001Good evening. My name is Tabitha Wilson and I'm the vice president of the City School District of Albany Board of Education. On behalf of the board, I welcome you to our meeting. Unfortunately, President Shadar Chhatur is unable to join us tonight. The rest of the board is here tonight in person. I'm joined by board member Elma Yawi, board member Creeche, board member Savage, as well as board member Wolf Gang. Also by members of the cabinet who are always here in person or virtually to ensure that we are able to answer as many questions as possible during the meeting. Thank you to all of you for your availability and assistance. 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 will
002discuss are available at albschools.org slash boe. This is a good time for me to note that normally we have public comment and you would um approach Miss Timmons here to my right to sign up at this we do. Okay. So actually we do have um public comment and if you're here for that you can sign up with Miss Timmons here to my right. And with that introduction, we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. In addition to the pledge of allegiance, we always focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district
003of 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. Superintendent Hawk Rider, do you have a report for us? Uh, not for tonight, but in early August I will. Outstanding. Um, that being said, what we uh are doing next is not do we have any public comments? No, there's no voicemails, no emails. So, we now move to a part of our meeting we call routine consent. During this portion of the meeting, we approve routine matters for the district. This includes items like contracts, field trips, personnel matters, and the like. Each board member reviews each item carefully, but we vote on them as a group with no discussion. That allows us to use our meeting
004time 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 will now entertain a motion to adopt a routine consent agenda. Board member Wolfgang as well as board member Elman Yawi. Second. Are there any set aides? Seeing none, all in favor of adopting the routine consent agenda. No opposed. No abstension. Routine consent passes. That's unanimous. And I'm going to give it to um Superintendent Huckrider. Yes. If I may for a moment, I'd like to um introduce to the board of education and those following us at home uh that with the board's approval of the routine consent, we also hired our new instructional supervisor for secondary humanities, Miss Freya Mercer, who is with us.
005We're very excited um very excited for Freya to join our team. not only does she bring a wealth of knowledge uh to this position, but she is also a resident and has children in our school district. So, that perspective will also um certainly bode very very well for uh our team and our organization. So, I'd like to welcome Freya and thanks for joining our team. She'll be joining us uh later in August, but will be available for transition opportunities throughout the rest of the summer. So, congratulations and welcome. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is uh action regarding policy. Do we have a overview at this time? The board member crate chief. Uh yes, we do. And I apologize for not being on camera. I'm having a little problem with teams, but I
006am here in person. Um I'm going to walk you through these are actions on the three policies we discussed last time. uh 4526 computer network and internet acceptable use 5300 code of conduct and 5695 students and personal electronic devices. There are no changes to any of the policies since we discussed them at our last meeting. However, there is a revised regulation for 4526 and that regulation has eliminated reference to the BYOD and guest Wi-Fi networks which are being eliminated. Uh replaces references to the technology coordinate technology coordinator with the director of technology. It includes all forms of direct electronic communication such as texting in the guidance given to students on what is and is an appropriate internet activity. And it also adds a reference to images as well as language when describing what what content
007on the internet is considered inappropriate for students to share. Um, as far as 5695 students and personal electronic devices, the administration has begun drafting the associated regulation. Um, but at the last policy committee meeting, we suggested to them that they may need to flesh out certain portions of it. specifically uh the portion regarding how all schools will have two-way communication between students and parents and how and with more specifics on the process for requesting an exemption. Um with that, could I get a motion to adopt these three policies? Oh, or should I ask ask if there is any any any further discussion on any of these three? Miss Savage, do you want to do them sort of like one at a time or do you care? I have a just a couple of questions. Um,
008sure. I think I'll start. Yeah, sure. I'll start. Do I have any questions on policy for 4526, the computer network and internet acceptable use policy? I I don't have it open. I just want to make sure. Is that the one that eliminates BYOD? It is. So, I just wanted to clarify. We're eliminating the network alto together. Um, so because for a while we had a BYOD policy for staff so that they could use our but I think Miss Crerache said that the network is being eliminated. And I'm going to need you to come to the mic just because people at home can't hear you. I can hear you but people at home cannot. We are not planning to eliminate the opportunity to join the network. or just it's not going to be available to students
009um since they can't have their device anyway. But we didn't really have a plan to to shut it off and okay so that that helps cover that. I don't know what it says in the policy. I was just going on what what Miss Craig said and our policy is belltobell right so it was my understanding that students would have access to their devices after the end of the curricular day. So people who are available hanging for sports or who are in clubs after school would have access to their devices and but we're not planning to make the BYOD network available to them during those nonbell times. I don't I don't necessarily think that when I talked with um my team about it we can remove the students from that or we can just leave it.
010And if if the plan is to make sure that they don't have access to their devices in general during the day, then there's no reason why they shouldn't have access to BYOD at the end of the day and we can just leave it as is. I'm my my question and this Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Maybe I misunderstood you. Could you say that again? Sure. um because they're not going to have access to their devices or shouldn't have access to any of their devices during the school day. There's really, in my opinion, no reason for us to worry about removing that group, the student group from having access to BYOD um at any point. So, they should be able to access it at the when they're not in their curricular classes. I see. I understand. And
011I guess I would ask my colleagues on the policy committee, which I'm not anymore. Um is that what it says in the policy? Thank you very much for bringing that to my attention because I think it may be that the 4526 rather than eliminating rather than eliminating references to the BYOD may need to leave that in there and simply revise it to say obviously that's after hours rather than not have any instructions on how on on those and how they're used. So you talking the are you thinking of the policy or the regulation or the pol the policy because we don't the board doesn't doesn't directly uh write or approve the regulations. Right. So so right now the the draft policy simply eliminates all references to BYOD because I thought that was I thought that
012that network I erroneously thought that that network was being eliminated. So, um, we might need to say leave, uh, reinstate that language and simply add language, you know, authorizes student use of personal devices outside the instructional day, but have the same rules about you have to do the you have to do these things, you have to register the device, you have to use the code of follow the code of conduct. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's not a problem to put it back in and put the parameters around when they would have access to it. Um would it be possible for you to um give us a revised version of this policy and regulation for the next board meeting so that we can adopt it then? Yes. And then I think I just Oh, Mr. Wolf Gang.
013Yeah. Just a quick question to clarify. So we're not getting rid of the BYOD. We're also not getting rid of the guest network, right? Correct. Okay. We also took out the guest network in the policy which as the policy reads has nothing to do with the students anyway. So that's why that's why I took it out. Okay. Because the guest network is available to anyone at any time. It that policy is was specific to students using their devices. So, it was a random as I kept reading this over and over as I inherited that policy with that statement about the guest Wi-Fi in there. It just in my opinion didn't seem to fit because there was no additional conversation in that policy about the guest Wi-Fi. Like the guest Wi-Fi is the guest Wi-Fi. It's
014always available regardless of who you are. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that real quick. Sure. I had I do you mind if I just say one clarifying thing? I had um asked my team for my own understanding. What is the real difference between the BYOD Wi-Fi and the guest Wi-Fi knowing that it's available to anyone who has a device that's not a districtsued device, right? And the the difference, the only real difference is is that on the BYOD, you need to do the certifications. On the guest Wi-Fi, you just get to join it and but the filtering is the same. Um what's what you can access or whatever should be the same, pretty much the same, but it's the certification part on the BYOD. So I'm going to make one more proposal
015just um to try and um simplify the future of our lives is that maybe we don't want to name the network um in the policy. Um we just want to say we'll have access at the you know to a network as defined by the technology department or something something because if that way if the name pol if the network gets renamed we certainly don't want to have to rename the re change the policy. Um, so some something along those lines would probably be I think an older version of the policy didn't necessarily have it named. I'd have to go back and refresh my memory, but yeah, I can go back and look at that language from a couple policies ago and and see what that said. Yeah. Or just come up with new language. We're
016just trying to make your life easier when when somebody has some reason they have to rename the Sure. I I have another suggestion. Would it be possible to to write this in a way that says the board may make a wireless a Wi-Fi network available for students to access outside of school hours and not promise that we will but just say we may and if we do this these are the rules for it. Sure. That way it's very flexible. Okay. Thank you. So I'm not going to entertain a motion on this. I don't think I need to entertain a motion on this for it to come back. Right. Okay. It just goes away. So the next one is uh is there any discussion on 5300 the code of conduct? And Miss Savage I just want
017to renew my um appreciation for Miss McDow and the team at PPS for all of the hard work that they did on this policy particularly on their the beginnings of the efforts to make it um written in more plain language so it's more accessible for our families. So I just appreciate that work so much. Um, and I just don't want to lose another opportunity to say how much that is appreciated. So, thank you to the team and I look forward to the work following in the next year as we look to make the whole policy in that same mindset. Thank you. Is there any discussion on 5695 the phone the student use of personal technology aka the new phone policy? Miss Savage, I didn't even have to raise my hand that time. She's reading my
018mind. um the the regulation was um posted but then you said that the regulation was not ready. So I am very confused about whether this regulation is the regulation that like or are we still in the process of figuring out the regulation. So uh let me let me check. I haven't reviewed I actually have not reviewed this new version that is up. I don't I'm looking now. I don't know if the new version that is Yes, I see. It's it is revised from the it's revised from the version that we saw originally. So it looks like they have it looks like they have reviewed that and made some distinctions. Yes, I see that because they've also made references to uh people with exemptions generally getting a non-locking container for their phones rather than if you
019get and I think it's great to have that expect, you know, to spell out that expectation that if you do have an exemption, you don't just carry your phone around and use it willy-nilly. It just means you have a container that you don't h you have it in a container that you don't need a staff member to unlock. So yes, they have we suggested certain um changes and they have made those changes to the regs. Thank you. So then I just have two content questions now that I know I'm looking at the right thing and again I only had a few minutes to scan it because it was posted um quite close to the meeting. Um but in the policy it says regarding languages other than English, it says translation services will be utilized when
020needed. I know this is a really difficult challenge for the district and they've been working really hard to try and figure out what it how we're going to handle this and for folks who have not been following this as closely. The issue is not for our students who speak a language other than English. They can call their family in their in their native language in their first language or possibly their third language because many of them speak four languages, five languages. It's kind of amazing. But the challenge is um that I'm concerned about is when families who speak a language other than English need to reach their child during the school day. Um how is that going to be accomplished? And I do see that it's in the regulation that it says translation services will
021be utilized when needed, but I just wondered if we had any update yet on like how we might see that happening at some of our larger schools. I'm sure we don't have a solution at every school yet, but um I wondered if we knew anything yet or if we should wait for a few further report on that. Yeah, I think we could wait for a further report. I I don't know if Dr. Prepipino wants to do one more review of the systems we have uh when families call in. So, I'll make a comment on your way up to the table. Um I know that we're reviewing um all of our application communication applications that we use. Uh and Mr. Leco is leading that effort to to narrow down I think it's up to 17 different
022applications different uh organizations or schools within the district use. I'll also um offer that on Monday morning um I was one of two or three uh two superintendents to meet with the governor and her team on on this topic and um she asked about challenges. Uh and I did share one of our challenges um is this exact point that we need to um have more robust and and more opportunities for translation services as well as provide spaces for students to access their phone to speak directly with families because of language barriers. And um I use that opportunity as a as a um idea that maybe the governor in the next budget or wherever should include additional technology related funds for those purchases because that was something that um not many other districts are thinking about,
023but we raised it and and will probably be an implementation hurdle across the state. But in terms of the translation services we use, if you want to just brief everyone one more time. There's really not an easy way to utilize our current phone data system to just implement something across the district that is accessible to parents as well as to staff that makes this conversation, the exchange of a conversation just natural in an easy way. Um, so utilizing what we already have for our systems of phone and voice is and whatnot is not going to work. Um, I wish I could tell you that I know that it makes the most sense to to use something like talking points, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with, but it's quite I would say it's probably
024one of the more popular ones that we have in the district for immediate translation in a text format. Um, we know that we have all language translations or language line, sorry, which is where you make the phone call and it's a three-way conversation. Um, I realize that's not ideal all the time, especially if it's an emergency or something like that. If we were I I sort of wish Mr. Leco were here so that he could let us know where he is or what his thoughts are on a timeline. I can tell you that whatever we select, however we choose to do this, if a however a school chooses to do this, um my team, we can provide for example, we can provide each each main office with like a dedicated cell phone, for example, to
025make sure that if that's the number that they need to text to, that someone needs to be monitoring that phone so they can text back. We can do that very easily. Um, again, it just Matt, it makes it makes it important that there's some dedicated staff to be paying attention to those things and whatnot. Um, but I don't want to speak for Mr. Leco. I don't want to speak. I know that some schools use Class Dojo, some schools use Talking Points, some schools use Remind, some schools use I I don't know. Um, but we can, my team can work to help make sure that we figure out a strategy to get something into the hands of the main offices to get something going. It looks like Miss Wilson also has a comment or question. Um,
026thank you. Just in response to what you were discussing, I'm curious um because I'm familiar with the traditional language lines where someone calls and you identify what language they're speaking and then you call. Is there any service that the person can call into and then they'll call a designated number like thus they're already on the phone with the translator? I'm just curious. H that's a good question. I'm not aware of that per se where where a parent could initiate that call. I'm not I'm not personally familiar with that option. Just curious about that. And also um you know typically if it's things like an appointment that day you have that face tof face interaction. So just thinking of an emergency. I love what you said about this number for emergency. Um just just taking that
027back. It would be great to know as we assess what product we use what the need or how typical that is that there's an emergency regardless of language like on what kind of basis that we're getting that so we know what to anticipate. I think that it's important to point out unless I'm I may be incorrect, but my knowledge of any type of system where it allows for two-way communication, translated two-way communication. The parent needs to join that service via a code that's provided or an email that says, you know, because in that mechanism, then they're able in their profile to select the language they want to receive information in. So, and I'm I'm not familiar if all of the systems do that, but the ones that I have familiarity with, there's a need for
028the the parents to do that in order for the two-way to work for translations. Um, but it doesn't mean that we can't try and do what we need to do to just ease the process. I mean, it could be, and I'm daydreaming here, but I'm just trying to simplify because I do realize what a difficult problem this is. It could be as simple as if you speak a language other than English, text your students name and ID number to this number and we will go get your student and then you can speak to the student in whatever language you speak. Um, you know, we don't necessarily need to engage a third party. We just need a way to for parents and um, you know, I I I the regulation is extremely vague. It's not clear
029whose responsibility it is. It's written in the passive voice. Translation services will be utilized when needed. That gives me a little bit of anxiety. We're now five weeks away from the first day of school. We don't seem to really have a clear idea of how we're going to do this. And we should be, in my opinion, pretty close to a point where we're communicating to families because families are expressing increasing anxiety um about what this experience is going to be as more of them become more and more aware. So, it would be um great if we could, you know, figure this out. It's not right, ethical, or just that our families with the most capacity in English also have the most access to their students. That's not right. It's just not okay. Um, and I
030re I'm not speaking to you, Dr. Prespatino. I don't I know this isn't your problem. I know that this is a challenge that we're all facing together, but I really um one of the things that I was told very early on when I was a school member is as long as you keep what's right for the kids in mind, you will be serving the students. And I am really doing my best to honor the challenges that the staff is facing, but serve the students um and their families. So, let's let's simplify. Let's figure it out, but we've got five weeks till the first day of school. We should be sending communication out well before that explaining to families what it is that they need to do if they need to reach their children. And for
031the high school summer school this summer, we did not tell them that. We said no cell phones. We did not say and if you need to reach your child, here is the office phone number. Call us. We will get your child. We didn't say that. And that was clear in the board policy then. And it was not something that was done. So, I have um concerns about the um level of intentionality around serving our students in that way. And I will yield the floor, Mr. Yes, Mr. Um to tack on to the complexity that member Savage was saying, um if there is some way that we can utilize services that are not necessarily going to require a long-term contract like So my thought was that um and this might just be totally bogus. it could
032be useful. But Google voice has a situ like has a process where you can create a phone number and literally the voicemails are transcribed. Um you could text it. If you had a phone number for each academy or you know each school and somebody who monitors that it would say hey you have a new message here's the message here's what we expect you can even have automated responses to it saying like you know thank you for reaching out to us please include your you know these things um and people generally if they have a phone to text they could take whatever ever English we have sent and they could have it translated and a lot of their phones already do the translation. Um it's just it's not a you know total solution but it's something
033that may work better than give giving the phone call to the secretar's desk where they're going to get inundated you know I don't know and maybe have a process where every 30 minutes or you know every So often you I just see what is on the list. Um the other thought was that or a question was have we looked into answering services because I know that's also an additional contract money etc. But um their doctor's offices have them now where you call essentially a central hub and that central hub takes the message and gets it to the people that need it. Um and then you get a call back from whoever you are trying to contact. Mhm. Um I'm not sure if that's been looked at, but to me there definitely should be a way
034that you can call or text, which would Google Voice seems like a simple free option, but obviously much more complicated than just that, of course. Just food for thought. Thank you. Um Mr. Wolf Gang. Yeah. So, just kind of similar followup to uh especially what uh member Savage was saying, but I just want to throw out that, you know, especially in the beginning, I'm sure we would like to have all of the messages translated, but presumably the students and the parents will have a common language that they speak. So, if we're able to even set up like uh a voicemail box where you type in your student's ID number and then you leave the message in your native language and then that message can be played for the student. I don't know. I mean, there
035might be concerns about like us being a conduit for messages that shouldn't be shared, right? But, um, you know, I think that's possibly something to look into, too, is um like a manual entry of the students ID. Um because I believe all languages use well most of languages use the same digits. Yeah, digits the Arabic numerals uh you know so that's just an idea I wanted to throw out as well. Thank you. I'm I got to say I'm intrigued by some of those ideas uh particularly Mr. Elmanawi's idea of engaging in answering service because the thing that worries me and I think I've discussed it a little bit in the policy committee is that if this is made one singular staff member at a school's responsibility then if that staff member is out for the
036day that school won't have coverage and I fear parents calling and having the phone ring and ring and ring or by October 1st they call and it's like this mailbox is full. Sure. And that really worries me because obviously with eight, you know, 8 9,000 students at any point many of them may be having very urgent family situations, emergencies, car accidents, hospitalization, um, immigration, whatever cases where there there will be cases where families need to contact their students urgently. And if they're not able to do that, I'm afraid that that will affect attendance if parents are like, if there's a serious situation, I can't reach my kid. I'm going to keep them home for the duration. Um I but I was very very happy to see the regulation uh revised a bit in response to
037some of the concerns. The one thing that I still see in there and I'm going to ask you since you are the technology person is we had discussed previously um questioned why wireless earbuds and headphones were included because by themselves they're not able to access the internet and because uh logistically especially with those bigger overthe-ear ones you can't fit them in a yonder pouch and I think that the at the last policy committee uh staff said that they would look into that and get back to us but we Actually, I never heard anything back on that and I see that they're still in there. And I also wondered why we would say wireless earphones and headphones because one with wires, right, would be similarly presumably similarly prohibited, but we' never heard anything back on why
038those continue to be in that policy. I do not know the answer to that. I I'm working under the assumption that the plan is to put obviously you can't put the over the ear headphones in but anything that is able to access the internet into the yonder pouches to your point if the phone's in the yonder pouch theoretically the the watch and the earbuds and things like that can't do anything anyway. So, if that's a question that we need to bring back to Carla for followup and kind of get an answer for that, we can certainly do that. Yes, please. Because I know one of the things we discussed is many students use the noise cancelling features on those headphones because the hallways and the school buildings can be noisy. Um, but yeah, thank you.
039And I wanted to bring up just for the public's information that we have received the change.org or petitions regarding this issue and that we as a district are obligated by state law to institute a policy banning use of cell phones during the school day. That's not something that is that is a superintendent decision, a staff decision or a board decision. um we are required to do that and I think as a board we as a board and as a policy committee we've tried to do that thoughtfully and carefully and as Miss Savage said in a way that puts the students first at all times. So, I did want to let people know that we are we do share many of those concerns and we're committed to doing this um as fairly as fairly as possible
040and in a way that disrupts lives as little as possible be because we know that while phones while phones can be a distraction and can be a problem, they also are very important in people's lives and and we do realize that. Um, with that, if there are no further comments, could I get a motion to adopt this uh, I gota click back on that? Oh, um, can I get a motion to adopt? Um, did I did we adopt any of these yet? I don't think we did. We Okay, we did adopt I didn't think we adopt we didn't adopt any of these yet. Um could I get if there's no further discussion on any of these policies? Could I get a motion to adopt 4526 5300 and 5695? I'm sorry. I think we decided 4526
041is going back and is not to be adopted tonight. You got it. Okay. Just the two 5300 5695. Miss Wilson, second by Mr. Wolf Gang. All those in favor and that is unanimous. Save save Dr. Chhatur and member man who both of whom are not here tonight and I'm going to yield the floor back to acting president Wilson. Thank you board member Kerichi. So at this point in the um meeting although we sort of just met two weeks ago I'm going to double check if there's any board committee reports or other business. Not at this time. So any other item you'd like to raise tonight? Okay. So in that case, may I have a motion to adjurnn? Board member Creeche. A second. Board member Elman Yawi. Any no discussion? All in favor of adjourning. That
042is all the board members present. Thank you.