001e e e is Bobby Ready good evening good evening my name is sha 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 all our board members present here with us Mr alavi Miss Smith Mr Wilson Miss CI Miss Savage Miss man uh we have the superintendent and members of the cabinet also here 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 you will discuss are available at Alban schools.org this is a good time for me to note that if you're here tonight to speak in public common you should sign up with Miss timens or B cler here to
002arrive with that introduction I invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance Al the United States of America to for stands one indivisible liy and justice for all in addition to the Pledge of Allegiance we always focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district of Aly which is to work in partnership with our diverse Community to engage every Learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the Knowledge and Skills necessary for Success superent hawr you have a report for us I do and I'll let Mr leco kick us off thank you and good evening uh it is our pleasure to begin tonight's District highlights with recognition of our school resource officers uh our SRO are important members of our districtwide
003safety team uh through our partnership with the ALB Police Department we have three sro's working in our district this school year Officer Nick Schuler at Albany High School officer Nicole Rex at William S hacket middle school and new this month officer Brian mcaro at North Albany Middle School while the sro's have primary responsibilities at their assigned schools they also also respond to assist schools throughout the district as needed we celebrated SRO appreciation day earlier this month and are grateful for the opportunity to recognize them in person here tonight uh we also are pleased tonight to welcome uh police chief Brendan Cox joining us I'm now going to turn it over to director of safe schools and violence prevention Jason Davis to tell us more thank you sir appreciate it thank you everybody for being here
004uh I just like to say that uh school resource officer programs are collaborative efforts by the police agencies Law Enforcement Officers Educators students parents and communities uh the goal is to promote safe learning environments to provide valuable resources to school staff members and to Foster positive relationships with students and helping develop strategies to resolve problems that affect our youth uh something I've learned over my 30 plus years now in law enforcement and school safety experiences is that uh it's not just about placing officers in schools it's about placing the right police officers as SRO in our schools to help make a difference they are carefully they're carefully selected specifically trained dedicated to the needs of the school and the community uh fortunately for us our sro's uh consistently go above and beyond what it takes
005to sustain a successful partnership uh they never simply uh work their shift and then go home after a regular school day uh they see themselves as more than just police officers they are in constant Comm communication with our safety teams uh participating excuse me participating in multiple after school programs and initiatives some of which they themselves have actually uh helped to create they take on informal roles as mentors counselors uh serving as trusted adults within the school Community not only do they play a vital role in school violence prevention they also help students navigate challenging situations whenever they can whether it be on campus off- campus during regular school hours after school or when there is no no school in session uh I myself am very grateful of what they do to contribute to influencing
006a positive School climate in our district and Community uh and I am proud and it's my privilege to introduce our school resource officers and I'll turn over to [Applause] them hi my name is Officer Nick Schuler um I've been with the albony police department for 10 years uh Jason pretty much said everything I wanted to say but um 10 years in law enforcement this role that we have goes beyond enforcement and I'm thankful to be able to build positive relationships with the students and staff in my building and throughout the district and uh thank you for having us [Applause] tonight good evening I'm I'm Brian mcaro and I'm the newest school resource officer I've been here for for six days now uh so so F first and foremost I want to thank Chief Cox and
007Lieutenant Anderson and Sergeant Davis for this opportunity I I find this job very refreshing I'd like to thank Miss Piper um the principles the entire staff I've been incredibly impressed by how well put together nams is um the services that are available for the students and it really is a pleasure to go there every day um I accept that I'm a guest in your school I am happy to support your teachers and your staff in any way that I can and uh I'm looking forward to learning from everybody so thank you very much for having me guys [Applause] good evening everybody uh my name is Nicole Rex I'm a school resource officer for hacket Middle School I've been a police officer for over 13 years now and been in the schools since 2019 so I'm
008the senior SRO here these guys look to me for everything um but it's a great group to work with um everybody's been supportive the ALB City School District hacket school has been a second work family to me and I still love what I do every day um the best part of the job is creating those positive relationships with the students the families and um the teachers that keep going on and on for years so thank you so much for the [Applause] recognition so thank you all so I'll I'll just wrap things up so I'm Brenan Cox um I'm on my second turn back here um as Chief so I just really want to thank everybody I want to thank Ron I want to thank the superintendent thank the board for your support um but I
009really want to thank Nicole Nick and Brian for all the work they do and then behind them is Commander Harrington Norah Harrington and Lieutenant Devin uh Anderson for their support and all they give Brian um Nicole and Nick because this is a partnership and at the end of the day we believe in making sure that we work as partners to provide Public Safety for our entire community and we need to invest in our kids a few years ago and make craft over there who also often chips in when it comes to our kids in our schools but at the end of the day a number of years ago we started a strategic plan and one of our goals was winning over a generation and that was twofold it was about recognizing that we needed to
010have more positive relationships with our youth we needed to have our youth recognize that we need to be their mentors we need to have our kids look up to us and these three are the a me of that the work that they do with the youth in this city the youth in our schools is just amazing um I've been able to now see this twice because I've known them from when I was here before I left in 2017 and now I've seen how they've grown and how they have just carried that on and they've done that on their own and they just continue um to just step into that goal and recognize that we need to develop our youth we need to be there for them we need to support them and you know when
011all of the national push back on school resource officers came around and said our police can't be in our schools arresting officers it happened after I retired and I was off doing my other job I retired and I was still working but I was in my other job and I was saying to people no you don't understand our police officers in our school aren't there to arrest kids they're there to be mentors they're there to work with them they're there to ensure their safety they're there to ensure they have a healthy environment to grow up in and that's what these guys do every single day and I thank you all for supporting that and recognizing that that's what we need to do to have a healthy and safe environment in this city and that's what
012we're dedicated to so thank you guys for the work you guys do every day Devon and Nora thank you guys for supporting that it is truly truly appreciated superintendent thank you very much for your [Applause] partnership thank you we'll just take some time to take a few pictures now e e e [Music] all right thank you um I uh we are now pleased to welcome principal John Powell to tell us about the great things happening this school year at monor Magnet School is it on we're well I say again then good evening Board of Education superintendent rider thank you for inviting us to share some of the many great things about the school that we love monor magnet school I'm joined today by our MCC president Miss Anna kellings um in my eighth year now
013at monor I've had the chance to work with a host of different MCC president partners and an's been wonderful so asked her to join me today and she said I'll do whatever you need pal and so she here we are came here today so um all right working off of the SL I'm seeing right there so uh my name is John Paul as you've already heard and my partner for all of my eight years is home school coordinator Akira Marshall um we'll move on to the next slide just to give me a little look at the current demographics of monu and I added a slide or excuse me a column in there because they're evolving um you know as you take a look at where we are even just compared to three years prior there's
014some interesting trends that you see and there's actually one number I want to amend in there is our current um amount of students that are English language Learners we have seen noticeable increase just a few years ago we were sitting in single digits and at this point we're at 30 um following the trend of the district for sure but um absolutely something that has begun to really inform the professional development work that we do the thinking that we do as far as um meeting the needs of those new to the country and new to our building and so beyond that um some other points to highlight would be I would say for the first time maybe in the history of monor as a school the percentage of white students has fallen below 40% I it
015goes back as far as I go um and I imagine that probably was on Trend um above that before and so the school continues to evolve we'll go to the next slide pulling some of the items from our SE that have really framed what we've been working on this year um absolutely working on the continued incorporation of ruler we're all familiar with ruler and social emotional behavior eai and core um all of these different efforts are seen across the district but each individual School takes on its own efforts to make them a part of what we do and when you're wrapping anything into a public monu it brings its own unique sort of challenges and conversation and so um these are things we're very active in working to make a part of what we do
016and at this point I feel very good about where we stand with each and I think that any visitor would see they've all each become a piece of the daily experience for our students tier one planning for Math and Ela hugely important um we make regular ongoing efforts to use the many available data sources to plan for instruction to consider our e and small group instruction to um program our Cel work in reading and math and these work throughout the year as we um work off of the last state test and work towards the next and all of the different data that comes to us in the middle through nwaa and ecbm and the like but the tier one planning is something we actively engage in not just in ela but at moneri we also
017do specifically with math um tier one plans just the same and then regarding math our newest primary instruct resource luster of math in its second year um we've worked to not just grow with the program but also engage in the studio model um moving not just from fifth grade to also now third grade um teachers involved in studio working alongside teachers in the same grade level but in other schools under the guidance of our math coach so a few key pieces to pull out of the set for this year on to the attendance that's something we always do well with um at this moment just kind of looking at it as of today actually updated the numbers to give you right to the minute but um our n our daily attendance average sitting above 95%
018absolutely meets our goal of 95% um years even even going back to our Co year we've always been able to maintain and I think that our community sees the value of it but it's not to say that we don't have a lot of work that goes into it through letters through parent meetings through Communications regular attendance meetings with my team um in just promoting that attendance matters through all of our um Communications to families and they show that by showing up our chronic absenteeism percent sits at 11 for the year at this time um I believe those numbers um previous here were end of year numbers but I don't have any reason to think that we wouldn't continue to drop down we um often spend the first part of the year or the first half
019of the year with families who do maybe a vacation or different things where we then educate and say okay but magic numbers 18 don't get to 18 and by the Year's End our number usually drops even lower so and I want to pull out one highlight that we have less than 1% of our students below 90% daily attendance and I really proud of that I think that says a lot for the work of our team and the value our families place on being at monor just to kind of give a little look at some of the things that we are actively doing we use rooc calls office calls and letters meetings home visits by our attendants officer our home school coordinator attendant officer Miss Brown um daily tracking of our chronically absent students communication thread
020for special education student absences we started this years ago as we used to have a really high percentage of our students in the shine program that were chronically absent and made a concerted effort and continued that especially as we see those students who are getting close at this point if you're sitting at 12 13 14 you getting communication from the your classroom teacher you're getting communication from everyone on the team to just s the importance of it and if we have to facilitate getting you there we will get you there by whatever means it is so that you can be part of our day um atten language is regularly built into report cards to make sure that we have um sold the message but also um if we have to go to a Next Level
021measure It's always important to be able to say we've really explained the impact academically thoroughly um our teachers always connecting and working hard to support attendance and then our meetings that are held weekly add one today on the school highlights side I haven't done this I actually on our template it suggests a bunch of different things and I took one of those suggestions looking at music and our music department was like we've never been asked about this um to give this kind of information for the board meeting so they were happy to do that um Mr Deval Mr Stone and Mr vagado are amazing and really consistent Presence at monory luckily have having been able to work with them my entire time and I think that that's a key piece of growing the department growing
022the interest um and mon story all students in grades four and five take part in chorus I don't know if there are any other schools that do that but we we build that into our schedule so that they do which you know not only gives everyone a good look at things but it's great for concerts we have a huge turnout because every student participates and they value it and they turn out for the concerts just the same as an could absolutely attest to standing room only um I say amazing 74 4% of students in grades three through five are taking part in band or strings and the majority of students are learning those instruments with the help of school-owned instruments so programs that support that are really being used by that large percentage of students
023that are taking part and we had 10 students this year participate in nisma go to the next slide few slides just this is monor and monor I I people would always we have if you don't know us intently we are a building that has our monory classrooms and we have our shine classrooms and our shine program supporting students so we're supporting Health in Independence and Nur diversity for everyone shine as an acronym as something that came um off of the work done by the teachers and teacher assistants that serve as students in a program formally just called 613 and so we began a conversation early last year um around the idea that it needed to be something that Define their work more than just a ratio and since we have that ratio in buildings across
024the district um it was an easy effort to get people on board with so we worked through a monthlong effort of considering options and you know AI coming up with ideas on ways things that would make sense and like sound good and then coming up with a logo and all of that which um what if our teachers's husband he actually created it but shine has been adopted in all like programs across the district and I just think it's appropriate it really does capture the work that is done and the support for our neur Divergent students that this program offers and so here's some photos to just kind of capture what it's like um being a part and then you get another page that gives some additional photos and um I'll pull from that one oh
025moving quick um well there's another page there with uh students that are working on moner materials familiar to anybody who's been there and then down in the middle Center just going to highlight our wonderful Food Service staff from the kitchen and the cafeteria um and it's a it's a wonderful team uh so just some pictures of monor some academic highlights with a state test I would C I would capture our our performance from last year with some really impressive improvements in the cohort for ELA and minor setback step back in terms of some of the math so I I you know leave it at that but I I really am going to focus on primary first the um great growth in reading and comprehension skills demonstrated um by our students and move it into grade
026four and then grade five our next slide is about our monory community council so I'm going to turn this over to Anna to share a bit about her work thank you and thank you for allowing me to be here alongside you to be able to present this um as uh Mr pow mentioned I am Anna kellings I am the board chair of the Monas Community Council I have been part of the board for the past this is my third year um and part of my goal along with our team's goal is to build strong parent participation in the school um our goal is to not just allow the parents and the students to see that this is just a school Environ it's also something else for them to enjoy and have fun and create memories
027um we do frequently meet um inviting parents into our board meetings so they can understand what we're doing in the district or I'm sorry in the school understand what's happening understand the events that are happening we attempt to do fundraisers and these fundraisers are particularly helpful for student field trips sorry is this better sorry um so we do have quarterly board meetings um and these board meetings are aimed to have parents come in attend our meetings understand what we do understand how we are trying to gather them into the building um our focus is to try to recruit as many parents as possible that is somewhat of a challenge because of the time in the evening um parents do have other obligations but we attempt as much as possible with Communications via School messenger newsletters
028um emails which keeps them a breast of what's happening to also include our Facebook page some of the events that we have put together are typically summer play dates which are aimed for the new families who are entering the building um and we typically meet in our playground we provide um some type of refreshment ice cream um and that's a opportunity for parents to get to know the new parents that are coming into the building um we have done what has been very successful is we um the ice cream social and we get donations from steart Ice Cream as well as selling mums and that is a big hit it is the start of the Fall families come we listen to music ice cream is given out kids are happy smiling which is a great
029hit another one that we just did and you saw some pictures actually there's a picture up front now is a trunk or treat and we do have plenty of parent participants who actually dress up decorate their cars hand out ice cream and we do this in our parking lot um and it lasts for about an hour hour and a half and all you see are kids dressed in their um costumes just roaming around taking pictures excited hanging out with their friends and getting tons and tons of candy I'm sure by the end of the event parents are not very happy with me but hey it's only for one night um we also host two Book Fairs one in the fall and one in the spring which is pretty a pretty awesome event to see the
030first one that we do in the fall or the winter we um sell the books at regular prices and typically what we do is we communicate with classrooms of students who are unable to purchase any books and we make sure that these students do get a book without knowing that it was purchased for them um so we we obviously want to make everyone feel welcome and encourage and understand that love for reading is always there and then we also have our second one in the spring which is typically buy one get one free um and we are able to gather more books and actually give more books to other students and students in the classroom so with those um funds that are raised we typically save those monies for field trips or anything that teachers
031may need may desire um which is pretty awesome to see because often times as you know being a teacher it's often hard to buy things and um be able to purchase things and they usually come to us let us know what their intent is and with all smiles we give it to them we do have a multicultural Festival coming up next Thursday if you are more than happy to come and attend it is next Thursday at our school from 6:00 to 7:30 um where it is an opportunity for us to celebrate all the diversity that exists in our school and that includes having interactive tables um having families who are willing to share where they come from the types of foods that they eat the types of traditions that they hold um alongside some Raffles
032and again the monies that are always raised goes towards saving these monies for future field trips and any events that um are needed um we do have have a walk and ride to school which we partner with the police department where kids either walk or ride to school and this is typically on a Wednesday in May and we meet up at wesland Hills Park um We Gather there they get some healthy treats in the morning they either come in their bicycles they walk um and we hang around for a few minutes before they enter the school um and then we take a big picture everyone's excited and ready to start their morning and then lastly we have an ice cream truck day um where we host um an ice cream truck for the entire school
033they come they order whatever ice cream they want it is the best day of the day for them it's typically very hot which is towards the end of June um and it's an exciting day for them so our job at Monas Community Council is just to bring smiles to make sure that everyone's having a good time and to create beautiful memories thank you Anna the ice cream truck is really one of the examples of where Anna just sometimes rolls her eyes and say whatever you need pow and like you you cook up something or you find an opportunity or somebody a group we bring in and MCC always finds a way to to say yes if we feel like it's going to support our students and I really appreciate Anna challenges and next steps everyone
034has those uh just some things that are going to really continue to um shape what our experience looks like significant change in Staffing we have we all have four new teachers next year um what form will monaster training take like take uh that's a big question as we have the biggest turnover the school has had in its entire existence um we say goodbye to well over a 100 years of experience with uh three retirees and actually one who is filling in in a vacancy that we have right now so that's a major consideration and an answer um we're still working to fully navigate through um uh a shift in the shine programming another big consideration for a really important part of our school as we go from 613 ratio to 813 ratio our team will
035do it we will do it well as we always have no question about it but that definitely requires planning and um considerations as we go into the new school year and evolving an ongoing effort to marry District provided resources and monu materials practice and philosophy that will always be an effort that we are undertaking and working navigate and especially as we welcome four people new to public Monas story and help them learn how to balance those different pieces themselves as new teachers or teachers new to our building successes very proud of our homegrown development of professional development opportunities for our shy staff we have taken that on ourselves in a big way and making sure that we do almost weekly propy opportunities on various elements of what it takes to do arguably one of the
036most difficult jobs in the building which is be a part of our shine program continued growth and support of student social emotional needs uh efforts to bring into practice the E and SGI model Broad and evolving use of ruler pillars across the building uh a a data point that doesn't show up because I know zero is a data point but we don't talk about it as much as we should but zero days lost suspension in our building is three years and I would wager maybe no more than three in eight years that I've been there um and so and then nearly actually let's just say 95% daily attendance in terms of student voice our primary direction for those who want to take an active role in the area of student voice is no place for
037hate something that I really do enjoy as a direction for us and a frame for our work so no place for hate now in its third year some of the key pieces for this year is getting all of our students behind what the no place for hate pledge actually means as we start the year and what that looks like what that commits them to um beginning our engagement with best buddies program aiming to really bring together the um key pieces or key parts of our building with shine and with our general education classrooms in a more structured way through a nationally um recognized program and then activities such as one that we will do as the season begins we will have a monor supports the unified basketball team and that's the kind of important thing
038that demonstrates really what you should be doing as a member of monasa you are really looking out for the others around you you are demonstrating what kind of a person we individually think that each other should be and when we hold each other to that standard that's how we have a school of the sort that we have and all the things I do believe fall in place and that is the end of our presentation thank you all thank you thanks and that also concludes District highlights okay thank you everyone I have a number of updates uh tonight so I'll try to move quick but not fast uh and as we typically begin our presentations revisiting our district vision mission and goals and now let Miss Timmons get organized a number of topics to uh review
039tonight and I won't read them to you because we're going to talk about them but it begins with our our cell phone Task Force update uh we received last month some guidance from the governor uh where she is requiring schools to implement restrictions on cell phones uh inside the classroom outside the classroom in fact um on school grounds and we'll talk a little bit about this later uh in my update but a number of us were able to uh engage in this specific conversation with with lawmakers but um want to talk about our process a little bit um we know that our uh cell phone use policy is applied in consistently we have a couple schools that are um that have had no use in cell of cell phones uh in school and on school
040property a couple grade levels have tested it uh but earlier in the year we uh conducted a survey for uh families and 62% of our families were in favor and 31 not in favor and um one of the major pieces of feedback we were heard from families not in favors how do I communicate with my child if there's an emergency a family matter uh or other um uh issues taking place uh whether locally regionally or or nationally or internationally um our committee as they were working through the process um has recommended restricting use during the school day uh which includes lunch and study halls in between classes uh there would be some very specific exceptions um that we know would be important uh that would U assist students for a number of reasons and the
041committee uh before vacation before February break took a trip to Troy to learn about their implementation as well and uh identified a number of opportunities uh where Troy if they could do some things differently they would and so our committee is taking all of that under account so uh we're going to gear up for some more districtwide engagement uh to make sure we're communicating with our uh families about what to expect um a discussion around really around storage solution solons and um again not to foreshadow what we'll talk about a little bit with members of our uh government Relations Committee but the governor did commit um money to the budget for storage solutions it's not nearly enough I believe around 15 million for the State uh Statewide that's for everyone in the state more than
042700 school districts uh we also learned that um there are going to be some amendments um that are forthcoming that will give schools a little more uh flexibility and local control so again uh as we shared with our lawmakers we were moving um uh moving our our or engaging our community uh through the ad hoc committee and uh we're making some uh getting close to making some recommendations when when the governor got involved earlier in the year uh and so we're still in this little in between um in between area where we're not really sure what the final law will be but we do know that school starts in 7 months uh and so lawmakers are pushing the governor to uh either make some decisions and we're pushing lawmakers to amend uh to make some
043amendments so everyone understands what's happening and so students and families can understand what the expectations are when they come back to school uh in seven short months uh with all of that said uh members of our government Relations Committee uh spent a day and a half with our friends from the big five uh and uh worked with lawmakers with our colleagues and lawmakers uh across Ross the street we spent all day Tuesday and half of the day Wednesday uh the big five consists of New York City Rochester Buffalo Syracuse Yonkers M Vernon udica and of course Albany and we were a founding member uh member of the big five and uh during our time across the street Tuesday and I say across the street from from our offices in Academy Park um we met with
044representatives from the governor's office the Senate Majority Leader uh the Senate majority finance committee uh and their Council State education the Senate and assembly education committee the black Puerto Rican Hispanic and Asian caucus uh folks from our longest meeting was with the uh Department of Education Wednesday morning and had some in-depth discussions with the division of budget folks um the big five uh we have shared our legislative priorities with the big five that includes a New Foundation Aid formula that aligns with our needs and our student uh population and demographics that have changed over time um we're reducing Charter School oversaturation our uh committee has talked about that over the last number of months expanding our CTE program so that we can include ninth graders and receive aid for those ninth graders uh in particular
045two programs uh are literally busting at the seams and that doesn't even include ninth graders um so imagine the interest um and opportunity to expand existing programs and build programs if we were um eligible for reimbursement not just for ninth graders but also eligible for reimbursement at the state threshold of $3,900 per student right now we're receiving about 2third of that uh our priorities include um increased funding for pre kindergarten uh funding for mental health uh and school health uh services for students not just during the day but particularly wraparound programs before school after school weekends uh during vacations it's really critical that students and families have access um not just when schools in session and um continued support of dual enrollment program so at this time I'd like to turn it over to our
046our chair uh Miss Savage to talk a little bit about uh the group's experience and uh our President and Vice President also accompanied Ron leco and I during the day and a half and we figured this would be a nice opportunity to share perspectives so I just will uh share many of you have been met folks from the big five and participated with them one of the reasons that we participate with them is that all um our level of fiscal Challenge and our level of demographic Challenge and academic challenge is very consistent with the other schools in the conference of big five schools including Mount Vernon and udica who are the other nontraditional Big Five the big five plus three um they do get um a good hearing because a huge percentage of of New
047York's children are educated by those eight school districts Alone um one of the things that we share in common for example is our um concern about the way charter schools are funded and the way that impli impacts us Buffalo and Rochester are at 28 and 29% of um their students in publicly educated students in Charter as we are 22% there was a shocking amount of conversation about the cell phone issue that was very interesting um and it was interesting how the legislator's perspective um was shared and I think it's important for everyone to recognize that the governor's budget proposal is a budget proposal and that's where that cell phone language is and it is doesn't get adopted to be an actual law until the budget gets adopted and so the various legislators are attempting to
048have influence on what that final outcome will be and the key thing that the big five schools were were were including us advocating for is some local flexibility around implementation right so it's you know the clear clear agreement that cell phones do not belong creating distractions in classrooms but the implementation strategy should not be dictated by the governor in a way that constrains the ability of districts who might be a school district of 12 people in the Adera may have to handle that differently than say New York City right so that that is the the level of flexibility that folks were looking for so um it's great to spend time with the conference of big five schools folks because they have very um comparable experiences to us but most of those districts are quite a
049bit large bit larger so they have um different experiences that we can learn from so that's what I guess I would share I don't know if anybody else has something I want to chime in Miss Wilson just that um it was interesting that how much we are aligned so much so that almost all of our proposals for were identical and the Common Thread many people indicated is you know if we took care of this infrastructure work we can be focused on the business of helping students learn to read and things of that nature so the the less fiscal challenge or these sort of conflicts that we have the more we can be about the business of educating the students I mean it was interesting to see um the viewpoints how how similar we had some
050you know differences but we were we were all having the similar challenges amongst these all all all the eight schools um know with regards to Charter School I mean some of the things that were brought up were the um the uh payments right right we we pay for the charter schools this year but we don't get reimbursed till next year that means we are out of that money for a whole year which makes it harder for us to plan for our budgets uh things like attendance records enrollment records when when do we get them from the charter schools who oversees those are those are the numbers we get are we getting the right numbers are there inconsistencies because all of that impacts our budget U the uh what happens if a charter school is dissolved
051or closed those public funds that went into the School how did we make sure that it comes back to the public system so those were some of the questions that were raised by the the the bigf schools we also talked about the uh Ells English language Learners uh and how 65% of the English language Learners in the state go to these eight schools and and how they presenting unique challenges because you know if if you can communicate effectively you can't even express what the problems are right so now you need an extra level of support and uh there are different mandates that the commissioner's office has put like CR 154 where it says that if if you're X number of students then you need to have X number of Staff well now you got to
052have a staff who's not only skilled in the teaching part but also the language skills and when you have many languages that that's an additional challenge so we talked about some of these things that how you know if we could have more funding then we could we could uh not only try to go into these communities because these communities do have people who are qualified they may not have the New York state certification but they are qualified and how great would it be to have somebody who looks like you're in front of you teaching you right so if there was more funding then we could we could help people get certification that that that would help with workfor development in our communities and it be a win-win situation so those are some of the things
053that we talked about um the S was was very strongly supportive of the to the dual enrollment and early college high school programs because if there's more funding sustained for available they would support that every student you know has at least has the opportunity to get 12 credits while they're in high school that's like a year of college that you shaved off and that that that will help you there was a lot of discussion on the CTE programs the different Pathways that could be created C city is not just the old Career and Technical these are high-paying jobs in you know Aviation and and Chip manufacturing and uh so you know the the uh ways that we can try and make more opportunities for our student was discussed so it it was a very fruitful
054meeting now you know the the truth is in the pudding when the when the budget gets uh announced and how much we get from it from our advocacy but we we have to keep trying like I said you know this is the time where we burn the incense and go with our begging balls and appease try to appease the gods and we'll see what happens yeah thanks for sharing uh also uh kicking off this weekend a day and a half conference we're uh very honored and U Michelle Bridgewater is here the epsa president uh we were asked to participate with the New York State Council of school superintendance and Institute for Education Innovation uh to host at Albany High School a uh day and a half workshop for New York State leaders of color for
055Education this is a group that began a few years ago um sponsored by the state superintendent uh Association uh to support leaders of color throughout New York State and to uh help build a pipeline in into um leadership roles in public education so we have an opportunity to uh showcase our facilities we have some students performing we're going to have an opportunity to talk a little bit about our district at the kickoff uh Saturday morning and we have a little more than a handful of our own School leaders participating as well so it was uh certainly a nice recognition and speaking of recognitions particularly at the high school uh Congressman Paul tonko had a town hall on February 19th he um unlike other uh politicians uh having events at schools he gave us about a
056week notice so that was that was good uh Ron and his his team were able to uh get a setup but it this was u a really nice opportunity uh again to showcase our facilities and and the auditorium was packed and I know we had a lot of our trustees that were there and some other staff um but the congressman uh had a well uh well attended and well facilitated conversation with the public about the happenings in Washington DC uh and speaking of um of uh facilitation one of our high school graduates graduates Des Wiggins who also as the CEO of the Albany Black Chamber was the moderator and it was nice to see her give shoutouts to her old high school even though it certainly went through facelifts since she was there but uh
057always nice to uh be honored and recognize and be able to partner with our El officials a reminder that our prek and magnet Lottery uh is still happening um our magnet Lottery at Ash dual language monor and toast uh we still have available K to five seats uh so we ask families to make sure they go on our website to uh follow the process to uh make sure they apply by March 14th uh as well as prek we're asking all families who are interested in prek in all 12 of our elementary schools uh to fill out requisite paperwork by the 14th and a month later uh in mid April we'll let everyone know uh who was selected and where they are on the wait list uh Athletics updates as recently as last night our girls
058basketball team um had a big win over Saratoga they actually began the began the game up 29 nothing and um what was probably most impressive is that the head coach grabbed the microphone and sang the national anthem in a very last minute uh off the off the bench or out of the bullpen moment the students we had uh identified to sing the national anthem uh had a had a last minute conflict so not only did the coach lead them the victory set the tone with an outstanding rendition of the national anthem uh the girls will play March 7th uh in the semi-finals against Colony at Hudson Valley and the boys will also play at Hudson Valley Community College this Sunday at 11:30 against CBA which uh was a barn burner in their first matchup and
059our uh All Stars uh from our indoor track and field team uh will be heading to New York City next month uh number of uh our student athletes will represent Albany High School and the number of events the 4x200 relay long jump 55 meter sprint and 1600 MERS and uh what's really interesting is most of the students in the 4x200 relay are going to represent us in other individual events so uh we'll let you know how they do but always an honor to have uh our student athletes um be recognized and be able to perform among the most elite in the state and in the region next month kicks off music in our schools month and uh we have a tradition to have our All City concerts during March but we had to squeeze one
060in April uh so it's March plus one uh but we hope that you can join us at North Albany Middle School for the strings concert the high school will host the All City Chorus and the All City band uh and we'll continue to update our website for all of the other opportunities that our student musicians are performing uh I know Myers's um jazz band is performing uh they have a number of performances a a PTA social event and also at The Concourse the Empire State Concourse uh the high school jazz band I think is trying to schedule another um event out in the public as well and certainly um uh we have a number of other student musicians that are performing as well so we'll we'll keep you updated on that and last lastly uh
061this is public schools week in America and perhaps uh with uh everything we've heard from executive orders or other considerations in Washington DC there's no better time to support and honor our 1,00 uh employees than this week and so we want to congratulate and thank all of our employees that serve uh in a very important capacity educating close to 10,000 students um in our community uh we certainly would not be able to do this without their support and the public support and we do know that uh public education in our country has been a great equalizer and we hope that it will stay that way and that concludes my report 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
062one question for each board member so that all members have the opportunity to be heard if you have additional questions or comment there time remaining will go around for additional questions uh and if you don't mind let's try and keep it in the order of the slides because I'm sure we have lots of questions on different topics around the thing Mr alavi I think the first topic was cell phones if you have any questions on that um yes thank you for that um summary um regarding cell phones I'm I just want to get the timeline right so starting next school year we should have a plan in place where we have these cell phone Pockets or some kind of storage like is that I just want to say one more time it's not a law
063yet so until the New York state budget passes we won't know what the requirements are so anything that we say now is about what the governor has said in the executive budget which is Bell to Bell no cell phones that is what the current language is um that does not mean that's what's going to be in the adopt law but so that's why we can't really say what we're going to do or what we're going to be required to do until the law passes okay I have no questions on that then okay any questions MTH yes thank you um super I just and I appreciate the information that was provided to the board and also in here in public regarding the experience that Troy City School District is has have or is having but that
064their policy went into effect this school year is that my understanding uh I I'll have to get back to you I believe so I believe there were a number of school districts that imp either piloted or implemented beginning in September 24 and and do you know if that also included skincity I don't know the status of what skinc did and I'm I'm sorry these are all around the same question sorry um what I wanted to um begin to get some sense and we won't have it probably for sometime but I did want to look at how they well number one was there a difference of opinion between as we have in our data thus far between what students think about the policy and also parents versus staff Etc and I think it was pretty interesting
065to see that among our students they really differ from their parents they differ from staff and so you know that's something that we'll have to handle um or address um but I also wondered about uh so I wondered about that in terms of Troy and other school districts also specifically wanted to look at how discipline was handled and whether or not we are seeing some disparate issues as we continue to see because of how we deal with race and sex and gender and transgender all of these isms and so um I I just wanted to ask those questions that I realized we won't have some of that information uh probably until after the school year although there might be some preliminary information that the districts could provide that have already studied this experience so that's
066that's what I wanted to put out there um I I wanted to say that that was a topic that came up multiple times during our conversations with the big five because I think one of the questions is um there's so many question questions but the what is the code of conduct going to look like around cell phone usage and what is the progressive discipline going to look like um and if it ultimately increases out of school suspensions how does that benefit anyone right it doesn't benefit the students it doesn't benefit the teachers it doesn't benefit anyone so I think we will all have an opportunity to think hard about that when we renew the code of conduct because that the the rough time line here if things happen according to plan is that the the
067New York state budget will be adopted in April 1st hopefully or sometime very soon shortly thereafter then we'll know what the regulatory requirements are or what the um statutory requirements are and then we will be uh renewing reviewing the code of conduct in May at the policy committee and then in June on the board floor and we will be expecting in the May policy committee to get recommendations from staff about the details of how the code of conduct will read that will have to be consistent with whatever the state law is um and so all of that that's sort of the timing and the opportunity for the board to influence but I think the question of discipline um around this and and How It ultimately leads to better experiences for students is really the question
068right and and the the disproportionality that we know exists in discipline in all school districts um is a is a very serious and good question to be raising and also when the policy could develop those regulations and those regulations had be carefully tailored because not every it's not a one sh it's all situation the buildings are different and how each building handles things the implementation of that how are you preventing the cell phone usage might differ slightly from one cohort to another cohort and so those are the questions that came up in those discussions and will definitely come up in policy also I'm guessing before we generate our own policy so thank you Miss man I too am curious to hear how the um cell phone um um policy will play itself out after it
069becomes law um so it should be uh that should be pretty interesting um and that's pretty much all I need to say on the cell phone Task Force I feel like I've gotten more than my share of mic time because I was at the big five um things but I did have a couple of questions one thing I wanted to draw attention to is I'm pretty sure and and Miss McKenna usually has a good good head for these numbers but I'm pretty sure when we saw these um survey results originally they were broken down by level like elementary middle and high and my recollection is that parents had very different opinions in particular at the different levels with Elementary parents being extraordinarily high no cell phones in the building and high school parents not being
070split in this 60/40 way at all and I'm just asking that when we present this information that we present that level of granularity because I think it is it's I think if if my Rec rection is right and she's nodding back there it's a little misleading to say 62% of our parents and Guardians are in favor because I think it was more like 50/50 at the high school level because I remember being rather surprised that it was so even among parents and it's really at the secondary level that this becomes an issue because we don't really have many cell phone issues at the middle school level so that that was one thing I just wanted to raise and then I also wanted to ask that as the cell phone Task Force continues their work they
071be prepared to to talk about what the budgetary implications are for not just for the pouches not just for the additional security staff we're going to need on the way into school and on the way out of school but also we're certainly going to need um increased office staffing right we know parents you know when you right now if your kids's doctor's appointment gets changed 15 minutes and they got to come downstairs 15 minutes early at the high school level you can text your kid and say I need to I need right so now now you're going to have to call the office the office is going to have to connect you to the classroom and the office workers are already working hard um they do not have excess capacity so I would like to
072understand what those implications are for that communication also in my high school and recently Middle School age children I saw teachers and coaches extensively relying on cell phone to communicate the game is starting 10 minutes earlier or the bus is going to be 10 minutes later you need to miss out of your your 9th period classroom earlier or pra whatever whatever it is it's not just the parents who it's parents and students are not only the ones it's also our own staff and I would like the cell phone Task Force to come prepared to talk about how are we going to mitigate that what are we going to do differently because something is going to have to be done different we can't just subtract we also are going to need to backfill that um and
073I am assuming based on what we heard from the governor's Representatives that she may be willing to negotiate some things but she is not likely going to change be willing to come to an agreement with the legislature that's not going to be Bell to Bell like that that seemed to be the governor's position is that it's going to be a bell bell-to-bell situation now I don't know I mean it's a it's a negotiation so anything can happen but that was what the messaging was it was coming out of the governor's office so that that's really what I want to say is like we need to not just talk about what how it's going to change student Behavior but how is it going to change our our behavior and what kind of money and Staffing do
074we need to add to make this actually work in a good way M GRE um I just wanted to say thank you for the details I think it's it's helpful to talk to other districts especially districts with similar demographics to understand how they're doing it and what they may might be able to do differently because I completely agree I wouldn't want to see you know kids in their third or fourth cell cell phone violation get suspended it that I guess it makes the classroom a little more calm but it doesn't help that kid get an education and I I would anticipate that maybe an effective strategy would be confiscating the cell phones and giving them you know saying the parent has to come pick them up at the end of the day where you know
075if the parent has to go out of their way to pick up the phone enough the parent's not going to let the kid to take the phone to school but on the other hand that requires our staff to be hanging on to you know a bunch of thousand phones and and going through the work of getting them back to people and that's going to be extra staff work as is Manning phones uh to communicate with with parents that need to contact their students during the day as is um I think the question of people who are not native English speakers the parents that are not fluent enough in English to be able to have these conversations with school staff it's going to make it very difficult so I do look forward to hearing how how
076we'll work it out and seeing how it will uh play out as it goes into the final stages of the budget thank you Miss Wilson there's not a ton new to say about this as we wait to see how was implemented and just agree with um Hassan's Point although it's not necessarily the law yet if we know from an implementation standpoint when or how it's going to be put into effect that helps us plan so just moving backwards understanding when they say storage solution I understand there's already one brand out there about what extensively else can we do and to what extent if we remove cell phones are is there going to be a um shift to other like you know there's non-apple products that are phones watches wearables now and the other implications of
077that and then much of what Ann said about the practic practicality of now we have added time to coming into school now there's uh extra device that we're furnishing you know all these things being factored in so that was all part of the discussion that we had uh because the language as it is right now in the budget is IEDs internet enabled devices which includes all of the above right and so that's going to be a challenge it's not just cell phones it could be I mean these days it could be ey glasses for all you know right so things are complicated they have to work that out and in terms of the storage solutions yeah I mean there's the Yonder pouch and you know she uh the governor has uh I think 13.3 million
078or something set aside for whatever the you know State districts want to do but if you look at the under pouches I think they're like $30 a student so that works out to like 25 million for New York City itself right so that's not going to work so that's why we were asking for uh flexibility in how everybody implements their own for some places it might be like you have a basket and people put their phones in the basket during the class pick it up afterwards other it could be a shoe rack behind the door there different solutions for different uh Different Strokes for different people right so whatever works uh so it's a wait and watch and see what happens but regardless you know we would be knowing this after budget time which would
079be April May is when we do the code of conduct and policy and then June is when we dis in the board floor so that would be the time period when we would know more about these details and we would have established more or so what we would do for the upcoming school year so I just wanted to throw one more thing about cell phones one of the interesting topics which had not occurred to me before is that apparently some districts especially when um during during the covid closure when there was virtual instruction they encouraged families to purchase devices to reduce the costs on districts so now families purchase these these devices that children are using them in school in lie of a district owned crap Chromebook and now they're going to be told they
080can't use them anymore so that's just like a really interesting twist which hadn't occurred to me that now you've got a family that's invested in a piece of equipment at the encouragement of the district and they're going to be told not to be able to use it anymore so I don't I don't think there's many families in our district who have that situation but it is something to to think about because it's not as as Dr tour said it's not just it's not just cell phones it's internet enabled devices which means every tablet every watch every everything every music device everything um so we'll see if that's what comes out of the um the end when they actually pass this you know there were different positions from different legislators about how much flexibility there will
081be so but it's right now not very flexible so we'll see okay that was a good Robo discussion on cell phones okay um so I just want to so it is more likely than not that there will be a law is that what you okay well the B the state budget is a law well so I on cell phone specific to cell phone this so oh sorry this right now the cell phone language is part of the state budget and the state budget ultimately is a law I understand that mean what I'm actually wanting to get at is so we we're we're not in going to be in a position of where let's say for some reason it it we're not expecting it to be not be in the budget and we would be would
082we be as a board considering this policy in any case is my question so I think we I mean we did begin my belief and we can let superintendent talk about this too we started the cell phone Task Force before we knew the governor was going to do something um so the idea was for them to consider and make a recommendation prior to us knowing that there was going to be a gubernatorial recommendation so if in the very unlikely scenario that nothing came out as a state requirement um we would still want the cell phone taxk Force to continue their work and come out with a recommendation then we'd have to evaluate okay it might would be maybe on a different time or something could be different yeah but but I mean I think the
083chances there'll be nothing at the state level is is infinitesimal okay and um just one more piece on this so uh and I I think Ann was getting at it um so um but I I really wanted to whether it's disconnected or any District but also to have uh I don't know if our I don't know if our survey asked this question but it's around the issue of enforcement it's also around the issue of inconsistency of practice uh at a teacher or whomever or principal level and um and that does does seem to be like something that we're going to be having to uh tackle in a in a major way um and I don't know that we can expect it to be pretty but um I think that is a piece that I I
084hope that we are all thinking about well in advance of you know even the committee reconvening and working because that's it's it's not just a disproportionality piece it's it's that and how this will be implemented I might be a kid where the teacher said listen I'm I'm going to let this pass for now don't do it again so my first warning which I should be given but according to the code of conduct maybe gets ignored I do it again you know now and then a student over here says well wait I know that you got caught you know I'm just so I'm just saying that and I do also want to reiterate that um the adult piece is really important I um just two short things I wanted to point out um I was proctoring
085for the bar exam just Tuesday and Wednesday and I had the hardest heck of a time letting go of my phone okay it it was you know and I didn't consider myself to be one that always had to have it in my hand boy did I come to a realization that that wasn't true it's an addiction we all addicted and and I realized so my proctoring I never sat down for two days I mean there were little STS where I sat down for a minute but I had to get get up because I physically was like having this problem with not having this cell phone attached to me and I even had to put it in my purse because I knew if it was in my pocket I was going to touch it right the
086other thing that I think to Ellen's point I was also at the DMV this week and I don't know for some reason a young man uh primarily speaking Spanish came over and he asked for help I just knew a little bit to know that that's what he was asking for and he pulled out his phone um and put in the question and we were communicating that way and I don't even I don't know what ultimately happened but it was a heck of a time going up to the counter with him to communicate with DMV and I'm thinking there should be like translators here what do they do you know and there were all sorts of people of course I look around there all sorts of people um non-english speaking folks in in the lobby and
087I'm thinking oh my God how is this ever going to work it doesn't work in DMV you know how is it going to work in schools so I'm just sharing that that this is uh a big a big issue of course all right thank you anybody else on cellones I'm just gonna I just want to articulate my thoughts on record I I think that given the climate that's existing um I think that there are U going to be a number of families and a number of um uh uh students who who will resist this also some um students will use um their phone as a as a tool to you know you're in the cafeteria and your your friend who you eat lunch with is not there and it's a way to kind of distract
088them um and so I I I get I get I get concerned around that and I'm certain that there are parents um that have shared that um I also know the problem of teaching a class and everyone's on their device right um um but it just it it it um I'm I am more apprehensive about this than I was when I first heard about it and and it's you know and it's respectfully um kind of an unfunded mandate and you know and every time we have unfunded mandates there's a Cascade of issues that you know our our teachers who are hired to teach have to then add on and deal with you know and so I just wanted to get that out there on record um um because none of this is pleasing me right
089now so M CR I realized I have a question about our task task force in relation to the budget proposal because we're talking about what it covers and it covers or at least the governor's proposal covers internet enabled devices like watches and uh things like that but it doesn't cover like a telephone that just makes phone calls and does texts it doesn't cover like the little flip burner phone type things so would would would we be thinking about treating those the same as smartphones if we in our policy or would we would would we go along with the state definitions I think if it we would refer that to the task force but if this is part of the law then internet enabled devices and I'm sure we wouldn't be the only ones asking those
090questions uh I met with our PTA leaders on Monday that question came up the question also came up of of practices uh parents are communicating with coaches with uh the play is rehearsing everything is through if it's not through a normal text message it's through app-based uh device that ptas or schools or teachers or clubs or sports teams you name it have um have uh embraced and and Ron and his team um we doing a an audit of all of the different app based communication tools we were using so I think we're going to see some more resistance from exactly the conversations we were having today notwithstanding what we heard from the Big Five Just Around what do you do when a student has a we're all now deputized as the cell phone police and
091we know where that snowball so I'll bring that back to the um to the committee and we'll also ask more questions of the folks we met with around some of the those particulars can Mo on to the next topic legislative advocacy Mini Miss man you were there some M cre um just other than thank the board members and the members of the administration that were there advocating on on behalf of the district thanks Miss SM okay so um um all right and I don't really like see an answer but I think it's something that I'm hoping the legis legislative committee will will start to talk more about with big five and others um and the superintendent may have already had some discussions about this as well so as some of you know today us doe
092launched its um Dei portal so that you can go tell on people who are doing Dei related activities um and so um again I sort of uh unlike not unlike the rest of you expected something and knew something else was going to happen this was just it just hit me like a a ton of bricks um you know today and so uh one it raises questions about um how will New York State protect us how will our school districts protect its students its employees um will we Bend to the ring will we bend the knee so that we don't lose funding um those I think are going to perhaps become real questions and decisions that this board will have to consider along with the superintendent so um again I I hate you know I I
093like to have joy in my life and I like that for everyone but we're not living per se in a time of Joy um we are living in a horrible horrible place and yet we're all continuing to try to go on as if you know perhaps it'll not be as bad as it we think it is but this is bad already um and so I'm just really throwing out the question that has to be asked at every freaking level um and of every freaking entity organization institution that we have what are you going to do who are you going to stand for and with if your funding gets called into question so the say this topic came up even before what happened today um and the sentiment that we got from the Senators the assembly
094persons the different members of different committees the S is they that as New York State we are still going to stand by the eii and keep doing what we do and when the funding doesn't happen we will see what happens it'll be highly unlikely that the state will be able to backfill the whole thing because we just AR that won't have the resources is it'll be challenging and that's where they left it so and in the meantime while as we see as challenges happen also you have to adhere to whatever the law is whatever the expectation is so again I don't know that you can wait we have to continue to have these discussions uh among and across uh the institutions and as well with our community and with our constituents who students particularly who
095are going to be most most impacted by everything that is coming down so again I don't want to belabor the point but it is um this is really uh situation that's you know if we weren't um you know we may sometimes we have uh you know not gone as deep as we and I sort of had this question for the CR people uh Who coming to talk later um all that's a very important work and my question for all of them was going to be how do we get deeper and I don't understand how that's going to happen in light of what we're dealing with as a society um without there being more fear more consternation more of I don't want to be reported you know and things like that so anyway um sorry thank
096you next topic uh the I let's take both the events together Paul tono's event and the Miss man I just want to thank uh board member Smith for those comments um because that's real that's that is real and you know um this uh this this year in a couple of months um you know we have we have a board member Vicki Smith who's not running again and so as a board we have to be committed to um having these hard conversations because and I'm not trying to be Doom and Gloom but I want to be very real um I'm concerned I'm concerned about issues of safety I'm concerned about this trend um I'm concerned about Strife among staff I'm I'm concerned by all of it so I just wanted to go on record let's talk
097for the events any questions on the New York State leaders of color for Education conference as well as Bonos event okay magnet and pre Garten Lottery can we could we just go back to the the conference y okay the conference of the people of color so that that is this this weekend am I okay that's very cool um so again this having this conference here at this time I think is really fantastic uh also in light of some uh recruitment efforts that we have been talking about and focused on it uh it seems important and again I'm raising the question of now we're faced with some hiring recruiting and all of those things by anyone's definition we are focused on making sure that we have as diverse a Workforce as possible now what will we
098do should that be challenged called in the question and are we going to act in a way so that we can potentially avoid being you know having a complaint against us being sued so that we are actually going against our I'm just raising the question so that we're going against what we believe what we have stood for what we have you know have principles around um in order to make sure that we still have a school district right so again I'm I think this is I love that this is happening and um and I I'm so pleased that uh superintendent and and Miss Bridgewater are um you know sort of there and haunching this and I think it should be a great uh discussion and I you know yeah and I would hope I mean
099each one of us has a conscience right so I would hope that we we stand by what we believe in whatever whichever side of the aisle you are on but you you know you have your principles and you have your whatever we've agreed on and what what we believe in Stand by it regardless of what we have to face and it takes a certain amount of of courage and bravery to do that and it's not going to be easy but we can just run away from it running away is not going to solve the problem so okay magnet and prek Lottery Savage you had something to say about the okay Athletics update music any other questions okay c um sure I just had a public service announcement on the music music in our schools month
100so six more opportunities for music in the schools starting on the weekend of March 7th this year the musical will be two weekends March weekends of March 7th and March 14th featuring music composed by Lyn Manuel Miranda uh performed by our high school students thanks Miss Savage and I am just doing a calendar check I am 90% sure but everybody should double check me that April 2nd is a Wednesday not April 1 so right it's actually that's an April Fool's joke on there because I believe the concert is April 2nd because while we can have a music in our schools I a uh all strings were all City band concert on in April we can't have it on a Tuesday because that would really like throw the universe into into some sort of weird place
101because it's always on Wednesday night so it's Wednesday April 2nd okay Dr shur Mr SMI yes and um I just wanted to uh just acknowledge acknowledge um uh followup to miss C's uh music piece that uh Sheridan prep and I know that our teachers at their uh employee or teacher music concert acknowledged uh the loss of um a teacher music teacher Miss monria Slade and I just wanted to uh really Express gratitude and appreciation um particularly for our students who worked with with uh or who had the uh opportunity to be taught by her um and uh and her spirit so I just wanted to acknowledge that um that wasn't that didn't go unnoticed um by any of us and that uh we're just very pleased to see that um you're helping to recognize her
102but also to support our students through uh that time of loss for them thank you any other questions okay thank you Mr superintend that was the longest discussion we had on your update which good discussion important topics so now we move on to public comment this is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public uh the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making we set aside up to 30 minutes of of each meeting to hear from District residents parents students and other members of the community if there are more comments then that can be accommodated in those 30 minutes which we don't anticipate today uh we may choose to extend the length of the public common period alternatively establish a second period later in the
103meeting we also accept comments virtually on the same basis as those in personent and we accept comments in writing by voicemail we welcome comments in English any other language and we will provide the translation if necessary all comments must include the comment name and the place of residence we do not accept Anonymous comments all the information about these and many ways to share your thoughts with us are available at addressing the board information at Alban schools.org we ask all commenters to keep in mind that the information about individual students and specific District staff cannot be shared not only is that a violation of privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that the concerns about them will not be aired in public um so we do have people signed up in person
104uh so I'm going to call the first two people you can take this yeah I will so and then why you come up and have some rules that I will read to you guys uh the first name is Ava agree excuse me if I'm saying this wrong Jewish voice for pce and Karen carel uh jbp Albany when I recognize you please state your name and city of residence statements are restricted to a minimum of 3 minutes and Miss Cree our board secretary will give you a one minute notice and a 10-second notice and I'll notify you if your time is expired it's a good idea to look up occasionally to see if those not notices appear so that you won't be surprised at the end of your three minutes please not the board's polic is
105not to respond during the public comment period if you need a response please contact us by email phone or Postal mail our contact information is available at Al schools.org and I'll respond I or another member of the board will respond on behalf of the bo okay Miss a thank you and thank you board for having us here tonight U my name is Ava agree I live on Pinewood Avenue here in Albany and I wanted to speak just briefly uh to follow up on what I believe was a discussion that was had at the board meeting in late January regarding incidents of anti-Semitism in schools and obviously I I trust that this committee and the talented people that work in our schools are well equipped to handle all instances of racism bias sexism islamophobia uh anti-palestinian
106racism and anti-Semitism in our schools and I wanted to specifically address um uh one thing that had been urged to the board at that meeting was that this board adopt a definition of anti-semitism the IH definition of anti-semitism I believe at that point uh group of Jewish community members had urged that that was um a sort of agreed upon definition and I wanted to just urge this group uh not to take that step uh I think that we all know that these issues no matter where they're coming from take a great deal of care thought complexity and nuance and I I would just submit to the board as as a Jewish member of our community that the IH definition does not do so um I come from a long line of Jewish family I have
107ancestors who fled Nazism and I have ancestors who for over 100 years have worked in non-zionist Jewish Community Building lives and homes here in the state of New York um and those legacies live in me those are Jewish legacies and those are not Zionist legacies and so I'd ask this body to recognize that um certainly Zionism and zionists do not speak for all Jews we don't have a Jewish consensus on the state of Israel we don't have a Jewish consensus on Zionism and certainly uh I would hate for uh members of our community students in our schools to be subject to censorship for speaking their mind on what I think are issues of great import uh in our world today and that is what is happening right now in Israel and what is happening in
108Palestine and so I would just urge this court to approach that with the Nuance that those discussions really do require and and urge that that IH definition of anti-semitism does not represent the Jewish community at large it does not represent necessarily the Jewish Community here in Albany I wish we had consensus we don't um and and I would submit on that thank you thank you thank you next person is I'm just going to call the next person number three uh Tariq Francis can you come up to the thing and go ahead Miss car yes hi my name is Karen carmelli I live in Albany um I'm also here to express my opposition to the recommend ations made to the board by members uh of the group amida at the January 23rd meeting namely that the
109board adopt the international Holocaust remembrance alliance's definition of anti-semitism which wrongfully equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism um I've lived in Albania with my husband since 2014 that's the same year that I joined Jewish voice for peace Albany and I'm now a parent of two young children who I intend to enroll in Alban Public Schools specifically because of their diversity that reflects our City's various religious ethnic groups and cultural groups and I'll just say that my daughter right now is in a Catholic pre because that was available and um we recently toured Ash and and we I was and her school right now is not doing anything for Black History Month and we toured Ash and there were pieces of artwork on the walls everywhere celebrating Black History Month and it just it felt so
110good and I know that I want to put my kids in these schools because I want them to be exposed to to all of the all the different cultures and all the different uh religions that we have in this city um as the granddaughter of Jews who narrowly escaped the Nazi Holocaust in Europe I take instances of anti-Semitism very seriously and very personally as a dual us Israeli citizen who spent her childhood in the Israeli public school system I find amida's attempt to insert itself and its definition of anti-semitism into the Albany City School District particularly offensive the definition proposed by amida is controversial among Scholars of anti-Semitism and within the Jewish community and it because it equates criticism of the state of Israel and its actions with anti-Semitism as an Israeli I find this
111argument completely Preposterous as it would mean that I was engaging in anti-Semitism every time I criticized my own government or its leaders voted or protested against my government something that happens regularly in Israel Zionism is a political ideology that many Jews do not subscribe to okay I have one minute so I'm going to keep going um I did want to bring up uh the incident that happened at monor school last year uh where I did come to give comment where Palestinians uh chalk work was erased I find that um pretty pretty bad that we didn't address that in a in a proper manner the attempt to insert the IH definition of anti-semitism is part of a national strategy to shut down any criticism of the conduct of the state of Israel Zionist organizations are pushing
112that definition to be used on college campuses to shut down debate and asking states to adopt this definition in order to smear any speech critical of Israel as anti-semitic just yesterday Governor Kathy hokel ordered the removal of a job posting at CUNY Hunter for a Palestinian studies professorship demanding conduct thorough to conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that anti-semitic theories are not promoted in the classroom right now we have children who are undocumented in our schools who are threatened by ice right now we have children in Albany schools who are are housing and food insecure we need to take care of all of the students in this District thank you [Music] Susie hi can you come to that trick uh hi my name is Terk Francis um I'm a junior in Albany
113High high school and I'm part of the jrtc program which I very much enjoy I've joined it for I've only been it for this quarter for not this quarter this school year only but I've really enjoyed the experiences that I've I've met in there I've went to many different places I've went to many different trips and I've learned a lot from them especially this one that I came here to thank you all for um helping us go to the one at Norwich it's a military college and I really want really wanted to thank you guys for bringing me there because I have had I got a lot of leadership experience from that I got I got to see a lot of different lot of different stuff the I learned a lot of stuff like the
114three um three C's of being a leader consistency competence and confidence and those were very great things that I learned and I I'm very I'm just happy to say and I want to say thank you to you all of you for providing help for us and helping us go through the school go to the school for this trip and thank you to Major Erikson for bringing us thank you thank you for speaking and support of the program Ashley Castillo okay Susie um hi everyone my name is Susie hey I'm a junior at Alney High School um what um all of us here are on behalf of major David Ericson we just came here to say our gratitudes um for you guys supporting um the jrtc program at all High um uh specifically um the event
115that the one I Know Rich we attended over the weekend we just wanted to say thank you so much for helping us you know being able to have that opportunity to go um see what norch offers for a week was really uh really benefit official for us it kind of established a lot of personally for me p uh to see what you know what colleges offer and how I can go further in my career especially if I'm trying to pursue something in the military so that kind of established a lot of things for me um not only that just anything you do in general for the jgc program we just are um very appreciative of everything especially Miss Vicki Smith cuz she's very involved and she is on some um a bunch of trips that
116we've been on so she can say something on her behalf um that's all we came to say we just wanted to you know say um thank you for everything you've done for JC thank you I blat take that seat and Ashley um like the rest of us have already said I want to thank you all for the support in JTC we went to Norwich recently this past weekend we learned a lot of leadership skills and overall how to work in teams I think it was an amazing opportunity and again thank you guys for your support like now I know what I definitely want to do in college because they had um college students there that were enrolled in ROTC too and they were able to tell us their experiences and what they went through in
117college to be able to get to where they are so their advice actually really helped me and now I know what I want to do and what I want to make major in and they also offered a criminology course over there and I was really interested in it so I definitely wanted to do a minor in criminology when I go into college and it also just inspired me to look more into colleges so now I have a few options and just in general thank you guys for supporting JTC um I've been in it for three years already I'm a junior and it's just it's really great because I feel like if I wasn't if this um program wasn't offered to us I feel like I really wouldn't know where I was going I'd feel like
118I'd just be a normal student you know going for something I don't really want to pursue but now I know what I want to pursue so I'm really grateful for that and having one of your board members Miss Vicky Smith go on trips with us it also feels it makes us feel extra support knowing that you guys have our backs and we'll do will offer us and help us with these different things too so thank you so much thank Mark mler did I say that I'm butchering your name oh uh good evening everyone um my name is U BL uh I'm a junior in Albany High and I would like to thank you all including uh majoron for giving us the opportunity to attend norish norish University this weekend uh it was a very fun
119trip you know each day was a new learning experience uh they taught us a lot of leadership skills teamwork um accountability um [Music] also taking us into classes to learn about new majers that you could see when you attend college and uh it was very fun I made I met a lot of new people and uh the cad or the students at the University took really proper care of us they gave us proper guidance and uh I was also able to tell Miss Smith a little bit of what we did including uh suie on what we did on the way back home and uh overall I'd like to thank you guys for the opportunity thank you thank you board member board president could I just sure um before the cadetes uh depart uh and by
120the way I did not pay them or ask them to say anything um but I I did want to uh they were just so kind and and very articulate in their words um but I also want to uh ask and I because I think this is true in your weekend at Norwich this was yes a lot of learning but a lot of competition as well am I correct yes so you had could one of you just also just tell us what that competition involved in and how it connected to your leadership uh skills and other things that you learned let's make that quick though I know I'm sorry time it's I'm not supposed do I was breaking the protocols but which at norch it was really interesting you know I've never really woken up every
121morning at like 5:30 um waking up with a bunch of other girls we slept on the ground all we had was our um camping bags and we slept on the ground um that was like a really new experience we were able to meet um people from you know all nationally all over um the United States not only that we were able to experience a lot of the opportunities provided within school like I even learned how to swim over that weekend so that was really fun and um I actually uh we can all say that we we learned how to shower within 2 minutes cuz they were like rushing us out so that was that's like getting into that um experience that was really wild but um comp competition wise um I guess kind of just
122like PR yourself in your school and who you're representing with what everyone's kind of really doing that's wonderful thank you Mark hi um good evening uh board members my name is Mark michell I live on South me Boulevard in Albany and uh I'm I've been an Albany Public School parent I was an Albany Public School parent for 18 years my oldest child started kindergarten at Ash in 1994 my youngest child graduated from Al High School in 2011 um and as some of you know uh very well I was deeply involved in the school district during the time that my children were here um in the ptas at Ash hacket and almany high school as well as serving as the co-president of the Citywide PTA for three years and was a strong advocate for school district
123um lobbied in the legislature um many times on behalf of the AL school district and and I spoke publicly in FA about the school district U throughout that period um in support and so that's sort of in some sense irrelevant other but it's relevant in the senses I I want to make say on the record that I'm not new to advocacy in and about the Albany school district and for children I'm deeply disturbed by uh any possibility that the school board would take up the uh proposal from members of amida and other groups or individuals who came to you last month asking you to adopt a definition of anti-semitism I'm Jewish I have experienced anti-Semitism in my life uh very directly uh and I'm also a member and was one of the founders of Albany
124Jewish voice for peace uh 20 about 10 years ago as has already been said this evening um not all Jews support the policies or even existence of the state of Israel this is hotly contested within the Jewish community and I want to say a few things about this I think there's no reason for a definition to be adopted the school district does not have a definition for example example of racism um and there's no reason to adopt to single out the Jewish community and say Jews are deserving of some special privilege and need to have some definition adopted by the board the definition itself is extraordinarily faulty I'm going to leave you with uh three handouts uh one is uh about the uh Dr uh Kenneth Stern who was the person who wrote this definition
12520 years ago he publicly Speaks now and has a book and articles explaining why this definition is extraordinarily damaging in educational institutions um so I hope you'll read that the other two are by Barry tractenberg a former Albany resident who was the head of Jewish studies at University of Albany he is now a distinguished professor of Jewish studies at Wake Forest University he is an expert on the Holocaust in Jewish history he is also strongly opposed to this definition I'm going to what's the best way pass it to board cler thank you so much appreciate it thank you and Miss hrer I think you wanted to say something yeah uh the students uh had to leave to go uh do their homework but we uh learned um today in fact I had a meeting with
126uh major Ericson uh and he shared with me that a number of our Cadets five in fact uh were selected to participate in uh boys and girls R State uh 2025 this June and so this was uh new information to us and and uh we wanted to get that in District update but didn't meet our our deadline so we'll make sure that we uh represent them and it's important uh to underscore that uh Albany High School has had more State delegates than any other Public School in the capital region so uh the experience that these four Cadets the experience of these four Cadets certainly speaks to um the other 125 plus and the major also uh has been on tour the last few days meeting with eth graders and he's expecting somewhere in upwards of
12780 to 100 nth grade Cadets next year so um we may have a staffing problem so we'll have to talk about that but uh wanted to make sure we got that on the record tonight as well there was also one girl Cadet right who is only the Albany County only has six and and one of them is in Albany hi J so more to come okay thank you we now move on to the part of our meeting we call routine 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 as a group with no discussion this allows us to use our meeting time more efficiently nonetheless each
128board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion and vote on that item with that introduction I now entered in a motion to adopt the routine con agenda Miss Wilson Miss man are there any set asdes okay hearing none all in favor of adopting routine consent agenda okay that's unanimous Mr Savage has stepped away so it's all except Miss Savage thank you so they all pass the next uh action item next item on an agenda is an action discussion item and that's the policy uh section so pass it pass the torch on to uh Miss crei chair of policy hello we had an exciting policy committee meeting a couple of weeks ago and I'm going to try to oh my goodness trying to find a
129way to get to the memo on it just one moment somehow I just opened the wrong screen okay so the first uh the first several policies on here are action items they're all regarding special education I'm not going to read the descriptions of what they do because we talked about them last time uh action on allocation of space for spe special education confidential IAL it and access to individual education programs individualized Education Services programs and service plans availability of alternative format instructional materials for students with disabilities districtwide and state assessment of students with disabilities impartial hearing officer appointment and compensation declassification of students with disabilities independent educational evaluation and use of timeout rooms and physical restraints I do want to say uh one thing that the use of timeout rims and physical restraints policy has
130in it is that the district will draft a regulation on timeout procedures there is not a regulation currently in place at a previous policy committee meeting the administration said they're in the process of drafting one so when they do draft one the plan is for them to give that to the policy committee to look at as you know the board does not uh vote on on regulations but we do review them to make sure that they're consistent with the policy and offer feedback at the policy committee meetings um next next policy we are proposing to take action on as preschool spe preschool special education special education Personnel qualifications and training and programs and services for parentally placed non-public school students with disabilities um can I get a motion to adopt these policies I see a
131motion from Miss man in a second from you Dr Jor all in favor it appears to be unanimous minus Miss Savage she was stepped out um next to our discussion agenda the first for discussion is 8636 artificial intelligence this is a new policy and this follows very closely the nisba sample policy language which was recently put out there it's nice to be able to have some guard rails on our use of AI this sample policy is already consistent with what we do but it's nice to have some guard rails in writing um the next one is 6215 reduction in assessments for people over 65 years of age we revised the policy to increase the maximum income at which senior citizens can have up to 50% of their assessed value of their property exempt from taxation
132from $37,500 annually to $58,500 annually this income limit had not been increased since 2011 and it's right in line with inflation um the next policy up for discussion is 7500 facilities naming SL renaming policy in fact this also represents a change in the name of the policy itself from school naming policy after various discussions in various things that have happened over the years we realized in fact we are asked or consider naming things besides schools sometimes we're asked to name you know a room a gym an auditorium a field a por of a school and also there's buildings in our district such as the one that we're in now that are not schools are not currently used as schools like this building sunshine and Academy Park so we wanted to uh have a more robust
133policy that addresses every every piece of let's say every piece of physical property or every piece of real estate that we could potentially name um we also added language about what happens when you change the name of a facility in some cases when you change the name of a facility you would want to memorialize the thing it the person or place it was named for previously um in a in a positive way and I think in some cases when you change the name of a facility you would want to memorialize in sort of a historical here's why we changed the name and here's why we needed to kind of a way so we we added language in which we can memorialize previous names of schools appropriately um we also we also uh helped draft a
134regulation which the regulation uh really focuses on how to name committees to participate so that the whole Community is engaged in renaming facilities so we may again added more to the regulation to instruct on how to how what what the composition of these committees should be when you're renaming something at the the district level and not on the school level uh the next policy for discussion is graduation ceremonies uh based on the nisba sample we added some language that makes it clear we can exclude students from graduation ceremonies for code of conduct violations and then just give them their diploma separately uh we also added some Provisions for including students for with this abilities to participate in graduation ceremonies uh with their with the cohort they entered ninth grade in even if they have not
135yet met the requirements for a regular high school diploma or another certificate and then they can subsequently participate in a second graduation ceremony if they do later receive a diploma or a certificate students with disabilities may also elect to participate in a graduation ceremony at the end of their final year in school if they have not previously participated in the ceremony finally students who receive one of the certificates that students with disabilities are eligible for but stay in school and subsequently receive a high school diploma May participate in a second ceremony uh the next policy for discussion is attendance we've made some revisions to the policy first uh to clarify that sta the existing language says staff will always call parents uh send mail to them and talk about the attendant policy and consequences for
136every single absence and tardiness uh that that that student occurs and we said that doesn't actually really happen so we made it from they will to they may if there's an issue um we we moved we removed language about sharing our attendance policy with CPS to for for matters of educational neglect we clarified that when parents provide written excuses for excused absences they may do so either on paper or electronically through email or through other um software we added some language from the nisba sample policy that reflects our attempts to increase attendance through improving School climate and removing systematic barriers in addition to more traditional prizes and incentives we added some language describing the specific types of interventions we engage in and finally we added a pre kindergarten section specifying that the district will follow
137the same policies for pre kindergarten students that it does for its K through2 students at attendance and that excessive absences and an and something specific to prek uh that excessive absences may result in forfeiture of a student's prek placement um next is 5500 I was going to say last but not least but second to last 5 00 Student Records fura this one is really uh timely and we made we have we are proposing some really excellent changes we're revising the policy to eliminate many of the types of personal information about students that was previously treated as directory in that is currently treated as Direct reinformation.tv certain personal personal identifying information such as address phone number and place of birth from the categories that we consider directory information we've added some language specifying that the district
138cannot sell directory information um and can only use the information to produce programs yearbooks and rosters such as honor role and music programs uh use the information as part of news stories press releases social media and other media posts and can also use anonymous de identifiable student address AA for transportation or attendance Zone planning we've also revised some language to indicate that when a student or family opts out a release of the their directory information it lasts until the end of the school year uh and for students who leave the district by moving or graduating that op out lasts indefinitely unless they later contact us to cancel it finally uh policy 2020 Section 504 we Revis the policy to remove a list of common 504 accommodations which were provided as examples because the accommodations for
139students on 504 plans vary so widely uh depending on the nature of a students's disability that it was felt that the policy shouldn't make it sound like oh here's all the ones you get if you have a 504 and I open it up to questions on any of the policies uh that are on the discussion agenda can I just I just want to add and I'm not sure I apologize oliz for coming in part of the way through the conversation on on the uh fura policy that all the policy changes really are consistent with practice that it has not been the district's experience that people are contacting the district for large volumes of director information that's not really happening the one place it is apparently happening that will have to be handled slightly differently is
140some um occasionally elected officials will ask for all of the names and addresses of the graduates so that they can send a thank you card or a congratulations card so that will have to be addressed and I hope that um whoever normally receives that request we'll we'll handle that proactively and let them know that we'd be happy to send those cards on their behalf um but that we're no longer going to release that directory information like that they had been used to for the for over the years so it it besides that we investigated this thoroughly poor Miss McKenna probably went back to Cabinet four times Mr leco got to talk about this that policy had a hard time getting through policy committee because we were trying to make sure that we weren't inadvertently eliminating
141something that had been District practice um because this this business of directory information and furpa this is federal law with some local control and every single district has a policy and most of them say that the district May release fura uh directory information at The District's discretion and so us putting these very extreme guard rails on it where you really the district may not not release directory information except in these very limited settings that is something we're doing that's that's um much different than the the standard nisba policy um and we're doing that with all for all of the reasons that um we all believe to be true that we really want our students to have as much privacy as they can have um and that we should support the um the privacy of our
142students thank you for clarifying that and I didn't mean to frighten anyone it's true there are already laws in place saying in fact that we can sell directory information I'm pretty sure but we wanted to just clarify this and we are not again we heard that there were very few instances in which the district was divulging that type of information but this is intended for the privacy and the protection of our students and families as well as I think the safeguarding of our staff and administration because uh before we until we change this policy if someone were to come and ask staff members for students names and addresses and parents' names and and birth dates and where they were born Etc um you know the that staff member wouldn't as much have a leg to
143stand on if he they I don't want to do it well you can there's nothing the law says you can and now we can say that person can say actually Alban's policy is that we don't share this information on students period end of story um you know certain pieces of information in there like you know students wait they're useful if the students's on a wrestling team but they're not useful in any other situation so we added language for example for weight clarifying only as part of Athletics when relevant um just kind of stuff to make it make it clear that we're not um we're not in the business of publishing these types of intimate personal details on students um without a very good justification and that's it unless anyone else has any other questions on
144any of these policies question about the artificial intelligence policy I didn't I didn't get a chance to uh read it thoroughly but from what I understood we are allowing use of General AI uh tools for students to use in their coursework so things like chat GPT for example they could very well use it they just won't be penalized if they choose not to use it do I understand that correctly um one of the things in the policy is that instructional staff must be clear about their expectations for student use of of gen and assignments so they wouldn't be allowed to example if they're if they're given a paper to write the the they would not be allowed to just simply have ai write the paper but some of the classes have specific projects where they're
145encouraged let's say to use AI to flesh out ideas or flesh out artistic interpretations things in some cases choose to use AI are we training the staff to be able or providing them the tools to detect the use of AI I wonder if we want Dr prestino to come out since she's hiding behind the curtain back there we know she's back there and while you know while she comes out I'll ask I'll ask I'll ask another question while while while she's walking up um also you know when people use Chad GPT and a lot of these free AI tools they most likely don't realize that these are algorithms are still being trained with the questions you're posing so you're feeding information to these algorithms which means you could be disclosing information that you necessarily don't
146want to and it's just collecting data so it can train itself oh can I just say that the one thing that's in here does say anything that would be protected by fura or State education law and staff information anything that's confidential or School District information anything that's confidential is not something that anyone is allowed to put in the AI and I think she can tell you more about the specific AI software that the student that the district uses because it isn't your St it isn't like the free one you use online welcome um I wanted to address the first question which was AI detection tools and the training for things like that um the technology coaches spend a great deal of time providing support professional development um engaging in conversation um really helping everyone to
147understand that first of all detection tools don't really work um so that's important item to know number one right like it just that they don't work so what they do is they work with teachers to help them to have other ways to encourage students to show their work if there's um a concern that a student used AI in excess or something like that um in terms of other ways to engage in conversation with the student or you know things that can happen more in class as opposed to doing it for homework or just replicating the work some other way um one of the things that is I feel is becoming more important for our district is kind of establishing guidelines right because the question is you know the initial conversation was about um establishing parameters
148you know teachers that allow students to use it teachers that don't allow students to use it to what extent and there will always be um professional autonomy for the teachers to be able to make those decisions but as a district and of course my mind is thinking primarily secondary with that kind of conversation but of course as a district I feel it's important that we set some um guidelines that we agree to you know in the ELA Department the math department social studies science whatever it may be so that it's clear um what the teachers can ask of students or what the students are allowed to use or how they're allowed to use it um in terms of free AI resources like chat GPT and things like that students on a district issued device don't
149have access to chat GPT um co-pilot Microsoft co-pilot Gemini at this point although there are some new age restrictions or kind of some things that have been lifted that allow us that are going to allow us to examine that as a as a tool that we can allow safely in the district but we're not there yet so in the district teachers and students are encouraged to use magic school um because that is basically the same type of thing but with the bumpers on it the protections on it that um allow students to use AI safely the chat Bots we have teachers that create chat Bots and work with kids within magic school for those things so outside of school if they have the ability to access those tools they have the ability to access those
150tools but so far inside school or on a district device or with your Albany credentials those are the things that we have in place for kids um I'm not sure if I've answered all the no no that that was very useful and I I would hope that as you're you know that's AI is here to stay right we're not going to run away from AI being able to use it reliably valuably and understanding that the caveats of what it involves and the the the the pros and cons of it is important and it's especially important as kids don't know more of these things and it's it's brand new uh this they have a lot to lose going you know because they're just starting out on things and all that data is getting collected so I'm
151hoping that even in the like the the sixth grade seventh grade where they may not be all into it there are certain things that are that are implemented where you're starting to teach them the the safety rules of working with the internet so that as they start using them more in the high school right they already are building on that Foundation of safe use of those tools absolutely and New York state in in 2020 actually released um some digital fluency uh standards that um the the supervisors the instructional supervisors at the elementary level thinking you know kind of thinking along those lines have have taken and kind of divided up where those standards are best addressed in in what ways you know um through a library interaction you or like I don't want to say
152like a typing class per se but I think that and digital citizenship and digital literacy it really comes down to digital literacy also for all of the staff they can't really work with kids until they have their own fluency on on those types of tools and comfort level with those tools you know it's I don't want to digress but I I feel like it was basically a year ago we were sitting here and talking about the pilot for magic school look at where we are now as The District in just a short year with magic school being very very successful um in snorkel and some of the other tools and and the AI overlay that is now embedded in so many of the curriculum tools that we already have in the district so we have
153to I've been working with the coaches to think about how to shift the message or the purpose of their PD not how to use the tool but how to just be good stewards of of using AI tools so I think we've come a long way we have a long way to go but I know that I will feel better in the absence of having um a guide a structure or a guidance document from New York State education department that if we in Albany have one um I think that will just really help people feel like they are using it the right way the best way across the grade level great thank you for that explanation you are welcome and another question about the graduation policy okay so um it talked about how the students who
154would be violating the code of conduct would could be prevented from um attending the graduation ceremony so you're going to is that already in the code of conduct or are there going to be changes that will happen in May in the new version of the code of conduct you're going to make me go back and look at the code of conduct I think the code of conduct May mention activities like extracurriculars and whatnot but I don't know if it mentions graduation specifically if you give if you give me a second I can but we can certainly think about that and make sure it gets considered and implemented in the discussing so yeah but no I'm thinking about when we get to the code of conduct it should probably say up to an including prohibit prohibit
155prohibition against participating graduation and I like the fact that um you know students with special needs get the chance to graduate with their cohort and that's a good addition so no other questions thank you we did I'm sorry you missed it thank you next portion so I think that finishes all the action items for the night tonight uh the next discussion item is P3 evidence-based uh reading instruction update good evening all welcome so I'm really here to just introduce Miss morphe to my right on our instructional supervisor of Elementary Humanities Who currently is supporting us K12 in that role um and tonight she's going to provide us with a number of literacy updates um as they apply to the the elementary division oh there we go okay good all right um thank you Mrs Brown
156for the in uction and thank you for the invite tonight to really discuss some of the literacy initiatives that are happening in Albany in relation to what New York state is putting out I did oh no worries you can go ahead and go to the next slide so we just have the vision mission and goals um all right so some of the things that New York State has done as far as the literacy initiative um they put out the science of reading literacy briefs in January of 2024 they did the K3 curriculum review guide in June of 2024 the New York State dyslexia and disg graphia task force recommendations came out December 2024 and then the prek through third grade literacy instructional best practices guide came out in January 2025 Al has really been engaging
157in this work for over 5 years and I just am going to give a brief update on where we are these bullet points um so next slide please so the first one is the um science of reading so we have been implementing this for multiple years as far as kind of mindset shift and then within the past three years we have added the hegr phonological awareness our wonders units have been Rewritten to highlight vocabulary and writing instruction um we've added the hegerty foundational skills program using discussion protocols and then we've started really systematically training our teachers in the Sunni new PS micro credential for the science of reading so our reading teachers have been trained uh we had about a hundred teachers voluntarily um engage in the micro credential over the summer and then we
158have another cohort going through right now where we are targeting our kto2 classroom teachers um so really trying to be specific about who is engaging in that work um as we get you know through all of it uh we also implemented the NWA map reading fluency rather than the um strong stall Diagnostic in our K to 2 or in our K to 5 um classrooms to really more accurately address student need in foundational skills so that's how we've implemented the science of reading um then when we look at the New York State dyslexia and disg graphia task force recommendations these are just recommendations now they were done in three categories so there were readers and writers there was talking about screening and parent Guardian notification and then there was really talking about school support the
159only um recommendations that were targeted directly at schools and not more at legislation was the middle part which was screening and parent Guardian notification we do meet the requirement for the Diagnostics and screenings that they're currently talking about the ecbm um measure that we use has the rapid naming fluency which does screen for dyslexia and show early signs of reading difficulties so we are you know doing fine in that area the one thing that we we don't we do um inform parents if their child is receiving tier 2 or tier three reading support that's part of our process what we don't do is inform parents if a child has um shown that they are showing that show potential for reading disability we don't use that exact language so we will wait for how this recommendation
160gets put into law to see if we have to change some of the language that we use in the way that we notify parents about if a child's getting reading support but that would be the only shift that we would need to make in regards to these recommendations and then we go to the uh prek through third grade best practices and uh in alignment with that the state is going to ask us to attest that our curriculum has all of these components so uh Mrs Brown and I attended a training to see how we're going to have to do that attestation and um you know one of the things that we were pleasantly surprised about is that we really are we really do have all these components within our curriculum based on the heger foundational
161skills our Lexi andl platforms our wonders um really aligns nicely with these five things and then I did highlight on the next slide for you uh one of the pieces that they were very particular about was our connections to culturally responsive and sustaining education um you know the New York State framework there so again you know wonders has high interest uh literature texts many genres eras cultures the social emotional themes are woven in we did our custom um social studies text that really highlights Al's Rich history and aligns with our students um we have social emotional texts that have really a breath of um variety and books and entry points for kids K to5 and we have a lot of ongoing professional learning support including Ela coaches in every single building um our ongoing training
162with Sunni news the science of reading and then I've been engaging with our K to 5 reading teachers in uh professional development around a book study for the structured literacy interventions um so that's some of our professional development opportunities and then we get to our next steps so Ela is up for curriculum review next year so there will be a comprehensive um curriculum review k to2 for our Ela uh we will continue to systematically train our teachers in the science of reading uh using the Sunni newts micro credential we are prepared to do the attestation um in the spring of 2025 and we will continue to watch the guidance and legislation in regards to the suxi and disg graphia tax Force to make sure that we are following th those guidelines thank you um questions
163questions yes huh let's let me start Miss Savage sure I'm happy to start um first of thank you for the presentation it's always hard when you get a presentation from somebody who's a real expert and you're like I know so little about this I don't know if I can ask a coherent question but one question that I that I know will be familiar to many of your colleagues is I'm always curious if we're going to keep track of which teachers have received the training so that we could get year-over-year reports not just of how many people we've trained which is helpful information but what percent of our relevant of our teachers that are still employed with us have received the appropriate training because we train a lot of people who then do not stay so
164that do absolutely yes I do have a list of who has been trained it's actually color-coded it's very particular so I do know who has been trained and who hasn't um and part of it was that idea of trying to Target the K2 teachers and again that changes all the time right there we've got first grade teachers who will be in fourth grade next year or a fourth grade teacher that comes down to second grade so it was important to me to keep track of it for that same reason um so that we can be really particular about who we send for the next group so when you come back the next opportunity to to give us this presentation is that like data that you could say look oh sure we had this percentage of
165our K2 teachers were trained by this last year this percentage this year because sometimes that percentage might go down right absolutely if we do have a big shift in who's teaching what grade absolutely yeah and then the other thing I'll ask just on that point and then I'll release the microphone is it would be great to have that embedded in some of our HR tools rather than you having to manage it on a spreadsheet on your own because that data will live and die with you and you know we don't know who's going to you know how this is going to play out so I I know this was something that used to come up when when we were doing spending a lot of effort on C these long CR cohorts four or five day
166cohorts and it was always tracked the way you're tracking it right the administrator responsible for it was tracking it on a list that's not a like long that doesn't have longitudinal success for us as a district when it's done that way and I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong it's just like we I think it's something we talk about all the time is this balance between where things live and when they live with certain people and when they live in a more systematic way so and whether we even have the right tool to do it in that way correct yes yes so thank you so much no problem and just to tag on to that one I mean you know there could be unless it's just a one-ear program and that's it and everybody gets
167the same program if people are getting multiple levels of it tracking it would be better because then you know who's actually because you could have people leaving at the second level people coming and if just one single number is not going to be very descriptive of what actually happened yeah at this point it's it's a 35-hour micro credential um and it is only level one but again as these recommendations continue to grow and change and as new puls grows their program um I'm sure there's going to be opportunities for a level two thank you Miss cre oh thanks I was just wondering it sounds like the focus maybe at the state level has been about literacy and specifically literacy and issues with dyslexia and my question was I don't know as much about disg graphia
168specifically and I wondered is that something that you tend to see a lot of overlap with the same students that are having the reading struggles or is it more like maybe I'm picturing dis graphia is also PE if that phrase is used to describe people like with the F with who are having fine motor motor problems that they can't write or is it more just specific problems uh putting words at putting letters together to make words and less of a problem about I can't write legibly it can be a combination um so it can be both of those things and it is something that you don't hear a lot about and I actually I do kind of feel like they just threw that term in like you hear a lot about dyslexia and um I
169it's interesting that they chose they chose to include disra graphia and not discala because you hear more about that so it was an interesting choice on the on New York State's part and um what's also funny is that in the attestation there is no writing piece to that it was all reading skills um and that was something that Mrs Brown and I noticed so it was one of those things where like it was in some pieces but not in others so I'll be curious to see how the guidance does come out around that um and again yes those can be co-mingling um you know disabilities for students sometimes it is completely separate where there is not a problem in writing there is a problem in reading or the opposite so it just depends it's very
170specific to the kid thanks for helping clear that up sure M wison thank you for your presentation and I know in the beginning you indicated that we've been at this for five years and most of these recommendations started in 2024 did they give any indication of a certain Benchmark that they wanted to see Statewide or like a particular outcome you mean as far as um like sorry as far as releasing that guidance and anywhere they wanted us to be as districts they want to make sure they want us to be able to say they so in the attestation it's going to be those five areas the phic awareness phonics fluency of vocabular and comprehension and we have to check whether it is not implemented at all partially implemented or fully implemented um but that's really
171it they're not going to give guidance around curriculums that they approve or don't approve um and then what's what I love though is that they did come out with the curriculum review for prek to3 so I really intend to use that closely in my in my full review next year it'll be a nice tool that has some rubrics and things like that um in those areas so it will be it will be a really nice addition to the curriculum review that we already do um just to make sure that we are fully aligned Miss man great thank you for the presentation I um I wanted to just follow up on raes a good question um so because ination is something that uh the public will see um you know in addition to the board um
172I wondered if and I always hate for definitions but I wondered if it would be appropriate to Define uh and even if it was like sort of the footnote like where it says New York State dyslexia and graphia where whatever definition it is that they use or or if there are definitions that you sh share with parents um just because I know that I will always come back and and so I would refence parents well I just thought it might be useful to have something that gives um some understanding absolutely it is interesting that uh one of the recommendations from the dyslexia and dysgraphia task force is that New York State adopt a common definition because they are kind of all over the place so um that's one of the recommendations in that first um
173part there is that new York State come up with a common definition as well but we can certainly add some language around that thank you sure Mr Almani I didn't have any questions great presentation thank you thank you I'm glad that we have all the tools that they're thinking of using we already using them it's good to know it was exciting to be on the right path I feel like we left feeling good like okay good we don't have to throw everything out and start again right thanks again thank you moving on to the next discussion item on equity and CR good evening to the the board our superintendent colleagues and community members um we're excited to present our CR and Equity update tonight and share the great work happening at the building and District
174level we would like to acknowledge um the district and building leaders who lead and support this work um day in and day out as well as our CR facilitators Mr Tom jilo jilo our enl and Refugee Services director Miss Amilia Gallagher assistant principal at Myers Mr Lionel Harris hom school coordinator at hacket Middle School Miss Bridgewater our school Improvement director and Miss Candy antonetti Academy principal at albony high school without them this work would not be possible as we do with every presentation we start with our vision mission and goals which is directly connected to the presentation you will see this evening I will now turn it over to McKenna to share the work we are doing in support of culturally responsive education in our district good evening our district is committed to culturally responsive
175education ensuring that all students learn in an inclusive environment and Equitable environment as well here's how we bring bring that commitment to Life Equity and action plans each school's School Improvement plan includes clear steps to amplify student voice instructional rigor and social and emotional learning our ruler and social emotional learning um provides emotional intelligence and social and emotional learning are embedded in our curriculum supporting student well-being and academic success we also have no place for hate where schools actively Foster inclusivity reject discrimination and inter anti-bias education into Improvement plans CR training you'll hear a lot about this in a little bit nearly a decade of training has deepened Educators awareness and application of culturally responsive practices belt are building Equity leadership teams play a key role in advancing Equity across our schools one book one
176school which we've had for several years now is a shared reading experience building cultural competence and a sense of community in the curriculum instruction um realm we continuously refine curriculum and teaching strategies to reflect and support diverse student needs Albany International Center is a vital resource for newcomers ensuring welcoming and a supportive environment Central registration language support and Equitable access helping to Foster stronger family and Community engagement so as you can see Equity is more than just a goal for us it's ongoing action and we remain committed to refining and strengthening culturally responsive practices to create a truly inclusive district for all students next slide please so we are continuing our partnership with NYU steinhardt and similar to last year the work this year has taken on a three-pronged approach for our administrators we are
177providing three sessions focusing on core practices how it's implemented at the building level and providing steps to support our teams in each of our schools we have our c facilitators training uh where they are getting trained on the new framework and modules and then we also have our C cohort training uh we are training one cohort of 25 this year um and this is our 16th cohort that we've trained with a focus on members from each of our schools Equity teams so they are the uh lead Learners and they can go back and um Implement uh that learning that they've acquired turn it over to Miss Brown all an active student Equity team oh I'm sorry next slide please you our schools have an active student Equity team with the purpose of serving as the
178Catalyst for collaboration learning aiming to empower students to lead and contribute creation of more Equitable and inclusive educational environments for our students identify Focus thank you thank you um each year our schools identify areas of focus for their student Equity teams and then embeds that into their Improvement plans in order to codify the work of our e Equity teams in our school district we held our first by anual Equity Summit in November of 2023 under the leadership of Mr Tom gilo and Christina zontini the summit brought Equity team members together from our schools across the district and served as a collaborative platform to discuss strategize and share best practices related to equity diversity and inclusion we had another Equity Summit in June of 2024 and our third one is scheduled for March 28th just a
179few weeks away some examples include um examples of our student Equity teams empowering students to take on leadership roles as facilitators in various School events that can include things like student Town Halls data presentations honoral ceremonies and character cohorts aligned with ruler themes this approach promotes student engagement leadership development and active participation in shaping the school Community next slides please um what you'll see in the next slides are some examples of equity and action from um that spring Summit so next up you'll you'll see a slide tied to um C in our Elementary classrooms in our Elementary classrooms cultural responsiveness continues to be at the heart of the work that we strive to do every single day we have worked hard to integrate it into every facet of an Al City School District's learning and
180experience at the elementary level you'll see some of those ways outlined on um the slide presented in ela and Humanities we've worked hard to make sure all students no matter their educational setting have access to grade level standards our goal has been and continues to be to identify develop and Implement high impact instructional routines and strategies that develop deep literacy skills K5 um as you just heard at our last um presentation we have a new social studies pacing guide that provides students various opportunities to explore multiple perspectives um in math we provide learning around math routines that Foster student engagement and increase student Voice through a variety of opportunities for Student Exploration and engagement in problem solving in science our resources mysty science and F provide students with inquiry based and Hands-On learning opportunities and
181our enrichment acceleration and intervention blocks include phonics phonics instruction integration of Multicultural Tex sets that focus on identity um perseverance and perspective during our math eai blocks our students engage in a multi- approach to intervention with standard space centers using our bridges curriculum math games and theel digital platform next slide oh I'm [Music] sorry see in classrooms am I can you hear me okay okay in ela we're making sure our students see themselves in what they read by using texts that reflect albany's diversity and bring in voices that aren't always heard in our math the focus is on grade level learning while making sure students have a voice in how they engage with the content in social studies and Civics we're digging into Justice power structures and social justice themes and in Civics our seniors
182will take on Civic action projects working with the community to make an impact science should be Hands-On and inquiry based where students learn best by doing in our world languages we're not just teaching words we're helping students understand cultures perspectives and how language connects people in our encourse subjects we're intentionally recruiting underrepresented students into stem music programs at the high school level are expanding we are building a strong art portfolio pathway for students looking to pursue pursue creative careers and our Middle School CTE options are growing to expose students to more career paths early on the big picture St student voice matters we need to create spaces where every student is heard gleam instruction grade level engaging affirming and meaningful should be the norm walkthroughs should feel like a two-way conversation with real support for
183staff assessment isn't just about a grade it's about having students provided with multiple ways to succeed next slide please so we wanted to give you a sneak peek around what the 25 26 school year um uh looks like uh Miss Brown and I had a planning meeting with NYU steinhardt Dr Brown and Dr week so we are well what the 2526 school year looks like next slide please so next year we will continue our collaboration with NY steinhart and we again are looking at a three-prong approach and this graphic does a nice job sorry like I think literally battery so this graphic does a nice job with um showing the overlap between the three prong so the first prong is around co- facilitation and coaching we're not just bringing in outside experts we're building our
184own District capacity so the culturally responsive uh becomes part of what we do and who we are we next year will be training 50 lead Learners um Educators who will drive this work forward in their in their schools our schools we will have two cohorts of of 25 next year this year we have one and and we're doubling that for next year our sessions uh will continue to be co- facilitated by District Educators and NYU Metro um staff to ensure coaching modeling and real-time feedback is provided the focus is around common language identity and power and education classroom practices and the C toolkit the big picture around co- facilitation coaching is this isn't just about today it's really about embedding this uh culturally responsive framework longterm so it's sustainable beyond our partnership with NYU the
185second prong CR um around leadership training is that second prong and I I stress this and I know we we say it when we do our secondary and Elementary updates is leadership really does matter if we want systemic change our school leaders need the tools to make that happen so this prong will do that we we'll be focusing on the self assessment walkthrough tool so leaders can assess plan and refine their schools CR implementation uh we will provide three full day sessions uh to guide them through understanding the tool setting goals and refining their work this is not another Standalone this will be embedded in superintendent Haw riters um superintendent administrative days so three out of the 10 uh meetings will be dedicated to this work this moves uh the crse from isolated efforts to
186a districtwide shift ensuring that equity-driven practices impact every single student that we serve each and every day and our third approach which I'm really excited about and it's something that we haven't done in the past is around building Equity leadership teams and technical assistance so we know that change happens at the school level and our building Equity leadership teams are the teams driving that work so NYU steinhardt will support our belts development with four online halfday sessions focused on beliefs policies and practices the work will include team culture structuring for impact and continuous Improvement the belts will become equity-driven leadership teams ensuring schools create truly inclusive responsive environments for all students so why does this matter it's about real sustainable change building expertise supporting leadership and ensuring every school moves toward true equity and inclusion
187next slide please so the scope of work um creating systems of coherence um at the heart of this work is coherence making sure that this isn't just another initiative but truly embedded into how we operate as a district collaboration is everything as you know we're building strong teams through coaching leadership training and belts to create a shared responsibility for this work we know that leadership doesn't stop after that training so we're focusing on real practice coaching modeling and reflection so it becomes part of everyday teaching and accountability uh accountability keeps us moving forward self assessments feedback loops and Progressive review progress reviews help us track what's working and where we need to adjust so the bottom line is we're creating sustainable meaningful change that directly improves student experiences and outcomes and while I won't be
188here I'm really excited about the direction of um this work for the 25 26 school year so this concludes our C and Equity update and we would welcome any questions that you might have for us thank you for your presentation I'll open up the floor for questions beginning to my right with board member Elman yawi so no question I just want to um reinforce several comments that uh board member Vicky Smith has said tonight that this work is very important um it's always been important it's even more important now um with every um everything that's happening in the federal government and the push and the drive to squash these programs um and it's just a reminder why it's so important in our district because of the immense diversity in um both across race religion socioeconomic
189status we have such a a variety of essentially um folks in our schools that if we didn't do this it would it would show a lack of care for our students and that's not why we're here so um thank you for showing us this work that you guys are going to continue to do and um as Dr chatur said um it you know kind of buckle up but you know it's going to require um strong heads um and consistency in belief of what we're doing um and not just saying okay I give up that's I think one of the most important uh things we can do is not give up so thank you great thank you both um uh I I always love uh hearing uh about the work and um and I do want
190to sort of uh get to a a question um about how how are are we able to to get further I mean I think there's great work I don't know if you know what I mean I this work is great and it's uh it takes a lot of individual you know perseverance and um and um of teachers of students um and um I'm I just always worry that you know get to a good place there's still always a deeper dive that that has to be taken before we can really start to see the next level of change and you know just that's how the cycle goes so just kind of wanting to understand this work in that sort of cycle of life process if you will um and then I I also wanted to ask
191you about this uh our jrtc students were here and I'm sure that there other uh groups of students um my brother's Keepers My Sister's Keepers uh perhaps the clubs uh athlet Athletics you know these are all um uh groups that kids belong to and so and and we all know that kids really do need and want to belong to something and so I'm trying to figure out from all of these opportunities for students to grow to learn to develop their leadership skills there are still youngsters for whom we not able or haven't been successful in getting them into something that drives them that says okay I'm going to try to to do this I'm going to try to take on this leadership um and so my question is what are we learning from these opportunities
192like our clubs like JC like Athletics that can be built in elsewhere and are our are ourm designed or should they be designed to serve as sort of yet another level of where kids are gravitating hey I want that I want to belong to that and you know and maybe I'm fighting or just struggling for straws because I want I want to see a better world before I leave it um and I and I believe in every youngster and I believe that we do and can and should have high expectations for them all they jump for that but something is clearly some breaking that that process for some or not or not leading them to move in that direction and so I'm always always focus on you know also what can we do more of
193or differently um and and I see we're doing a whole lot and I want to make sure that all of that does every one of these things lead to where we want it to is it working is there something that um you would change you would do differently um because we're just like are we all over the place you know so again I know that's a bunch of like questions and I'm sorry my my M my mind just kind of goes towards like like what might be chaos but there really is a thought process behind it I promise you and it really is this I want to make sure more and more of our youngsters get what they need to be successful um and I know we believe in them and we just have to
194figure out how we can help get them there so thank you now that's a a great question I think the first question that you asked was around are we able to to get any further and you know I want to reflect on where we were as a district a decade ago um and where we are today and I'm really proud that we have stayed the course with this work it's not easy work um and it gets ugly at times um but we are continuing to fight the fight on behalf of our kiddos and make sure that every kiddo has an equitable experience and they get exactly what they need um we have worked really hard around that plan do study act to make sure that process um to make sure that we are evaluating what
195we are doing every day um to provide students with an equitable education and that their voices um are heard you know similarly to the last presentation around the um the literacy we have staff turnover and so while it seems like we've been doing this for many many years and I can go back to my years in skincity you know 20 years ago we were doing the same work with NYU steinhart and they're still doing it and we're still doing it here um it's never ending um and we won't be done we still have disproportionality even though we're closing those gaps we have disproportionality in suspensions and discipline we have disproportionality in our chronic absenteeism we have proportionality in when you disaggregate uh who's participating in sports and who's not the clubs and so there's a
196lot of work to still be done um in this area but we have to continue to fight that fight and Lead that work and so yes it's been a couple of decades since we've engaged in this work 10 years since I've been here and we have to a decade later we'll probably still be talking about this work um I know the you know the the work that we're doing and I know Miss Brown can speak to the elementary the work that we're doing at the secondary level around equity and student voice and student leadership teams and making sure that their voices are heard um is having an impact we have students who are leading to Leading Town Halls we have students who are leading um honor role ceremonies we have students who are leading different
197student groups um at the school we have you know at the high school we have a huge uh initiative around student engagement and getting more students involved in the clubs and making sure that students are connected to a trusted adult so the work is happening but there's still a lot of work to be done and until every student has exactly what they need the work won't be done and if I can jump in real quick um as the board knows we've been working with ncbi ncbi uh on a number of uh really important yet sensitive topics and Miss McKenna and I received a sort of a update uh on some of their data collection and interviews with students and and staff about a month ago right after the new year and we're due for another
198one shortly but part of that work also um in working with students and and trying to understand their experiences and where we can improve an environment to change their experiences are around those conversations are around what else can we be doing the provide social experiences before after school programs with with students that uh have similar backgrounds or dissimilar background so part of the recommendations that will come out from that work will um hopefully answer some of of uh that one particular piece of your question as well miss Savage say a very thought-provoking question and conversation just there um as well as this whole presentation always is like the heart of what we're trying to do and I'm really sensitive to some of the concerns that um that board member Smith brought brought up around staying
199the course through a very challenging period I mean if you've ever talked to someone who lived in Europe in the late 30s it can get very hard we have seen nothing yet compared to how hard it can get um so I don't think that is an easy thing um and I think that all we can do right now is keep doing what we're doing and very intentionally tie it to the reason we are doing it right and I know that that's something that's embedded here um and is always embedded in our work but I think that we would benefit by being really clear about why we're doing it when we look at our outcome data it's not acceptable and it's not acceptable for certain groups of students um more so than for other groups of
200students and therefore we must do something to address the Deep student need um and um I think the more we can talk about the why in every presentation so that it's not an isolation we're not doing C and Dei and whatever whatever term people want to decide is a bad term just because we think it's touchy feely we're doing it because we have student outcomes that demonstrate we need to do something for students so that they can learn so that would be a takeaway I think um that will help us stay the course and help protect us a little bit against people who think it's just you know words um and then I also just wanted to tie in um two things one is that I believe that the staff um cabinet level staff and
201board have a kind of a a theory of action that engagement drives academic success right that and that shows in our commitment to Project based learning and those sorts of in theclassroom Project work that's Hands-On and gets kids excited but also in what you just talked about in terms of the number of kids active in clubs and active in sports I know when we first started talking about leading indicators for Equitable success for our students one of the ones we thought we could measure because it was data we had is let's look at what students are not doing anything right especially at the secondary level if you're not on at least one sporting team and you're not enjoy engaged in at least one club and or you're not in the CTE program and you know
202whatever pick your 12 criteria there's lots of ways our students can be successful but if you're not tied into any of those that should be like alarm Bells should be going off for us that that kid is in a dangerous place in terms of their projection for Success so that's one of our theories of action um that I think we don't always talk about explicitly but I think is really there and then the other thing that I wanted to talk about was um staff retention you the fact that we that all school districts have turnover that's normal it's normal for there to be turnover especially over the last 10 years right when it's been a very very hard time to be a teacher but I really think um that needs to be a stronger Focus
203for us and that's not a you thing it's an us thing um but figuring out what we can do to um increase our retention so that the trainings that we do um we don't need to do so many times to increase that percentage of of teachers who have that and teachers and staff and um administrators everyone I don't mean just teachers but I think that's um an area that I feel like we we have room to improve on that and I'm not exactly sure how um but I feel like there is something else that we need to do in terms of engaging our um our whole our whole team all the people all the adults uh in um figuring out how we can be a better place to work and how we can improve for
204for them so that they will wrap around our students so not that that's not a criticism that we're doing things wrong it's just a cycle of improvement that we can continue to get better so none of that was a question it was really just me thinking hard about about what we can do um both given the federal situation because it is what it is and we are going to have to deal with it um and it is going to be hard especially I mean there is a reason why the drinking age is 21 in every single state and it is not coincidence it is because the federal government said we are going to pull your transportation money if you don't raise the drinking agent that's what they did um and so they do have ability
205to change policy by withholding funds and it is going to be really interesting anyway I'll stop talking now sorry Miss Grey so I really appreciated this presentation and it's been really meaningful to be part of the board as we've progressed through this because the Equity presentations and like the way we've approached Equity has it's used to be something more AB more abstract Concepts we were teaching adult we were teaching the adults and it's progressed into something that's action and to these very clear things we can show people and I think that's very helpful especially when you're talking about the local level people in our community that are curious but maybe skeptical if you say well what what does it mean that we have an equity policy what does it mean that we do equity in
206our schools if I show them the page with the purple pyramid and I say we're creating systems of coherence they're going to be like huh whereas I love that you have not only that abstract you've got the theory but then you can say what are our specific schools doing we're reading books we're having you know we're reading books we're having celebrations and I I love I think it is important I'll Echo what my colleagues have said I think it's important the way you've shown how this is all tied to academics because I think that there's this this false idea out there that schools are are do they're doing Equity work instead of focusing on Reading Writing and teaching mathematics and the way you've shown that this is all tied and what tied through it permeates
207what we do and is the reason why we do things the way we do them we do things this way so that we can reach students um where they are um so that we can give them texts to read where they see people like them where they hear about who they are and I just as I said no want to comment I was visiting an elementary school and I saw those third grade or third through fifth grade social studies textbooks and I was so impressed that we had published our own local textbooks in two languages no less it's amazing to be able to teach kids about the community and I love that as part of our Equity policy we're really centering student voice supporting student interests and helping guide our students to become leaders um
208and I think that continues to be important so thank you so [Music] much M WS I mean it is it is you know it is a very it's very hard work and every time you dive and you think you know something and you realize no you don't and then you need to dive even harder and so it's been a very long uh experience for me personally going through this process with the board and the administrators as we de and decided to come up with an equity policy and work through these things but a question that I still uh comes to my mind is I mean you know we have a lot of turnover in the district we have a lot of training mechanisms that we use we have a lot of tools that we use
209to to implement it and so there are different schools different cohorts different types of implementation happens in these different places how do we measure impact is it really working right I mean I I am still like what it's a question that I don't have the answer to like is it is it just the okay grades are going up or is it something else how are we actually measuring that and if it's not if what is it a measure and if if it doesn't meet our measure what are we doing about it right so I a teacher or a staff member I've gone through my training level one and now you know next year comes around I'm ready for level two but I'm taking the teachings from level one and implementing it in my day-to-day work
210right how do you see my work as okay I'm actually doing it right and it's working in my classroom because if it's not working in my classroom and you just to send me to level two training next year that really isn't helpful what is it in my level one training that I'm not doing correctly or implementing in my Cort and what techniques can I change to make it more successful and are we doing looking at the those and I I don't have the answers but it's easier to ask the question yeah I don't think there is one answer but just high level for me when we see all of our subgroups performing at the same level and we do and we don't have any disproportionality we know it's working and so when you think when
211you go back and you think about what I said earlier around that plan du study act model um we have to continuously look at our data and plan around that data study the data and then make informed decisions based on that and then repeat the cycle and we're doing that um at every level um you know is it as fast as we would you know are we closing those achievement gaps as quickly as we would like to close them no we have a lot of work to do around this but we know what's working when all of our students are performing and there's no disproportionality whether it's via achievement or suspension and and discipline um Etc I don't know if you want to add anything so while I know we always talk about outcomes um
212I'm just going to reference being in buildings and seeing some hard conversations happening um is one of the ways I'm going to say that you're able to see it in real time um making an impct act and that's being in these student leadership team meetings hearing kids advocate for what they see or what they need or what they they don't see that they need or um staff members kind of challenging and pushing other staff members um to to to make sure we are creating the school communities um and the environments that we need for our students um so while we are um moving towards raising student outcomes you're also able to see some of those things happening in real time in buildings um I also want to say that having been a part of that
213initial cohort a decade ago and um now seeing how we've kind of systematically developed um these systems the belt teams the student leadership teams um as Miss McKenna just talked about that plan to study Act and the seps um having an opportunity to evaluate and discuss those things and tie them to particular benchmarks or outcomes we're on our way um we understand it's hard work um a lot of it is is is work of the heart and the mind um and just this week alone you know I've been a part of some very difficult discussions around things the adults need to do to make the environment better for students um so the answer is yes I I I I think that we're we're definitely moving in the right direction um there's a long way for
214us to go but is it's happening and it's you see elements of it every day in our buildings I totally agree with you the young kids are are easier to teach it's the adults because the first step is to make yourself vulnerable right and that is hard for a lot of people to do and you're making yourself vulnerable open for whatever right and and taking that first step let take some effort courage whatever you want to um and and that's where I think you know it's the adults that need to get this first um but I'm glad that we are on the path I'm glad that um things have changed the achievement Gap going between the the minorities and the U you know and the Caucasian population after graduation right the 4% Gap we only
215one of the few districts that could do it you know Co changed everybody's grades everybody's grades were inflated everybody can say all of those things no one else can show that The Gap dropped right so that was one indicator that showed that okay we doing something right and thank you thank you for your presentation okay yes so um so I'm going to just push you a little bit um I do want to get back to the question of there are uh especially and I again I'm not I I I do believe that adults have to kind of get with it but I'm very interested always in in the student that's where I see that's where the change is going to happen um and so I'm watching these students whether it's in our Equity teams whatever
216you know the student government I mean you know and talking with them is just so impressive and again I'm just asking you what are we learning from those student groupings that might inform I mean what are we asking them what are we learning from them that might inform how we continue to move with sustaining a CR environment um from K to 12 right um regardless of the turnover and staff and we're about to have how many retirements you know over the next several years well goodness if you're losing I don't know what the percent is that's huge somehow you still got to be able to sustain the this environment and so my question is how do we intend on doing that and how will we know that we have done that successfully and it gets
217back to I think what you and I were both saying there's so much in here and I'm not disputing any of it but how what is it telling us and how are we using that information um and um I don't know I just uh again I I'm coming I know I'm going to be harping on jrtc because it is one of the most diverse groups that I have seen and I do know the students that have indicated an interest at the uh Middle School levels and superintendent's right I don't know what we're going to do with that number because you you're practically doubling the program and so I say to you then what is making this so successful and desirable um and it really I think it comes down to those students themselves they're they're
218saying look hey I wasn't I wasn't really focused I mean I how many of them have told me just on a car ride you know like I really hated school I didn't want to be here my my buddy said Oh you should come try this out you know and they get into the program they're testing it they they they understand you're not going to be testing it but once before you're out you know try it if you want to don't play and generally they don't play they have found the camaraderie they have created Community they have created Family within that structure um they are the leadership they're taking it on even when they did not think they could their first year and I'm watching these kids develop and they're becoming the commander of their unit
219and I'm like oh my God I remember this kid I just surely didn't think he or she was going to make it um and they're they're doing it so I again I'm just really focused on what are we learning from our students that they demonstrate both in their language in their speaking up in their behavior that might inform us as to how we might do something differently or how we might sustain what we hope will be um sustainable during this period of time in particular okay so thank you and I don't know if there's any answer to that I just sort of talking it through okay thank you thanks again okay moving on to the next part of our agenda that'll be the budget update Mr Carris good evening um as we get deeper into
220the budget season you'll have more presentations as we get more information so just our budget calendar as I move through presentation uh tomorrow which I already submitted as the property tax capap calculation to the state uh we have an upcoming Community budget committee meeting uh the 13th another board meeting and more uh virtual community budget committee meetings coming up but you can also see the full calendar as I try to do monthly breaks of this at the bottom with that that link uh the key budget term for the budget is rollover budget um the 2526 budgetary notes um the uncertainty for State Foundation Aid due to Rockefeller Institute recommendations released in 2024 of December I'm sorry December 2024 uh that's still up in the air I know that the state aid runs that the governor
221put out were very beneficial to us as a district um then we have we're awaiting the uh the state aid runs as the budget gets passed within the state hopefully by April 1st um as always we want to continue our existing programs and services contractual obligations our operations Staffing and benefits um and otherwise we want to monitor our overtime so this is still our actual Staffing ratio for the school district um as we work on our staffing for the upcoming year you'll see another column com in in the next presentation with estimates of our enrollment and our staffing um per unit and then the ratio on the bottom of the unit per student uh the legislative priorities which we've talked about earlier as well um but again on the bottom you can see the link
222it will give you a list of the nice presentation that where the packet that Mr leco has created um for the legislative priorities I think I'm frozen some of the budget variables um the health insurance increase is a good amount for the school district the tax cap which you'll see in upcoming Slide the tax levy that we will set in early April with the board and impact of retirements um the current tax cap calculation uh as of today that's was due tomorrow is 5.06% it's due to the difference in our building Aid as compared to our debt service that's the biggest component of it so right now with our debt going up and our Aid didn't go up as much it will catch up in the upcoming years because the way that the paperwork goes
223go into the system but that offset actually increased a bigger calculated tax cap limit so the original one before the I got new numbers for Debt Service was about 2.25% so you can see how much of a difference that is with probably within a couple weeks so general fund expenditures uh the rollover budget you can see the salaries benefits tuition for the charter school students I believe that was based on 245 roughly um it's the current enrollment within a couple of our students there's a couple unknowns yet there um the high school is being built across town um the nursing charter school is still out there so we're still working on trying to figure out a good estimate number of students that we will have to put into that number but right now it's the
224current enrollment that we have um contract Services you can see that there's a bigger increase in there one of the bigger things with Contract Services uh five or six years ago when the high school starting to be built the technology that was put into the high school was in through the capital projects now that we have that rotation coming through we have to buy more Chromebooks or desktops because of that rotation um I'm trying to see if there are any other bigger numbers I talked about the benefits uh The Debt Service uh as we go through the individual um phases of the capital project we do banss rather than bonds until we do the finish of the capital project so we just are going to be bonding for our group three project which is the
225North Albany and the um miscellaneous other capital projects within the small smaller projects within the buildings so that would be a bond in the upcoming year uh but we're still Banning the project for the high school so that will be a year out so once we get that then I get a better uh prediction of a fivey year 10 year 15E um payment process or um or death service so here with state aid you can see the difference between the estimated Foundation Aid um then we have our special services which we don't have Bose Aid so that's where the special services Aid comes from um that's the individual things that we do with bosis and we get Aid back uh high cost Hardware private access software Transportation you can see with building Aid um from
226the initial state aid run this has gone up that's because the timing of the paperwork for that group four I'm sorry the north Aly project and the smaller projects went in our building aid went up but not as high as our debt service cost so there's that Gap as well um the Char School transitional Aid based on enrollment has gone up based on the calculation the Char School supplemental Aid I haven't touched yet because I want to make sure to calculate that properly um but you can see that our Aid did go up a little bit as compared to presentation I did about a month ago so as always with this budget process the numbers fluctuate um and there are many more things that we have to start adding into this or consider adding into
227this like we talked about tonight with the cell phone process and what may need to be put into there um JC the the big enrollment with our students coming in nth grade for that but that's stuff that it will be coming in the next few weeks and then that'll affect the other slides and the additional costs um um we were approved for the by the Civil Rights the Attorney General civil rights Bureau of the New York State Voting Rights Act the Attorney General did approve the new location of St Bethany's I'm sorry say yeah Bethany Reformed Church sorry thank you um yes oh I didn't go that far down um so as a Cabinet we are still reviewing the building requests that's the next process we have as a Cabinet to do um we have
228to incorporate the new information as it becomes available as I was just saying that it's continual up and down um and can we have to incorporate feedback from the board community and staff and continue legislative advocacy e efforts questions smage no no real questions just that you know this is such an early phase and we won't really understand what this really means until we get state aid and we won't really know that until the April budget um I did want to ask whether you'd had a chance to figure out why the executive budget so I just going to try and state the question I know you and I just did that like thing where you know what my question is and you know what you're going to answer but nobody else knows what's about to
229happen or what we're talking about but when the governor renounces the executive budget she gives you this year like 2526 and she gives you the current year 2425 and the 2425 amount she put in the this so it should match what we got last year which is what we adopted the budget like what we said we were going to get and it was off by like many millions of dollars um and did you were you able to figure out why that was off yep so when we do our sc3 um for state aid report our enrollment at that point in September um have power VI is different than when the bedday report comes out due to students that are non um non- entrance or non I for I think it's the non- entrance students y
230um and that could be based on vaccination records it could be L students that have come to try to register and then decide to move on to a different district there might be other students that just have moved to other districts and we did not know about it at that time um so for example last year to this year just in that month time it was about 160 student difference just in the high school Alone um this current year where we did the sd3 in September there's about 600 student swing between what was estimated in September to the beds day so that that's the difference in the aid because it was estimated on or sc3 and then it comes back on the actual numbers that come through so I just want to make sure I
231understand the timing so a year ago we adopted a budget that we put in front of the voters and they approved that amount and in in that budget we anticipated a certain amount of state aid and you're saying that anticipation was based on a projection of enrollment and that the actual enrollment was lower so that's why our state aid was actually lower than what we had originally anticipated but didn't our enrollment go up last year that's why I'm like What's Happening Here I don't understand so it it did but then it the number that we put into the system in September September of what year though like it's right before bedday so there's like September of 2024 this school year yep so no it was last September September of 23 with base check change it's
232a 2425 school year yes somebody check me right the 20 the most recent bed day was in 20124 right December of 2024 yeah when we put the number in for enrollment yeah in the sc3 it changed between this mid-september datee that we pulled it to beds day okay and the number that's in the executive budget goes back to beds day which is lower than what was actually in our system in September but our budget from last year was not based on what we thought was going to happen in September it was based on the actual numbers but then they go backwards as well and change it so last year there was see students swing just in the high school alone okay so they do retroactively go back and change the amount of state aid that
233you get I'm going to have to go in you and I are going to have to sit there with like numbers and spreadsheets and stuff because I'm still not tracking because I know our enrollment is going up so I don't understand why our state aid is going down so that's like I'm not registering properly but you and I we'll look at numbers and then I'll I'll get it okay thank you Mr rich no questions other than when you find out can you explain it can can you expl thoroughly plan to understand it and convey what I have that is puzzling thank you Miss SM Miss Wilson it's too early to ask any questions but you know if I understand correctly you're just saying that numbers fluctuated between the first calculation and the state calculation for
234this year's what they whatever they put so what we predicted and they they actually went back to a 23 number or whatever and that 160 number fluctuation related to that difference and I forget have any Millions but yes but I I will we'll talk about better yes yeah no worries no worries sure I just wanted to um to highlight a couple of specific budget things that come up every year and I am not particularly advocating for them but I do not want to get to the point where you guys have a presented budget and they have an even gone into the conversation so um we are asked every single year if second grade swim is ever going to come back we are asked um every single year if we can add more coaches for each
235sport we are asked every single year or particular the last couple of years if we're going to add more bus monitors which we have determined is reimbursable right so can we do more bus monit bus monitors as you guys know we're not getting through this this budget year without me saying the word child safety Zone like about 400 times so are we going to try and do a child safety zone because that's going to hit that 45-day notice pretty soon um and then I know there's been a conversation over many years which um Mr Powell raised up this morning or this at the beginning of this meeting which does seem like this morning it was so long ago but um what are we going to do about authentic pedagogical training for our monor teachers so
236that we're doing authentic Monas um so those are questions that I know are going to keep coming up and so I'm hopeful that there'll be a response I'm not saying that they all have to be in the budget I'm just saying let's make sure that there's a conversation at the cabinet level about whether those should be in the budget or not okay pending more information thank you see next time okay board committee reports that's okay um hello uh so we uh let me start with the facilities committee um we had a great meeting last uh oh my gosh February it was two or three weeks ago yes February 11th I think it was and we do have one um coming up um on uh March what's that date thank you um and um so again
237we're we're just uh excited that we're uh closing out on some of the high school uh work um although it won't completely be finished until uh later um in the summer and early September um but it's good to see all of that coming um uh to uh closure um I uh did you find that date okay it doesn't matter it's oh the eth there we go uh so we do have a meeting on the 8th 545 here at HG and uh we'll keep you posted on what's happening there um the other uh committee is the uh ad hoc committee on uh uh student board representative and we are steadily making progress we will uh as a group convene um we had um a great session with our uh we did power lunches four power lunches
238with um uh our student students um and uh each of those sessions I think maybe we had about about on average five students each time maybe maybe a few more you're in the M Wilson would you say that's about right would you uh we had four sessions and we had five to 10 students okay each session okay and some stayed some left but generally we had good uh I think good group and uh good interest actually um and uh it's going to be interesting because there was was at least one one maybe two groups of siblings they came at different sessions so um this is going to be interesting at home I can tell you that um but at any rate um I think we we definitely had a good um session with with those
239youngsters gave us some great feedback and uh so one of our next pieces of um of work will be to uh get out a survey and we will work with superintendent and Mr leco and others to get that out and just again to make sure that one all of our um students uh at every level K12 all of our staff and faculty uh are aware of of this uh opportunity for students and uh can can weigh in on some things that uh are for consideration for instance how which of the four or five ways that are permissible under the law to select a student will we choose uh or would they like to see so just things like that and uh I was thank you also uh president chur for being able to participate in
240those sessions you got to hear from students as well great students yeah isn't it cool um and very diverse group um and uh so anyway I I I'm very excited about the the possibility so we will come back and get more but we are I think going to be pretty ready to uh you know get to uh Miss cree and the policy committee the um when I was visiting the schools I I told the principales that the survey was coming for for this particular thing and then yesterday you saw the email I said you about NB correction on the rules of how you can you can you I guess you for a small City School District you can have a student body election to elect that person right so if you had slides of things
241involved in that survey with that information right no no we got it and uh I I want to say it was actually thanks to our attorneys who caught that uh in the nisba policy and that resulted in the change so Shannon Shannon is right we've been we've been communicating back and forth and she wanted to make sure as well that I had seen that and the committee members had seen that change but y we will get it get it moving um I think there's I'm sorad yeah please I said uh the eth and it's actually March 11th and then April 8th so March 11th is the first I appreciate that sorry no no no March 11th that's perfect great and uh one other committee and I'll stop rambling um and that is the committee edoc
242committee on routine consent um we're going to be meeting on March 3D uh here at H at 5:30 and with Mr Carris and uh and I think we we should be moving towards ending the work of that committee soon I don't know maybe that's wishful thinking right but but we are uh but he's been working hard and we've been working uh to just make sure our processes around um you know how we uh you know um obtain information about uh contracts and all of that how that's working field trips all of that how it's working and so I think uh you know we'll be very excited at the end to actually have this system I think um I won't say much revamped but clarified and roles clarified and the uh the flow more importantly um
243will be clarified for everyone so U but we will be meeting next on March 3rd great and and then you know uh that'll all impact how the procurement policy and other things are we have to make some changes cor yeah so so is even though I'm describing it as sort of this thing and that thing it really is a big system um uh impact on the entire system of how we move forward on all of these things very good thank you thank you savage uh I will start with school visits um U we are in good shape we amazingly completed two School visits there are seven scheduled including three tomorrow so there will be board members throughout the district tomorrow um there are nine still to be scheduled um and I think everybody knows sort
244of what what the status is of those and people are doing their various follow-ups as they need to so we're in we're we're looking good to try and get that all done as you guys know my personal goal is to have all the school visits done before the April testing window opens so that we can get out of everybody's hair before they got to get down to business so that's the objective so hopefully we're going to be able to achieve that and then um government relations of course you heard much about US Government relating over the last couple of weeks um and then I wanted to add um one more government relations topic um which was the um cdrc Capital District Regional I can't remember what they stand they used to be cdtc um but
245it's the it's the um Metropolitan planning Organization for the capital region that does transportation planning hosted a vision zero Workshop regarding Albany High last night was that only yesterday oh my lord it's been a long day they also met with Albany High staff and they have met with Albany High students um and there was an opportunity for community members to um look both sort of on a map what do you think are issues and also do a walk around um of the the great big super block all the way from Maine to Ontario Washington Western that whole giant super block um they did not walk people onto our camp campus which I thought was interesting I kind of thought they might like do the interior but they did not they did the exterior they come
246from a traffic planning you know City urban planning background so that makes sense but I just thought that was an interesting choice um and I was there from about 4 till about 5 I was on the walk which took almost an hour so my grand total time there was about an hour and a half and I saw probably 25 to 30 people there so I thought the turnout was pretty good um it was not as many district parents as I thought I thought we'd see a lot of parents there and I didn't see a lot of um either people with young children or toe toe or uh familiar faces so I don't know but that was interesting as we talked about last time um we agreed uh last time that we would write a letter
247I have drafted the letter and um Mr leco has it to review because ideally it would be um signed by the president of the board and the superintendent jointly um which is what we've done in other cases where we have waited on a City action um and the the draft letter which of course you guys will all see before it's finalized essentially calls for prioritizing pedestrians um throughout that area so that our students can be safe um and um calls for us to give at least the level of um dignity and uh safety that is offered to the Sunni University downtown campus students who are crossing Western Avenue there's that lovely pedestrian Refuge um Andor the adults who work at St Peters but park behind Maria College and they get that lovely safe way to
248cross South Manning and our students should get at least as much considering they are still developing their decision-making skills um perhaps they even need a little more protection and safety but certainly not less which is what they have right now um so that's my government relations topics for the evening Miss CR uh thank you so there's been a change in date to the policy committee it is being moved from uh Wednesday March 5th through Tuesday March 4th due to a conflict um we'll have several policies to discuss I'm just looking at it now I think I'm going to ask for travel and conferences to be mve to a later date because we still have to discuss travel and conferences as part of ad hoc routine consent so it makes sense to hold that one for
249policy um one thing that I'm bringing up now that I'd like to bring up at the next policy commit committee meeting um thinking of it now while I mention it is we have we have because I've fallen behind a certain amount of backlog of policies and we have to get through code of conduct in May and we're facing an issue where we can't really stay all night here because of staff so we'll want to think about be prepared to think about when we meet next whether we'd like to schedule some additional meetings or move this start meeting of these meetings to 5:00 p.m. or figure out another way that we can do it it without unfortunately putting too much burden on the staff that is waiting for that's like we have to clean the building
250we have to go home we can't stay here all night so we want to make sure that we're conscious of that and figure out how we can do figure out how we can put more meeting time into our schedule in a way that we're in a way that we're serve both the board members and the staff thanks do we know when the advertising policy is coming up the advertising policy is in excellent shape actually and should be discussed at the next policy meeting and unless something unexpected happens I think it will actually be at the board meeting the very next board meeting after the policy meeting yes we have we have discussed it but we have a little more to do with it but we're getting there hey we we got to we got to
251the district naming and renaming so that was our really that was our other really big one that we've been working with r lco on so we're getting we're getting there we're really getting there thank you any other business items if not may I entertain a motion to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing matters pertaining to proposed pending or current litigation M Cree M Smith all in favor thank you that's unanimous except man for