Albony community that uh we have a lot of support uh just a few of them listed here uh the Albony Police Department the fire department the sheriff's uh probation state police uh I'm part of the Albony County threat assessment coordination team uh that's run by the sheriff's department we meet uh every month and the information that comes out of that that collaboration is incredible. Uh and like I said, we meet every month and uh there are a lot of uh all private and uh public agencies involved in that. Uh the Albany community charter schools that we we work with, uh Snug, CDTA, the public library, we we have uh parole is not on
129there, but again uh we couldn't do that without everybody and their their incredible contributions to our information sharing. So to get into some of the data here, uh there were 577 incidents that we recorded for the 24-25 school year that required a response, including at least one of the following we include here, uh crisis team, threat assessment, a safety team response, an AVD response, an open fire or EMS response, or other services, and followup. 57 of those instments approximately occurred outside of the normal school day. That means something that usually happens after, you know, in the evening or or nearly morning before school. Uh sometimes overnight. Uh again, I know Dr. Ball and Miss McDow talked a little bit about our partners and the the time that they spend with us uh throughout the day.
130Uh we never have an 8 to4 day. We never have a 7 to three day. We are in constant contact with uh not only the SRO's but Brenda Shanahan uh again providing information. If anything happens, you know, during the evening, overnight in court, uh we usually get a call. Uh and like I said, that information is critical to everything happening the next day or if it's a weekend that's happening on Monday. So again, those early morning hours and and after hours communications are very important. Uh emergency response protocols through our Raptor emergency management system. Uh again, as you probably know, we have an electronic emergency management system that we use within the district that can be activated and people can get uh a mobile alert or desktop alert. Um initiating the standard response protocols that
131were provided that we followed by the I love you guys. Uh th those were initiated 246 times and 67 of those were drills. So that that is actually a good number because that has that has been increasing which means uh what is happening is most of our schools have increased the use of that which provides us more immediate information. So that is uh that is definitely the positive move in that in that uh event. Uh 179 behavioral threat assessments were conducted using the evidence-based tool cstag that they talked about in the PPS presentation. Uh again these threats include expressions of intent to harm or kill somebody. Uh threats are assessed by multi multi-disciplinary teams. Wow. And involve law enforcement when and if necessary. Uh the only thing we didn't really include here are some other
132minor incidents including uh which would be kind of physical security equipment issues. If there's a door prop or something somewhere reported or if there is an issue with a door or any of our uh computerized systems, uh then obviously those get reported, but we do not put those in here. This is just a further breakdown of some of the crisis response data. Uh, as you can see, Academy Park, Harriet Gibbons, they had 12 of those unique incidents. Uh, K through five had 197 and six through 12, excuse me, had 368. And again, some of these incidents may overlap in multiple categories. You know, if you have obviously if you have uh, you know, an incident that uh, a threat may require an APD response uh, again, or you know, a parent or staff issue may
133require an APD response or an EMS response depending on anything that happens. Uh so again some of these overlap but again it was 577 unique incidents that we went off from the top. Uh I just want to bring to this attention uh this was a sheet of data put together from our friends at the um crime analysis center for the Albony Police Department. Uh they're called calls for service. Uh the Albony Police Department and the Albony city have a uh computer aided dispatch system. So, anytime an an address is put in for some type of call, whether it be, you know, an EMS call, a burglar alarm, or if there's an accident or something in front of that address, it goes into what they call their computer data dispatch system. So, speaking with them, I
134asked them, hey, can you do a workup of, you know, how many times uh we've had a a call for service, as they call it, at these specific addresses. So, they came up with this for us. It was between August and August. Uh again again the numbers you know somebody said well you know you know a school didn't call the police department 171 times and yes that's true. So the numbers are you know that address was put into the system 171 times and again a lot of those things were from calls to our schools whether it be you know for like I said earlier an EMS call or maybe it required a police response but it could be as simple as something the burglar alarm went off overnight and the police had to respond to
135that. Uh again, if there was some kind of incident in front of that uh address and somebody had to use that address to actually get the police to them, again, most commonly would be like a property damage auto accident or sometimes like Albony High School, as you can see, has a very high number of incidents there. Um those uh besides the fact the ones that we actually you know needed responses for those also include things like uh police uh a police uh intervention not police uh being at a an after school event like a basketball game or a football game. If they are on scene there you know attending the event they in order to notify obviously their department they have to put that in. The address goes in. So all of those things kind
136of factor into the data there. But as you can see from this data, uh we have very uh a very active community around our schools every year. Um so I want to want to thank them for that. They've been very good to us especially getting uh the data together for us. Some of the areas that we've been focusing on hall monitors as uh Miss the talked about earlier with the the hiring of uh hall monitors. Uh in the three years that I've been here uh we've come a long way in filling a lot of these full-time positions. As she mentioned before, it is kind of a fluid uh you know event. We do get hirees and then we do have some people leave based on you know whatever the reason may be. But uh in
1372025 we hired uh over 20 hall monitors. Um a lot of that was due to a very successful u job fair that we had back in September. We had a lot of very viable candidates to fill a lot of the spots that were missing. Uh right now we do have a number of openings. Uh most of them right now are in the Albany High School. However, we do have a number of viable candidates in the queue that are going through the HR procedures. You know, their fingerprinting onboarding references to see if we can get them through and hopefully we'll be filling most of those gaps uh very soon. Uh TCIS certifications and continuous reertifications. Uh again, I want to thank Mike Petta uh putting that together. whenever we have a new hall monitor. Uh we
138try to get them through the TCIS training as quickly as we possibly can to get them uh you know up to speed on everything that's happening. Um and with his help we have been doing that very well. We have another session coming up starting next week where the homeowners who were recently hired will be going through that that initial uh certification. Uh comprehensive professional development planning. Again, we're always looking at ways that we can increase our home monitors uh abilities and their knowledge. Uh most commonly, you know, we want to look at things like uh CPR training, AED training. We're, you know, working currently to try to see if we can get some of those things again this year. Uh the ongoing assessment of district-wide integrated security systems. Uh I know that physical security is
139always an important uh an important aspect of what we do here. Uh we are constantly uh assessing the the current uh not only the camera configurations but the building configurations access control systems into the buildings. Uh last year 202425 we had eight buildings that received camera upgrades during the 2024 year. Uh we've identified all the remaining buildings that uh are requiring new cameras or updated cameras in addition to what they have now. Uh we're hoping to get that started uh sometime this spring. Uh again, we're working on some of the uh funding and other aspects to get these things rolling. Uh last year, we completed some updates to the emergency response protocol procedures. Those are the ones uh that are provided to us by the I love you guys that we've been using for many
140years. Uh they were commonly referred to as the shell procedures, if uh anybody's familiar with that. Uh shelter in place, hold in place, emergency used to be lockout and lockdown. So, there was a mandate back in July of 2025 that by the 1 of July that New York State was going to uh amend that one of the procedures to going from lockout and to making sure it was called secure lockout and all of our uh procedures and all of our uh paperwork. And uh that was because uh what they had found uh a lot of a lot of other states and that use the uh procedures that were provided by the love you guys and the standard response protocols were using the term secure lockout or secure. And what uh we found in New York
141State the state found was that there was getting to be a lot of confusion between the term lockout and lock down. So a lot of a lot of staff members uh did not understand that. So that again led to a lot of confusion. And so it was decided that you know in order to make it easier we would change that to secure and secure lockout. So we again we changed that in all of our materials including our raptor alert system. So whenever that comes over it comes over now as a secure lockout instead of just secure excuse me instead of just lockout. Uh the building level emergency response teams we provided them meeting resource their uh meeting resources and agenda materials to all the administrators. We use that every year so that they can keep
142track of their meetings uh and their drill schedules. Uh again the raptor technologies emergency and visitor management updates. Uh we did that for the shell the the used to be shell procedures but we also what we also did is for visitor management. Uh we added the event safe module that we worked on last year. This was kind of to facilitate uh people getting into the buildings for larger events. Uh, and as you may have experienced, uh, sometimes getting larger amounts of people into the buildings, visitors, uh, would kind of be a tedious event when everybody would have to go through and use the desktop that we had there with, uh, the the card readers and the license readers. So, Raptor came up with another uh, type of equipment where you can use uh, actually a
143QR code. People can download a QR code to verify their identity. Uh you can scan it with an iPad when you walk into the buildings. The uh whoever the person at the desk or a hall monitor, whoever had an iPad with them, which is obviously much easier to carry around than a desktop uh can just scan the scan the QR code uh sign them into the building. There would be a Bluetooth printer which would work much faster than the older printers. So we included that. We have all the equipment already in place. It's been used uh a little bit sparingly at first, but uh with with great deal of successful so far in a couple of the buildings. uh the coordination of safety processes for afterchool events. NICD continues to put out guidance and to
144recommend that everybody uh observe and assess their afterchool activities and the security uh of after school uh events, making sure that uh visitors coming into the building are aware of what the uh emergency procedures are. uh checking visitors in and out and making sure that everybody is uh aware of things like exits uh in case of emergencies uh and things like that. U we continue to wait for some more guidance from uh New York State but uh we are on top of that as well. Uh the comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines again as we talked about and PPS went through before with CASG uh we partner with a company called PCG to integrate an online software. Uh, as you may know, the the old method of getting a threat assessment done was stacks and stacks
145of paper that uh, you know, the staff had to sit through and go over with a pen and paper and then try to get it to everybody else and in a legible manner. Uh, so that became very timeconuming. So, um, uh, just want to give a kind of a kudos to Dr. Kenzone Ball and Marcy Buchard who worked very hard with PCG to get that up and running. That is up and running and uh, now it's again it's online. people have access to it and it's a much easier way for everybody that needs to know the information to get the information, find it. Uh in uh February of 2025, we partnered with uh the Albony Police Department. We've been working on this for a while. We got an additional SRO added to our district, which
146we were very thankful for. The uh officer Brian Mascaro was assigned to the North Albany Middle School, which uh I can't believe I'm saying this, he's been there for almost one year now. Uh he's been a great addition to the district. Uh he's helped out. He's involved in a number of uh a number of uh programs up there. I can't even name them all because he's in so many and he's again he's there kind of all the time and another person I speak to almost uh you know 10 hours a day. Uh uh and again uh you know I'd like to thank uh Golden Police Spartan and as as you may or may not have heard, Chief Cox has been you know uh added to the mayor's uh council for another for another year uh
147to stay on as chief. Uh and again uh he's another great partner that we have here. We talk to him often and you know we're hoping that uh hopefully maybe sometime in the future we can talk about uh more SRO's coming to our district. Uh the SRL has also uh assisted in identifying safer spaces in classrooms and other occupied areas within multiple buildings. I believe they've actually hit every building in our district now in the event of emergency response protocol. So a lot of times what we have uh is complaints from staff members that you know during some kind of emergency response protocol especially what would be a lockdown protocol they don't really know what the safest spot in a classroom would be or if they were in a library or other occupied space uh
148you know they really want to know like like where should we go uh they're not super familiar with where they might be uh and how to how to find a safe space to get themselves and any students they may have. So, uh, the SRO's, uh, went to just about every building, uh, talked to the staff there. Uh, if any of the other, uh, classroom teachers or or staff members had an additional issue about where they should go, they contacted the SRO. The SRO's went back to the school, went over the rooms with them. Um, they did a great job. They actually, we made up signage kind of identifying what what a safer space may be during a during a lockdown event. Uh, so that was uh, very successful. Again, officers Reex, Mascaro, and and Nick
149Schuler did a great job doing that. Uh during the year, we attended a number of safety conferences, uh including uh the committee on policing safeguarding schools in Sarat Saratoga County, sponsored by the New York State, uh Sheriff's Association, and we're headed back to that actually next month for this year's uh the National Association of School Resource Officers, which is uh the big conference, the big safety conference. We went to that last year as well. Uh it'll all be high safety equipment. As you may know, in recent events, uh we had some new safety equipment put into the high school. Uh again, over the past year, our district-wide safety team researched some of the best practices in the safety and violence prevention to ensure the schools remain safe and welcoming places for learning. Uh again, through
150these processes, we identified a couple of technologies including walkthrough metal detectors from a company known as MIS and bag scanners known uh from the company known as Lenev. uh to make uh entry faster, smoother, and less intrusive. Uh on December 10th, we moved forward and implemented their use at the high school. The anticipated benefits of these uh this new equipment was improved efficiency during the morning entry, uh hopefully reducing tardiness and the potential loss of instructional time for students. uh the reduction of manual bag searches helping respect individual privacy and dignity and more accurate screening which would help to assist in identifying potential threats and any unapproved items. Just a quick if anybody hasn't seen this yet just a quick kind of shot of uh this is the main student entry here. If you can
151see on the right hand side here uh the what they call the the the the gate uh the two little ballards there are what the students walk through now instead of the big giant overhead metal detectors. Uh and on the left there you can see uh one of the u bag scanners that they have right next to it. Got to give you a more overview here. This is kind of what the uh the actual setup looks like now. You can see there's one ballard on each side of uh the two bag scanners there. So the students come in, they have two ways to come in. Uh they put their bag through the scanner, then they walk through the the walkthrough metal detector there where they can walk around and then get their bag as it
152comes through the scanner. Uh I want to acknowledge the the staff at Albany High. Uh this has been in effect now for the two weeks obviously before the break and then about you know since we've been back after the break. But the staff at Albony High especially the hall honors and the administrators and uh they've been doing a phenomenal job. They took to this very well. They were very excited to to you know get something new to see if if it could help us out. Uh and I was there I was I've been there obviously a few times since these implemented. The last time I was there was as recently as yesterday. uh watching some of the effects go by. Some of the students come in. Uh we did a count one of the bag
153scanners. I was talking to one of the hall monitors there. Over 700 bags had come through at the time when I was there. Uh a little bit later in the morning and he said it was about the same on the machine behind them. So they're doing probably 14- 1500 bag scans per day just and that's just in the upstairs. They have another entry downstairs where they have the other machines. Uh but again the interactions the interactions between the students and the staff is what I was kind of more concerned about. Um and again I have to give acknowledge that the uh the students also the students have been great with this. They you know uh you know they took to it right away as well. Again in the beginning of course there was a little
154a little delay here and there because there was a little confusion with the kids coming in. They didn't know whether they should walk through back up you know wait for somebody to tell them to go through. So um those kinks have pretty much been worked out. And again I was there yesterday. Today I was watching some of the students come in. They were interacting with the staff at the at the uh at the machinery. They were joking with each other, giving themselves each other fist bumps. It was just uh kind of nice to watch and it was uh it was a very smooth process. Uh and again, I don't believe we've had any significant delays at all. Uh there was uh there was one issue I think the second week when we had them where
155one of the there one of the pieces of equipment for some reason they said wasn't working but we found out that actually was uh caused by a blown fuse where another piece of equipment had been added into somewhere uh that actually just kind of blew one fuse u so they were down one metal detector or excuse me they were down one bag scanner but it was only for a short time when they realized what the issue was. Uh and again thanks to maintenance they showed up and took care of it right away. Uh and again everything seems to be move moving very well. So again I'm thankful I'm thankful to everybody that was involved uh from you know from finance to the board to the superintendent and everybody and again the admin at Albany High
156for helping to get these things in and the students again for their patience and uh you know working through this and and you know like I said hopefully it uh continues to work out well. And that's pretty much everything I have and open to any questions of course. >> Thank you very much. >> Yes. Hello. Um a comment first. That was a great presentation. By the way, on behalf of all the students, we would like to thank you all for the new security informations with all the new security and so on because to be quite frank, it is very cold and when we're outside for that long, especially with the bags coming in, specifically right by the door, there's this flush of air that comes in and you have to stay there while other bags
157are being checked and it is so cold. >> I'm familiar. Yes. >> Yeah. And with the new information, you put your bag in, you go right through, and then you don't have to get wanded down all the time because the old body scanners didn't really work that well to be honest. And then you just put your bag through, you get in, I can go to class, I don't have to be held up at the door because, oh, someone's bag has to be checked several times because there's so many pockets, you know. But as I did also have a question. >> Um, with the security hold in place and the lockown and lock in, are those tracked separately and also with the amount of drills that go on for high schools? I know they do differ
158or compare in comparison to the middle schools and elementary schools, but do they differ per middle school and elementary school? >> Do you mean are you talking about the number of the drills that need to be done every year? >> Yeah. No, that's a static number that comes from New York State. You have to have eight evacuation drills uh per year for the state. So evacuation drills obviously are our fire drills. They call it evacuation, but we all know they're fire drills. And you have to have four lockdown drills every year per that's the state mandate. So that's the same for every school in New York State. Uh and what was the other? I'm sorry. Oh, the tracking. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, we can track uh all those response protocols. We can break them down
159separately. we can track how many how many lockdowns we've had, how many drills we've had, how many uh shelter in place or hold in place we have. Uh so yes, those can be that that data can be pulled separately. So >> all right, thank you so much. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Wolf Gang. >> Yes. Um well, first thank you guys for your presentation. Um I will say really nice touch with uh branding the body scanners. I think it makes it look so much nicer and that >> we try we wanted to again as a part I know that we know that physical security is important but you know also social and emotional security is important as well and to make it more welcoming we thought that you know we want to do that we
160don't want to make it like uh again I know a lot of people have comments about the big giant gray metal detectors that were in there I mean you know you know they're ugly they you know they're intimidating we wanted to find something that was not so intimidating at least like the least you know, you're at least you know you're coming into a safe place, but you know, it doesn't look so intimidating, a little more welcoming. So, so I'm I'm I'm glad everybody likes it. >> Um, no, no, great touch. Um, one question I do have about the uh the bag scanners that we put in. Um, a concern I brought up to the superintendent when it was first happening >> was um, you know, having a strong uh, practiced response for when there is
161a hit on these. What have you seen or your team seen with getting a hit on these? Have they been I have there been any hits? Have they been pretty like we could just figure it out right there or have there been any issues with false positives? Anything that you can share with us on that? >> Sure. Uh we haven't had too many reported issues about false positive or anything. Sometimes uh sometimes what they do if they see if there's something there and and I don't want to go into too much detail obviously because just because of uh you know security reason but but yes but uh if there is a question sometimes what the what the operators will do is uh you'll know the bags go in kind of one way if they see
162something that kind of shows up what they could do is they put it they can put it back in and in a different direction >> to see if it picks it up differently. Uh and again if there is a question uh about it will be uh then searched by hand you know as a secondary search and what we try to do is again to kind of keep people from not standing out in the cold and get in is they you know what the procedure is they hand it off to another monitor that says hey can you do me a favor take this off the side it can you just double check this bag to make sure that that's not anything in there that's uh an unapproved item you know uh but yes that's kind of
163the procedure that's what that's what we're hoping to do to kind of speed it up that way it doesn't keep this if you're in behind behind somebody who their bag has to be checked. We don't want to hold you up too much longer, but you know, also for safety reasons, we want to make sure that whatever bag needs to be checked is checked by somebody. >> Gotcha. And have there been any issues with students throughout this new process? Like bigger than just, you know, getting delayed a little bit, but like >> Oh, as far as their as far as their attitudes and anything coming out. No, I haven't heard anything. I said the the first day I I know I was there the first day and like I said people were and students were like
164a little kind of I want to say maybe trepidacious about coming in because they were like they were approaching the like the new metal detectors and they're like do I wait here? Do I go here? The light's red. Do I not come in? And also with the staff also was learning as well. They were like so they're like hey just wait there until the light turns green then you can walk through put your bag there. But uh again it was a process. Uh but as far as uh any issues from the students, not not at all. Not at all. I've noticed uh you know uh or that have been reported to me at all. I know I've got uh again I you know I want to give a shout out to the team there, the
165the staff that's there and uh Joe McDade who is the assistant director there who is who's assigned to that building. He's also been taking the the staff uh when things slow down. He takes the hall monitor staff and the security staff that's working those those machines. They go down to a the downstairs level where there's uh you know they've been closed for the day and the machines are not in use by students coming in and the uh the hall monitors will continue training on those machines to learn how to better use them and and to kind of you know see the screens and make sure that they're observing what they need to observe on the screen. Uh but but yeah, also I can tell you that the the two companies that were involved in getting
166us the equipment, MIS and LEV, uh by the end of the week when they were there, they were uh very impressed with everybody at the high school, everybody in the district. They said it was one of the smoothest uh in installation and operations they had ever seen. And that's pretty big praise because they have these machines all over the country. I mean, there's a bunch of them around the capital district now, but uh they're all over the place. Uh so that was pretty high praise. They were very they they were they were very pleased. And I can tell you I went to a demonstration on the first day at another school. Uh I won't say what school it is, but uh their first day was uh it was absolute chaos. It was chaos to the
167point where I began to get concerned about what was going to go on the first day that we had it had coming up. But uh uh they were like, "No, don't worry." you know, and that and I've since then I've actually spoken to the the safety director at that school and he said after a week they were they were fine and smooth too but it was a it was a little chaotic for them at first. Uh but again like I said earlier I mean between our staff and the students and everybody involved I I I'm very pleased that's how it's going and I'm glad that you know it seems to be going well. >> Great. I'm glad that the implementation of this went well and I appreciate your team taking the extra time to hear
168from the public during that as well. So >> yes, thank you. >> Yes. Very important. Thank you. And I'm all set. Mr. President, >> Mr. Almani, >> no questions. I just wanted to thank both of you guys for keeping our schools and our students safe. >> No, thank you for your support in that. >> Miss Madden, thank you for your presentation and I have no questions at this time. >> Miss Savage, >> have to push a little person. Um, thank you very much for the presentation. We always appreciate the work you're doing, both the proactive work um and the reactive work, which I imagine is not the more fun part, but we appreciate all of it. Um, one thing I wanted to just inquire about the data regarding the Raptor system. >> Yes. >> My
169recollection is that Raptor really only triggers in two ways. It triggers if there's a um registered sex offender and or if there is a keep away order or you know do not um trespass order. And you said that there were 256 hits of which 47 I think were um 67 were drills. So that would need 199 real triggers of Raptor. >> So I'm wondering if you could give me more information about that. >> Yes. So that's kind of two different aspects of the Raptor system. There's the Raptor visitor management system and then there's the Raptor emergency alert system. So those are two different things. So the raptor alert system uh it that is that's our standard response protocol procedures which we can activate either through you can do it through desktop but most of the
170time we do it through the app uh because most of the employees and especially the uh the admins have the app realize you use the same yes vendor for those two different things. >> Yes. Yeah. They have they have multiple uh modules I guess you would call them now. So, got it. Uh, and yes, the visitor management though, you're correct that that that activates an alert two ways. If there is, you know, a registered sex offender that that that may be entered into the system, uh, or if there is a district stayaway letter that has been entered into the system, yes, that'll alert that way, too. So, you're right, there's two ways for the visitor management system to to be activated, but the emergency alert system can activate all five of our emergency response procedures.
171>> And do you know how many times the Raptor visitor management hit in the last school year? Uh, I can pull that data as far as as far as >> Would you mind sending that by SPU? >> Oh, yeah. As far as as far as he's talking about as far as sex offenders have been hit >> and and keep away to know how many times it actually uh Thank you so much. >> Absolutely. Yes, >> Miss Greg. >> It is so strange how sometimes Miss Savage predicts my questions and asks this you ask the same question and then the same follow-up question. So, like it's good to know and that means I can go directly to my next question because that was going to be exactly what I wanted to know and I just wanted
172to follow up and I'm really glad to hear that things are going well with the bag scanners. My question was, have we been keeping data on how many manual bag checks have been necessary like as a number or as a percentage since the system was uh put in place? I don't know if they've been actually keeping that number, but I I can check with the with the staff there at the high school and I can check with the assistant directors there if they have that. So, >> and then I had a question. I wanted to followup clarification question on these unapproved items because I thought this was checking for weapons. >> The bag scanner. >> Yeah, the bag scanner checks, you know, depending on if they have an unapproved item. Uh that's up to admin
173there depending what they're doing with those things. But uh you know I if there's something comes through like a vape or something that's you know that that'll show up in the bag scanner. Uh so something of that effect. So you know non-approved items. So something like that. >> So do we have a is >> there like a list that your staff has >> that's all outlined in the code of conduct list. Whatever those items >> contraband >> what I mean is are people waiting outside in 10 degree weather because somebody's checking to make sure nobody has an earbud or are people being checked for weapons is my kind of my question. >> Weapons. >> We're checking Yeah, we're checking for weapons. That's mostly. Yes. I mean, if there if there's if there's an issue with
174an unapproved item, we're not we're not like I like I said before, we're not trying to hold up the line. If somebody has a bag that that may have something in it that needs to be checked for whatever reason because they don't know what it may be, then they've tried to pull the bag aside and that another monitor aside separately so they can keep the line moving. >> Thanks. Because this is a question I asked last time where I think the idea of this the Falcon Pass for students to be able to have headphones if they meet certain criteria is great, but I don't want the security guard looking up everybody's grades for last quarter to figure out should this person have earbuds or not. >> Yeah, they must not have that. >> Miss Wilson,
175>> no questions. >> I don't have a question this time. Oh, >> thank you. I was trying to figure out which screen here. >> I have no questions. Again, thank you for everything that you do to keep our building safe. It's even more important these days than ever before. Um >> I have another question. >> So I don't have any questions, but thank you, Miss Savage. >> Um so I had two other questions. I'll ask them both because I think they're both um vast. One in the calls for service slide, which was very interesting. Um I was concerned when I saw it immediately because it was clear that it was not just police calls. Right. But but a quick read of it is like wait. >> Yes. >> Right. So I'm wondering when you receive
176this data if it's possible to create a uh column header chart, you know, where the top across the top you write traffic calls, EMT calls, police calls so that you get, you know, a grid rather than just the total. Is that an option? >> I can I can ask them to break it down a little more succinctly. This is this was uh some data I had them them pull previously. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh and then to have I had it already. Uh but to have it in time for the presentation, I didn't have time to have them break it down for us, but that but I absolutely can have them break it down if I asked. >> It would just be I think it would be informative. Um and you know, people people react
177to information in different ways. >> Sure. Yeah. And I I did ask the chief of police if it was okay to share theirs and he said, "No problem." >> They are always very generous with their data. Always. Yes. >> Yeah. One of the things that I've been tracking just is super interesting is the number of accidents, crashes, car crashes in Albany is down dramatically. Right. >> The last number I saw was in October we're down 22% fewer um personal injury crashes um than we were the prior year and that is the school's own speed cameras and the 25 mile per hour speed limit. So, it's making a radical difference in people's safety. That was just a side note about the police and how they are willing to share information. But my question was when you
178have your ongoing meetings where you meet with partners and includes APD, APD supervises our crossing guards and do you have conversations about where they have crossing guards and where there's absence of of crossing guards and do you look at the traffic safety data to try and help them figure out where crossing guards should be deployed because it's we know they're always understaffed just like we're always understaffed. >> Yes. So I I don't personally look at the data with them but I do have conversations with them. Usually the conversations start with uh somebody letting me know that there hasn't been a crossing guard at a at a crossing intersection for let's say two weeks, 3 weeks, work, whatever it might be. Usually that'll come my way. And if that does, what I do is I contact
179them and discuss that with them. And usually it's some kind of issue with, you know, maybe somebody's out on leave or maybe somebody's sick or maybe somebody retired from the position. But uh yeah, we have constant conversations with with with them as well about the crossing guards. >> That's great. I'd love to know that that's happening proactively, too, and not just in terms of a complaint. Um Mr. Leco knows that. I would love to see our district take a more active role in making sure that every child is getting to school safety that our transportation department while wonderful is really a bus department and we don't really have a great system for supporting safe routes to school. Um and I know I sent the safe roots to school grant to Mr. Angelhart which is an
180municipal grant unfortunately so they have we could do it in partnership with them but there are grant funds available to support some of these initiatives. So um anyway I appreciate what you do on that front. No, I'm very familiar with the person who runs traffic safety now. So, yeah, I can just call them up and and usually talk to them whenever I need to. But, yeah, we do have conversations about that. I know it's a I know it's an issue. It's been an issue. I we discussed some of the traffic stuff. It's been an issue for 30 something years. >> Thank you again. >> Thank you, sir. Thank you. >> Moving on. Next discussion is a building condition survey. >> While they're coming, can I have a point of order? I would like to make
181a motion to amend the agenda to remove the budget presentation since um the content there is nothing that couldn't wait for two weeks and the meeting is going on for some length. So I'd like to make that motion. >> Second. Yep. All in favor. >> So be moved. >> Thank you very much. We do love you, Mr. Carris. We'll see you in two. >> You get it approved for two weeks. And as uh we bring up the uh update around the building condition survey and welcome our friends from SEI here. Um I just wanted to kick off this conversation. Um while some of most of this uh information at least the review of the building condition survey and what it is and why we do it is a reminder for the board. Um, it's important
182to underscore for the public that this really is the beginning of a a set of conversations um with our board, with our facilities committee, with our uh school personnel, and ultimately our families and community to determine whether or not uh and to what scope we should consider capital projects uh moving forward. So, while some of the information seems um a repeat from uh conversations we had last year, really the the purpose is to keep the public informed and sometimes we have to slow down to go fast. And u this presentation is going to slow us down a little bit in terms of uh bringing some folks up to speed and then we'll talk about a potential timeline if we were to uh consider a a capital project whether for 2026 or beyond. So, with that,
183I'll turn it over to Mr. Little and company. >> Thank you very much. And um we'd really like to uh just quickly thank the board. This is the first time we've had an opportunity to be in front of the whole board. Uh SEI Design Group greatly appreciates the opportunity to partner with you and uh we're very excited about what's gone on and what we've accomplished to date and what uh we have in front of us and the opportunities. So we really like to uh thank you for that opportunity. Yeah, I would just re reiterate that from uh Rich. Um we'll get right into it. So, our agenda this evening uh we're going to talk a little bit about the building condition survey that we're conducting. Uh we'll also talk about the utilization study that we're
184conducting as well. Talk about what that is. Uh where we're at in terms of the uh you know what what what stage of that we're in, what our next steps are. Then we'll get into some of discussion about the uh future capital project vote and uh some of the timelines related to that. Oops. So what is a building condition survey? So uh building condition surveys are required by New York State uh education department. Every school district must conduct one every five years. And that condition survey must be conducted by, you know, licensed architects and engineers where they look at sort of every major building system component. We get into classrooms. We look at finishes, lighting, any code issues that we we might find. And all that information that we uh find we uh put into
185a report to the district. And also that information has to be submitted uh to state ed as well. And all that information becomes uh basically a springboard or basically a basis for any future projects and work that the school district uh wants to uh conduct. I just like to recogn you know first of all that it's a database that comes together and it's a an extensive amount of information what's wrong what's going on it basically gives you a snapshot in time of what the status of your buildings are today what needs to be repaired and then also what's going to need to be repaired in two 5 10 15 20 years so it really lays out a roadmap to help us plan these things together. I'd also like to thank this board and and and
186commend you for the fact that you are looking for this level of detail. The state offers the 31 cents a square foot and you're taking advantage of it. There are a lot of districts around that just want to check the box and put it into state into the state just to get something off their plate. This is truly going to build you a living document that you'll be able to move forward with for many years. >> All right. So, uh, where we're at with the building condition survey. So, uh, when we conduct our surveys, uh, we do it in, uh, as said, as basically a team. So, we have the architectural team, engineering team, and our site team. And, um, each one of these groups looks at different components. Our architectural group, we're going to
187walk through every single space in every building. We're going to look at every classroom, look for any code issues we might see. We will look at doors, like I said, finishes, uh, uh, lighting, ADA issues. We'll go through toilet rooms, that sort of thing. We also conducted, uh, a set of interviews with the, with every single uh, principal at all the schools and get their information as well. Because when we conduct our walkthroughs, we can only see what we can see with with our eyes and what uh with our uh experience from doing other walkthroughs. So, we really need to talk to the building occupants to really understand what their issues are, what they see, because they're going to have more in-depth knowledge of the buildings that they live in every single day. So, we've
188conducted those interviews. We take that information along with our walkthroughs and compile that into the database that we then share with the district. Uh we'll have we have additional meetings scheduled uh with additional uh departments throughout the district that'll give us even more information. The our engineers uh so we have mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineers that also conduct their uh surveys and walkthroughs as well. And they're looking at different systems than we look at architecturally. So they're looking at uh the mechanical systems in the building. They're looking at boilers, unit ventilators, anything that uh makes the building sort of function. And they are also they also conducted uh meetings at every single building with the individual uh maintenance facility for those uh particular uh facilities. So they could get their information as well because just
189like with architecturally where we can only see what we can see sort of the same thing with them. Uh so it's nice to get uh additional information from the folks that are living in the buildings. So along with that with engineering we also have site uh uh engineers and they're looking at everything pretty much on the outside of the building. So what are the conditions of the sidewalks? What are the conditions of the parking lots? uh playgrounds, uh athletic facilities, that sort of thing. And all that data that we gather from all of our groups, we're actively compiling that information now, putting cost data associated with it, prioritizing that information, and then we'll provide that to the district uh for their review. That's just a great point to just recognize the fact that although we've
190had an army of people in your buildings, we really want to recognize and thank the the facility staff for making buildings available, coordinating schedules, even in the buildings. You you're trying to do work. We did a tremendous amount of this over the summer, but your building level principles, your building level maintenance staff, and just people in general. We're in the buildings. We're we're visitors there. We just want to say that everybody has been unbelievably cooperative and very supportive on getting this data together. So, thank you for that. And with that, I'm going to jump into the next one that uh is another collaborative effort and uh taken on uh a a great effort by building level principles and some of the other individuals leadership in each one of your buildings. So, and that's the utilization
191study. um what we do, and this is kind of a a personal favorite of mine because I'm directly involved in doing this uh across the state with many many different districts, but basically what we're doing is taking a a look at every space in your building, who's in that space, why are they in that space, is it an appropriate space for the activities that are going on, and we'll take it further to to uh coordinate that against uh the standards from not only New York State, but nationally. And then also your own district uh standards. Sometimes whether it's number of students in a in a room, there may be New York State guidelines, but you may have contractual obligations that differ from that. So we'll have the data that compares those items and looks at
192it. Uh once we're done with the snapshot of what is in each room and why it's there, uh I'm sorry, beyond just the educational platform, we're further looking at it from a support standard. What support services do you have in your building? What do you want to have in your building? Is it in the building? Do you have space? As you heard in an earlier presentation, the amount of support services coming into a school have exponentially increased. You now have more counselors, more more psych uh psychiatrists, more social workers. So, where are we putting these individuals? This is going to have an opportunity for us to look at where are they? Where do we not have opportunities for them? or where do we have people potentially in space that could be beneficial to the district
193in a different fashion and a lot of times it's just shuffling people right we get this map we look at it and maybe it's just a matter of taking people and moving around so it's a terrific tool for that and again hopefully if it's done right it becomes a living document right that each year as things shuffle around people move a little bit we update it you keep it and it's a great tool at a principal level to administer and work with their people in our buildings Uh where are we at? We've had our first meeting. So when we do the utilization study, I we usually do two meetings. The first initial meeting with the principal at the building. We look at the drawings. We identify everything. We've conducted that first meeting. We've put the
194data together. We're overlaying enrollment information and things like that'll go on. Uh at your secondary, when we talk about middle school and high school, we take it a step further. We not only look at how many kids are in a room, we look at how many kids are in a room period by period to make sure that we're full fully utilizing classrooms and taking the maximum uh benefit of the space that we have in the building. Uh the second meeting will be going back to the principal one more time and that's a matter of we'll be sending them out the drawing, letting them look at it, see the data that comes out of it, the spreadsheet information and calculations. We will check with them each once to make sure that we're all in agreement. Not
195always always in agreement, but we can all agree on the data. Uh I will tell you that every component of education, every uh academic component we can uh validate based on enrollment and uh state standards at least the same state standards that are used based on funding a school building. The only one that we cannot do mathematically is special ed and that takes an extra layer of work with your district administration and team in that area. There's just no mathematical equation for that. But there is enough once we work on it, we can show the trends and the facts that work along with it. Uh so once that step is done the second step which will be happening here in the next month we'll confirm those and then we'll start bringing that data forward to
196administration where we'll sit down and talk about what are the findings and then from those findings there's summaries and then uh potential options of of of recommendations on maybe movement or shuffling. But it's really at the end of that we're going to have graphic uh images of the floor plans colorcoded by who's in the spaces so you can quickly reference you know is a building departmentalized is it grade configuration and you'll see through the colors where people fall on the building. We'll also be able to identify any spaces that are outsourced that are not district. They'll be picked up and identified in there so that we know where they are. And again, all of those spaces will be evaluated not only by just who they are, but where are they and is that the best
197space for them. Um, planning for capital project. This is where it gets exciting. Um, there's a lot going on in your district and there's a lot of things with the BCS projecting and looking forward. One of the very exciting things is that the district has had the opportunity to to be a a recipient of a a significant grant from NAERTA and based on that grant there's an opportunity to leverage that for local share to uh do some other improvement. So, we're looking at we're kind of uh looking across the BCS, although it's not done, and we've kind of targeted a few items of uh kind of equity across the district to pull forward quickly. And uh the items that we're talking about right now is focusing on equity of large instructional spaces across the district
198and that could be um cafeterias, auditoriums, gymnasiums, uh things of significant space. F. The second item is focusing on safety across the district um and uh infrastructure that goes along with that. You guys have done a tremendous amount of infrastructure work already with camera upgrades uh improvements on your building. So, how do we what do what do we uh what is not equitable? How can we take that forward? And then the third one is just some infrastructure work that we know about in the BCS or that's critical in a building that we've seen that we can pull forward because if we're in a building working, if some building is going to get some of this scope, we want to make sure that we're not duplicating effort or going back into the same space in the
199future. Um the second component of that is that we've built the BCS. So there's a long-term look in the future and may may you know potentially that could be another vote in May of 2027 where you're looking at a larger project that would address more of the needs not only just BCS but then the data that comes out of utilization study a lot of the feedback that we're looking for throughout that utilization study and as we listen and hear from all the different building leaders and then coming back to the building uh district administration is really also to look at future program. You know, we're always trying to look at where do we want to be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. What do we what do you aspire to be? Not just who we
200are today, but where are we going to get to and do we have the adequate space and opportunity for that. Uh the other component of all of these things is going to be outreach and and uh uh reaching out to the areas of community. So, we're going to be providing a lot of opportunities for building le level interaction. We've already had a number of that. Starting in February, we're going to be reming with uh principles of buildings that have potential work to talk to them about that scope and further clarify it. And um then as we start to build out those groups, we meet with teachers. We open up opportunities for community and for staff. And what's really exciting for us and and important for us is to bring in students. Nobody knows the day
201in the life of a of a student better than the students themselves. And you can really get some great impact and feedback. And I'm going to celebrate this here because it's an important thing to us. And I'm working with the young man uh just this afternoon. We have a young man who started with us in middle school on a facilities committee as a middle schooler. He's now a graduate from the University of Buffalo, works in one of our offices, and is a full-time designer with our team. So, it's pretty exciting to have been working with this young individual all that time. Uh given an outlay of the possible uh 2026 capital project that would be voted in May. Uh we're there's uh $10.8 million of NAERTA grant. Uh in that 10.8 8 million. It includes
202uh some money for non-f facility work uh and student engagement enrichment. Uh it c it covers cost of the uh services for us to be doing the work to do the drawings and also other uh non physical services. Uh 10.1 of it will be the the physical improvements that's going on in the buildings and they're listed here. If anyone wants to get into some deeper, I can describe more of the work. But right now, the three buildings that are are touched most significantly are GIF and Toast and uh Albany International. Those are the three buildings that were identified that meet the uh scope uh defined by NAERTA. Uh, additionally throughout the district, there's some other things that help with energy and uh, kind of improving our our carbon footprint and that involves some uh, weather
203weather protection improvements on buildings to help with energy and then um, lighting uh, across in some of our buildings that wasn't already addressed in the past. You've done a lot of this work already. This is a great opportunity to capture some more from a grant and catalyst us further in. Um, again, I just want to remind you the grant then gives you uh kind of covers the local share that we would normally be burdened with where we'd have to go out and ask for uh a local share contribution or a tax increase. This covers that. So, based on that funding, that that creates an opportunity for you to do up to around a $44 million project, uh, which is a significant project. Um, just to talk a little bit more about some of the large
204spaces I mentioned earlier, we're looking at playgrounds, the cafeterias, gymnasiums, pools, auditoriums, uh, library and media centers. And as we talked about safety, we're looking at secure vestibules. How are you approaching the building? What's your arrival? How do you enter and control your buildings? Upgrading the current cameras. Again, I think eight of your buildings had significant camera improvements already. um but a lot more need them. So, we'll we'll be looking at that. And then perimeter control, looking at your buildings and how do people arrive at the building, where do they get to, and then how can you get in and out? Uh next steps, we've got to finance uh finalize the uh grant approval and paperwork and drawings and documents that go out there. We actually had a call this afternoon with NAERTA and we
205have a followup early next week to ensure that we're all following their specific uh forms, submissions, and dates. So, we're tracking those and making sure that everybody's keeping up on those schedules. Uh it's evaluating and ranking all the data that we have. As we said, the BCS and and this is kind of overlaying. It'd be nice to wait, but the grant doesn't allow for that. We need to move a little faster. So, we are pulling everything together and then we do have some workshops here coming up with uh the board's facility group where we'll be looking a little bit closer and more detail about the ranking of each one of these items. Uh looking to have a very detailed conversation about those. Um ultimately our goal is to get feedback. We're going to want to
206meet at the buildings once we, you know, kind of kind of build these things out and get an idea of where we want to go and what kind of stuff we want to need. But then you get into the building and you talk with the pe the further talk with the individuals that live in that building and operate in it. Does the scope make sense? Is there something that should be picked up? We're pushing our engineering team to look at it as we're looking at these areas of scope. If there's something close that should be done at the same time as something we're talking about, we want to bring that forward. It may not have to be done, but if there's cost savings with it, if it's the if it's the right thing to do,
207so we don't have to go back in somewhere, we want to make sure that we're testing and pushing all of those elements. Uh we'll be sharing all these findings and datas back with the district because it's even if we choose not to do something, it's still something that we're going to need to track, right? So just because we decide we're not going to fix this door, but it still needs some adjustments, we need to make sure that we're tracking in the future that that door still needs to be addressed. And then um once that is all put together and we've come up with an understanding of that scope with the facilities committee, we'll be coming back with recommendations for that project later on uh to the board of education. Uh so throughout January, we've got
208the discussion here tonight giving you an update on it. Um we'll have a couple of facility meetings. Um and then you know throughout the month of January um we have uh some community engagement and mostly it'll start early February with building level. We find that to get through the district takes us with with getting all we got a number of buildings. So to get the team scheduled together, it takes us almost three weeks uh to get everybody uh met with on a det on a decent detailed uh rate. So most of February is really making sure that we've met at that building level and that the leaders of the building and key interest groups on each one of those areas know about it and have a chance to feed back. And then we're going to
209be reaching out to the building level people. Is it PTA? Is it neighborhood associations? We've taken these presentations out to, you know, town council to the city city uh council meetings. We've taken it to uh you know, special interest groups. We've even gone to to uh local religious organizations. It really is dependent on where's that where where do we need to get that message out and take it to and we'll help build those things with you. working along with uh Ron and his team, we've had some great conversations about the data and how we can get it out to the community and what works best in the past and what we want to see as a model going forward. Uh once March rolls around, we're going to be looking at finishing up those community meetings.
210uh we're going to be finalizing that amount of of work and that scope and we're really trying to get towards the fact that if you want to have a May vote, you have to April 1st of the last day you can go out with a public uh with without that public declaration of of a referendum. Hopefully that happens before that, but April 1 is kind of that last date. So there's a number of meetings that we'll have uh prior to that. We'll be back in front of the board uh if not sooner with other information. We'll be back on the 12th and the 26th uh with some updated information coming to you at those nights and then hopefully uh some detailed conversations. Uh again, the public notice has to be done by uh April 1st
211and then following after the April notification. You have to have a couple of opportunities for public again to come back and provide some feedback throughout the month of May prior to vote. Um and we're here to support you and help you throughout those processes. Also, I did kind of go fast. I apologize. I'm trying to so but uh we really thank you. This is very exciting for us. Um, our office is just moments away from here and this is uh, you guys have a great district. Who we've met with already is uh, been dynamic, fun, your building leadership, the the passion. Uh, their advocacy for their buildings and their for their peers is is tremendous. It makes it very exciting to be a part of. Thank you, Miss Brenda. >> Thank you. That was a
212brilliant presentation, but I currently do not have a comment. >> Mr. Holk. >> Yeah, thank you as well for the presentation. Um, I do love that we're being really uh thoughtful about the NAERTA grant. Um especially I remember being a student with the Albany High redevelopment and how we leverage state funds was really big on that. Um so I'm really glad to see we're thinking about that. Have we um I guess looked at other uh hidden pockets of money we can find uh to take down that local share even more. >> We will be continually working with you on that at every at every opportunity we have. So once I mean just when you start building projects and you look at rebates and things like that uh you know we've talked already with the facilities
213committee about you know options for procurement what makes the best sense how can you do it timewise financially um when it comes to ensuring that we're we're meeting district um desire desired uh standards things like that. So, absolutely, every every stone you can unturn is is a benefit. We're going to work right alongside you with it. >> Great. Awesome. No, um you know, we got a lot we want to get done. We got great students to need the support they can get. So, uh >> you know, that's why I just want to make sure that we're continuously looking for the next thing even if it's years ahead. >> Absolutely. >> So, thank you, >> Miss Almani. >> Yes. So, thank you, Mr. Little. Um I understand that uh you know it was a 15minute uh
214presentation but you guys have been working on this for 8 months 7 8 months at least right >> so there's been a lot of information boots on the ground uh at each of our schools talks with principles data collection data crunching um lists made so we've been looking at that in facilities ities committee. I um >> apparently I'm Mr. Oz now. >> Hello. Better. Um a lot's happened. Um we still have a lot to do in a very little amount of time. And uh I want to encourage our uh families and the public to come to the meetings in February to essentially hear what we've got to say and also give their input so we can make the best decision possible. I think there is definitely something wrong with my with mic. I don't know.
215Can you guys hear that? >> No, it's off. But um yeah, so uh I just wanted to also touch on a couple of things just reiterate. I know they were mentioned in the presentation that this is kind of part one of potential part two, you know, projects. Um, we're being really thoughtful about how we roll this out in order to keep taxes at uh to keep no tax increase or keep no taxes at base level. And um 2027 we are going to be looking at the study further to see what else we can do. And I'm and I'm glad um we've focused this year on those two matters. Uh, and I look forward to seeing what we actually do. No one really knows yet. We're still we're still uh making decisions. So, thank you guys
216so much. >> Miss Mad, >> thank you for your presentation. I've enjoyed the work we've been doing um as a member of the facilities committee. Um and um and I have no questions. >> Savage. >> So, thank you very much for your presentation. I I very much enjoyed my return to facilities committee after quite a long time. So, it's been a um very uh interesting time to rejoin facilities and I hope those of you who aren't on facilities really feel like you have a sense now of where we're going and how the process is going to work. Um I want to just stress, I know you said it on the slide, but I think everybody should really grasp what this nice grant means. It means that there is no property tax dollars at all going
217into that $44 million project. It means the local share is coming from NAERTA, which would normally coming at be coming out of our capital reserve. So, that is an incredible win for our property taxpayers. Um it's just an incredible opportunity to do, you know, $45 million worth of work um paid for with essentially state level funding in both cases. So that's just terrific. Um did you want to add on there? >> I I just I I I think when you talk about this accelerated schedule that what you just said is tremendously important. if you if it feels like you know that that we're moving quickly with these things, but unfortunately based on the way grants work, if you don't time it and work it with it, you pass that opportunity. So if you if you
218don't jump in and and pull this work in early to be a part of this, you'd leave that $34 million basically for future work, which would then you'd lose the opportunity to have that local share offset. So this is kudos to the district for, you know, putting all that effort together and charging forward uh to do that because it's a benefit to the tax base. So it's tremendous. You know, you're applauded for that. >> It's actually a little bit more than that. >> Correct. >> It's a time time value of money. A dollar today is worth less tomorrow. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> So I I did want to um add somebody I think it was Mr. Wolf Gang asked about additional money and uh Dr. Chador Dr. to and I were had the opportunity to
219sit in the start the smart schools um act uh user group. Um so one of the things that will be coming as part of this is a a use of some of those funds to offset some of the camera work and other kinds of work in here. So they are already uh commending the the team for really looking for ways to offset some of these costs through other sources of grant funds. So it's all it's all really being very strategic >> EPC there's very thoughtful everywhere you come. >> A couple things I just wanted to just confirm which I think I understand from facilities but I just want to make sure. Um the utilization study my understanding is that that's going to include office space as well as instructional space. >> Yes, absolutely. Okay. >>
220Basically any anything inside your perimeter walls will be evaluated. >> Right. Including the including the buildings that are not student facing. So we have a lot of office space. you know, we're in a unique situation right now because of our um change in the way we're using a brookin. >> Um and so we are we are in opportunity, we have an opportunity now to make some decisions. Um so we need that information. And then one question I had is in some of early versions of these slides, there was some words that said theater theatrical equipment not reviewed um in the uh equitable distribution of large um instructional spaces. And I just wanted to make sure that I understood that because we had assumed that you would in fact review the theatrical equipment since that would
221be a necessary component of having a successful auditorium space. So did that get reviewed? >> Yes. >> Yeah, those items will be reviewed. I think it's just basically the information that in all these other meetings that we've had where we shared those spreadsheets >> at that point in time. >> You just hadn't gotten to it yet. >> You just hadn't been able to get that. Just wanted to make sure because we don't want to we don't want to be making assumptions based on budget numbers and that it's essential, right? We need to know that works. Do you want me to pause now or do and ask somebody else or should I ask my last question? >> Okay, I'll come back. >> Mr. CI, >> uh, thank you for the presentation. It was very edifying and
222I appreciate your attention to detail. uh like one small point you just kind of said as an aside that was really intriguing to me is you mentioned a student you'd worked with in the past that had served on a facilities committee and I know as a past member of our facilities committee a few years ago a lot of what our particular board facilities committee does is going into exec to discuss details of appointments of particular corporations or you know details of like land lease and and property sales so it doesn't really work for that but I'd be curious to hear from you or just to think of in general ways we could get students more involved in in maybe ancillary work related to facilities because it does seem like yes they are in the buildings
223all day and they they are coming at it from a different perspective. So that'd be really it sounds like there's a lot of it could be a really valuable uh place to to use student input. So facilities committee is a very general term and we start at a top at the leadership with the board facilities committee but then it moves down into each level. So when we get to the building level facility committee where we're talking with the principles and then getting into groups where if we're looking at the cafeteria we're going to have a facilities committee that is food service involved the people that work at that cafeteria directly the administration. as we start looking at what scope is going on in that building, we would encourage the leadership of that building to bring
224forward students that have, you know, the the ability and the initiative to to contribute to that. And from that, we've I've I've done this for many years and we've worked with many many facility groups. The students always bring a unique perspective. Um so we we'll be encouraging that at those levels to really have those those people step forward. >> Thank you. That's fantastic. I do know that all of our buildings have student leadership teams, student equity teams, so there's definitely people available to do that. Thanks. Thanks for clarifying that. >> That's very exciting. >> Miss Wilson, >> thank you for your presentation. My question is um thanking you for the eco-conscious and climate conscious considerations which go in hand I feel go hand in hand with behavioral economics just thinking about you know days of
225yonder and maybe the schools that we all went to could be maybe a little institutional drab buildings perhaps and I think you know what I see at least with Albany High and a lot of our recent um building like upgrades is that it's well lit, it's bright, state-of-the-art, uh and there's a obviously there's the cost effectiveness and yielding return on investment from doing things in that eco-conscious and climate conscious way. >> I'm curious, thank you for that. So um curious about you know beyond building conditions and the actual bu brick and mortar building uh do we have considerations about green space trees landscaping? Um there are parts of the city predominantly redline communities that have had buildings taken down and then it could be like very vast expanses of concrete or you know works in
226progress or like industrial areas and just to contrast with that do we factor that in with the building conditions too. >> Uh we we haven't assessed them from that standpoint. What we generally do is as a as a building project is ongoing, if we're involved involved in any of the exterior of it, whether we're manipulating some of the things we're going to be talking about are going to be arrival and departure, how is parent drop off, how are buses arriving. So, when we look at those types of things and we start working in those areas, we're always looking to incorporate uh any kind of landscaping and and improvements in the building that benefit that. It's always a challenge because you're always fighting the opportunity of where are they, the maintenance of them, uh all those
227types of things that go in it. But we will have those conversations as we narrow down through a project. >> Yeah. You know, I think just as sort of generally like responsible designers, we're always looking for those opportunities to incorporate green space or, you know, anything to uh improve the quality of both the inside and the outside space of a building. >> A lot of the questions I wanted to ask have already been asked. Great presentation. Uh there were some comments though in terms of the uh involvement of students. uh please do include the uh student leadership at the different buildings when you have these conversations and we have a fantastic CT program. So when we built when when we did the rebuild of the high school we made sure that the construction companies had
228opportunities for our students to participate in some of those uh there were students who participated with CSR for example and then you know found a career that way. >> So any other opportunities you can help us create for our our high school students are are immensely appreciated. uh and and let's have those discussions uh you know as you're making these plans for the future. Um this these are this presentation is more the process of how things are going to go. So there's not a lot of stuff of what is that we going to need to talk about. Uh so I'm I'm going to wait till you know February when you have more of that information. But Miss Savage, you have another question. >> Yeah, just a quick one. Uh would either of the uh reports,
229thank you, reports that you're working on um include like additions or anything or is it just going to be focused on the current assets of the school? >> So, but what ends up happening through the utilization study, you get a total accumulation of of what you have, what you what could potentially be excess or what could potentially be a shortfall. We're working with a neighboring district right now that once the utilization study was done, the projections proved out that they were short a number of classrooms. That data was then shared with state ed. We had a great meeting with state ed face toface where they evaluated all that information, supported it, agreed with us, and that gave them the opportunity to move forward. And and again, it's it's done early so that you're not waiting
230later. We want to we want to be proactive about these things. If there is something or a potential need for something like that, you're doing it ahead of time, engaging with state ed prior. But yes, that data will will fair out whether you need more or you or you have more. Maybe it's in a different location and maybe there's an opportunity to shuffle around. Those are the types of things that'll come out of the utilization study for us. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Go ahead. Um I just wanted to reflect back uh something I was planning to say anyway, but your last comment when you gave your presentation was about the um dynamic and supportive nature of our building leaders. And one of the things that I have recognized in all the conversations I've
231had with building leaders, which I've had a few because we're doing our school visits at the same time, it's just in timing. Um it building conditions survey five-year plan especially in the way we're doing it where we're doing kind of like this quick rush to do the first bit and then we'll do more. It's hard because we can't afford to do everything. Correct. >> We cannot afford to do everything. We're never going to be able to afford to do everything. People are going to put things on their wish list and they're not going to get them. >> And that's hard. Um, and what I know about our building leaders is that they believe that every student in our district should have comparable facilities >> and they will stand behind each other and they will recognize
232the value to the district as a whole. Um, when we say, "Okay, well, this year we're going to do X at this school, but we're not going to do Y at that school." And I love the fact that in this district I very rarely see principles being grasping. I see them saying, "Okay, I recognize as long as you can explain to me why that school's getting it." Of course, I want it for my students, but I really value every student in this district. And so, I just appreciate that you recognize that and made that part of your comment. >> And I wanted to echo it and reflect on it and celebrate it because it's a really important part of who we are as a district. >> Absolutely. >> No other questions. Thank you so much
233for your presentation. Looking forward to more. >> Look forward to seeing you again soon. >> Thank you. Okay, since we're not doing budget, let's move on to other business. Board committee reports, facilities meets uh Tuesday the 13th. We are going to be discussing priorities for the 5-year plan. And um uh we also have an a running log of deficiencies at the high school that we're tracking. Um, we have another meeting. We have two meetings in January. I believe the other one was well, it's the 13th and then um well, we definitely have the 13th. 13th is coming up. So, I'm not sure what's coming. It's a little late. It's a little late. So, that's uh and that's uh concludes my report for the facilities committee. Okay. Audit. >> So, um the audit committee is scheduled
234to meet uh February the 2nd, Monday. Um February the second. So, >> policy, Miss Creature, >> thank you. Uh the audit committee is scheduled to meet next Wednesday, the 14th at 5:30. And looking forward, I noticed uh when I was looking at my schedule for calendar year 2026 that the March and April policy committee meetings are scheduled uh concurrently with high school concerts. So we'll be reaching out to my uh members on the fellow policy committee members to determine if if hopefully if there are other Wednesdays they might be able to meet that month. Just a heads up. Thanks. >> Okay, Miss Savage. Uh so government relations is going to be government relating next week with our legislative um our local delegation meeting with Senator Fehee and Assembly Member Romero. Um so those meetings are
235set for next week. Hopefully my fellow um uh government relations folks have those on their calendar. Um and I did appreciate the suggestion from Mr. Wolf Gang and I wondered if the superintendent could really get a handle on what the issue is with county and vaccinations and really kind of figure out what the issue is so that we can make sure we're putting the right questions to the right people on that. Um and so we'll we'll talk about that at our next government relations meeting because that's a was a surprise for sure. Um school visits, we are almost done. We have 13 complete, one scheduled and four that are still working them out. So, I know everybody's working hard to try and get those nailed down. So, let's finish that. And ad hoc routine consent.
236We've had a little bit of a lull, a little bit of a lull in ad hoc routine consent as we've, you know, done things like holidays and such, but we're coming back trying to nail down those those two major factors, the field trips form and the um conference form and the related policies that underly those. So, um we're coming back I think on Monday, are we? It's Monday the 12th. So, we'll get some drafts soon for those. Cool. Okay. Thank you very much. >> Okay. I also want to just add that Nesba is going to have their capital conference on February 6th and their lobby day is on February 11th. So, but you have to register for both of them separately. So, make sure if you're interested do register for those events. Okay. Any other
237items for business? Okay, hearing none. Motion to adjurnn. M cranyavi. All in favor? That was quick. >> Thank you.