Board of Education Public Meeting | Live Stream | December 4th, 2025

001Good evening. My name is Shria Chhatur and I'm president of the City School District of Albany Board of Education. On behalf of the board, I welcome you to our meeting today. We have our student board member, Miss Cleana, uh Mr. Minyawi, board member man, secretary cree, vice president Wilson, member Savage, member uh Wolf Gang with us. Uh and we also have the superintendent and members of the cabinet joining us either in person or virtually. Uh this meeting is being livereamed and the instructions to view the meeting as well as a link to the agenda including all the documents we'll discuss are available at albonychools.org. This is a good time for me to note that if you're here tonight to speak in public comment, you should sign up with with our board clerk, Miss Simmons, here

002to my right. Uh, and with that introduction, I we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the pledge of allegiance. Ladies, the United States of America and to the for it stands nation. 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 our diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success. Okay. And today we have a special guest. Um, Mr. Leco, would you like to introduce our our guest? >> Yes, absolutely. It is our pleasure this evening to welcome Alb Mayor Kathy Sheen. She is, as I think everybody knows, about to not be ALB Mayor Kathy

003Sheen any longer. So, we wanted to take this opportunity to invite her and uh and thank her for all of her service to our community over the last 12 years. >> Thank you. Uh it is um really as I think about one of the things that motivated me to want to run for mayor, it was working so closely with so many of the people who are here and still active and still engaged in ensuring that all of our children have the opportunity to learn, have the opportunity to succeed, have the opportunity to follow their passions and their hopes and their dreams And one of the things that we really focused on as the city and recognizing that we are a separate entity and that this district is run by a board that is elected, that

004takes their uh their duties incredibly seriously and by an administration that is really focused on our children that we as the city could be strong partners. And one of the areas where we focused on partnering was with our summer youth employment program. and in creating a program that didn't just keep kids occupied or off the street, but was a program that was really intentional and that was built with this district and with the expertise and advice of people who work with the district to ensure that our young people have a meaningful experience, have the opportunity to see themselves in their future, have the opportunity for enrichment. And we have worked over the years together and worked with administrators in this district to say we will pay children to do just about anything as long as

005we know that it is going to help them and benefit them. And in 2019, the University of Albany studied our program and found that young people who participated in it were far more likely to graduate from high school. and that where we had the most impact was in those kids that were in the lowest 20th and 30th percentile of the class. And that says a lot about how we demonstrated that the city and the district when we work together can really transform lives. And so it has been a pleasure to serve this city. It has been a privilege to work with the members of this board and to ensure that we're doing all that we can for our young people who are, as we know, the future of this city. So, thank you so much.

006>> It's been amazing what you've done for the city and the school district. Uh, I mean, we we actually now have the deeds from of school buildings. uh believe it or not I mean even though we we were in inhabiting those buildings and and running those buildings uh because some archaic uh rule that was forgotten nothing everything was somewhere in the city records and not with the district. So all of that has been changed. Uh you made so many improvements in through parks and recreations providing uh open spaces where our youth can um have fun, be kids. Uh and of course the the student employment program that has opened door the city opened doors in so many departments uh for so many kids including my own. Um and uh it it shows them things that

007they wouldn't normally see within the school buildings. Right? This is a real job. here's what happens. How do you engage? Uh and trying to work with adults in a in a in a work environment. Um and and the Lincoln Park pool, I mean, that's latest and greatest. I mean, it's amazing the things that uh people I hear talk about from the surrounding suburbs is is the Lincoln Park Pool and the Albany High School. So, thank you. Thank you for your continued support uh over over the last decade. um looking forward to you to what you're doing for the next phase now. >> Well, we will remain committed to Albany. Uh I now have a three and a half yearear-old granddaughter who will at some point will uh be uh attending your incredible prek program and

008uh look forward to continuing to be part of this very special place that we call Albany. >> Thank you. And um mayor, on behalf of of our nearly 10,000 students and more than 2,000 staff, I also want to thank you. Uh it was within 12 hours after I was appointed uh way back in May of 2023 that we met. Uh Mr. Leco set up three important meetings for me um that my the day after I was appointed. Um those meetings were with the mayor, Chief Hawkins, and the Times Union. And I remember saying to Mr. Leco who I'd known for 10 minutes. uh what you know this is a little intimidating these groups and and um I remember Ron said this relationship is is critically important between the superintendent and the mayor and although it's

009only been um two and a half years I I really want to thank you uh as our board president said to our your commitment um to our students not just summer youth employment and pools and parks although those are important um but leading safety uh safety matters in our community speed zone cameras, lowering speed limits, making sure students in our community have uh access to not just warm clothes, but brand new clothes. $41,000 raised um uh uh for that effort. Uh access to student supports um and family supports. and most of our time and our communication sadly, but it's part of the job is is um during a crisis moment, but uh it has always been reassuring to know that uh we could speak or text literally at all hours of of the night to

010figure out how we can support students and their families when um when they're dealing with a crisis. And most recently, and I know I've reported on it, um here in other places, uh the mayor was a was a keynote uh during our leadership conference talking about what a future ready Albany looks like. And uh we had more than 80 of our school leaders there. And to hear about uh the significant investments that have been made and that are coming and the investments in infrastructure um and the vision for downtown and waterfront and bringing in uh exciting jobs which will bring in revenue and will bring in um people who want to be part of a a flourishing downtown. that that has been your vision and and that that brief but mighty conversation you had with

011our leaders uh spun a lot of heads but also gave significant purpose to our work. And so uh again on behalf of nearly 10,000 students and more than 2,000 staff members, we'd like to thank you. Um we have a couple gifts. We we want to explain I want to explain one of them. Make sure you don't dig into this. This is not a cake. Um, but what this is is this is um a 3D rendering designed and printed uh by some of our STEM students in Albany High School, which is a aerial view of the new and improved and renovated Albany High School from our ribbon cutting ceremony that you attended back uh in August. So, we wanted to present you with this and a plaque and certainly uh have a photo opportunity with you.

012So, thank you. >> Thank you so much. All right. So, next thing next thing on our agenda is the student board member report. Hello. Since our last report, most of our ongoing initiatives remain consistent with steady progress being made in each area with the Falcon Pass initiative update. The Falcon Pass details have officially been finalized at the student government level and we are preparing the draft to submit to our principal, Miss Cmerford. As stated before, the program will reward students with strong attendance, academics, and behavior with in incentives such as headphones privileges during free periods and spring access to the new courtyard. And for our student voice survey update, the student voice survey, it is still in development. We continue working on questions that will help us understand what students value in our school events

013and learning environments and our day-to-day experiences. This remains an active work in progress for our debate for change event update. Planning for the debate for change event has officially been completed. Promotional materials are done and ready for approval and the event is ready to begin on 11th of December next week. It will offer students a space to discuss relevant educational topics while participating communication while my apologies while practicing communication and critical thinking skills. And as the weather gets colder, students are appreciative of the coats and winter essentials that have been donated. These contributions continue to support many students during this winter season. So overall, our projects remain on track with the same goals outlined in our previous report with continued progress on the Falcon Pass, the student voice survey, and the debate for change. We

014look forward to further development and implementation in the forward coming weeks. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Super Hawk Rider, do you have a report for us? >> I do, and I'll turn it over to Mr. Leco to get us going. Before I begin, I'm going to have to admit that I feel a little bit like Alice Through the Looking Glass on the side of the room. >> Everybody's different. I'm usually over there. >> We are excited tonight to welcome Alb High School senior Kais Bjay, who has been named a semi-finalist in the prestigious National Merit Scholarship Program. Kais's score on last year's PSAT exam placed him in the top 1% of 1.3 million juniors who took the exam nationwide. That is impressive. And along with Kais, we are also glad to welcome

015Alb High principal Jodie Cmerford to introduce us to Kais and tell us a bit more. >> Thank you, Mr. Leco. Good evening, board members and superintendent. I am proud to introduce Kaiser as our National Merit Scholarship semi- finalist this evening. Um with over as Mr. Leco said 1 million entrance for the scholarship competition. Kais was among 1600 students nationwide to earn the semi finalist status. He achieved a remarkable score of 1490 on the PSAT qualifying him for this honor. Only finalists are considered for the national merit scholarships and approximately half of the finalists will become a merit scholarship winners. Winners are selected on their abilities, skills and accomplishments with announcements typically made in March. These awards are unique because every finalist is considered and winners are named in every state. The number of awards in

016each state is determined by using the same representational process used to designate the semi-finalist. Finalists compete within um the state for over 2500 national merit scholarships and the award would be $2,500 as well. And it's chosen by a committee of college admission officers and high school counselors. Cal Kais is a talented pianist in our orchestra and has been playing since the age of five. He is a member of both the National Honor Society and our French honor society. In addition, he's an active participant in the French club and he has earned his seal of biiteracy. Academically, he has challenged himself with several advanced courses, including nine of our college and high school courses. Kayla has applied to five colleges and hopes to attend one of his top choices, either Bingmpington University or McGill University. And

017we sincerely hope that his intended major in math education will one day bring him back to Albany High School as an educator. So without further ado, I'll allow Kayla to say a few words. >> All right. Thank you, Miss Cumber. >> Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. I'd like to express my gratitude to the school board, Superintendent Hawk Rider, and also Principal Cmerford for all the work they do and for having me here today. I'd also like to thank my parents, sorry, who supported me all the way and who pushed me to study harder for my exams and my twin brother who stuck by my side and supported me my whole life. I owe a lot of my success to the public education system of Albany and to the many amazing teachers

018and experiences I've been fortunate enough to have over the years. The quality education I've received from Pine Hills Elementary, Myers Middle School, and now Albany High has been instrumental to my achievements, and I've never taken it for granted. My experience with Alb High School has been really fantastic and has pushed me to new heights. I've met many new friends, found new hobbies, took many interesting classes, and learned so much thanks to my many wonderful teachers. Having such an amazing experience has really solidified my love of learning, and I genuinely could not have done what I did without it. I just wouldn't have been as invested. I'm really looking forward to continuing my learning experience well into college, where I plan to pursue math, education, and music. I'm glad my Albany school experiences have made me

019feel prepared and I'm confident and excited for the next chapter of my life. Thanks again to the school board and the superintendent for this opportunity and thank you all for your time. >> All right, we just have our board members and the superintendent come out for a few pictures and also Kais's family. If you'd like to join us, please do. Whoever sitting over there >> and you can come a whole bunch of us. Okay. >> Come over here. >> I'll sit with you. >> Oh, what are we doing? >> You can do whatever you want to do. >> Do you want us together or >> That's fine if you want to. >> Why is she telling me to come? Sorry. >> It is now my pleasure to introduce principal Sophia Noel and friends uh to

020tell us more about the great things happening this year at >> at Thomas O'Brien Academy of Science and Technology. Is this on? Okay. >> Hi, good afternoon. Well, actually, good evening. My name is Sophia Newwell and I am I have the honor and privilege to be the principal of Thomas O'Brien Academy of Science and Technology. I am very thankful for this opportunity to speak to the board and cabinet and the world about all the great things that are taking place at Toast. So, thank you. >> Oh, you ready? >> So, I just would like to say that um as you can see toast vision mission statements definitely aligned with the district. Toast will be a community school that provides equitable educational opportunities and cultivate nurturing relationships with a safe environment for all students to be

021successful. Toast school's mission statement is the mission of Toast is to educate our students, our school community through learning strategies that reinforce reinforce curiosity, discovery, observation, problem solving, inquiry, and creativity across the discipline. Our goals at TOES is to increase student achievement, enhance the delivery of quality culturally responsive education and instruction, partners with diverse community, and provide learning experience that are rooted in our science and technology theme. So before we begin our presentation, I would like to introduce my great team. As I already mentioned, I am Sophia Noel and I'm the building principal. I'm Christina Zantini. I'm the assistant principal. >> Currently, our homeschool coordinator, Aaron Herell, and our community side coordinator, James Cobbins, one is not available to be present today, but we wanted to shout them out. So, hey guys. >> I'm Senica

022Wallace. I'm the ELA instructional coach. >> And Jackie Lappy, STEM coach. >> Deborah Cal McNicholas, STEM teacher. So, I just wanted to talk quickly to you about our demographics. Um, as you can see, this is um for our pre-K through fifth grade students. I just wanted to highlight that, you know, we do have a true representation of our district for our multilingual learners, which is about 20% of the population, which we see across the district, is one in five students. Um, and our black and brown students do make up above um more than half of our population. I wanted to go ahead and discuss our subfocus and highlights. We are currently um focusing on three components which our first one is evidence-based instructional strategies and collaborative learning which we work to ensure that all students

023are engaged and are using a lot of their communication skills. Um, our second component is our MTSSI, which is our evidence-based I did not shut that alarm. Evidence-based instruction. And it is nice because our behavior support team meets once a month with our each grade level um to discuss with teachers areas of student concerns. And then our third component is our community schools which focuses on our student and family engagement which you'll hear later on in the slides. So I get to talk to you about our attendance and as you can see it's looking real good. These are December numbers so you know it's December 4th. So I just want to put that out there. Um so as you can see you know attendance is something that we really um focus on and encourage. We

024do highlight our students for perfect attendance, excellent attendance and then also most improved three times a year and um we are doing a lot of attendance challenges to support not only the students but the families. Um and so we are really encouraging students not only to be at school but also be at school on time to really get the day started because we start with a social emotional learning block right off in the morning. So we want to make sure that the students get that time to check in. As mentioned toast is a community school. So far, we've been able to currently partner with 22 community partners. Some of those partners includes Radics, United Tenants, Fourth Family, 15 Love, U Albany, and RPI. Also, we have a hundred about almost half of our students are

025currently enrolled in one or more afterchool program. Some of our afterchool programs include African dance, tennis, ecology, engineering, and um we definitely have a lot of STEM activities. We just started a Lego club and also a chess club after school. All students participate in one or more inschool enrichment programs. So we try to not just provide afterchool enrichment programs and opportunities. We also tried to provide opportunities during the school day. We have had you all come in during the school day. We have for family um doing programming also during the school day. So we're trying to make sure that we are providing opportunities not just after school because sometimes staying after school is a barrier and so we also try to make sure that students can have that same experience during the school day. We

026one of our goals this year is increasing family engagement. I think that's something that we all try to strive and work on. And so this year we have had several events. We have had our walk talk and talk event. We had open house. We had trunk or treat and spooky stem night. Um we're looking to have a family movie night. We do invention convention. We have a science fair. We do a beautiful family event which are which is our cultural night. We have maker space day where um you all will come in and do activities with the students during the school day. And we also have a power lunch series. And so over the last two years, we were able to bring in different um speakers to speak to students, the fourth and fifth grade

027students about their career. We make sure that the person career is tied to STEM. This year, what we're hoping to do, we've been in contact with Maggie Paul Mary, who is now the district new um director of CTE. We're looking to have an opportunity that the CTE instructors could do a power lunch with our students and once we done with the rotation the students would be able to go over to Albany High and actually see the CTE programs. Recently um the board of regions, New York State Board of Regents has proposed that students before they graduate should have at least one unit of um CTE or financial literacy. And so I think the earlier that we expose students to these opportunities, the better prepared they will be for high school. >> Yeah, that's you. This

028is me. Here we go. So, we saw you last year and a lot has happened since then. Um, since we saw you, toast students have been on the move. Uh, every single grade level was provided with a field trip to my science connectity and our fifth graders were able to visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Um, and that was all possible because of the continued support of the Renaissance Corporation of Albany. Um, last May, Toast was chosen for United Ways 518 day. volunteers from the Albany Firewolves came and we had a large donation from Curtis Lumber uh and we were able to rebuild our garden beds. They were in pretty bad shape. Uh it was great. Families came and volunteered. Students cycled through as assistants. Um and the younger students

029were able to decorate some of the beds. um our gardening it it continues our efforts to uh support our families and provide real life connection for our students around gardening, food production um and nutrition science. Uh Sophia mentioned to you about Walk, Chalk, and Talk, which is our teacher staff meet and greet. Um the fifth grade also has already visited U Alby's ET Tech and drone labs this year. We were one of the earliest participants in their outreach program. So, we're pretty locked in and we have a really good partnership with U Albany at this point. Um, they support all of our events. They show up at our spooky steam night, which was in the fourth year this year. It was our second annual PTA fundraiser uh color run. We have hundreds of our families

030participating. We've amped up our monthly studentr run PBIS assemblies and celebrations. we in our effort to engage more families are now inviting the families of the grade level that is presenting um and on the day we have our PBIS assembly it's a very special day it's one Friday a month um our equity team has initiated a steam buddy initiative and um it's reflected in our SEP and what happens is we pair an upper grade with a lower grade on an engineering project project and we're really cultivating like the culture of cooperative science learning um within the culture fabric of our building. You hear me repeating things if you've been here. Um I know you're new Mr. Wolf Gang. Uh but we're really looking now towards building like legacy programming. Uh stuff that can kind of

031begin to run itself and can be passed on for people later. Ready? Um, our mentality in steam as a steam hub uh is to be focused on future ready education and local STEM opportunity exposure for our students and we're building legacy into that as well. This year the STEM lab continues to be fully hands-on workshop model except now all students at Toast K to 5 have a STEM lab class. Um, last year we started an early childhood AI awareness education uh in conjunction with AI Edu's trailblazer program. This is an equity focused program. It is early childhood. This is a no techbased understanding around machine learning um and coding and things of that nature. And we are looking to expand the grades and the number of sessions that those students have this year. Uh for

032the second year, we are continuing our programming with Cornell Cooperative. They came for 12 weeks last year to work with our first graders, six in the fall and six in the spring, uh aligned with our science curriculum, and we are continuing that this year. Um, Spooky Steam Night you hear over and over again continues to use representatives from within the district. This year we had Jeremy Dudley from the tech department come with the brand new VR headset kit which is blows ours out of the water right now. And you Albany came with their portable drone lab uh stuff and the tech department continues to support our work. Uh, our tech our resident tech coach Sue McCoy who's cohorted with us spends one day a week in our building facilitating edtech adoption and integration for our

033teachers. Um, the maker space has added resources, uh, benefiting from community schools, was able to buy us a cool cardboard table saw that's safe for kids. So, the things that they are dreaming about building are are really able to come true now. I'm trying to build a full-size playhouse, but we'll see how that goes. Um, yeah, maker space is the place to be, right? Uh, for year two, U, Albany came and did a maker space takeover day. um where they came with their stuff and their students and our students cycle through that and continues to host the power lunch series. Uh last spring in the absence of a citywide science fair um toast established a triple stranded stem a triple stranded STEM fest um we really looked past the traditional science fair uh programming so

034that we can embrace the interests of more students. So the three strands are traditional experimentation strand which runs the same way as every other science fair since we were kids. Um an invention convention strand with the hopes of feeding kids to the new local affiliate um and a research strand. So our winner in invention last year is in sixth grade this year but he is submitting his project for invention convention. Um, okay. And finally, I am very excited to share with you, um, we're expanding our garden with a focus on output to support our backpack program and provide food for the local community in the toast community with our partners from Radics and Cornell. Um, made possible by an urban farms award that we just found out about um, for $50,000. Last year, I was

035one of the five people from our building who was sent to the Magna Schools of America conference where we visited science school science themed schools and learned key components of a successful magnet program. After a follow-up magnet review of our building, here are two recommendations that we were able to lift in the 2526 school year. First, we strengthened our partnership with the prek to ensure they feel part of our school family. Second, we began weaving, literacy, numeracy, community schools and our into our magnet themes. These shifts has strengthened our magnet identity and created a more cohesive and engaging learning opportunity for all students. So, some of the challenges that we have experienced um this year and and I think that they kind of mirror what we've said last year were some of the staffing that

036we have incur um incurred in our 812 classrooms um for our self-contained students. Um as well as specialized training for deescalation for our TAs because of the staffing issues. um we are receiving a lot of subs who don't necessarily have that specialized training in TCIS. Um and then just thinking about the lack of afterschool care that we do have for our prek students. Um, so what we're doing to kind of mitigate these challenges is continuing to um collaborate with both human resources and special ed when we're looking to hire and train qualified staff and then also partnering with community- based partners um to help accommodate our prek students. So some of the successes that we have so far this year is that we definitely have a high level of family engagement. We had discussed that

037earlier. There has been an increase of um community events including our color run, our balloon over Broadway and our PBIS assemblies. More than half of Toast body have a family member participating in parent teacher conference. Parent teacher conference this year was a huge success and we look forward to increasing the amount of families that participate in February. It's February. Yeah. and then 30% increase in our family responding to our community school survey. It's hard to get family engagement especially on surveys and so we have done all of the incentivizing that we can but we definitely have made an increase and we're hoping that when it's time for us to provide families with the the dity survey that we also have an increase in that as well. But something else that has been a success is

038that we really are working on creating a welcoming and affirming environment for our students. Um, Zantini, my assistant principal, had attended the retention culture and climate um, >> retreat this summer and she came back with all of these great ideas and she's like we are going to welcome all the kids every morning. So now every morning we are outside welcoming the students. We has we have also have staff now helping us welcoming the students. Something that little has definitely changed the culture and climate in the classroom in the building. Um the students feel it. We have had parents say hey when I went to school the principal wasn't outside welcoming us. And so is I I feel to do that shift for culture and climate. It's just the little things. It's not the big things.

039It's just the little things. And the little things become big things. And so it's just building those relationships. And we definitely you can feel it in the building. And so thank you Santini for having me outside in the cold, you know, and so >> coats, gloves, whatever down. But but it has definitely the students are just happy to see us in the morning and just by doing that it just really changed how their day could be. So those are some of our successes. We continue to strengthen our student leadership team. We strive to make them the face of our building. So during our assemblies, they greet parents, they greet the students, they usher them in. any staff when we have um uh staff come into our building, we really have them wearing their little sashes

040and greeting and telling them like where to go throughout the building and really taking ownership of our building. Um this year they will continue to launch our No Place for Hate pledge and continue service projects throughout the year. We're really excited for that. So, the moment that you all been waiting for. So, we can talk about toast all day every day, but I think that students can say it better than we can at times. And so, here is a a little video of our students talking about toast. >> Hi, my name is Kaya and I'm in fourth grade. And what I like about my school is hanging out with my friends. Hi, my name is Mayan and I'm in fourth grade. And what I like about this school is is that I get to play

041with my friends. >> My name is Lennox and what I like about Toast Elementary School is having friends. >> My name is Juliet and I'm in fourth grade. And um what I like about my school is science and constellations. >> My name is Eliza. I'm in fourth grade. And what I like the the best about my school is that we have a turtle in our science lab. >> My name is Jack. I am in fourth grade. And what I love about Toast Elementary School is its science class. It is so it is super fun and and we get to learn a lot about science. My name is Hidea and what I and I'm in fourth grade and what I like about my school is that we get to do a lot of science. What we

042love about Toast is honestly the opportunities we get to have about like STEM, math, ELA, and the events >> and like during like one of the events like sweet theme night, color run like trunk or treat. My favorite thing about Toast is that we do many fun activities like the STEMfest and science fair and we also get to do many fun field trips. My favorite thing about the about my school is that the science is pretty is very good and I really like the STEM fest. Hello toast. I'm Raina. I'm in the fifth grade. Hi. And I'm Madison. I'm also in the fifth grade. The thing I like about Toast is that there's many fun and interactive after school programs for everyone to enjoy. The one thing that I like about Toast is cosmetology because

043Miss Davis is so >> Thank you. And that concludes tonight's district highlights. Okay. >> Thank you, Mr. Leco and our friends from Toast. Always impossible to uh present after one of our fantastic schools do. Uh couple updates uh for the board and the community. will turn things over to Kate thesis, our HR director, to give uh her monthly um update around staffing and hiring. >> Thank you. Um so this month I'm able to show you vacancies as of today versus a month ago. Um and you can see that we've had a slight dip in the percentage of overall vacancies, but unfortunately we haven't made a whole lot of progress uh filling our TA vacancies. Um we did fill some hall monitor vacancies and we continue uh to have teacher and non-classroom professional vacancies but you

044can see that the percentage is significantly lower than the percentage of ABSU vacancies which are our the support staff. Uh we hosted a job fair yesterday evening at the high school and we hope it was ex it was uh geared toward substitute teaching assistants and teachers. uh we weren't really interviewing for any other positions and we hope to get um at least four or five substitutes on boarded from yesterday's job fair. Um so we continue to try to think of new and different ways to get TAs and other support staff in the door. Um but yeah, I'm happy to be able to present these numbers with some trends going forward. >> Thank you. I mentioned earlier uh the mayor's work with uh cash for coats campaign. We uh believe we eclipsed a record of raising

045more than $41,000 which will provide two thou or 900 new coats and more than 2,000 hats and pair of gloves for uh Albany students. And we thank the mayor for her leadership over the last dozen years and look forward to working with Mayor Electa um moving forward as well. uh more than 18,000 new coats and tens of thousands of hats, gloves, and scarves over the 18-year um this 18-year effort. So, many thanks uh to the mayor uh for to for her commitment uh for the last dozen years and uh Albany students will be walking to school um warmer these days. And uh there's no better segue than to talk about the weather. Uh winter weather is here. We had a snow day on Tuesday. Uh we have two more left in our in our calendar.

046Uh we want to let folks know that um certainly we evaluate all options including a 2-hour delay. Uh particularly uh regarding the weather on Tuesdays, a delay uh really didn't matter. The snow was coming and um it it came when we expected and it stayed a little bit longer. Um but want to remind everyone that you can get up-to-date information on our website. If you work for us, we will email you as soon as the decision is made. Um certainly by way of school messenger, all of our uh social media outlets as well as the newspaper website and local TV and radio. We have more winter concerts. We've had a concert each day this week that wasn't a snow day. We have more coming up. Make sure that you check out our website uh for

047the full list of concerts and let people know that our concerts extend into January. So, they don't end uh at the end of 2025. They do extend into uh January. And uh we hope that we will see you at any number of events showcasing our talented students. And speaking of talented students, a few of them uh will be performing tomorrow in the snow at Academy Park right out in front of our uh district office and across the street from uh from city hall. Members of the Albanets and the uh trouidors will be singing festive music and our culinary students uh our CTE culinary students I believe are serving hot chocolate and we'll have cookies and other treats. Uh, so the festivities begin at 5:00 pm. I believe the actual tree lighting is at 6 pm

048and we hope to see you tomorrow night. And that concludes my report for tonight. >> Thank you, Supin board colleagues, as is our usual practice, I ask you to prioritize your questions and ask your most important question first. We'll start with one question for each board member and then depending on time, we can go on second round. Um, we'll start with Cleana. Not a question, more of a comment. As I did say before in my report, the students really do appreciate the coats and the winter essentials. Like I know I do because not everyone usually like has the finances to have coats in the winter and it is really hard especially this winter. And just to comment on the presentation before with the last school. Am I able to do so? >> To comment on

049the presentation. Go ahead. >> Yeah, it was quite amazing to see all the advances the last school had. It's quite clear to see the staff, they really care about their students and that's what clearly binds them together because it was so refreshing just seeing them wanting to push their tables together, so excited to tell us about all these things they're doing for their students. So, it was quite interesting and amazing to see. >> Thank you, Mr. Olsk. >> Uh, no questions at this time, >> Mr. Alini. So I wanted to uh comment on Miss Thes's uh presentation uh and I just want to acknowledge that slow uh slow incrementation is still good you know um and we understand that it is not easy to find folks for those roles and uh it's um still good

050to see that we're Even if it's not a whole percent, we're moving in the right direction. If we move in the right direction enough for long enough, we'll be good. Hypothetically speaking. So, thank you, >> Miss Man. >> I have no comments, >> Miss Savage. Screechy. Yep. >> Thanks. No comments tonight. Thanks, >> Miss Wilson. All positive things but no questions or comments. >> No questions from me either. It's always fun to to listen to as as Diana mentioned hear about the what's happening in our schools. Um and toast being a STEM school. I mean I have a special honor in my heart for them. Uh I mean last year I had I actually visited uh that was one of my visiting schools as board members go to every school and I still remember you

051know they had this invention convention and um there was a student who had made the best sneaker and the things of the things that kids come up with it's just amazing to see the creativity that exists and um I I you know every school I mean it's amazing what the teachers do to to encourage that and promote that creativity. in in whatever field STEM or otherwise you know um because that's the future then nurturing their talents is something we all should be thinking about. Okay. Uh moving on to the next part of our agenda is public comment. Okay. This is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public. Uh the board always welcomes input for the community uh from the community about the decisions we are making. We set aside up

052to 30 minutes for each meeting uh to hear from district residents, parents, students, and other members of a community. If there are more comments than that can be accommodated in 30 minutes, which we we don't anticipate today, we may choose to extend the length of the public comment period or alternately establish a second public comment period later in the meeting. We also accept comments virtually on the same basis as those in person and we accept comments in writing and by voicemail. We welcome comments in English and in any other language. We will provide translation when necessary. All comments must include the commenters's name and place of residence. We do not accept anonymous comments. All the information about these many ways to share your thoughts with us are available at addressing the board information at albonychools.org.

053We ask all commenters to 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. And we have one person signed up for inerson comment today, Becky Zimmerman. While I recognize you, please state your name and city of residence. Statements are restricted to a maximum of 3 minutes. And Miss Cree, your board secretary will give you a one minute notice and a 10-second notice. And I'll notify you if your time is expired. It's a good idea to recoup occasionally to see these notices so you won't be surprised at the end of your three minutes. Also, please note that the board's policy is not

054to respond during the public comment period. If you need a response, please contact us by email, phone, or postal mail. Our contact information is available at aubonychools.org/bee and I or one of the board members will respond on on behalf >> and thank you for the opportunity to present to the board. I am Becky Zimmerman speaking on behalf of the Albany CPAC, the Special Education Parent Advisory Council. As we continue our presentations to share information about the 11% of our school district population who are served by individualized education plans or IEPs. Today, I'm speaking about intellectual disability. I am particularly happy to be here tonight to speak to you about this topic on what is a special night for our family. one son being honored for his National Merit Semi-finalist achievement and one of my other

055sons, Emil, who is himself living with level three autism and intellectual disability and who we are equally proud of. Emil, we're going to say hi now. Right. You want to say hi? >> Hello. Intellectual disability, which represents about 6% of special education students, is diagnosed when someone has significant lifelong challenges in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior that present before the age of 18. There are many different conditions that can contribute to or co-occur with intellectual disability and it is often accompanied by a developmental disability such as autism or down syndrome, for example. These individuals develop and learn more slowly and usually require accommodations or support from special education teaching assistance or help for help with their learning. They also often need assistance to acquire daily living and adaptive skills such as help with communication, self-care,

056and social skills. And many of these students receive extensive related services such as speech, occupational, and physical therapy. These students often require a transition plan that maps out their skills and goals and details the supports and services they will need in order to be successful postschooling. There are many school district employees who impact every facet of such a student's life over their school career. And we are grateful for the support our son has received from his many amazing teachers, teaching assistants, therapists, social workers, and school psychologists who have gotten him to where he is today. Living with level three autism and intellectual disability impacts everyone in the family and is a full family 247 365 effort. So I wanted our whole family up here so that I can tell Emil and my other sons how

057proud I am of them in front of the school district which they are product of. Thank you all for this opportunity to tell our story and let you know how vitally important school supports are for students with IEPs. of course for the student but really also for the whole family so that every kid in the family can thrive. All right, Emil, that's all. Let's thank everyone for their time. >> Goodbye. >> Thank you. We appreciate all public comments and we find hearing from a community member is very valuable. Again, our contact information for both public comment and routine correspondence is alsochools.org/boe. We now move to the part of our meeting we call routine consent. During this portion of the meeting, we approve routine matters to the district which include items like contracts, field trips, personnel

058matters, and 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 our 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 adopt routine consent agenda. Mr. Almanavi, second by Miss Man. Any set aides? Uh, Miss Cr. >> Thank you. I'd like to set aside item number 13, educational vistas. Okay. All in favor of adopting routine consent agenda list. Number 13, Educational Visters. Okay. That's unanimous. Okay. Number 13, Educational Visters Inc. >> That's great. >> Thanks. Um I had a question if someone could confirm about this contact about this contract um

059whether the need whether there's a need for a separate data privacy agreement because on the contract cover sheet portions is initial to indicate that it's not applicable but then there is a whole attached statewide data privacy agreement but it's actually part of a contract between the Renolier City School District and Educational Vistas and it looks like some parts of that big long other contract say that other. It looks like in some cases you can sign on to a contract between another district and that company, but then it looks like the one that's specific to New York references like the specific district privacy policy. So you go to that one and then it references Rinsier and I was like getting kind of confused. But then I thought also like the appendex A off the off the

060privacy agreement doesn't talk doesn't like list the scope of work at all. It just says what the company does. So, I was like, "Oh, is is what we're having this company do even bring the data stuff into play? And if it doesn't, maybe we can take it out." Yes. Um, this contract is an RFP. They are our scoring vendor for state assessments. So, what it says they're going to do in appendix A is what they're going to do. Um, they're going to it's identical to what was submitted last year. Um, but they receive all of our paper tests, our computer-based assessments. They do all the scoring. They make sure everything gets transmitted over to the regional information center for um processing to send the data up to New York State. So, absolutely, data privacy is

061required. Um, the data privacy agreement that you're looking at is part of the statewide uh district consortium that is if uh in July at the reorg meeting. Um, you all approved our ability to participate in the statewide data privacy consortium through NEARIC, which means that when they there's always a district that has to initiate the request for the data privacy agreement for that particular vendor. Um, and then New York State takes over the process of getting all of the requirements in place. And it's not just New York State, it's actually um they actually partner with other states as well, which is why you see so many different states listed. >> Excellent. If this is the one that you got through NERK and this is all part of that, then that answers all my questions and

062that satisfies me completely. Thank you. >> You are welcome. You will likely see many in the future uh data privacy agreements that look just like that because that database grows and grows and grows and all we have to do is just piggyback off of that. Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you. I I forgot to make the motions in the right order. So, Miss Cr makes the first motion. I seconded it. All in favor? Okay. That's unanimous. I don't want NA to get mad at me. Okay. So as is a n uh normal practice we have arrange our agenda with all action items at the beginning unless something unexpected happens. We do not anticipate the board will take any further actions tonight. The balance of the meeting will be items of discussion some

063of which will lead to an action item either at our next meeting or a future meeting. And that brings us to the next discussion topic which is legislative priorities. Mr. Leco. I don't have a license for this thing, but I think I'm driving. >> I know. Just I know I'm doing this for including reading because I can't see that far. Uh, thank you. I'm glad to have the opportunity to be here tonight to talk with you about the work that the government relations committee has been doing uh this fall and uh queuing up what we'll be doing through the rest of the fall and the winter. Uh and just as all of the work that we do in the school district, the uh the work of the government relations committee is aligned with the vision,

064mission, and goals of the district. And we'll briefly outline the uh legislative priorities that the committee has developed for this cycle. they'll look they'll look very familiar because we're still uh pounding on some of the same issues uh for good reason as you'll see and then our a brief look at our legislative advocacy schedule over the next few months. uh the the committee has developed these four primary uh priorities for the upcoming cycle and again they are all topics that we have uh been talking with our legislators about for for many years and making progress on uh for many years. We do feel uh very supported by uh by our leaders at the state level within the context of the their ability to help us with it, you know, in the context of the work

065that the work that they do. But we do feel like we're listened to uh but we don't feel like we're all the way there on on many of these and we will continue pushing and advocating for them as we as we move forward. At the top of our list is uh equitable school funding as the state reworks the school funding for formula. Uh, equity and access for all students remains a top priority for uh, for us as as an organization as we talk about all of the all of the needs that our our schools have and our students have and our families have. And that we'll continue to emphasize that this year along with the critical importance for uh, for the new formula to look at the individual needs of communities and school districts. Uh,

066fair pre pre kindergarten funding. We are getting there, but we're not there. and we'll continue to advocate for that as we have been for a decade or more. Uh expanding and diversifying our teacher pipeline through our CTE platform is again a critical a critical component for us. And then some of the work that we're doing in our social, emotional, and mental health uh arena both on our own and in partnership with other organizations in the in the community. uh to dive down just a little bit deeper into what some of the unique uh unique needs are in our community as we as we advocate for that as a part of the school funding formula. Uh I think you all know these uh these factors very well, but they uh they are factors that challenge us

067as a as an organization and as a community. uh almost twothirds of our property in the city is taxexempt and that leaves the the burden of uh supporting everything in our city to people who own one-third of of the property. Our child poverty rate in the city is among the highest in the state and the nation. Uh our charter school expenses are over $40 million annually and our ENL enrollment comprises 18% of our student population. And if it were not for last year, that would be the highest percentage in the history of the city school district of Albany. So we we still have a very in spite of the changes at the federal level in terms of immigration policies, we still have a very high number and percentage of ENL students in our school district

068and serving those students is critically important to us. >> Fair pre kindergarten funding. We were as again as as as you're aware because we've been talking about this here for years and we we're getting closer uh to having it solved at the state level. We were one of the first implementers of full day prek in in the state and in in implementing those programs in 1990. Uh but the in many ways the state's funding formula has not yet caught up uh to the the funding that they began with all those years ago and as an early implement we're suffering from that to a certain extent. Uh they've made the state has made progress as they've emphasized uh uh adding prek statewide. They have made some progress in bringing districts like ours up to speed. We're

069probably at about $8,000 per pupil currently. Uh which is definitely progress for us. But the the funding that the state is uh giving to other districts across the state that are implementing prek for the first time now is more in the lines of $10,000 a a pupil. So there's still a gap. uh the state is closing it and they've closed it fairly aggressively for us in the last few years but they haven't closed it all the way and that's a problem and and we'll continue to advocate for that. Uh we're you know we we contribute more than a million dollars annually from our general fund to try and close some of that gap but the the gap is still more than $2 million and that's the level of funding that we're going to be asking

070for again this year. We we really hope to and I think are working are planning to work with APA to create a a new CTE platform uh to create a teacher uh pathway, a teacher pipeline for our for our organization to to grow our own. Uh and that and that is true both of our students uh but also for for some of our employees who are who are not all the way there in terms of certification but helping helping some of our employees become teachers uh as as well. uh we're going to request from the state $300,000 to support that uh the development of that program and that will allow us to create a create a pathway through our CTE platform uh that will stretch down to the middle school to begin to prepare students

071for a future in uh education and hopefully hopefully we'll grow a lot more of students like Kais and other students who've come through our school district to go go to college and come back home and and become teachers uh in our school district. uh and that that has been again um on our agenda for a number of years and I think we are very uh well positioned as a school district probably better positioned than many school districts in the state of New York because we do have our own CTE uh programs on our campus. So we're we are very well positioned to add that new pathway and especially now with we have a new K12 CT director and this has been social, emotional and mental health supports uh have been a significant priority for us

072for a decade or more and it it continues to be as the challenges of particularly of poverty in our community really impact families. Uh and you know we've all seen uh we've all seen some of the things that have happened in our community. uh and that uh when things like that happen in our community, we know that they also uh come to school sometimes. So, uh we are going to continue to advocate for additional funding to support us in uh in that way. We have worked closely with Senator Pat Feahhee, with the county, Albany County, with the city of Albany this year to talk about some of the solutions to that we can be a part of uh to uh to addressing some of those challenges that our students, our teenage students in particular, and

073and their families are are facing. Uh so we're proposing to create a um I know it's certaint to to tell you that that's student engagement resource team uh with four FTE positions uh that will uh will be advocating for $400,000 to help support the creation of those new staff members in the district to partner with uh other organizations like the county to put a program in place that's going to we believe help address some of the chronic absenteeism challenges that we're seeing and some of the other social emotional challenges that our students are facing. And that's a quick look at uh what our advocac advocacy schedule will look like uh through the through the fall and the winter. We had a a meeting already with the division of budget and the governor's education staff. Several

074of you attended the big five fall meeting earlier this week. Uh and then uh we're as I think the members of the government relations committee know and thank you for your quick replies on that today. We're working to schedule a meeting with uh Senator Fehee and Assembly Member Romero uh before the holidays to uh to talk with them about our agenda for this year. So they are armed with that information uh as as they go into the uh the hard work of their budget development cycle in January. And you can see the uh the the next steps that we'll we'll follow uh after we return in the new year. I'm glad to answer any questions. With help from my government relations committee pales. >> Um, Brianna, >> no comment. >> Okay, >> sorry. Uh, well,

075first let me say thank you for putting this all together, Mr. Leco. do a great job with uh everything comms and operations related. You got a lot under you. I found out I was looking at your report that we're going to hear about later today. Um one thing I did just want to add is I would like to see some uh specific mention of the community school funding stream um and how we can make that more flexible to help us expand the number of community schools we have in the district. It's something that came up when we did our community school update um probably two months ago um that the funding gets locked up when we designate a school community school but there's not really the extra funding to support that. So some kind of

076messaging around that um I think would be a great addition but otherwise a great presentation. >> Thank you. And we have talked about that in the past and it'll be easy for us to add that back uh back onto uh onto the agenda. Um it is expanding, you're absolutely right, expanding the community schools model to all of our schools is uh is important for us. >> Mr. Almani, >> uh sometimes the simplest thing to do is just thank the person for their work. I mean, I have no questions, no comments. Thank you for your work. I know this is hard work primarily because there's many other districts who are fighting for similar things or different things and um it's always important to lay things out like this and um have a strategy and I think

077I've never been on the government relations team but I think we've got a really solid one. So thank you >> Miss Matt. >> Thank you for the presentation. I don't have any other questions. >> Miss Savage. >> So, as chair of the government relations committee, I just want to say thank you to Mr. Leco for his hard work and also acknowledge um the comments from a couple of board members. We are routinely recognized by folks that we visit with at Capitol Hill as having a truly professional government relations um effort which um I know people like to use this expression but we punch far above our weight when you look at what comes out of school districts that are you know 10 times our size. Um ours is equally professional and high quality. Um and

078that is the credit to this team, the staff who supports it and the the work of our of our community. Um, and I particularly love living in Albany because we have so many um, folks who understand how state government works and it gives us a little bit of a leg up as well as making putting us a little bit under a microscope. So, it's a it is a double-sided coin. Um, and I am really proud of our work in this area and you know, one of it's very hard to pass a law in New York State. Very, very hard. Um, in particular, it's hard to get the assembly to pass laws. Um, and no one's looking anywhere. Um, but you know, we passed a law for child safety zones. We passed a law in New

079York State to expand the definition of child safety zones and that while we have not yet gotten there, I know it's coming up later in your presentation, um, very few school districts can point to something as specific as that that their government relations community has done. So, thank you very much for all of your work on it. Um, and also credit to Jennifer Lang, whose um, ongoing presence is still felt in the government relations committee. Okay, Miss Gr. >> Uh, thanks. I'd like to um echo the word of my the words of my colleagues and praise of of our really um coherent and understandable legislative priorities. It's it's been helpful to me in talking to other people to kind of be able to say, "Hey, this is this is one of the things we're doing.

080This is one of the things I'm, you know, we're really excited about and one of the things we're trying, these are some of the things we're trying to lead in. So, thank you for the work in putting this together. >> Miss Wilson, >> thank you for your presentation and I'm curious about the request for 300,000 to support a partnership to for the grow your own initiative. I know at a city level we've discussed at length different ways to attract people to teaching and things of that nature. Are we familiar with anything that would be a state initiative to do the same? Whether it be um I know there's things about residency and maybe housing credits and things of that nature. >> The last part I can't speak to. I can and I can speak only

081in a very cursory way to the first part. I I know that the state and the governor has invested in the teacher um um a teacher development program u teacher residency program I believe. So there is a there is a model out there. We've had a partnership with NYU for for many years to try and do do the same thing. And I think we want to replicate those models to some degree uh within our own own organization. But again, focusing on exposing our students to to those opportunities and to that those career pathways uh much earlier even again down to the middle school level. uh so that u so that they are um much more focused on that as they you know as they start to get into that stage of life where you try

082to decide what you might want to do for the rest of your life. >> Just also um in terms of tuition reimbursement, I know that we have a statewide process across the board for public service and I was curious if there was anything specific for teaching reimbursement or waiverss or forgiveness along that line and if we could advocate for that. I don't know. Yes, to the last part, absolutely advocating for it. I don't I don't know what would be available, but I know that has that has to be a critical component of of it, particularly when we talk about providing those opportunities for some of our staff as well. And that's uh and that is absolutely part of a part of the ask >> as always. Ron, thank you. Thank you. Great presentation. uh this

083is that time when we bring out our begging balls and uh we we are fortunate enough that we live in the capital city and and our legislators do listen to us. Uh even you know during this season and and during other times of the year uh uh I wish there was there was the responses were quicker and and you know we get more than what we asked for but they listen so so thanks to them too and um the um been I've been on government relations for all these years and and I see our process and we're the more people I talk to from other boards around the state. I mean there's a lot they can learn from us and and there's a lot they do learn from us when they when they meet us

084and we have a very structured uh cycle of things that we do on a monthly basis leading up to this this time when we go asking. Um so even with the um build your own program um lots of ideas that have been floated I mean even even in trying to you know expose our current students into the line of teaching by putting them in in other classes because of this portrait of a graduate student. Uh it's it's more experiential learning pathways that are in included in this. And so one of the things that has been floated is that we could take some of the high school students and put them in the elementary schools for credit learning and see if they want to be teachers, right? See what does teaching involve and and try to

085expl give them that real life real world exposure. Um sort of like the reading buddies that used to happen in the elementary schools where the fourth grader is sitting with the first grader reading a book, right? Only in a different level. Um so that's one of the things that uh that that uh we talk about and on Tuesday we had the uh big five meeting uh that uh member Wolf Gang and Superna were there along with me and uh there's some very interesting discussions that happened with uh commissioner Rosa and and what she envisions this blueprint of a portrait graduate to be uh and I think we're we're we're on the way uh to filling that uh model that they that the state is creating. So I think it's all good. It's all good. And

086then uh of course things cost money. So we'll see where we stand after the new year. Thank you. >> Thanks everyone. >> I know you'll be back in a couple of presentations. Okay. Moving on to the next discussion topic that is the all awaited school calendar. Good evening board members, my cabinet colleagues, and the greater Albany community. Um, my newly recruited co-chair, Dr. Prestoino who is over here and I are pleased to provide the uh the board and the community with some initial information regarding the 20 the 2026 2027 school calendar. All right. So, as always, uh we'll begin with our district vision, mission, and goals and connect them explicitly to the presentation we've prepared. Um though in this instance that may be more of a stretch than it it typically is. Um certainly by

087developing our district calendar as early as possible with consideration for um the diverse community we serve, we can equip our schools with the information they need to make building level plans. That in turn empowers our families to organize the scheduling needs of their homes um while holding space for consistent school attendance and engaging in school events and activities. This slide uh details our uh committee uh and these are the following individuals that serve on this committee. Um tomorrow, Mr. Leco is publishing an opportunity for on our website for an additional parent or guardian to join us. Um we thank Miss Zimmerman who was actually here earlier tonight for her service on the count longtime service on the calendar committee, but um she was no longer able to serve. So, we are recruiting an additional parent

088um or a guardian uh starting tomorrow. All right. So, this is our charge um to provide the board with a proposed calendar for the 2627 school year, which will happen, I believe, at the first meeting in February um after the committee convenes and makes some uh a draft recommendation uh that best meets the needs of the students and staff and effectively addresses issues of teaching continuity. So we are convening in early January um in preparation for presenting that draft to the board um at the first meeting in February. In preparing the draft, we'll review the documents that we provided the board earlier. Um we I shared the Bosey's draft calendar as well as the New York State testing calendar for 2627. Um and these are the parameters that we must consider as we draft the

089calendar. Some of these are musts and some of them are considerations. Um and that will bring us into the next slide as well. These are some recommended priorities. Um sometimes we're able to accomplish our recommended priorities and sometimes we're not. We have to take into consideration labor contracts, uh the calendar priorities that were listed on the previous slide, um the academic needs of students and um having appropriate levels of staffing, which is why the Bosey's calendar plays into effect often certainly for the the long breaks. These are the the topics of discussion that will rise to the surface first. Um the opening days of school, some complicated variables. I don't have quite the Miss Beal doll had like such a passion for this and like all of the minutia and I will try to succeed

090that you know well but um it's really complicated. Um so so some of those variables we'll have to grapple with as a committee is whether or not we'll need to schedule the return of students before Labor Day. Labor Day is really late next year. It's September 7th. Um uh we'll have to consider what religious and cultural observances we'll be able to incorporate in some fashion in our school calendar with a mindful eye on playing evenly across all of our diverse community. Um and the holidays that are of significance to them. We'll have to select our two family conference days which will are contractually they're now in the ABSA contract. um that was previously an MOA, but we did incorporate that into their contract last year. So, in exchange for two family conference days, one in

091October and one in February, um uh that is in exchange for having Thanksgiving Eve off, which means it is also off for students and families. Um good news this year, uh everyone will be able to celebrate Rashashana, Diwali, the Lunar New Year, and Eid al-Ha as they wish because they all fall on weekends. Um last year was the opposite. they almost all fell on school days. So, um that gives us some wiggle room um to meet the demands of regulation in terms of the number of days we're required to attend um our labor contracts, etc. Um, it remains a priority. Even though next year will be a little bit more flexible than perhaps the typical year, it still remains a priority to advocate for flexibility between the regulations that dictate the days and hours we

092are required to be in session according to the state and our state's attentiveness to the various holidays of its diverse populations that have been added in recent years. Um to that end, we do share uh with all schools and staff a fairly comprehensive list of religious and cultural observances to inform academic and athletic planning as well as school activities and events. That was a request from this presentation last year. Um that went out um I partnered with the communications office and thanks to Mr. Leco um and also some of our uh staff members at ALB International Academy for assisting with that. Um I gave you the draft the version from last year that we distributed in the spring and that of course will be updated um to go out this spring as well. Um and

093with that I will happy to take any questions or comments. >> I mean this is always like the uh analytical part of a GRE test. That's what I keep telling Miss Beal. Now I'll tell that to you and uh hopefully everybody was paying attention because those there'll be questions uh that that uh will be asked as to what days are allowed and what are not allowed and what are the contractual obligations who can sit next to whom and who's not allowed to be in the room. So um Miss Brael >> it is quite fulfilling to see certain holidays be taken into account for the calendar next year. So that's quite fulfilling to see. I do have one small question. So for ne the year afterwards for diwali or maybe like another holiday like paga will

094that be considered for a day off for next year? So we have to first start with the number of days we are required to be in school which is 187. And then we have to take into account federal and state holidays um that we have to um honor and as well as labor contracts in terms of how many days they work a year. Both the appto contract and the appsu contract. Um and we have the apps contract as well, but the administrators work all the time. Um and so once that comes into play, we really do try to at least consider um the the major holidays of particular um groups or the observances both religious and cultural. Sometimes what we're able to do is even if we can't have the day off for everyone, we're

095able to for example schedule professional development day on because we have some flexibility with those on a particular day so that um students aren't in session um but our staff is here. Um so uh it was Lunar New Year was a new addition last year I think and then I believe New York City schools added Dewali. um we have not yet upstate. Um but those are all considerations and at some point something will have to give in terms of priorities. You know, are we able to honor all of these holidays for our families and staff as well? Um or are we going to have flexibility? because if you fall under the number of days you have to be in session by regulation or the number of hours you have to be in session by regulation

096um it can affect uh funding. Um so that's kind of the long answer to your question. we will always try um to to prioritize. Um >> and if I can add one more bit that I have learned through listening to this presentation, I'll be very interested to see for both of you after the end of the calendar presentation, you will, you know, once they actually adopt the calendar, you'll know so much more because it is um it is oddly complicated, much more than I understood my first year on the board. >> But one of the things that's interesting about the way the structure is is that the first day of school, there's a limit to how early we can go. the students can't be brought back in September and the last day of school is

097always the last day of regions week. So it's the the the calendar isn't infinitely elastic. So as we keep adding more and more holidays as we've added Junth and we've added the Lunar New Year there does become like truly a physical limit or as my colleague Dr. Tour will tell you in India where they celebrate all of the holidays they just go to school on Saturday every week because there's not enough days um left to have school. So it is we have added both the EDS which is something we've done and pushed for over the last couple of years which were one of the few school districts um who are who's doing that who are doing that and we are continuing to build whenever we can but um it's it's shockingly complicated and difficult um

098to to make it all work. So um I'd be very curious to know what you think at the at the end of the process because it's um there's a lot of factors that that get considered. Um, and I would just add since I'm interrupting anyway, um, that we love for you to come as soon as you can. It doesn't have to be February, okay? Um, it can be as soon as you guys can meet because as a parent, >> I I have often felt that the school the school district when I wasn't on the board didn't really understand how badly I needed to know when the first day of school was. Like, I need to know because there's like camp and there's how am I going to get childare? Especially for elementary school students, you

099really need to know that way earlier. Um, and we're usually beholden to the Bosey's calendar, but it looks like the Bosey's draft calendar is is in hand already at the beginning of December, which is unusual. Sometimes they haven't been done till the end of January. So, if we can creep earlier, >> okay, >> the parent community would appreciate you. >> Thank you. Thank you so much for explaining this to me because before this I would definitely say I was not aware that how 187 days were required to be on the calendar but this is new information to me. So thank you so much for explaining it. >> Of course, >> Mr. Wolf Gang. >> Yes. Um two quick things. Uh number one, I would very heavily second the idea of no school on election day.

100Um, as a student, I always felt uneasy about the people coming into the building, especially when we have to go through security and they don't. Um, so I would just like to uh second not having school on those days. I think it just makes it a lot easier. Um the other thing I just wanted to submit as more of a recommendation than a question was the idea of putting uh some student on the calendar committee whether it's our student board rep or a you know student nominated by the student government association or however we wanted to do that. Um but I think there's always uh you know it's always good to get a student in the room um as we just saw. So you know just a recommendation not even a question at this point.

101>> Thank you. Mr. Almani, >> no questions. Um, I know it's very complicated and I'm, you know, I'm seeing a difference in the way you run than Miss Beall, but it's a good difference. Like, >> like, you know, >> we're very different. >> Yeah. I think I think you'll do I think you'll do great with it. So, thank you. >> Um, I know it's complicated. It's definitely um much appreciated by the families when we get to know faster and um obviously it's uh always a challenge but uh second to um member Wolf Gang's suggestion about a student you know could always run ideas off of them really just get a pulse and um whether or not you know what they want happens I think it's important to get them involved and for them to see

102how complicated things are. So, thank you again. >> Thank you, >> Miss Man. >> So, I sat in on a calendar committee meeting a couple years back and um it's a hard job. You have a you have a hard task. So, thank you. And I just want to echo what everyone else said and um good luck with this. Okay. >> Thanks, >> Miss Savage. Any other comments? >> Okay. Great. >> Uh, thank you. Um, I wanted to echo what my colleague said as we went through this. I was thinking, boy, if we're looking for members, it would be great to have a student representative on the committee. To be honest, as we move toward greater student voice, we should probably think of having a role for students on all of these types of hybrid committees

103where their staff, board members, and members of the public student should be included among them. that might be on this committee especially a way to add more add more cultural and ethnic slashreligious diversity to uh the makeup of the committee. So that would really be excellent. Um I value I value the work that you do and looking forward to being a part of the committee and I also encourage my f my fellow board members to think about who might want to become a calendar committee liaison in the future. It's not hard work and it's very pleasant company. >> Thank you, >> Miss Wilson. >> Thank you. We will wait further development. We know that there's a lot to consider and balance and it just gives me appreciation because I thought I planned pretty far ahead

104in the future and then thinking about 2027, March of 2027 is very interesting. So, thank you so much. >> Of course. Thank you. you know this after I joined the board is when I and after these you know paying attention to what is being distributed by the district um now I know why and how these things these days are picked or not picked uh it's it is a big challenge the 180day rule applies regardless of which district you are in that's a sed mandate state mandate >> one of the things that government relations also has been talking to um the state is even through through NISSBA is to to to move to to have the ability the freedom to move the bookends because school cannot start before Labor Day. School cannot end after regions, right?

105So there those bookends that are put and then you had to figure out 180 days between those two bookends. Now you start putting new holidays in there. There are contractual holidays, religious holidays, Boseies who we work with. So we have to work with their calendar as well. with all those restrictions becomes really challenging. The other thing that we've also done over the years um especially to you know uh comments that Miss Savage has made is like when we try to have a holiday right let's not put a holiday in the middle of the week right students come in and there's a holiday on Thursday and you come to school on Friday let's try and plan this so that they're they're towards the weekend so it makes if you're going to take the day off take

106the along you have an extended holiday or if you have to do PD where the students are not in the classroom let's try and put it under those times. Right? So, so the students are not coming in one day and then two days they're not in class and then the third day they're coming again and lose you lose the continuity in in in what the teacher is teaching in the classroom. Right? So all of those things that we've been pushing on the calendar committee over the years has now come to fruition to to this form. Uh I did have a question about Junth. It falls on a weekend. >> So, it'll be observed on the 18th >> because usually in the state you celebrate it after the holiday, right? >> So, I I did actually

107look this up. If it falls on the Saturday, you observe on the Friday. If it falls on the Sunday, you observe on the Monday. Um, and then I did also look up about if Lunar New Year required observance and it currently does not. If it falls on the weekend, it falls on the weekend. >> Was great. I realized this is something that we've talked about in the past with the calendar committee in addition to scheduling the days on which we are not to have school or that it would also be helpful. I know in the past certain members of the community have asked can we have a can we have a list of other days that are commonly celebrated as religious or ethnic celebrations so that people know you know maybe don't put the big

108you know don't put prom don't put don't go put home and coming weekend on the weekend of a major holiday or something like that. I think that's the list that that she mentioned. >> She mentioned that in there. >> I shared that um >> last year's version of that that went out. Um we sent out a district-wide communication in I think this it was in the spring. It may have been early June. >> June. Um so that as folks were getting ready to plan their school calendars for this year, they were thinking about what when were awards nights, when were um you know, proms, things of that nature. Um any sort of school events. And the only thing that gets a little more tricky is athletics because we have to coordinate that of course with

109um other districts. Um but yes, I I provided the list. >> I was just I was just saying are we doing that again? That just wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's that's going to be a great great addition. Thank you. >> Thank you. I wonder if another addition to that could be another footnote on the on the calendar, the beautiful family-friendly calendar, which is another great improvement um that we've made over the last few years um about the uh accommodation for religious holidays for students. Right? If if you have a holiday to celebrate in your religious home, that is um an excused absence from school and that that should be accommodated by your by your teachers. And maybe we need a little footnote about that. >> Sure. uh because it is you know

110we are definitely going to start approaching the the India challenge um as things happen. So but we do absolutely honor every family me family's right to celebrate whatever holidays are there. So >> absolutely that should be easy enough. >> Yeah. And I don't I just don't know that it's understood you know what I mean by by the families. I think the teachers mostly understand that but I thinkamilies are confused >> understands our grading policy supports >> right >> all sorts of opportunities to you know make up work or whatever. We enforce the attendance, right? We we make sure students understand why it's important to be in school. >> So when when you hear that all through the year when it comes to a day like that, like do I is an excuse to have something.

111>> It's natural for them to to not realize that yes, you can take the day off and not worry about that. Go do what you need to do. >> Um in terms of having student reps, I'm all for it, but I also realize the challenge that students need to be in class and these meetings are might be happening while they're in class. So an alternative may be to do a student survey within those buildings and then get a feedback as the committee comes in and it or it could come you know student survey that goes to a student board that comes uh via them to this committee uh because we want them to do what they need to do right they don't need to fix the calendar but they need to be able to provide

112their voice and suggestion as to what they would like but they're they're important that it's important that they're in class learning um the with regards to Diwali, I mean Gilderland already had Diwali this year. Um our calendar was last year was fixed last year and we we hadn't put it on there. Um the the idea is to celebrate all of these events with all the communities and we are a very diverse community and that that adds its own challenge right so there are few ways in which we can do it is like as an mentioned in India we celebrate every religion and then some that you don't know about right so but we used to when I was growing up the Saturdays used to be half days now every other Saturday is a full working

113day we don't want to go there right so the Um people need to realize that we will be try to accommodate as many as possible >> but then there are times when you know you have two or three of one community whereas none of the other communities. So we may not be able to give you all of these holidays that you're traditionally used to seeing to be able to incorporate these other ones and and that is something that people have to realize that they have to be willing to accommodate too. they can still take their holiday as a unexcused absence, but it's just not a day on the calendar because we have to honor other communities as well. >> Um, >> and I feel that um we're just uniquely positioned as a school district to

114be very educational about all of this. So maybe it doesn't look like a day off, but we can very much send out communications highlight, you know, this month we're celebrating XYZ and there's a long list. I think there's 29 holidays in this period of time right now. So >> absolutely and there's so much for us to learn about other people's cultures >> and that will make us more tolerant uh in in in the way the world is today is ma >> is mainly because we don't understand you know and a fear of the unknown is what creates these these issues in my opinion uh and and the more you understand your your neighbor and your fellow human beings I think you will realize that they're not much different from what you are and what they're

115celebrating might be something you want to be a part of. Uh so anyway, we we're right at the beginning of calendar, so you got a lot of work to do and I won't keep you. >> Thank you so much. >> Welcome back, Mr. Leco. The communications division update. And before you start your thing, I'm just going to ask you, do we have a blue sky or a thread uh link now for communications >> because every year we keep throwing new ones at you? >> Or Discord. >> We ditched one more recently. We got out of the Twitter business. Right. We >> axed. X Thank you for the opportunity to come back up tonight to talk about all the good stuff going on in the comm community uh commun communications and operations division uh uh this

116year and over the past year. Um as it turns out I'm here when I normally would be here. I prepared the presentation as if I would be here in October. So the numbers are a little they were you know mid-occtoberish uh not uh not more current through the end of November but obviously you'll still get an idea of of of where we are with the data points that are in the presentation. This is the staffing in the division. I am your fearless leader and uh it all should look very familiar. This is the same team that we had uh we had a year ago. uh they do great work in uh in all of the different areas that that we serve in which we serve our community. Um I do want to note that we

117will have a change uh for next year. However, we are uh coming what's today? The 4th. Um on January 2nd is going to be Lee Andrew Amy's least last day with us. She's retiring after 17 years uh in the communications department. She's been a terrific servant to our community and to our students and families and we will absolutely miss her uh when uh when her time uh her retention time was coming quickly too. I I thought she was going to retire at the end of the year and and circumstances changed and she's retiring midyear. So we are in the process of working with the human resources department to division to uh to um hire a replacement for that position. So, we'll be going we'll be going through that uh opportunity uh over the next month

118or hopefully not a heck of a lot more than a month, but this winter we'll say. Um in the communications realm, uh Lisa Andrew Amy, Abby Black, and Ashley Hendrickk are our primary communications people. Uh Lisa is our assistant director and Abby and uh Ashley are both communications specialists and they are responsible for the day-to-day uh communications oper uh operations and service for all of our schools and all of our departments. We do other stuff too. uh district level communications, government relations, uh charter school monitoring, uh crisis communications, certainly um lots of things. Jake Plank is the creative services arm of the department. Uh he is responsible for protecting the brand uh of the of the organization and of our individual schools and uh responsible for graphic design. uh he is our lead photographer and

119does a terrific job at that and videography as well but uh he makes us look very very good all the time. >> Kathy Edmonson is our community engagement coordinator. She is responsible for doing exactly that. She is at dozens of community events uh annually. She's responsible for the community roundt meeting which we have here in this room once a month and she has grown that to a a terrific gathering uh on a monthly basis and we've had more than 50 people at both of uh both of those meetings this year. She organizes parent university. She's brought on 75 new volunteers this school year uh and the summer celebration and safety day. I'll skim over that later, but that was the largest that we've had uh this year. and she is responsible for uh in partnership

120with Mohawk ambulance, we're putting together that that big event every year and it's just a it's a becoming a bigger and bigger success and I think moving it to uh moving it to the start of the school year as a back to school event has been a has been a great a great move for that. She does a terrific job with that event uh annually too. So, and as I think you all know, I'm stalking Shen. We're getting we're getting we're getting closer. Uh this was this was probably the third week of October. Uh we are probably now right about 145 in o I can't tell exactly where they are, but in Octo and when I did this, they were in the 14,000s as well. Uh but now they just moved over the 15,000 15,000

121marker. So, but we're within hundreds now. uh and uh that is absolutely a goal and our our that has been we've had tremendous success with Facebook in in the school district as you know both at the district level which those numbers represent but also all of our school pages our athletics page etc. it it's been a great tool for us to uh share so many of the wonderful things that are happening in our organization and also also just news that's going on and you know as you can see by those numbers and no one else in the capital region is close to to us and Chen and in terms of follow followings following on Facebook so um I know it's uh more people of my generation on Facebook but we get a we get a

122lot of we have a lot of success with Facebook Facebook and as you'll see in another slide or two we're also growing our Instagram presence pretty significantly as well. >> I can't read any of those, but I do know that I want to added a couple a couple to them. Uh, our announcement recently of our new assistant superintendent for secondary instruction uh got more than 39,000 views and Abby also had a post of U Annie Morgan uh when she when she was crowned the winner of the county's uh I voted sticker contest that was there was more than 23,000 views for that post. So, we've we've had great success again this year with uh with some of the content that we've shared there. Probably added about a hundred new followers to our district face uh

123Instagram page since uh since uh since I put those numbers together and that that platform has grown pretty significantly for us and it's been a focus for us really particularly since we were fortunate to add our new uh uh communication specialist Ashley Hendrick at the high school last year. she's really been able to focus on uh developing the Albony High Instagram presence in particular, but also our district Instagram presence and the athletics presence and intentionally I think with a following there to try and attract more student engagement and that really has we have seen that we've had more student engagement and that's been really where the growth has been with uh with with Instagram and it's it's grown pretty quickly and I would I would anticipate its curve is going to be something along the

124lines of what we've seen with Facebook over time. And you can see some of the successes we've had there. We fewer posts, but some of the some of the numbers that we've seen with some of the the Instagram posts are just we we had one last year that was we had to shut it down. It was over 100,000 views. So, it's it's uh it's been really successful. You can get an idea there of the of the growth growth over time. We're going to have to redo that chart because the the gap in the middle is where the Twitter line used to be, but it's it's not there anymore. So we'll have to we'll have to represent that differently next time. We also the contact us form on the on the district website also comes to

125our office uh through um third week of Octoberish we had 382 forms submitted over the la over the previous 10 months. Uh I was an English major but that's pretty easy math. That's you know 38 38 or so a month. Um, so, uh, you know, and it's a it's it tends to be the same the same kinds of questions that we get a lot, although there's really a big range of questions that we get. Transcript requests continue to be the number one uh the number one item that people re reach out to us about. Uh, September, we're loaded with tax inquiries, those those kinds of those kinds of things. But opportunities too for us to partner with other organizations come to us as well. I I just received two uh two letters from a Guilderland

126High School teacher who reached out to us through that tool. Uh she has two students who went to elementary school in our district and one of her annual uh annual activities for her kids is to write a letter to a teacher who at a younger age made made a big difference to them and two of them uh two of the students in her class in Guilderland uh called out Albany teachers and wanted she wanted to make sure that we got the letters to those teachers. So that was a nice thing as well. I'm going to do my best here mostly from memory. Uh we we we've uh my office is responsible for organizing a number of district level or some of our bigger events as as you know and we had some really nice events

127uh this year. We kicked the school year off with a great ribbon cutting ceremony for for the new Albany High School. That was very well attended and just very energizing for us after that long project and after everything that everyone at the high school uh was patiently patiently endured for that those seven years. But it was a great way to celebrate the community's investment in uh in that project and in the future of our our school district and and the future of the students who are there today and the students who are going to come through there in the in the decades and the generations to come. It's a it's a fantastic place. You don't need me to tell you that. Uh but it was great to have that celebration to to wrap up a

128very long process that took a lot of time and a lot of commitment, a lot of effort and a lot of patience and a lot of blue words. But there have been a number of other great events. I mentioned earlier the the summer uh summer celebration and safety day or the back to school blast as as we call it now at Arbor Hill on September 13th was was a fantastic event. and it was the largest one we've had and and the turnout was great and again Kathy does a fantastic job organizing that. Some additional highlights we Oh, wait. I got I can't read that. Oh, Ashley. Yeah, we successfully onboarded Ashley. She was she started in uh after the school year began last year. So there was a a part of a process for about

129half the year to get her acclimated and she's just been a terrific addition to us both to the team in general but specifically at ALB High School and the athletic department. It really has and I would say especially the athletic department has really has helped close some gaps that we had with athletic communication and that's not anyone's that's not anyone's fault at all. Uh but it just having someone there in the building in contact with uh with the athletic staff has been a has been a great addition. Um certainly along with the addition of of our athletic director and her staff as well. Uh we redesigned the capital education newsletter which I see you have in front of you and some of you are even peeking at at the moment which is great. uh we

130went from a newsletter format to a magazine format and um really helps us you know again it's that's a designed by Jake and it really does a good job aligning that that important publication publication with the the branding and look and feel of most of the rest of the things that we're doing. I mentioned the enhanced focus that we've have on on video content that has been especially true for us at the high school and uh and for our athletic our athletic department. And you can see the numbers there. Both the Albany High Instagram page and the athletic Instagram page have quite a quite a few more followers than the district the district pages. And that's uh that's I wouldn't say that's intentional, but that we've been intentional in the content that we've uh that

131we've posted in both of those places, particularly the Albony High School Instagram page. And uh and that growth has been really really nice to see and really significant. We facilitated well over $35,000 in donations. Now Kathy Edmonson does does the most of the point the point work for us uh in that in that area. Uh an invitation and you this will land in your inboxes tomorrow, next Friday. Uh the market 32 president is coming to Alb High School for a media opportunity. They've they've made significant donations to support the food pantry at Albany High School. shelving, uh, refrigerators, freezers, those kinds of things to and that that is really going to help take that operation, which is already very significant for our students to a to a very different level. I believe there's a naming

132contest uh going on for it currently for the for the new room and the new space, which is right next to where we have the new stained glass windows, which which we'll also be celebrating as we move forward, too. So, it's uh so next Friday, I don't know the time off the top of my head, but again, I'll drop that into your email boxes and if you can make it, please do. Jake and Ashley work with the athletics department to design some of the senior posters that you see at all the senior nights. And there's an there's an example some goals for the current year in alignment with the communications audit that we conducted. Uh so about a year and a half ago at this point about a year and a half ago at this

133point. uh redesigning the newsletter for this year was one of our priorities and we've accomplished that. So we'll we'll continue with that that format going forward. We are we are going to be looking at a new the new whatever the new school messenger tool is going to be a new notification tool uh something that allows us to uh reach families with email text message and and and robocall u uh messaging. A priority for us in that search is going to be something that has a a fairly robust translation component, including for including for our text messaging. And there are some really good tools out there. We may not land on one tool. We've looked at a few different things that we really like. talking points has probably the best translation uh program uh going and

134uh but they're not as robust as a a communication tool as let's say parent square for the for the full notification system. So um tools like parent square will probably land on one of those but we may supplement it with something that really allows us to do an even better job with translation for uh particularly for obviously our ENL families. C PD for customer service was an element that was that was a focus in the uh in the communications audit and will develop some programming for for all of our staff through uh and particularly some of the frontline staff through uh through the PD sessions that we have during the year. Uh continue working to highlight uh Albany High School and the opportunities are available that are available there. I know the high school itself

135has developed a number of a number of uh opportunities through the year to invite families into some of the existing some of the existing programming that we have and we're going to work with them too to try and supplement uh some of the work that they are doing uh to to highlight the great opportunities that are available to uh students in our community uh at at ALB High School. And then that idea of splitting our current communication plan into into two different pieces, a communications plan and a really more formal communications guide book for the district. That's also work that's ongoing this year. As I mentioned off the top, we're going to need to hire a new person. So that'll be a priority in the in the months ahead to make sure that person is

136settled and feels welcomed and uh doesn't let this big place over overwhelm them out out of the out of the gate which is often very easy to do or can happen very can happen very easily. So but that so that'll be a priority as we get in as we turn the page into 2026. And then as I'm sure he talked about with Mr. miles uh earlier this fall. The uh researching opportunities to expand uh and add child transportation through child safety zones is is something that's uh ongoing currently. I think that work is going to start the week after next. Is that the week of the 15th? The week of the 15th. And we expect to have information back from them by the end of January. So that'll be about the and then we'll begin

137to have the the conversations here about what we want to do, what we can do, what we might do as we look ahead to the budget cycle. >> And I'm glad to answer questions. >> Thank you, Mr. Leco. Miss Brimble. >> No comment, >> Mr. Wolfkin. >> Um, no real comments. I do think that uh Joe here should get a slide in your presentation with how many budget presentations you guys do, but otherwise >> it's always heavy lifting in the in the spring, but you know, I just wrote this for some other reason recently in advertising the budget committee. The last three years, more than 80% of our voters have have supported the budget and uh and that's that's a tremendous testament to the work that Mr. Caris does putting together a responsible budget and

138and and working together with district staff and the board. Uh and our community is very supportive of us as as you know and that's uh I always say you don't pass your budget in April and May. You pass your budget from September through March. And it's you know if if you get to April and people are really mad at you, you're going to have a lot of trouble on the third Tuesday in May. But if you get to April and people feel pretty good about what you've been doing over the course of the previous year, uh you'll probably be okay on the third Tuesday in May. Miss gentlemen, >> thank you. Mr. LCO, >> Miss Man, >> you have a dynamite team. I mean, it it was a great presentation, but you have a dynamite

139team. And I I just wanted to um point out Kathy Edmonson. Every single time I go to a community event, she's right there, you know, um representing our district. And um and I just think that's fantastic. And the pictures are great and they're all over the place. and um uh it's proud um I'm speaking with some pride here. So, thank you. >> Thank you. But but I invite everybody to bundle up and come join her tomorrow night out outside Academy Park for the city's tree lighting ceremony. It'll be chilly, but she'll be there along with everybody else, >> Miss Savage. >> So, I just want to thank uh board member man for raising that. It is an amazing team and a credit to good hiring. I mean, it's hard to hire good people and have

140and hire a good person every single time. And you've been you've had tremendous success in hiring great people. And you're doing something right in the hiring process. I don't know what it is. I want to know what your magic is. >> I Well, let's see how we end up in January, February. And and an emphasis there for me has and and we are all still and who knows if we'll end up there because we'll be looking for really good people. But we all live in the city, you know, and those of us who have had children and sent our kids to our schools. Kathy went to our school. She's a grandparent in our schools. You know, we it's not just a thing that we do uh you know from 8:30 to 4:30 8 to 5

141on you know Monday to Monday to Friday. It's a life that we live and that's that's important and that is that is reflected in in in the work that you see and and the commitment they all that they all have to doing uh doing doing the work work no matter no matter how you do it or where you do it is a four-letter word but it's important that you love it and and we all do. So the I was going to ask if you would just follow up a little bit more about customer service um training. That's something that the board has been asking for for some time. We think it's really important that that front door to our schools be very warm and welcoming one. And I'm wondering what you have in mind. Are

142you planning to um look for third-party customer service training? Are you planning to create our own training? You know what p who what whatever you know at this time about what you have in mind because I do really value it and think it's important. >> Yeah. the conversations that I've had with the superintendent about probably lean probably lean toward bringing in a third party a third party maybe through the chamber of commerce is one of one avenue that we've talked about but there are lots of folks out there who do that sort of thing and our you know our environment is not exactly everybody's environment but still good customer service is is good customer service and if there are are people out there who prov can deliver that kind of uh training about and it

143we you know we used to share share this at the start of every school year a big long list of you know it was our it was my be nice email every year but just you know be nice be friendly be understanding of of uh the fact that every single person who walks in front of us every single day and that includes me is is carrying some kind of baggage and our job is our job is to help them in spite of the baggage that that you know we all carry ourselves it's we have an important job in serving to do in serving this community and that that extends to every single person in this community from the you know the first student or Dur or Rayhop bus driver or CDTA bus driver who opens

144the door to greet a student in the morning to you know whoever the last person is that sends them out to the to the bus uh to go home at the end of the day. It's uh it's there's 18 or 1900 of us who have a a very very important role play role to play in serving this community and it and it begins with good customer service skills and it begins with a reminder for I think especially some of our frontline staff who are are seeing kids in uh much more often or in earlier than than a lot of our other staff. So um so that'll be that'll be a focus and I think we again I think we will look to an outside entity that has experience in doing that kind of thing and

145delivering that kind of thing because you know if I stand up in front of our staff and say be nice I think they might start talking about me behind my back. Uh so uh so it would be easier to have a third party come in and tell them to be nice. >> That sounds like the right strategy. I mean there certainly are companies who who companies and I do mean profitm companies who have exceptional skill in that right? you know, you've got your Disney and you've got your Trader Joe's and a couple of other companies that are just notorious for figuring out how to train folks to give you that warm welcoming sense. And it does not feel like a wheel we need to recreate, even though it's different, right? Mandatory education is different. And

146it's different in a pretty specific way um than a company. But I still think that that that ability to make people feel welcomed is uh is the core of what what it takes. So looking forward to hearing more about that because I know it's been a bit of a time coming. >> Miss Grchie, >> thank you for the excellent presentation. I commend the the work that you've done and the work that you've done in um adapting and bringing on the communications plan because we've seen really significant improvements, whether that's uh the new staff member at the high school and more really great stories coming out of the high school highlighting accomplishments um or the new format for this or just better communications in general. they're already at a very high level. Um, what my colleague

147said about being more welcoming um, reminded me of something that I would like to see and I think it could be really um, something really suited for the talents of your area because we want to be welcoming in our schools, but we also need signs to delineate which areas or public areas, who's allowed to come in, who is not supposed to come in unless they are student staff or an invited guest. And I feel like your department might be good at designing signs that we could use throughout the district that would be welcoming. You know, they wouldn't be big, keep out, this means you, but could convey the appropriate message that we want to convey to keep our students and families safe. We've had those conversations uh in alignment with some of the new security

148updates at the high school recently and it's very important that that there's some information that is very important to communicate but you also have to do it in a way that is >> well what you said just not offputting to people. >> Thank you >> Miss Wilson. Thank you for your presentation and I will say over the years being on the board I've definitely seen the evolution that the um packages were always beautiful but now things seem to have flowed so much into a cohesive that while I'm scrolling I can instantly tell that it's the city school district of Albany with something very important to say whether it be the um school pumpkin runs or pizza party math parties you could definitely hear um see visually and almost feel what the emotion is trying to

149convey. Um there's very much a specific voice and footprint of our Alb High School whether it's coming from Alb High School or we talk about Alb High School and we also see a very specific voice and footprint of our superintendent now also. So those are clearly deliberate efforts. Um it's always outstanding work whether it's editorial or even a live event comes under your wheelhouse. I've been to your events and they're very nice. So thank you. And whether we're conveying very good news or if we have sad news or not so good news, we really approach it, I think, across the board so professionally and people appreciate that. And I just have a question. One is as far as um outbound communication, obviously we're speaking to the public. As far as uh to what extent is

150it two-way or that the public can speak to us outside of inboxing us or emailing us or using a parent communication tool, >> right? two-way communication is something that we don't have aside from Facebook comments, you know, really uh in our toolbox currently. And I think that's one of the things that we'll be doing as we kick the tires on whatever the next notification tool is. What what do those platforms allow us in that way and allow us to to to do more to gather feedback from parents, students, uh community members, that sort of thing? that that's that's something that I think there are always things that everybody can try to do better, but that is an area in which we can do try to do more of through the communications department. Right. I do

151think and I appreciate what you said. I do think we do a really good job getting information to people and making sure that we're getting the right information to our department to share with people. And that's, you know, that's that's much more of a trick than I think a lot of people think it is. Uh but it takes a lot of commitment from a lot of people in the organization to be to be focused on that to be focused on communicating clear timely accurate information to our to our to our families. And you know we haven't always been excellent at that. And I and I think maybe we're not excellent currently but I think we do a really good job of it and we're a heck of a lot better than heck of a lot

152better than we were five, six, seven years ago. And I you know I tell this to you every year but it's the truth. It's this board's investment and the investment of previous boards in communication in our school district. I wouldn't have the excellent team that I have if you weren't if you weren't committed to investing in the staff to the staff to do that. So, you know, it's an organ organizationwide commitment and it goes well beyond the five of us in our in our department and it takes the entire organization uh a cohesive cabinet all the way all the way down through all of our buildings to to make sure that we are uh getting the right information to the right people on the right timeline. And I I think we're doing a I think

153we do a very good job of that. And as always, as always, I mean, the work that comes out of a department is fantastic, but I take myself to 10 years ago, right? And you just mentioned it. Uh, and and no one wanted to talk about us, but if they did, it wasn't something we wanted to hear because it was always negative, right? And then suddenly we we like if no one's going to talk about if we don't talk about us, why should we expect somebody else to? And that was the whole change. and and we started putting out all these successes and achievements that our students were having in every one of our buildings and this goes back to Superman Adams, right? And and uh the work that has been done since then and

154and over time we've just gotten better and better and better and and now it's sort of like the community expects it, right? and and sometimes the challenge comes where we we we wait we hesitate on putting out a new uh uh something uh communications uh feature and and I I want people to realize that it's because we want to validate things before we put things out and not be putting out things which are halftruths or incomplete information which only causes more confusion at the end. So sometimes when people expect why don't we hear about it? Well, that's because things are still being discussed as to what is the fact that we put out and then so where you might you might get u a little bit of angst from the community that oh why didn't

155we hear about this I just want to put that out there is a reason behind it and u you know and we stand by what we what we say um so thank you for what you do um the one thing that I asked last year too and which I'll keep reminding this year too is in terms of the as going forward uh with AI, right? I mean the website is great, but sometimes we have to go through a few pages and searches to get to the information. So having a chatbot of some time where the frequently asked questions where I could, you know, as a community member, I'm asking a question and I get directed to this page might ease some of the um the patience issues that especially today's generation has. Uh and as

156I grow older, I I feel like I'm losing patience too. So, and with AI coming in, some of those tools might be easier to adapt. As long as, you know, it's it's framed correctly and it's if it's only searching for articles from within our side, we don't have to worry about it just randomly throwing about wrong information, right? Um, and and a lot of the universities have it where they have their uh mascot that you can chat with and get to quick information. >> Uh, especially with new families coming in or new initiatives that we have and somebody wants to find out information about that where they don't know who to call, right? you don't need to call, you can find that information, it's already there. And if you need for information, this is what

157you do. >> So that that might uh help people navigate some of these things because we have a lot of information, right? That's the other end of it where we have a lot of information out there and what do what I need might be a fraction of that thing. Where do I go looking for it? >> Um so that that's just a request um something to consider. Uh and I'm sure you know with kids learning AI they should be able to show us how to do it, >> right? And one of the things that I think is happening over time, we we have a ton of information on our website and it, you know, since we redid it, I don't know, it's been five, six, seven years at this point, it's much easier to find

158than it was on the previous version of the website. But people just use websites less. They just they they want what they want right in front of them. And it's it's it's it's not anybody's fault. It's I'm the same way, too, a lot of the time. You just you want to click on that link and get exactly what you want. And sometimes it's, you know, another click or another click. But that's a that's a I like that idea. That's a good idea for us to look into to help make the website, you know, it frustrates me sometimes to make it easier to use because we have so much information there, but uh that's the reality of the world and the way the way all of us search for information and content online. >> Thank you.

159>> Morgan, you have a question. Miss >> um so I had two questions. I just want to go back to my notes, make sure I don't forget. Um there's actually three things. Do you want me to do them? >> Okay. >> Number one, um Miss Crerache suggested that we have uh students invited to most of our districtwide committees, which I thought was an excellent idea and was consistent with something that you had talked about a while back about putting together all of the district-wide opportunities to be on the community budget committee to be and putting all of those asks in one place so that people could sort of see the breadth of opportunities for them. and I don't think that we ever got that done. Um, and so I would love to to revisit that.

160So there's the there's about I don't know six or seven required district-wide committees, there's the DSIP, there's a variety of committees and getting all of those in one place so people could see them I think would be really helpful and investigating whether a student participant would be appropriate for each one could happen at the same time. So that was one thing. And then two other things that I just wanted to check in um which are outside of communications but under your purview. When Mr. Miles was here a couple weeks ago, he said he would give us updated figures in early December because he normally comes in early December. So he wanted to give us like year year versus year comparison, which he couldn't do when he was here in October because the timing was wrong.

161So he may already have that half completed for all I know and it's on its way. But if not, um I I'm still interested in seeing those. It was like on time busing and things like that. that they were all the sort of routine things >> from his presentation. >> Yeah. And he couldn't he couldn't compare last year to this year because this year he reported so much earlier. Um and then along those same lines now you know what I'm going to say is you know I would love that charter school the charter school data even if you can't get the narrative written just the updated numbers. I'm always curious and I know this is around the time of year you're usually able to consolidate that. Actually, just today the the school report cards came

162out and I quick went through and and did my little chart just to, you know, see how all of our schools did in comparison to the charter schools. But I've looked, you know, uh the enrollment data that we look at every year we got uh at the start of start of November. And off the top of my head, uh overall, even with the addition of the new high school, uh overall charter enrollment is down something like 22 or 27 students. Um they obviously opened a new a new high school. They a high school closed. The the the uh the nursing charter school closed at the end of last school year. But Green Tech and ALB Leadership in particular were deeply affected by the opening of the new the new high school. Green Tech's enrollment was

163down 22% year to year. And and ALB leadership, which has which which has had its enrollment decline significantly for a decade. From last year to this year with the opening of the new high school, their enrollment was down 28%. >> Oh my gosh. So, um, >> well, when you whip that into enough shape to share it with us, we would love to see it. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Any other question, folks? >> Thank you, Mr. Leco. >> Thanks, everyone. >> Okay. Board committee reports, facilities, So, if I'm not mistaken, our next facilities committee meeting is on the 9th, Tuesday the 9th. And um it's been several weeks since we've had one. So, I think I gave my most recent No, >> I did. Yeah, I did give my most recent uh reports

164at the last meeting. So >> okay man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man audit >> I gave a report um the last time audit committee going nothing's changed it will meet um I think in Janu late January >> yeah so and that that is all >> M cr policy >> thanks the policy committee will be meeting this Wednesday here at 5:30 >> okay Miss Savage >> I don't really need I don't need to do a government relations report because Mr. who took that handily. Um, school visits. Um, the last information that Miss Timmons has updated, so if you haven't updated her, it's not I can't promise it's completely up to date, is that we are five visits done, five visits scheduled,

165and eight that are in the process of being scheduled. So, we're we're making some progress there. I was hoping that we would get them all done before, you know, around the 17th of November or December because we don't want to suddenly be doing a school visit where what you're watching is the holiday party, right? It's much much more fun and more informational when we see a real day a regular day of school. So, if you haven't been checking your district email very regularly, take a quick look and see if you're waiting for anyone. And am I supposed to do something else? Government relations >> ad hoc. >> Oh, ad hoc routine consent. Um, we skipped a meeting because of various things and we may or may not be. Are we going to meet on Monday?

166And we will be meeting on Monday. Um, and so I presume we're going to get some draft stuff tomorrow. Um, perfect. Wonderful. And that's the end of that. Okay. Any other items? Any other board business? Hearing none. Motion to adjourn. Miss man, Miss Cry, all in favor? Motion to journ. Okay, that's unanimous. Thank you and good night everybody.