Board of Education Public Meeting | Live Stream | March 13th, 2025

001e e e [Music] good evening my name is chur and I'm president of the city school district of Albany Board of Education on behalf of the board I welcome you to our meeting uh today we have uh member El manavi member Smith vice president tab Wilson secretary Ani and member Damas man with us member uh Savage is actually in Washington DC advocating so she's not able to join us today and we have superintendent members of the cabinet joining us either in person or remotely uh this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting as well as the link to the agenda including all the documents we'll discuss are available at Al schools.org booe this is a good time for me to know that if you're here tonight to speak in public

002common you should sign up with Miss Timmons or board clerk here to my right uh with that introduction we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance States 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 and to engage every Learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the Knowledge and Skills necessary for Success super hwr do you have a report for us we do and I'll turn it over to Mr leco to get us started thank you and good evening we are excited to have two groups of students to recognize uh tonight we we begin with a team of

003eighth grade scientists from William S Hackett Middle School Grace fuerth Naomi Richards and Simone scow work together on an experiment that astronauts will perform on the internation International Space Station later this spring the project was part of the student space flight experiment program and it is the fourth year in a row that a team from hackit has been selected for this honor it is my pleasure to welcome their science teacher Alison Chen to introduce us to the students and tell us more hello my name is Alison Sheen I am the eighth grade science teacher at hackin Middle School um these are my students and we're here to talk to you about the student space flight experiment program which is something that all eighth graders across the district participate in so um our students were tasked

004with writing a proposal for an experiment to test the effects of microgravity on something that would naturally happen on Earth and so they wrote their proposal it was evaluated by a team of teachers and administrators here at the district level and the top three were selected to be sent to NASA and then from there NASA selected the top experiment which will eventually launch to the International Space Station um and the girls will get to participate alongside those astronauts to conduct that experiment so I will let them continue and explain uh the rest of what the project entails our project is about the effects of microgravity on the germination of menap pipita um are more commonly known as mint um we chose this because it has many benefits towards the astronauts like helping with nausea and

005headaches um astronauts will be conducting our experiment on the International Space station and we are currently waiting for the um launch date we will also be conducting the same experiment um here on Earth um we're conducting on Earth to compare the results to see how it was affected um in micro gravity um than how it is grown on Earth we very proud of that they work very [Applause] hard now it's off now it's on we would just ask the board members to come out and join us for a few pictures with our with our scientists e e Al high school held its second very successful Red Cross blood drive of the school year at the end of January coordinated by seniors Nathan Martell and Ana ster the drive collected 61 pints of blood I pleased

006to welcome their adviser Alicia Abdul to introduce us to the students and tell us more about their leadership thank you for the recognition of the work Albany High School does to run three blood drives with the American Red Cross with Community Support alongside our students we are making a difference this past drive we had a husband of a former employee a parent of a former student coordinator a graduate a mom and her High School daughter a parent of a potential high schooler a handful of teachers a board member a superintendent do you want to show them that now okay talk about it later sure and countless students donate to match and exceed our goal it's not about the sweat or the juice and cookies it's about building a culture that values supporting one another and

007donating blood does that Anya and Nathan donate both their time and blood no one forced them to volunteer to coordinate the drives or donate blood and actually in the 15 or so years I've coordinated the drives I've never had to recruit new student coordinators because they always find me to ask how they can help we've had a former student coordinator go on to help at their colleges blood drives and even in one case start running a drive at her place of employment and just like it's not about the swag juicer cookies Anya and Nathan aren't doing it for the Red Cross scholarship that they're awarded at the end of this yes the Red Cross gives a scholarship based on the number of pints we collect over a year and add more money when we exceed

008or meet our goal students have walked away with no less than $750 and sometimes up to $2,500 I'll let them share a little bit about why they volunteer their time um hi um I volunteer my time because um well as some of you might know there's a national blood shortage which prevents a lot of surgeries from happening and people from getting the healthare that they need and um I can't donate as much as I would like to and so I get to go and meet people and hear their stories about why they donate and help get information spread about why it's necessary and it's just very rewarding I donate who I donate blood uh because it's such a easy and accessible way to help people and save lives it's really amazing that this is an

009opportunity for people my age uh in high school to uh just donate blood in their school it's a great system um not to mention I'm O positive so I'm pretty valuable in that respect so they love my blood um but I mean it's great to just um do this every couple months um and again just help people when they need it uh so it's it's really great thank you we've come to the picture taking time of this I just got my eight gallon pin a couple of days ago well you don't have a belt Mr President so next time so the belt is the um fastest the the the quickest time to donate how how much a bucket of blood a pint a pint of blood so work workplace stress is what I think this

010is e e we are now glad to welcome another member of the Martel family Tony Clement Center for Education principal Chris Bartell to tell us about the great things happening at his building this school year good evening that's a tough act to follow um I maybe a little bit biased thank you for welcoming us here I am here along with Teressa andan our assistant principal at the Tony Clement Center to talk about the work that we're doing there and some of the great things that are our team has done for and with our students and to celebrate what our students have done um it's my second year as principal of Tony Clement and I am thrilled to be here in this position and honored to be here speaking with you tonight one of the things

011I was reflecting on as I Was preparing myself for tonight is how much I have learned in the last year and how much I've grown um and you know I did it with the support of the people in this room and the people in this room earlier today when we're here with our administrative colleagues and um again I just can't say enough about how happy I am to be here so but you're not here to hear how I feel you're here to hear about our school so um thank you I'm not going to go through the district vision mission and goals because Dr shur did that very well and no since they try to repeat that um if you don't mind the next slide so the next slide is shows the vision and mission of

012our school and at the Tony Clement Center for Education students are empowered to realize their individual aspirations goals and potential for greatness the mission of our school the Tony Clement Center for education is to provide students with a safe nurturing and supportive educational experience that is responsive to every students's cultural emotional and Social Development we ensure equity and access to rigorous and relevant learning opportunities through flexible Innovative programming through positive relationships and collaborative Partnerships with our families Community each other and our students we will develop they will develop the skills to become responsible citizens uh this is a slide shows our school leadership along with Mr dalion uh Mr Gandy and Mr Strickland are two home school coordinators and Mr cancer is our senior Hall Monitor and uh you know he helps us make sure

013that everybody stays safe and we're very very fortunate to have that team working with us every day some information about our demographics um our total rollment as of February is 141 and you can see through the uh different colors the different programs our high school program is our largest program of 57 students this year we have our choice program which is our program that is for high school students it is specifically for students who are overage under accredited and that program is somewhat unique that it provides them the opportunity to recover credit for their nth grade class classes that they might not have been successful in in the first margin period earn those credits and then work on their 10th grade curriculum so that at the end of the year they have the opportunity to

014be caught up with their same age cohorts and we have 43 students there and 38 students in our middle school program and that program serves uh students from all three of our middle schools in the district a little bit more about who our students are um you know we we work with some kids who have a lot of challenges and um you know certainly this shows that poverty is very closely linked with that and the demographics of our students as well um this slide shows the um student risk screening scale um for internalizing and externalizing behavior it's a rating scale that teachers complete um in the beginning of the school year I think um it's after knowing the student 30 days um and then the rating scales completed and we do it again in the

015winter we just finished our second round um you can see so the the first chart is the Tony Clement Center numbers and then the second chart is the district's numbers so it really looks the way that we would have expected it to look where um we have a lot of students at high risk that's the the red and um it it breaks it up between internalizing and externalizing behaviors so again I think it's exactly what we think it would look like and it looks very different than what the district looks like we always say like Tony Clement if you looked at mtss has an upside down pyramid um and this uh screening tool showed the exact same results that we would see in our mtss triangle um this is the choice and the high school

016program there specific data from Fall to um winter and I am proud to say that we went from um 22% of our students actually moved out of High um risk for internalizing behaviors into moderate or low and 34% of our choice in high school students moved out of the high into the moderate or low so they're moving in the right direction this this scale shows um middle school students and we also had some good news here we had um a 4% increase in high but we had a 133% decrease in moderate and then a 31% increase and low so the students are moving in the right direction um and they're uh you can see that their their their fall scores definitely look different than their their winter scores so they are moving the way they

017should um their externalizing behaviors was also positive it's 8% decrease in the high risk 3% decrease in moderate and a 6% increase in low so again they were moving in the right direction so shifting gears to our uh School comprehensive education plan our Focus we really have two areas we're really um focus on this year the first is fostering cognitive engagement and amplifying student voice and um to do that we're providing grade level engaging affirming and meaningful instruction across all content areas um we are moving our practice in that direction and you know it is a h cycle of continuous Improvement and we are doing that with the week weekly instructional support with assistance from an instructional coach and one of our instructional supervisors and as far as amplifying student voice we're really looking to

018get more and more opportunities for students to be heard in our school and student government um is one of the ways we've done that and we'll talk a little bit more about that later but again it is working to try to make sure that our students have a voice and the response we've had to our uh most recent iteration of student government has been very positive and um the students really seem committed to trying to make our school a better place um specifically I just want to mention too that last year we really started the year with a redesign of our middle school program and one of the things that we added there was um an instructional coach who comes in every week and focuses on specific in structural strategies with the entire team across

019all disciplines um and that was specifically with our middle school program and this year we were able to expand that with the support of um Mr lacass who is our social studies and foreign language supervisor um he works with US Weekly again we're providing the same professional development he works very closely with the other instructional supervisors and the coaches and so now we're moving our high school team in that direction as opposed to splitting them up across their you know by discipline the other thing we're really focusing on is strengthening our school climate and culture and um to do that we have integrated our social emotional academic development by aligning our PBIS expectations and our uh expectations from um ruler the uh social emotional learning curriculum and we actually created a new PBIS acronym um

020we went from The Three Bs to grow g r w we say Bulldogs grow and the g is for give respect the r is for remain responsible the O is for own our actions and the W is work hard and so so connecting those with the ruler lessons um and reinforcing them throughout the year we we're starting to see some payoff um we also are trying to improve communication between students and school we're introducing uh modern campus or signal Vine which is a me a text messaging service that we can send messages to students and they can uh message us back and um so we're looking forward to leveraging that tool and we are also as I said before introducing our student government uh reintroducing I should say and we've had u a very positive

021experience and we've got some really specific feedback from their most recent meeting um which we're now synthesizing and trying to determine our next steps um and you know we are in implementing a belonging the survey because when we looked at the um SS I always say the wrong acronym but the um student risk survey that uh thessa spoke about before that's the teachers perceptions of their students and the fact that we had students that were moving from um high risk for externalizing to uh more moderate risk to me speaks to the power of building those relationships in our school our students are becoming more comfortable with their teachers again many of our students coming to us after having difficulty in other settings and our teachers are getting to know our kids better and one of

022the things that really stuck with me as a comment one of our students made one of our student government uh Representatives who also happened to make the honor role in the first two Market periods for this year after really struggling in his previous placement I asked him why is it different and he said because I can be myself here and um that was really powerful for me because what it told me is that he could be true his authentic self and sometimes the way he expresses himself can come across as maybe a bit inappropriate or aggressive our teachers very often will look past that when they can to listen to the message and affirm what the students saying and uh you know it's just a really concrete example of why those relationships are so important

023lastly we're refining and improving our school routines we've moved uh for our PBIS system to electronic point sheets last year in our um particularly in our high school program students used PBIS point sheets it was really almost voluntary because if students chose not to grab a point sheet and have their teacher do it um you know then they weren't necessarily feeling the impacts of that this year we do the teachers do it electronically so every student gets points every period they Bank those points and are able to use them to um redeem them for certain privileges like using the gym during lunch or um getting a a snack or other special items we've done some Raffles uh quarterly and um we again are starting to see more buy into that system from our students and

024um we also are looking now at targeting our hallway interventions and being a little more systematic and frankly um use leveraging technology more to get more meaning meaningful and um reliable data on some of the struggles our students have in the hallway with regard to either tardiness to class or you know behaviors horse play that kind of thing the next oh you have the next one I'm sorry I do yes um the next slide is about improving attendance so attendance is always um a challenge for Tony climate Center um so we have put a lot of a lot of effort in um to seeing how how do we get our kids in the building and um it is working it is working um we have a lot of uh things that we're working on right

025now so there's daily there's a daily attendance tracker that we use at the door so that everyone in the building knows exactly who's here like in the moment that they walk in um it helps us uh have a really clear visual of who's in the building and what days they came in and what time they came in and um that's been a huge help um daily attendance phone calls go home we do attendance surveys with kids who are not attending we talk to their parents to try and remove barriers to see what those barriers are um we have had pop up attendance prizes randomly so kids don't know what's happening but like surprise you're here yay here we go um PB incentives that are uh the kids do know it's happening and they can earn

026them uh structured reinforcement interventions home visits weekly attendance meetings uh we meet with probation regularly and we have case management for students who are not yet chronically absent but are approaching chronic absenteeism so we try to get ahead of that um we're currently running a March Madness bracket on the um Middle School side where the kids are um competing to see who can get there first they each have they they are their own team and they're competing against every other child in the middle school and um we are uh that that is hilarious I just want to take a minute to say that because the kids know who they want to compete against they're like can I get that kid right there because I know that they're going to come later than me um we're

027like yeah that's not how this works so um they're really loving that and then on the high school side right now they're doing some um double Point periods on the the periods that we have the most issues with attendance which is period one and period seven so first and last of the day so kids have an opportunity to earn double points if they're there for those periods the next chart here is our attendance rate for this uh this school year and it's just Tony Clement compared to the district attendance rate um and as you can see we are lagging behind the district but we're not lagging behind the district like we used to like behind the district so I do think our efforts are definitely paying off uh this is our chronic absenteeism rate um

028and again um it is higher than the district rate um but it's still better than years past um we actually some of these charts that we're looking at right now we have an internal um slideshow that we have for our mtss data and we um have it charted for um previous years and we are re like in attendance is really improving um I don't have those numbers off the top of my head but when we look through it at mtss um it was pretty big increase our daily attendance rate meaning the uh percentage of students who come through the door each day is month by month higher or at least the same I think a one month each month and uh we are definitely seeing the results people are feeling differently and that our students

029are coming yeah um and again we still have work to do but it is it's nice to see that Trend starting to move in the right direction this slide is just by program attendance by program um you can see the um choice in the high school let's see blue and the red or I'm sorry on this well okay on this slide it's purple and red um they're pretty neck and neck um for attendance rates and then the middle school is that blue bar and middle school kids come every single day they are there um which is fantastic because a lot of our middle school kids um become our high school kids so if we can get them in the routine of being there every day it will have lasting results thank also um one other

030feature that is highlighted in the previous graph is that you know our choice attendance rates are a little bit lower what we found is the students were coming to us from for the choice program um you know chronic absenteeism is one of the factors that has led them to not be successful in earning their credits across the ninth grade classes so changing those habits uh takes time but again we are seeing overall our tenden is improving so the next slide here uh actually talks about suspensions and one of the things we really have focused on is that we can't do the work with our kids until they're in the door so they come in the door we want to keep them there and so we're working really hard to reduce our suspensions as well um

031this particular graph shows the incident referrals per month um and you know they're broken down by category classroom incidents which are the uh least severe incidents and then we have our discipline and Invader which are those uh unique circumstances that are classified differently by the state those are your more serious incidents the next slide um is for us really meaningful because this is where we see over the last three years and the suspension rates by and large have dropped each month um you know February is a little bit less of a drop but we see it's very consistent with the data from previous years as well um but again we're really looking to try to find alternatives to suspension in our school so we can keep our kids in there because it doesn't make sense

032to make all that effort to get them in the door only to tell them that they can't come back the next slide um unique out of school suspensions I have to apologize Teressa and I were reviewing um these slides and we realized that there was an error in our calculations um and when we had sent the data to one of our staff to analyze there was just a misunderstanding about unique suspension so this graph actually shows um each month kids that had onep ension so like unique suspensions typically are one suspension a year or more this is by month so it looks a little bit different um but again what we're noticing is that the you know the trend overall is is heading in the right direction um but if you look at this graph

033and then compare it to the next excuse me am I the wrong slide TR what I do oh no the out of school suspensions versus unique so the numbers in January for example um on this one look lower because there's 10 unique suspensions in January anuary but there were 14 suspensions in January and that just means that students were suspended more than once four students were suspended more than once in January sorry about that okay this is the fun stuff so the here are some pictures of some of the great successes we've had this year um there uh the first set of pictures there are honor roll breakfast um which is super fun we have the parents um or Guardian or whomever the kids would like to come support them to come we have a

034light breakfast and then we give out um Awards and certificates to the kids for honor rooll and then the um the caution artists at work those pictures that was actually from um the Middle School CL H the Middle School side of the house has a social emotional learning class so the kids actually take a social emotional learning class every single day and for this particular class it was about following directions so they did a Paint and Sip where they um were able to um paint snowmen and sip hot cocoa in the library um while they did that and that was a lot of fun and then here we have um our Black History Month celebration which we just had um which was awesome this year um um just to give you some history our black

035history celebration used to be the biggest night of the year um for our school and it was uh after school hours so many families would come um we would have a dinner together we would have presenters when Co hit um that celebration took a hit um and we've been trying to figure out how do we get that back to being Tony Clement's like best day of the year because it always was and I think we did it um so we ended up actually um on the early release day we plan to have our black history um celebration so we had um the last half hour of school we actually all went into the gym we set up tables chairs we had guest presenters come in we had families join us and um we actually the

036kids stayed later than the half day because um we were all in the gym together eating um seeing the presenters and then you can see here some really awesome pictures of the students work so we do a project um every year and um the uh middle school did um uh black Excellence famous um people where they actually um there was a list of quotes that the kids could choose from we did not tell them who the quote was from and whatever resignated it with them they chose and later they got to find out who their secret person was and they did a whole bunch of research on that person and you can see the middle school is that uh uh voices of black Excellence that's the projects for the middle school and then the the

037Hall of black Excellence is um the choice program they also did historically black colleges so the doors had um a whole bunch uh different colleges on the doors with um some information about each and then the high school floor made their own businesses for Black Wall Street and then um we actually had our um student government assist us which you'll see was the MC of the day and that is the video that we're going to share on the next slide that's the last slide but you can see the picture of them up there um before we get to the the video yeah we wanted to talk about challenges and next steps um you know what we really are looking to do is continue to improve and continuing to build those strong connections with our students

038between our students among our students and for them with their school um so that is again we are seeing the success we need to continue to build on it and find new ways to um for students to you know demonstrate what they're actually capable of when they feel um that they are in the place that speaks to them and that they are heard um we also want to look at how do we take what we've learned from our middle school program enhancers that we've made over the last two years for example Teressa talked about the um social emotional learning class that the students take in middle school and um you know that last year was our first year this year we've seen again continuing to build that program and um we're really trying to figure

039out how to bring some of that over to our high school and it's it's a little bit more challenging because we have the credit bearing class that we have to offer for students but you know we're learning a lot from what we've done on the Middle School side um and then one other thing we're just really working to try to do is provide and this is again reflective of student voice because this is one of the things that came out of the work with our Student Government um more course offerings particularly electives because we're a small school we do not have as many electives as a larger school um so trying to figure out ways to leverage other resources to provide kids more options and lastly our student voice video and this is uh John

040craps John is um a now sophomore in our choice program he was a student I actually spoke about earlier when I asked him after making the honor role for the first two markting periods what was different and he said I can be myself so this year um with our Student Government we were able to bring them in to help uh plan and set up and actually um welcome our visitors and John agreed to be our student MC so this is just a quick video of John introducing some of our guests welcome to TCC I Wasing black history mon well it looks like we're having some technical diffic difficulty so I apologize um and I am hopeful that um the link within the um presentation works for you if not I can happily send it out

041to you um because again John did just oh there it is a wonderful my name is John P I'm a 10th grad here at TDC and a member of student council for the past couple of weeks me and the students here at T CL Center for Education have preped likey mon projects such as decorating doors making making posters and creating our own businesses our progress has focused on black excellence and exploring black black historical colleges and black w stre we have enjoyed learning individuals such as Cala Harris BR duckus mam C Walker and many other important black history figures I would like to welcome our special guest our special guests such as DJ DJ TGF the brothers from Kaa Al Pasad and the the community outreach coordinator David Grim thank you so much for accepting

042our invitation here to join us today I hope everybody has a great time enjoy the food we have prepared for you today I would like to welcome our first guest the brothers from cap the I would like to welcome our first guest the brothers from Kaa [Applause] Al good morning I'm glad we were able to see that together um and I want to give Applause to John as well because he really did a a fantastic job um we were incredibly proud of him I think that's all we have right all we have well thank you for allowing us to come and speak with you tonight thank you and that concludes tonight's District highlights okay thank you and we'll transition to our district update again our district vision Mission goals and I'll touch on those in

043a moment but a number of uh updates for our board and our community tonight beginning with our commitment to our guiding principles um we sent a a message to staff earlier today uh sort of underscoring um the unsettling times that we're experiencing in public education not just in in New York but uh in all 50 states we have um a pressure to end um activities and principles and philosophies around equity and inclusion uh we have had uh the threat and even um those threats carried out in terms of uh Refugee and immigrant families and students feeling threatened and not welcomed uh in our country or communities uh we just heard of massive layoffs I think to the tune of more than 2,000 members of our federal department of education and a series of threats to

044Federal funding that could very important programs uh to some of our uh neediest and most atrisk students and um those threats and that commentary and and rhetoric uh really does have have Ripple effects and uh this District like many um in New York but particularly here in Albany um we believe in diversity Equity inclusion and that's who we are and and we lean into that uh and we use that as a recruiting tool we use that as a mechanism for families uh and they reflect on why they chose Albany or why they choose to stay in Albany because um of those commitments in our school community and recently our attorney general in New York Leticia James put out a a statement that um I wanted to make sure I shared with our board and our

045community and I shared it with uh uh the link to the statement earlier that schools and educational institutions can rest assured that they are well within their rights to continue building inclusive learning environments for all of their students in New York York which brings us back to our mission vision and goals and this is why organizations particularly school districts um have a vision and a mission and goals is that they're not just words on paper but they are uh belief systems they are uh words that articulate passion and commitment for all students so um I want to make sure that everyone uh hears me loud and clear and I know the board uh also that we will remain a district of Excellence uh we are going to continue to engage students in in Opportunities um

046that provide Equitable learning uh and access for all students and that we'll continue to work in partnership with our community to make sure that all students have a robust uh access to a robust educational plan and uh unfortunately um we have to reiterate those beliefs but um that is uh the political climate and that's the culture of of what we're operating in and um I hope that our students and our families and our staff uh remember that Switching gears to State Testing it that means it's officially almost spring we had a taste of spring earlier in the week uh and some more tastes on the way but uh beginning next month in April and for the next about six weeks we will have math and Ela assessments we'll have science assessments uh and then at

047the end of the year uh certainly our Regent exam so uh for those who are trying to get out in front of this make sure you check out our website so you understand what grade levels and what content areas will have their assessments uh we will celebrate Eid uh on March 31st uh our schools will be closed uh but we will be open for faculty and staff we'll have a professional development day uh and March 31st is just a tease for our spring recess that will begin uh in mid April from the 14th to the 18th a reminder that April 16th is our last date for our lotteries our magnet and our prek Lottery uh there's information on our website but we have four magnet schools uh that are accepting applications and certainly our prek

048Lottery uh that includes uh opportunities in all 12 of our elementary schools and our community-based partners this weekend marks the final weekend of the High School Musical bring it on there will be two evening performances Friday and Saturday and the finale on Sunday at 2:00 if you are a student or a senior citizen you get in with a discount and the rest of us will pay $15 so we hope to see you this is a a two- weekend show and they had uh outstanding reviews and great attendance last weekend this also is music in our schools month uh we have a number of uh of our students participating our All City choruses next week we will creep into early April for our All City band concert and then this Saturday our marching Falcons will perform

049it to different St Patrick's Day parades if you can make it and check them out and we have a number of student art artists we'd like to highlight five um high school students uh who are among only 138 selected students of more than 500 submissions throughout the capital region uh their work is on display uh at the Albany Center Center Gallery uh on Broadway and their artwork will be on display for just about another month until late April if you could check it out more than 300 District students uh artwork is on display at the Empire State Plaza Concourse that kicked off tonight uh with an opening reception and they will be on display until March 23rd uh and to get there quickly we uh recommend you going through the Madison Avenue Concourse entrance as

050we wrap up our winter sports season and uh number of uh teams and individuals we'd like to uh call out and um congratulate a number of our indoor track student athletes uh wrapped up their state meets and are heading uh this weekend to some Regional uh and National meets we have Samir Gardner and Noah viser Samir finished second in the long jump and broke his own record and uh Noah joined some friends from Boston spa colony and Shaker and finished second in the intersectional relay team they will head to Bost a on Friday and then scoot down to New York City on Sunday and some other Falcons will be joining them uh to participate at those meets as well and with that as we wrap up winter sports it's time for spring Sports so tryouts

051and practices um will begin next Monday uh we encourage families to sign up through our final forms make sure their physicals are on file uh and that everything is up to date and for our middle school students in grade seven and 8 uh practices uh will begin on April 1st and physicals will also be available and we ask that you check out our website for more information on making sure that everyone is eligible and ready to go and that concludes my update thank you superintendent as is our usual practice I ask you to prioritize your questions and ask your most important question first we'll start with one question for each board member so all members have the opportunity to be heard and if you have additional comments or questions and this time remaining we'll go

052on for a second round uh today we'll start on this side with Miss man I certainly it's more of a comment I want to appreciate um the comments from um our superintendent about our commitment as a school district um and as a school board to um diversity and Equitable o opportunities for all students in our district so thank you Miss C echoing the the words of our superintendent and Miss man um these are difficult times but I think it's valuable for us to have that opportunity to really stop and Ponder our values and really uh learn about how much they mean to us and how important they are to maintain these values even in the face of them being challenged thanks M Wilson Miss Smith thank you uh again I was going to uh comment

053as well uh on the statement and I Echo Miss man and Miss C's comments um and uh as usual I do have just a little something more to say on that um I always always always want to make sure that in saying that we are committed that it's actually demonstrated in the work and in the practices that we uh put into uh everything that we do every day so um I don't mean to suggest that that wasn't a part of the commitment but um as I'm learning this is uh everything that we've done and talk about around diversity equity and inclusion requires requires more than commitment um and I'm just asking folks to use particularly at this time that we're in to take advantage of every opportunity you have you have to learn uh particularly

054to know and learn about the other and the experiences of the other and um and we all have that I think work to do uh respectively and so I'm just asking us to do more uh it will in the end pay off uh immeasurably and so uh again thank you superintendent and I do thank uh Miss James and I I also have to say though we have to be prepared for the question of uh what happens uh you know hey here here it is our commitment but who will stand for us uh should money be uh threatened to be taken away because we are using words like diversity equity and inclusion or you know transgender or lgbtq Plus or black matters you know lives matter so uh what will we do and I'll ask that

055until I'm not on this board anymore and even as a community member what we will do when that happens and again that is not to panic but it's to say that this is the reality in which we're living and we have to face it headon and we have to be for prepared there is nothing more that should surprise us um there might be different you know you know strategies or different things that happen but I think we know what the game plan is and I think we know uh the work that we have to do to resist this kind of uh negativity this kind of uh undemocratic um values and really disdain and hatred for everyone who is refusing to conform to uh a certain way of thinking or being um and and I really

056want to just also Echo the student that JY Clemens um who said he was felt good at that school because he was able to be himself and that's what we're doing in in their realm of Education we want our kids to be who they need to be who they want to be and feel safe as they are exploring and as they are learning uh and if we can't give them that um then we we've got big problems so thank you and I'm sorry to always sound like maybe a broken record but um there's a reason for that and uh we're certainly in in a reality that no one uh had anticipated ever being in uh but here we are and um our commitment must um be more than words um every day thank you thank

057you Miss smth um Mr alminia we stepped out so I will uh say my comments these are interesting times and these are challenging times and uh you know when the going gets tough the tough get going you have to be steady I mean everything Vision Vision goals things that we say they just words and they have to mean something and they have you have to show that they mean something by our actions uh I mean in your in in the uh highlights we we celebrated so many successes for the for the district right in sports in arts and Tony Clement Center what did you see in those pictures diversity right it's a wonderful thing if there was no diversity this world would be monochrome you need color in your life right so you need you

058need the whole Spectrum uh so I I too agree that we need to learn more about others and try to understand things and try to be more inclusive and understanding and but you know um it's heartwarming to me that when I during my conversations with my kids or with other youngsters at the University the the the uh yes there is fear of the unknown but these kids this the next generation is is understanding inclusive and willing to stand up for the right things and so there is a lot of Hope and we need to keep supporting them uh we need to give them the opportunities U as in how however we can and U you know when the funds get threatened yes it will be challenging and there will be sacrifices that we would have

059to make uh across the board um but we still need to make those cuts sacrifices whatever they may be with that focus on what we started out doing and try to keep doing those things and and hope that people will understand that it's not it's not um that we haven't lost sight of what our goal is um and that's the tough part you know trying to convince people so what I would say is you know as long as you can talk to your neighbor uh and if you don't make an attempt and and try to explain to them why it is important why is it important to stand up for the other person who doesn't look like you may not speak the same language as you or has is different is differently able than you

060whatever the situation anybody who is different still deserve is a human being is still part of this universe it's part of this community right and and if you want this community the city this the school district however you you look at your microcosm if you wanted to succeed then everybody has to be in it together and so this is we move on to next part of our agenda which is public comment this is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public uh we do invite members of the public to share thoughts on the decisions we are facing we accept public comment in person by voicemail and through a web based form information about public comment and contact information is on the district website it's Alban schools.org booe um we set aside

061about 30 minutes of each meeting to hear from our district residents parents students and other members of a community if there are more comments that can be done can be accommodated in 30 minutes which we don't anticipate today we may choose to extend the length of the public comment period or alternately establish a second period later in the meeting we also accept comments virtually on the same basis as those say in person and we accept comments in writing and by voicemail we welcome comment ments in English and in any other language we will provide translation if necessary all comments must include the commenter's name and place of residence we do not accept Anonymous comments and all information about these in many ways to share your thoughts with us are available at addressing the board information

062on Alban schools.org we ask all commenters to keep comment commenters to keep in mind that information about individual students in specific District staff cannot be shared and not only that a violation of privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be add in public um we have three letters to be read I think Miss Smith will be reading them for us thank you uh the first uh letter is from uh well I would say all three of these have to do with uh the cell phone uh proposed uh ban so um let me pull that up the first one is from uh parent and former board member Jennifer Lang and she says I would like to State my support for a cell phone ban for our

063students during academic hours in the city Albany City School District the second one comes from Eliza Kent and she says if the board decides to ban cell phone usage in school which I hope you will following an increasing number of school districts across the country and world the transition will not be easy as parents we know how a kid can react when told to get off their phone it's as if you've said tear off your arm now our phones now feel as much part of us as a hand or an eye and essential as essential as vulnerable this is not by accident but because brilliant and high- paid Silicone Valley engineers and designers are using these pocket sized supercomputers to addict our children and grown-ups too she says bleeding us all for as much money

064time and attention as they can uh ring out my opinions here are based on what I've seen in my own family and on the analysis of cell phone and social media usage by youth produced by the center for Humane Technology founded by Silicone Valley technologist turned whistleblowers please read or listen to their short videos if you have any doubts about the harms of cell phone and social media usage on children and that's at H uh well www. human Tech excuse me www.h human.com youth the harms of cell phone usage among youth are especially profound in our school our Studies have shown that just having a smartphone turned off in your and in your bag divides your attention causing you to perform less well on test than if the phone were out of the room imagine

065how divided our kids attention is when the phone is on and in their lap or they hear a classmate giggling by the time they get to high school some students have learned not trigonometry or Spanish but that they can just completely tune out a teacher by wearing earbuds in class so they are physically present while their mind is completely elsewhere how do I know this because my son spent several semesters in exactly this state don't your teachers tell you to stop I'd ask in despair they don't care he'd say I don't believe that for a moment of course they care they are just exhausted by the effort of policing these addictions when they should be teaching and our final comment is from Alicia seers she writes I'm the parent of three children in the acsd

066one has graduated from Albany High School and another will graduate from there this year my third child a ninth grader just switched to private school with a belel cell phone ban in part because Albany High exceeded her tolerance for distraction I support a district-wide implementation of a bell-to-bell phone ban because all families should be able to send their kids to school in an environment without the distraction of cell phones and that concludes uh these written comments thank you thank you Miss SM uh we do have three people signed up for inperson comment uh I recognize you please state your name and city of residence and statements are restricted to a minimum of 3 minutes then U miss crei or board secrity will give you one 1 minute notice and a 10-second notice and I'll not

067notify you if your time has expired it is a good idea to look up occasionally to see those notices so that you won't be surprised at the end of your 3 minutes uh also please note that the board's policy is to not respond during public common parent if you need a response please contact us by email phone or Postal mail our contact information is available at Alban schools.org booe and I or one of the other board members will respond on behalf of the board um Mar shop say and Gina M mad um why you come up to the table and then you know I'll and then Dorian you you know when Marie finishes you can come up uh good evening and uh thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak I want to I

068know many of you from my professional role as the executive director of the Albany fund for Education um but tonight I am speaking from my personal Ro role as the parent of two children here in the district one a seventh grader at hacket and the other senior at Albany High although I would be remiss if I did not mention that our Gala is on April 26 and it's the best Gala I think people will say will vouch for that and we will be honoring this year the Alban Center Gallery um the late monria Slade music teacher and uh Juliana Obie but all right putting taking off my AF hat uh my children like many in the district have ADHD my son even though he understands the need to put his phone away and his notification

069silenced cannot escape the distraction to the point where multiple teachers comment on his report card that he is capable of great work but is distracted by his phone um every single report card for kids these days in their post-pandemic high-tech lives they have less ability to tolerate doing things that are not immediately satisfying the process of learning is not always immediate gratification and the presence of a phone in that environment is a constant Temptation my son also reports that phones increase fights and drama in school and make it much less safe if students are mesing messaging each other and friends are watching and egging them on on social media it increases the opportunity for kids to get upset and start fights in a much shorter and more public time frame than in the pre phone

070era phones increase the likelihood that fights will occur and are used to plan them and draw attention to them I had a conversation with the social workers at hacket last year where I mentioned that we had not allowed our daughter to have sta chat and the social worker said that's fantastic because probably 90% of the drama and fights in the school were being fueled on social media um as you probably know our seniors have to do a identify a problem and come up with actions to address it as a Capstone project for civics and the project that my son chose was making everyone feel safe in school um and I think that this ban is a big step towards making that happen thank you thank you Miss Madden hello my name is Dr Gina Madden

071I'm a pediatrician here in Albany taking care of many of our district children Children and Families I'm also a parent of two kids one of whom graduated from Albany High and another who attends Albany High currently I'm also a member of the cell phone Task Force committee I speak to children and Adolescence daily of ways to be well including reducing screen time I ask them about their academics screen them for signs of depression and anxiety and exposure to violence these are all parts of their lives I ask the questions because they deserve to be well they deserve ve to succeed there's a wealth of data regarding the detriments of cell phone use phones are first and foremost addictive it's correlated with poor academic performance particularly for our most vulnerable and struggling students it's correlated with

072mental health issues like depression and anxiety and can amplify violence in our schools to think we can impact this with a bell-to-bell ban on cell phone use is in my perspective simply good work restricting cell phones tells our children and families that though it may be a big change at times even inconvenient we value and prioritize our children's academic success and future their mental health and their right to be safe teachers in our district are in favor of cell phone restrictions simply because they want to teach our children they want to teach our children without the distraction of kids playing video games scrolling through social media watching movies through the entire of class not to mention texting or watching a video of a fight that's happened at school they just want to teach our kids

073and though parents and children may have worries about not being able to rely on the devices we've come to depend on in every aspect of Our Lives we don't have to look far for positive outcomes I would encourage you to speak to families whose children attend Tony Clemens where phones are collected at the start of the day the children who I see tell me they don't like it but also acknowledge it's really good for them and the parents are relieved because they want their children to succeed all the children and our district deserve this opportunity I feel our district can work through the challenges of communication with parents coaches Etc during the day um expedient concise information from schools to parents in emergencies ensuring that children are not facing damaging an unnecessary discipline related to

074the code of conduct as many many many other districts have we will find a way to make this work as almost everyone in this room did Growing Up I joined the committee because though many of the children in our district May face obstacles that neither you or I can alleviate this is one critical place where we can have incredible impact thank you thank you dur insula my name is Dorian solot I'm the parent of a seventh grade grer at hackit and an 11th grader at Albany High and I've also been part of the cell phone Task Force this year I wanted to be here tonight to tell you how excited I also am about the possibility of having our our schools go phone free is it this subject is something I've done a pretty deep

075dive on in the last few years and I wanted to share with you three things that I learned that I found really helpful as I learned about this subject the first one is that in terms of academics when schools go phone free it actually helps the lowest achieving students the most there was a really interesting study in the UK specifically looking at Urban schools where they found when they compared schools that had instituted a phone ban versus ones that had not changed anything the high achieving students did a little better with the band the lowest achieving students did a lot better and so the study really concluded this is a way to help close the gap between the highest and lowest achieving kids and for me that's so exciting and so much in line with

076our priorities as a district and it's sort of an important eyes on the prize detail like that's that's why we're taking this on despite all the challenges all the logistics all the stuff to figure out like that's what's important that's what we're going for number two I think we can be incredibly reassured that when schools around the US enact cell phone bands the bands become more popular after they're enacted students often start out strongly opposed they don't want to give up their phones after a while they often begrudgingly come to appreciate having a seven-hour break when they don't have to have to keep up with all the input and the gossip because it's all gone quiet and they don't feel like they're missing out because nothing is happening students often start I'm sorry parents often

077start out support supportive but divided and then over time when they experience the ban they're like oh this is kind of good for my kids teachers often start out supportive and as as ours overwhelmingly are in Albany and they often end up only getting more positive once they experience life with a cell phone ban in their schools so I think it's okay for us to sort of sit with the divisions in public opinion that we're seeing right now know that's normal for this stage it's okay and feel pretty confident that parent opinion and student opinion nearly always shifts much more positive once we've all sort of lived with a band for a little bit I watched the video of the last meeting and all of you board members asked really great thoughtful questions about logistics

078and I think one thing we can all keep in mind is thankfully we don't have to invent the wheel on this as you all know a ton of school districts around the country have already gone phone free some Suburban some rural districts but also a lot of urban districts with demographics a lot like ours I will read you a very short list Baltimore Houston Los Angeles New Haven New York City Philadelphia closer to home Holo Newberg pipy spring field and as you know our neighbor across the river Troy High School some of those schools have districtwide policies some of them have just a few high schools or a few H hundred high schools for the really large districts that are trying it out we can and are in the process as a task force of

079learning what they have figured out about what percentage do the phone calls from parents increase and how can we prepare for that how do coaches send updates to athletes in ways that are you know effective and quick when they don't have their phones tiered consequences for infractions when students aren't following the policy that don't involve out of school suspense pensions and all the other great questions that you asked so I know there is still a ton for us all to figure out and there will be trade-offs there will be some losses because this is complicated messy stuff but to me the weight of the evidence is so overwhelmingly positive that I think there's really a lot for us to be very excited about in the years ahead thank you thank you we appreciate all public

080comments and we find hearing from community members very valuable again our contact information for both public comment and routine correspondence is Alban schools.org for / Boe we now move to the part of our meeting we call routine cons consent uh during this portion of the meeting we approve routine matters for the district these include items like contracts field trips Personnel matters and like each board member reviews each item carefully but we vote on them together as a group with no discussion this allows us to use our meeting time more efficiently nonetheless each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion or vote on that item with that introduction I now entertain a motion to adopt the routine consent agenda m c Miss man second

081by Miss man are there any set asides hearing none may have a motion to adopt the routine consent well we already did the motion all in favor that's unanimous thank you everybody so the next item on our agenda is policy which is an action and discussion item and pass the mic off to miss Cree chair of policy committee thank you and I apologize somehow it did not occur to me that policy is on the agenda every week so now I'm just making a note of that and I'll set up a reminder for myself and I'll we'll get a policy memo out there for the public and for you guys um shortly after the meeting we have action up on several policies we discussed in more depth at our last meeting including a new AI policy

082um a change to our sorry new a policy AI policy 8636 a slight change to our 6215 reduction and assessments for over 65 um some changes to 7500 school name naming policy it's going to be facilities renaming naming and renaming policy now uh 4772 graduation ceremonies 5100 attendance policy 5500 student records fura and 5020 Section 504 could I get a motion to adopt these policies please I see Mr elwi seconded by Dr chour all in favor thank you um I'm gonna move on to discussion again some new um some new policies here the first policy I'd like to bring to your attention is 6255 gifts and grants we made a couple of changes we removed the uh nisba introduction paragraph that was in there accidentally um we also the original policy said that teachers seeking

083grants had to ask their principal we changed that to principal or Department administrator because in some cases like Arts and Music uh they would not be you know it's better to be asking the person in charge of that department um we're also specifying that for donations and Gifts uh the board will be the superintendent will be informing the board in writing of any donations or gifts between between $1,000 and $3,000 existing policy was always for grants for donations gifts and grants of more than $3,000 the board would have to put on those and approve them before the district can accept them uh the next change do we go through the I can't remember do we go through these one at a time we do okay thank thank you um would anyone like to do I

084have any conversation on 6255 okay seeing none I'm going to go on to uh the second policy we revised 8330 the authorized use of District owned materials and Equipment uh that's been change the first change we made this policy was so old that well it wasn't really that old but it pre-pandemic so it original it it talks about the use of District owned materials by board members officers and employees and then also by students who have I PS but now all middle school and high school students are assigned laptops and then other student there are other uh types of equipment that students are allowed to use like an audio visual classes they're allowed to sign things out so it's not just for students with IEPs anymore we took that language out we also changed the

085language which was a bit archaic talking about us maintaining lists of equipment that's lent that's lent out people uh replacing that language with acknowledging that we may maintain electronic inventories um there's also new language saying that individuals borrowing District owned equipment the original policy which again applied to staff and only students with IEPs said that if you borrowed equipment you must be you would be fully liable for any damage and we've changed that a bit to say individuals borrowing District owned equipment must take any reasonable precautions against damaged lost or theft and may be liable for any damage or loss occurring to the equipment During the period of its use if such damages or loss could have been avoided uh this language still makes it clear that we expect people to be responsible with District

086property uh but this gives us some flexibility depending on the circumstances do I have any discussion on 8330 I question yes um I mean so this this specifically talks only about digital equipment right because when you talk about District materials and Equipment you could also include uniforms and you could other equipment like um band instruments and Athletics instruments that's right we actually did mention musical instruments as well this this actually does also cover musical instruments so it's probably never accurate to say that that only students with IEPs were getting District materials because you know they're getting certainly lots of them have VI LS tubas trumpets Etc and most of most Bandon instruments cost many times were of Chromebook costs thank you uh so the next policy is 0111 title X title I'm sorry title X

087title 9 so the only change we're making to this is most of our policies we talk about roles rather than names that keeps them up to date and just makes it clear who is doing what for example we don't have policies that say Mr Hawk Rider is responsible for this we say the superintendent uh but title 9's a little bit different under federal law we need to name a title N9 coordinator so anyway the only change we are proposing to this policy is to update the name of our title line coordinator who is also our human resources administrator with the name of our current uh Human Resources ad administrator these we are not making any other changes the original plan was to make changes to our Title 9 policies to align with the new reg

088the new federal Rel new federal Rel regulations that were issued in 2023 and included much more protection for transgender students as well as incre as well as improved um hearing practices that gave students that were reporting harassment more protection however before we could do that a federal court struck down those new regulations so the federal government reverted to the old version therefore uh removing any necessity for for us to or not just necessity but we have to keep because this is uh a policy and how to align with federal law we have to align with what they have so it's a little bit sad but it is what it is and then we also have a brand a brand new policy that I'm excited to announce we've been working on it for quite a while

089um together with Mr Lesco who came up with who really worked a lot on this it's 1511 we the original concept of this was simply advertising but as we talked and refined what we really wanted to address it became third-party advertising to students because that's what we're really concerned about uh we wanted to allow we we wanted to allow certain things to happen and other things not to happen for example we have food pantries in schools uh we have period supplies that we give away a lot those things have brand names on them we wouldn't want to be stopped from doing that we want to be able to sell things like School Rings School photos and yearbooks um we want to be able to Grant incentives Awards and certificates to students even if those events

090incidentally advertise and organiz ganization or individual you kind of think of those College book awards they're really advertising the college we wouldn't want to get rid of things like that uh we want to be able to allow the Student Activities that further the work of not for-profit charitable organizations um and we want to be able to we also added language that's going to specify what we should be using District facilities and District communication channels like email and messaging for uh they shouldn't be broadly available for anyone to put to just put out whatever message they want especially if it may be advertising a specific event that's being held by a for-profit organization so under this new policy we would be allowed to use facilities and communication channels to share information about first fundra fundraisers that

091directly benefit District students families or staff in material need and organizations specifically affiliated with the district or specific district schools including but not limited to ptas Etc booster clubs Etc I'm I'm paraphrasing now or also share information about nonpartisan community events or activities hosted by a not for-profit charitable organization or a governmental entity as long as those events and activities are consistent with the district's Mission Vision and goals and such announcements clearly identify that such activity is not a school district activity um is there any is there any questions or questions or comments on that Miss Smith um so uh when you're ready I wanted to go back to Title Nine because I think you moved ahead without asking that question apologize okay no no no I'm just but we can we can since we're

092going in order we can go back if you have a comment or question about the title nine things now um so U again I um and I had to keep this in my head because I was listening to you uh on the other one um okay so under title N I understand that there there's no per se protections for transgendered youth right under Title Nine that's what you're saying right and and so my this is one of those things where I I'm just get concerned about so where will those students outlook for protections I mean I know in New York we still have you know code of conduct and all of those things but again this is the kind of erosion that I'm just concerned about um with things coming down from the federal government

093how will our students know that I still uh am deserving of being safe in my learning environment uh I completely agree and this doesn't change our other District policies uh that show our commitment to equity and include transgender children and lgbtqia plus students and other students that aren't and other students that are different from other reasons we still support them and we've we have actually been throughout my years on policy uh making changes to specific specific policies specifically to protect enable enable those students it doesn't necessarily have to be called an equity policy for example we put in as not not direct rein information if a student is using an assumed name their birth name is not Direct reinformation.tv this doesn't change anything this just this just means that for a short period of time

094transgender transgender students who were facing harassment because of that could complain on the federal level now they can't but right our Comm to them it does not change right and I do appreciate the explanation particularly for the public uh however for me it's really again just a pointing out of the kinds of things that we're going to be faced with uh in this current reality that in which we live that's all thank you Miss man I think that you know then the next question would be and we don't have the answer to this but how will this impact our Title Nine you know by our standing up to do what I believe is the right thing how will it impact our title n funding thank you well then then then beyond that even if a

095student were to complain even if a student who was still protected under Title 9 or to file a title 9 complaint I I heard a rumor that the entire New York staff of the Department of Education that deals with those things was laid off today so it's it's a very challenging time and I agree with what you said earlier that it can't just be uh words it has to be actions um it's disappointing for the people that we serve to know that some of the protections for them are eroding and we have to redouble our commitment to continue to protect those rights even in an environment where it's no longer mandated or even encouraged more comments on on this one or we on on the same one I mean uh just as a as a

096housekeeping thing if if if it's just changing the name of the person on the which is the change in this particular Grant it doesn't even need to come to the board floor you can do you can bring in policy committee and just make that change in fact you know for things like this uh if administrators change right and we have to make the change I would say just do it because as long as you're not changing the principle of the policy or the wordings actual wordings of the policy it doesn't need to come to the board thank you I wasn't sure because I was like well it's not just a typo it is a substantive change in that it's going from one person to another the policy committee and you approve it we can do

097that we can do that sorry to sorry to bring it here but back to advertising I advertising policy does anyone have any comments on Advertising yeah I do you do okay so two things one the logo needs to change that's the old logo uh and so and so it is thank you for it thank you the uh second thing was um it talks about um um two things actually one is it talks about nonpartisan community events and stuff but I think we it needs also needs to include the no campaigning uh sentence which is there in our school property uh policy I forget the name of the policy school facilities where people can campaign on school property I think that's a that's a very good that's a very good point that's important because I looked

098at some of the other District policies for advertising too and and they all seem to have uh that in there too so and it doesn't take away from it just make sure that there's no loopholes there that's a that's a good point you know I you can you can kind of see from people's from the policies we draft what we have had issues with and what we haven't had issues with my question on that one is and this is a tricky one because some of the awards we give away and I'm thinking of all the times I've gone to elementary schools and we've given like an Office of the State Controllers award away sometimes we give Awards away that are named after elected officials I understand we don't want elected officials coming around and passing

099out brochures and shaking hands but are we comfortable with uh are we comfortable with Awards and certificates yes from local yes from from from from elected officials at any level yes even even if that is okay then we we'll make sure to I mean I what I mean is I will bring that back to the policy committee I don't anticipate any strong resistance to that I think that's a good refinement and in the regulations we haven't looked at the regulations yet so when the regulations get drafted some of those fine-tuning what is specific allowed even though it falls into this category those kind of differentiations can be made over there as well U the other thing I had was in terms of uh third party advertising um the restriction on use of any of the

100district uh uh channels of communication uh so how does that work with field trips and things of that nature you mean advertising field trips or while students are on field trips advertising field trips so I think if the field trip was hosted by a not for-profit charitable organization and the field trip was consistent with our district Mission visions and goals and all the announcements clearly identified that this was not a school district activity then we could send out then we could use our communication channels to share information about that type of field trip so I I would suggest that right up front it say we have those words and big ball letters this is not a school sponsored event right so there it rules are even before you read what it's about you know you're

101not talking about a school sponsor of it at first I thought you were you were saying specific to field trips but you're saying amp up the second bullet to say if you're going to maybe or maybe the regulations would it be okay if just the regulations said it has to be this this size font this big and right at the beginning of the email because it seems like more like a reg I agree it's important but it seems more like a regulation thing uh I mean you guys have it here where it say where you know in the nonpartisan paragraph at last sentence you say such an clearly identify that such an activity is not a school district activity yes that's what I'm saying if you're saying and make sure I'm saying that it's only

102listed with that particular category instead if you have a sentence somewhere else which includes anything that we are promoting which is a third party and is allowed I see whereas you're saying the you should also have that for the fundraisers and the booster clubs and we're thinking I think this started as a little disclaimer if you get hurt here it's not the district's fault and it wasn't as much we I don't know that we were contemplating as much just disavowing connection from like PTA fundraisers and things but that makes sense to because it's not that's not as much an activity as it is just kind of a um a well an advertisement encouraging people to do a thing but we could find a way to do that and I think maybe putting the regulations we

103have community events that are not District run basketball sports or whatever other sports that happen in the community that we do advertise but they all Clearly say this not a district sponsored event right and then you have the information so that we want our students to to take to Avail that of that opportunity that exists out there in the community we want that partnership between the district and the community we want to promote all of that we just want to make sure that people realize that it's not a the district isn't liable for anything that happens yes we want we want that and we want to make sure that the things we're promoting are not for profit like if there was I don't know I'm thinking of something that was around when I was younger

104they used to have for-profit modeling schools that would teach you how to break into to Hollywood if somebody like that that was for-profit was trying to advertise there's one there's a stem one up right now that that was posted out I think it's at Hudson Valley and it says that on there um so I mean I know we're doing it I hear what you're saying it you want it to be written in in the policy policy so that there's no question about anybody every everybody has to no I understand yeah so no I got it just codify it so it's there and then people have to follow it but we do have current examples of where that is actually that's happening and commun but there are also examples where it doesn't happen right or it's

105not clear enough and there's all thisy washy gray area it takes that out of the equation where okay so does it so you're just saying I'm sorry I'm just want to kind of move this along so we you're just wanting to expand that to it's not it's just for every activity that for which is not being sponsored by the school district the school district and it could be I mean it could be anything it's a third party I like I thought I heard Ellen also trying to distinguish a little bit but I think it sounds like anything that we're not sponsoring it makes sense and I think our Communications Department is really good about already doing this but not all the communications that go out to our students and our families go through the communications

106department and so somebody doing it on their own s you know a teacher who's making up flyers or something like that doesn't necessarily know this and if we want to tell them to stop doing it um if there's not a policy that says you can't do that that's a little more difficult to do thanks I'm going to turn the control of this meeting back to you Dr chor thank you thank you Miss Cree uh the next topic for discussion is PED special education discussion good evening everyone I am honored and privileged to introduce our special education department team to my right I have Miss elain gra Excuse Me Miss elain Chrysler our director for special education to her right I have Miss Christina lebret who is the assistant director for special education focusing on our

107elementary level and then to her right I have Miss Kim Koto who is our assistant director for special education who supports the secondary level and with that um introduction I will turn it over to Miss Gracer all right thank you very much uh good evening Board of Education superintendent Hawk Ridder and members of cabinet uh Kim Christina and I thank you for the opportunity to present our special education program review as always uh the district's Mission Vision and goals are the foundation of our departmental work tonight's presentation includes an overview of special education programming and budget a review of our departmental data a summary of our departmental strengths and challenges and details regarding the focus of our work now and moving forward our department offers a full Continuum of programs and services for students ages

1083 through 21 from the least restrictive to the most restrictive of environments this Continuum ensures that all students have General access to general education programs while continuing to receive related Serv services and specially designed instruction in this chart you'll see the program locations for the district's enrollment of students with disabilities the majority of students are programmed within District um approximately 7% of students are programmed for out of District which would include bosies and private day programs additionally 6% of students attend charter schools and 1% attend non-public schools it's important to note that these percentages have remained consistent over the last several years in comparing last year to this year our departmental uh Staffing increased by one special education teacher one speech therapist and three Behavior Specialists who um deliver services within our classroom settings since

109last year we have hired additional teaching assistance which can be attributed to increases in programming and individual student needs and additionally we have added a halftime csse chairperson at the elementary level to help support with meeting needs associated with increases in in our Elementary programs and student enrollment our budget is supported by both the general fund and the idea Grant um our Department's budget provides for all student programming including District Staffing outof District tuition contracts materials and supplies a thorough breakdown of our budget can be found uh in the special education program profile uh we also want to note that hiring has improved um however we are experiencing some mid midyear fluctuations which can be a challenge um and out of District programming continues to be limited so this slide is an overview of our

110special education data the district's classification rate in 2324 is pending released by New York State Ed in reviewing the three-year trend for initial referral data there has been a slight increase from last year in the number of initial referrals requested looking at the preschool evaluations the number of initial evaluations has remained the same since last year however evaluations continue to show an increase another important important metrics is the percentage of students with disabilities accessing the least restrictive environment which is intended to offer exposure to general education peers last school year the percentage of students accessing the least restrictive environment for more than 40% of the school day was 61.1% and this represents a decrease compared to the prior school year the graduation rate was recently released um with a 78% for general education students and

11144% for student with disabilities in regards to student or to 10 or more day suspension rate for students with disabilities the rate of suspension has decreased significantly so now we would like to review departmental strengths and challenges and one of our biggest successes this year was the completion of the all-inclusive playground at Albany School of humanities we worked in collaboration with the maintenance department and Ash staff leadership to make our vision come to life with new equipment which included ramps a glider adaptive swings and sensory panels as well as rubberized surface which could easily support navigation by wheelchair Walker or gate trainer and you'll see pictures throughout the slideshow um We are continuing to offer botche ball bowling and basketball as Unified sports we have had the opportunity to take part in Special Olympics events

112this past year where our best buddies from the high school program supported our students from our elementary schools at Ash and New Scotland and we have an event coming up with Arbor Hill we're continuing to look for additional opportunities to stay connected with our partners from the Special Olympics the special education students at the high school have the opportunity to work in the Falcon Boutique which is located on the third floor balcony at Albany High um it's open to our high school students and families where they can get free clothing and Footwear and it's another opportunity for our best buddies program the career development and occupational studies program has been successful at the high school students are working within the school building and outside with Community Partnerships within the school building they have the opportunity

113to work in the school store the food pantry and the Falcon Boutique uh our nicest students at the high school also have um an opportunity to par participate once a week in a cooking club with general education peers some more successes are um our students and teachers have worked in collaboration with Kevin marinko our assisted technology specialist and the technology department to engage in Virtual real reality field trips um they've also teamed up with our special education coaches in order to determine trips that would align with our curriculums both Nisa and um New York State learning standards such as animal and habitats Transportation solar system land forms and Engineering they work on life skills and communication through these different experiences we've had the opportunity to to provide and participate in many professional developments um through

114the department we've continued offering training through the Sign Language Center to both teaching assistants and our teachers um our special education coaches have offered a variety of different professional developments um around direct consultant teacher model unique Learning System autism Nisa Dynamic learning maps IP progress monitoring um goal writing and many more topics um advanced therap has provided training specific to Adaptive seating and our sensory rooms um we've had outside providers come in to provide training around ays um Anderson Center has come in and provided some training and we've had our regional partnership do some trainings around specially design instructions for both teachers and T we've also been working closely with bring on the Spectrum and we've had 40 um Grant funded field trips for K through 12 um these trips include transportation and have provided

115our students an opportunity to use the sensory gym and the community space um this slide is the capital project update um it's almost complete and January 6 our Nisa class has moved over to the new citizenship Academy and in September all self-contained classes will move from a brooken to the main campus and the Nisa Wing we have some pictures here includes an occupational therapy physical therapy room and a washer and dryer as well as a nurse's office office thank you the department has had its challenges as well availability of preschool providers and programs has presented significant limitations in being able to get students accepted into recommended classroom programs or in starting their related services this results in students being placed on weight list as districts are competing for the same seats throughout the county the

116cpsc has experienced an increase in the needs of our English language Learners in terms of providing evaluations in the students home language and communicating the process and results to those families the district has added two on-site special class programs one is located at Arbor Hill Elementary School and the other is at Alber School of humanities Additionally the district supports a full day integrated classroom at Pine Hills Elementary while Staffing shortage continues to be an area of concern our staffing does look much better than it has in past years we are feeling many more of our vacancies and are working closely with human resources to hire and retain our staff discipline suspension and student attendance remain an area of concern that we are monitoring closely according to the district pd8 report the percentage of students with

117disabilities that were suspended from school for more than 10 days during the 2324 school year has had a significant decrease from the previous year the percentage went from 3.58 to 1.58% and 50 to 34 students the trend continues to decrease which we can attribute to our work around the disciplinary change in placement as well as disproportionality the attendance trend for our students with disabilities has increased of 77% compared to 0.93% for general education students chronic absenteeism has decreased we will continue to monitor student attendance and respond at the building level through mtss and csse meetings as our special education program continues to expand space is an area that we have to continue to monitor closely as we have worked hard to align strands this year the special education department is focusing on four major areas

118in the area of teaching and learning our work includes hiring staff to ensure that we are providing services and programs in accordance with IEP ratios and delivering recommendations the special education department is working closely with human resources We are continuing to embed the collective consultation model the collaborative consultation model for related services in all of our Nisa programs this promotes collaboration flexible Service delivery and supports the generalization of skills across settings due to the limited availability to special class programming for preschool students We are continuing to work with agencies to open additional classrooms currently there are 40 plus students on the wait list for special class preschool programs there is also a wait list for integrated programming and related Services working in collaboration with the physical education department adaptive PE will be added to all

119of our Nic students IEPs professional development will be delivered by the PE Department in the spring common planning time continues to be an area of focus for our special education and structural teachers and coaches this work gives them an opportunity to collaborate which each other and grade level Partners to look at specially designed instruction grade level material or dynamic learning maps for our nicest students as we discussed previously in this presentation many of the trainings that are listed on this slide are ongoing and will be extended for the remainder of the school year and onto next year through our work with s and our regional partnership we have focused on the FBA bit processing and training we have worked on specially designed instruction and this has been a multi-year process and we will continue we

120have also had an emphasis on training for teaching assistants we have hired many new Tas and substitutes and have been providing program specific opportunities and have ideas on how we can continue to provide ongoing support for those in the future the special education department Contin continues to work in collaboration with CPAC the CPAC meets monthly and information is posted on the district website we present twice a year and meet quarterly with CPAC officers in the interest of collaborating around parent and District concerns related to students with disabilities and programs we continue to monitor our internal systems we have been focused on disproportionality and suspension with a focus on the implementation of the disciplinary change of placement FBA and bips and ensuring the least restrictive environment and participation in the Nisa targeted skills support plan and

121finally as a department we always remain committed to our meeting our fiscal responsibilities which includes the monitoring of federal special education grants the general budget and Medicaid reimbursement and as always we conclude include resources specific to our work for your references this concludes our special education board presentation at this time we welcome questions and comments thank you board members one question at a time Mr elav thank you for the presentation I might have missed this but um how um how fully are you out of a brooken at this point like what's so we have some special class programs remaining um but all of our alternate assessment programs have shifted over to the high school um so it's most mostly our 1511 and 1212 special class programs was there a plan for like was there a

122timing uh that all of the classes will be pulled over by next year or something yes by September everyone will be at the high school okay thank you there's only eight remaining classes over there right now self-contained thank you miss m great thank you um always a great presentation here um and uh as you uh the challenges that seemed like quite I know it seems short but it's a lot in there um and then when you uh pose the U the areas of focus that's a lot a lot um and uh but I did have one uh thing that I was focused on uh for preschool are we talking about um more providers or there's a lack of providers out there a lack of uh physical space for us to actually expand the preschool offerings

123in our facilities I'm not sure if that's a if that what that if that's a thought and then then there's the Staffing that needs to go along with that what what uh specifically uh are you uh looking to do there I guess so all of those are areas of need and concern um we are looking to expand and add additional classrooms within the district um we'll be uh walking our elementary buildings um this spring to see if we can identify some additional spaces um and you know as our numbers shift on the CSE side and students move up to Middle School sometimes that creates a natural opening for us to be able to find a space um once a space is identified um then we would begin reaching out to um see what providers uh

124and agencies might be interested currently we've been working with Beginnings um so they may be interested along with others um and then once um once we have an agreement around that then they would provide the Staffing and we would be preparing the classrooms for the fall and also if I recall correctly uh during uh Co we we lost some providers if I'm is that correct yeah there the the providers are largely um arranged through the county so they're qualified to the county um so prior to covid the bulk if not nearly all of the services were managed through the county and so there were um you know programs in different locations and then we would send our students to them but that is Shifting as they're having their own struggles um and so they're asking

125that we begin to locate those programs within with the district so so that says that's my question was they those numbers haven't gotten back up to where they might have been at before Co or even even at the peak of Co right at the county level at the county level okay okay all right thank you appreciate that Miss man I I have two comments um I have a comment and a question the first comment is I do want to applaud you have the eight classes over out of brooken and they're coming over to the high school in September so I know that took a lot it's a lot of logistical work and things like that so I I thank you for that um and the question I have is what work is being done across

126like all of our districts because um to address staff shortages um so I mean we're always looking for staff Kim has recently been reaching out to colleges to see um if they have individuals who are recently graduating who might be interested in starting with us as taas or if they're interested in opportunities that are coming along in the fall um you know we're utilizing the CPAC wherever we can to say hey can you get the word out we're looking for Staffing and so they're carrying it onto their websites and then of course you know just collaboration um with other agencies and and districts sometimes um districts will find a provider that they can't use um at that point in time they don't have a position but they'll say Hey you know we have this person

127looking for a job and it will come out on the list serve I do want to add to we have a lot of Subs right now and we are trying to grow those people so we are working with them to get them certified as Tas so we have been going in and and and working with them oneon-one to get them certified and and you know because they're in the positions Miss Grey thank you an excellent presentation I really appreciated how you went above and beyond to kind of show the more humanistic side extracurricular activities some of the special things we're doing um just to add to the flavor of the day and give the students extra um extra experiences I really appreciate that I did have one point of clarification based on the presentation and

128then I had a more detailed question the point of clarification is I heard you say that we're educating 61% of our special education students in the least restrictive environment can you clarify what you meant by that 61% hold on got it okay so the um percentages for least restrictive environment are determined by the programming um that we set up on their IEPs and so as the programming is listed on the IEPs it generates a percentage of time um in special class or outside special class so using those numbers um 61% of our students are being educated in a less restrictive environment for more than 40% of the day so it's not 100% so what it's saying is 61% of our special education students are spending at least 40% of their day in a general education

129classroom correct right but we're working to get all of our students educated in the least restrictive environment for their needs regardless of whether that's like a 911 or 1211 or 15 right okay and there are opportunities for that they may um some opportunities may include more more specials or um Encore kind of areas um and then as we are able to move them into um a Content area either for exposure on a short-term basis or even par participation on a regular basis um we look for those opportunities wherever we can um the ideal would be for some of our um more restrictive settings to be able to find topics or units to partner with the general education and be able to have our students um share in in that learning alongside their gened peers that's

130that's excellent to hear that's excellent to hear it's it's good because it's a it's a goal that we can't educate every special education student 100% in a general education classroom even with pull outs and extra supports but we can make sure that they're a part of the school community and can I say I loved the montau presentation and I'm already forgetting the acronym but it was a shine it was a wonderful it was a wonderful acronym and it wasn't like medical or deficit based it was amazing so the next question I had is I noticed by far the greatest percentage oh sorry I forgot sorry Miss Wilson and I apologize because I hate so much to interrupt you you were clearly on a roll I'm so sorry um so thank you for your presentation it

131was nice to hear about the virtual reality field trips and also bring bring on the Spectrum support for for um actual trips too so my questions were just centered around the challenges slide and much of what um board memb Smith asked about you know how and also I believe board um board member man asked about how are we growing our own and you kind of that was going to be my question is do we have gr our own initiatives and you've already spoken to that and you've spoken a little bit about the prek as well as far as the space concept so a question I had is just the overall challenge of prek is an area of legislative advocacy for us and an interest uh area of Interest I would say for the executive branch

132just all across the board Early Childhood so is was the emphasis on prek out of what you were discussing with board member Smith um a matter of spaces or is it also just the ability to detect early and intervene early in prek very important for our work especially overlaying what you mention are cultural and language barriers is that part of the challenge so in terms terms of the um child find process and evaluations we are doing pretty well we're pretty successful in that area we have our own evaluation team parents always have the opportunity to select outside of the district um but you know we encourage the use of our team whenever possible because we are maintaining timelines and getting the evaluations done um as anticipated um for uh State deadlines um that's not always

133the case for outside of evaluators but there are certainly some instances where a parent may want to choose a particular evaluation team and they're willing to wait and so we certainly respect those decisions um but when it comes to the actual evaluation process um we're very much on top of that um and and don't have any specific uh areas of concern there it's more once they're evaluated and a student qualifies for services being able to immediately um move them into that programming the capacity I understand thank you so first foremost thank you for your great presentation uh thank you for the work that you do with our U most vulnerable population um you know you you you talk about your budget is around $33.5 million um it's about 10% of the District budget how much

134of that is federal funds and grants so we do have a substantial Grant um through um idea and I can get you the exact number on that if you bear with me for a minute because that's the one part we don't control these days right and then that's the risk factor correct yeah I mean the majority of our budget is covered by the general fund um certainly the grant does not cover the entire um budget but I can give you that number if you give me a second here I know it's on this page FAL here we go we're getting close there we go all right because you also have like Medicare Medicaid reimbursements which again is another part of money that is correct so sort of so last last year between 611 and 619

135which would have includ which includes majority staff so of that Grant is largely absorbed by staff we do have um a few contracts in there as well uh that that total is um 3,686 27 and then the general fund portion is 29,8 61 , 610 so last year's budget Grant total was 33.5 million we do anticipate um you know a little bit of an increase in cost um coming into the next year with some addition of Staffing and just um the natural increases that go along with programming and also the trend that you just talked about is a higher rate of referrals right so which means yeah population is also possibly going up shifting yes yeah yeah even since our um numbers were put in this at Ben day we have increased by at least

13675 kids okay thank you Mami round two um I also wanted to point out that as numbers increase um for our students with disabilities that um your work is more and more important and it is increasing as you just said um I wanted to thank you about uh mentioning the ash playground because it's been kind of on my radar for a while and I did get a look at it um and it looks great and it um it's kind of like been like a two years in in the making so um I'm super excited about it and like I said as that popular population of our students increases we need to be able to accommodate them so um really happy about that thank you thank youi U thank you I just had a a question

137related to um special ed and uh students in charter schools so um and I think my colleagues know this that um so uh we Ida money from the district goes also to those students who are enrolled in schools um what is the impact of impact on staff your time in terms of uh having to have IEP or CS CS CSP meetings like what can you just talk about that a little bit and then also whether uh we are do school district or do charter schools in this area primarily uh find the staff on their own that's needed like if they need you know um a child needs another paa are they finding that or is that your role um and and then I assume if it's the charter schools role that they are billing you

138so there's I know it's a complicated kind of thing but just wanting if you could talk a little bit about how that works and what the impact is on on a staff that's already um quite busy and active uh so we are the C of responsibility for students in in Charters and both non-public so uh we would hold any annual review meetings we would conduct all evaluations um that it would be the psycho educational and any related Services um and then if there was a need for a review meeting uh throughout the year uh we would be um it would be our team that would conduct that review schedule it and and make sure that everybody who needed to be at the table was there um so that's on the kind of the CSE side

139in terms of the programming piece the majority of the charter schools provide their own special education teachers at this point in time um but we are seeing they used to provide their own related Services where they would contract with an outside agency but we are seeing more need um in terms of our staff needing to serve those students so that does require travel to other locations um they do let us know before June 1st so that we can try to plan for that in the event we need to increase Staffing uh the same uh is true in non-public uh but in non-public it's important to note that we provide the special education teacher Services no I appreciate that I I forgot about the non-public too when I was saying that um and could I just

140ask you a question to about uh if I remember your numbers the the number of our resident students who go to Charter Schools who have an IEP that has been kind of steady over they have been fairly steady um let me just move to that we haven't seen 6% the percentages have definitely been consistent I mean the actual numbers fluctuate a little bit I'd say the charter numbers are pretty consistent we have seen maybe a little dip in the non-public and um it do you have a lot of frequ this last question I promise on that do you see a lot of frequency uh with uh either the parents or the charter schools coming back to the CSE to say hey we can't deliver this the services or we can't accommodate the services that the

141student needs for whatever the reason is um do you see that a lot and and what kind of examples we do more so at the beginning of the school year um because families tend to enroll in the charter schools at the end of a school year and over the summer um so uh Charter Schools typically start reaching out to us around August um to find out about student needs and so if there is a student that they determine they're unable to program for it is typically a student who may have special class programming they generally provide resource room co- teing um or integrated consultant teacher I think it's important to note too that at the high school level the charter school kids tend to come back we offer so much at our high school between

142our CTE programs and our fax programs our Arts and Music so if they have left to go to Charter they will they a lot of them will return once um they hit High School Miss mad Miss GRE thank you so looking over the data I noticed that consistently uh the the largest break the largest group are students with disabilities are students uh that are diagnosed with a learning disability and it made me kind of think back to that presentation we had at the last meeting about literacy I'd love to get some more information about how the new literacy how the new focus on uh science B scientifically um research-based literacy how does that tie in to the work you do in this area are your are are mainstream General edit reading teachers pushing in are

143they working with special ed teachers So within the elementary um level students receive um mtss or RTI supports um you know within special classrooms sometimes they're paired up with special education teachers um sometimes it's a pullout service um in addition to that we provide resource room services that can specifically address literacy through specialized reading at the middle school level we have a lot of opportunities for team teaching um uh with um related or RTI providers uh who can help focus on literacy within our skills period so we have um within our special class programs where many of our students have significant um learning disabilities uh we will typically pair with an RTI provider uh during the math and reading skills period so that you know we can make sure that they're getting the most out

144of that instruction alongside the special education teacher as well does that kind of answer your question I think that's what you were looking for does may I ask a followup question on that thank you so one of the things I mentioned at the last meeting was that there's a special certification program in news but I think that's for reading teachers and I don't completely understand the certification are there some sort of certification programs or something that special education teachers or is there some sort of PD that special education teachers can do to make sure they are up on the most scientifically based literacy method yeah Christina can speak to the elementary level and then I can speak to the middle school thank you so the the science of reading credential was offered to teachers special

145education teachers too that is the reading the credential that you're speaking about um so that was offered to special education teachers in addition to general education teachers so they had that opportunity to do that um I actually did it this past summer it was great um but we've also offered um Wilson training and Foundations and just words to our um elementary teachers which um is helpful within the specialized reading so at the middle school we'll have a we carry the just wordss program which is Wilson based um into our specialized reading resource room sections thank you so much for giving me a detailed answer I appreciate it m wion thank you and my final question was around the space consideration and space planning and I'm just curious it's not so much specifically for your unit

146but just a larger dist question about our need to basically assess maybe population growth Trends and in this case as far as this department needs and I'm wondering if it would be helpful if we did and I imagine this exists on its own within facilities I'm not there anymore C is in a new unit but like an inventory of the buildings where we have a sense of what their past life was whatever they may have been whether previously Charter Schools elementary so forth and what we use them for now and assess our needs and for Baseline just overall and for our sub population special population subgroups and I'm also curious because um instead of even retrofitting buildings in a very permanent way if we've had any thoughts about modular or accounting for some modular rooms

147within buildings just knowing that we don't always need something a dedicated space for something all the time we may need a space that has flexibility to either be for staff meetings and or therapeutic spaces for example and I'm just curious if we are doing that and if not if we can get on a path to do that I think I'm gonna let Joe handle this one thank you um so we're actually engaging with a company that will do a space study um that is going to go alongside the building condition survey so we should have all the information by next year thank you um that was a good question um and perfect timing with the building survey uh time it when we heard from Mont about the shine program and they talked about the change

148from the 613 to the 813 which is going to post some challenges and I think there was something else when I was talking to somebody else that's going to a 12 something um model to um yes the um 913 kindergarten programs at New Scotland and Arbor Hill are going to shift to a 12 right and so that's going to be even more intimidating to to manage for somebody just coming into the field so I like the fact that you're your offering sped training uh to to and we passed a contract today yay uh because you know it is very important that those are the most vulnerable kids at the same time we need the people who are working with them to be extra uh trained uh to handle them you know the right way no

149because things can change in a minute right and being able to assess the situation and calm things down and keep things going uh requires some training uh more than the average classroom right and so you already mentioned about staff challenges Staffing challenges where we can find people now when when if I'm in the job market and I see that uh it's going to get even more harder in the classroom because there's more kids that I have to manage How likely is it that I'm going to you are going to be able to find new people um to hire and what can we do to mitigate that uh when you talk about uh challenges with the charter schools and or the busies or non-private schools trying to find those is it worthwhile thinking about an additional

150model partnering with other school districts where maybe a third party can come in and so sort of like what we do for the athletic trainer for example when we didn't have an athletic trainer there was a company that we contracted with that took care of okay you have you need an athletic trainer you get this person you get that person it's sort of they're not our employees per se they're employees of that other District but we get our services Pro provided uh is something like that possible for handling I mean are you thinking more like an agency right so I mean that's certainly a possibility I mean we currently work with advanced therapy which is an agency that provides our um um occupational therapy Physical Therapy teacher of the deaf and um teacher of the

151visually impaired services and we have had to increase those Services as um our programs are increasing inside so that we can not just provide the individual um sessions but also some collaborative support to the classrooms um so that would continue in terms of um I mean ideally we always want to hire our own staff wherever we can um um and you know in the at least related to speech and language therapy we've been pretty successful in the last several years um being able to fill our positions the teaching positions can can be a little bit more challenging depending on the time of the year so as if we know what our openings are we'll probably have a nice pool of candidates going into um the spring to be able to hire for next year um

152it's during the school year that can can get challenging and and when we're unable to certainly We Begin having discussions about how we can cover those positions potentially through um either we've been using retirees so we've been really fortunate there several retirees have come back and you forget they're retired because they're here here a lot right um but it is certainly if we were not able to get folks like that I think it is something that we would have to consider because this is this is not different from the bus driver situation right where it's not just our district problem Tri connected gild and bethle well if they have a sped programming they're also you know possibly facing the same challenges it was just thinking how can we collaboratively find a solution where you know

153yes it's ideal to have our own employees but is it possible to have somebody else that we can share an employee with to still provide the services to these kids while we you know find that individual who wants to come and be our employees coties used to fill that role too for a looking good yeah any other questions folks thank you thank you next item for discussion is pupil personal services good evening again I have the privilege of introducing our um people Personnel Services Department um Dr canzon ball is not here this evening but she was instrumental in um preparing the presentation and the documents that were provided to you in advance of this so um Mike Panetta assistant director for people Personnel Services and Carla McDowell assistant Su assistant um director for people Personnel

154Services will be presenting uh the Department's um program review to you tonight so I will turn it over to them and Mike did I say assistant director for you okay I don't know good evening members of the board superintendent Hawk Rider and cabinet we are pleased to be here tonight um as you are aware our department supports all aspects of social emotional learning or seal safe schools and violence prevention school health and Behavioral Health Services for all youth including our most at risk we work closely with departments throughout the district related Services providers and Community agencies to assess the needs of both students and staff our district of vision mission goals oh thank you um we are reminded of the district's Mission Vision and goals throughout our work and our outcomes throughout our discussion we

155will highlight our Partnerships relationships and acquisition of skills and knowledge over the past year to demonstrate how our department operates with G these guiding principles tonight we will provide an update on our 2324 goals strengths and challenges our areas of focus in the current school year as well as proposed work for next school year our the office of PPS provides a variety of support to our building level colleagues our students and their families we have increased our Focus ensuring that the school Community is healthy and feels emotionally and physically safe PPS has expanded our services to students and families through a multi-year multi-million dollar New York State education department student mental health Grant to serve all of our buildings we strive to stretch our minds in our current constructs to ensure that we are meeting

156the needs of students while maintaining regulatory requirements I know I just want to make sure I have the right ear all I just on a different slide um our goals for the 2324 school year will multifaceted with a continued cycle of improvement the next few slides will outline our work and provide updates as well as our strengths and areas of challenge we will address the bullets on the screen which is the updates for the 2324 goals um in the next couple of slides so here's our strengths while we strive to focus on strengthening our most impactful initiatives we have been able to create meaningful and ongoing opportunities for professional development a few highlights of last year's professional development included the comprehensive School threat assessment gu guidelines or SE stag the national ruler conference at Yale

157University and the National Association of school resource officers or nazro conference from these valuable experiences systems and structures structures were redefined and strengthened our threat assessment process was reviewed and refined in order to use the data in ways to be more impactful in the lives of our students schools restructured their ruler lessons based on identified building needs and from nasro we returned new information to address best practices in safe schools and violence prevention including proactive measures on how to best screen visitors and students another strength is our Behavioral Health Services the continuation of the mental health Grant has allowed for the hiring of a psychiatric nurse practitioner and mobile crisis team specifically assigned to our own building sites for in instant access to assist any student in crisis as we look to strengthen our relationship

158with our Community Partners we continue to expand our school-based mental health clinics and look to best practices for supporting families in need of immunizations and healthare we increase the number of school-based social workers at the secondary level to fill the the need demonstrated bi our behavioral data from the previous year we continue to implement erands law and ruler and train teams in evidence in evidence and research interventions we embedded supports to assist all buildings with their mtss structure the main focus of these efforts is to consistently make data driven decisions and use our own intervention matrices to support individual and groups of students the mckin vento grant was in year two and the acting mckin event to Liaison retired and one of the case managers was elevated to that position all activities continued during the

159transition and the program provided Direct Services to increased numbers of students and families despite of the shifts and gaps in Staffing in central registration we saw a huge increase in new entrance whose home languag is other than English partnering with the enl and Refugee services and staff from across the district we established a Welcome Center modality and a flow of Entry that upheld Dignity of registering families last year our team responded to 619 significant safety incidents requiring the response of Safety and Security that could have involved the coordination of the crisis team a threat assessment or some type of security response all threats are assessed by a multi-disciplinary team and involve law enforcement when necessary despite our ongoing efforts including training support and Community engagement we continue to face challenges such as practice inconsistencies initiative

160fatigue and safety concerns that impact our students both inside and outside of the school building we actively Implement and continuously enhance social emotional learning Frameworks like ruler to ensure effective Service delivery in compliance with Equity standards we conduct regular monitoring and quality Insurance of all of our data driven systems to support Student Success we are committed to ensuring that staff are trained the New York State education Department's requirements for all aspects of social emotional learning and behavioral interventions through a New York state archiving Grant we are digitizing student records including health records for efficient management and access each year we continue to expand Partnerships with external organizations to enhance supports for students behavior health needs including onsite as well as virtual options for school and on the weekends after school and on the weekends to

161strengthen our College and Career ESS curriculum we started embedding lessons for students to grow and experience through middle and high school we're also refining a structured system of support that prepares students for College and Career transition we are improving security measures in schools increasing personnel and providing highquality professional development for all home homeowners to ensure a safe and secure learning environment a third resource officer was also assigned to North Al Middle School research on threat assessment and behavioral support advocates for a holistic approach to mental health and safety in schools mtss is our holistic approach we are committed to meet the diverse needs of all of our students as a department our goal is to support students families and colleagues with a strong focus on equity and enhancing student achievement we are dedicated to broadening

162our impact by continuously assessing needs and exploring new funding sources Partnerships and programs to provide to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our efforts we remain focused in aligning multi-tiered systems of support and social emotional learning along with Crisis Prevention and response strategies thank you for your ongoing support and at this time we'll take any questions in I have thank you m SMI M man I don't at this time thank you it was a wonderful presentation Richi no questions thank you thank you for the presentation thank you for your presentation and it just jumped out to me when you stated that the threat assessment process was reviewed and refined to use the data to be more impactful in the lives of our students can you just point to like one or two ways it's been

163impactful for us so looking at the threat ass well one of the ways is actually we realize there's a Got To Be A system that we put our data into so we researched the data system to to actually do that for us we have in the process process of purchasing that I believe and looking to have that on boarded for us once that's done we'll be able to sip through our data data and have some more information about what we can do with it uh more importantly it's identifying students that are in need and using that data at the building level to address any specific needs they might need at that level great presentation I'm still thinking of my question somewhere I I saw that um uh when you had your charts uh the um

164when you had the different kinds of alternative uh practices that were used somewhere I saw that the restorative justice numbers had actually dropped in comparison to others and I was just trying to form the question over there uh to could you okay let me rephrase a question could could you explain all the different ways in which those practices work I mean you got the restorative one is the apology letter one is the you're talking about restorative justice and the restorative interventions right so through discipline process we give options and tiered interventions for any kind of like um reaction to a disciplinary thing so depending upon what it might be it could be a restorative intervention meaning like the restorative intervention really is around building and maintaining relationship and rebuilding a relationship between two people that

165have been harmed from each other and trying to figure out the best way that we can all agree upon a particular student to respond and say they're sorry basically to a classroom or to another individual student so there's a lot of different things buildings can do we give a list of things that are options of an apology letter is one option um students sometimes stand in front of the classroom um and there's other things that other buildings have come up with on their own to do so there's a lot of different ways that can do that and buildings have kind of like taken that on on themselves which has been great to find other ways to do things like that does that answer your question sort of and so what works the best what's I

166mean the easiest thing is somebody just saying sorry right so so you'd be surprised students don't want to say they're sorry they rather say I'll take the suspension um that's been my experience it doesn't mean they're going to accept it correct right right so the hardest thing is get is to get them to accept the restorative response and we push to do that a lot and and and personal experience in my end when I was a principal it's that I'll take 3day suspension to one day and say what we call home and say this is the choice and your son or daughter is choosing this or the other thing but we try to really push the the restorative thing but in your terms of your question what's the best thing to do it all depends

167on the student and the situation it's they're all independent from each other so there's a lot of different variables that go come into play so one thing might not work for another student so fair enough just building on that thread is there something that that would be a how do I say community based solution or what would you like us to know or how would you if there were to be a magic wand and we can engage the community in supporting us and making sure these situations pan out in the most positive ideal way is there something Community Based that you could think of or a group that you would like to partner with that could help in supporting us having you know things not spill over from the community or long fraught historical things

168just coming into school with us so we partnered with community members in the past uh mediation matters is one of the partners we've had in the past um and currently have some um relationship with them and we've conducted um restorative conferences in the public um I personally did a restorative conference between a police officer and a student and brought in the families and other support people for the student as well but conducted a circle so things like that do happen but in terms of like what you do on their end I think it's it's more more of just supporting what we're doing and if there's something that happens big that we might need support we would reach out and ask for some assistance on that end but I can't think of anything off the top

169of my head that would be helpful at this moment thank you so um again I I want to thank you you both and and all of you all who are on this uh pupil personal side um so I don't know if this is along the same lines but um of uh Dr chatur's question I think it's so it just feels ridiculous to ask this but I I'm I'm trying to understand uh not so much what works best but does what we're doing actually work or are we a or is it something where we're like is does is working defined as we're able to like maintain a certain level of something some culture some behavior in the school so we can get through the day but versus are we actually have an impact having an impact

170on a long-term uh you know way of of supporting the youngster um you understand what I'm saying I think you're trying to get to is is repeat offenders like if something happens and we have a restorative conference are they doing the same thing over and over again Defenders but it also just may be um are is I guess I'm just trying to get better at understanding you know schools have taken on so much of of what I can recall there was used to be more and maybe it has to do with where I grew up more like of these services that were in the community you know and you know there was a partnership but a lot of them were sort of Community Based it just seems to me that at least these days uh

171most of this responsibility is really falling on the schools and I'm not faulting that I think we I think it's a good place for it that's where we have students all the time but are is it will will a youngster graduate who's who we been servicing for however many over time are they graduating with the skills with the knowledge and further support to be able to cope and manage out there or is it is it just a situational that we were able to just help keep a situation keep the lid on a situation for now and maybe next week but it's really not having a long-term systemic impact do do you see what I'm saying on that level do you want to respond I'm trying to think of a a story right um and you

172have to understand I mean I'm also in human behavior I understand it takes it takes a lot you know to to help change something when youngsters are experiencing a lot of stuff whatever that might be I can talk about two situations one personal one that's I think evolving and I think it's around what you're asking and about the impact of restorative practices and or peer mediation or things like that and trying to figure out if that's making an impact and changing Behavior long term down the road where students are evolving and growing from that a personal experience we had a mediation program when I was principal and we would train we trained probably 15 20 students at the middle school level and we found that and they did a great job and we found that

173when things happened and mediations had to happen the students ran them there was an adult present who just supervis it but the students ran it we found the best people to recruit to be Pam meters the next year were those students were being mediated and so we saw that skill on my end come to fruition for them and and change them in a in a drastic way um so can can I just also interrupt you so um and I guess uh I mean the Restort of justice peace that's just one aspect I'm talking about of all the combined services in that under your umbrella um are we having a long-term impact do and and how do we know on student Behavior I guess so sorry it took me a minute to kind of frame that

174the way that I so I think the best way to answer your question is looking at our student outcomes and when you look at the discipline referral data the suspension data our superintendent hearing data that data is decreasing um which tells us that the interventions and supports that we have in place for our students are having a positive impact on their behaviors and the recidivism of of those behaviors um in schools um we also have you know an amazing wraparound service um Continuum of Serv services for our our students as well and so certainly I don't think that we can pinpoint one exact intervention or strategy that's having an impact on student outcomes but in in totality what we're doing in our schools are having that positive impact Mr so um you guys included uh

175data profile which is pretty extensive and really useful but I had some questions just for my own kind of edification let me just pull them up so um there was something that caught my eye that um an increase that was tracked between 21 uh 22 school year and 22 and then 23 school years um the use possession or sale of drugs we went from 29 in 2022 to 82 to 85 um what were we doing that essentially nabbed those extra like I mean because I'm assuming that there was something that we did differently because it doesn't jump 50 points in a year without us doing something differently so that was my first uh question or clarification so we too noticed that huge increase and I would like to say that it was because of some

176new technology or screening techniques but it also coincides with the legalization of marijuana and our um local stores um access had um certainly increased dramatically and um we noticed that there was a lot more um particularly marijuana and marijuana products coming in to the school um as uh we began to um look at this more we have done some Outreach to some uh local agencies and um we were looking to build in more education pieces in our secondary particularly at the high school so that is actually underway right now to see about bringing in more um education and having it be more relevant um to students uh with uh particular guest speakers gotcha um did do you know if that accounted for more vaping like like you know marijuana Vape tools is that do you

177know like if it was it a specific format or like well I do know it's not tobacco because tobacco is not under that category so if we knew it was tobacco um it would not have been tracked as um under the Vader category for drugs yeah so as far as um I honestly would say I believe it was more Vapes but I don't have it broken down in a t even know because sometimes it's it's hard to tell you know what what it is is it a you know is it a vape with the marijuana liquid inside it or is it a vape with you know a lot of the um ironically many of the items that have been confiscated are actually labeled in their original containers what they are uh again coming from you

178know um local stores or from certainly from Massachusetts and now within New York um and so they actually said what the products were um and sometimes those items were not even opened um so um and then we use our our police Partners to help us identify if we're unsure got it um just to quickly jump uh there's also man managed behaviors um and fighting being essentially the top one in 2024 and I was just wondering um if we have additional kind of metadata on that so it says 1570 for 2023 24 how many unique students make up that um it you know because right off the bat it just seems like you know they could be we'll have to run that I don't I don't know with me tonight go ahead so I'm sorry one

179one more followup here um and I know that there are certainly some of some of the service we have there are some things in the community but um I think I'm I'm I'm concerned that there're uh we don't we have a certain amount of care in school but you know for for the youngsters but there seems to be a community piece missing I mean would you agree with that and and I'm wondering whether that's somewhat where we maybe again it's not entirely all on us but as a legislative agenda item we could be certainly calling on more of that because of I'm try I'm not saying that we shouldn't as schools have this responsibility but there's a whole like Continuum of Care kind of thing that's needed out there and I just I I feel

180like you know what we're doing you know I'm I'm and I'm glad to hear that there that we can say that this is successful but I'm also looking at like is it sustainable are we are we able are we just keeping the lid on the explosion you know if you will and and I I hate saying things like that but but that's what I mean and so we were able to get through that the school day the school week the year uh some of our youngsters but we've got a situation that is still very um maybe unpredictable out there um and so what's what what's needed to support the work that you all are doing every day in school and it seems to me that some of that has to be ongoing community service level

181work and I don't feel there's enough of that but I I have colleagues who also do more of that work in the background than I but that's been my um my experience here but so and you don't really have to answer that I'm just trying to you know you want you just want so much for for everybody and you want to be able to um provide that support and and you all are doing that and uh and and thankfully you are um it just feels like as a society as a community that certain more things or some some complimentary things would be helpful oh M yeah go ahead I was just going to um just comment that you know we have seen an increase in youth violence out in the community and I know superintendent

182Hawk Ridder um with the support of Mr Lesco is partnering with the mayor's office the DA's office the police department and other community organizations to and then District um staff as well to look at ways that we can support our students in the community at large can support our students outside of the regular school day because we all know that it takes a village to raise a child um and there's so much truth in just that um that statement alone so we're you know continuously looking at ways to partner with the community um with our local agencies and elected officials to um put programs in place um that are outside of the regular school day Dam I I did rean say something I I was but you can go ahead okay so certainly I appreciate

183all the efforts that the district um is is doing um and my my comment is because because I gave it a lot of thought since our last board meeting because I was feeling a particular way about the cell phone policy but perhaps um uh the uh uh Banning of cell phone during periods will also reduce some of that drama that becomes um fights in the community after school and things like that so and I listen to the public comments um earlier tonight and they were right on point with the majority of the student altercations whether they're verbal or physical are probably 99% the result result of cell phone use uh via text message um chat snapchat um YouTube all those types of social media platforms that um engage students meet me in Tower 22 um

184because there's going to be be a large scale fight and so not having cell phones period you know Bell to Bell um will certainly eliminate um the majority not all but the majority of um physical and um verbal altercations and we should say in the school environment that doesn't mean it's not going to happen outside so I'm just just to be clear so that's why I think the superintendent with the bigger discussions uh in the in the community is is so important just I wanted to get um my thought on this uh no it's okay uh the mckin vento uh case increase of over a hundred so it's a essentially I want to say like a 15% increase or 20% increase year toe um and that that has budget implications and that are we um

185is your team working with the superintendent on forecasting or kind of trying to predict where we're going to land next year so um we don't fall short budget wise yeah we um have been so fortunate to have a grant for the past three years and um it was a reoccurring Grant from the prior three years so we've been fortunate to now this will be almost the six-year cycle and through that Grant we were able to hire two additional um homeschool coordinators as case workers and uh they've been providing essential Services out to families who are newly um identified um or new to the district under mcken vento and I've been working with the um certainly the um grants office um because that's you know they usually look to sustainability and working with um Miss McKenna

186to try to really make sure that um these services will stay in the district because we see them as essential um so um to your answer I do believe it is because of of also the work that we're able to educate and provide services and that's why our numbers have also grow um gotten larger um not to say that there isn't an increase as well so it's hard to know exactly um what's contributed to that um but definitely we are expecting another round for the grant um we are anticipating applying for it is not yet released they keep telling us it's going to change so we don't know what that means um but uh certainly we are you know even our own case workers who are funded by those positions are as you can you

187know think of anybody in that position are a little worried right but um you know are they are homeschool coordinators and they part of the district so um hopefully we will be able to continue that work but it is something that is on our radar for sure excuse me but to be clear that when you say Grant that's the Federal mcken vento monies right okay so not not there's not out other monies you it's okay so that's why this uncertainty maybe but and our homeless leison is also to correct me if I'm wrong but um supported by um within the general fund so AR the liaison position is covered yes wison sorry I don't know if I'm out of order but I just wanted to plus one back to board member Smith statement which basically

188gets to the heart of my question also about when I was asking if there was a magic wand Magic Bullet whatever you want to call it because there is a sense of our fundamental task is to do education yet we're confronting so many things that are beyond that naturally we have our multi-disciplinary um groups that we're working with but it's just the question of the big what's missing like is there a non-traditional atypical way that we need to approach certain things because I just feel like I don't want to mince words I want to be frank one of the very recent um Fireworks interactions at Emperor State Plaza literally had a barricade separating one side of town from another so there's that sensibility knowing that for things to be successful this has to happen it

189should not be the way it's just what they've done so just trying to understand are there people in the community that we have to point to um unelected official Community Grio people with the knowledge the connections to help us because to board member Smith Point it may not be something everything would plus one every what everybody said about the cell phones some of the things cook up at other locations at Crossgates Mall at games externally in the community then they come to school so that's essentially what I think her question was getting to heart too was what I was pointing to too which is why I wanted to Circle back to it so I just appreciate you all and wanted to this plus one her statement because that's what the heart of the question was

190I think we would be remiss not to mention that we do work with our faith-based organizations um pastors on patrol that certainly come to the table uh when we are um seeing conflicts between student groups we also have a great partnership with ncbi the National Coalition building Institute um who is working they are working with our um School District um specifically at Albany High School and AIA uh to address conflicts between uh uh groups of students as well so those are two um you know community-based um organizations and Partnerships that we have that we work closely with to address um conflict between student groups whether it's in school or outside of the school day in in the community and to add on to a um Miss McKenna just said also we've um we recently engaged

191in um anre with snug um to make that more formal as well any other questions folks I will just add one group to this sorry there's a group that just emerged I don't want to get their name wrong but I feel like their very basic name is black men United and they actually may comprise groups that actually we already work with in intersection in the group and I feel like if we were to pose this question to them or invite them to one of our community roundt they could have insight into this conversation also thank you folks I guess the next task is the code of conduct right for you yeah I mean all that's going to go in the cell phone policy so thank you thank you all right moving on next item is

192the budget update Mr Caris good evening so this is just going to be a quick update as uh we're still gathering information for our budget um most of the slides and the uh financial information that's on there is a repeat from the February 27th meeting um there's one slide though that I want to just draw attention to as the um oh sorry just passed right by it the tax cap calculation which is the I had the tax cap calculated cap of 5.06 but I wanted to break it down by some numbers as well um as if we needed to do a tax levy increase you see right there in the chart the 0% a0 5% increase a 1% 1.5 just to give some numbers behind the uh tax levy if needed and then right hand

193side you see the homestead non- Homestead differences per thousand if nothing has changed or nothing changes when we calculate the tax cap or tax rate in the summer time um there's a lot of variables that do relate to that um the common Council and the proportionate rate is one of the biggest ones uh that's something that we don't control as a school district and then you can see on the most right hand side of the chart is that's based on a $300,000 home um with the recessed values and how much of difference it would be in the tax bill um but other than that the information that is provided here is a continuation of information that we are still working on as a Cabinet as a district to provide to the board um and how

194to proceed going forward as the three I'm sorry the March 27th meeting will have a lot more information and a lot more detail to it um prior to the 410 meeting that we would probably need to approve a budget or accept the budget so just a little bit of a timeline just a little bit of an update just a little bit more granular details that we could provide um anything else in this presentation hasn't changed so start this Miss man any questions I don't but I appreciate that I was able to review this presentation prior to now and I like this time of year because every time we come together we're just building on what we did at the time before so thank you uh thank you thank you for continuing to put it together

195and you know I think it's going to be important as we look forward to the new budget to realize that our student population may not be growing as quickly so we might not be able to continue the expansion that we've been continuing with this continued growth but I have faith I have faith in you to uh keep it together and make sure that we're right sizing the amount of staff we have to be appropriate for our students needs thanks I feel like I left for two seconds yeah um and we're already on questions so I don't have any right now I did review uh the PowerPoint um but I have not reviewed it thoroughly enough to come up with any reasonable questions so nothing much has changed since the last day yeah I I don't

196really have any uh changes I have lots of uh things going on in my mind in terms of um our ability to continue to address the needs and and while enrollment might be down we might see some shifts the needs however are still uh I think very uh mighty and and evident um Staffing um you know we have Staffing we're still we're in the but in the continuous mode of hiring you know I don't know what that looks like uh you know going forward so um just lots of those questions as well um and uh you know so I I look forward to us getting a bit more information I I I feel like um I don't know I don't know that it's been any different from previous years it feels different and maybe that's

197just the reality I keep saying that we're living in where I feel like we had a bit more information at certain points earlier um and I don't know if that's really accurate or just kind of my assumption so I'm getting a little nervous um because I feel like there's still uh some detail that we we don't have not not your fault at all you know just you know just waiting on different pieces to come together uh and also the climate in which we're uh finding ourselves so I'm just trying to uh get to questions that in my own thinking uh that as soon as we have more information you know I just want to kind of figure how are we balancing things um um you know needs staffing um is it does it uh is

198there something we have to do fundamentally about the way we are uh providing instruction that we have to do now because of the reality we are in we just don't know some of these things um and uh but we know we're always going to need a few more resources than than we're being given so um anyway but I want to thank you and and staff for for continually trying to get us what we need uh in order to address certain uh questions and to to do what we need to do and that is to support uh our um our teachers and our students certainly in being successful and accomplished so thank you you wison it's just too early to have anything in terms of a strong opinion either way I thank you for this update

199and keeping it on the radar um I don't think people think about budget until it's around that time of year but it's just always the Forefront of our mind there's always factors and variables so I appreciate appreciate you thank you again I mean we don't have all the information it's just going to come probably the next couple of weeks I I believe the one house bills or budgets passed today or or over this week they should be coming out if we don't have it we should be getting those quick enough yes they're out right I think I saw an email flash by right before I was coming to meeting board meeting uh so once we look at those numbers we'll see exactly where the legislature stands in comparison to the executive budget which is what

200we were basing our numbers on uh guesstimates on uh what happens on the federal end we still don't know and how that'll impact us is another uh issue uh though none of those numbers are actually reflected here right so that will not affect this but it'll be a hall that we'll have to figure out how to fill uh to keep that programming alive so you know challenging times unchartered Waters could um president Shar I actually appreciate you clarifying that on on record right so what happens at the federal level is not about what's going on right here in this budget however it does for me given the times we're living in it presents with a little bit of caution for for for me as as we as we come into this so like I just

201took a break because I wanted to be really brigh eyed for this discussion you know and um so yeah so I just I just I I want us to be I guess on our toes right and and the thing is some of the things uh in terms of enrollment and stuff might be like what we saw in 2016 you know with the immigration policies changing drastically our El's dropped and so enrollment student numbers dropped and then you know we we have to make sure that we have the ratios in the right and so there might be as long as we can keep the programming sustainable for the students who are in the district that's the best we can do right so right but there will be some uh it'll be it'll be painful if we

202don't have money and if the state doesn't give us and if the state would fund us our prek funding which we've been asking for in an equitable manner for this for I don't know 10 years now um that will be like a few million dollars that we don't fund from general fund right and and so these are choices that we we have made as a district based on our vision mission and goals that we want to provide our students the best educational environment that we can possibly give them with the funds we have uh I mean we would want to do a lot more but we just aren't able to right now and we made those choices and since we can get the funding here we take it from general fund and and but on

203the other hand you know for the last what nine years I think our U tax rate has been less than 1% we've tried to keep it you know as low as possible things that are out of our control property values or or tax levies we can control those but what we can control we've tried uh and and we'll keep keep trying we'll keep trying but this year would be different um if it already feels different so we'll see just one other question if I might so uh Mr Carris do do do you anticip I mean I think that we've always had this sort of here's our our best guess at what we you know what we'd like our budget to be but here's uh perhaps a contingency and we're not there yet would you say

204or would you how are you moving progressing along that thinking so on the expense side I think we're pretty close I think there's a couple things that we're still looking at um possibly to add or alter into the budget um but then you you have to have a conscious thought of what the revenue source and stream ability to sustain um we all want to make sure that we provide the best opportunities for our students but we also have to make sure that as we build the budget what our community could sustain as well so it's a a dual thought um and that's why we're still waiting for more information usually this time is kind of an awkward time this is just a different awkward time because the way that the executive budget came out how

205much money was already put into the executive budget and usually you have a gap usually as the executive budget comes with a low ball budget then when the state completely makes a budget it usually comes up to a point where we're kind of at so the the thought I've never seen or I don't know where or what the negotiations or what is going to be given up to get more funding if we're already almost to the point where we would be funded um so that that's kind of the awkward part it's like do we hope and expect that we get more money for state aid yes how much we don't know I don't think it's going to be enough to cover the gaps that we do have so that's kind of like where we're talking

206about what the rollover budget is the Staffing the ratios the programming to make sure that we can sustain and then we have to make sure that we have a long-term plan to sustain because nobody wants to have a cliff nobody wants to come up with a huge tax ly increase so it's smooth growth or stability um moving forward and and would you would you and um superintendent agree that we're we're not in a different situation than other districts out here that we really all all of them are faced with the these same yeah concerns questions yeah I'll I'll jump in um we are also a member of the Suburban Council and the Suburban council is basically a three County or three region um set set of large comprehensive school districts that meet on issues that

207are that we have in similarity so actually tomorrow is our monthly lunch in uh and we are hosting a AIA and so there will be about uh 20 other superintendents joining us in the number one discussion is the budget and everyone is trying to figure out um where the governor is going to land uh in terms of the negotiation with the assembly and the Senate uh what we heard this morning was anywhere between 600 or 570 and $700 million additional money going to uh the budget for foundation aid but with some um with some caveats that there would be uh an aid calculation for uh districts downstate because of cost of living and and all of those sort of things um there'd be a different Aid ratio for uh districts with uh for high cost

208special education reimbursement Ells a little bit of the Rockefeller group so they've got to they've got to figure all of that out but um districts are already talking about number of positions that they may lose through attrition uh districts that may have to lay off other staff and and there are list serves out there among superintendents and and other uh lead administrators about districts that need people and districts that may be um laying folks off so this this is real um many districts had to face this two years ago um shortly coming out of covid uh this board and and District made some um different decisions in order to mitigate uh that Cliff so soon um and uh one of the things you'll see is as we get further in the budget development is the

209use of reserves um during the co days we were able to um limit our use of reserves to build our our bank account for the rainy day many of those districts used their reserves a number of years ago um we may end up with a with a spending plan that says that this is the rainy day the next three years we need to be real strategic with increasing our use of reserves so that we can minimize or mitigate any sort of tax increase and expense side um like other districts are are doing we need to look at folks that are uh that are retiring or positions that we've had in the budget that we just couldn't fill and determine which of those positions for folks who are retiring are really Mission critical and what impact

210that would have on the learning environment for students so it it really is um there really are two right now moving Parts um Staffing and reserves and we will we are our teams coming up with with different uh educational plans around those two um and oftentimes what happens the school districts do that and then all a sudden in the last minute they receive the additional Aid and the governor ends up being the hero the issue is that that additional Aid just is not there let's say they agree on the uh at the top end 700 million of additional Aid um to school districts there's 732 school districts you know and and I know they're not all the same and some are wealthier and and certainly some some are not but um that additional Aid will

211not cover our Gap so we've we've got to look a little differently at some of the positions we have and the folks who are retiring and and really determine um what we may be able to live without so that we're not using tax increases uh as uh as the only other mitigating Factor and and one other thing I wanted to point out just so the people who are listening pay attention to is that the state has a tax cap of 2% and that 5.02 or whatever you had on the slide is the result of that 2% calculation so 2% is actually equal to 5.02 work out the math but uh and those are things that we don't control um but I don't think we'll ever reach a 5% uh tax ly but you know we

212look we we have when we trying to calculate this we have to look at all these factors um but and then we I just want you guys to know and explain to you how this thing works because it's not so easy and now even with the Rockefeller formula which they're still tweaking as we speak because when we were lobbying with the big five there were all these districts U downstate Upstate um advocating for their needs and and that those formulas could still get changed as we are talking uh and so no one really knows what that Foundation Aid formula is going to work out you know whether it's going to be in our favor is it going to be neutral is it going to hurt this uh too many unknowns at this point in game

213uh let alone you know within the state let alone what what's happening outside of New York so you just wait and watch and see and and I keep your fingers crossed thank you Mike sorry I was just curious if we're going to get a presentation from the community Budget Group in a similar fashion that we've gotten them before uh when we have a finalized budget you'll have a lot more detail a lot more information it's all going to be together so you can see everything together um and I that's why I'm saying by I think on 327 presentation you'll have a lot more detail because we'll have a lot more answers um so I I guess to me I'd rather not put so much out there if you don't know exactly where it's going to

214go and typically once we approve the budget that's when we go out into the community and present that approved budget as to why how it's going to fa thank you okay on to board committee reports okay so the um facilities committee we met uh last I'm sorry this week the 11th um and uh we we will um I will send around to you the uh notes from that um and uh we again we're moving along the direction of seeing the high school uh the capital project being completed um it was great to see this week uh the uh culinary uh site for the students which is looking beautiful um the barbering was was uh area was getting there and the maker space was also uh getting there in the high school and of course we

215do have some other as you know things that we're working on with the panels around the building and uh some tennis court repairs all of those things we' we've known about but uh those things will will begin to sort of take care of themselves but the the the inside core of the building uh where students are um receiving instruction um is is looking really good so um we we are moving along um the other thing that we uh have been working on as a separate subcommittee of course is the uh stained glass windows piece and so those windows are um are have begun to be taken apart and the structure uh rebuilt to support them and I mean so uh we are um and I would ask my colleagues to be sure to check their

216calendar or their email because we did get some dates that um or possible dates to go see those windows um but I don't think uh I didn't we didn't hear from everyone and so if we're going to do that we should probably look at a time and we can extend that to um to the committee members the ad hoc committee members and to board members who might want to go take a peek at the work that's being done uh by Chapman Studios and so um up up in the building in the high school you can see where those windows are going to go um and uh they're looking uh you know so that space is already ready for installation there um so uh so anyway I will make sure you have that information and I

217think the other important thing uh that we're looking at is you know there is some work that uh is likely to have to be done in a couple of buildings prior to us getting the Sur conditions building survey up and and actually moved on um we do have some some things that are going to have to be uh dealt with sooner rather than later and so that'll be coming to you but you'll see that in in this report so we we do not meet yet again until um April and uh I'll make that uh date known on the 27th um in terms of uh the uh ad hoc committee on the student uh representative who will sit on this board after or for next year um we're making progress I have to admit that I

218I did take a little bit of time away and so so I uh did do nothing nothing associated with uh the district so um but I have I did think about obviously what needed to happen next um so we are um going to get ourselves acclimated together and uh and then begin to uh collect a little bit more information from our students and faculty and so forth but I do anticipate moving materials along to miss cree and the policy committee uh I think I said that last meeting but it it is true it's coming um and uh I wanted to make sure also that you all were aware in your email box and thank you Miss tons for this um the the nisba the the New York State School boards Association uh is doing a

219um a uh webinar focused on the student uh board rep and I want to make sure uh that you all look at that um and I'm sorry I'm just uh trying to pull that up real quick here we go no it's but I'm just going to ask you to go in and take a look at that and um because it's a webinar you can do it from wherever okay it's Wednesday April 23rd okay so it's in your Tuesday inbo when she's in the email okay Tuesday okay well I saw it I registered so I'm just saying please don't miss it um and uh and it would be helpful I think uh especially those of you on the policy committee to to you know um to one one or somebody one or more than somebody's could

220participate in that that would be great um and uh so that's that committee the other committee is the um uh adoc committee on routine consent and uh so we are still going at it you know um we I think the next component really is on our field trip um um forms but also I think some of what we're discussing May go back to policy um so as soon as we uh you know get have that U situated we'll be reporting back and uh I'm sorry I have to look at the I think we meet on Monday um that Ellen's shaking correctly yes yes I'll be wearing green okay oh yes St Patrick's yes so thank you for that and um so we're keeping it moving and uh we will come back to you all um

221as soon as we can about the outcome so all right I think those are my committees thank you very good grey thank you the policy committee will not be meeting again until April however you know we've we've been getting our work done we will get the policy memo to you um I think in addition to waiting from actually gosh we're waiting from two um from Miss Smith's ad hoc student committee on the student board rep thing so I'm looking forward to going to the webinar and to getting the draft of the policy because we're really I mean I'm personally really excited to have a student on the board and then I think we're also waiting on the ad hoc routine consent committee regard regarding um adult conferences like employee conferences that's the other one where

222it's been uh confusing confusing subject for a number of years because we've postponed our policy discussion of conferences until we can get our ad hoc um no I don't even want to say the form but until we can get the function and the procedure uh clear so that's it I haven't checked the policy tracking tool is that updated it is not updated yet but an and I went over it and she's giv me some remedial tutoring in it so I've at least learned how to get to it from Google Drive so that's a start and I she explained to me what I need to do to bring it up today because come May and June are going to be your busiest months with all bunch of policies coming up and code of conduct that's going

223to take a lot of time it always does yeah so the audit committee will meet in April cool thank you everyone any other business motion to adjourn M crey M Wilson all in favor okay thank you e e