Board of Education Public Meeting | Live Stream | June 5th, 2025

001Good evening. Good evening. My name is Shrida 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. Uh today we have uh member Almanavi, member Smith, uh vice president Wilson, member creary cre and member Savage with us, member Damis man is not able to join us today. Uh we also have the superintendent and a few cabinet members present here and 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 will 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 Miss Tim Simmons here, our

002board clerk. Uh, and with that introduction, I invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nationy and justice for all. In addition to the pledge of allegiance, we also 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. Super Hawk Rider, do you have a report for us? I do, and we're going to begin with Mr. Leco and all of these fine falcons in blue. Thank you. We are proud tonight to celebrate a first time, but certainly not

003the last time achievement for one of our athletic teams. The Alb High flag football team won its first section 2 championship on May 23rd, outlasting Shannendo in a thrilling back andforth second half. The Falcons have now played in the champion championship game each of the first two seasons of sectional competition in flag football, and we have no doubt that they'll be back. Here to tell us more about the team's exceptional season are coaches Becky Lawson and Rachel Swan. Uh we are very honored to be here today as the Albany uh Falcon football team. uh with my uh assistant coach uh Rachel Swan uh and the rest of the rest of the squad who's not gonna really speak. Um but we have uh one of our young ladies uh who um was the flag football uh

004most valuable player here. She's not going to speak today. Um she was here for another sport. So she decided to sit this one out and let someone else speak. So um Azir great u most valuable player of the section two. Uh we have uh a few more young ladies that was uh picked to be section allstar who was the first team uh Z was first team kicker second team kicker. Um, Bri was first team, but I'm going to let them um speak and let them let you tell about their accolades themselves. Uh, all right. Uh, Rachel, you want to say something? Um, I just wanted to say that uh last year didn't go our way and we were here uh same time last year and we told you we were going to take it and

005uh the girls bought into the system. They knew what they had to do and they got it done and we are extremely proud of them. So, now we will hear from our young ladies. Za, I'm gonna go first because everyone's awkward, but hi, I'm Zeta. Um, this is my first year playing flag, but it was really like an amazing opportunity. All the other sports I played, we played definitely for fun, not because we were good. Um, but it was really incredible going to sectionals and then not only that, but section champs and then to regionals. It was just overall really amazing experience and I wish I could do it again, but I hope these girls have a really fun time. [Applause] Okay. Hi guys, my name is Brianna Perez. Um, yeah, like this season it

006it meant a lot because I haven't played like a team sport in a long time and so being able to like connect with all the girls and like really create a family, it it really meant a lot. like everybody had each other's back at all times and you know we we could keep going. We should keep going. I don't think the game went our way our last game, but um we did everything we could and they're going to come get them next year and they're going to do even better. So yeah. [Applause] Hi, my name is Gabby and this is my first year playing flag and I really just started playing it for fun, but I'm happy that um I committed to it and everything cuz I met a lot of new people and I

007got close with them. So, I really love them, I guess, and I really hope that next year they do great and, you know, I'll come to field games and cheer them on. cuz you're short. You get it? Hi, my name is Brazia. This is my second year playing flag and overall the experience was really good. Like I love everybody on the team and it was fun. Yeah. Hey, it works. So, we thank you guys very much for having us here today and see you guys next year hopefully. Yes. Thank you. [Applause] I tell you, these teams, I mean, they're quite the bunch and and um they bring that team spirit all the way through. And when you if you're on the field watching them, I mean, the interaction between these kids, it's amazing. They stand

008up for each other. Everything that you expect a team to do. Yeah. If someone's down, they they look their teammates up. So kudos next year states. They played so hard last Saturday. It was uh it was such a heartbreaking loss, but they played hard and they played well. It was it was a great game and you know at next board meeting we'll have um some more really really really exceptionally talented student athletes here to celebrate their their success and they got a shot at a state championship which you hear more about from the superintendent later on. Um, we are now pleased to welcome Principal Leslie Buff to tell us about the great thing and Leslie Buff and friends to tell us about the great things happening this year at New Scotland Elementary School. person. Okay,

009there we go. Thank you. Sorry about that. Um, I'm Leslie Buff, the building principal at New Scotland Elementary School. And here with me this evening, I have our assistant principal, Miss Tamita Rose. And we have some students that are joining us that Miss Rose will introduce a little bit later in our presentation. Before I begin, I just want to thank the board of ed and also the superintendent for giving us the opportunity to share with you a little bit about New Scotland Elementary School. As we begin our presentation, we always start with the district vision, mission, and goals, and then our New Scotland um vision, mission, and goals. And is my hope um that you will see these coming to life um in the work that we do and that we share with you this

010evening. And I hope the board does not mind, but I'm going to go a little bit old school style and date myself back to when we had about five minutes to present um and shorten my comments um so that I can afford more time for the students to share what they want to share with you this evening. Um so we can go to the next slide. And this is our school leadership again, Miss Rosen, myself and our building leadership team. As you can see, we have a variety of staff members that make up our building leadership team and also a parent and then our student leadership team. That looks small, but these are our student leadership um president, vice president, secretary, and representatives. Um but we have a variety of student leaders within the building

011um that are constantly bringing initiatives and new ideas to Miss Rose. Um, you will hear some of that today. But then also our student newsletter is something new this year. The newsletter that I send out is now solely written by our students. Um, and that was a student initiative. They approached Miss Rose and asked um if they could start that. We could go to our next slide. Um, we are close to 500 students and growing. I think we got two new students this week and we love that. Um, and you can see from our demographics that our student population is quite diverse. Um, and that's something that I think makes New Scotland Elementary School very special. And you can go to our next slide. Our attendance has stayed fairly consistent um, for the last couple

012of years. Um, and this is due to Mrs. Rose's work with our attendance committee. Um, we have a plan that supports all of our students and celebrates all of our students attendance, but also drills down to our students that might need a little bit more support. And she creates individual plans with the student and their family to support their attendance success in school. You can go to the next slide. For our set focus and highlights, I really just want to highlight a few things. Over the summer, Miss Rose and I had some conversation about really increasing our classroom visits from last year to this year. And as you can see, last year we did 116 and this year we're still um still doing visits, but we're up to 222. Um and we've had discussion about

013quantity versus quality, but for us it was really just getting out into the classrooms more to help us uncover um some instructional trends and ways that we could better support our students. And we definitely had support um with that work with our instructional supervisors and Miss Hulahan came over um and did some class visits with us as well. Um and that was really beneficial because they kind of saw some of the trends that we were uncovering and that work has really um been vital in building our SEAP for next year and ways that we can elevate um students accountable talk in within the classroom. And I'd also like to highlight our um under equity um we brought back our welcome back night that some of you attended um our work with equity was really about

014building relationships not only with with our students but with our families. We really want our families to feel that they are um important stakeholders in their child's education. And so we had a back to school night that was kind of like a block party and we had an amazing turnout and it really um was just such a positive way to start the school year. and we've kind of continued with our events and and those connections that we made during that and that is definitely something that we plan to do um you know for years to come and you can go to our next slide our challenges and next steps um our challenge is still attaining that 80% proficiency when I look at our New York state data from last year we had um a few

015classes come very close to that and a class actually achieved that um so this is definitely an attainable goal for us. Um, and my hope is in the next couple of years we continue to grow very close to that, if not achieve it. Um, and some of the next steps um that we plan to do is um smart scheduling um being strategic with our service providers and making sure that we're maximizing um their time in the classrooms. um in common planning time and making sure that um my building coaches are supporting that time and we're using that time to capacity and then also continuing with our classroom visits so we can stay on top of instruction and student learning in the classroom. um also using our coaches and encouraging coaching cycles with our teachers and

016then um continuing our equity work really um you know we've focused on relationship building but shifting that conversation from relationship building to instruction and really empowering our students um to take charge of their own learning. Um and with that I'm going to pass it over to Miss Rose. Thank you. I think I stayed under five minutes. Good evening everyone. I can definitely say it's ladies night between the group that we have here and the lady athletes we saw earlier this morning. I am really happy to be in the room this evening. So back in March, uh board member Vicky Smith visited our school to meet with our student leadership team to talk about the student board member uh representative. And while there, two of the members who were here with us tonight shared a project

017that they were working on with their friends at lunch and recess regarding the amount of plastic that is used to serve our school meals. So before uh Miss Smith left, she invited the students to speak before the board. And so we thought it would be fitting for them to join us tonight to share the project that they've been working on. Uh they're very wellprepared. Um, I won't introduce I'll just introduce them as fifth grade students from New Scotland, but they will introduce themselves individually. But I have to say that they truly embody our student miss our school's mission, which is to create a compassionate community of everyday leaders. So, I really hope you enjoy their presentation as much as we have. Ladies, Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, could you click the link, please? It should be

018hyperl. All right, we are prepared. All right, so we will just Oh, she's working. Oh, oh, you are. Oh, I'm sorry. I told them to expect these things. While they're talking, it would be possible to see if you have that clip and you can email it to Thank you. Okay, you're good. Hi, I'm Margaret Oander. I'm Lana Mender. I'm Alina Connorenti. I'm Ellie Girthy. and I'm Grace Collins. And we are here to talk about our plastic problem and the effects school waste has on all of us and what we can do to fix it. The average hot lunch at New Scotland Elementary School contains a fruit wrapped in plastic or an applesauce in a plastic container, a plastic bag of vegetables, a waxed cardboard milk carton, a cardboard tray, a main dish, sometimes in a

019plastic and cardboard box, and plastic cutlery wrapped in plastic. Now, that's a lot of plastic. And every single student who gets a school lunch is throwing away that much plastic every day. But think about a whole grade, then a whole school. Then you get our point. We are here to talk about how the school lunch waste is hurting the world. But wrapping some foods in plastic can be beneficial. Plastic packaging for food can make handling and serving meals easier. It also can make transporting foods easier and can have allergy benefits. While pla while plastic wrapping has some benefits, it is very harmful. When plastic breaks down, it is actually just turning into microlastics and sometimes chemical leakage that we consume. In addition to getting into our food, plastic is seriously bad for the environment. It

020doesn't biodegrade, accumulating in landfills, polluting ecosystems, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. It won't take much to make a change. Wrapping things in plastic isn't a requirement. We all worried about our plastic problem. One day, Alen and I came out to recess and we saw Lana crocheting. Next to her was a pile of sport wrappers. We had no idea what she was doing. It turned out she was crocheting bags out of the garbage to reduce the amount of waste that ended up in landfills. Soon, the rest of us were helping, too. Every lunch, we collect spork wrappers, and every recess we rip, tie, and crochet the otherwise garbage into durable and fashionable bags. When we sell them, we donate a fraction of our profits to a climate organization. After helping others learn to crochet on

021crochet day, creating a logo, preparing for our first sale, and taking lots of our own time to help the world, our business has really taken flight. We've made the difference that we've wanted to make, but we'll need a much bigger difference to save our planet. It's amazing for the district to supply lunch, breakfast, and after school snack for any student who needs food. But the school lunches are throwing out an absurd amount of waste. Something needs to be done. We talked to Miss Parin, the head of the food department about many, many solutions. One of them is using plastic alternatives such as paper that are less expensive than plastic. As well as plastic waste, there is much food waste getting thrown out and as one of the longer and more difficult solutions. Partnering with the

022city compost could solve this problem. The way that the lunch line is set up also plays a factor. If all the trays are set out with food on them when the student gets their lunch, then most of the the food will be wrapped. But if the students can serve themsel can serve themselves, it will cut down on much plastic. But if we do this, a sneeze guard will be necessary. Many students who also take a spork, napkin, and straw, which are all in one plastic package when they only need one of these things. If we get separate dispensers for all of them, it can make a big difference. Lastly, Aramark, the program that gives us our lunches, is also responsible for some of the plastic. So, we hope you could take into consideration switching to

023more eco eco-friendly lunch program. Thank you. Also, um, Miss Smith, Miss Rose told us that you were retiring. Um, so we made you a bag. Actually, that's a good question. Aren't you having a a sale? Um, so that got cancelled, but we're probably going to be doing a farmer's birthday. We prepared a lot of things for the sale. We were going to have a sale on Saturday, but it's probably going to be rained out, so it's probably not going to happen then. But since we have so many things prepared for that, um, we're probably going to find another place to sell them. During the summer, we're also probably going to be doing a lot of farmers markets and stuff sales like that. Students like us and people like us can sell our creations. [Applause] All

024right. Squeezing. Squeezing. More. Squeezing. Stay right where you are. Oh my god. And that concludes tonight's district highlights. always difficult to follow sectional champs and entrepreneurs from uh plastic various plastics. But a number of updates uh for the board and the community and as we heard earlier uh we like to restate our vision, mission and goals. A couple updates and discussion topics. It is uh the awards ceremony season and um there have been many of us who have been on tour celebrating all of the uh successes far and wide of our students throughout the organization. Uh last week, I think it was last week, this week, Monday, it was it was this week, JOTC, uh we celebrated uh the graduating cadetses and number of promotions uh from one of our largest and certainly most diverse

025groups uh in the district at the high school, the uh JOTC group. Uh and pictured here on the right is Harry Hypnarowski. Uh he is going to be the JOTC commander next year. Uh, also part of the uh, award ceremony and recognition, um, if I got the number right, I believe $800,000 of scholarships were handed out to students. Was it It was eight, right? Oh, it was nine. $900,000 of scholarships. Uh, two students going to Syracuse and one student going to Baylor University. So, um, their, uh, achievement was certainly recognized by their higher education institutions. Uh, also this week on Tuesday, what uh we celebrated a number of our our athletes, all of our coaches uh were able to give out their end of season awards and recognize their seniors. And we want to uh

026congratulate we saw her earlier today, Azera Gates uh was recognized as outstanding female athlete and Samir Gardner as outstanding male athlete. And the celebrations and recognitions uh continue next week at the high school. We'll celebrate students on Monday for our junior senior awards night and a number of CTE programs will have their ceremonies also at the high school next Thursday. Tomorrow kicks off the 11th annual uh elementary art show uh in partnership with the Albany Institute of History. Uh we have more than 500 uh pieces of work that that have been submitted representing all 12 of our elementary schools. We're going to have some live jazz from uh the Hackett Middle School Jazz Band opening uh ceremonies. The gallery opens at 5:00 tomorrow and runs from 10:00 to 5:00 on Saturday and noon to 5

027on Sunday. Uh you do not need to pay any um fee to get in. It is free and the institute is located on Washington Avenue at 125 Washington A. We heard about uh these champs earlier and we hope to recognize them in three weeks at our last board meeting. Uh we certainly anticipate great success, but our Albany High School 4x100 meter relay team uh will part be participating in the state championship um next weekend. Uh and they will head to Middletown on June 13th. They are the fastest team in the state at the 4x100, just under 42 seconds. uh they ran uh that brought them home the section two championship in late May. That's also the fourth fastest time in the history of section two. Uh we want to make sure that uh our outstanding

028team of Samir Gardner, Rohan Edwards Grant, Duron Herell, and Nif Smith uh will be participating in representing Albany. They also will be complete competing at the 4x400 uh and Gardner will compete in the long jump. So, we wish uh our Falcons more luck next weekend in Middletown and it is officially the end of the year and finally the weather the last two days have felt like it. Uh but we are uh approaching the finish line. So, our we have regent exams at our high school Tony Clement and our new newcomer program next week. Last day of class is June 16th. Regent's exams continue the 17th to the 26th and we will recognize hundreds of graduating seniors at noon on Sunday June 29th at the MVP Arena. Our middle schoolers including Clement and newcomer program. Their

029last full day is the 26th and they'll have moving up ceremonies on the 27th. uh same dates for the end of our uh elementary K5 program uh both with early dismissal and June 20th is the last day for preK with the exception of Monsuri which uh will end on the 26th and 27th and that completes my report. Thank you, superintendent. Board colleagues, as is our usual practice, I ask you to prioritize your questions and ask the most important question first so that we can uh everybody gets a chance and we can have a second question second round if need be. Um, we'll start on this side. Mr. Almani. Uh, no questions. I just wanted to say I'm so proud of all of our students. Um, all of the awards and all of the recognitions that

030they earned are, you know, welldeserved and I love the end of the year because I get to see them do things like today. So, thank you superintendent and all involved. Miss Smith. Yes. Thank you. And uh Superintendent and and I want to just echo uh Mr. Alman Yahawi's comments. Um you know, we we are here for them. And uh I love that um our students are just they're just so brilliant, so wonderful. And um and there were what five or six well there are hundreds and hundreds uh of our students. thousands actually um that are doing wonderful and great things um not just for themselves but also for our world. So I am uh grateful um for for them and gives me a great deal of hope for our future and uh many thanks also

031to their leaders their school leaders as well as their teachers and staff who work and support them on a daily basis. Um I don't really have any questions other than uh superintendent I did want to check uh one thing with you and uh and that has to do again with the state of the world and the climate. Um how do would you say our students are are doing particularly our ENL students or those who are uh concerned about um their famil family's safety and security? Do you have any u reports? Um I know just like in other communities we are seeing um some ICE activity. Um and we haven't had I don't believe some of those uh experiences. There have been a few detaining situations but uh some of the ones that we've seen um

032you know in Massachusetts particularly of students and children in Texas or wherever. So just wanted to kind of get a sense from you of of uh how our students are doing. uh not just those who are impacted but those who love and support them. Yeah, I know that uh the folks at at AIA u our full-time principal who's now the uh acting ENL and refugee service director Rachel Steed is in constant contact with any number of agencies. Uh we have been uh in communication with Albany Police Department. They they have continued um to uh commit to giving us any heads up if there if there is ICE activity involving our students, families or certainly at the schools. Um that has not happened um at this point. Uh I know tomorrow um Mr. Leco and I

033will will be in this room uh with about a hundred of our community partners. Um, and usually this topic does come up and so um, if there is any, uh, discussion or chatter from our community partners, I'll certainly be able to report back. But the good news is we we have not heard anything internally from our school folks. Miss Savage, Miss Grey, uh, no questions. just echoing some of my colleagues to say um I'm impressed with the students and you know the sort of the common theme among the flag football players and the new Scotland students and the students I've seen in events has been them working together in team building uh their strong sense of creativity and their achievement. It's really it's really heartening. So, and thank you to the people that are working

034with them and bringing out the best in them. I mean, JRTC night was amazing. The athletic awards night uh on Tuesday. It was fantastic to hear that, you know, these kids are doing doing great things on the field. But that's not it. That's not just it. you had so NISA if you have more than um 90% so if 75% of the athletes on a team get more than 90% then the team is called a scholar team we had girls tennis boys tennis girls swimming boys swimming cross country boys and girls uh lacrosse soccer you name it I mean these are teams that are soccer team I mean that are scholar teams and on top of that there were a whole bunch of other kids who not I mean their team barely missed the 75% requirement

035but they're a whole bunch of individual scholar athletes. So they're doing great on the field and in the classroom and that's that's so great to see that you know our staff our our coaches our teachers all are coming together working together making sure that they shine in and have their you know are doing to the best of their full potential. Um, and I mean the creativity that these kids showed from New Scotland today, I mean it is just amazing. And and I this last week, I mean May and June is great because you start to celebrate things and and last week there was the New York State API uh heritage celebration in in the uh legislative office building. And I was I happened to be on a panel that was talking about navigating biculturalism and

036and the challenges and opportunities of youth. And who do you think was the right next to me on the panel? Kevin McCloud, 2023 alumni. Right. So these kids are going out. I mean, he's in Harvard. He's going to be a junior this year. And he's there on a panel on the state level talking to community, right? And another graduate, Miss Onu, she just graduated from Harvard. So these kids are doing so much whether they're in our district or outside our district. And I wish we had more and more opportunity to celebrate their achievements. Uh but no other questions. Uh thank you Mr. President S. So Dr. Chur just to pick up on Miss Cree's themes and and really everyone's uh the leadership, the creativity and the sense of community and belonging that that they are

037actually creating. It's not the adults. These are kids. Um, and I just it's just wonderful to to see and experience. Um, so again, thanks to all of them and everyone who supports them. All right. Uh, moving on to the next topic on our agenda, public comment. Um, this is a time we set aside to hear from members of the public. Um, I don't know if we have any uh in-person presenters today. Uh while there are no nobody uh presenting in person today, we do invite members of the public to share their thoughts on the decisions we are facing. We accept public comment in person, by voicemail, and through web-based form. Information about public comment and contact information is on the district website at albonychools.org/bee. And we do accept um comments in any language and we

038can uh provide a translator uh to translate those. Didn't we get one? Yeah. Yeah. So, we do have one uh public comment that came to us by email and I would like to read that. Okay. This comment comes to us from um Christian Mike. I see that tonight's board meeting minutes include the adoption of the New York State Deferred Compensation Plan as a benefit to district employees. I spoke last June at one of the board meetings during public comment in support of this important benefit and I'm so pleased to see this coming to fruition. Thank you for getting this done and for all that you do. So we do listen. All right. We appreciate all public comments and we find hearing from community members very valuable. Again, our contact information for both public comment and

039for routine correspondence is at a albonychools.org org/boe. We move on to the next part of our meeting. We call routine consent. During this portion of the meeting, we approve routine matters for the district. These include items like contracts, field trips, personnel matters, 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 uh 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. Miss Smith, Miss Crerachche, any set aside. Uh Mr. Almanavi, I'd like to set aside number three, the ACST donation. Okay, setting aside number three.

040Um, all in favor of adopting routine consent agenda except number three, ACSD donation. Okay, that's all in favor. Um, okay. Um, Mr. Almani, I just wanted to pull this out and recognize the community foundation. recognize and thank the community foundation for the greater greater capital region for donating uh this uh fund to essentially um help our students go to a science symposium and do uh space experiments. So it's really cool. Thank you so much. Great. And for those of you who are not aware in the last three years now uh the science team at Hackit has won the uh opportunity to go present have their their scientific experiment be conducted on a space shuttle. Uh and the Bender Foundation is a very strong community foundation that supports science in colleges and and schools and all

041around the capital district. uh and I'm I'm so grateful for having them support this team so that they can do more uh science. So uh having heard that uh all in favor adopting number three ACST donation that's unanimous. Thank you. Okay. So as is our normal practice uh we have arranged all the our agenda with all the action items in the beginning unless something unexpected happens. We do not anticipate the board will take any further actions tonight. The balance of the meetings will be items up for discussion some of which could lead to a action later on in a future meeting or later in the meeting. Uh and this brings us to the discussions and presentation. And up next is the technology division presentation. Come on up. Are you all set, Mr. Barber? Yes. Okay.

042Good evening board members, Superintendent Hawk Rider, and members of cabinet. We are excited to share with you tonight the latest updates from the Office of Assessment, Accountability, and Technology Innovation for the 2425 school year. We always keep the district vision, mission, and goals at the forefront of all of our work. We unveiled this visual for the first time last year to illustrate our overarching responsibilities in in supporting the daily activities of all staff and students. Our focus is on fostering innovative methods for both systems and instruction throughout the district. To effectively meet our core responsibilities, the work of the division is organized into these four departments. Joining me tonight are most of the leaders of each department to give an update on the work in their area. Testing coordinator Shaina Barber, director of technology John

043Wild, the in instructional technology coaches Jeremy Dudley, Kevin Marceno, Sue McCoy, and Terrence McN. And unfortunately, our director of data and accountability, Patricia Wolf, ended up falling ill during the day and um had to go home. So I will be covering her part. But in the meantime, I'm going to turn it over to Shaya Barber for state assessments. Hello. I'm happy to be here this evening to share an assessment update with you on the New York State grades three throughout ELA and math tests and grades five and eight science exams. In the past, New York State Ed would release a standardized testing schedule that school districts adhered to with specific testing dates and specific makeup dates. Traditionally, the testing season would start with ELA, math, then science. The exam were always administered in that order.

044There was no deviating from the prescribed New York State Ed schedule. With the transition to computer-based testing or CBT, districts have the flexibility to schedule New York State exams within a prescribed six-week window. Now, thoughtful considerations and planning to establish the testing calendar starts in the summer and continues throughout the school year up until the test administration. Looking at the testing calendar, you can see that the first week of testing was quite light. That was due to the statewide CBT glitch. Our district then pivoted testing until the week after spring break. This was a benefit to Albany schools as all their districts were able to test the system while we were on our spring break. When students returned from April break, you can see that the majority of schools administered the ELA test. Then the

045next week, some schools took a break. And in week four, the majority of schools administered the math exam. And then the fifth week, most schools finished up testing with their science exams. The six week testing window was extended an extra week due to that CBT glitch, but our testing was completed within the original window. So, as you can see on the data slide, moving along, as you can see from the pie charts in red, almost 13,000 test sessions were completed in ELA, math, and science during the spring CBT administration along with 1600 paperbased tests being completed. Looking at the ELA testing data, you can see that 316 students are firstear English language learners or better known as L's and they were exempt from the ELA exam during their first year. Plus, I'd like to point

046out that 92 students tested on paper and that is an accommodation on their IEP. As we move over to the grades three through eight math data, you can see that almost 1,200 students tested on paper. You may ask why the increase from the ELA to math for paperbased tested students. The reason for this is ENL students may take their math and science exams on paper because there are no languages other than English in the next Terara CBT platform. When looking at the science numbers, please note that only grades five and eight students take that exam and there were over 800 sessions completed. And again, we had only about 175 students test on paper. um and the rest of the students who do not take that assessment end up taking the region's biology exam instead of

047the science 8. On the next slide, there were some CBT challenges and opportunities. Communication to all stakeholders is essential during the testing window. It needs to be ongoing, immediate, and succinct. Along with making sure all of our district buildings have points of contact is necessary to ensure that all of our outof district placements receive that same information for all of our students. Ongoing support is always available throughout the testing window from setup to closeout. There's consistent monitoring on special education students and their IEP accommodations. ENL student data is monitored also so translators can be provided when needed and the proper language exams provided. Plus, it is imperative um that all students that enroll in our district are added to the next terrace system so they can be tested. The workflow changes are quite different for

048CBT. The upfront set setup can be laborious and detailed. Computer-based testing along with paperbased testing is a challenge in itself because two testing systems are running in tandem with one another. The tracking of testing material is a challenge because ELA, math, and science materials are all happening simultaneously. So having a coordinated structured system in place is a must. Last but not least, professional development for CBT. CBT is changing as fast as our technology these days. PT PD is continuous and ongoing with always the testing integrity at the forefront. I'd like to turn it back over to um April for the data and accountability update. So on behalf of Patricia Wolf, I will be um sharing her information um as it relates to the department of data and accountability. The department deals with an with an

049immense amount of data from many different systems that is operationalized and communicated through many integrations and dashboards. Our focus centers on progress monitoring to help inform stakeholders in the moment and as well as the end of results reporting for state accountability and many other program initiatives. Another aspect of our department is helping to ensure data privacy. There are so many web-based applications and tools, it is challenging to monitor and ensure compliance. Thankfully, we have a new development this year that helps with this endeavor, which I will explain in a little bit. Lastly, one of the most reported issues by users is the overwhelming amount of information and systems, and it can be confusing for users to know where to go or what to do. To combat this, we continue on the path of creating more

050forms and workflows to help with communication and the streamlining of business processes. We are also attempting to streamline a unified framework for all resources with potential integration with AI to help data privacy. As you can see, our our numbers continue to grow for district approved purchased apps and approved free tools. The exciting development this year is New York State has joined the Student Data Privacy Consortium, SDPC, which is free for all New York State districts. This is a nationwide organization and is ever growing. This has been a huge timesaver as we can expedite um data privacy agreements with vendors by piggybacking off of what is already in the consortium database and also quickly investigate new products requested for compliance. Currently, 97 of our 111 data privacy agreements on file have been obtained through the consortium.

051The SDPC tool continues to be enhanced. There will be a new release with added features in the fall that potentially mimics most of our learn features. That's our current system for taking care of our data. With these enhancements, we may potentially be able to replace learn platform. We are actively investigating component needs that would not be covered by SDPC such as application discovery and monitoring. We are exploring a current tool that we use for content filtering that may also monitor app usage and have auto integration with the SDPC consortium. We are dedicated to removing redundancy and streamlining wherever possible. Student management system. As you know our current student management system is school tool. Last year, we began a systematic review of student management systems to ensure that school tool is still meeting our needs from

052a technical, operational, and business standpoint. We held a comprehensive review with multiple stakeholder groups with for four different products, Aspen, Alma, Infinite Campus, and Powers School. In reality, there are only about six products that meet all of the New York State reporting requirements. This review narrowed it down to two possibilities, Aspen and Infinite Campus. We are currently in the second part of the review where we are surveying for the satisfaction with school tool from multiple groups. Trisha went to PTA meetings and is trying to make sure that she incorporates feedback from parents as well. Thus far, the data indicates a desire for change and we will continue to delve deeper into these two systems. It is the hope that if we do change that we can reduce the number of different systems and/or complexities we

053currently face. air quotes, we have too many systems in a common thread is a common thread we hear from multiple stakeholder groups. This past spring, we migrated school tool to the cloud as required by the vendor. We took this as an opportunity to revamp all of our integrations to repurpose oursel, reposition ourselves in case of an SMS change, student management system change. From our standpoint, we have found that upkeep on the customizations that has become an increasing burden and has compounded with cloud migration. Stay tuned on this topic for further updates. Records management and paperless systems. We are making great strides in the records management and paperless in initiative. Most buildings completed scanning current student folders and most are working on historical records. The project for conversion from microfich is also underway. We have continued

054to replace email and paper forms from many business processes and I can tell you that central registration absolutely loves the forms that we have so that she's not managing emails from different buildings for student enrollment and exits. As an indicator, we had about 1500 workflows executed last year and now we are over 20,000 for this year. We also have a new central registration process in beta testing. We will continue to add new forms and processes as it has shown beneficial impact for communication and efficiency. I know HR can speak to that too. We will also continue to work on a unified framework for documentation so it's a one-stop shop for finding district resources. And now I will turn it over to Mr. Wild. Thank you. Good evening, Board of Education. Uh I'd like to begin

055with just discussing some some help desk ticket trends. Um as you'll see on the graph uh shown, we currently have four years worth of data um from every single level. Um you'll notice a decrease in each of the levels which I'll be talking about in just a second. Um as we dive into the numbers, I'd like to take the take a moment to appreciate the scale um of support. Uh over the course of the last four years, we have had over 41,000 help desk tickets open. Uh and I'd like to draw your attention to the graph in the bottom right hand corner. Um this has been a consistent uh trend where as quick as we are closing out tickets, new help desk tickets are are coming in. So this year we've had almost 9,500 help

056desk tickets uh with about 21,000 calls to uh our office. um the decrease in tickets. Uh I just wanted to empas emphasize that that does not mean a decrease in the in the work um but it is just repurposing how we are doing the work. Um I want to talk a little bit about uh the reasons that we're feeling why we are seeing the decrease. Uh we continue to have our 5-year replacement plan for all technologies based on the buildings. Uh we've standardized uh technology across the entire district. That means if I'm a a teacher who's traveling between two buildings, I don't have to worry about what type of technology I may be using in those two buildings. Um, as you know, we've also changed the middle school model to remain uh in school for

057the Chromebooks. So, we've seen a decrease in uh Chromebook tickets at the middle school level. Uh, we've also implemented dedicated staff members at the middle school for IT support to help embed them in those buildings similar to the high school. uh you'll be hearing from our full-time tech coaches shortly, but also we contribute that as well. Uh the work that they are doing uh definitely helps with lessening the calls when people are feeling more and more familiar with with the technology. Uh finally, it's really been a an opportunity for us to move into a proactive approach than a reactive supportive approach. Uh we have monitoring tools set up for power events in environmental conditions in buildings uh which send out automated alerts. Uh, a lot of times we're able to deal with infrastructure issues even

058before buildings are are reporting them. Uh, next slide. I like to refer to this slide as my Wizard of Oz man behind the curtain slide. Um, items that that you uh will will never see, but are extremely important to to the district and our infrastructure. Uh, over the course of this year, we've replaced over 300 wireless access points in all of the buildings. Uh we've also implemented new battery backups and uh backup battery backup packs in network closets. Uh those will help keep a building's network up even if there is a power event. Uh our goal has been to have 1 hour worth of runtime. These new lithium ion batteries last 10 years and they are averaging us about 2 to three hours. again keeping the network up allowing for phone calls to be done

059uh received in case of emergency with those types of power events. Uh finally we have replaced 20 uh over 20 switches in buildings. Uh and then I did want to call to uh the the image in the bottom left hand side of the screen. I use chat GPT uh to say man behind the curtain meets network switches and looks like this individual. I'm not sure if you recognize that individual, but the man behind the curtain is literally our man behind the curtain, Mr. Bober uh Barber. So, he has been instrumental on helping our team with those uh behind the-scenes initiatives in the in the buildings. Cyber security, cyber security remains one of our major challenges. Uh still, uh as of this year, we've had 59 reported fishing attacks with over 10,000 emails being sent. Uh

060the uh main form is staff impersonation. Um the thing that is most concerning is interaction with threat actors. We still have staff members that are responding to emails that are providing personal cell phones. In some cases, we have staff members who are using their own personal money to buy gift cards for the quote unquote principal. Um so these still um are our concerns. Um, I do want to tie a little bit of the the conversations around cell phone ban. Um, there's been conversations about, hey, could we open up email functionality for students to be able to email outside of the district's network? Right now, we are trying to monitor the staff and try to train them on these fishing attacks. Those fishing attacks would be extringing it up to 10,000 students. So, that is why

061we have prohibited it leading up to now. uh cyber security training training training. If it looks fishy, it probably is fishy. We're really trying to hammer that home with staff. Uh the final piece of cyber security which I am super super proud of is the FCC this year started a cyber security pilot uh which is based on the -ate funding model which means the district only pays about 15% for our rate funding. Um there was $200 million available for this pilot. Uh it was a multi-application process with over 2,700 applicants. Three $3.7 billion dollars was being requested out of that 200 million. Um, and the City School District of Albany was one of 700 eligible schools, libraries, and consortia nationwide and only one of 52 within New York State, which equates to close to $386,000

062worth of funding over three years uh to help us with cyber security initiatives. We showed this slide last year about the per pervasive impact of technology uh throughout the organization. uh our division is deeply impacted and heavily uh integrated across all of these business functions throughout the district. Uh for for that reason the goal this year has been trying to look at business continuity and disaster recovery. Um so we have gone through a current state assessment. So next slide please. Um right now uh all districts should have a disaster recovery plan. Um we wanted to have take an opportunity to go through this current state assessment to really see where the district would fall in this this rating. Um the goals were to again review uh to also take a look at if we were

063to have a unplanned event, how would we react not just from a technology perspective but from a business perspective. Uh the two final goals were really to come up with priorities for for the district to look at and improve on. um as well as get a roadmap for maturing our business continuity and disaster recovery. Uh this slide just shows the maturity level with uh business continuity and disaster recovery. Um where you see that this is uh the level for most mature the four to five range you're talking about. Those are your your Fortune 100 companies the the build ma massive massive businesses. um our range we fell into that one per uh one scale. Um but that is typical for K12 education. Um but this is all in a matter to help improve uh business

064practices. As I mentioned, we currently went we went through the current state and scope assessment. Um the next step for us really is to take a look at business the business impact analysis where we look at the the 10 most uh highly needed business functions within within the organization. We then take a look at what the uh dependencies are and what steps can we take to mitigate if we ever had uh any types of of those events. And finally uh achievements and opportunities. I've spoken a lot about it. I feel like the green areas we we do a bangup job. I I love the idea of this image of a roundabout. Uh because in our world uh we don't have a slow time. So you really have initiatives coming in and out at all time.

065Um the areas that that we've seen as challenges this year um Chromebook costs and tariffs. It's just it's real world right now and we are experiencing that. Uh time is always uh of the essence for us. uh and summer preparation going into this year. We have a very condensed summer while supporting summer programs as well as trying to get buildings ready for the beginning of next year. Uh and finally, just having uh largecale district projects with that day-to-day support. So, I've listed a couple of the the projects that we've uh accomplished this year. And with that, I will turn it back over to Dr. Presetino. Thank you. So, obviously everyone loves to talk about AD AI. Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure. We do. If you recall during our update last June, I spoke about

066the work of the AI task force. The final report, which was written by Renaissance Group, was not completed until over the summer. The next set of slides detail the major points from the report as well as our current status with the integration of AI instructional tools. To refresh the board's memory, the AI task force convened last spring to explore how AI tools can be utilized to enhance instruction and learning opportunities for students. The key findings revealed that the task force members expressed varied opinions regarding the use of AI tools by both staff and students. However, there was a noticeable increase in their willingness to embrace these tools from the first session to the final session. We only were able to have five sessions. It went really fast. The central aim of the task force was

067to develop an AI tool evaluation rubric. The rubric was developed after reviewing several similar models created by respected educational authors and research in institutions. Each category utilizes a rating scale ranging from 0 to three. It has been effectively tested with a few of our AI applications. And while we are not looking to acquire any new AI tools at the moment, we expect to use this rubric in the future to evaluate the effectiveness of of our applications and to help us continue to make informed budgetary choices. You have heard us discuss Magic School and or Magic Student and Snorkel as our recently acquired standalone AI tools and the latest additions to our collection of instructional applications designed for teachers and students. In addition, there are numerous premium AI tools available in the market. The technology coaches

068are dedicated to exploring new tools as they are introduced, aiming to reduce the cacophony of information that faces educators constantly. Some of the top premium tools endorsed by the technology coaches include Brisk, diffit and school AI. The instructional applications on the right have been acquired over the years for different reasons and because of be primarily because of their potential to enhance academic content and improve accessibility for students. As AI technology continues to evolve in education, these applications have started to integrate AI enhanced features to further boost their support for student learning. And I feel it's worth mentioning that Canva which New Scotland use the students use for use Canva Canva is really robust but they have committed to remaining free for all educators which is fantastic. The AI task force report presented a range of

069recommendations categorized into six distinct groups. Many of these proposals are already being implemented especially in the areas of professional development and policy development. Furthermore, other suggestions will commence with the development of an AI guide book set to launch this summer. And then our timeline, just want to show you how short really this timeline is in terms of AI integration. We embarked on our AI integration journey in winter of 2023 with the technology coaches introducing AI tools to educators, setting the stage for awareness in a wide variety of professional development opportunities. Since then, we have convened the task force to investigate the role of AI in education committed to utilizing magic school AI and snorkel are as standalone AI tools very new to the district and adopted policy 8636 which outlines guidelines for the ethical use

070of AI within the district. The next step involves drafting an AI guide book which will establish the district's philosophical and technical stance on AI applications. My team will also prioritize the importance of AI literacy while further aligning their work with the instructional goals of the district and the schools. And now to conclude our presentation, I will turn it over to the technology coaches. Good evening. The Albony Tech coaches are proud of the work we do in support of our students, staff, and school communities. We have four full-time coaches who each serve a cohort of schools as well as 13 part-time coaches who are full-time teachers, coaches, or math interventionists and who contribute to the work of our team. In addition to these roles, our outreach includes weekly tech tips, monthly newsletters, and brightspot videos to

071communicate updates, resources, and inspirational examples of technology integration in our district. We lead engaging professional development that's aligned with district plans and initiatives, follows best practices, and features the latest product updates with the goal of helping teachers be the best they can be for their students. We also meet with our vendor partners and that work has led directly to enhancements including the inclusion of curricular resources used in Albany and product features that we've requested on behalf of our students and staff. [Music] We've continued to build on these foundations by deepening our work with teachers, instructional coaches, and supervisors to advance pedigogy and intentionally integrate technology into classrooms. Our collective efforts Our collective efforts have elevated our approach to technology integration and have built capacity across the district, ensuring that these tools serve as a meaningful

072resource and enriching student learning [Music] experiences. The Albany Tech coaches support all learners by helping teachers design accessible lessons, materials, and tools. We advocate planning to the edges because designing for the typical learner often means designing for no one. This year we focused on assistive technology tools and strategies to bring entirely new experiences to all students including multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Immersive virtual reality experiences like class VR and Florio aligned with classroom content create permanent background knowledge and open classrooms to experiences we previously couldn't imagine. The team also continues to support individual students with disabilities by providing IEP and 504 assisted technology services and consults on appropriate technology accommodations for students with disabilities. This year we began a pilot of Snorkel, an AI powered tool that provides high-quality feedback to students and actionable

073formative assessment information to teachers. Snorkel usage has seen significant growth this year with over 26,000 student responses and 66,000 targeted pieces of feedback generated to date. Our team has had a number of meetings with the Snorkel co-founders which have directly resulted in new features and content as well as exclusive opportunities for district staff. We're also continuing to support Magic School. Magic School usage is steadily growing with over 1,000 staff users creating more than 64,000 AI generations since purchasing. In addition to their planning, preparation, and productivity tools for educators, Magic School's studentf facing tools have seen a surge of interest and usage this year with custom chat bots being by far the most popular across all grade levels. As Jeremy said, our team is very proud of the work we do and grateful for the opportunities

074our district provides. modern instructional technology in every classroom, the robust infrastructure you heard about from April and John, access to powerful digital tools, and most of all, the innovative, passionate educators who bring it all together to enhance teaching and learning every day. Picture it. Students engaged in exploring critical thinking, collaboration, and creating in classrooms at all grade levels across the district. We're proud to share a brief glimpse into some of our work this year with you this evening. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] So, moving forward, we're going to continue to support teachers through professional development, in-class support, and collaboration with other instructional leaders. We look for continued alignment with leadership, district and building goals and best practice strategies and continued promotion of the responsible

075use of educational technology with an emphasis on AI literacy. Technology is changing at an incredible pace and we remain committed to embracing the opportunities embedded in these changes as we move forward intentionally and with great optimism. Thank you. And I just want to thank um the team for joining me again this year and and contributing to this presentation. Um we're a small but mighty group and uh we thoroughly enjoy everything we do every day. So thank you for this opportunity. [Applause] Board colleagues questions Mr. Almani. So I do have uh some thoughts. I am of the mind that um you guys are doing superior work in terms of getting our students ready [Music] for essentially I don't want to say the challenges of tech you know the future tech but um at the throughway where

076I work we're asked you know how can we get AI to make this better you know how can we get AI to look at this 10,000 rows of data so that you and your team don't spend a month to do it. And um it's really it's really fascinating. But um I guess there are certain concerns that I have just surface level about making sure that our students also still understand how to like do the research and not necessarily just ask chat GPT the question or and even beyond that like how they are really supposed to or what the best practices or best kind of questions that could ask they could ask AI or chat GPT or school um magic school and you know like how to ask the right question to get the right information

077and how to utilize that information not just like copy and paste. So um do you have ideas on on that you know like how we can make sure that their critical thinking is still intact? Yes, absolutely. And I appreciate that question. I'd like to share that just this week I was in a an ENL classroom at the high school. It was an English class and there was a uh class that the teacher was using magic school and inside of magic school they have a tool called the research assistant and sometimes you might be tempted to just go to an AI tool and try to get that answer right away and uh instead in this case they were using the research assistant that was providing them with links to articles or reference materials to go out

078and do the research. So I think that's evidence uh that the conversations are happening and that our work is uh helping to shape some perspectives on how we could use these things you these tools responsibly and appropriately. I think there's going to be a lot of ongoing work as Dr. Prepino referenced. Uh there's a a convening of some members to look at AI guidelines. Um I know we talk about best practices when we meet with teachers, but I think officially having some AI guidelines for the district will go a long way. So, thank you, Miss Smith. Yes, thank you very much. And I I really uh appreciate Mr. El Elmanawi's question. Um, you know, when you do get a little concerned when you still have youngsters that are still not reading uh at at the

079level that they should be uh for their age, for their grade um and sometimes not thinking as clearly as we'd like. you you you worry about the technology uh preventing them from you know even doing learning that stuff and understanding. Uh so I do appreciate that question and I think it seems to me you all always have that in your forefront too and and I have no doubt that our teachers are are have been worried about that. Um and uh but I I I really uh think that's just a question always keep in our forefront. I um I love this stuff and I I want to say that um you know when you said small but mighty I I do uh it reminds me that it's easy to forget what this team does and is

080responsible for doing you know I'm thinking about that in terms of even here you know brand new uh elements of wings of the high school well you all are in there you know making sure that you know again I'm going to get it all wrong but you're in they're wiring things, making sure, you know, all the things are connected and and um sometimes like, you know, like I don't have to think about that. I just know I get to open my computer and and it and it works. That's all I care about, right? Um and so uh I I am very much uh appreciative of of all that you do and and this presentation every year reminds me um of of just how much uh work your team does. it it's not just making sure

081all the equipment is there and the structures are there but you know there's the PD I mean it's just everything. So um I I really want to thank you for that and and um and being able to organize this in you know incredible fashion um and structure it. So uh I really don't have any questions but uh just just it's perfect. Um, I think one of the things I I will say though is it reminds me when we're doing and sorry not I anymore but not as a not as a board member. I'll be in the classrooms, but not as a board member. But as we're in the board, uh taking visits to the schools, um uh being able to see how some of these uh pieces work and uh and uh and are, you

082know, being implemented in the school, I think would become important just just as important as you know, we walk around and say, "Oh, yeah, there's uh repair that needs to be done over there. HVAC needs to be done." Well, this too is another piece to say, I really want to see how how that really works. I'm I'm getting glimpses of it, you know, um, you know, through uh the presentation. Maybe those of us who still have students in the in the school, we get to kind of hear about it a little bit. But if your children were like mine, they don't talk about it. You know, you say, "What's new today?" And they nothing, absolutely nothing. Okay. So, um I just I just want to, you know, support the idea that as as you're going

083in to visit schools to also don't forget about, you know, being taking an opportunity to make sure if you're in a classroom that you're actually also seeing these elements come into play um because they are critical and and um so thank you all very much. It's a great team and great work. Appreciate you, Miss Savage. So uh one of the thoughts that kept running through my head as you all presented your extraordinary body of work um it is truly immense and it always uh triggers two thoughts for me. One nobody knows how difficult things are unless they do them. That is a constant refrain in my mind. People think why didn't they have a backup or why didn't like you really have no idea how many steps are involved in every single thing that we

084do. Um so I appreciate all of the work. Um, and then the second thing that always runs through my head when you all are talking is this um the time management strategy about important versus urgent and how clear it is that you guys are spending a fair amount of time in the important but not urgent quadrangle. Um, which is where you need to be to try and set us up with systems that are resilient and protect our our staff and our students um going forward. And that is super hard, right? It's really really hard to not get dragged into the urgent because it's all urgent all the time. But um particularly as Mr. Rod was talking about some of the disaster planning um work and the planning ahead for AI and the professional development, this

085is all the work that it's not urgent in the sense of um the building is on fire, go put out the fire. It's important and it sets us up for um to be effective moving forward and to grow our practice um and the students all benefit. So it really shows that that's the the way of thinking throughout your whole department and I really appreciate it. I of course would like to know a million things about all the things you do, but since it is impossible for me to know all the things, I will not ask you a million questions. I am kind of curious about what happened in September of 2024, however, because your chart with the tickets is like September 2024 is way up here. So, what happened in September 2024? So, so that

086is the average. Uh we we usually receive close to 3,000 tickets just in the month of pretty much from the last two weeks of August until the 1st of um October. And it's just truly everybody's back in buildings. You know, PCs and everything have been hooked back up in classrooms, but that is our spike every year. Um, so we were averaging probably 800 tickets on a daily basis. Like it was just it's a lot. And the ticket what the tickets are for ranges dramatically. Oh, correct. Do you want to correct? I mean it it could be as simple as I need to add a printer to I haven't logged in in a year and you know in a summer and you know how do I log back in and then reminding staff that you have

087the ability to reset your own password. Now we have those processes in place but uh August through October is usually very interesting to say the least. Miss Gray, thank you for the exc excellent and very thorough um presentation. Some I want to call out and highlight positively some of the achievements that you've described. Um, I'm really I was really excited to hear that you've joined the student data privacy consortium to make sure that all the apps and software you we're using has a robust privacy agreement in place. I'm really happy to hear uh that we are uh working on a records management and uh looking for looking for an a successor to school tool. I echo what my colleague Miss Savage said about the disaster recovery plan. so much progress, so much really strong work

088in this department and as well your work in AI and what you're doing with the students and the teachers with AI is really exciting and really interesting. I did however have a question about um managing the access to AI because I see uh the certain tools that are the instructional tools that have been approved but then I notice having a district computer now you don't filter access to other AI tools and you mentioned like for example the use of chat GBT to create images for this. I know at my own day job they're really strict about if it's an AI tool that hasn't been approved by the committee. It's filtered and you can't even get to it. And I wondered if you've considered doing that either for staff or even just for students because right

089now a student could go to chat GPT and open up a window where you could fil you could use your current filtering software to add those sites, right? So, so we do and for students chat GPT is blocked. Um, for content filters, as uh we presently use light speeded as our content filter. Um, that is designed specifically for education. Um, in addition to that, as categories as new sites become available, sites are then c recatategorized. Um, so we we are getting requests all of the time. So, chat GPT is blocked for for students. I think my follow-up question is are is st because I wasn't sure from this thing saying this is the current stat this is the current AI instructional tools are staff allowed to use other AI tools when they're not specifically related

090to instruction and are there any guidelines or controls on that at this point or do you anticipate doing that wants to take the chat the I'm just trying to think so your question was first about um the other AI tools that folks are using. Are we the premium? Well, maybe like you mean like chat GBT and co-pilot and Gemini those open types of AI tools? Exactly like like you know like claude or chat GBT or Gemini or those other ones. Do we have any guidelines for our staff and use of them and have we thought about um you know creating more controls around that? So for for the controls, I mean we have content the content filter in place. Um that is something that we we can filter whatever we need to filter uh based

091on the the feedback that we're receiving. Well, what I'm saying is you don't I meant for the staff. Do you have guidelines to what they can do with those with those software with those with those other AI tools that are not the ones that you've researched and put on put on this put on this uh PowerPoint and have you considered doing have you considered doing that? they there aren't any um actual limitations on adults using any number of AI tools and we haven't really we haven't discussed putting limitations on that um more so our responsibility especially with the technology coaches has been to really try to make sure everyone's educated on the proper use of those tools meaning you know no student PII um you know just making sure that they are really thinking thoughtfully

092around what they're utilizing it for. Um, so but we also make sure that everyone is well aware of the fact that they can accomplish a lot of the same things that they want to use chat GPT for or whatever inside of Magic School as well. Um, and then also trying to encourage them to do a lot of their instructional planning inside of Magic School or Snorkel or things like that. Um, so I haven't really I personally haven't really thought much about the restrictions or should we have restrictions on the adults. Um, the AI guide book right now in my mind is about what the district's philosophy will be on AI in general. Obviously, as it relates to students and how we're going to approach that, but that doesn't mean that that the conversation wouldn't come

093up about how we would approach things for adults if there's a reason that we need to do that. I can't tell you at this moment that anything has occurred or has come to our attention that has caused us to pause or to have any reason to believe that we need to to think also about the adults. Thank you. And I'm definitely not suggesting that anything like that has happened. I've just said saying I've only noticed I've only noticed at my job that the state seems to be really strict about really strict about who can use it and why and you have to you have to justify it and sort of go through a whole process. So I was just curious. Thanks very much Miss Wilson. Thank you so much for your presentation. Um, interestingly, I

094feel like this is one of the intersections where the district has similar concerns to our families. Like not one, not the only one, but one of many where um you were talking about, for example, fishing and that can also happen amongst our families. So much so that um there's actually now synergy between AI and fishing and people cloning um the voice of someone or even um the cadence of text. So um when you were mentioning that you know for fishy text sometimes it may actually look so complimentary and like so one of the dialogues I heard is um talking about with your family you know just bringing it up in general and um making sure people are aware that this can happen and haven't even um in the case of the family they said like

095a a neutral word or something that people would know that it's really us you're talking to and I was curious if there's any intervention like that for the district too where like you said impersonation is an issue. Um would we go to like a token system or something just for like extra layers of protection? So we do so we implemented multifactor authentication a couple years ago now. Uh that's that's the first step. Uh really the the second step is the the education piece of it is very simple for a thread actor to create an email address that says the display name is um Mr. wild, but the actual email address is uh [email protected]. Um, so we we do try to continue to emphas emphasize the importance on that. Um, and part of the education piece

096is we try to share with folks when they fall subject to this. It's not a slap on the hand. It's hey, like just be aware like you you just responded to X. You just provided your personal cell phone. like please be aware that you could start to get text messages asking you for X Y and Z like please do not try to click on links please do not enter in your credentials. Uh that is the main reason that we implemented the MFA process is that I'm going to call it a token that you actually have to prove who you are. So I hope that answers your question. No, it absolutely does. um the most so I didn't think so I'm sure people have saw the text messages about like the um what is it called

097with the tolls system yes but to see how many people actually went all the way through when you can clearly say see you're in a uh group chat just shows about the vigilance that's necessary so thank you so much as a tech nerd I mean I love what you guys do so thank you first and for this is this is fantastic I mean those numbers blow everything way, you know, the number of tickets you do. So, in in ter I I had one question, but I have a couple of comments. Um, in terms of the um tickets, right? I mean, things really go up shoot up in in September. Um, how about using AI as a chatbot which will get rid of some of those basic questions, right? And so now we can focus on

098the real questions instead of you know you can have a link that points here's how you add your printer here's how you do this u yes um that's one of the things that we just really started exploring this year um I will say that on both the technology side and on the data side we have hired four two and two four young really smart individuals that we know have the capacity to start diving into doing exactly that and um taking this that's exactly what I have kind of said I want to do is take those most frequently asked questions or the most frequently identified problems that come through with the tickets or the phone calls and and create that chatbot database where they and self-s serve basically without thinking okay that documentation is in incident

099IQ or this documentation is sitting in a Google folder somewhere and this documentation is sitting in schoolfront or whatever it is but like what are the most common things and start building that out um so the the four young men have started playing around with a few things and um I really hope that we'll have something to sort of beta test throughout the course of next year to see how that works but that's exactly where I hope we're headed on a broader scale having a chatbot for the district's website. So the community or parents going through the same things asking questions which are questions that they everybody needs an answer to those have already been answered if there's a chatbot database that will point you to the right person, right department or here's the FAQ

100and here's the answer that was already provided. uh that will streamline things and and you know when people don't get an answer back they're like a right so it'll calm people down and and make things more easier and then you can focus everybody in the district can focus on because you know all these presentations whether it's communications or it you see the tickets and everybody's asking questions maintenance there's questions right and some of those could be easily answered using these newfound tools as long as the database is sound correct Correct. And and we have the AI plus institute just down the road, right, at the university in Albany. And it might be a project that they could do a student uh with grad students, right? And build some of these tools. Um Yeah. Our goal

101is to figure out the right way to do it so we can maintain it, but also make sure that it maintains at least internally the privacy that we need to to to respect and honor. Exactly. So, we're working on it and and you know this is still I still haven't asked my question yet. Okay, just holding on to that. Tabitha's question about the um training right at this state. I mean, God knows I mean I must spend like 11 hours of mandated training. A lot of them are on fishing and wishing is a new word I heard uh video fishing using AI. And in fact, NISBA's board on board uh newsletter had a thing uh educating people about that. And so, you know, there are all these videos and things. It'd be great to have

102like a small um blurb cliffnotes version of these things that you can hand out to students or teachers which they can take home and do exactly that. educ the more people who get educated, the less people fall to these scams because God knows I mean how much money I would have to pay to an and Vicki and and Tabitha in in gift cards because we get them all the time and and the at the university we also have the I think it's there in our email too in Outlook. So if I think it's a spam or or a fishing I can click a button which will signify that it's a maybe. So if people are curious they can always click on that which notifies you guys and then you can tell me no it is

103real. And I and I do have to say I would prefer someone to reach out to me and say I am not sure like okay let's look at it together. This is a legit email address. This is an actual company. Like have you done business? It's those conversations that we're having that that just helps the training piece. Um and as far as working with with the buildings and and the building leadership, um we can definitely definitely look into doing that more for for the families. Yes. Okay. Now the real question, the chart that you had, the histogram chart you had with the magic school data towards the end, there were spikes in March of last year and this year. Why? Why March? It's a great question, great observation. Um March is report card season for

104the elementary schools. So yes, uh we generally have seen a very large spike in March. And also I think um you know it's following some uh PD days as well. So um we've been able to do a lot of training prior to March or just you know I think it's a February training date and then we get into March and people are trying things out but all this in magic school. Yeah. And I and Kevin just said there's also no days off. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Kind of like what's happening in March that people are all going to magic school. So, okay, cool. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks again. Wonderful presentation. Any other questions, comments, people? Thank you. All right. So, that brings us to the end of our discussion topics. Any committee reports?

105Miss Savage uh government relations met earlier this week. We talked about a couple of possible uh near state school boards association resolutions. Um we sent some folks including the superintendent home with some homework to evaluate some of the more highly technical um provisions. Those of you who've been down this road will recall that um any resolution that's adopted by the New York State School Boards Association lives for five years, at which point it sunsets. If we would like that provision to continue to be uh a position of the New York State Schoolboards Association, we need to reintroduce that. And when I say we, I mean any of these 700 or so school districts across the state that belong to NISBA. So, we took a look at some of them that are um suns setting to

106confirm whether we would want to resubmit them. And one that is um suns setting is the um NISBA opposition to uh the uh increase in the number of charter schools allowable in New York State. So, we will make sure that that's at least in front of the membership to consider that to be continued. Um we also um are we'll probably reput in the mail and voting um as we did some years ago and then um we're waiting for feedback on some of the more technical ones from our friends at superintendent's office and then I had a conversation with Miss Wilson later that we um she's doing some investigation into the her thoughts about a resolution that has just jumped out of my head. I'm sorry Tabitha. Financial literacy. Oh, financial literacy. Um, thank you very

107much. Like I know we talked about it, but what it was is just gone. Um, the possibility of um financial literacy curriculum um support from New York State. So that will come those decisions will be made over the next couple of days and will come before the board um in time for Mr. Leco to well in coordination with Mr. Leco in time for them to be submitted to the New York State School Boards Association by July I think it's 17th or 18th um to be um considered by the resolutions committee and then ultimately the membership and nothing on school visits. Thank you Miss Cr. Thank you. So I wanted to announce that the policy committee is meeting next Wednesday. We have a robust and rigorous agenda planned because we'll be working on the code of

108conduct. We'll be working on um the prospective cell phone policy. uh the new revised advis board advisory committee or not district advisory committee's policy and also which is very exciting we're going to be working on the student board member policy uh Miss Smith was able to send us a draft version of that policy so I've had a chance to look at it and my goal is to talk to Miss Smith before the meeting uh just to work out a couple of little questions we have because my go I would really like um the the version that we present to the policy committee to be exact exactly what the student committee, you know, this both the board committee and the students uh that she's been working with want and that. So, but but it's exciting. It's

109exciting and just wanted to share that good news that we're on track to get that done. Thanks. Great. Great. Thank you, Miss Smith. Sure. Thank you. And uh uh thank you, Miss Crashy, for that. And I will admittedly uh say to the policy committee uh that I was kind of putting it all in there. um based on uh our committee's work uh and realized that I wasn't exactly sure how you might want this policy formulated and I my mind was going to uh both the policy as well as perhaps regulations and then I said you know what you that's not you don't have to deal with that. Um let's just get X to the policy committee and and they'll tell you if anything else is needed. So uh happy to talk when when uh when

110convenient for you Miss Crerachche. Um and uh again many kudos to our students that we have spoken with there. There was a piece that I just did not get to and that was really having a sort of uh widely distributed and responded to survey. Um but I think we have uh quite a bit of information from our stu the students we've met with uh whether it was at the high school as well as some of the schools that we have visited. Um so happy to to take your your questions and and uh work through the committee if need be. So, uh thank you for that. Um in terms of the facilities committee, um we will be uh we we had boy we met last month and which doesn't seem that far away. Um and it

111was quite robust. We do have a meeting coming up on the 10th um at 5:45 here. Um and again, we are working on, you know, we'll be closing out some of that high school final capital project work. Um and uh so that that feels really good to uh for for me as a as I'm leaving that that was a a project that I kind of started with uh uh my term oh my gosh really like nine years ago. Um and uh and so uh it feels good to kind of see that coming to uh fruition. Uh the other committee uh that I want to mention has to do with the ad hoc routine consent uh committee and uh we'll we'll be checking back in. I know that we have uh the 9th that's the Monday

112before um and I just have to check in with Mr. Caris um our business official who heads that uh who sort of staffs that committee to see if that date is going to still work. But that is scheduled right now for the 9th here at 5:30. And then Tuesday is our governor I mean our facilities committee at 5:45. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Any other matters of interest? If not, may I have a motion to return back to executive session? Miss Crit. All in favor? No. No. Continue the discussion that we had before. Okay. Motion to public session of the meeting. Good night everybody.