Board of Education Public Meeting | Live Stream | May 8th, 2025

001and I'm president of the city school district of Albany Board of Education. On behalf of the board, I welcome you to our meeting today. We have um Miss Man, Miss Savage, Miss Crerachche, Miss Wilson, Miss Smith, and Mr. Almanabi is also with us. He's fixing his computer back there. uh and we have Secret Hawkwriter and a few members of the cabinet. Uh this meeting is being livereamed and the instructions to view the meeting as well as a link to the agenda including all the documents we'll discuss are available at albonychools.org/be. 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 Timmons here to my right. And with that introduction, I invite those of you who choose to join us as

002we stand up for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for 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 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. Superintendent Hawk Rider, do you have a report for us? I do, and we will begin with Mr. Leco. Thank you very much and good evening. Well over 500 students will cross the stage at MVP Arena when we have the opportunity to celebrate Alb High School's class of 2025 at

003the end of June. We are excited tonight to welcome the two students who will be be leading that long line. Valadictorian Jacob Lavine and Saludiatoran Jamima Sadiki. [Applause] These two Sorry, not yet. These two exceptional scholars uh have dist distinguished themselves over the last four years as the top students in their class. Their high school transcripts look like a treasury department run of Benjamins. Here to tell us more and introduce us to them now is ALB High School principal Jody Cmerford. I was ready for you Ron. Good evening board president, board members, superintendent and cabinet. It is with great pleasure this evening to introduce Albany High School's class of 2025 validictorian Jacob Lavine and our saludiatoran Jamima Sadiki who have both excelled in their studies and extracurriculars at Albany High School. They both have attended

004Albany High School since kindergarten and have both chosen to continue at Sunni Albany in college. Jacob Yep. Jake Jacob, our validictorian, has both a love for computer science and music. He is a member of our student help desk and our indoor percussion. While Jamima is interested in biology and anesthesiology, she is a member of both the key club and the med club and volunteers in the community food at a uh food pantry. Uh but enough from me. I will have them now tell you about their experiences and what led them to these prestigious seats at Albany High School. Good evening, board of education and superintendent, and thank you for inviting us to this meeting. My name is Jacob Lavine, and I'm honored to be the class of 2025 validictorian. I've attended Albany City School District

005School since kindergarten. I began my educational journey at New Scotland Elementary School, then went tack at Middle School, and I'm now attending Albany High. All all the way back in kindergarten when I first began my education in in the city school district. Um, my teachers asked my mother what letters of the alphabet I knew. Even with alphabet rubber ducks at home, I refused to tell my parents what I knew. But with the constant encouragement of my teachers and the goal of writing stories, I soon began reading, writing, and exploring the world. Each year, my elementary school teachers helped me expand my creative writing. Mr. Phelps introduced me to the flute flute, sparking my love for music. He even helped my family get a keyboard, which I later used to practice indoor percussion music all throughout

006high school. My love for computer science was also sparked in elementary school at a Scholastic book fair. I found a book about making video games in Scratch and I've been learning the program ever since. Sixth grade at Hacket was my was my only full regular year at middle school thanks to co. Miss McNicholas greeted greeted us with hands-on activities expanding my love for science. I continued learning to program through techn through technology classes and even got to program for the school's Lego robotics team for two years. Then March 2020 changed everything. For two years, I I learned at home behind a screen. Though it was very difficult, with the encouragement of my parents, teachers, and my pet parakeet, Dwey, I persevered. Albany High School has opened up so many opportunities for me in my education.

007Each year, I've loved learning more and more in technology classes taught by Mr. Lman, Mr. Allen, and Mr. Katie. With my experience in these classes, I've even began working on developing my own video game for the past two years. And this year, I was excited to learn even more at Albany High's game design and development class. I've also spent lots of my time outside of school programming for the first robotics team with the help of Dr. Castana. During my first year of high school, I also began volunteering at the student help desk, and I've learned so much repairing Chromebooks and helping out there over the past four years. I've also proudly been the synth player for the Albany Indoor Percussion Ensemble for the past four years. And at the end of this year's season, we

008won gold while competing against two other college ensembles. I am so proud to have been a member of the ensemble for this historic show. And um and I made so many amazing friends due to the ensemble and I wish the ensemble the best of luck in the future. Finally, I'd like to thank a few more teachers that have helped me get where I am now. I'd like to thank Miss Contras, Miss Donahghue, Mrs. Leola, Miss Wilkkey, and Miss Reone. I'm so happy that I've been a student at the Albany City School District, and I'm looking forward to my future education at U Albany. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening, members of the board of education. My name is Jimmy Siddiki, and I would like to start off by saying that I'm in incredibly honored to be

009here today as a saludiatoran of my graduating class of 2025. This moment to me is not just a personal milestone, but also a family one. I'm the daughter of two hardworking immigrants from Pakistan. My father came to this country at a young age, but my mother arrived when she married him. Neither of them had the chance to complete their college education. So being here today as a student who will be a first generation college student means more to me than I can truly express. Growing up, I watched my parents work tirelessly to give me the opportunities they never got the chance to have. They made sacrifices, carried burdens I never had to, and always put my education first. They never let me feel like I couldn't focus on my education or that it wasn't a

010priority in my life. Because of them, I was able to focus on learning, growing, and the reason why I jumped so big. They're a huge part of my success and how I got to this prestigious position. But along with them, all my teachers were so supportive. One thing about Albany High is that all the teachers will help you succeed no matter what. And one thing to remember to be success successful is that you can't be shy when asking questions and getting help. Miss Laola and Miss Ron are just two of the many teachers at Albany High that showed me that teachers not only care about the students grades but also their mental health. They taught me that the first step to doing good in your studies is doing good mentally and I grew so much

011with that in mind. They always gave not just me but all other students opportunities for more help with without such understanding and helpful teachers. I would not be in such a great position today. To talk more about my future education and my plans for college, I will be attending the university at Albany this fall and plan on majoring in biology. I have always had a deep love for science and math and so I'm excited to further my career curiosity and skills at U Albany. Albany High has allowed me to further my education and skills by offering so many different math and science classes and other opportunities. For instance, through the Pathways program at Albany High, I landed a position at Albany Medical Center as an anesthesia technician assistant. And this is where I I have

012the opportunity to observe so many different things at the hospital in and in the O room such as open heart surgery, medical professions, working together in one room, and so much more. This is also very exciting since as Miss Kmerford said, I want to be an anesthesiologist in the future and so learning at this age is such a great honor. I also volunteer at the St. Peter's Hospital occasionally which gives me even more experience in a hospital setting and with patient care. Making my parents proud and making a name for myself through education has always been my motivation and will continue to be so. I'm grateful to my teachers and to the school district that I've been a part of since preK starting from Ash, then Myers, and then Albany High School. And also to

013my parents for believing in me. Thank you for supporting students like me and thank you for having me today to share my story. [Applause] Okay, if you'll all come out, we'll take a few pictures. It is principal CR for night at the board meeting. So I am going to welcome her back to tell us more even more about the great things happening at ALB High School this year. Good evening again. And I'm I'm going to be on again later. All right. Why is this not working? All right. So, in alignment with the district's vision, mission, and goals, Albany High School is always focusing on our college and career readiness. So, this always starts with even um when we have our middle school visits coming up to the high school. Um, we've been trying to have

014all of the middle schools come to Albany High for visits now so we can really start that integration of students seeing the high school, seeing the facilities, and getting them really excited and knowing knowing our grounds before they're coming to such a large high school. Um, so our goal is not only to graduate our Falcons, but to also ensure that they are ready for a college or career pathway upon graduation. And so we really want them to be able to sample all of the different course offerings that we have and ensure that they are ready to enter the world for college or career. Um and then among our school co goals really ensuring um achievement and then with our teacher leadership uh with through instruction and um increasing our capacity of our our teachers. and

015we've been doing a lot of work with our curriculum um which you're going to see in not only this report but uh the graduation report this evening and um we've really grown all of our um community school model at Alb High School with our kind of full service with uh our um Falcon Boutique as as it's being come to know with our free store our food pantry um and um our students really running that whole whole section of the school now. So um it's really become full service at Alb High School to um really empower the school community. Next slide, please. Um we have been very lucky the past two years to have all of our school administration um remain the same. So we've had a lot of consistency there. Um you can see Miss

016Antennetti is here with me tonight. and um our Brooklyn principal, Miss um Dr. Now Moroache this year and our committee of special education principal, Miss Jenny Evans. Um we have all of our academy principles, um Miss Lawyer, Mr. Goldman, Mr. Sheay, and Miss Miranda. And then under each academy, our four assistant academy principles, Mr. Klene, Miss Brandon, Dr. Joan Oliver and Miss Lacass. Next, we'll get to our demographics. And as you know, what really makes Albany High School special is our diversity. And you know, as a graduate myself, I can tell you going to Albany High School and getting to know so many students from so many different countries, such a diverse background really prepares you for life after Albany High School. Uh I was talking to some students just last week and they were

017um actually um Tonko was there and um Congressman Tonko and students were expressing to him you know how he was he was speaking about the level of questioning students were were um asking him and you know they were speaking to the preparation at Alb High School and um how many students that they get to interact with and how much preparation goes behind that. So you can see here our demographics at Albany High School and um our number of special education students um is at 15%. Um our L students is at n 9% we are approaching 600 L students at Albony High School this year. So that has grown from about 400 in the past um two years to um over 500 students. Um, our economically disadvantaged students is also at 67%. On campus, we are

018over 2700 students. I can tell you seven years ago when I became the head principal, we were always hovering at that 22 2,300. Um, so it's an increase of 500 students over the past um, five to six years. Um, then we have our Albany International Academy with just over a hundred and our Clemens Center just over a hundred. Our night school is um the highest it has been in a few years. Um we're just approaching 200 students at night school and um but a total of almost 3,000 students under the entire feds code for Albany High School. So our SE focus um for commitment one is really around instruction. to our um you know commitment to students being engaged at Albany High School and our teachers and all of the work that they do around

019instruction and teaching and learning. So um our key strategy one is high impact teaching strategies and then two is data informed decision- making. So that's really most of the work that they're doing in common planning time. On this slide here, I really chose to um put the survey data this year. Um this really stood out not only to me but the members of what we call TLC at the high school, our teacher leader committee. Um so that includes our building curriculum team leaders and our um department chairs and our curriculum supervisors. And um while we're creating our set plan um many of our principal all of our principles join us in that work as well. But during the school year it's the supervisors and those teacher leaders. And um it was really great to see

020here that our students are seeing the impact of the work that our teachers are doing. So we had the highest amount of growth here and you can see that students are um rating teachers higher from last year to this year around all of these teaching and learning areas that we're working so hard in our SEP plan. So, um, you know, this is teachers giving students feedback, um, teachers working in collaborative groups, um, teachers asking students questions, um, uh, checking in with students, um, are their teachers engaging, are they providing students with meaningful feedback? And you can see, you know, these ratings going from like a 64% to a 70%, a 44 to a 50%. This was the area that we grew most in. Um, so that was really empowering for all of us to see

021that this work that we're doing in our set plan is is impacting students and students are noticing. So I wanted you to see that too. All right, our next um SE commitment is really around our MTSS work and strengthening our school culture and climate. And this is really around our student needs. So um this is our student agency belonging and connectedness to the classroom and our school community and this is our MTSS model. This is really our dis our academy MTSS teams in the high school. Um I also chose some data here that you'll see on this slide and then our attendance slide that's coming up um to show you over the last couple of years the progress that we're making in discipline referrals and out of school suspension. So that yellow bar is this

022school year. Um and you can see how much our out of school suspensions and our office discipline referrals are decreasing. You know, so that first year out of COVID, you can see that blue line, it was really difficult for kids to transition back in. Um and then you can see now like we're really making gains in this area. And um I think the work that we're doing using ruler um integrating that into lessons I think all of the instructional work going into that first commitment that classrooms are engaging so we're not having um so many incidents. Um so we can really see this is pretty remarkable that these numbers are decreasing so much. So um really great to see that we're heading in the right direction. Um just checking my notes there. Sorry. All right,

023next slide. So um our focus um and highlights here um on student interventions, our MTSS meetings for monitoring students um for 9 through 12, our academy teams that includes our um academy principal, our assistant academy principal, the guidance counselors, social worker, psychologist, your attendance teacher. I think I got everybody there. um all meet on a weekly basis. They're pulling up the data dashboards that we have access to. Principles are looking at those dashboards in advance of those meetings so they can tier students. Case workers are assigned to students and that's how we're making gains and being able to look at students individ individually so that we can make sure that we're getting to all of the students that we need to and we're not missing any students. So that is happening um weekly with academy

024teams um special education um just this morning the assistant director of special ed and I were going through the special ed dashboard um and um EL our um English second language students as well um we're going through the dashboards for those students and we're meeting um not only with the academy teams look at those um populations but we're doing that on a more global basis as well. Um we also have um student intervention meetings per academy uh with um at every interim report and every um report card um daily there's a scan skip report run so students are um randomly not randomly but the the the report is run and principles are going through that report. So, if you skipped a class or you missed a day of classes, that is being checked by attendance

025teachers and homeschool coordinators and students are being called in for interventions. Um, we just got our regents review calendar released um and um mock regents are coming out. So, those are those have been released. Um all year we have our afterchool tutoring um online recovery not only after school u but Saturdays and we've been doing that on all of the vacations as well. And as I mentioned before, our ruler implementation. All right. So this is also very exciting. Uh our attendance and I thank you all for your support in securing our four attendance teachers at Alb High School. We have one attendance teacher for each academy. Um this data really displays the impact that they have had. Um I really this year, I'm not even going to lie to you. I called the um data

026coordinator a few times this year and I'm like is this right? Um at the beginning of the year I'm going into walkthroughs and classrooms and I'm like classrooms are packed. Um it's it's correct. Um so it is working. I also think and thank you again to you know not only the board but the the city and the voters um for supporting the capital project because the campus and the school build has brought a new vibrance to Albany High School and I think this really shows that as well. Um, so you can see our chronic absenteeism, I mean, I can't explain it any better than that, is down to um 39%. And um, that number is actually lower. So like that's for this week I figured out today digging a little deeper. So actually for today,

027for the year it's even lower than that, it's like 30 I want to say 7 something. Um, so the way it's calculated, I had to little dig a little deeper that, but for the year it's actually lower than 39%. Um, and our daily attendance rate for the year right now is at 89%. Right. Hasn't been that I think in my tenure. I know in my tenure. Um so yes it's working so and the attendance teachers are working and um our students are working and coming to school and our attendance interventions are working. So next slide please are a lot of the attendance action steps that are happening. So again those academy attendance meetings um if you walk around the high school there are bulletin boards and academy offices. So you'll see student pictures out there.

028There's attendance recognitions. We do um attendance matters announcements. There's a lot of um correspondences that go around within the school. Um we do do and Miss Antonetti does um we do hall sweeps in the building. So there'll be random hall sweeps and um different initiatives throughout the school year in the halls to make sure students are getting to class on time. And then um there are a lot of home visits that that occur throughout the school year. All right, on to our advanced course offerings. So, um really remaining um very consistent in our AP. So, uh a little right around the same number as last year, about 478 students in our AP classes. uh assessments were up a little bit to 786 which we are in the midst of AP testing right now. I'm sure

029many of you have heard from students. Um our UHS classes we are increased from um 217 last year. We are up to 270 students enrolled for for college credit this year. Um so our uh community partners we've increased a lot of our partnership with Hudson Valley. um uh Sunni Potam is one of our other partners and CNA. So we are for next steps continuing to work with um streamlining uh college and the high school registration process. There's like some residency things. There were a few hiccups this year, but we do all of that within the school. It's just we um really help assist students with doing that all in the school. So we're just streamlining a lot of the processes with um registration. But I think it went fairly well this year. All right. So,

030challenges and next steps. So, even though, you know, we're heading in the right um direction with engagement and attendance, um we can always improve on that. So, that continues to be our major um challenge for us at Albany High School. Um and we know to um tackle that. We want to continue monitoring students through that MTSS process. I I can tell you, you know, being in the high school for 13 years, you know, we did not have the dashboards and the access to student data the way we did when I came 13 years ago. I I have would sit there with report cards and interims and putting them into piles and then calling students in and like I was tearing them that way and we didn't have a you know access and it took hours

031to go through data like that. Um and then we'd have some Excel spreadsheets that we could work with, right? So this is like instant. Um, and we didn't have the number of people we had then, right? So we're seeing these gains now with students because we can work smarter, right? And we have staff who can work smarter and we know who's working with students um and we can reach more students um in a very strategic way now. So we can tier students in a way, we can group students in a way. So we can call students in in small groups, we can call students in in larger groups, we can call students in individually. So that MTSS process is so streamlined now. And that's that's really where we're getting a lot of the gains that

032we're doing. Um so in um increasing our academic supports as well. So um just in starting our set plan for next year over the last couple of weeks, you know, we really heard from our teachers that they would like more support um and professional development around academic supports. So they would like more professional development in differentiation, more professional development in classroom management. So we're we're working on that for next school year right now in our planning. uh as always our operation graduation initiative. So that happens all year. We literally start that in September with our seniors. Our APS work with their counselors. Their spreadsheets started in September for seniors and um we monitor those starting in September. So they meet weekly with their counselors on seniors and that process has started um as well as

033our our night school um students as well. And then um increasing our student participation in our school community. As you know, we started our our teen nights this year once a month. I'm I'm hoping to do those twice a month at next year, maybe even a little more. Um but I'm committing to twice. Um, but that has been a a really we have a lot of events at night as you know, but um a great way for us to get students engaged after school who may not be in a club, an activity or athletics. Um, but really having things for students to do after school that might not be part of, you know, a certain group that they're in. So, um, really just kind of opening up the school a little more after school. And

034then um the last couple of slides are our school highlights. So um really trying to focus a lot on student voice. Um so we've been doing a lot more events where students are leading them, right? So um Albany Serve came in both last year and this year. Um, so we had our second brunch really focusing on um how to make the community better was was the focus year this year. And last year we were kind of more assembly style. And this year um we had tables set up and we sat with community members and students were able to talk about um that in a more uh friendly way where they could ask questions and give ideas to community members. Um we have our mock trial um our debate team. Uh we did a lot of

035work with NCBI this year um with staff and student trainings and a very um diverse group of staff um teachers, hall monitors um and then they trained our staff to be NCBI facilitators. Um I was just in a classroom uh last week and they were implementing this into the classroom. So they're already they've already turn keyed that into the classroom. So great to see um our student government. Um they lead a lot of initiatives within the school. Um oh I have that twice there. Uh the library um we have a lot of open events in the library as well. And then many of our instructional programs that are just thriving at the high school. JOTC, um all of our fine arts, our career and tech ed, um our advanced course offer offerings, our tech and

036um world language businesses, and I could go on and on there. Um our theater program, um we've made it to Proctors with three awards. I will be there this Saturday night. So, um we are in the running there to um win this year. So, happy to see that. They're getting ready to announce next year's musical very soon and then we have the spring show coming up um a black girl in summer. So very excited about that. I hope everyone can make it. All right, our next slide is successes. So um we're seeing an increase in um not only student attendance but our family engagement with the new campus as well. So, we used to see very few families come out for a lot of our events. I hate to say, um, but even our open

037house, um, two years in a row, we've had over 800 families come to open house. We used to average probably 250. So, it's happening. um our um other events that we've we've had throughout the school year as well, we've probably doubled attendance at all of them. Even our concerts have doubled in attendance. Um the concert last night, the auditorium was full. So um great to see an increase in our um family events. uh our weekly um food pantry free store access um our black history night uh um all of our MBK nights our black history night we have outgrown the spaces we were using for those before um where we're moving those um this year we moved black history night to the gym um we did culture night this year we didn't do that in

038the gym we have to move them to the gym so um it's great to see uh increase in all of that so uh culture and climate. We do our spirit week, our pep rallies. I have the falcon formal giveaway there if anyone um still needs any um formal wear for the upcoming proms. Um a big shout out to Miss Antinetti on our equity PD. Um she has just brought that to a whole another level at Albany High School. Um you know, they talk about, you know, walking the walk with equity PD. Um and and she is not talking it. She has gotten our staff to really walk it. So um I have to say uh we have made it a priority to ensure that when we're doing equity PD that we have all of our

039staff there. It's really hard to do um because the PD days we don't always have our hall monitor staff um our cafeteria staff, our maintenance staff. Um but we have strategically planned that to ensure that all of our staff have been at equity PDS. Um and so we've also been trying to increase our staff so um social so that we can increase um culture and climate. Uh connections with students um all of our assemblies. I have them listed there for you and I won't read them all because I think I'm going over time. um our successes, uh seal of civic readiness, um seal of biiteracy. I'm not going to go into the numbers for that um for you either because that will be in the graduation presentation. Um student voice, all of our clubs and

040activities. We have over 30 to date. Um these are just some photos from uh debate team getting down to I think they were number three this year in the um finals. And that was Tonko here um this week. He comes into the AP government class every year. Um, great session that he held with us and unbelievable questions from our students. Our JRTC uh always growing over 150 students, 70 trips this year. Um, we have three seniors receiving scholarships this year. Um, our third year which we ho um third year of the fitness competition which we actually hosted for the first time this year. um and a lot of other participation in community events for JOTC. Our brother, my brother's keeper, um we had over 25 students this year. They did the H.B.CU tour um just

041over um April break. Um we have our exiting uh seniors from My Brother's Keeper this year. Um and our entering Jir Rose and James Campbell coming up. These are just some of the um student government um projects that they worked on. Um I meet with them once a sometimes a couple times a month. Um or at least once a month. Um so they meet with me to address things going on in the school. We've had board members come in. Um we've had other um facilitators come in to meet with student government, but they really do a lot of planning with me around school events and um issues within the school. All right, and that concludes my presentation. Thank you. And that also concludes our district highlights. Okay, thank you everyone. Uh we'll transition to our

042district update. We have a number of important topics to uh brief the board and community on. The first is uh our work toward uh implementing uh new policy with regards to student use of cell phones. Uh we had the opportunity to um spend some time with the governor earlier this week uh in Laam as she announced uh the statewide cell phone ban and we were able to uh attend that unveiling and press conference with a number of district officials but uh particularly important that we included three Albany high school students and all three were in support of u of the policy and so that's a good thing but also uh recognizing guys and gave us some input that it it will be difficult for a little bit and then everyone will you know we'll move

043on. Uh but we were honored to be invited. But it's uh important to underscore that uh given the governor's um or given the the pending approval of the state budget in its entirety. With that comes uh a statewide bell-to-bell cell phone free policy and uh New York State will be the largest state in the union that will implement uh such a policy. We're still waiting for a number of specifics uh particularly around funding uh what the plan will look like uh who needs to participate in writing the plan uh as well as other guidance documents. But regardless, while that information gets uh ironed out uh not far from here, um our uh cell phone task force is going to move forward uh with some policy and regulation revisions. That will be a discussion next week

044with our policy committee. So, while the state figures out uh what they're going to do, we're going to move forward on our own like a number of other districts have in the state. But, uh it's important to let everyone understand that next year uh the city school district of Albany will have uh a smartphone free bell-to bell policy in all of its schools. Uh earlier this week in ending the week on Saturday will be uh more partnerships and opportunities um to engage with the NAACP. Uh we were able to meet with them earlier this week. We've uh committed to at least quarterly meetings uh with the NAACP uh leadership or executive council and then uh we'll participate with um other opportunities that they have and other members. Uh we talked about on uh Monday what

045life looks like with pending uh discussions around the closure of the Department of Education and and uh discussions around or the threats I should say of uh reducing federal grants and funding. And so our grants administrator met with um myself and Mr. Leco and the NAACP to talk about what that looked like. Uh talk about some uh backup plans that New York State has as well as the district. And we also talked about some short long-term plans that we have been uh meeting with the board on in a number of different retreat uh settings around resource allocation review. So we as I said earlier committed to monthly meetings. We're going to focus on student mental health and how to widen our partnerships um with mental health agencies in the community. That meeting will take place

046uh in August. And what will happen also at Albany High School later this week on Saturday is the statewide NAACP uh conference. It's a quarterly meeting and it will be held at Albany High School from 10 to 2 and we expect hundreds of leaders and young people from around the state uh to be briefed on the different happenings um within the organization. And then from 3 to 5, the Albany NAACP chapter will host a voter awareness event. We're honored that we have a number of students that will uh perform and and support uh this event and the NAACP has been a great partner and we look forward to expanding that relationship moving forward. May is typically a month of uh staff recognitions and so uh we have recognized our principles last week and school lunch

047folks um May 1st and 2nd. this week of course na national teacher appreciation day and nurse day and in a couple weeks we will celebrate our school pathologists. So uh while we take a moment to appreciate them on on these particular days certainly this board of education and community and our staff uh recognizes their outstanding uh achievements and their dedication uh to students and our community each and every day. We heard a little bit from uh principal Kford about my brother's keeper. We're excited to announce that Jir Rose and James Campbell uh will participate in the state ed department's fellowship program. Uh Jir and James were among over a hundred students from 50 communities that were selected. And uh as we typically have done is earlier in the year, maybe late fall or early winter,

048we had uh our fellows come and uh provide a report to the board. and we will do that again uh next year highlighting their uh achievements and participation next school year. And we had another no no. This was great written by our our sports caster Mr. Leco. Uh last month we had a um baseball pitcher Donovan Prim threw a no hitter. Well, uh, not long ago, our own Caroline Baker, uh, a member of our Falcon softball team, also threw a no hitter against Skenctity. And, um, while a no-h hitter is certainly, uh, a huge feat, it's important to underscore that 12 of the games 15 outs were recorded by strikeout. So, um, the ball was put in play only three times and the defense held. And uh I read something not long ago that the

049absolute toughest activity to do is to stand still and hit a moving baseball and softball. So uh that was proven the other day with only three balls in play uh at the softball game. So congratulations. Uh also on Saturday at the high school, it's a busy day. Uh from 10 to 1 is our spa day that uh students and staff from the cosmetology program uh will pamper our mothers. And so we ask folks to uh sign up online or make sure that um uh they reach out to Miss Love uh with her email address there and phone number. But an opportunity uh for our community members and parents to experience all of the outstanding skills that are being taught, learned, and applied in our cosmetology program. U anywhere between$25 and $45, you will be pampered.

050And um I I went last year and uh this wasn't a service, but it was recommended. I got my eyebrows trimmed and so I wonder what uh recommended service there may be for me um this Saturday. Uh end of year info. Uh it is that time of year. We will celebrate Memorial Day on the 27th and due to unused snow days on the or on the 26th rather and and schools close on 27th and 28th due to unused snow days. Thursday, June 19th, we will celebrate Junth and we remind folks uh to check the end ofear end of year scale uh end of year school calendars on our website. uh Albany High School, Tony Clement, and our new newcomer program at the high school level will have their last day of classes on June 16th.

051Uh more than a week of regent exams, and we'll celebrate uh our graduates June 29th at MVP Arena. All of our middle school programs uh will end with a full day on the 26th and our moving up ceremonies on the 27th. Um early dismissal at our elementary programs on 26th and the 27th and prek will end on June 20th uh with the exception of monastery which will follow the K5 schedule. Uh we also heard from Miss Commer about the soldout concert. They uh continue. We have a a number of concerts at our middle particularly middle school and elementary schools throughout the rest of May and into June. And you can find that schedule on our website. And that completes my report. Thank you, Superintendent. As is our usual practice, I ask you to prioritize your

052uh questions and ask your most important question first. We'll start with one question for each board member so that everybody has an opportunity to be heard. Your additional questions, we'll do a second round. Uh as a as per our practice, we'll start on this side, Mr. Almanavi. Uh so thank you to Principal Kmerford and um Mr. Lusco and Superintendent Hawk Rider for the updates. I'm really um happy to hear about a lot of the attendance successes at the high school. Um I wanted to pick up on something uh because I've been asked this a lot this past week um about the Department of Education closure. the federal department of education closure. And so, um, curious if you guys went into, you know, potential shortfalls with the NAACP, if you guys have, you know, figures or

053if you guys have an idea of what this could look like, um, if we, you know, do you guys have any idea if we're not getting all of the funding? you know, just any kind of any kind of information you can give on that. Yeah, we we talk mostly about um sort of the rhetoric around the closing and whether or not it it would happen, but whether it could it could happen statutoily and just sort of the um the conversations. Um we have spoken internally and uh I'll have uh Dr. Dr. Anglehart, our grants administrator, sent another update on some contingency plans. I know that his colleagues at the state education department are um assuring us that whether through uh state funding um or even legal action that a number of uh the threats or

054the rhetoric being discussed in Washington just wouldn't come to fruition. In fact, we heard the other day that um federal court got involved in the uh potential uh withholding of ARP funds um that the district uh schools across the country particularly in New York that had been committed to um that came from Corona virus relief funds and those sort of things. So I can get you u more detail. Our conversations with the NAACP were really sort of around the political realm um of whether it would happen, but also reviewing with them as we have with the board where where we spend our Title One dollars, our our 611, 619, what programs and services that um those funds support. Miss Smith. Thanks. Thank you. My my battery looks like it's running low over here. There we

055go. Um, no, thank you, Superintendent, for the updates. Uh, and Miss Cford, always great to to hear about what's happening there at the high school. Um, and, uh, I know I I probably need to come see you next week about some student voice related things. Um, I'm running behind on a few projects on a project. Um but uh I like Miss Gman Yawi very concerned about what could happen uh in the future in terms of funding but also just as and probably even more important just wanting to u make sure that our students continue to feel safe and u connected to our school community and to our teachers in particular. Um and so uh just you know with all of the LGBTQ plus IIA and trans related uh things going on in the world and

056um you know um curriculum related issues and all of those things that are affecting uh a number of states um while they haven't so directly I think felt we haven't experienced that too much here I am concerned that that is certainly coming um and what and and I'm just concerned concerned about again the impact of our students in a in a world where we might feel temporarily safe but uh something feels like it's always looming over us. Um but um I I was I'm always heartened to hear as Miss Cford pointed out the the work that continues to go on uh with our teachers and uh in our school settings to um you know to ensure that our staff are um are in the know and and continue to to be those caring individuals and

057wanting to take on more learning of how do I do this? How do I make sure our kids feel safe and feel better? So I am uh immensely grateful personally uh for that work that everyone is doing and uh want to make sure that that everyone in our learning environment, teaching environment feels u safe and uh comfortable in our settings. So thank you Miss Matt. So I was just struck by the um uh update that came from Albany High. Miss Commer, I really would like to, you know, congratulate you and your um your your school personnel, um the parents in the community and the students because the common theme that was discussed in your um update was growth and change and how you guys have have done it. And we went through a period during

058COVID where we didn't know where some kids were um and or where kids were learning behind as um uh the young man uh Mr. Lavine had shared kids were learning behind a screen and um and look look where we're at now. So we have a lot to celebrate and um uh and I really uh it really is something to be very proud of. At the same time, we have a new campus and you talked about how families are engaging more and how there's a different vibe and students are engaging more and that's just and during a time like this to piggyback on what um board member Smith was saying, um kids need a students need a place to feel safe and so do families. Families need to be connected to something. Um and uh and

059I just uh I just really want to commend you and um and and all of our staff um personnel um for the fine work that they're doing. So, thank you. Um let's see other other comments. There are some things I'd like to ask, but we don't know what's going to go on at the federal level. Um, so I appreciate the comments from board member Elman Mahawi and um and uh and board member Smith about that and I'll wait to hear updates as they um as they come through. I'm glad our community partnerships are um intact and going strong. And um those are just some of my comments that I'd like to put out there. So thank you, Miss Savage. Um, so as not to repeat, thank you so much for um, a lot of the

060information here, but I wondered if we'd started thinking about how we were going to convey the new cell phone policies, which I know have not even been finalized yet, so we can't convey them yet. um to in particular families. Students I think will get the gist of things relatively quickly once they're in the building. But I think the leadup phase of that will be very stressful for families while they're anticipating something new without really being able to understand what that's going to be like. So have we thought about that communication process for families? Yeah, we had the um three leaders of the uh task force meet with our cabinet earlier this week um to go over a Q&A uh but also start to outline what a communications plan would look like. They want to start

061with uh next week's policy committee to sort of hammer out some of the language and and get to an agreement. but they have a number of um different communication campaign campaigns and templates that other districts recommended as well as uh some some communication practices not not to do. So, uh early on um I'm looking at Mr. Leco, but it was uh one of his communication team members has been dedicated to that group um throughout their entire work. And so, uh Lisa Andrammy has been working on a number of different communications on the back end. So when we're ready to roll, uh we'll be able to have communications that are specific to students, to parents, uh age appropriate by division, um and also have conversations with um with principles about um PTA meetings toward the end

062of the year, uh back to school nights and uh as we get ready to open year, but also what assemblies would look like and and um who the key people in each of those buildings would be to um help help deescalate students. when the inevitable conversations come around putting your device away, so on and so forth. So, we have a we have a pretty good start. It's the beginning of um conversation we'll have, I think, in two weeks after the the group meets with the um cell phone policy, but we'll certainly uh in two weeks when I come back uh to report, I'll I'll give a outline of what those communication strategies will be. That sounds great. It sounds like a lot of thought has gone in particular to um two-way communication for students with

063family with um principles and in the schools and uh one-way communication for families in terms of communication outgoing from the district. I hope you'll also integrate some two-way communication for families whether that's virtual meetings or some other mechanism. I did hear PTA meetings which is good but of course a very narrow set of families is invol involved in PTA. um virtual meetings tend to give people the most capacity. And it it occurs to me this might be a time for broader than just cell phone policy. You know, it could be that could be the primary focus, but families, especially families who are new to the district, um which happens a lot in our district, um may have a lot of questions that could be answered or at least identified. I also wanted to add one

064more thing. Um while I was there at that uh event um we talked a little bit about our code of conduct and we want to make sure that it's going to be non-punitive and um so when when that happens when when conveniently the code of conduct conversation is at the same time as the um cell phone policy and the intention is to have all of the at least my intention nothing has been finalized but my hope is that all consequences will only be in the code of conduct so that it will reduce the level of maintenance of having to correspond bonding policies. So, they'll be in that same format that we have in our other code of conduct and they will clearly not be punitive. Mr. Grey, uh I wanted to thank Principal Comfort and

065Mr. Hawk Rider for the updates and there's some definitely some successfulness. It's always exciting to hear uh the high school's updates just because, you know, it's the flagship school of the district and that the school uh through which all of our students eventually go. So, it's really kind of exciting. It's also kind of exciting to see uh the people that start as you know often very young children becoming adults in their in their uh journey here and exciting to hear from those two very successful validictorian and solidictorian candidates. So, um, and then of course as as chair of the policy committee, I'm excited to be working on our annual code of conduct review next week as well as, uh, working on the new cell phone policy because, yes, definitely a lot of details to kind

066of get straightened out and make sure it's, you know, implemented well, that it's, um, consistent with the consistent with what's going on at the state level, and that it that it also ties into our code of conduct and our goals to not be punitive. So, thanks. Thank you, M. Wilson. Good evening. Many of board member man's statements more or less echo my sentiments as well. Thank you for your updates. Um it's interesting the thread from Principal Cmerford's um report on Alb High School. And then interestingly, this weekend will be the same high school will be a Buzzwood activity. Um I think speaks to the level of investment that we made and the returns that it's yielding. Thank you. what everybody else said. Kudos to Albany High. Um, you know, these May and June are the

067months I love the most. You know, we go through everything all through the year and now we start seeing the fruits of her labor and the the success of her students. Uh, it was nostalgic seeing this valatoran and salariatoran uh come and give a talk to the board. Um, you know, having been on the parent of one two years ago. Um, so time flies. Um, you know, and one thing that I I I do want to say is that it's good to see that the investments that we made over the years. Uh, it wasn't easy making some of them, but this board has been very supportive uh and and uh thoughtful of what the district needed and what what we needed to do and put some systems in place. It's good to see those systems

068are actually working now. Um, and and you know, when attendance is going up, I mean, everything that we've heard today is positive, right? Great. Great. Um, I can't wait to hear more about the graduation rate and all of those things. Um, so thank you. Thank you for everything you do. Um, looking forward to the other presentations. Mr. Um I had just a couple of thoughts that I didn't include in my first comment that um in in terms of the closure of a department of ed and you know budget potential budget shortfalls and stuff um that um I know there are some challenges regarding um you know like a volunteer bank and um we already work with our community partners very closely, but I would urge um the superintendent to take another look at how we

069can utilize, you know, people and partners uh and groups in our community that um want to help us um in a volunteering manner. I'm not saying it's going to fill any enormous amount of, you know, money that is may not be coming to us, but I think it could help. Um, the other thing is about the eyebrow trim. I think I might need one, too. But, you know what I think about that, like I've heard that like people with long eyebrows like to read a lot and like they're more studious. So, um, and I would encourage everyone to, uh, get the, um, the extra package for, uh, Mother's Day because that looks really fun. So, thank you guys. Thank you. I just was reminded of one more thing. Um you talked about the uh Labor

070Day, the Memorial Day and the um snow days, but we had a holiday at um unplanned holiday at Albany High last week. How does it impact the Albany High? Yeah, we uh there's a a form we we submit both to Boseis and the state education department about a an emergency closing u and have to detail the circumstances as to why school um could not be in session for that particular school. So typically these snow days or emergency days are more widespread and need to trigger a certain uh a certain percentage of your overall district enrollment and this did not. So we have not been advised that the that Albany High School's in jeopardy uh of um losing instructional days or instructional minutes. The state now counts instructional minutes and so we'll be able to move

071forward with that plan. So if I understand it correctly, those three days are still considered holidays for Albany High. Yes, the the Monday t because there was a question in the community when that happens like how would that impact because again it's a long weekend people are planning their holiday. Yep. It remains that way. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Okay. Okay. We move on to the next part of our agenda. That's public comment. This is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public. The board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making. We set set aside up to 30 minutes of each meeting to hear from our district residents, parents, students, and other members of the community. If there are more comments that can be accommodated,

072which we don't anticipate today, we may choose to extend the length of the public comment period or alternatively establish a second common period later in the meeting. We also accept comments virtually on the same basis as those in person and we accept comments in writing and by voicemail. We welcome comments in English and any other language. We will provide translation when necessary. All comments must include the commenters's name and place of residence. We do not accept anonymous comments. All the information about these many ways to share your thoughts with us is available at addressingtheboard information at albonychools.org/beie. We ask all commenters uh to keep in mind that the information about individual students and specific district staff cannot be shared in public. Uh not only is that a violation of privacy but all student every student

073and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be in public. Uh for that reason the board members who will read we have one letter today for uh that Miss Wilson will read. Um so board members who read written comments will pass over this or substitute alternate words if individual names are mentioned. We'll also eliminate those names and description from recorded uh voicemails. Also, please keep in mind that the public comment is not the best place to first alert the district to a concern you have. We ask that you share the concerns first with relevant staff such as the teacher or the building principal. If you feel the concern is not addressed adequately, you may appeal to the person's supervisor up the chain of command. If necessary to the superintendent, decisions

074made by the superintendent may be appealed to the board. Miss Wilson. Hello. I have one public comment from Kimberly Relle. My name is Kimberly Relle and I am a parent of two students in the district. I would like to acknowledge and thank all educators and staff in Albany. I'm encouraged to see over 50 staff recommended for tenure tonight. I have met and work with many of these wonderful staff and I wholeheartedly support retaining and rewarding them for their service. My second reason for writing relates to field trips. Per the August 2023 presentation, all middle school grade levels would take a field trip during the 2324 school year. There seems to be uncertainty and inconsistency about the district's stance this year. Many most many middle schoolers will be offered a trip this year. But I'm concerned

075for those students who may not have had the opportunity and for those who might be disappointed with the destination. last year seemed to set the precedent that every middle schooler would experience trips to the Bronx, Boston, and New York City during the middle school career. But that isn't the reality for the same grades this year. While any trip is better than nothing, when will there when will there be consistency and equity in the offerings? Also, why don't buildings know what is and isn't allowed before January? Many schools were waiting for guidance on funding availability to determine what if any trips classes could take. In addition, some staff were told that trips couldn't occur during the last week of school. I wish students took trip throughout the school year, but I understand that the last few

076weeks are typically chosen because grades are submitted and inclass learning is largely completed. It makes sense to plan the trips during this time frame, but some were told that wasn't allowed. Now, I see that two schools have field trips scheduled for that week. And while that is a great experience for those students, it frustrates me that some trips were possibly cancelled due to misinformation. I have reviewed theu district's policy on field trips and have not found any guidance about scheduling restrictions, so this guidance appears arbitrary and ill advised. Building should know about funding and restrictions for field trips no later than November to adequately plan. The district's failure to prepare and plan should not negatively impact the students and staff, but this has a repeatedly been the case. Please take time to review these concerns

077and plan accordingly for the future. Thank you. We do not u comment on public comment. Uh if you expect a reply, please email us and u the superintendent or the board will reply to you. We appreciate all public comments and we find hearing from community members very valuable. Again, our contact information for both public comment and for routine correspondence is albchools.org/boa. We now move to the part of a 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, personal 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

078any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion and vote on that item. With that introduction, I now entertain a motion to adopt routine consent agenda. Miss Wilson, second, Miss Man. Uh, any set aides hearing? None. Um, all in favor? That's unanimous. Okay. Sorry, trying to find my place. Okay, we move on to the next portion of the agenda which is the action on policy. Pass it on to Miss Crerache, chair of policy committee. Uh good evening everyone. Um my the policies on the agenda for action tonight are the same policies that were on the agenda for discussion last time. There haven't been any changes to them. Uh just to recap, the first one is is policy 4100, response to intervention, RTI. No substantive changes to that one, just uh standardized references to

079the district. Um adding some verbs to make the bullet points consistent and adding a reference to guardians in addition to parents um as per our policy. For policy 1741, homeschooled students, we added language to the first paragraph to clarify that the policy applies only to district residents. We added a paragraph stating that the cse will develop IESPs for homeschool students for disabilities to provide more context about what parents and guardians are being asked to request in the scope of this policy. And we made a few slight wording changes to promote uh clarity overall. Finally, for policy 4321, programs for students with disabilities under the IEDA and New York Education Law, article 89, we added clarification that students entitlement to special education ends at the close of the school year in which they turn 21 or

080when they receive a high school diploma, whichever comes first. We added some examples of activities the district might engage in to locate and identify students with disabilities. We updated the policy to include genderneutral language and made some slight wording changes. Um, given that, could I get a motion to approve these three policies? Um, oh, I forgot to ask I think that lack of a hand is because I forgot to ask for discussion. Correct. Do you only ask for a motion? It wasn't time to vote yet. That's gotcha. Okay. So, I I see a motion from Dr. Chau. Um, all in favor? Any discussion? Any discussion? See, okay, got protocol right. Any discussion? Just voting. Seeing Seeing no discussion, all in all in favor. That is unanimous. Thank you. And I'm going to turn turn the

081chair over to a more qualified and experienced uh person, Dr. Chad. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cr. As is our normal practice, we have arranged our agenda with all action items at the beginning. Unless something unexpected happens, we don't anticipate the board will take any further actions tonight. The balance of the meeting will be items up for discussion, some of which will lead into an action either at our next meeting or a future meeting. So, the next item on our agenda is summer school planning. Welcome Good evening, board president, vice president, board members, superintendent, colleagues, and community members. Mr. Chaffy and I are pleased to present our summer program opportunities for students in preK all the way through high school this upcoming summer. While not all the minute details will be shared this evening, there

082is a more detailed document that provides additional information that has been shared with the board. As we do with every presentation, we'll begin with our vision, mission, and goals. All the work we do to move our district forward continues to be in alignment with the vision, mission, and goals of the City School District of Albany. We are a district of excellence with caring adults, engaging learning opportunities, working in partnership with our diverse community, focusing on student achievement, quality instruction, strong leadership, empowering our families, and partnering with our diverse communities. So on the next slide, we begin tonight with a brief overview of all of our programs. We have eight summer programs that will run across the district this year. One site will host our jump start program for our prek students. Our elementary summer enrichment

083program will be held at two sites again this year. We have three middle school programs that will be housed at each middle school site. AIA will house three three programs and then our high school program. Students will be provided both breakfast and lunch at each summer site and transportation will also be available for all students who live more than 1.5 miles away from the program site in which they are enrolled. So on the next slide you'll see the program budget. The last few years, a majority of our summer programs were funded by our ARP funds, our American Rescue Grant Plan that district that our district received during CO. What you'll see in this slide is that there are a number of different funding sources being used across a variety of programs through the district this

084year to make sure we're able to maintain our summer school opportunities for our students. As we go through the following slides, we will provide the cost and funding sources for each program as well as any changes or variations in programs that you may see this year due to either budgetary or programmatic factors that may have required a slight shift. On this slide, you'll see details about our Jumpstart pre kindergarten program. This program this year we will be housing just one classroom of students at Pine Hills Elementary School. The goal of the Jumpstart program is to prepare children to begin their kindergarten year ready and excited to learn. The Jumpstart curriculum supports social emotional learning, language development, and academic readiness skills through hands-on engaging learning experiences. This year, our target enrollment will be students currently enrolled

085in our UPK program who could benefit who could benefit from the extended school year in preparation for kindergarten readiness. It is our hope that after this program, students will be both excited and more comfortable entering the classroom on the first day of kindergarten. On the next slide, you'll see some details about our elementary enrichment program. This year, our elementary program will be housed at two sites as it has been in the past. Those sites are Spa and Toast, with Toast being a new site for our summer enrichment program. The goal of our elementary summer program is to provide a structured and engaging environment where students receive academic instruction as well as participate in enriching activities. This year we are shifting a bit a bit to prioritize lifting enriching experiences hoping to foster creativity, social skills,

086emotional well-being, and ensuring that each student enjoys a balanced and fulfilling summer experience. While academic instruction remains a component of the program, the focus priority will be on enriching experiences that allow students to explore new interests, build friendships, and develop a love for learning beyond the typical classroom experience. There has been a reduction in classroom sections this year. However, the available student seats we look to fill this year is only 10 seats under what we were able to fill last year and almost 40 more seats than we were able to fill in 2023. With the academic component being reduced 30 minutes, there will be no IXL component for assessments this year. Instead, we will utilize embedded formative assessments each week to provide an end of the end of summer progress update for families and for

087the schools of those students in the fall. We will also be reviewing the participating students spring and fall NWA scores for progress or continuity of growth. After the program, our enrichment partners will again be the YMCA at Spa and the Boys and Girls Club at Toast. We are currently working with them to also bring in some community partners and plan a couple field trips throughout the summer for students that attend. We also are working with our athletic department to be able to again offer swimming to our intermediate students at both programs. As you can see, there are a combination of funding sources being used to support this program at both sites. At this time, I'll turn it over to Mr. Chaffy, who will discuss the secondary programs. Thanks, Jasmine. As you've noticed, this the program

088for middle school this year has changed dramatically. Uh when I took the job, uh Miss McKenna had already met with the building principles with our uh supervisors and started to redevelop what the middle school program would look like. So it we were still meeting the same number of students that we had in one site, but now we've uh divided them into the three sites um across the district. And so what the program will do is this allows the faculty and staff from those buildings to work with their own kids to build a better relationship with their children and the students and to foster a relation a better relationship with those kids. So it's it's a new approach um and it hasn't it hasn't been easy to do the planning for it but we're working out

089all the little details. Again, we will be offering uh breakfast and lunch at each one of the sites. The program itself will be divided into blocks uh humanities block with ELA and social studies, a block with STEM, math and science activities, and a block that will have uh social emotional and uh component to it as well as some time to focus on individual students special needs. So uh basically the program will be um it's going to be all projectbased. The curriculum has been developed uh was developed several years ago. So the the curriculum will be the same at all three sites. Um and and again it goes along with your vision statement. Um, it's more aligned to the vision of the district, building the relationships between our educators and our students. The high school program

090is essentially the same as we've had for for every year. It's a chance for us to recover for kids and students to recover course credit. Um it is uh running from 8:30 to 12:30 uh Monday through Thursday. Again, we're going to be providing transportation for the students. Um we'll be using Apex um to recover credit as well as the the courses that we offer during the summer to the high school students. The curriculum is essentially the same as what's being done during the school year. Um uh we you can see that we've outlined um a maximum of uh 15 students in class and a minimum of 12 students in class. Um it's a four period day. Um and again it's for course recovery. The newcomer program is essentially a program for our students who are

091new to the country. Um it's to acclimate students to and also prepare them socially and emotionally for um for our our schools. Um it provides students who are new to the country uh and AIC and Aub High School with foundational knowledge that will accelerate their success in the upcoming school year. And we this program basically um gives students a basic literary skills uh and understanding of the local civics uh for academic understanding. Um it also prepares them for the algebra regions uh preparation. Again, we're going to be looking at attendance uh a parent student survey. The program is essentially the same program that we had last year. The summer refugee program. Is that the one that's up here? No, it's dual language. Sorry. Sorry. Dual language program is an extension of our regular school um

092summer dual. The summer dual program is an extension of our regular program that we have at AIA. Um it's basically targets interventions um in for home language uh arts in both Spanish and in English. Um it provides enrichment in math and ELA both in Spanish and English. Um it's basically to develop biliteracy in Spanish and English. Um it we do post pre and post uh assessments on the students um both in Spanish and English. Uh again transportation is provided for all these programs uh breakfast and lunch. And this program operates 5 days a week from 8:30 to 12:30. The summer refugee program is in its third year for the school district. Um, again, it's to support refugees, uh, students and their families, uh, to acclimate them to the United States and the local community. Um,

093we assist the families in registering the students, getting their immunization records, um, and basically get them ready to be in our schools. Um again we'll do parent surveys, pre and post assessments in writen and oral language assessments and in English. Again you can see that uh on our budget um slide all these programs are funded through a various funding sources. This one happens to be a grant funded program. No I didn't. Oh sure. Yeah, I talked about high school. Got it. I think you did miss the first time credit slide for Albany High. So, that would be great if you'd go back to that. Okay. First time credit. Yes, the first time credit um slide. Basically, um New York State regulations. Uh one credit, 90 hours of instruction. Um uh there is a typo on

094this. We do not have IB classes. Um and AP classes are you can't uh get credit for AP during the summer. Um but we do offer the university and high school credit um which uh Miss Cmerford did mention earlier. Um we are offering a couple of classes um for firsttime credit also the media literacy a half a credit and it's virtual a half credit for health but that's in person only uh and multiple c cultural studies uh that's also a half credit that's virtual. Um again minimum class size is 12 and maximum class size is 15. Um we will be giving uh numeric grades and um and the course and the grade will appear on their transcripts. Sorry. It's been a long time since I've done this. I got you, Mr. Chaffy. Um, and this

095year we will continue to support our students with disabilities in our extended school year program. This program will be held at ASH and is for kindergarten through 12th grade students with disabilities who qualify. The purpose of this program is to address regression in the following areas: academics, social behavioral functioning, communication skills, or other skills identified on a student's individualized education plan. Um eligibility for ESY programming is based on individual student regression and recruit rec recruitment data as determined by the CSC. Um all instruction will be provided in person and will include access to supplemental resources including unique learning systems math Bridges Lexia and RAZ kids. Our coordinators this year are Cidra Stevens and Tammy Kio. Um, the school district does receive 80% reimbursement from NICED for the cost of the special education services during July

096and August. The remaining 20% will come from general funds. Thank you. We'd be happy to address any questions you may have at this point around our summer programming planning. Thank you, Mr. Gmani. Thank you. I just have a broad question about um the level of enrollment. So, is this comparable to last year or is it like a is it a smaller enrollment than last year? Because it in some situations it seems larger like the high school seems like more students but no actually the high school is exactly the same as it was last year 625 and uh the middle school programs exact number we we just had them all in one site. We had 225 kids in one site. This year we're allowing for 225 seats, but we spread them across the three schools. On

097the elementary level, we did have more seats. Last year we had planned to um bring in about like just over 500 students. Um we only had about 420 students that enrolled in the program. So this year our seek target is like 408, something to that effect. Um which is actually more than it was the year before. Um, so we're pretty much right on target with where we were last year, even with the reduction of sections. Just to follow up on that, um, so breaking it into the for the middle school, three schools, uh, seems very convenient, um, for our families. Is it are we operationally prepared to do that? you know, do we have, I guess, the resources to man all three locations? Actually, we do. And it's it's really been more efficient um with

098the staffing. Um we've also uh set up transportation so that each one of the sites has their own buses. So, we have kids from one each middle school riding on their own buses. And they'll they'll run similar. They'll be yellow buses, but they'll run similar to like a triper tripper bus, but it's worked out actually more efficient. Miss Smith, that's Yes, that's great. And that transportation was one of my questions. So, thank you very much for that. I don't really have any others. I I was I'm very excited about the middle school uh structure and uh and also the project based activities. I think that's that population could really use that uh focus. So, thank you all very much for the time and uh I know this is a lot, but thank you, Miss Matt.

099I don't have um any questions. I appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into the elementary school number of seats. That makes a lot of sense because as I recall, not all the seats were filled. um and and also some of the out- of-the-box thinking in order to ensure that um um that that we're looking at appropriate funding streams to fund our summer program. So, thank you Miss Savage. Thank you very much for the presentation. The summer school thing, it's amazing how many different things are happening in the summertime. It's much less staff and sometimes feels like almost as many programs as we have during the school year. So, it's very impressive and all the effort that goes into it. I also really acknowledge and recognize how much better we've gotten at the pre-planning. It now feels

100much more like, okay, everybody's got got a plan. We're under in things are moving ahead and that um you know, there was a lot of variability over the years and how we did things. And I feel like we feel fairly confident that we've hit the right metrics now because the planning there's not as much fluidity. I really do love the idea of having folks in their own middle school. I think that's creative. Fantastic idea. I'm excited to see how it works out. Um I'm a little worried about coverage when a teacher gets sick and now we've got less ability to cover staff. So, you know, I think that'll be interesting to see how that plays. But my real question I wanted to ask may even be a question for Miss Cmerford. So, I'll just say

101Miss Cford a couple times so she knows that I might be asking her a question by accident. Um, I feel like our dreams of what the firsttime credit program in the summer opportunity was going to be have not really lived up to expectations. We had big dreams for this and allowing our students to really access additional programming because anybody who's had a kid at Alb High knows the biggest problem at Alb High is there's only nine periods in the day and there's so many great courses. But now we're down to three half credit classes. Um, and I'm wondering if we can talk more about like the big meta picture about what has happened and why that idea didn't live up to our dreams for it. And then also why two of the classes are offered

102virtually but health isn't when that's the required one that I know a lot of students would be very happy to knock out of their schedule. Um, but don't really want to sign up for summer school in person. So those are a big big picture question like we had big dreams and when I'm not seeing it and then secondarily can't we make health easier for our kids to access over the summer. We can also do this by SPU if nobody wants to address my big questions now. That's also fine. I don't mean to put anybody on the spot. Phone call to Jody about these because there was a bigger list there. So students have not enrolled. We haven't had enough enrollment to run the courses in the summer is why the uhs courses have not run.

103Um health typically we have not been able to get a teacher a live teacher to teach health in the summer. So that is why it's been online but it's not online. It's the opposite. It says nonverirtual for health that you have to be physically in the building. And that's what I'm trying to understand why it was it was before and now we have a teacher. Sorry, I said that backwards. Yes. Okay. Cuz last summer, I don't think you could do it. I might be misremembering, but I think last summer it was also in person. I remember the COVID summer it was virtual. Uh because everything was virtual, but yes. Um is there do are we obligated to offer it in person? Could we offer it virtually if it were something that would increase enrollment for

104it? Yes, we could. Okay. I hope that that will be something that folks consider because I do know that health tends to be a schedule challenger for our the students that I'm aware of because it's a half credit class and then you there's always this like okay what am I going to put against it. So I've got in inerson summer school versus virtual summer school two totally different mindsets for the average high school student. Scratchy. I I wanted to thank you for the innovative innovative approach to the is this is on right. Okay. Thanking you for the innovative approach. I really liked reading especially about the elementary school. Uh the goal is to foster creativity and social school social skills and create a dynamic atmosphere that inspires curiosity and enjoy. And I also like the

105focus on building relationships between students and their teachers and working on project based learning at the middle school. Um, my most relevant question I think I think I might have asked this last year. I'm getting this weird sense of deja vu about it, but there's something in the middle school uh description and only in the middle school description that says in accordance with our attendance policy, students who exceed three absences will not receive credit for summer summer courses, but there's nothing in the district attendance policy that mentions losing credit based on attendance. So, I wondered if you guys could provide more more in background on that, please. Do I have it? Yeah, I have it in the in the writeup. Yeah, but the writeup was done by Miss McKenna. So, uh that's pretty much been

106what I think it was taken from the high school um also versus So, we can get the information. We'll get the information for you to figure out why that's in there. Thank you. Miss Wilson just left. Uh most of my questions have been asked in one form or the other, but I have a slightly different uh followup to the um elementary school versus middle school u u organization. Uh because this question has come up in the in the community before as to you know how middle school is this is great, right? I mean you can have those kids be be with their court in their buildings everything's familiar whereas for the elementary school now they are all going to go to two different locations. Um, and I sort of know the answer, but I would

107rather you say it for the benefit of the public. So, it's been two locations for a while. Um, if we were to spread amongst all of the schools, um, budgetarily, I don't know that we'd be able to manage that. And I also think about staffing. Um, just between the the two sites on the elementary program, we're in the middle of hiring right now. Um, we have a number of teachers that did work the program last year that are coming back and we are starting interviews. Um, and we have probably just about enough staff to staff the two sites. Um, so I don't know that we'd be able to do that across all buildings. Um, we do try to make sure that there are two locations on both sides of the city um to make sure

108that there's some accessibility to families. Um, I do know in the past we've had four sites through the cities. Probably I'm going to say a year or two precoid. Um, it's been two sites for a very long time, but I think if we did more than the two buildings, we would have a hard time staffing um, those for everyone. Thank you for pointing those out. And the transportation issues, too. Um because for the middle school you could even do the the uh CDTA buses if you need even though you're not doing it this time. But for the elementary schools you absolutely have to have the school the yellow buses and yeah prices go up really fast and then we wouldn't be able to do provide the same things or even half of those things for

109the same budget. Mhm. And and we're we will offer those same bus passes during the summer, too, for kids who don't aren't on, you know, for the stops that they have them at. So, we do have extra bus passes for kids both on the high school level and on the elementary or on the middle school level. If no one else's question, oh, Miss Wilson, Miss Cr. Sure. Um I had a question which was I noticed that the um programs for newcomer um duel and for refugee just have numbers of teachers and not numbers of seats. So I wondered about that and I also wondered could you tell me more about the difference between the newcomer program and the refugee program? Yes. Okay. Because I talked with Rachel about this earlier. Um the refugee program is

110more more of them searching out the the new students who are um just coming in that are just starting to register. But the newcomer program actually uh spends more time uh with them in the building in the classes and spends uh getting them acclimated. And many of the students that are in the newcomer program that in the summertime actually stay in the newcomer program during the school year to acclimate them and get them ready to go back to Albany High School. So the refugee program is more of just getting them just getting them registered, getting them uh they're making sure that they're ready for school, that they have their immunizations. They and they spend a lot of time just getting them uh doing a lot of work with language and skills. Um, so it's it's

111it's intense, but th those refugee kids are really just coming into the country where the other the other newcomer program is the kids are have been here for a little bit. They're spending more time with them and they're getting them more acclimated to our educational system and getting them to the point where they're ready to uh move and they'll keep them in the newcomer program during the school year and then at certain periods of time they can get them back to Albony High School. Thank you. May I ask a follow-up question? Sure. So, the other question was again about the number of seats because I noticed that the dual program it says there's going to be five teachers. So, is that going to be like one class per grade? Are do we have a number

112of seats that we're anticipating for that? Because that could be large, right? It could be. Um I will I can check with um with Rachel Ste uh who's heading up these programs right now and I can get you a number for each one of those programs. Thank you. So with respect to the uh summer school at the uh high school, it'd be great if we had any CTE programs there, right? Like automotive or again staffing is always the issue, but if it was available, I would love for kids to learn how to do their oil changes and stuff, but because they can take those classes during the school year, it' be great if that was offered during summer so they still get gain that experience, which is some of some things that they should definitely

113know. um even if they're not pursuing it as a pathway. So, it'd be great to see what things might we be able to offer provided we have the staffing and the resources. That's always the challenge. Any other questions, folks? Thank you. M really minor question is it's not mentioned in the description, but I'm assuming that the high schoolers also have access to breakfast and lunch at school. all the programs. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Now comes the graduation report. Welcome back, Miss Camford. Good evening again. All right. I want to begin by thanking Trisha Wolf, our director for data and accountability for assisting with all of the data in this presentation. So, um, thank you very much to her. All right, we're going to begin the presentation with the graduation business

114rules. And so these are all listed here for you. I think most of you are familiar with them, but um the cohort year is determined by the first date of entry in 9th grade. Um the 4year August and the fiveyear sixyear five and sixyear cohorts are cumulative. So they they build um the 2020 total cohort consists of all students based on the last enrollment record of June 30th of 2024. So that is that first date of entry in the 2020 cohort um till that year year of graduation. So regardless of cohort students are reported in the school and the district um that they're enrolled in for that four, five and six year. Um, so important to note there, if a student leaves and does not register in another school, they remain in our cohort. So

115that's why we're always trying to find those still enrolled students. And if they do not enroll in another school or finish in another school, they remi remain in our in our co cohort. Graduation rate is calculated using the number of graduates as of the indicated reporting date and it's divided by the total cohort. You'll get to see that in um a later slide. And then on the bottom there you can see um the cohort year. So the 2020 total cohort graduation data that will be included in this report. Next slide. All right. So we will go into the cohort data here. All right. So, here we have um you'll see a lot in the report here both the district data and the high school data. The high school graduation rate encompasses Albany High School, Clemen

116Center, Albany International, Night School, and our any of our students that are on home tutor. The district rate includes any outofd district placement, any special ed out of district placements into um all of the other um Albany high school students. And then our August graduation rate reflects our any summer any students that would graduate within the summer. So you can see here our 2020 June and then the students who need the extra time over the summer is the August numbers there. So the 69 and 73 and then the 71 and 74. All right. So we have our um diploma type for June and August comparison. Our toughest challenge here is still the enrolled students that I spoke about. So you can see the column there for still enrolled as these are the students that we

117generally cannot locate um that we are always attempting to find. Um, unfortunately, most students that are still enrolled there are students that have other circumstances, life circumstances, um, that do not return to school. Um, sometimes we can get them to return to school. Um so you know if they have other family duties um if they are working if they have been exhausted by taking regent exams. Um I just today I I I personally receive the um notification to exit a student or drop a student. I review all of those. Um I am very meticulous about this at the high school. Um, I will not drop any seniors unless it goes through me. Um, that was not the case prior um to my my tenure at the high school. Um, so all of the principles have

118to review their seniors. There has to be a number of interventions that occur before those drops come to me. Um, I can just tell you today we had um four students who who left the country who were not going to be attending school. So they will remain on our roster. Um so like that's some of those other circumstances where they will remain on the still enrolled for our graduation rate. Um so I don't know what that impact is going to look for us right now. So it's it's we're going to have to see what happens there. Um, I do see some light at the end of the tunnel though with the blue ribbon commission and what the new standards will look like in a few years because, you know, we do have students and I

119do as well for students who who just say they're not coming back. That final step that happens there, I actually call every family. The principles have already exhausted efforts, done home visits. My principles actually go out and do home visits before they drop a student. um and I make that final call and I will tell you probably one out of every six calls or so I will get a student to return. Um so it is worth the efforts there. Um but sometimes you get the student it's just miss I've I've taken the regions too many times and I I can't. So I am very pleased to see what happens with the new standards and um giving students some different options to graduate. All right. So, um, okay, we can go to the next slide. Um,

120I do want to note here with the summer school, um, we do have, um, the additional students that do make it from summer school and, um, the seal of biiteracy. So, from last year, we're up from three students to 12 students. Um, and we maintain the seal of civic readiness um, from 95 to 97 students. I'm going to all right for your June. There we go. I'm having a hard time on my computer here. Sorry. There we go. All right. As you can see here, um all of our areas are over 60% um except with the exception of our special education students and our English language learners. So, this will this is a huge area of focus for us. It is important to note it generally takes both of these subgroups a little more time

121to achieve success on the regent's exams. We look at our five-year grad rate for the 2019 cohort for our students with disabilities, it's at 60% and our L's at 51%. Then when we look at them at the six-year rate, you'll see the um students with disabilities goes from 60 to 68. And then when you look at our L's, the rate goes from 51 to 77 at 60 at the five and sixyear rate. So they just really need that extra time or that extra time to be able to pass those regions exams. So it really is the exams at that point that they're having to overcome. I also have to say um both last year, this year, and all of our summer graduates who did not who were attending and did not make it to graduation

122in the summer, it was due to regent exams. Next slide. My computer. Okay. All right. So even from June to August, our ELLL students, they increased from 42% to 51%. We did not see much movement um any movement with our students with disabilities. Um I am I dug really deep on this to figure out some issues there. And I'm doing some um some things differently with our summer school scheduling for our students with disabilities for this upcoming school year. Next is our fouryear um June with in comparison with the state. So here you can see um the blue is Albany High School, the orange is the city school district and the um gray is in comparison to the state. Um, in researching this, when I compared our graduation rate to other high needs schools in

123the state, the average graduation rate is about 78%. And so, you can see we're at 71%. But when I looked at those schools, they do not have the number of L students and the number of special education students that we have because I'm like, why why are we not falling where they are? And it is because we have a significantly high number, double the number of L's and um special education students that they have. So our our we're at 4 and I think what was it seven L students um special ed students this morning and you saw we're at the 590 L students right now. Um so it is very different for other high need schools in the states when you're comparing us to them. Next slide please. Okay, so again um our August rates

124and compared with this most of our summer school students you'll see that bump here in August for the extra time and usually it's just students making that increase with the region's diploma. You can also see here too um you know that dropout rate going down as well. Next slide. So we put this data here for you for the 2019 to the 2024 comparison to demonstrate that our graduation rate in comparison pre with prepandemic rate as the rate since um we've had the special appeals. So, the 2019 cohort August graduation rate was at 68%. And the 2024 graduation rate at 74%. The special appeals ended in August of 2023. So, without any exemptions, we've actually increased 5%. So, we are moving in the right direction. So, when you're looking at the comparisons over the last couple

125of years, it looks like the graduation rate is going down over the three-year trends. But if you compare it without the special appeals, we're we're we actually made a five% increase when you compare 68 to the 74. Next slide, please. All right. So, this next portion will show you the trend data. Uh we did include this 2019 cohort data in this as well to demonstrate the growth that we made without any of the special appeals in the August slides only. Next. So while uh it appears that we've decreased in the data, if you look at the three-year trend as the number of special appeals decreased each year, the next slide will de demonstrate with the special appeals that we're still trending in the right direction. So here like you see um the blue um line

126and the yellow line. So that's your district and the state. So this is June and then you can go to the next slide for August. All right. So this is where you can really see it a little bit better visually. At least I can. But I don't know if you want to look at it the other way. So you can see here um the graduations rates go up with the special appeals for the 2022 graduation year, the 2023, but those are the special appeals there. So if you really compare us to a year without the special appeals, we have that 5% increase from 2019 to 2024. And again, if you take the um dropout rate from 2019 to 2024, we went from 11% to I think it was 5%. Yes. Okay. All right. So, again,

127the three-year trend um by June, this is the subgroup data. So again, while it appears we've decreased in the data, the next slide will again show the special appeals. So if we can go to that four-year trend for subgroup. So all subgroups increase from 2019 to 2024. Our students with disabilities um did decrease from the 53 to the 43%. So we'll be, you know, laser focusing on that for the upcoming school year. Um it is important to note we have um had some significant special ed staffing challenges over the last two years including vacancies and turnover there. Um so I do think we've seen an impact from that. Um our ELLL graduation rate if you look at that from 2019 to 2024 17 to 51%. Um so a lot of great gains and kudos to

128our ENL department there. Next slide please. So here we have the trend data comparing June and August and you can actually see how the graduation rate is calculated there. Um so you have the total number of graduates divided by the total number in the cohort. So that gives you the percents and then you have the class of 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively and then that district. Um and then it gives you a nice comparison there to see the gains that students make from June to August. Next slide. And then as pre previously discussed, some of our students need that additional time to meet graduation requirements beyond the summer. You can see the five and six-year graduation rates here and the increase that occurs when students are given the extra time. So you really see how

129much the graduation rate goes up from the four-year to the 5-year to the six years when they're given that extra time. and initiatives and next steps. So, I discussed a lot of the monitoring data in the Albany High um report earlier. So, our MTSS and all of the teams that we do there, our common planning time, our um academy principal meetings with counselors, um principal meetings with APs. Um so, that is um my check-in meetings. I meet with all of the academy principles every three weeks and in their check-in meetings I pull up the dashboards for each academy students. So we start with the seniors with the academy principles and I go through their senior data with them as well. So there's a lot of checks and balances occurring there um in the graduation rate.

130They do the same thing with their APs. Um I go through the APs with the freshman so that we're always monitoring students as they go up. So, I'm also monitoring principles, ensuring that they are um monitoring students. So, there's a check and balance system there. Um academic supports, we've talked through a lot of those as well. Um I won't read all those to you because I think we did discuss them. And then, um some of the special education action steps that um we're going to be um implementing and some that are already implemented there. Um we're really looking at scheduling this year. um and strategically scheduling um teachers in a different um not a different way but a way where both self-contained and integrated um teachers can collaborate um more and have scheduling that way.

131Um we've grown our seeds um program at Alb High School. So you saw the numbers there. We've had um I think it was 5 to 11 yes 5 to 11 students who graduated with that credential. So students who cannot get a region's diploma or a local diploma, they get that CEDOS credential. And then um for this June coming up, the major life exemption. Um so students who have um other life circumstances where they maybe cannot take a regent exam. Um so you know, the death of a parent um an extenduating circumstance, a medical illness. Um, so we're actually going through all of um that process to have that set up for this June as we speak. And then um ENL, so increasing the standalone minutes for our transitioning students um for the the upcoming SU

132school year with some increase in staffing as well for ENL. Um curriculum mapping with uh language development in content areas. And then again that major life exemption is for special um for ENL students as well. And that concludes the report for graduation. Thank you. So many of you. Yeah. Um thank thank you. Um thank you both. And uh let's see. Um generally I think this I mean the graduation rate looks good. It it seems to be about the same. Correct. I I still get um a little concerned about the fact that um I don't know what happens uh I don't know uh if we if we have a grasp on those students uh who are not as successful. So, if if I'm looking at say the African-American rate where it's maybe it's still far there's

133still a gap between our African-American students and our Caucasian students um our ENL students and uh our black students or you know, etc. And so I keep thinking about like who are these youngsters? You know, what do we know about them? What? And maybe there's like different I mean kinds of groups and skills. And at what point do we know these are going to be students who will graduate on time or who need an extra year, maybe need an extra two years and and I see that we've got all of these uh programs, interventions. I mean, it looks like a whole menu, right, of things that we uh are doing and have in place, but we still seem to have this gap. And maybe I'm asking an impossible question, but on the other hand, I'm

134I'm so so you'll pardon me if I I feel I get I'm I'm excited and thrilled because we have, you know, our numbers haven't gone down. We don't look like some other districts uh around the state, but we're still not where we want to be with our youngsters. So, I'm trying to understand how do what are we actually able to do what do we know when do we know it and how do we actually make a dent and are these and the students that are not doing as well graduating on time or maybe not at all. I mean, is there something that happens? I mean, do we know can we spot this, you know, in elementary school? Can we spot that in middle school? Do we know this when they're in the ninth grade? We

135know exactly who those kids are. Help me understand what we know and what we are able to do differently. Um, or do we need to do something differently with some of our youngsters? I I just I I believe more of more of our kids can can be successful. I also worry about youngsters who yeah maybe I need a little more time but if I'm like going into like okay now I got an extra year maybe I need an extra another half year you you know that does something to your well-being possibly um if it takes you longer than your peers to to accomplish something. I mean, we're overjoyed and ecstatic that and I am that you can manage to grab some of them back and like give them you can do this, you can do

136this. But how many are we also losing at the same time? So, I'm I don't know where I'm going with all this except I'm I continue to be depressed that we're not more successful uh as a district. And I'm and I don't really like to compare our students to any other. I'm talking about how can I help or how can we best help our youngsters where we live to have uh a more um engaging um confident um you know process uh to get from A to Z successfully. So and please know I don't really expect a whole bunch of answers right now. Okay, thank you. There's a lot of answers for that, right? I mean, there's a lot of predictors of that, right? So, reading, writing, you know, um I think we were more strategic

137this year, like we held more mock regent exams this year than we've like we're we're knowing students need more stamina. Um we've held more of mock regent exams than we have previously. I've already talked with the supervisors about planning for more next year than we even did this year. um utilizing some of the um regions days in January to do even more mock regions exams than we did this year. Um we're doing some of those during the school year. Um so, you know, a lot of it stamina sometimes as well to sit for an exam. um it's showing up for an exam like so even on an exam day we get the attendance sheets in and we have literally a team of about 15 people who start calling students and we have people on standby

138literally going to get students um you know and then it's the other skills that we need to make sure that students have to to pass exams but but let me and I apologize I'm push just one more little push here but so I I guess what I'm trying to also figure out is um are some of these youngsters the same youngsters that were having that difficulty at third grade or having that difficulty at some other point in their education. Right? And were we were we not able to to really tackle what the students needs were so that they actually never got the gain the kind of confidence and success along the way. So I'm I'm so I I know what we're doing at the high school, but by then it's a it's never too late,

139but it's but the impact is is very different. So I'm I'm really trying to figure out like all this data that we collect on students. I mean, we know who's participating in what programs, we know who's in after school things, we and then I I want to just kind of kind of and what interventions they're getting. And I'm really trying to understand to the extent to which these things are the right things and the things that will make a difference um in that child's trajectory. Okay, Miss M. Thank you. I appreciate the comments from um board member Smith. Also I I I have to say um principal commer there you seem to have a deep understanding of of the data you were presenting and that is for me very helpful as you um did your

140presentation. Um I have a question about when students sign out and how they're still attached to our cohort. So I didn't say that well. So if we have you say four students that left the country, we can't sign them out. And I'm not encouraging us to, but we can't sign them out. Okay. Okay. All right. I was just wondering based on some other conversations we were having in exec. In order to drop a student from our roles, we have to receive a record request from another school. So they would have to enroll in another school to not be attached to Albany High School. Um so that's what it it really comes down to is that without a records request where we are officially transferring them to another institution of learning be it in the country

141or not in the country um that we're responsible for them. Oh sure use my Um, is it possible that there are two different definitions that we're working with here, which is a student who fails to enter for purposes of, for example, state aid calculation versus a student who's kept in the graduation cohort? Because I think that may be part of what we're talking about here. For your purposes, for graduation, a student is a student and you can't release them from the cohort. But if they fail to enter the next year, they just don't show up here. We are not counting them as an enrolled student for purposes of calculating our enrollment. Am I asking a coherent question, right? And I think that may be the the confusion that's happening here. Yes. Um if a student

142fails to enter eventually there's an exit code and that exit code could be any number of of reasons the state has approved that we can confirm and one could be a um student who we believe is coming back for their fifth year or sixth year opts not to and then they would be considered non-completer and they would go against the the cohort graduation. doesn't for the purposes of calculating graduation rate. They're still in the original cohort, but they're no longer enrolled. So, that does that help? I appreciate that clarifying question. Um, let's see. And did I hear correctly that our dropout rate lowered? Um, it was at 11% and now it's at 5%. Correct. That's fantastic. Okay. I thought it stayed the same. Yeah, the state went 5%. Right. Very much so. And that that's

143all I No, it's fine. Okay, Miss Savage. 11 17% to 11%. Testing my microphone which was acting kind of crazy before. Sounds better. Um, okay. So, thank you very much for the presentation. I I know how complicated this is and I really appreciate the depth that you went into. I always amused by people who say, "What's the Albony High graduation rate?" And I'm like, "What do you mean?" four year June August do you want the whole district or just Albany high because people do make this analysis like graduation rate is up graduation rate is down and it's often very simplistic um so I definitely appreciate the depth I um find it extremely frustrating that the four-year graduation rate is the rate that is the one that gets um touted when it's clear that that is

144a rate that's only pertinent for students who have a fair amount of privilege at home um and that the six-year rate is really much more meaningful Because what do we care about? We care about our students being ready to assume an adult life. And if that takes us six years instead of four years and they have that credential and now they can go and they can do whatever it is that they want to do, that is so much more important to me than this metric that that people use to to badmouth high needs districts. So I appreciate that and that's what I look at and I try to just ignore the four-year rate. Um so thank you for all the work that you've done on that. I know that it's um it's been very noticeable

145to me that the um the the the differential between our subgroups has overall been trending down. It's this year is a little wonky. Some are up, some are down because the regions have such a crazy um impact in different ways, but overall trending since when I start looking back at the data since like 2014, the trend is fantastic. the graduation rate is way up and the um closing of the gaps especially for our students who have economic challenges is way down. Um I did notice as you talked about quite extensively the special education challenge seemed to be kind of out of nowhere like we were going fairly well progressing along and then this year seemed really radically different. So, I appreciated that you really focused on that and and it was helpful for me to

146hear that you were addressing that very proactively and thinking about um what the staffing issues were that may have led to that. Um and I know I'm working my way up to a question. And I do have the the question I have is actually very minute data one I want to understand about the regent exemptions because you said that there were no regions exemptions and it had been my understanding that if a student had been enrolled with us in those two years that we had and you called them something different this time you called them uh special special exemptions or something. I'd always called them regions exemptions but in any case I think we're talking about the same thing. There were two years that that students were able to get CLA regions credit for taking

147the class, right? That was the May of 2020 and then or June 2020 and June of 2021. So, some of our six-year rates would still have those in there, right? Because those students would have been enrolled in 2020. It's only 2024, 2025 now. So, we still, I think, are have some students who have those exemptions. They didn't stop counting them, did they? It's just that fewer and fewer of them apply, right? Correct. Okay, good. I just wanted to make sure I understood that. So, so I think we're still going to see a little more drift, especially for those six-year rates as we lose some of those those last few years um exemptions, which you know, I really appreciated you're doing the comparison to other highs districts too because I think that's um we want all

148of our students to succeed, but we also want to know how we are doing against our cohort. And so, that was a lot of words and feel free One thing I would just like to lift for the group is that as we're thinking about the exemptions phasing out, this introduction of the major life exemption is a really big deal for our kids. Um because it's not simply like I had a stomach bug on the day of the regents. It's not that simplistic or narrow. there it there's a wide list of of sort of suggested things right that said it's going to they'll still count in accountability right um if we exempt a student from an exam because of a major life circumstance they will we are still responsible through the lens of accountability but like

149you said it's not about our accountability it's about our kids um and so I think we're working on that right now there are two webinars next week this is a brand new thing um but we have many students who have major life circumstances that could range from a stomach bug on the day of the test to you know I'm I'm a refugee I fled my country nine months ago and that is also a major life circumstance to be taken into consideration we have to set up some really clear protocols around this um with the guidance from the state we're going to a webinar next week um but more to come on that but for our kids and what this will do for them is really lifechanging I think um because we haven't to Jod's point

150earlier around I I can't take that exam one more time. Right? Like there there are circumstances for us to consider that we have not previously had the opportunity to consider. Get dang for it. Yes. We will still be held accountable. Yes. For it, but we're still going to do right by kids. Miss Grey, uh I appreciate it. I appreciated your deep dive into these numbers. And I appreciate it also because I was concerned when I looked at this report originally, but I appreciated you giving us some perspective about how things have sort of reverted back to the way they were precoid uh with the lack of those regions exceptions. Although as you noted that we have shown some improvement. I was thinking of this sort of in the light of looking at the results we've

151seen of Regent's exams and kind of thinking to myself, what is, you know, what is the main stumbling stumb stumbling block here? What is uh the exam that's keeping kids from walking across the stage? And I just remember hearing about problems with algebra specifically and problems with getting enough teaching staff, especially enough summer school teaching staff for that. And I'm curious if you see algebra as being the big stumbling block right now. And if it is, what can we do as a board to support that? Whether it's staff, it's tutoring, it's some sort of individual study or hands-on help. What What can we do to get these kids across the stage? So, we are still down to math teachers at Alb High School. Um, so that had and that's been for two years. So, um,

152we've been able to staff our math classrooms, but we have not been able to staff our math interventionist. So, that would be the staff supporting classrooms and students specifically who need interventions. Um, so we need teachers, right? Um so that has been difficult. Um you know we had to get very creative last year with summer school scheduling and um sharing those teachers last year. Um and then you know algebra is definitely one of the exams but I for most of our L students it's the it's the English exam. But I mean our L's like those numbers still look a lot better than they looked five years ago. But the students with disabilities just that looks pretty bad. Yes. And and there are a lot of um out of out of district um programs um smaller

153setting programs um that were more suitable for a lot of our students um that um do not that our our students don't attend anymore. So um Alb High School is very large. um 2,700 students for some self-contained students who would need a smaller setting. Um and so we've kind of created smaller settings at Alb High School. Um so we're we're managing um special education students who might need a smaller setting. Um and I do think that has been a challenge. Um you know, Brooklyn has helped us um with that smaller space. Um, next year I have two um, wings that I've created um, for our self-contained students at Albany High School. And I think we've been very cognizant of scheduling next year with um, some great teamings that we're creating. Um, so I'm hoping that

154will assist um, in getting the graduation rate up too with our special education students. So um, Jen and I and the other supervisors been working really really hard on that the last couple of weeks. Thank you, Miss Wilson. Thank you both for your presentation. Um, I am curious about if you have any um thoughts about, for example, I'm thinking about board member um Smith's commentary about the profile of a student who is um potentially struggling because we're trying to get the the totality of all students to graduation. And I think that's wonderfully illustrated throughout your presentation. Everything that we do to help and there's there's something trying to basically ascertain what is that extra challenge and you know whether it be experience or environment. Are you um aware of any sort of external factors or

155what I would say like social psychosocial factors where um where you kind of briefly mentioned like the ability to sit for exam. um how do we convey or buttress study skills you know the exposure of things that you read you draw for these things on exams um writing skills and things and I'm curious also was mentioned about the new campus and I see a lot of student voice a lot of student activity whether it be plays cheerleading and things of that nature um are you seeing or feeling any impact from our enrichment activities or community partners as an impact towards our graduation rates too. So, the more students are getting involved, I mean, certainly that's increasing our graduation rates. You we each year we're really trying to get students involved earlier in the year. Um,

156doing our set plan last week, we were already talking about, you know, how can we get students in clubs, athletics, and activities, you know, at the very start of the school year. So like one of our ideas was asking um each staff member to commit to walking students after the bell rings to a club to an activity um because a lot of them just won't go the first time, the second time, the first week alone, right? So we can advertise them as much as we want. we can tell them to go, but they're not going to walk into that room the first time without someone. And so like that's, you know, an initiative that we're thinking of doing for the fall is to ask every staff member to pick that student that we know doesn't

157have a lot of friends or, you know, doesn't isn't in a club or an activity to try to get them involved in something at the beginning of the year so that they don't get lost, you know, in the 2700 students at Albany High School, right? I I met a young man in the hallway today. he didn't have a pass and um he said I said you know what why don't you have a pass and he said I'm too shy to go in the lunchroom I said honey it's May and um we had a great conversation and um you know we navigated Susam Sings and he came in my office and he was reading a book and I had another student who actually eats lunch in my office every day and they had lunch together and

158um you know we figured it out but you know here's a kid in May and he's like I go sometimes you know but you know who who doesn't know how to navigate that. So if we can get staff to do those things in September at the beginning of the year you know that's going to get some students involved in what they need to do. So um if we can commit everybody to do that with one student there's 350 staff you know that'll do a lot. Um to any extent are we doing sort of um and I know this is probably onetoone with the counselors but getting a sense of PL like immediately after school planning so I I imagine students who aspire to go to college the graduation rate for them but if students don't

159see that in their future is there some kind of impact there or anything of that aspect too I was just curious if there's any um ongoing discourse about like what are your immediate plans or you know even starting in ninth grade it goes to the conversation of what do you want to be when you grow up. I was just curious if that also has So it's in all of our assemblies. It's in a lot of our curriculum. Um we have the college and career center now that you know the actual room that opened this year. Um and our college and career counselor, our ninth grade counselors, um we're pushing into ninth grade classes this year. All of our counselors push into classrooms throughout the school year. Uh the college and career center was actually open

160after school this year. We did after school hours. Um, so there's kids in and out of there all day long. Um, but it's in everything that we we do. Thank you both of you. Um, can we go to slide 10? Just wanted to understand something before I ask my question. Um, when you look at this right panel which talks about the regions, um, histogram for the regions. Are we actually better in regions than the state? It's 55% versus 51%. I think it's because it's because the regions with advanced designation, we don't we're not having as many students graduate with the advanced design. No, no, but just the regions, not the advanced just the regions category we are better than the state just those last three. Yes, that is true. But yeah because because the advanced

161designation is is less right good right right just wanted to clarify that now when we look at the uh subracial um breakdowns you know by by the when you look at the different cohorts in uh two years ago when when we could exempt the regions or the state exempted the reg we didn't have to take the regions uh during co we had narrowed that gap between the African-American students and the hispan the uh Caucasian students to 4% or so and then it went up to about 13% now um which is not much different from the state's 10% right so it's not bad but I thought we were great um but this blue ribbon commission is supposed to come into effect in 2027 right so this this cohort that is right now in the as a

162senior would be that last year that falls under this category of having to take the regions whereas is the the freshman and the sophomores who are in the high school right now would not have to have to take the regions but they could have all those different uh career pathways based on the profile of a student. I think that's what they call it, right? So I only can speak to this most directly because my son is in eighth grade. He's like the halfway point. So it's actually the current um sixth graders who are projected to be sort of fully free free. That's not to say regions won't exist. It will be a choice amongst others. Yeah. Multiple pathways. Yeah. Uh so my eighth my current eighth grader will have some different opportunities but not wholesale.

163Um it's the current sixth graders. Okay. So we have we do have a ways to go. Um and Yep. And we we are still waiting anxiously for guidance about what this actually looks like and what do the other things that perhaps will be under local control like if students are doing a project or a presentation very similar to like the seal of biiteracy or the seal of civic civic readiness. That's sort of what we're envisioning but we don't really have any concrete guidance um in that regard. We know we have to have um students will have to have financial literacy. um we already have that course. We know we have to prepare for being off be able to offering that course to everyone instead of just those who choose to take it at the current

164time. Um so that's just one example, but we're very excited for the opportunity because having those things in local control and really coming up with robust opportunities that students have a lot of choice in um projects that they, you know, enjoy doing. Um, and I think that's evidenced by our seal of civic readiness and also the increased numbers in the seal of biiteracy. Um, so we're excited about that. Yeah. And and I'll I'll d what uh Miss Savage said about we care about all those students when they graduate and and are out as citizens of of our society and capable, you know, doing what they need to do to support their own to themselves and their families. Um, so the taking an the ability to take an exam, there's other variables other than just because

165you couldn't take an exam doesn't mean you don't know the content. there's always that as an educator there's always that dilemma the default and um so yeah you know I'm looking forward to when the the blue ribbon commission actually implements those guidelines and um because what we need what we want to make sure is make sure that our students are competent and can do things that they need to do once they step out of the high school whether they took that exam or not right um okay thank you lot of data But I'm I'm glad it's there because you there's um it is important to present that data that way so we can people who as as Anne mentioned you know just throw the graduation rate out understand why the rates are low and what

166is it what are the challenges uh our district is quite different I mean it's an urban district so it's quite different from suburbans but it's also different in other ways from other urban districts with the L's and the the students with disabilities and all the other things that we throw into our diverse population, right? So, with diversity comes challenges. So, thank you both for your presentation. Any other questions? Thanks again. Okay. And last but not least, money matters budget update. Good evening. Um, so I really can't believe how fast the budget season has gone by. Um, since we have 12 days left before our budget vote, uh, on May 20th and, uh, the other good thing or the other piece of information that came out today was the state aid breakdown that we're still going

167through. Um but as we go through uh and work on our budget, we always keep in mind our district vision, mission goals. On tonight's agenda, we have the 202526 budget proposal, our additional school related propositions, our board of education election, the Albany public library budget proposal, our voting information, and the budget calendar. Um the budget development goals, we wanted to support our academic and social emotional needs for all of our students. We wanted to maintain our programmatic and extracurricular offerings for all our grade levels. We had to strategically reduce some staffing through attrition to align with the declining enrollment and the end of the federal CO 19 relief funding. And as always, we wanted to minimize the tax impact of our residents. We are asking for a.9% tax levy increase. Uh this is the fifth

168consecutive year that uh proposed increase has been less than 1%. On average over those five years, it's been a 0.55%. And a 10-year average of8%. Uh with a new aid run, which was a little bit of that we still have to verify some numbers, but our foundation aid has increased from this current school year to the upcoming school year of $10.7 million. Um we're also investing 12.6 six million from our fund balance and and reserves. Um but we wanted to maintain our current programs and initiatives to continue to provide opportunities for all of our students. Our budget supports uh full day prek in all 12 elementary schools and 11 community locations. We have our four magnet elementary schools. We have our band choir orchestra starting in third grade. We have our community school initiatives at

169Alb High School, Arbor Hill Elementary School, Delaware Community School, Gifin Memorial, My Meyers, North Albany, Roots Academy, Sheran Prep and Toast. We have newcomer program K12 at Alb International Academy. We also have our social emotional supports as in our behavior specialist, psychologists, and social workers. Uh we have our instructional interventions positions to support accelerate learning for math, reading, and ELA. We have our MA Alb Marching Falcons and our indoor percussion ensemble. We have 67 athletic teams including three unified teams in partnership with Special Olympics of New York and intramural programs for students in grades 7 through 12. We also have numerous advanced placement and university and high school opportunities. We also have 11 career and technical education pathways. We have Albany High's theater ensemble program and those always we um look to have culturally relevant

170teaching and learning practices for our students. Um in this slide here, there's a two-part slide of the main categories of the budget expenditures and the estimated for the upcoming school year. You can see the um majority of our um budget goes for salary and benefits. And in this slide here, you can see that our overall budget from this current school year of $326 million244289. That's a about a 4.9% increase for the upcoming school year to 342 $342 million 360,598. On this slide here is the general revenue um general fund revenue slide and projected for the upcoming school year. As I was saying earlier, we are asking for a.9% tax levy increase. So, you can see it's a little bit over a million dollars from this current school year in the upcoming school year that we're

171asking for. Our state aid is staying uh relatively flat with the state aid run that was put out today. Our local revenues 17 million 510 was to also include pilot payments. Um, as stated earlier, our appropriated fund balance from reserves. You can see that we are putting $12.5 million into that. And there's still a little bit of federal aid built into the budget. This is a nice slide here where you can see that over 10 years where the school district district's budget relied predominantly on the property taxes in um has flipped to the projected school year for next year where uh the primary source for our general fund would come from state aid of 54% where our property tax about 36%. Uh one of the key issues that we are working with as a school

172district and our cabinet were to make sure that our staffing ratio stays similar or uh got a little bit better for our students in the upcoming school year even though we are reducing some staffing. Um we are looking to reduce about 36 positions to retirements and vacancies. Uh this is necessary to account for the anticipated enrollment decline and at the end of the federal co 19 relief funding. Um the we received approximately $45 million of COVID relief funding from 2021 to 2024. Uh you'll see in the upcoming slide the staffing ratios. Uh but our federal leunding no longer is available with the enrollment expected to decline due to changes in federal immigration policies. We need to strategically reduce staffing to be able to continue to support our programs and services for our students. No positions

173will be eliminated through layoffs. Uh even with the planned staff reductions through attrition, K12 staff and student ratios will remain the same or improve as enrollment declines. Uh you'll see that in this slide here uh on the right hand part of the slide, you can see the actual for this current school year and estimated for the upcoming school year. Uh if you look at the bottom right hand corner, you can see that the ratios per student or I'm sorry, per adult the student count. So apps uh which is our admin union you see the current year is 124.8 to one adult uh decreases to 122 students to one adult. Uh ABSU which is our service or I'm sorry support staff uh is going from 14.3 students to one adult to 13.8 students to one adults

174which is our teaching staff remains the same as 8.2 two students to one adult this year will remain the same for next year for 8.2 to one. Management confidential or cabinet uh would go from 173.6 students to one adult to 167.6 students to one adult. And our lunch aids uh it's the same where it would go from 183.2 staff I'm sorry 183.2 two students to one adult to 176.9 to one adult. Uh this is a nice slide of our tax levy history for the last 10 years. You can see that there are four years of zeros. Um but you can see that the 5-year average is a 0.55% and again our 10ear average is 08 as we ask for a 0.9% tax levy increase for the upcoming school year. If the budget is not approved,

175we have three different options as a board of education in the school district. Uh we could put the same proposal up for another vote. We could present a revised budget for voter consideration or adopt a contingency budget. Um if we did go for a second vote and it failed, we would have to go into a contingency budget. But with a contingency budget, we would have to reduce the budget by $1.2 million. Um, this requires us to charge community members to uh for building use. We also have uh additional cuts to specific programs or areas including potential cuts to staff and um programs. And we would be prohibited from spending money on student supplies. Also on the ballot, we have two propositions that have no impact on our community or taxpayers. Um, proposition two is the

176upgrade or the um, repair of their HVAC systems at New Scotland Elementary School, Monasuri or Sheridan Prep. Um, New Scotland's air conditioning system is functioning at about 60% of what it needs to be. Monasuri has some aging units that we need to replace. Sher and Prep has one large unit that needs to be replaced. uh for a total of $5 million that'll be funded through our capital uh project reserve. Also on the ballot is Proposition three, which is a small vacant parcel. Um we're asking I'm sorry, the community we're asking the community to allow us to sell a small vacant parcel on the south end. It's located at the end of Bingmpington Street off South Pearl. It's about a tenth of an acre. Uh, we own the piece of property, but we've never had a

177structure on it or we've never occupied it. We're asking the voters to allow us to sell it for a minimum of $1,000. And our board of education election, we have three candidates vying for two open board seats. Uh, board president Dr. Shar uh, is running for re-election. Board member Vicky Smith is not. Two additional counts will also be on the ballot. We have Edith Lee and we have Austin Wolf Gang. Uh, also the Women of the League of Women Voters of Alman County will hold a virtual candidates forum on Saturday, May 17th at 10 a.m. If you have questions, you can call our district clerk, Nica Timonss, at 518-4756015. Also on the ballot for Proposition 4 is the Albony Public Library. uh budget. Uh this proposition is the library's proposed 202526 budget which will be

1788.257 million. Um there's also two library board of trustee positions up for election. For more information on the library budget vote or I'm sorry the library budget, please visit all public library.org or call Stephanie Simon at 5187083912. some information for our voters. We have 15 locations citywide, citywide, I'm sorry. Polls open from S 7 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. We have one new voting location, uh, which is for the 8th ward, districts 1 through 4 and the 14th ward, all districts. Uh, this past year was at Myers Middle School, but will be moved to Bethany Reformed Church located at 760 New Scotland A. For more information, uh you could visit our website at alubschools.orgvote. Uh that site also has a searchable directory in case you don't know which location your um your voting location is or

179you could call Nikia Timmons at 45 I'm sorry 518-4756015. We also have the early voting by mail. Um, all eligible voters can vote by mail. Uh, visit our website to download the application or you pick one up at any of our district buildings or the public library branches or you could call our district clerk at Academy Park at 518-4756015. Um, there are some timelines. So, if you do pick up an early morning early voting ballot in person, the application must be received to Academy Park by May 19th at 4 p.m. May 13th is the deadline for requesting an early voting ballot to be mailed. The ballots need to be back to us on May 20th by 5:00 p.m. to be counted. If you have any questions, you visit our website uh achools.orgvote org/vote or call

180518-4756015. Our upcoming budget calendar, we have a virtual community presentation on Monday, May 12th at 5:30. We have virtual uh Q&A sessions with our superintendent. Friday, May 9th at 9:00 am tomorrow. Wednesday, May 14th at 2 PM, Monday, May 19th at 9:00 a.m. Additional upcoming presentations, uh, we had our budget hearing tonight at 5:30. Uh, we have Tuesday, May 13th at the Beverwick Neighborhood Association, 6:30. It will be virtual. Wednesday, May 14th, the Common Council at 5:30 at City Hall. Thursday, May 15th at Pine Hills Neighborhood Association, uh, Alb Public Library, Pine Hills Branch, 517 Western A, 7 PM. Uh, if you would like it to have us present for your organization, you could contact Ron Leco, who is our director of communications, um, at the email listed below or call him at 518-4756065. And

181again, the budget vote is 12 days away. Um, I'm open for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Caris. Shelby, uh, no questions. I'm just going to commend you and the entire team that put together this presentation. I think it's very thorough. I know um we have several public um meetings that you guys are going to be sharing this out and taking questions. So, I'm happy to see um that's being offered and I'm excited to see people attending and asking questions. I support this budget. Um it's wellcraftrafted and um it you know it does the things that we need to do for our students be it uh update the HVAC systems you know old aging HVAC systems or you know um make sure our you know our property portfolio is in order you know so thank you

182and uh I fully support all of what you shared with us, Miss Smith. Uh, ditto. And thank you, Mr. Carris, and and your team and superintendent for this uh working collaborative work with us. And I I like this budget very much. Thank you, Miss Man. I said at our last meeting, this is a budget I can get behind. And and it is. And so I want to just um you know piggyback on what um board Elmanawi and um board member Smith just shared. Um I I want to piggyback on their comments. Historically um school budget votes and I'm speaking to the choir, but for those in out in the community, um the voter turnout is not as high as it would be if it were in if the vote were in like November. And there

183are so many good reasons why we have the vote in May. Um because it just doesn't mix well with politics and let me get off my soap box. But the point is I do encourage folks um that are that are listening to um to to get out and vote because this really does matter. Um so um and I know that um Mr. Leco is going to make sure that all the information is out there and so forth. So I encourage folks get get out and vote. Miss Savage Thank you very much and of course thank you for all the hard work done by the staff and cabinet. This has been a very interesting year. We knew this would be the year um that would be interesting as the ARPA funds really disappear and we're really

184moving down that um new pathway. The complication of our enrollment changes um and the way our enrollment is tied so tightly to what happens in Washington DC is makes it always an interesting place to be at this time of year. Um, so I really appreciate the thoughtful way that this budget was put together. Um, I wondered if you had any comment that you wanted to make on the adopted New York State budget and the changes there. Um, or if you want to plan to do that at a later date. I'm very interested in the modifications to the way the foundation aid formula is calculated. I know that there was some potentially good news for um some additional charter aid and I just wondered if you wanted to talk about any of of the news in

185terms of the adopted budget which is new since we last met. Yep. Um so just on the surface because I still need to get into the foundation formula deeper. Um the foundation formula for the charter school aid has gone up for us. uh there was something built into the budget for districts that have 20% of students enrolled in a charter school or higher that there was a a fourth component within the um the formula. So Albany has more students more than 20%. So we fell into the bigger formula or the bigger uh calculation. So we are expecting more for our charter school transitional aid uh to come in which is a great thing for us. I know that there's new figures within the formula as well for like our L waiting our students that are

186are English language learners students but I need to see how it interacts with the rest of the the the numbers. So I'll get back to you as as soon as I can. Miss Cr. Thank thank you Mr. Caris for the presentation. Uh, I do want to echo what my colleague said to say I am fully in support of this budget. I think that it it strikes a very reasonable compromise between a slight increase in the tax levy to to uh prevent any gaps in the services we're providing our students while still being fiscally conservative. And I know it's been um a difficult year both because we with what we knew was coming with the end of the federal co funds, the change in the federal administration, the late state budget, and all the other issues

187that have made things more complicated. But I'm satisfied that this that this represents the best uh we can do for students, our families, and then also for the community to keep the tax levy uh reasonably reasonably low to keep our taxes competitive with those in the area. So, I encourage everyone to get out and vote um next week and week after next. Thanks, Miss Wilson. I want to echo everything my comment um colleague stated and plus one also to what board member man stated about although it can be a low voter turnout um every election matters and it's very important to have your voice heard and an unforeseen benefit of voting um all the time is you become a prime voter you receive lots of political mail and you will not um but you know

188you become sought after as an important important voice almost like a troll bridge. So yes, it's very important. Thank you as was mentioned before and thank you for this uh fiscally prudent budget that allows us to maintain all the programming in a sustainable manner. um you know as as like just like my colleagues I you know strongly support this budget and um this was a challenging year because there were no uh federal funds that we could bank on and the formula for changing uh we're still trying to understand the the foundation formula uh properly I mean so many moving parts and enrollment numbers and this and that. I mean the fact that we got here without having predictable numbers from the state um that even after the aid runs came we are not that far

189off that I'm very comfortable with this budget. So thank you thank you for all your hard work. Any other questions colleagues and and thank thank you to the board. Um it's a big process. It's a lot to do and the support for the board for our students and our teachers and staff. Um, it's great for our district and our community. So, thank you. Thank you. All right. I think that was the last item on our agenda. Uh, any committee reports, Miss Cr? So, the policy committee will meet this coming Wednesday at 5:30. It's the biggest It's the biggest meeting of the year. We do the code of conduct and this year we'll do the cell phone policy. Um, I know the district has, as it always does, opened up comment to the public uh for

190uh comments on on the code of conduct. In fact, they have something on the website saying changes will be or comments rather will be accepted till tomorrow at code of conduct albony.k12.ny. us. So if anyone is out there in the audience and has comments on has comments they'd like to share on the code of conduct, please get them in as soon as possible so that we can consider those um at the meeting. is always it's always a really interesting meeting and it's a great great opportunity to discuss with cabinet and with staff um exactly exactly how we can best support our students and encourage um behavior that's conducive to the learning environment. Thanks. Okay. Anything from facilities or Yes. Uh let's see. So, uh I think was somebody mentioned this, but uh we will have

191our next facilities committee meeting uh on the 13th. That's next Tuesday at 5:45. Um we uh would have also had our um ad hoc committee on routine consent on Monday the 12th, but we're going to move that now to the 19th at 5:30 here at HG. And uh that hasn't been reflected as of yet in the public calendar, but it will be. And then uh yes, I am absolutely behind on the student uh rep board rep piece. Um and I just want to try to grab my two colleagues um just briefly tonight so that we can have a quick meeting not tonight but uh like next week and uh and then we'll uh move from there. So um that's it for me. Very good. Government relations. Government relations is the same report I've been doing

192for the last couple approaches. We meet next on June 4th, which frighteningly is to begin thinking about the following year's budget cycle. So, we are always thinking way ahead. Um, and the action there will be to discuss NISBA potential resolutions to put before the NISSBA board. So if anyone ha is aware of state laws that are um or state policies that are constraining our ability to serve our students effectively, the way we advocate for changing those besides with our own voices is through the big conference of big five schools and conference and through the New York State School Boards Association. And our process for putting ideas into them is through this resolutions process and that begins with a government relations meeting on June 4th. So that invitation for suggestions goes out to all family members,

193staff members, um faculty members in the district and as well as of course my board colleagues if you have ideas for resolutions for us to put before NISB. But we would love to consider those on June 4th. Um as you know from last time, our school visits have been completed. We have done our school visits for this year. So, in my role as the chair of that committee of the whole, I'm pleased to um have that behind us and we will be planning to start that cycle up again relatively um quickly at the beginning of the school year. And not to toot our own horn, but uh I will say kudos to government relations for the advocacy with the formula calculations in the LS because finally it looks like the the state did hear what

194we were advocating for and and change the weightage appropriately. Particularly the charter um piece I think is an absolutely specific connection to the advocacy that we have been doing. Um I looked at the language a little bit. I haven't really dug into it fully, but it's only for independent districts, which means it does not help our friends at the big five. Um, it's only for school districts like ours that have taxing authority. Um, so it won't be many districts that will benefit from that. It will be Albany and, um, a couple of other smaller school districts that just happen to have a large charter population. Um, next up, maybe we can get fair prek formula funding. Maybe maybe we're going to keep pushing. All right. Anything with audit or uh No. No. Our audit committee

195met um was it in three weeks ago, four weeks ago. Our next meeting is in Was it a month ago? It was a month ago, right? So it feels like two weeks ago, two days ago, I don't know. Um but no, I have I I have no new update for audit committee. Thank you. All right. I think that's um this would be our last uh board meeting before the budget, right? So when we meet next time, hopefully we'll have good news. Um any motion to adjourn? Miss Smith, Miss Wilson, all in favor? Okay. Good night for