001e e e good evening my name is sh chur and I'm president of the City School District wman Board of Education on behalf of the board I welcome you to our meeting today we have um member El minav member Vicky Smith SEC um Vice President tabida Wilson secretary Ellen CI and memb Savage um member man was with us and then had to leave for an emergency so she might join us later um we have a bunch of cabinet members both uh in person and U online uh this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting as well as a link to the agenda including all the documents we'll discuss today are available at Albany schools.org booe this is a good time for me to note that if you're here tonight for
002public comment you should sign up with Miss Timmons or board clerk here to my right with that introduction invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance United States in addition to the Pledge of Allegiance we also focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district of Albany which is to work in partnership with our diverse Community to engage every Learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the Knowledge and Skills necessary for Success superon Haw writer do you have a report for us I do and we'll begin with Mr leco with some recognitions thank you very much good evening we are excited to begin uh tonight's District highlights by celebrating one of our talented Albany High School music students uh senior
003Iris whan has been accepted into the conference all state music festivals treble chorus she was chosen from thousands of singers throughout the state after her exceptional performance at last Spring's New York state music uh New York State School Music Association Festival she will perform in the All State Music Festival in Rochester next month Iris also has been accepted into Alban Pro music's high school music internship program it is my pleasure to introduce Albany High choir director Brendan Hoffman to tell us more about iris's achievements thank you very much for having me um it is such a pleasure to be able to come here here and share just how wonderful uh the experience of working with someone like Iris has been um and what that means for Albany city school district and the way that she
004represents us out in the world and will continue to do that um so as you mentioned just a a quick overview of the All State Ensemble um so as you mentioned the um selection happens the year prior so Iris performed a solo an Italian Arya qua qua fende um at a nisma solo festival and scored a perfect score of a 100 now that's impressive yeah and so that made her eligible to be selected there are 6,500 students roughly across New York State who audition for these ensembles and only about 600 that actually are selected at the end of that process so just to give some perspective on just how competitive that is um it also uh gives her the opportunity to be selected for potentially an all Eastern Ensemble which we could learn about at
005the beginning of December so potentially more really good news to come um the APM internship is a relatively new program so APM is the um Capital Region's professional Coral Ensemble it's a group that I've been fortunate to sing with myself and actually served as their director of Education from 2018 to 2023 um so this internship program is a relatively new program we started last year this offers um very highly talented and motivated high school students an opportunity to become members of Albany Pro mus for the whole year so in that capacity Iris gets to sing with the Ensemble throughout our entire season which is is pretty remarkable and amazing um for me personally to have gotten to uh go to rehearsals every Tuesday night um knowing the crazy schedule that she keeps outside of just
006what she's doing there um and then to show up at a rehearsal with all the rest of the um colleagues and and professionals that I get to sing with and then uh have our first concert on December October 20th um we have other concerts coming up on December 15th March 9th and April 26th those are the subscription concerts but she'll also have the opportunity to participate in the uh High School Coral festival and also this summer The International Coral Festival that will be taking place at uh Sunni Albany and at impac this year so that is some really uh amazing opportunities that uh that she's been able to to earn um through her incredible work um so those are the the two things to to recognize for in terms of accomplishments but um equally important
007what I would also like to share is the um amazing human being that iris is and what she has brought to our program as a member um and I can think back to freshman year when uh when she came in and started singing and it was very clear that there was not just a level of of talent and and motivation to keep working but just a a genuine love of who she was doing that work with and uh watching the way that she continues to encourage people around her um both her peers in her grade and also those who are coming up uh is really inspiring and wonderful and has helped to keep our community strong the way that it has been and uh we just had a conversation earlier I was saying you're you're
008leaving it in in good hands and and a lot of that has to do with the strong work that she's done um just being a wonderful person so kindness is a huge part of what makes her as special as she is um so not only the accomplishments musically but just the the person that she is and I'm really grateful to have been able to work with you for the last four years and I'm sad that you know that has to end but also super excited for what she's going to continue to do so I'll stop talking now and uh let everyone acknowledge that wonderful [Applause] work um I just like to say thank you oh gosh I just deleted oh no I'm just kidding thank you so much for first of all this honor um
009I'm incredibly grateful to Mr Hoffman for just seeing potential in me in the first place um for helping me grow as a person and as a performer and for always being so supportive of me and all of his students um you've just fostered a wonderful environment for everyone and um thank you for inspiring me and encouraging me to pursue my passion along with many other students uh thank you so much superintendent Hawk Rider and board of education for this wonderful honor and for also fostering a community where music and performance is so encouraged and so supportive um that means a lot I'd also like to thank Mr Avery Mr Halverson and Mr Burman and the rest of the music and performance faculty at Albany High School for also helping me grow as a performer build
010confidence in my creativity um and this program would not be where it is now without the wonderful faculty who constantly just puts their all into inspiring children and I'm really thankful for that uh being a part of our district music program and seeing the talent here has been so wonderful um our music programs give us a place to grow connect and express ourselves and I'm so proud to be a part of it and I'm so proud to have been a part of the Albany City School District so thank you guys so much all right now we'll just just gather for a few photos e e e all right I just have two more quick items and then we will introduce our next guests if uh if you're looking for an affordable and practical solution for
011outdoor storage Albany High School's construction technology students might have exactly what you need as part of our students work-based learning requirements for their CTE techn endorsement diploma they are taking orders for 4x8 sheds if you would like to learn more or place an order you can contact construction technology teacher art Herby at 518 791 4562 or a Irby a rbe albany. k12.in.us and we also have more information available at Al schools.org and a reminder for our student athletes in grade 7 12 and their families that registration is open for our winter sports teams try outs and practices for Albany High winter sports begin on November 18th and tryouts and practices for our modified teams start on November 25th you can visit the athletic Athletics section at Alban schools.org for more information and it is now
012our pleasure to welcome principal Marie Kahan and assistant principal Glenn Westfall to tell us about the great things happening at Albany School of humanities thank you Mr leso good evening Board of Education superintendent Haw Rider and cabinet members we are honored to present this evening about Albany School of humanities and I'm sure our presentation is coming so I will just keep moving so we always start with our district vision mission and goals and then we are going to start on our next slide with our school mission which is at Albany School of humanities we will educate engage and enrich everyone every day and our school goals are to increase student achievement safe healthy environment a standards based instruction culturally responsive teaching and our homeschool Partnerships my name is Miss cahan This is my eth year
013at Albany School of humanities and my name is Glenn Westfall I'm the assistant principal and this is my sixth year at Albany School of humanities um so if we look at the demographics of our school it does match up very well with the city school district of Albany um every ethnicity group is within 5% of um the district and if you noticed from last year we have actually added about 50 students to our school this year so we're up above 400 students for the first time since before Co and we went through our set and we just wanted to highlight our three big action items for this school year um for English language arts it's the integration of discussion protocols with our curricular resource to create systems and opportunities for student discussion in math we
014continue to unpack our new resource um we are on year two with a specific focus in lens around pacing for rigor um which means like implementation of fluency centers and really we say um doing the program with integrity and not as much focused on Fidelity but Integrity of the program and enhancing the duration and quality of math discussions and our last one really combines our cell and Ela work this year which is to embed the work of ruler into Ela enrichment acceleration and intervention through collaborative practices text and resources and the one common theme that I hope you're seeing from our set focus is that we need to make sure we're increasing student voice and choice throughout our school day and that is the big focus of our building this year and we're doing that
015through our student engagement strategies and making sure students are proving um their with reasoning um and making sure that they're using number talks and sentence frames to really expand on their thinking so when we talk about attendance at Ash we've really been doing a good job over the past few years of kind of decreasing our chronic absenteeism by about 3% um and I just wanted to kind of highlight the things that we've been doing at Ash that have really been helping us um we have an attendance kickoff challenge every year right at the beginning of the year where classes can earn um extra recess um through their percentage of attendance in their classroom throughout like a three or four week span um we also do the same like point system for our March Madness Tournament
016towards the end of the year um and then this year we wanted to add in like a holiday one right before we leave for um the holiday break um we recognize all of our perfect attendance students each month and trimester each month the students get a $10 Roar ticket that they can use towards the school store if they had perfect attendance and then every trimester we recognize the students with um a certificate and um and a picture that we post on our school dojo for our parents um and then we also recognize the students right outside of our lunchroom where we do like a word cloud where all the students that had perfect attendance for the month can see their name on the wall um so that's really been encouraging for the students this year
017um and then our goal every day is 95% daily attendance um we've noticed that if we are hitting our 95 % goal we're usually hitting our chronic absentee goal for the year um so we just want to quickly um highlight some of our accomplishments so far this school year um it's been two months and so um but we just want to talk about we've done a great job with our Magnet School um work this year to kick off we've brought in two authors already um all of our students are receiving Theater Arts once a week we just came from our amazing fall talent show and so we're really pushing the Arts and Humanities through our magnet lens um we have shifted this year to a walk to intervention model for our EA and ey block
018for ELA every day um so we did some research over the last few years around um enrichment and acceleration because what we are finding is we're really great at intervention um but we needed more work as a building with enrichment and those kids that need to be accelerated so now now every grade level has the same block and we move kids um to the teachers based on the skills that that student is working on so for an example a third grade class during 1115 to 145 they have six adults and so the 60 students are broken down by what they're working on and they go to that teacher for support um we have been able to create a part-time teacher who she a teacher who now became part of a technology coach our third grade
019teacher Miss Adam and she put something in the weekly update integrating technology every week Community artists have started at our school for our magnet theme um and one thing we just wanted to highlight was that over 90% of our families came to parent teacher conferences last week um which is a big shout out to our teachers staff and entire School Community um they met tirelessly for two days with every parent um that came to talk about the highlights for their students and we just couldn't believe how a lot of our teachers had every single kid um's parent come in for those two blocks of time and then the last one up there is our interv visitations and so our teachers um from Encore classroom teachers have all been asking to go visit other teachers and
020have us cover their classroom um which is fun so then we get to go and check it out for a little bit um and we have had over 30 inter visitations so far this school year with only two months of school so our teachers are very excited to visit their colleagues and we always say like everyone in our building has something to offer and so just go check it out and see what um you might want to steal from their classroom um one of our challenges this year is um just limited time for professional development and that just came with like new mandates from the state um and the district around certain PPS requirements that we had to do so we are pivoting a little bit um by creating time and space for interv visitations
021we have um Studio models going on where we will cover um the classroom and then the teachers can go and learn together with the coaches um and then we're really doing targeted PD at principal meetings once once a month if it can be something that can be said in an email then we don't use time at principal meetings for that um we really use that hour to learn and grow together um and so we have had great academic success over the last few years and we hope to continue this pathway as you can see our June Ela NWA on the left um the way I'm looking at it and on our math is on the right up there and so you'll see that our growth and mean for for our Ela um hit 70% in
022June and in um math we actually for the first time in our Ash career um hit our growth Target of 80% um growth for Math and 71% for mean on this slide you'll see our incredible building for the third year in a row has shown double digit growth on the New York State Ela math exam so we grew 13% from last year uh 51 to 64 and what you'll see is that our cohorts are growing um we do know that our fifth grade it does get slightly harder and there are more standards that we need to address um but our fifth grade team is doing a phenomenal job and you can see that they have grown from last year to this year um with the work that they've been putting in and believe it or
023not we grew by the exact same % on math so 133% growth on Ela and 133% growth on math um and what we think is really great about this data is it correlates very closely to our NWA building data so we know that our students are learning and growing and that our assessments are aligned um and if you look at those fourth grade numbers the three of them did so much work last year um around our fourth grade math and they hit 88% proficient this year on the New York state exam um we carefully evaluate all our decisions through uh an equity lens at Ash um as we believe it's essential for every voice to be heard and valued in our Ash Community um so that really embodies our student population with our student Equity
024team the book study that we're doing with our whole school this year uh a our discussion protocols that we hold at our principal PDS and with our students uh the one school one book the decision and the activities that are done are led by our student Equity team it's not any adults that are picking the book it's not adults that are choosing the activities the the students are really putting in the hard work the student Equity team is also doing positive attendance postcards to all students who are improving their attendance each month so they spend about 10 minutes at the beginning of their student Equity meeting uh just writing names of students and giving them a nice little note uh congratulating them on their increased attendance for the month Community School service project usually one
025or two a year with our student Equity team and they get to come up with it they choose what they want to do um and they go out and ex execute it and then our student voices and choices like we talked about before um we're always listening to what our students are saying and what they want for our school and they are really choosing the pathway that we're going with our school and then we just have a video for you uh with some pictures of the year so far [Music] a [Music] thank you and that concludes our district highlights for tonight okay thank you Mr alesco and our friends from Ash will transition to our district update and as we always do we uh um like to remind everyone of our district vision mission and
026goals number of updates uh tonight we'll jump right into our New York State graduation measures update this is the state Ed Department uh State education Department's Blue Ribbon Commission on graduation measures uh they provided an update uh on Monday uh to uh everyone in New York it was a a public meeting and broadcast on their YouTube channel uh the idea of the Blue Ribbon Commission is uh based on a a number of surveys and and conversations and focus groups in the field uh to expand Pathways for students to earn a high school diploma uh and there are at least three different recommendations that uh the State education department uh has supported and what was uh reviewed on Monday was around a phased implementation uh more opportunities for public input and a focus on professional development
027to implement any change it's important to uh understand that Monday's presentation was a set of recommendations for the State Board of regions to consider no decisions were made uh but timelines were provided uh uh outline of a budget in order for the work to to take place uh was provided so it's important to underscore that that current uh graduation requirements will remain intact for everybody and that if the uh Board of regions were to accept these recommendations uh it would begin with students in the 28 29 Academic Year uh and the full set of recommendations would begin in the 2930 Academic Year so we're still a number of years away uh from implementation but um certainly there appears to be some momentum and uh now the onus is on the State Board of region um
028to take those recommendations and uh there's opportunity for public comment and there may be additional listening sessions throughout uh throughout the state particularly here in the cap region we also uh shared uh some exciting news with uh the opportunity for the school district to partner with some of our higher education Partners uh to continue to build on our STEM related opportunities for students and uh College and Career Workforce Readiness uh the University of Alban's College of nanot Technology science and engineering um has reached out to us and and we've begun meeting with them to uh revisit a relationship that the district had with them nearly 10 years ago a little over 10 years ago where 110 Albany High School students participated in a uh high school and nanotech college uh opportunity we're looking at not
029only resurrecting that but uh seeing if we could uh build on top of that so we will be meeting a number of District officials and folks from the high school will be meeting with uh the nanotech folks over the next couple weeks and we'll be able to report back on some uh opportunities to provide uh students um with an opportunity to receive some college credit but also for the college uh to advise us on some of our stem curriculum and um instruction initiatives as well uh we also heard a presentation right in this room uh last Friday at our community Roundtable meeting uh from Dr Donna Baron uh who works at Hudson Valley Community College uh she is leading the biotech con con partnership uh and essentially this is a relationship that regeneron has with
030Hudson Valley to increase their pool of workers uh for any number of jobs throughout not only the uh the Capilla region but also down in their headquarters research headquarters downstate in ter town so she came and presented uh the vision of uh the community college and she and I and Mr Lesco spent some considerable time after the meeting uh again in the similar vein of pulling our team together to meet with the uh nanotech folks uh we're going to pull a similar team together to meet with Hudson Valley to see how we could support their initiative again opportunities for dual credit opportunities to build new um career Pathways for students and and certainly to tighten up our curriculum initiative so that students may have a pathway directly from our high school to Hudson Valley and
031uh the world of work through regen around so we're very excited about that and uh we'll be able to um have an update on both of those initiatives before the end of the calendar year last month in October our cell phone Task Force met uh they continue to uh review survey results um that have uh been published and we asked our community our parents and Guardians and students to uh participate in where we had nearly 1,400 responses uh members of the committee uh attended a uh a a conference a disconnected conference sponsored by New York State United uh teachers union that was right down the street at the Albany Hilton I was able to attend with the team as well and a big Focus was on the impact on Mental Health on cell phones in
032the classroom we heard from some folks um who are implementing cell phone bans uh but it is very very clear that this uh initiative has the attention of the governor and while the governor has not made any firm policy decisions we we have been officially told to look out for some polic polic decisions from the governor after the new year so um we'll certainly report back on on any uh anything we hear uh from across the street uh however our task force continues to work regardless of of what the governor does or doesn't do they're looking at survey results uh disaggregated by elementary middle school and high school students they're looking at Trends uh they're also talking about their own needs and and looking at feedback from grade levels I know that the task force
033wishes to uh discuss the implementation um of cell phone banss and other uh schools throughout the region to see if there are some lesson learned lessons learn and see how it's going so the committee will meet again uh later in the month next week or a couple weeks on November 19th and we'll continue to provide updates for our board and community and with that in mind uh the committee will also schedule a date uh to provide a public uh information session and Report out to our community in general so once we have that date certainly we'll share it with uh with our board but we'll publish that uh as widely and loudly as we can it is that time of year to eat chili so next Friday on the 15th from 4: to 6: at
034a brooken our culinary students uh will again uh ask for your donation of $10 but to test all of the different versions and ingredients of uh different Chile that our Culinary Arts students uh concoct and I was there last year I saw a number of our board members and our staff I could tell you it is certainly worth the $10 but come hungry because their portions are very favorable so uh you certainly will not leave um with an appetite and it's a great opportunity uh for our community to see all the happenings uh that are taking place in our culinary arts program this month is Native American heritage month and we're proud to um recognize that month and to celebrate all of the different cultures and contributions uh certainly right here in our own backyard
035in New York and that this month-long observance provides intentional opportunity to explore and learn from this history um we are uh very fortunate in New York state to have a number of curricular opportunities uh throughout a students journey in our school district in New York state where Native American history is is taught uh and the importance of what happened right here in the cap region and not too far away how that shaped not only New York State's history but certainly our nation's history and lastly on Monday uh all schools and offices are closed for Veterans Day uh we have an exciting opportunity for over 150 high school students to participate in the annual Veterans Day Parade that includes our Junior Roc members as well uh and they will be uh marching right down Washington uh
036where the uh parade will kick off about a mile and a half away but end in front of the State education department um Board of Education members received an invite from major Ericson to either participate in the parade or um uh be at any of the viewing station so uh this is an important opportunity for us to uh remember all of those who have served uh in protecting our democratic values of which our nation was founded on so no school on Monday but a number of staff and students from the city school district of Albany will be spending their Monday uh honoring the veterans and we're excited for that and that concludes my report tonight thank you board colleagues as a a usual practice I ask you to prioritize your questions and ask your most
037important question first we'll start with one question for each board member so that all members have the opportunity to be heard if you have additional questions or comments and if there's time remaining we'll go around again for a second round I'll start on that side with member alavi [Music] thank you for the update um I had no um real questions I I think um there was some there's a figure um on the ash presentation that uh I think we need some clarification on just it might have been like a flip but um and did you w to did you want to take that or I can I really was not planning to do that as part of the meeting but um I think they reversed their economic disadvantage number um and they gave us economic
038advantaged instead of disadvantaged um and I would hate to have folks think that the credit to that school was because they had some disproportionate number of well-off students which I don't believe to be the case yeah that was the only thing I I was thinking Miss Smith sure thank you um and I uh just want to apologize my uh I have no questions pertaining to your um update um but I I did want to raise something uh relative to I think probably our CR and cultural diversity and and and it came up as well with the announcement here of our celebrating uh the uh history culture of indigenous peoples um without really going into any really detail about this uh past week's presidential election um I did want to note a couple of things that
039I'm hoping that we as a community including our school Community might be able to to do and perhaps we're doing these things but it's just striking uh how um how divided we are as a country and uh and divided as we are as a community um and a lot of work that we do to increase the voices of others and to be heard and to be uh active participants in all of our electoral process we still end up with uh not having great or ideal participation I I wondered about that on a couple of levels one when I was going to school and I went I grew up in Virginia and I remember every single teacher from middle school on in history government classes in particular and also in student government um I was told
040it is your job your responsibility to vote and I remember saying but I'm only in like the sixth grade um and it didn't matter it was I want to instill this in you it this is not um a given it's you know people fought very hard uh for the right to vote um including my own family members and so when I sometimes sit on my couch and go oh God I really don't feel like going out here um I have every single one of those teachers sitting on my shoulder and so I don't know how much again I'm not trying to direct kids or instruct them in this is what you must do but I remember that it was my responsibility I didn't have that luxury privilege of sitting out and it came not only
041from my household but it came from my uh incredible teachers that I had I also wonder a great deal about uh the ability for us to you know all of our CRT CR work also depends on our getting to know each other pretty well our our our uniqueness our you know our likenesses our you know what what binds us what separates us um to have some very fruitful discussions and to be able to critically think about how the decisions we might make as individuals or as a collective impact on others and so again it's it's in line with what are we doing are what can we do or we able to do what will parents and Community permit us to do to ensure that our youngsters are growing up um with uh an understanding of
042their civic responsibility and I know we have courses I know we have uh you know seal of CI Civic Readiness and so forth but something feels like it's missing in this process I don't know exactly what it is and if it's nothing then I I would like to stand to be corrected but something is is terribly wrong in our society that we are not able to be and I've noticed this for now more than you know 10 years uh is civil kind and the fact that you know we have to keep saying things the young student you know having to be clear she's a kind young lady this is a kind person a thoughtful person and the fact that we have to always say that in our descriptors on one hand is upsetting to me
043because I'm expecting that of each and every one of us so I I only wanted to just raise this as um uh as part of our teaching and learning and and and it's here we we we we're trying to do we're trying to be better adults we're trying to um be better teachers we're trying to be better Learners better students um and and it just seems to me that we haven't quite made it to where we might want to be as a community and maybe we still have to do more work to say where who is it that we're trying to be and are we going to be able to get there together so I just leave us all with that um that thinking about what uh our role and responsibilities are as Educators uh
044as board members as family members as community members to really help develop the kind of society that we have uh no fear about living in um that we uh participate actively in its decision you're making um and that we live as a diverse loving kind Community where we can celebrate all of our commonalities and all of our differences so thank you m Savage member crei no questions thank you m wison thank you so much and I appreciate that aside that you included um I think Joy Reed did a phenomenal breakdown of the demographic breakdown of who showed out before election and when you look at the data our young people showed up um overwhelmingly Millennials and under so I'll you know and I'll let you guys look at her breakdown of everything and you know
045Reserve judgment time will tell um to the Native American heritage month I appreciate so much as highlighting that um so much of our history locally and Beyond we modeled many of our governance structure borrowed many words um and even at my work the other day we were crafting something and the phrase for all New Yorkers came up and we have to even as a group we realize that wait not everyone identifies that way so I think keeping that top of mind um is important when you talk about the continuing education part and I want to highlight a website called native-land.ca just to give you a sense of like where um whose land we're on and you know the evolution of that land locally moan scat harani and Kia or MW so with that being said
046I appreciate us highlighting that and for the other topics on the agenda we'll just um let time evolve and see I didn't have any questions but I was uh excited about the stem opportunities that you've created with you Albany and Hudson Valley uh so more opportunities for our kids uh it's always a great thing um the chili cook off I'm looking forward to it now you know in my book the one who makes the most spiciest chili would be the winner so we have to see any other questions guys Miss Smith just um on the uh chili uh piece so I definitely have to be out of town um but I had a call and all that information was like please please can you be there so I I'm going to make a donation um
047but I certainly if someone would pick up a bowl and enjoy it for me uh in addition to your own bowl that would be really great so I hope that many of our colleagues can can join uh that event and uh participate so thank you this is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public uh we do invite members of the public to share thoughts on decisions we are facing we accept public comment in person by voicemail and through web base form information about public comment and contact information is on the district's website at Al schools.org first person on the list is Laura France and we also have Jim Grove take a table and second the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making we just
048set aside about 30 minutes for each meeting to hear from District residents parents students and other members of a community there are more comments that can be accommodated in 30 minutes which we not anticipate today we may choose to extend the length of the public common period or alternately establish a second common period later in the meeting we also accept comments virtually on the same basis as those in person and we accept comments in writing and by voicemail we welcome comments in English and any other language and we'll provide the translation when necessary all comments must include the commentator's name and place of res residents we do not accept Anonymous comments all the information about these many ways to share your thoughts with us are available at addressing the board uh ALB schools.org we ask
049all commentators to keep in uh mind that information about individual students and specific District staff cannot be shared not only that is a violation of privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be add in public um also please keep in mind that the uh public comment period is not the best place to for at the district to a concern you have we ask that you share concerns first with relevant staff such as the teacher or principal if you feel that concern is not addressed adequately you may appeal to that person's supervisor up the chain of command if necessary to the superintendent decisions made by the superintendent may be appealed by the board there are no voicemail comments so um Miss France thank you good evening
050my name is Laura France and I'm the proud president of the ALB Public School Teachers Association I come this evening with a message that reflects the concerns and frustrations of the dedicated Professionals in our classrooms while we are committed to the mission of educating and supporting all our students we cannot ignore the current climate and culture within our schools that is negatively affecting both our Educators and by extension our students your teachers are the backbone of this District they show up every day often going above and beyond to create positive lasting impacts on our students you need only look at toast's adop a family initiative Eagle Point sock fundraiser the creation of a lending library at roots and gif's harvest dinner just to highlight a few but the reality is that many of our teachers
051are struggling the workload is overwhelming support is inconsistent and morale is low we've heard this from our members time and time again often from the very same places where they work to give their passion Purpose By going the extra mile what has become very clear is that we need to improve the teaching and learning conditions without hesitation I want to acknowledge the positive efforts made by superintendent Hawk Rider in opening the lines of communication leaning into some of the harder truths of what it means to work here and taking critical steps towards improving labor relation ma Labor Management relations it has been some time since the teachers here felt heard by their superintendent and I want to thank you Joe for that work however it's clear that we need to do more and we need
052to do it quickly the urgency of addressing teacher burnout and creating a supportive work environment cannot be overstated we need an intentional sustain sustained effort to improve the school climate one where educators are respected as professionals where there are clear lines of communication and where teachers have the tools and time they need to succeed we need a culture where there is a genuine partnership between Educators and administration and where the policies that affect us are created with input from those who are doing the the work every day where instead of the daily micromanagement we are trusted as professionals with the expertise to make sound decisions for our students and to do this we need the board's support we are asking that you work with the superintendent to create a defined process by which we can
053explore the employee experience within this District in a comprehensive focused way within the next 6 to eight weeks we need a meaningful process that will give us the data insight and insights we need to identify where the greatest needs are and where we can make immediate Improvement improvements it's about listening to the teachers understanding their day-to-day struggles and responding with concrete action by committing to this you send a clear message to your employees that their concerns are being taken seriously and that we're willing to invest the time and resources necessary to make things better thank you for your time and for your commitment to our students Educators in this District we look forward to working with you to move this forward thank you Miss France and before you can start Mr Gro uh Miss pit
054were you did you have a comment as well no but can you set the table we'll be after Jim Grove thank you go ahead Mr Grove hello my name is Jim Gro I work districtwide as a par consultant teacher supporting our first and second year folks and I serve as the resolution specialist of the Albany Public School Teachers Association my comments will in many ways Echo those of Miss Fran including those about our dramatically improved Labor Management Rel relationship with superintendent Haw Rider Mr Haw Rider has repeatedly acknowledged the many disperate initiatives and priorities across the district pulling us in many directions and is committed to changing eval changing that evaluating them eliminating some hopefully many and allowing us to focus our energies on what is most impactful we have no easy jobs in this
055District all of us who choose to work here recognize the fact that our task of educating Alban's children is not one of only teaching but also combating the effects of poverty systemic racism and Trauma among the many other intangible weights our students carry with with them each day this is the work all of us have signed up for to which we bring our passion we are nothing if not resilient in the face of those challenges but with those challenges may come struggles we may not make Pace with some Metric determined by someone downtown a convenient narrative and easily found scapegoat will be to suggest that our struggles are the result of a lack of urgency and insufficiently hard work by our staff that is a lazy and insulting assumption that disrespects the efforts and energy
056the teachers who show up here for our students every day rather than leading our conversations with teachers by asking what they need and how Administration might help them we lean into the idea that teachers have let our students down and must continually be micromanaged we hear from our teachers across the district that Administration continues to add what I call its justs to our already overflowing to-do list as in it's just a 15 to 20 minute survey it's just a few more steps it's just another form or two to complete it's just a level of data collection as they tack on it's just we rarely create dedicated space and time in the work day to do these things my work is primarily with new teachers we have nearly 400 probationary teachers who have learned quickly our
057culture here is most often about control and micromanagement these are folks who may never have the space and time to learn this can be a fun joyous rewarding place where they feel valued and respected sadly these culture challenges face us at a time we are desperate to recruit and retain and grow excellent teachers years ago in a meeting with two assistant superintendents I said if we don't actively nurture our newer staff and help them grow they'll just leave the district and tell us where we can go actually I used much more colorful language in that moment we've already seen res ations this year of both brand new and Veteran folks who are just done with feeling unsupported and want out Laura often refers to a quote that says culture is how employees hearts and stomachs
058feel about Monday morning on Sunday night if we are to change how those hearts and stomachs feel on Sunday we need to do more than just pay lip service around respecting the work and time of our teachers the rest of the week I believe working together with superintendent Haw Rider and the administration we can affect change in culture but the time to move that action is now not a distant Point down the road I reiterate aba's ask that we support the superintendent in finding a meaningful process to address climate and culture thank you for your time thank you Mr Grove Miss P okay hi I'm Freda parrot I'm sick but I'm Freda parrot I live in alany and I wasn't going to speak because you know I don't speak that much from here but most
059of you hear from me in other ways um so this is the world according to Freda I'm not speaking for anyone else Tuesday's election had on so many levels the worst p possible outcome beyond the anger and disappointment the message was frighteningly clear however we have to move on and between those two sentences I will just say how disappointed I am in the privileged white people of this country um it couldn't have happened without them um so what does that mean means we continue to fight for and support our community and to me the community is the superintendent the board and everyone that is in contact with our students parents and Guardians and most of all our students this has to be on everyone's agendas every day we know most of the coming Federal agenda
060I'm not sure what Betsy dasas is doing but she's not knitting she um there is there not going to be a federal department of education what's worse than having one is not having one what is all this mean for an education system that produced the current group of Voters how do we turn our students into fully knowledgeable electorate that can lead us to a new world I hope we're thinking about this monitoring it measuring success as we move forward I'm willing to join anybody who is truly fighting for everyone uh even including some nice white people like myself and all I want to say tonight is more to come but I figured timing is everything if I missed it this time that's it thank you we appreciate all public comments and weine hearing from community
061members valuable again our contact information for both public comment and routine corresponden is at Al schools.org did you have a public comment yeah please come come go ahead introduce yourself and then sign in the list as well so you can be recognized thank you I'm here from Rise refugees Support Services of ous can you can you state your name and please as well sorry my name is Jango Gregory I'm the youth program director at rice and I'm privileged to be here Cy of Vicky Smith and why I'm here tonight is to request for workbooks for my program I we have children ages K to to sixth grade that is ages 5 to 13 and we need books workbooks children's books so I'm here before the the Capital District School District to make that request please
062do not TOS away the books bring them to we need them we need to nurture these kids they're refugees they've gone through a lot they've been through a lot and we don't want them to continue going through that we want to love them we want them to feel loved their parents our neighbors our sisters our brothers and we teach them English language we teach and social emotional and we do a lot of enrichment with these kids just to support them so on behalf of Rise School District please support us with books thank you thank you and excuse me Mr President may I uh and Jane was able to make an introduction to superintendent Haw Ryder and some other staff in the back um as well there are some other resources that um I will uh
063share with you uh one of them uh being the red bookshelf I I don't know if you are familiar with that you are okay and Paul Kane you know him okay so and there may be others that we we can connect you to so I know we have exchange information and you have now Mr Hawk Riders so um thank you very much for for coming and we will be in touch thank you thank you we now move to the part of our meeting we call routine consent during this portion of the meeting we approve routine matters for the district these include items like contracts field trips Personnel matters and life each board member reviews each item carefully but we vote on them as a group with no discussion that allows us to use our meeting
064time more efficiently nonetheless each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion in M on that it with that introduction I now entertain a motion to adopt routine cons agenda Miss C second by Miss Smith are there any set asdes mavi uh can I set aside number six please stop arm camera resolution excuse me any others I wanted to set aside U the routine consent um human resource position control agenda okay I just wanted to um lend my oh are we ready no no we not so all in favor adopting routine consent agenda minus uh number six stop stop arm camera resolution and the position control agenda that's unanimous okay Mr alavi number six um I just wanted to point this out and um
065lift it up a little bit our students and our families um trust us to keep their children safe um that's bringing them to school and bringing them back home and this is a um this is just one of the many ways that uh this board in this District have uh moved towards to make our students safer um and I'm in full support of this there's uh thousands and thousands of cars that pass buses um and put students at risk so this should prevent that I'm full support thank you Miss gra I'm I'm in full I'm in full support of the program I just wanted to note that the district would not get any of the revenues from these fines and while I think it's important to understand that that these types of camera tck these
066types of cameras are intended to improve people's behavior rather than as fundraisers it would be nice if any leftover revenues after the cost of the cameras and the processing were to go to safer streets to be earmarked for those purposes agreed I totally agree um in terms of uh any type of ticketing Revenue that is generated um I would I would strongly encourage us as a board to start thinking about how we can U I just want to interrupt for second no Revenue comes to the district whatsoever so I'm not quite sure what you're saying about the board should think about I was going to say in situations like this if there are ways that a legislation could be put in so that some of the money comes to solve the problems that they're meant
067to solve they're not necessarily just sticks so totally understand and that these unfortunately a lot of these things are statutory at the state level so we can put it on our legislative priority list um from a government relations perspective it always becomes a challenge which is most of the time you usually get three topics when you're in a meeting with a legislator three maybe maybe five on a good day that they can concentrate on so we could definitely support you know as you know I'm very involved with the New York Safe Streets committee I could certainly bring that outside of the school D District um my school district worked and towards my Safe Streets work to make that statutory change um there are also soon to be it's supposed to be released shortly I keep
068waiting the vision zero Network which is a National Organization is releasing a paper on Equitable Equitable automated enforcement and one of the recommendations is very specifically that all funds be set aside for a specific purpose um and that is one of the best practices as well as things that would be what you would expect which is like plenty of warning don't give tickets and then give a second ticket before people have even had a chance to receive the first ticket um be very thoughtful about where you locate your cameras all of those things are are in that um document which I've not yet seen the final document but I've seen some of the preliminary work so I totally agree um that it would be a good thing to do and it is frustrating when so
069many things are outside of our control any other discussion yeah oh that's what I was going to go to before we had the discussion I'm forgetting my Robert's Rules today uh may have a motion to adopt number six Mr alavi second miss grai miss miss Wilson you had a comment going back to the discussion now we had an order this was the only place to sort of um insert this but I know that there was just a commission opened for um discussion about where to award funding from any like uh what do you call it the marijuana commission I'm wondering if there's any like application that could be made on our own behalf as well especially in Albany County so I was just curious about that and I'm looking for the article about it but
070just speaking of Hassan's point about Revenue sources or any allocations that can be for us I'm just curious if that's another Avenue I mean this this goes back even to the uh stoplight or the um speed zone cameras where the city district has gets not a dime from it okay we are in it because we are interested about the safety of for our students who are in those school zones uh and the school zones have been 20 years long before the those cameras even anybody thought about them and you know it's unfortunate that we have to resort to technology to force people to drive and follow rules which have been there for years um so we don't get a dime from it but we are in it because we want our schools to be safer
071safe zones for our students the um um with this one the Stop Camera the county legislation um allowed anybody who had a school bus to have stop cameras on on their buses we don't own our buses so this legislation allows us to authorize first uh student to work with Al city city of Albany to put cameras on their buses so that it makes it safer for our students who travel on those buses so I just want to get that out there sorry it's a reinvestment program for five million Community reinvestment program the office of cannabis management and they're accepting Grant proposals Miss Savage I just wanted to add that one of the other comments that I hear made um outside of these more knowledgeable folks um about both uh stop arm cameras and speed zone
072cameras is that there's some way instead of engineering Solutions which would correct some of the road design issues we have and I know that we all have spoken about this many times and are in agreement that the number one thing we need to do to keep our children safe is to have the roads designed properly so that it's not so enticing to speed um in particular um Washington Avenue is is um a a right place for that um and I just wanted to point out that that everyone who's in this room and is listening at home and is involved and concerned about student safety should be paying attention when the public meetings come up for these things because they all require public process and there is already in the city's budget for next year and
073the year following funds to do some work on I believe Washington Avenue and Western Avenue so the designs will be evolving and so folks in Albany you know my work is mostly Statewide but in Albany we have walkable Albany Albany Bicycle Coalition Capitol streets who are all working very regularly on these issues and I encourage you to pay attention to um anything that's coming up from them and from the city proper as well as from the regional planning committees and all the folks who were doing that because being at those meetings really does make difference in terms of what we get so um encourage you to participate in that um for folks who are not at school board meetings when they're happening any other discussion okay all in favor adopting uh number six stop and
074counter resolution that's unanimous um motion to adopt uh Human Resources position all the U human resource things on the agenda motion motion Miss Miss Savage second by Miss Cree discussion I just wanted to understand the position control change I mean the titles are different one says uh um Hall Monitor whereas the other one is more the neighborhood security neighborhood and building security so I just want to yeah um the the uh school security officer is a management confidential title that's been phased out we recently received a resignation from the last person in that title and so now we are ready to abolish the last one and replace it with with the absu senior Hall Monitor okay so it doesn't change the security in our building not at all it's just a title change exactly bargaining
075unit tile y I just want to get that on on table so all in favor to adopt number three okay that's unanimous thank you okay as is our normal practice we have arranged our agenda with all action items at the beginning uh unless something unexpected happens we do not anticipate the board will take any further actions tonight the balance of the meeting will be items of for discussion some of which could lead to an action either in our next meeting or future meeting um that brings us to the topic of uh policy I pass on the microphone to miss grai chair of policy committee yes hello everyone in October we had a very eventful and productive policy meeting and I'm in fact I'm still working on drafting the formal memo which I will be finishing
076this but I'll talk you through the policy changes that I have uh before you guys for discussion tonight um of note some of them have some minor formatting issues but I'll walk you through substanti substantive changes uh for each of these policies the first one is policy 1900 parent and family engagement and the most substantive change is that buildings will offer at least one formal parent te formal parent teacher conference day each year which is to say we already do it but we're going to Ure on it in policy now um we're also replacing the word parent with parent or Guardian to be more Equitable replacing the director of enl with the director of enl and Refugee services and replacing our references to enl or L student elll students with MLL students multilingual Learners uh
077to reflect more accurately uh their status and not be so English language focused that's something that we're talking about doing those those changes the parent Guardian change and the multilingual learner change are things we're talking about updating in all of our policies as we come across them although my understanding is we do still need to uh confirm with the director of refugee Services uh with the for the MLL change uh the next change the next policy is 4750 promotion and retention of students uh at the elementary school level we've added a provision that principals will notify parents or Guardians no later than February 1st if their child is at risk of retention for the following school year um there are some new criteria for Middle School retention of students um in particular a new provision
078that a that right now if a student is fa failing all of their core class core academic classes uh they would be held back a year we vetted a provision that if they are passing all of their Encore classes uh that can substitute for one failed core class um the next policy 1925 interpreter interpreters for hearing impaired parents uh the most substantive change is asking parents or Guardians to notify the building principal rather than just the district generally if need an interpreter uh We've also removed an obsolete reference to a form to request an interpreter that form does not in fact exist anymore um for policy number 7,000 facilities development we've added a new goal for our facilities development I'm going to just read it for btim it's to invest in high quality construction management
079to plan coordinate budget and supervise construction projects from start to finish and ensure that there are procedures in place to inspect and validate the quality of construction uh we we agree that that's a very important goal let's see for 7100 facilities planning we are adding an explanation that certain points of the certain points certain parts of the long range facilities development plan which is required by the state uh will be discuss will be provided to the public during our annual budget presentations such as the educational philosophy of the district with resulting administrative organization and program requirements our present and projected pupil enrollments and space use and state rated pup capacity of existing facilities uh next policy 7365 we are adding parents and Guardians as a group that will get notification before construction projects uh that
080cost more than $10,000 which I'm guessing is pretty much every construction project now uh take place in an occupied school building let's see for policy 5504 Wellness we have a relatively small change to our physical education which is we had the various requirements for physical education for grades 4 through six and 7 through 12 but our actual schools are divided into grades four and five and 6 through 12 so we're fixing that uh let's see next policy I told you this is a very very busy meeting we were here till 8 at night thank you to thank you to all the staff who stuck with stuck with us I really appreciate you um 8110 we added community members as a constitu constituency that should be included in the membership of the district health and safety
081committee and finally 8112 health and safety committee um again as with the previous policy we added a reference to community members as members of the health and safety committee and updated reference to parents in the committee to include Guardians and I will now welcome a discussion of any of those policies I'm sorry I'm just making sure shar's acknowledging me okay um so I just wanted to say something that U we talked about but um Board of member didn't actually verbalize just now which is that the M minor change for the wellness policy is a sort of a stop Gap change there will be a uh a uh CommunityWide effort or a you know a nor the normal thing we do with Wellness where there's a committee and the committee is well founded and well thought
082through and they look at things um but it's a new administrator who's responsible for that so we wanted to do this particular change right now um and allow time for that process to happen properly without leaving this residual issue behind I I I don't I don't know who recognizes if the m has a microphone so Miss Smith okay thank you um I just I wanted to uh and I apologize I was I was listening and then I don't know if I skipped over um and it's where uh You' mentioned a couple in a couple of policies of of where how that there will be parent and guardian uh participation I'm um and again I I don't like to uh suggest that we prescribe how but but I feel like um something else also needs to
083happen um without you know again I don't know all the the answers and I I don't want to instruct people but we we have that language in a lot of things like and we have in our philosophy I mean in all of our things that we do we want more parental um uh Community involvement and uh it's it's lacking and so the question is how do we begin to attract more folks to uh engage in the process and it's along the same lines of my opening like sort of comments so I'm not being critical please don't take it that way but rather if we if we're aspiring to have more involvement and engagement participation it it means that something else has to happen beyond the words that are uh in our um policies that that
084are absolutely on point in terms of um of of uh you know communicating that that desired goal so that's I'm just kind of putting it out there that's that's that's a really good point the only only policy that's really being changed to include parents and Guardians where they were not before is for the school Building Safety Committee most of the changes to the other policies are just word I would say just wording changes but it's replacing parent with parent Guardian which seems like a minor change but it's more accurate because it reflects that not every child is in a household with their with their biological parents and we want to kind of ackn knowledge reality and real and recognize that different families look different and we think even though it's just a wording change it's
085one step toward being more inclusive so my question perhaps I'm sorry Mr Savage it's not so much about then I guess I want to go beyond the policy to say um this is something we we are we challenges us across the board how are we going to help make that happen there's probably a role that all of us play in that so it it's it's not so much about the policy but it's what that what does that mean and how are we going to get there sorry yeah no that that was the point I was going to speak to um so a couple of things on that point one um you'll notice for example today in the routine consent item that we adopted which appointed the health and safety committee there's a cover memo documenting
086what was done and um that was something that I asked for when I saw the committee list come up because I think it's important that we do doent what is done each time um and we are as you know in the process of formalizing some committees that have been um in process but not formally appointed prior um and so as I'm sure every Cabinet member knows if you put the list up and's going to ask you for the letter so you might as well just write the letter to start and you might as well have something to write in the letter that says here's how I reached out to parents and here and Guardians and other community members um so I think we can do that right now um as we're going but then I
087was thinking as I was thinking about the number of these things that we are adding that maybe we could um encourage the um the district to come up with a list of all of the places where there's an opportunity for parent Guardian involvement so that they're not coming out in this sort of oneoff sporadic way so that there's a list and also that we do them kind of all sort of kind of at the same time instead of um in a sporadic way um that way people would really understand all of the options because I do think it's hard as a parent who's not paying attention to every single email and every single board member to or board meeting to be like wait I think there was something but I don't remember and so if
088there was one place I think that might be um a thing we could do that would help and that's not the only thing but um but I do think we're we're behind where we want to be in practice in terms of having parents and Guardians engaged and we're playing a little bit of catchup um and that as we catch up we can also formalize and improve our our Outreach um it should be part of our you know back to school information and all that Stu thank you I mean that's that's I think what I'm looking for again I'm it's it's a it's it's not so much about every committee but we we're asking a lot of parents and and those I think having those opportunities listed somewhere um you know where they can say hey
089you I might be interested in this um but but doing something else that encourages um their voices um and and and gives an explanation of why it's important um you know again again back to some of this election stuff you know hearing people say I'm really disengaged because one sometimes people don't ask me two um they they get me at the last minute uh three you know I don't feel like they really want to hear me um you know all of those things are are real issues and so how do we knowing some of what we know about what also keeps parents and community members at Bay knowing some of that what actually are we doing doing and again I'm I'm not trying to answer all of that right now but just it's just a
090reminder this week of still things that are are lacking in our processes and procedures and I'll say one one more thing if I can which is that you know whenever there are these CommunityWide conversations like the cell phone Task Force um I think that it's the board's responsibility to say and how are we involving in the public and how are we engaging with community members who don't have the time to be at the committee meetings and come each time so for an example I know that we've added to the cell phone Task cell phone Task Force role some public opportunities for feedback and communication not just committees because committees are hard right you got to have a lot of capacity in your life to be able to go to extra committee meetings but coming to
091one virtual or one on-site meeting about a topic you care about that's sometimes more achievable so it's it's a combination of things but I do think one of the board's roles is to think about the community and how and whether they are having enough opportunity for feedback because they do have opinions people have opinions and they want their opinions to be solicited which that we do very often through surveys um and also through through these kinds of meeting opportunities so there's so much more we can always do but I do feel like we're we're getting making some progress now yeah over the last few years I think uh We've made a concerted effort in trying to one get the policies are basically just a 30 foot view of this is what we would like it
092to look like and then what you're talking about uh Vicky is the implementation of that how is how are the boots on the ground actually making that policy into reality and that's where the the uh um you know that's where we the Gap is and and and so what we've been trying to do is have those regulations for example District formally put those regulations on board dog so people can see what are the not just the policy but also how is it being practiced uh out there and and trying to fix those things so that they're more meaningful and and inclusive um I mean in the old days it was like okay you know ptas would take care of it well not every school has the same level of PTA activity going on people are
093different you know some are more vibrant and some are not because of different challenges uh so what else can we do then then came The BLT the building leadership teams right and again if there's one person who signs up for everything because they're the gungho person that's not that's one person's voice right it do they represent everybody every parent in that building or every Garden in that building or every Community member around that building right and so we're trying to find new opportunities to to to include them uh including our budget uh you know we used to have the budget sessions where Bill Hogan would have two or three sessions before budget session and there' be a public forum people will come there we do all of that still but in addition to that before
094the budget is formed we have budget advisory committee that of of uh members are solicited from the community um and they so when people get participate in the process in which those decisions are made I think it is better uh because some of those questions which might be just perceptions people's perceptions or misinformation gets cleared because oh really that's how it happens and now you start getting uh the misinformation clear and you become more engaged in the process and you're bringing in a different perspective which actually improves the process so that it's not just all of us looking at it like Yep this is how we have done it for the last five years and this is how we'll do it for the sixth year we can bring in a new change so all of
095these are good ideas um I did have a comment about 7100 uh M SC uh the the not not in terms of the uh changes that were made but that the policy still has notes in it and typically you want to get rid of those notes because that is the there are definitely some minor formatting changes that will be corrected before these come in front of the board for an action okay so we'll we will act on these at the next board meeting thank you a lot of policies and the uh next item on our agenda is a discussion on the ad hoc committee for designation of student rep represent on the ex official as an ex official board member um and this I sort of alluded to this as something that's coming down the
096pipeline a few a couple of months ago uh so what we have before us today is the proposed resolution to form this uh adoc committee on U designation of a student rep as the ex official board member uh and basically this committee's task is to come up with the process in in being able to select a board uh uh student member who would sit with us on the board they will be a non- voting board member uh but they would be bringing uh ideas to the table so we have student voice and representation on the board uh this committee will consist of three voting members uh Miss Smith who will be the chair of the committee Miss Wilson and Mr Almani uh the responsibilities would be to research the best practices from other districts that
097have successfully implemented similar policies um I mean not to say that we didn't have student board members on the on on our board before uh but that practice sort of disappeared before Co and now we want to make sure that there there's a uh streamlined process there's things that are put the process is is is is documented on paper and and we have a process you know 5 years going down the road 10 years going down the road that this is how it should be done so there's some pathway for people to follow and this is how we do things uh this ad committee will also engage with students staff faculty administrators community members to gather input and feedback they'll interact with the equity teams at the elementary middle and high schools to determine the
098best ways to ensure that student voice at all grade levels uh is heard and considered in board discussions so this member by you know who would sit on the board would be representing the entire School District right so it's not it could be a junior or a senior but that doesn't mean we won't be hearing about concerns at the other uh buildings uh outside of the high school uh and this committee will also work with the will draft a policy outlining the role responsibilities and process for designating at least one student as an ex official member of the Board and they'll work in conjunction with the policy committee and the superintendent to to formalize that policy and go through our policy uh process and bringing it to the board for discussion and approval uh and
099the uh the the goal is that the adoc committee will will uh commence its work immediately once we adopt as res resolution hopefully the next board meeting and uh will aim to complete his task by you know mid January allowing sufficient time for the board up the policy before the state mandated July 1st deadline uh I know that policy meets uh in early February so if you know if everything works out in our in our favor then we should be able to have this policy uh adopted before the end of March which is really when budget season and everything and all the code of conduct and everything starts coming at us from all angles so you want to make sure that this is done well before we get really busy um so um discussion Miss
100SMI sorry it was just going up slowly because I was trying to look and see what day in January the policy committee meets and I and I hadn't figured that out yet and so I was trying to figure out if that works with the January 15 wasn't there a I thought I saw an email from February 3rd or something was the next policy oh so there's no policy Committee in January okay perfect so sorry so that so I uh yeah that was the date that Miss Cree had given okay um I don't know that that needs to be here but I just wanted to I'll Make a note of that as being the next that meeting okay thank you right so we'll we can continue the discussion uh at the next board meeting if need
101be or we'll adopt it and that would formalize this ad hog committee and you guys will take charge so that's go ahead sorry I'm going back to my comment so if it comes to us January 15th it'll be after the January policy meeting be discuss February okay got it um so I just have a a question I know that we do have a two-step process but is there any reason for us to delay the decision for another board meeting can we go ahead and take action on the policy on on this on this now it's I procedurally to do that you need a motion to amend the agenda and if and a two-thirds majority um I mean the only logist the only sort of substantive reason would be if we thought there'd be public comment
102on this thought and idea and this is really the first time it's been presented in the community so they wouldn't have had any chance to react to it so I I don't I haven't put any thought into that but that's the only substantive reason procedurally it's just a motion to amend the agenda to make it an action item rather than a discussion item the lawyer is nodding which means I'm in the in the ballpark I mean given that the uh uh this is more a charge to start the process and this this committee will like actually engage public and other people I think the public comment faces will still be okay even if he adopted today so I don't have a problem with it I need a motion motion to change the agenda wait what
103I'm sorry I think ell I'm not sure procedurally but I saw Miss C's hand up before you were talking about a motion I don't know if that means she should wait to discuss no she was making a motion right oh I was I had been and then I realized technically there's this PDF like it still has lines on it indicating changes and it has like instead of the date that it has some blanks like when can the policy committee to get this done or like a question not the final then then the one that's on board right now I noticed it as well so I guess can I can we make one of those motions that's like making the motion contingent on fixing the little the little typo things if we can I want to
104make a motion that we can't I want let's see I make a motion to amend the agenda motion to amend the agenda by Miss C uh seconded by I just nope we can't hear you I'm not the man OHA there we are the man behind the curtain has made it work now um so the motion is to amend the agenda to turn it into an action item and to correct yes so motion by Miss CI second by Miss Wilson all in favor okay so that motion passes so we have we have changed the agenda from a discussion to an action item pending those changes okay so now I need a motion to adopt the to be adopted version to vot on the am no that's what but yes motion to to make the amendment to
105the current version so it will be corrected all in favor oh motion by Miss Savage second by Miss Cree all in favor okay that's unanimous and um once those changes are made may have a motion to adopt the resolution Miss Smith Mr alanavi all in favor okay that motion passes to thank you everyone okay so I'm just to just to be clear so that could mean a change we're not actually approving them tonight no we just approved it pending those changes assuming that those changes are made okay so and the the only change is the the cleaning up the uh the lines lines okay and um just to and dates and just let me make sure are you going to take care of that or do you wish for me to go ahead and take
106care of that I can I can do it that'd be great okay okay okay moving on to item H discussion on summer school okay some of our friends who are virtual will make their way onto our screen and give a highlight of our summer school program from 2024 okay thank you to the board of ed members superintendent Hawk Ridder and cabinet members for allowing the assistant principles to do their presentation tonight regarding the elementary summer enrichment program the oversight of the program was done by the assistant principles as well as Miss Kio our coordinator and of course Miss Brown our assistant superintendent excuse my voice okay um I'd like to acknowledge that Dr Nicole little one of the assistant principles Janet escotto lavois William flax light Allison Brody Glenn westwall Tamra Rose Megan delandro Tina
107gascone and myself are all part of this presentation tonight um the focus of the summer program was on academics and enrichment we initially recruited students who demonstrated High um growth but low achievement closer to the start of the program when we did not have full classrooms we did recruit other students who had shown that they were very interested in attending the program the goal of of the program of course was to prevent summer loss and to improve outcomes student outcomes the structure of the day was academics in the morning um with enrichment in the afternoon by either the boys and girls club or the YMCA the program was held also um in two locations at gfin and Sheridan prep it was five weeks long we had four weeks of academic enrichment and then the final
108week was enrichment only I have to say it was a robust uh curriculum over that summer program it included Ela uh K through2 foundational skills it included uh K through five um Ela reading discussing and writing on social studies topics uh s science the first week K through 5 they did science the whole week the students uh absolutely loved it it was very engaging very Hands-On a lot of creativity there every Friday was in engineering which was also um much loved by the students and very engaging the program gave breakfast and lunch Transportation home um and a snack and it was also supplemented by tennis and swimming and I think I forgot that in the curriculum they also had K through five illustrative math um it was an excellent program good evening everyone I hope
109you can hear me great so the budget uh as you'll notice from the table the budget this year was $915,000 800 95,96 three this was pretty similar to our budget from last year you will notice from the total expense that we did not SP spend near to that amount that was budgeted we spent $525,000 um most of the uh decrease in um in in funds came from the fact that we a transportation cost we took fewer trips this summer as well as there were a few uh positions that were not filled so all in all um the expenses were as you see here on the screen $525,000 as you can see from this slide excuse me um the staff that we had per site we had one coordinator um we had 18 teachers three coaches
110that were shared between the buildings so those were the only ones that that and the coordinator were the only ones that were shared between the the buildings uh four building substitutes per building um we didn't have any enrichment teachers this year we had one enl teacher at one site and two at another site uh one sped teacher two teacher assistants uh three Hall monitors a nurse clerical and a behavioral specialist um what we found was the having the four building Subs at both sites really helped supplement the small group for intervention and enrichment when it was available um so if we didn't have any teachers out during the day we were able to supplement that with adding you know support into classrooms for small group uh intervention and and enrichment um as we look at
111our demographics of the summer enrichment uh we had very similarities to the district enrollment uh approximately 19% more black students 8% less Latino students and 8% less white students but overall pretty close to the demographics that we had for the city school district of Albany and we had 46 more students attend our program compared to last year good evening um I'll be discussing our attendance rates for our summer program um so our attendance in our summer program is very much a high priority for us um as we prepare each year for our summer school program um each School works really closely with the families sharing start dates time time site locations and supporting with application fill out um often the beginning of the program finds us working through some different challenges though um oftentimes like
112identifying correct bus stops the start time student drop off points um so those are some challenges that we do work through at the beginning uh we also utilize a weit list when we start to notice spots at certain sites or grade levels are still available um and so we work to fill in all the spots throughout the program to make sure we're reaching as many students as we can I am also going to be sharing um Megan deis Sandro's Slide the ELA growth slide she is at a professional development opportunity um and was unable to log in but um sharing her information here students in grade K through 2 engaged in a number of foundation skill activities including phonological awareness and phonics word building um students in K through 5 read discussed and wrote about
113various social studies topics that included but weren't limited to Westward Expansion our diverse America geography as well as Civic ideals um students were able to sharpen their Ela skills using our ex EXL platform uh for 15 minutes a day Exel is our computer-based program program that works at a student skill level so as students move through the Mastery of grade level standards um there scores are an example of the grade level and the percentage of Standards the students have mastered so as you're looking at the chart um for example a score of 390 would mean that a student has mastered 90% of the third grade standards a score of 440 would mean that the student has mastered 40% of the fourth grade standards the blue is the average starting score and the red is the
114average ending score from our I EXL Diagnostics so you'll notice that students in kindergarten gained an average of 7% first grade was 26% second grade 43% thirdd grade 5% fourth grade 133% um and fifth grade actually we had an issue with the licensing for the Excel program because kids are moving up to Middle School um so those fifth grade students actually uh there was one student who tested so that isn't accurate information there um in regards to that but we did show growth overall throughout the program um hi I'll be doing the math metric slide which you're looking at um the color coding is pretty much the same following the Ela this data reflects that overall most grade levels did grow in math proficiency across all sites for the math students in grade one averag
115an increase of 10 points um grade one actually averaged an increase of 37 points alog together it was 10 plus points but 37 was the total grade uh kindergarten with six points grade two increased by six points grade four by eight they showed increases in all grade points averages through all three um but they did uh they fell short of the expected average growth of 10 points grade three showed a slide of just two average points uh this this summer we tried to Target a subset of priority standards for math that aligned with science and engineering and design instruction to improve the students through interdisciplinary experience we also had a similar problem because of the fifth grade they weren't the testing wasn't really aligned because their licenses didn't work from fifth grade to sixth grade
116so while we did show growth in all grade area in fifth it's not accurate due to the licensing issues and there was the one grade where they um just had a little a couple percent slide uh but the students were very engaged in the science and the Very Hands-On activities that we had this summer and that has shown over the last few years to be something the kids have really enjoyed and been very engaged in so I'm going to speak to you about the program strength and challenges uh trans Transportation once again was successful this year we start meeting for summer school in January every year early on and we we address both the negative and the positives from years past from the year before and um I think that has helped us develop um
117a system in which when we discuss what was negative to all the Departments that are involved um they really um jump to the challenge of helping uh the program be successful so in this case Transportation has come along very far and we're very proud that our students are getting to the program on time and most importantly are uh getting home on time we at least to the stops where the parents and the Guardians are waiting for them uh the addition of the extra building s substitutes per building was proven to be uh helpful and effective not only when teachers are traveling to the standards conferences and we needed them you know coverage in the building but also when you know um like um bro said earlier when we don't need the subs we use them
118for additional interventions in small groups and that has proven to be beneficial uh the math and the step Project based learning weeks continue to engage students effectively I'm sure you saw the pictures that were taken during the summertime um not only do the stem weeks support the academics but they also give students the opportunity to work collaboratively and encourage one another to overcome any challenges that they come up during that may come up during the projects um the inclusion of the behavior Specialists was very successful as well um they start talking about ruler and educating and continue to reintroduce ruler to the students like they do during the school year they also support with um cell uh classes for the students and um if there are any situations that may occur in the building they
119uh speak to students at times about the preventative strategies that can be used our Sim Pro our swim program uh also was again very successful we noted that there were more students attending this school year and in regards to the challenges um that we saw the application process Still Remains a challenge um so when parents and Guardians fill out the application process it's a district application uh where the clubs after school they require more information that is being asked in that application from the district for example we may ask for one emergency contact and the clubs may need three emergency contacts so this becomes a dilemma when parents think that their child is ready to go and in turn the student might not be able to start with the club because the club needs more
120information uh student and teacher attendance uh does not meet our desired uh expectations uh our home school coordinators as well as the assistant principles we do call families on a daily basis to remind uh the families that we're still there and how important the program is um but it is still continues to be a challenge as well as teachers taking off on days um when uh they're not attending attending conferences so we are uh talking and discussing how that can improve um families expressed a desire for improved communication including additional information related uh to Summer curriculum and one of my colleagues will speak to you a little bit further uh in regards to um how we got that information from the surveys and what we plan on doing good evening so at the completion of
121our summer enrichment program we always administer surveys to both our staff as well as our parents and as you can see indicated in the chart approximately 71% of our staff found the summer school enrichment program to be a positive experience 14% of staff had a neutral experience and 14% of Staff disagreed that they had a positive experience in regards to our parent responses 78% of parents indicated that their child had a positive of experience with us in the summer 7% were neutral and 14% disagreed next slide please in regards to more specific responses to the surveys in regards to staff the staff found the organization of the program was very consistent and productive they were found of the 4-Hour workday they also indicated that students enjoyed the Friday stem night as well as the ELA
122curriculum most of them enjoyed working in the summer and again they found the program to be overall consistent Mr flax slight will speak in further detail to family um specifics regarding the survey thank you very much all um yep family surveys uh re re re revealed some positive feedback as well um we we with members say I do appreciate the goals and availability of the program for my child um and this is something expressed throughout the program uh families who stop by said that they were very very pleased that that they had the option um super helpful to keep his brain engaged and social skills fresh throughout the entire year uh families were very key on the fact that there was not simply an a academic portion but there was the afternoon uh po portion
123where where students could engage each other um engage in play program you know recreational activities Arts and Crafts Etc um school program is amazing and I traveled along with several others stated that there was much academic work happening during this program so we're always pleased to hear that our students go here go go home and at the end of the day uh share the work that they were doing in the classroom we can move to the next Slide the next slide uh there were some grows so these grows are shared uh these are a combined uh a combined HT based on both staff responses and family as well um for people said I was I I wasn't given clear contact information about the teachers working with my child so that there was a concern about
124receiving more teacher specific information I receive very limited Communications and would like to hear more about the curriculum as well as my students progress on an on an individual level uh more students would come if if if uh summer school was held in the school that the students attend during the regular school year and um people also ask that we switch up stem activities and social emotional activities and books so possibly switching things up possibly using some new things from Summer to Summer next slide good evening I'm going to um share with you our recommendations and the budget impact um we're recommending to continue with the stem week uh the weekly math game day and uh weekly engineering and design day uh also the humanities Tech sets um we're going to consider uh location change
125of the two program sites to allow for maintenance building summer work and provide more frequent summer enrichment newsletter for the fam so they can know what the students are working for each week um we're going to review the current Administration uh structure and the roles of a possible adjustment of Duties and none of that will um significantly impact our budget questions do we want to wait till the end and ask or go by sections okay anybody have questions on on this okay Miss grai sorry sorry did somebody else have question Oh I you made a comment that one of the reasons the budget was lower is that there were fewer trips this year was that that you were not able to uh carry out trips that you planned or is it better for the uh
126program that you planed fewer trips for some reason that is a great question I don't know um the answer to it maybe some of my colleagues do in terms of um the trips that were planned versus the trips that were um not taken for you know in case they would pull back and if I could add um some of it had to do with our um enrichment program operators um we took a couple of walking field trips this year that did not require um transportation and then with the swim program um so there were just less field trips this year I don't think it impacted program at all it was just a shift thank you I also want to highlight Wendy who coordinated and organized for grassroot givers to come for a book giveaway to
127the sites so that was an activity that was done at the program um at the site but not needing a bus this Wilson thank you and I was just curious about the application process being a challenge if there's any [Music] um recommendations for preliminary work to happen earlier with the partners to see if we could synergize to either one application and or incorporate their question so it could be more of a single point for families so if I could also add here um so the aps jumped right in I have to thank them they mentioned that they start planning in January so this was the first group that I met with um in this this new role so they they taught me a lot um when it comes to ocfs licensing that was some of
128the complications based on what their needs were um you muted yourself you're muted we can't hear you did you not hear anything just the last part all right I'll I'll start over so when it comes to the the application um there were some ocfs licensing issues um and we tried to streamline some of those things that we knew about and there were still more things that came up there were some um medical documentation things that they required so um now that I've had kind of one run through with it I expect that we will be able to streamline more of those things come next year um so that we don't have as many issues with the application process as we did this year I think also we're in touch um early on with the directors
129of the programs and uh they are aware of what the challenges are for the parents to have to submit so much information and so one of the things that we did this summer is we were able to get lists of those students that were missing information and they were reaching out to those families so that the students were able to participate in those programs um earlier than instead of waiting so um we're going to take that information that we learned this year and apply it for next year as well I do think every year it's run a little smoother because you're able to see what was the hiccup even with Transportation I thought it ran much smoother than summer they seem to really be able to add the kids much faster and so I think
130when we have really recognized that the application process would move quicker and more efficiently if they were just giving the application one time with everything included and so they're not having to have multiple things filled out um so I'm just hoping that every year we just get better and better at being able to me more efficient with serving our families yeah in that same way it would be great to have like a cheat sheet or some resource guide for the parents that these are the different things you will need to have your documents together as you start filling so they're not like oh now I don't have this now to go three days later then I forgotten what you've done and so you know that had that cheat sheet would be good um any other
131question Oh Mr Miss yes um and just one similar to miss Wilson's question um so seem to be a little bit of concern around communication um and I wondered if you could speak more about that uh but I will say I was looking to make sure I I don't believe that was as much or a problem with the at the middle and high school level but it did seem to be something notable here at the elementary level could you talk a little bit more about that and then what what remedies you have for addressing those concerns well I I'm just going to speak to what something that I thought helped from last year to this year so this year instead of calling the school building and maybe getting the Office of the school we had
132designated lines that were summer school lines so I think people were actually able to speak to summer summer school staff much easily so I feel like last year a lot of the chaos was that they were calling the main number and the person in the regular school was like I don't know let me try to attach you to somebody and and so it did feel a little disjointed I think when people called they were able to get answers much more efficiently and I think now we're really recognizing like what parents really want to hear from so can we be more proactive like knowing what's going on coming up so to be able to do like flyers and I feel like we were sending a lot more things this year I I think what we recognize
133is that it's only a four-week program so we really have to be front-loaded so parents almost can have a calendar of the four weeks and know what's happening before we've even entered into program and so I think it it has been a learning curve because every year we're trying to add so many new things on and okay so they are going swimming and they are going these Fai trips but I think we've realized especially like as a parent lens in four weeks it's hard to get that four-week going so we really need to like have it all on a calendar and be able to hand it out and have them at least have a snapshot of what it'll look like and then have that point person I feel like made a huge difference in order
134to have them calling and directly getting someone that can answer their questions right away so they weren't feeling like they were being put on hold or that their questions couldn't be answered we also um this year for the first time in years past our receptionist started at the same time as at 8:00 in the morning and this year we had a receptionist start um half an hour earlier because those calls start coming in very early and if let's say for example the secretary of the building is there she was taking all the calls in the past where now we had the secretaries that belonged to summer school they were there answering the calls even if it had to do maybe a parent was concerned over their child being sick and wanted to talk to the
135nurse or even transportation questions so I think having that one staff member in each building be there sooner half an hour really helped with the communication and then regarding the communication about what the students are doing our coaches were able to provide um a newsletter that had gone out at the beginning of the program um but we're realizing that maybe we should be doing that weekly and then providing some weekly information okay thank you my question is uh more for Mr Caris I see that the Elementary uh I mean you you um budgeted for 915,000 and you expensed about 525 uh so that was about $400,000 left on the table uh and this is the same theme with the middle school as well as the high school and if you total doll just over a
136million dollars and most of these were ARP funds which had to be spent by before December September of this last year right um so did we find other ways to spend that million dollars or did we so the uh ARP funding has been totally accounted for um so nothing was left on the table it was used in different priorities that were uh given through the cabinet um so I just want to make sure that we didn't leave money on the table because this was that last staunch of covid funding that was given to the districts and uh who knows if we'll ever get funding like that again so uh and and going forward uh you know after the three presentations uh once we know that there was a lot of money that so we could
137put it into this but how much money is really needed those are numbers that we would have to note down when we go into budget season for next year because presumably it'll come from general fund at that point in time and some of these granting questions thank you so much let's move on to Middle School good evening Board of Ed president superintendent cabinet colleagues and community members we're excited to present our summer school program to you tonight my name is Emma dechman assistant principal at North Albany Middle School I'd also like to introduce our summer school leadership team who supported our students in our 2024 summer school program Amelia Gallagher who's an assistant principal at Myers Lisa house and Lawrence mtry both assistant principles at hackit middle school and Brad huffle our summer school coordinator
138and a teacher at hackit assistant superintendent McKenna provided support from the district level I'd also like to thank the leader the district leadership specifically the four core instructional leaders for their support in providing professional development and curricular guidance for our summer school program as we do each presentation we start with our vision mission and goals um as has already been addressed we budgeted just over $36,000 using AR funds um our summer school program came in under budget by almost $100,000 due to um less cost and salary and benefits for our staffing um even though there was a slight increase in our red bookshelf programming for our students our middle level summer program focuses on project-based learning um for students in grades 6 through eight we are housed at stepen and Harriet Meers Middle School this
139past summer uh and we aim to re-engage students by integrating core subjects with hands- on activities that enhance social emotional skills and resilience the program included stem Humanities and a combined physical education and social emotional learning block um and these sessions were used to Foster collaboration adaptability and active learning um and we ran the program Monday through Thursday from 8:30 to 12:30 uh which included breakfast and lunch every day so our enrollment information does add to 101% because of some rounding um and we had an increase of 12 students um but as you'll see in a few upcoming slides what was rostered versus who showed up every day um there's a little bit of a discrepancy so some of our numbers uh will be put into that context um as we continue so we continued
140this year with a block schedule very similar to our previous year um in order to support the stem and Humanities curriculum that was developed with our district supervisors and our teacher teams um where it was practical students were placed in school specific blocks so that they had some familiarity with their classmates um given that two-thirds of them were in a new building um as indicated we had nearly 50 staff members both instructional and non-instructional um who supported um you know the day-to-day instruction social emotional learning and student supervision during this program um on average um students attended summer school 68% of the days this drop in attendance um from the previous year is due to not dropping some of our no-show students um the vast majority of our no-show students either moved out of District
141or were slated for Tony Clement Center for um this this coming school year year and so if we removed those no-show students the rate would have been 83% which is just a slight drop from last year um similarly our Pass rates include students who attended fairely or not at all um the overall pass rate would have been about 76% this year which is fairly on paror to previous Summers um we wanted you to see you know what the data actually refected but also to provide you with this contact so our NWA window is very very short um when we go from a springer a spring um testing window to summer so any growth would be considered good per Enda and so um we have evidence of preventing the summer slide um in ela as there's
142actually growth um and this data only includes students who had a spring and summer score so it's more accurately reflecting the students who attended um regularly um so significant growth would be defined as four or more rip points um when a typical growth band is defined is nine but that's when you're doing like a fall to winter winter to Spring um and our if I go to the next slide our um math data is very similar and it again only includes um students who had a spring score and a summer score so even though you're only seeing a slight uptick there we would actually consider that um to be growth in this context so this year we again partnered with the red bookshelf um based on some feedback from last school year they did a
143shorter amount of time with students every day instead of having the full block with students every other day which meant that students got um this um partnership every day and they got physical education every day um and so that really helped to improve some of the student engagement actually in physical education and the red bookshelf um by shortening the amount of time but giving it every day um and our Scholars experienced more success um and so this is just some examples of what was taught um we brought back young Futures who's our red bookshelf partner um we learned from entrepreneurs um and there was just a lot of workshops discussing literacy And discussing entrepreneurship um creating a book of ideas and the glows and grows from them are similar to us right that the students
144were highly engaged um but just with some desire to do a little bit of extra um communication with District staff and then on the next couple slides you really just see some work examples i' give you i' tell you to look through those at your own opportunity um so that we had students creating business plans and then doing a level of um self-reflection around you know what they learned and what they enjoyed um and so we also do a staff survey um for feedback on the summer School experience around successes um and staff identified um built that they built strong connections with students um they felt like students were supported in their academic behavioral and emotional growth and we saw many students Thrive progress from us to high school with improved self-regulation and engagement um
145we collaborated closely with staff at Cross middle schools so folks who work in different buildings were paired to teach together and they found a lot of success there um and we also again worked with our instructional supervisors to Foster supportive learning environment um that provided impactful and individualized support for students um as we look um for opportunities for growth and elimination of barriers for next summer and we we will look at ways to some strengthen classroom support by adding staff and clarifying tier one expectations uh you bring the three middle schools together and we just need to be really crystal clear from day one one on what the two one expectations around behaviors are um and we'll also look to see if we can increase some collaboration among departments um so that all staff have
146you know One Vision around expectations um there's also a desire to enhance leadership presence to support students and teachers consistently um we'll also look to prioritize essential standards aligning curriculum with the school year um create diverse student groups and implementing shorter class blocks um while addressing timely hiring supplies and transportation for continuity and learning um transportation was better this year than last year but still some hiccups making sure that the kids who were rostered were able to quickly get Transportation so as we look ahead um into next summer you know in addition to kind of the feedback from the survey uh we'd like to consider using computer assisted instruction to support differentiation and acceleration uh and we'd like to work with our district supervisors to review the overall program design to ensure the program best
147supports the needs of students um you know just as we continue to get more resources to see what we can integrate and improve thank you any questions on this Miss grae and no questions just a quick comment that I enjoyed the presentation I particularly liked you presenting the information from the red bookshelf about how they experien the program and I really like that that you provided the artifact to the students work that really helps us visualize and understand who's doing the who who is in the program and exactly what they're doing so thank you you're welcome they've been a really really good partner to us thank you for the presentation um I just wanted essentially to point out um the 83% uh versus the 64% of like attendance when uh you calculate when the students
148dropped and Etc um I just want to kind of give you uh heads up that like the the two years prior had the percentage with the students dropped and then this year shows the students uh not dropped and just for the sake of consistency because like next year um we might see a 64% and then you know like I I almost would just keep it as either one way or the other so show us either that it would be 83% because they the students dropped um or keep it at you know 64% because that's the true measurement across the board do you see what I'm saying so when we where is it it's a a little further in the beginning yeah I was actually going to ask the exact same question but I was going
149to ask for why why did you do it that way why did you choose to CH show two years with one metric and the third year a different metric it just seemed like an unusual choice so I was wondering what the background was on that and I I see the assistant superintendent for secondary is leaping to her feet with excitement to explain this to us so here we go so that is a really good question and we did ask the same question and when I consulted with my trusted colleague Trish wolf our data director um she indicated that to leave it as is for now and represent the 63% because it matches up with the dashboard and we will go back and make those changes to reflect the accuracy and just following up the the
150understanding I had from both from the preliminary question and from the verbal respon or the verbal discretion here was that the folks who were not included in the past two years in terms of the denominator in order to make the percentage look larger it's because they they left the district essentially they were not going to go to summer school so is there a reason we shouldn't look at that like why why would we choose to look at the number where the students have essentially disengaged um completely I'm just confused about so many times we don't know that they're not that they've left the district until much later into the summer program when we're tracking kiddos down and we are staffed initially for that larger number anyway like we're prepared for 100% of the children to
151come um and then some looks like 20% of them just are checking out all together and then another 20% kind of come and go okay okay any other questions maybe just a recommendation that in the future if we if we do choose to present it that way put an asterisk in the note in in the presentation so that two years down the road if somebody goes back to the presentation and some of this discussion is not lost I mean it's theread it's captured absolutely we can go back and and amend the presentation so we have that footnote okay Miss SMI sure um I think uh as you were coming to the end of the presentation you you mentioned that uh one of the things that you might do uh or add or do more of
152is uh computer assisted instruction um could you say a bit more about that and and I and perhaps it's just me um I I have been in enough classrooms where like there's just a lot of that stuff kind of going on and and I just I'm trying to I'm trying to uh I want to understand a bit more why and especially like in a summer program why versus another approach to getting at what those youngsters need that might be a more engaging um I and I and my thought is that with the computer it's more self directed I I've watched enough kids sort of like get distracted or you know not finish something and you know they're bored so I just want to kind of understand why that approach uh for middle school students in
153particular in the summer is a good approach yeah great question so we are absolutely not looking at replacing our in-person summer school program for our middle SCH middle school students with computer assisted instruction we're looking at it as an opportunity to further engage our kiddos as a part of the summer school experience similar to what we do during the regular school year whether it's an enrichment or in our intervention classrooms where teachers have centers and they rotate through the center so some students may be working independently uh some may be working directly with student uh with the teacher to get one toone instruction or small group instruction and then some may be working independently um via computer assisted instructional program we also have shifted from as you may recall from Apex to what we call
154courseware which is uh a more robust uh computer assisted self-paced um program and it also have has some U middle level opportunities for enrichment for our students too but it just to be clear it is not replacing it's just an expansion of and another opportunity for students to engage in learning in a different way than just the teach are standing uh in front of them um so I just want to ask a pH question because the last time we went down the road of uniform um use of uh computer-based instruction it came with some sort of expectation around how much time students were going to spend on this and there was sort of a minimum expectation you were going to spend is there going to be that kind of guidance for teachers or are teachers
155free to use the tool as they see fit in their classrooms another great question uh we are in the this is just a recommendation um we will be meeting um shortly after um this board meeting with our instructional leaders at the district level and our assistant principls at the middle level to really talk about what this may look like and further develop um for the summer of 2025 so early stages um and it'll be differentiated it won't be um you know every student will be in a computer assisted environment for 20 minutes and then rotate 20 minutes it certainly is making sure that we differentiate to give every student what they need and I'm guessing it'll be using the same software that they would normally use during the school year like EXL and things like
156that yes thank yes could I another question and I know I'm I'm making an assumption that this would still happen at uh I don't at Meers or middle school um I don't know uh if this is could be done or needed but would is there an opportunity to introduce those middle school students to CTE instruction or you know some you know and and perhaps even a project that they themselves collaborate on to uh maybe it advances something they did in stem but it's a a Project based on hey we want to figure out this this worldly problem and here's what we would recommend you know um I just want to I'm trying to and again nothing against this computer assisted stuff I just know I'm glad that I never had to use um because I
157I it was more important I needed to engage in something Hands-On to understand like how something worked you know and how does this math problem that I'm solving over here relate to uh something that I I think needs to to be done I that's how I could learn um and so I'm I'm just just trying to think of other ways in which we might be able to um to keep our youngsters engaged keep them in school have them something to also look forward to engaging in you know down the road so if you remember um I think it was two summers ago or nearly two summers ago we engage in a conversation around providing um our Middle School kiddos a summer school exper exp erience around CTE and bringing in um intro to barbering and
158culinary and cosmetology Etc the roadblock there is getting the certified teachers in those areas to teach summer school so that was the barrier a couple years ago so um we will certainly revisit that as we you know move into planning for summer of 20125 because we do know that the Hands-On uh project-based learning activities and initiatives engage kiddos in a much different way than just the typical uh implementation and and presentation of the four core areas so that's part of the conversation thank you moving on to the high school thanks Middle School team okay I'm going to turn it over to miss Alex Alex laass our assistant Academy principal at Albany High School and she will lead us through this presentation and then we will open it up for questions um to the entire team
159to answer thank you Miss McKenna um thank you for having us tonight um joined on our meet um we have our assistant Academy principls Dr Marilyn Jones Oliver Mr Ken kleene Miss Jenny brandan and Miss shaine Mor biai again thank you for having us as always we are Guided by our vision mission and goal because that is what we guides our work when we when working with our students and meeting their needs our program the goal of our program was to increase the number of students progressing to the next grade level we wanted to create and provide specific academic plans for seniors potentially graduating in August our program consisted of students grades N9 through 12 including students residing within the city limits of Albany our program start started on July 8th and ended on August
16015th we ran the program ran from Monday through Thursday 8:30 to 12:30 pm and the regent exams were given on August 19th and August 20th our Focus was to support students in achieving grade level requirements gain course credit and retake regent exams support the seniors and achieving credits required for graduation our mtss progress monitoring and connects to the district goal of increasing student achievement and enhancing the delivery of delivery of quality instruction our targeted audience was to the was the credit recovery from the prior school year and to increase credit amount our budget at the end was was a little over 400,000 as you can see we did come under budget one reason was due to us not being able to hire all teaching positions such as our math and enl teachers our program consisted
161of 92 instructional and support staff we hired a total of 90 Regents practice to administer the Regents exam in August we had a total of 714 students attend summer school this is an increase from last year by 54 students each Academy team works with their mtss team to identify students who need to be enrolled in summer school to earn back credits and or retake exams we did see an increase in the number of students registering for Regents exam this year since the co um exemption is no longer offered students are required to earn a 65 or higher on the region our summer school registration process we felt ran really smoothly this year and we feel the team did a really great job communicating with our parents and students about how to register and made sure
162that all of our students who needed to come to Summers schol got registered our overall attendance rate was 64% this is an increase from last year one of our new positions that we added to our program this year and we advocated it for last year in our board presentation was an attendance teacher we knew we wanted to focus on increasing our attendance rate our role of our attendance teacher was to work the first three weeks of the summer school helping us monitor students who fail to enter conducting home visits and conducting parent meetings in the end we only were we only had 34 students who were failed to enter when we look at the credits attempted versus credits earned um we offered the most credits since 2022 with 1,134 potential credits with 1,1 189.5 earned
163this was a 62% success rate there were ALS Al 188 credits recovered through our online learning center also known as Apex this year we continued to offer firsttime credit courses we were able to offer Multicultural studies and media literacy through our apex program we also were able able to offer Health if you remember in the past um we have not been able to hire a health teacher which has caused us not to offer Health um in the summer so we were very happy to find a health teacher that was willing to work with us this summer so that was really really great um we had a total of 60 students who were able to take firsttime credit courses with the consideration that we prioritize classes that were needed to fulfill the necessary credits for graduation
164in general we had an average of 60% success rate of all classes taken this is just to let you know a 20% increase from last year we when we look at the unique students we have an average of 79% of students earning one or more credits when we look at our graduates we had a total of 84 potential graduates um just to let you know each Academy creates a plan an academic plan for students going into summer school with the understanding that some of them would need more credits than what they were able to complete during the summer so you know each Academy um had a plan with each student um compared to our numbers in the past we did have an increase of students needing Regents exams to graduate um we had a total
165of 70 students needing Regents exams this summer out of those 70 students 29 were enl students um in the end we had a total of 34 graduates we continue to survey our staff and students we have pulled pulled together some quotes and Survey um data that we want to share out from our staff survey our staff were very happy to have an organized program that allowed them to support our students and to help students earn back their credit the support from taas sped teachers enl teachers really helped provide individual attention to students um in the survey from last year if you remember teachers were asking for more planning time we were able um to budg budget for an additional two hour hours per week um this year making a total of four hours per week
166for teachers to plan and reach out to families um they really appreciated being compensated for this time and their planning hours being increased this year um I have to say you know we saw our teachers working really hard um that was something they've been asking for since last year but even I know through years in the past just talking about it so um I do have to say we did see um a really big increase with the Outreach with um par you teach teachers reaching out to parents and that communication continuing um through their lens so that was great in our student survey 8% of students feel they were given the opportunity to contribute to their own learning this aligns to our goal for teachers to plan for student centered lessons which promotes student ownership
167of the content another question we ask our students um 91% feel summer school prepared them for their classes in the fall um many felt confident that you know just giving them that extra support then the summer um kind of boosted their confidence um a lot of teachers also spoke about seeing that confidence in them and really were happy to kind of provide them that support this summer as for some successes um we continue to offer push in and pull out services for students with special education and enl students we hired three special education students this year and one enl teacher who supported all students but also worked with students who needed to additional support in their classes um as mentioned earlier we we added an attendance teacher this year to our program this was very
168impactful to us and helped us increase our attendance this year um also if you look at each grade level you can see an increase in the grade level as well um we also were able to increase the amount of teacher-led classes in the past couple years um courses like business math Spanish and PE were offered through online learning program also known as the apex program um they were offered that way because we weren't able to hire like a business teacher or a Spanish teacher however this year we were able to hire a business Spanish teacher and even a PE teacher um we really thought that was very beneficial for the students instead of sitting behind a computer learning relearning that material we know having an actual teacher in front of them learning that material was
169really beneficial so that was a great um you know very great success for our students and our program um we continue um us as Administration um we continue to be really thankful to our staff that has continued to work with us over the summer the dedication is very impactful to our program and also for our students despite some some success we did have some challenges um we did struggle to hire math and enl teachers this did create larger classes for our math classes and unfortunately due to not having enough Math teachers students had to take geometry on the online learning center also known as Apex um this was very very very hard for them but we did make sure to provide um teachers W who had a strong math background based on their content area
170um that teachers actually took the course with the students just so that way they understood what the what the kids um were learning and so they could also teach the kids how to do the lesson too um so that was really great and I have to thank those teachers in that CL in that particular class for doing that um as for enl we did budget for four enl teachers however we were only able to hire two teachers who um were able to job share over the summer um we're hoping to hire more next year due to the increase of our enrollment for El's another area that was challenging for our students is in the summer the regent exams are only offered by the New York State education department in Spanish compared to June when the
171exams are offered in multiple languages um students were still provided like translators dictionaries and glossies but many students were expecting to have the exam come in their language so it just they just kind of were not prepared for that um many of our enl students struggled when taking those exams this year when we look for the budget for next year um we would like with the increased number of students taking Regents exams we feel we need to hire additional region Proctors so we have enough staff to practor during the summer and as mentioned before we would also like to increase the number of enl teachers we are hiring in the summer due to our L enrollment increasing in the district thank you for that presentation and as is our usual practice we'll ask questions um
172of the board members beginning with Hassan elali this might be a silly question but is this the last of the uh summer school presentations okay um kind of an overarching question um so specifically I know most of our programs are essentially um um done by teacher recommendations or uh staff recommendations do we have any opt-in programs for summer school and if if not um why not so specifically for the high school um essentially across the board so I'll start with the high school the high school we have um we offer classes for firsttime credit and so that is an opt in so any student who would like to take a class that we're offering for first time credit can do so so there was that op in for for the high school is that always
173like health class basically we offer other classes and I believe Miss Laos mentioned three uh classes this year and Miss Laos if you want to just um refresh or if we could go back to that slide where we had the firsttime credit classes but it is um health as well as yep it's Health Multicultural studies and media literacy unfortunately we have tried to offer additional firsttime credit courses um throughout the years and we even tried this year however due to um Staffing we have not been able to hire teachers for those POs positions or um unfortunately we prioritize the classes that we need to offer for students to earn back their credits so um if there's a need for a teacher to teach te like English 10 or English 11 instead of maybe elective um
174new credit class um we have to we're offering the um required classes unfortunately but it really has been I can definitely let you know for the past couple years since we have started to um offer a firsttime credit it is in most cases it's due to um not having enough teachers to hire got it we also have some enrichment opport opportunities um for our students stanas is one of them as well as a fine arts um enrichment program as well and I believe this year we also offered um this past summer uh an inner Scholastic um program for students as well thank you so there does seem to be opportunities to opt in at all levels yes thank you and Lori I'm also going to mention I know art has their program s if I'm
175not mistaken from elementary all the way to 12th grade as well that they can do and if I can add um there's also Camp invention that's offer offered in some programs as in that's offered in some schools as well as additional um enrichment opportunities in particular schools as well as the aps mentioned while our elementary summer school program is recommendation based um off of Assessments there is normally a wait list and we normally will go to that that weight list for some students who may not be um our targeted students if we don't feel all those spots okay anybody else um just wanted to highlight I also enjoyed the Middle School presentation I just other people asked my question but this was a wonderful presentation also I particularly enjoyed that we offer a media literacy
176course and I was a little um taken aback not taken aack but sort of like felt the Pang of stress of thinking of students um taking the math course via computer and and appreciate the intervention that you had the Innovation to seat teachers with them I'm just curious is this a a feature of the industry overall or was it just a matter of this year it was just hard to hire um the support for those roles that we didn't have people I would say we have struggled in math over the past couple of years getting teacher getting teach hiring teachers or teachers wanting to work over the summer um we did see an increase in the number of students needing to take math again especially for algebra um we did work with our math supervisor
177Frank delanor um and Lori McKenna to make the decision on putting the geometry class on the apex program we understand it was a really hard decision however we wanted to make algebra is a required graduation requirement um when our kids graduate so um we made sure to have that support and like you said we did make sure to provide that support for the students taking geometry on the apex program so that way they felt supported throughout the school year and I can say um the Math teachers that were also taking or were teaching algebra topics in algebra this summer they too like provided support as best that they can they did provide region review during the summer when it came to region review time after summer school hours so that was really beneficial um to
178those students as well if they were preparing for the geometry regions thank you and I don't want to brainstorm too much on solutions by hearing that enl was a challenge as well as there's not support given by the by the agency for um students with different languages I feel that that's an area that we might want to take back to government relations as we are a member of a school port aacy group and if there's a need we want to fill it and I can definitely let you know um at the end of the summer we did meet and we did um meet with Mr Julio um Shane and barber Miss McKenna Miss kford and us as an admin team at the high school just discuss those challenges we had um not only in August
179but also in June and just tried to really kind of advocate he's going to try to Advocate um Mr Julio was trying to Advocate on his end as well to try to um hopefully Stop Those challeng challenges for L students yeah um actually I I don't have any I I uh I do want to thank all of you for the the presentations um um always gets the mind going and uh so thank you very much other questions thank you all okay thank you moving on to the next part of our agenda which is the K through 8 academic and assistments McKenna Mrs Brown and I are delighted to be here tonight with you to share celebrate and offer next steps relative to our K8 student student outcomes for the 2324 school year um and though
180Mrs Beall is not presenting with us tonight we thank her for supporting us during this transition in preparing this report and presentation next slide please as always we begin with our District's vision mission and goals I'd like to lift up that the focus of this particular presentation is grounded in increasing student achievement through the lens of all other aspects of the priorities articulated here we'll begin with the outcomes of our 3 through eight New York State Assessment program across the district and across all grade levels we have made incremental progress in English language arts increasing proficiency 6% over the past three academic years at this point I will turn it over to Mrs Brown to highlight outcomes by grade level in the elementary division thank you in grades three through five you'll see consistent a
181consistent upward trajectory and proficiency from 2022 to 2023 and then again from 2023 to 2024 these gains are significant with a gain in overall proficiency over 3 years of 10 percentage points at grade three 11 percentage points at grade four next slide please next slide please and then you'll see not a 9 percentage Point increase at grade five Miss McKenna will now highlight outcomes by grade level in the secondary division so at the middle level you look at the bottom of this slide we saw a 5% decrease from the 23 24 school year results on in grade six and we'll talk a little bit more about that um and the need for the vertical alignment and Scaffolding for our students from fifth to sixth grade when we discuss next steps with Miss hoola hand next
182slide please in grade seven we saw a healthy increase in proficiency of six percentage points from 2324 and seven percentage points since 2022 at grade 7even in grade eight we gained four percentage points this year after a decline in proficiency from 22 to 23 and I will now turn it back over to Miss Brown Next slide please thank you displayed is our districtwide performance by cohort from 2023 to 2024 students who were in third grade across the district in 2022 to 2023 were 29% proficient and then that same group of students a year later in fourth grade during the 23 24 school year were 36% proficient demonstrating a gain of 7% students who were in fourth grade across the district in 22 23 were 28 proficient and then that same group of students a year
183later in fifth grade were 31% proficient demonstrating a gain of 3% Miss McKenna will now highlight cohort outcomes by grade level in the secondary division thanks Miss Brown um students who were in fifth grade across the district excuse me in 2223 were 26% proficient and remained flat as sixth graders in 2324 again at 26% Miss Hulan will talk a little bit more about this um later around the vertical alignment and Scaffolding our sixth graders districtwide in 2223 had a proficiency rate of 31% and that same group as sixth graders had a proficiency rate of 33% demonstrating a 2% increase the cohort with the largest proficiency gains across grades 3 through eight was our seventh grade to eighth grade cohort and that cohort had a 27% proficiency rate as seventh graders in 22 23 and then
184jumped to 36% proficiency as eighth graders which was a 9% game which is um pretty significant Miss julan across the district and AC oop sorry across the district and across all grades we have made even stronger progress in math increasing proficiency 13% over the past three academic years um I will turn it back over to Mrs Brown to highlight outcomes by grade level in the elementary division next slide please thank you math proficiency proficiency scores increase ined in grades 3 through 5 overall scores over the 3-year period are significantly higher with percentage Point increases of 11 in grade three 16 in grade 4 next slide please and 17 percentage points in grade five Miss McKenna will now highlight math outcomes by grade level in the secondary division so the next several slides will show the
1856 through eight math proficiency rates in the upward trajectory although sixth grade remained flat at 25% proficiency for two consecutive years we have seen a 7% increase over the um the three years from 2122 to 23 24 next slide please so in addition to the New York state math results this year the table combines the seventh grade New York state math results with algebra results providing a broader view of student achievement as you can see by this chart or table Mass scores for grade seven improved by over 10% in both New York state only in Combined categories this year over a three-year period grade seven results increased by 24% in New York state only and 23% in the combined category the combined approach highlights growth across different math Pathways giving a more comprehensive snapshot of
186student performance the data indicates steady Improvement reflecting the effectiveness of our m instruction and interventions and these gains set a positive trajectory encouraging us to continue strengthening our math curriculum to support ongoing progress in future assessments next slide please following the same structure as uh seventh grade this table combines eighth grade New York state math results with algebra results again providing a broader view of student achievement math scores for grade eight improveed by a percentage point in both New York State state only and combined categories this year the proficiency rate for e8th grade alone meaning New York state only has steadily increased from 2% in 2122 to 5% in 23 24 and I will note we still have a long way to go um when combined with algebra 8ighth grade proficiency rates have remained steady
187with 28% Proficiency in both 2122 in 2324 and a slight dip to 27% in 2223 I would like to note that the percentage of at level one has decreased slightly from 82% in 2122 to 78% in 2324 indicating some movement toward higher performance level for Combined results level two and three have remained relatively consistent over three years reflecting stable performance although gains are observed there is significant opportunity to further increase proficiency levels especially in transitioning more students from level one to higher performance categories next slide please so um with our cohort results students who were in third grade across the district in 2223 were 35% proficient and then that same group of students a year later in fourth grade during the 23 24 school year were 40% proficient demonstrating a gain of 5% students who
188were in fourth grade across the district in 2223 were 34% proficient and then that same group of students during the during the 23 24 school year were 33% proficient demonstrating a loss of 1% It must also be noted that students in grades three four and five participated in computer-based testing for the first time Miss McKenna will now highlight math cohort outcomes in the secondary division thank you Miss Brown Positive Growth from sixth to seventh grade saw the most significant improvement with a 10% decrease in not proficient stud students and an 11% increase in proficiency usually those two numbers match but due to rounding um there's a little little bit of a difference areas for improvement um grade five to six we experienced a 5% decrease in proficiency with not proficient rising from 70 to 75%
189and as I mentioned earlier grade five to six um again we'll talk about this a little bit later um looking at that vertical alignment and targeted interventions to address the decline in proficiency of students transition to more challenging U math content um I do want to note here and you see a little footnote um at the bottom of this table that uh grade 7 to eight results are not included due to many eighth grade students taking algebra rather than the New York State um standard math assessment um which limits direct um comparisons next slide please in alignment with our thank you in alignment with our Equity goals we remain deeply committed to raising achievement for all students and have done so in both Ela and math proficiency has increased across all racial and ethnic groups
190in the 23 24 school year with notable gains in math for our black African-American and multiracial students of 7% respectively that said the achievement Gap persists among our white and non-white students and as such there remains work to be done uh next slide please at this time we'd like to highlight some of the gains that reinforce Collective efficacy the shared belief that Educators can positively impact student outcomes through their Collective action and prove it through their students growth and achievement we know from John Hattie's work that Collective teacher efficacy is the number one influence on student achievement with a 1.57 effect size greater than any other variable both those within and outside of the school's locus of control it's critical for us to acknowledge these wins while also affirming our commitment to our Equity goals
191and acknowledging there's much work to be done on behalf of students for whom we need to do better I'll now turn it back over to Mrs Brown to share highlights by building in the elementary division thank you as we scroll through the next next slide please thank you as we scroll through the next seven slides you'll see individual testing highlights from each Elementary building I'll speak to some highlights across um the entire Elementary division in our year-to-year data um you can go to the next slide Miss timens thank you um you'll see 11 of our 11 schools had at least one grade level increase in Proficiency in ela or math by no less than 5 percentage percentage points nine of 11 schools had at least two grade level increase two grade levels increase in Proficiency
192in ela and or math by no less than 5 percentage points and three of our 11 schools hit proficiency rates higher in ela and or math than the New York State proficiency average for the 23 24 school year the grade 3 through eight State average was 46% in ela and it was 52% in math next slide next slide next slide just give you a minute to look at the highlights next slide next slide please and now miss McKenna will provide some highlights for the secondary division okay I have two two slides here um so these points for our our middle schools highlight the school's progress in improving student proficiency across both year-to-year and cohort data with notable gains in ela and math for various grades so the year-to-year gains grade seven math proficiency was up
193by eight points grade A Ela proficiency up by 11 points reaching 50% and exceeding New York State Standards cohort growth grade 6 to ELA and math proficiency increased by seven and 10% points respectively in grade 7 to8 Ela proficiency incre increased by 11 points for next slide please for Meyers um grade seven Ela proficiency increased by seven points math by 15 points and at North Albany uh grade seven Ela proficiency increased by 15 points and math by 16 points uh similarly with the cohort um data grade six to S cohort showed a ninepoint increase in ela and 14 point increase in math at Myers and at North Albany grade 7 to eight cohort Ela proficiency increased by 10 points and grade 6 to7 cohort math proficiency increased by nine um Jasmine I will turn it
194back over to you thank you I will now highlight some of our additional Elementary assessment data so displayed are are our nwea map Reading data for spring 2022 spring spring 2023 as well as 2024 the scale score percentile and the growth score for each grade level the conditional growth percentile provides information about response to instruction when students achieve at the 50th percentile on average students are making a Year's growth for a year of instruction as this score increases from the 50th percentile we then recognize that we are closing gaps from 2023 to 2024 percentiles scores improved in grades three and four and grade five stayed the same growth scores increased from 2023 to 2024 in grades three and five in grade four stayed the same these scores follow a year where we experienced significant improvements
195in scale and growth scores the scores are generally generally flat from 2023 to 2024 with more improvements shown at the intermediate level than the primary level the data suggest that we are maintaining positive Trends over this three-year period next slide please from 2023 to 2024 percentile scores improved in grades kindergarten third grade fourth grade and fifth grade in math growth scores increase from 2023 to 2024 in grades three and five these scores follow a year where we experience significant improvements in scale in growth scores from 2022 to 2023 the scores are generally flat from 2023 to 2024 with more improvements shown at the intermediate level than the primary level again the data suggest that we are maintaining positive Trends over this three-year period despite full implementation of our new math resource illustrative math generally a
196dip follows implementation in this case we did have solid growth in 2023 during pilot activi with the resource Follow by year of maintaining those gains during full implementation next slide please so displayed is our ecbm K to2 Benchmark summary data it is a literacy assessment which is an integral part of our elementary mtss process and also one of which we use for Progress mon monitoring for K2 there was a decline in proficiency as reflected in the 23 24 data as compared to the 2022 to 23 data we continue our strategic strategic work in our primary classrooms with the addition of our new heg program to strengthen foundational skills with our youngest Learners next slide please this chart provides the fall and spring median data for all of K5 with ecbm overall students in K5 had
197greater gains than in 2022 2023 from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2024 student proficiency increased from 46% to 49% next slide please and I'll now turn it over to miss McKenna thanks Miss Brown so uh grade six through eight map reading for NWA if you look at the consistent um mean profile uh percentile the mean reading percentile across grades six through eight remains stable at 35 from Spring 22 to Spring of 2024 the average conditional growth percentile increase from 42 in Spring of 2022 to 45 in Spring of 2024 indicating a steady Improvement in student growth over time when looking at the grade level cgp improvements grades seven and eight showed significant cgp increases over the years with grade seven reaching a cgp of 46 and grade eight reaching 45 by Spring
198of 20 24 next slide please in math the overall scale score data increased significantly from 2223 and improved um Again by 1 percentage point in 2024 the overall growth data for 2024 is still greater than 2022 but has declined from 2023 levels the cgp improved significantly in grade 7 and 8 from 2022 to 2023 and while it has declined from 2023 to 20 24 it is still significantly greater than the 2022 score grade six remains flat which also is reflected as we mentioned earlier in our New York State data I do want to note that in um that we introduced calculators um for NWA testing in the winter and spring of 2023 but not in the fall of 2022 thus some of the large increases in 2023 cgp could be explained by that variable alone
199so the chart that you see here Middle School Pass rates this chart reflects end of thee Pass rates for the last three years in the four core subject areas there's a preponderance of blue that you see shows that 80% or more students earned their um credit if you will for um the four core uh in the four core classes North Albany has shown great improvement from 2223 and then again from 2023 to 2024 Myers and hacket have shown little variability over the three years although some evidence of growing stability postco is present in this data as well uh local classroom data combined with three years of nwaa and New York State 3 through eight testing highlights a positive trajectory upward Trend and student assess achievement especially in New York state Ela for grades seven and
2008 um we have strengthened the support through through expanded Ela and math uh academic intervention services um from with staff across all three middle schools through um though math AIS uh is impacted by ongoing teacher teacher shortages uh with two two positions this year still being open um the data driven instructional strategies are a district priority uh guiding targeted interventions and continuous adap adaptation um to meet student needs um so we're continuing um to reflect that in our step and in the work that we're doing um at the middle level I will now turn it back over to miss hulahan to talk through our next steps next slide please with each passing year we continue to streamline our commitments to school Improvement efforts with a laser L focus on implementing research-based strategies uh routinely in
201order to ensure our intentions match our outcomes through the lens of equity across the system we invested in building our Collective capacity to deliver grade level engaging affirming and meaningful instruction which is The Gleam acronym um as defined by Unbound Ed and in alignment with the district's instructional framework to that end we have prioritized professional learning grounded in high impact teaching strategies that Foster cognitive engagement and student voice amplify student voice and making data informed decisions through an action research model where teachers coaches student support teams and admin administrators plan with foundational knowledge of student needs interests and learning profiles inclusive of their backgrounds and lived experiences study and analyze that performance and act in response to it through the lens of differentiation acceleration intervention and enrichment in ways that are unique to each building
202and their individual trajectories and timelines as a community uh leadership teams are focused on strengthening the culture and climate in their respective spaces for students and adults alike with some examples of such identified in the presentation in analyzing the outcomes highlighted across this presentation we recognize a need to attend specifically to the grade five to six transition identify the root causes of the backslide we observe in terms of curricular and instructional vertical alignment so that we can strengthen our systems in support of our students as they enter Middle School next slide please this concludes our presentation thank you for the opportunity to highlight our successes and affirm our commitment to the ongoing work of school Improvement on behalf of our students and we are happy to answer any questions you may have that was so
203much data thank you that was crazy um I just want to go back to slides to the uh Middle School Pass rates which look great um it's like three slides back I think Ms Pass rates the one that's most y so I just had one question about this essentially our feeder alignment or realignment um process took place essentially what like two years ago two and a half years ago could would you put any of the north albany's um growth in passing like would you pinpoint the realignment um uh not the realignment the um Elementary School feeder program uh adjustments would you kind of lend some of this growth to that I think that plays a part in it but I also want to go back to June of 2022 we were coming out of um
204the pandemic and students were re-engaging in The Learning environment if you remember in the 2021 school year our middle school students were mostly um in person or um virtual and in 2122 which is the percent passing that First Column was the first year that students were re-engaging in an in-person environment so that certainly the feeder alignment pattern certainly plays a part of it but we were also re doing a lot of reteaching around social emotional and behavioral engagement at the middle level and as students um became uh re acclimated to uh in-person learning um and we grew our third large Middle School um you know the data showed and and continues to show the progression and the Improvement of our middle school students so it's just one piece of it and I'll just add on
205um not to get us down a rabbit hole however we did just get literally yesterday our outcomes for fall uh NWA data from Mr Robin and he now that we have fully realized the new feeder pattern he noted great parody I learned a new word um across the uh middle level um indicating that that decision has really um helped um ensure our outcomes are Equitable across the district thank you for that can I just chime in on that point I think what's also important is to recognize that there has not been a drop other places right I think one of the um in my opinion um ill-founded critiques of the feeder pattern adjustment was that it was going to be some ways reduce performance at other schools in order to increase performance at other at
206certain schools and I don't think there's evidence of that instead what you're seeing is what which was what we thought would happen which is all the schools are um reaching parody which is an excellent word without an impact on um on hacket for example which has been our our highest performing school with the one uh the one green era Square there but overall very similar scores to priori um thank you all um okay um it could I I think I'm I'm just in a space where okay I'm so happy that our youngsters are passing however that still doesn't as you said there's more work a lot more work to be done proficiency rates are not great so I'm I'm so I'm struggling to be happy um I also recognize how hard this work is both
207for teachers and also uh for for our youngsters and uh I I don't I just this is my ninth year and I'm I'm just uh at still at this point where I feel like not too much ever changes and uh I mean and yet and yet we do have kids who do well and they are successful in life but I have higher expectations for them as I know you do so it always raises the question what else can we do are there things that we are doing just because that's just what we've always done are there things that we should not do are there you know will the fact that you know hopefully if there are no no no more required regions does that give us us down the you know more uh flexibility for
208teachers to like just really hone in on youngsters I I I don't know so I don't want to go on and on Babble I'm I'm just trying to I'm trying to celebrate but I'm I it's hard I'm worried for our youngsters and given again back to this freaking election where I see people after people not being able to think critically not be able to and again we don't have to agree and pick the same candidate but the rationale the thought processes half the country is like this way half the country is this way some people didn't vote some people voted for just a few things that they want I mean it it so I feel like there's something wrong in our education as I started out saying and I keep coming back to it what
209are we going to do so thank you for indulging me and again I do not want to diminish the very very hard work of our teachers of our students and of our families to support their youngsters all youngsters in the kind of climate and culture that we live in it's horrific I do want to say that I do hope we're able to make um more and more use of not just our CTE but handson meaningful um projects experiences to help make the connection and to make sure that we are always expecting more of our youngsters not less not just as good as but that they can do it and that they can achieve and we have so many examples of people who have you know um all kinds and we need to hold those expectations
210up to them as well all right thank you [Music] um trying to focus on the most important questions um one of the questions I have is around that F five to six transition which I think we've all acknowledged is is a significant challenge um I'm really proud of the district's work on the um social transition we've come very very far um and I know that this um we as board really pushed hard to make sure that every student got to Shadow and that we did all of that work um but I'm wondering if the way our instructional supervisors are set up with a you know we do the curriculum as a K12 right that's something that we've in integrated over the years we have the five-year curriculum review and we look at the whole K12
211curriculum together but then when you look at the instructional supervisors they are Elementary and then secondary and I'm wondering if that's really working or not um because it seems like you guys have identified that this is a challenge and it's exactly at that point and it just I wonder like do they work together the instructional supervisors to develop that vertical alignment does that already happen um can you talk a little bit about about the instructional supervisor role and and how might lead to or or be changed to improve this so I I'll speak to that um I agree that that that's where the the challenge is and I think sometimes um we could absolutely do a better job of really honing in on on that transition I agree that the social transition has come so
212far um with more opportunities for the students Elizabeth and I are so excited um for this unique opportunity that is presented at self um for her to assume some of my former duties as the the two of us to Endeavor to do this work together uh we went and partnered yesterday just at North Albany and already have some exciting ideas of just little things we noticed from attending a team meeting together um for example um she noted that the rubric we use um to assess students with um you know in a constructed response argumentative writing is more rigorous than they're using in fifth grade right so like that's just one small example of what we're hoping to really unpack this year um and to really find different ways for the the six core supervisors to
213interact with one another more meaningfully um around that transition I would um point to the eth to nth grade transition as a an equally challenging space um and unfortunately we don't have uh Like Apples to Apples metric as we do with the state testing and nwaa to really um unpack the academic um or the outcomes component of that but um those two transitions specifically um really need um some laser like Focus From the instructional lens and looking at vertical alignment one other transition I want to note is curricular in that the elementary program uses a curricular resource wonders whereas the secondary curriculum is very much homegrown um uh and is standards based um with a laser light focus on those standards and and that is a significant jump in rigor um and so we we
214need to attend to that and really um look that and I want to look at our writing components our like portfolio pieces that the fifth graders do compared to the kind of writing we really slide very quickly into you know all academic writing is argumentative in nature right you we're establishing claims and defending those claims with evidence and while there's certainly room for all other kinds of writing um that that is a big leap in a transition on the ELA side I have a lot to learn about the math side I'm just a month into um this broader view um but I have a lot of confidence in m mcra and Mr delenor and then the other thing I just wanted to note is that we have turned over a it wasn't too long ago
215that our fifth our sixth grade was our highest performing grade um in ela um in terms of proficiency um by a significant margin and in that time we also uh we had six or five really because we only had one sixth grade team at North Albany veteran tenured staff with double double digit years of experience and only one of those teachers remains um all five uh five out of six sixth grade teachers are probationary um they're wonderful they're working really hard but it was a a full turnover in that staff um which plays a role thank you Miss GRE I just wanted to thank you for the presentation I'm overall very pleased with progress we've been making and yes I I did Echo some concerns about the fifth to sixth grade because I noticed um
216that You' commented that this may be some specific challenges to this particular cohort of students given that they missed some critical instruction in the primary years I wondered is this in in your experience is this kind you were saying in the past sixth grade has not been a that loss year right yeah our our past data did not have this you know dating back to certainly pre-co and then it you know we lost assessment data in that time period um there was one point where I distinctly remember asking Dr Wilson Turner and Michelle Bridgewater asking me to sit down with them and talk about what we the changes we made in the sixth grade curriculum to produce the the large jumps that we had um so and that was slightly before covid um but I
217did thank you for reminding me that was in the report not the presentation that this this particular sixth grade cohort was in first and second grade in 2020 and 2021 and those are critical years in both early intervention and foundational skills um along with Social Development um so that is part of the challenge um so we'll continue to analyze if it is that cohort or also just what we can do in the you know curricular and instructional vertical alignment thank you Miss Smith oh sorry Miss Wilson okay can we pull up slide six so that the6th grade 22 to 23 data I think that should be 26% not 31% and so it's actually a flatline between 2223 and 23 24 and not a drop like you see so if you the if percentage proficient would
218be 17 + 9 right so that should be 26% I see right so really there was no drop so don't beat yourself up well thank you we'll revisit that and and find out where our error is um no because when you count the numbers it's the numbers seem fine except the the first percentage proficient column is 31 and should be 26 well thank you for pointing that out any other [Music] questions forgive me so how do you come up with the proficiency percentage like so we're look three level four level three and level four level trust three and four right that's what New York State considers as profession okay I was cuz I like trying to do mathematical level one is the the the students who are struggling the most and fourth are the ones
219were exceeding and so you're trying to move them from level one and two to three and four got it thank you so three and four are proficient so you want to look at the numbers of one and two going down got and three and four going up thank you and I think the cohort chart makes that a little bit more plain um actually I had a question that's related to that which is about um the Statewide proficiency level sometimes we see this data on a chart where we get to compare against Statewide because one of the interesting things and we will not get into this larger conversation about the validity of the New York State um grade 3 through eight tests but there is some questions about what what defines proficiency and whether it's properly
220defined by New York State let's leave it at that um but so one of the ways for us to compare ourselves year-over-year is to look at this proficiency data but if the state rate is going up much faster and we're going up just a little bit it doesn't mean as much because we're not closing towards the the state average and I wondered if that has been released yet the Statewide um grade byg grades and if we could get that as an sbu to compare not just this year but but three-year average where we were compared to State um because really makes a difference because if the state changes the definition of proficiency it we can't tell what this means without that context um so that was one question can I ask a couple other little
221data questions I wanted to draw attention to the fact that next year's data is going to look kind of wonky because the Dual students are going to be their own school which I had completely forgotten about until you said the number 11 Miss Brown I was like oh 11 yes there's not there's going to be 12 next year so next year's data is not truly going to be comom because right now our dual students are beds coated in their home Elementary School um so that's going to be a change that we're going to wonder and maybe you should start now talking to our um statisticians about how they plan to deal with that um because it's going to be a challenge um and then I similarly I wanted to ask in the cohort analysis are
222they true cohorts only students who were in The District in fifth grade and sixth grade or is it all the fifth graders followed by all the sixth graders even if they're different humans do you understand what I'm saying like we know we have a lot of transiency people are coming and going so when we looked at that cohort analysis is it same children in grave Five who also continued to grade six or is it all the fifth graders compared to all the sixth graders the next year do you understand the question I do okay I do so Trisha has created an amazing dashboard so we are able to look at those students and I'll use North alvania as an example sitting in North alvania sixth graders and how that same group of students performed as
223fifth graders on the assessment so it is an apples to an apple apple true student it's true student yes that I thought it was but I just I just wanted to um make 100% sure and then the one other question I had which I imagine there's a reason you didn't do this but sometimes we see data that's like oh we've now gotten back to where we were before covid um and th lately we've been seeing data that kind of starts at covid um and goes forward which I would hope that we would see increases coming out of that very difficult time but have you started to look like okay well let's look at 2017 2018 or 2018 2019 which I don't think you're allowed to do for the New York state test but you probably
224could do for nwaa um in order to see if the gains are bringing us back to where we used to be have we done that kind of work yet or not quite yet not yet okay I think it would be interesting to know um because I know we we know that our students really struggled for very legitimate reasons many of them were deeply impacted um lost people in their family very crisis situation in our communities which people have a tendency to kind of forget about the those those times um but I would like to know are we are we back to where we were or um and also I think that might show some of this these things like that you referenced in the report about these kids who missed those critical points of instruction
225okay those are my data questions we can work with Dr Robin on that preco nwaa dat it would be useful to know I mean you guys have to you guys need actionable information it's if it's if it's just to fulfill my curiosity don't waste your time but if it would create some actionable information like okay this tells us something then I think it would be interesting to know when you provide that information to the sbu uh could you also include the when you look at the building by building level data year to year I mean you highlighted all the regions where you've seen the improvements but there are few grades missing right whether it's no change or or things didn't go as well it'd be good to know that because come budget season we can
226look at those buildings and see you know what are the interventions that that could be changed or what else needs to happen uh to yeah and and we did get some of that and um one question I have that's sort of a follow one from that is how you handle the v i mean these are districtwide numbers but of course there are school by school differences um and so what are some kinds of interventions you you do when there's a a school that's not performing as well as other schools you know you do see variety and some of the variety is explained by the sort of demographic differences between our schools but some of it's not um and so I'm wondering just like how how do you deal with that as an administrator what happens
227next when when you start identifying that so as I've come into this role with my 11 12 buildings um it really is about where they currently are and what the need is um we talked about like you said the the the global view but when you dig into the particular school's data then we start looking at grade levels we're looking at individual students um that's where some of our tier one work comes into play then we're talking about instructional strategies so on the building level we really are are drilling down into into the data um to to figure out what what we need to do to to address it at the student level and that ties in with our Equity work right so we want to make sure that we're addressing all the buildings and
228all the kids in all the buildings okay any other question so um thank you um so this also brings me back to uh trying to make a connection uh to students who are participating in summer programs and how they're performing um and so I can't uh I'm not trying to make more work but what I'm trying to get at is those students who uh participate in the summer school I mean is it really just kind of kind of helping them maintain status quo you know no learning loss um but is it is their gain that comes from that um and are we able to somehow see that even in some of these numbers where maybe there is growth among some of the um you know the uh level ones or level twos but there's I
229want to just kind of understand the connection um and not to poo poo the program or anything but you just suggest that that maybe there's still something else we need to do with Summer you know um and then how I'm just trying to understand how you then deal with knowing where their students start at the beginning uh at the end of summer in the beginning and where they are right now did did we did we do enough did we focus on the right things to to help them uh grow yeah and that's a pretty easy analysis to do I say easy because we'll look to Dr Robin to do that for us um looking at our students who attended for example Middle School summer school how did they perform on the NWA in the spring
230versus how they performed in the fall so we can certainly get that information at the middle level and I'll turn it over to same for Miss Brown okay so same for for our elementary kidos too and I think when we've talked about this before one of the challenges was always like how do you compare a true um my science terminology like a true control because the students who are in the summer program are unique in some way that's why they were selected so you'd almost really need to look at students who were asked to attend summer school but didn't in order to really do that comparison because know we've been down this road before and I feel like he I think Miss Smith do you recall this I feel like that they said I understand
231what you say oh I'm not disputing you I wish that we had this it's so frustrating to me that we don't have this information because I I do think our summer program PR predominantly is reducing summer slide and I would love to see it do more than that um but you know I don't know I don't know that we can show with the data because of that confounding situation I also don't know if if summer school if we had all the money and all the resources in the world would families be willing to do more summer school and would we be able to get teachers to do more summer school or do we just need to do different summer school as as you've been talking about all night with Project based learning and um you
232know trying to be more engaging and would that be the trick and how do we bring that more into the school and how do we look at the the um the Equitable implications of of the data that shows some schools are doing better than others and how do we put more resources where the resources are really needed that's I think I don't know I'm I'm now wandering sorry yeah and then and then I guess I just wanting to um just understand uh and I'm sure I've asked this before too um how that the that summer experiences um informs what happens in the classroom for these particular youngsters um does it does it change in at the end of the summer does it provide those Stu those teachers with a the strategy for the h they're
233going to address those youngsters needs or is it still we you know hey they did that and we have a classroom and here's where we are now you know going into the Year everybody you know we're going to divide into this group that group do this I mean I'm just trying to understand like how how it gets approached um and really utilize what we understand from the summer to um make a difference in the fall so I can speak to the the middle level we have a really strong mtss process and students who are attending our summer school program at the middle level are engaged in the mtss process and that's how they are identified not only because of classroom uh performance class performance but also through by going through that mtss process and um
234ensuring that they have the in ventions that they need in order to be successful so even those students who are in summer school there's still that connection back to the mtss process at the end of the summer to ensure that the the students who need those interventions in September moving forward receive those through tier tier 2 interventions or tier three interventions uh for ELA and math and then we also connect them with um after school enrichment opportunities or tutoring opportunities um to make sure that they have the wraparound supports that they need in order to be successful and hopefully not have to participate in summer school um the previous um or the following school year but it's certainly not attend summer school and then boom you're in um the beginning of the school year and
235we're not providing that wraparound service any other discussion have that actually seems like something something we could know is whether students repeat summer school summer school summer school summer school or not do we actually know that I couldn't give you the data off the top of my head but we could get it it's you know do you do you have a sense just like from your experience like do we think that we have the same group of kids going to summer school every year or once you go once you're like I'm done with summer school I'm going to actually do my work now so I cannot do that again next year like I'm sure we have some students who do participate in multiple years of Summer school but interesting I can't give a percentage I
236never thought that before we can take a look at it I'm just curious to know whether if if it has that impact that that that would be a good impact to know that would be that would be something to talk about Miss elino so this is anecdotal from my time in summer school for math class to be completely honest um and my job currently deals primarily with math so I went from getting a very bad grade in math class in 10th grade um to going to summer school doing fine in summer school because that's just what I want I didn't want to spend all of my time and effort on it this is just me remembering my time there okay um all I'm trying to say is I give those kids that get to the
237get to the summer school and stay and get through it credit whether they're doing phenomenally or not just to put it simply so good for them I know we have high expectations um I also just don't want to lose sight that these guys uh these students are young and they will change over time might not be the most interesting thing to them they might love to do something else so as long as they're going they're trying and they're they're passing succeeding I'm happy with it obviously would like to do better but I understand that there's a lot of other matters at hand speaking from experience can I just add um I am really very optimistic about what Blue Ribbon is going to offer in terms of flexibility we don't know much yet um but just
238from I've sat in as in a variety of stolder groups I've sat in as a parent I've sat in as an educator and um I'm really it if it does what it reports it's going to do it's going to add a lot of flexibility um for students um you know to Miss Smith's point about um different Hands-On opportunities and different ways to demonstrate um what they know and are able to do um in a way that suits their interests and so um there's much work to be done and it's going to take several years I think it's the 29 class of 29 the entering class of 2930 where it'll be fully implemented um right after my youngest son graduates high school um but um there will be a lot of there's a lot of work
239to be done but I think it's going to be great for our kids um to be able to demonstrate their learning in in different ways other than a test I I appreciate that could I so I mean I I yeah um I think I'm just trying to uh uh and again I I I didn't I never I played Sports so I I was not going to summer school I was going to play playing ball um uh but and doesn't mean I did great in math either but I did okay um but I think what I'm um I'm do does summer school have to look like or too closely looking like regular school that's really my question I in the summer you know you know this and that's why we have field experiences and all these
240things but can it be built or or do we can we have that flexibility of building a program around a project that incorporates the things that we need our kids to to be able to do you know or do better come to fall and that's really I think what I'm trying to get at is we we we we continue to and I know know it's driven by mandates it's driven by state level things policies but can we experiment that's probably not the best word but can we try something because if kids if they can come if we can get them to stay because it's something excit exciting that they're going to look forward to every day that they they're going to be saying to their parents oh my God I can't miss this you know
241and that's the kind of enthusiasm excitement that I want to see because they got to be here it got to be in their seats and if we can then do that in the summer then maybe we can figure out how we do a bit more of that in the fall in the spring so that they keep their butts in the seats so that's all I'm getting I'm sorry I don't mean to be too repe I'm I'm depressed I'm going to own it I'm depressed about where we are in the state of things um and how much I believe that we can always always always do better and we can have these higher expect ations I and I'm listen and I mean that for every kid but I especially mean it for black and brown I
242especially mean it and and it can be done you know and we have examples of that every day you know so I'm sorry that's okay thank you maybe we can uh incorporate some virtual reality or some of those things the kids like technology so trying to use this technology and this cool gadgets it's on our agenda it's one of our next steps at the middle level and I just you know I'll just close with this statement around um this topic is we need you know we can build the program but we also need the right people to teach teach those Project based um opportunities for our kids so um Jen and I had a conversation earlier today about um really doing a um a reimagining what summer school at the middle level looks like like
243um so it's in the works but and and I you know on the Staffing I me again this is where we've got to have some support from State Ed and maybe that'll come too I mean there are incredible people doing incredible things they may not have the certification or the degree but it's happening out there and and I see it in schools all the time and there's got to be some flexibility to be able to hire people even if they're sort of I don't know if it's called Co teaching with a with a certified teacher but some mechanism for for being able to make use of those folks in our communities who have certain skill sets that can help get certain things uh across to our students and so I mean I I I know
244that this is a struggle and we're talking about yeah and the Partnerships there's got to be a way you know and and that's including with Hudson Valley they've got staff I know that they're not necessar certif but I mean can we can we call them in here can we utilize uh professors or faculty at community colleges to come and have a residency in Albany to you know to I don't know whatever it is the project is you know or the English Lang you know I mean I'm just there's got to be some mechanism and and we've got to push on all those levers to get the right people to help with uh address our needs I'm Sorry Miss Wilson no I'm so sorry I just wanted to add to the mo the notion about certifications
245and things of that nature and leveraging people whether they be partners or not is that the shift is also towards direct experience or lived experience and so there's tons of that we can Source in our community yeah I mean you know we here we are we utilize Paul Kane at the red bookshelf a lot he's not a certified teacher but he's getting across to those youngsters you know and so that's the kind of thing we've got to have some flexibility on you know anyway and and I'll just jump in real quick I met with 518 elevated today and haven't wasn't back in the office to to uh fill anyone else in but that's their passion as well and so they have uh written and secured a grant I think from National Grid uh they're coming
246over to meet with us uh in early December to talk about these sort of opportunities and then build in I mean this sort of connects a thread all the way through the high school summer school presentation about petitioning State Ed or building new courses for credit to get kids feet wet as they move in from eth to 9th grade so uh we'll be able to report back a little on that but there seems to be some momentum in in this area thank you all again M on last discussion item for the day budget calend the process and overview good evening um kind of hard to believe that it's in we're going into November and we're going back into the budget season so quickly um it really has felt like a quick turnaround um so in
247this budget calendar uh we have added a lot more to the calendar to make it more more robust to make sure that we have uh some established practices within so that we know when we are have uh certain resolutions to put into our agendas um I know that there's I'm still waiting for some information from our legal council about um yes pre-clearance uh according to the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York State um where any mundane uh information has changed within the calendars and your resolutions has to go in front of the uh Attorney General's office of civil rights Bureau um for pre-clearance um so I'm hoping to get some more information to add more robust robust information into this calendar so as we build it it will be uh very informative
248for us as a school district and as a board for our community as well um um let's see so a couple things that I wanted to highlight in here um the government Relations Committee are meeting on the 13th uh so that's next Wednesday to discuss some of the uh key advocating points that we will have for as a district um as you go further down we have uh on February 6 the as an example of how we're making this Cal a little bit more robust the board resolution establishing Board of registration is on February 6th so it will give us good key points throughout the year or the budget process um as we move forward there are certain things that we still have to add to it but again that's what we're waiting for our
249legal council to give us information on um but I think this is a good start and I think in the next few weeks we'll be able to get it more tightened up so that we do have the good timeline to go forward questions just um so um I mean I know it's not that far along uh to down the calendar to start recruiting or advertising for um Community involvement but can can we move on that is that can we begin to put out that communication sooner rather than later yeah and maybe even look at some different strategies for um recruiting others yeah honestly why we can yeah I mean it's it's on here for November 25th which is only I I know it's not that far 18 days away and the holiday is in there
250but I don't know what's ready to go you know but I just do you have ideas for other ways to do it because I I agree it has the first year we got a fairly significant number of interested parties and then the second year because it it was dormant for a while we used to do this then we didn't then we did it again and then it felt like the interest level really trailed off last year well I mean I mean maybe again is this something that Al that just needs staff to it but is there is there communication from us as a board uh from our president that goes out to you know I don't know um various folks hey this is happening I'm just just trying to I'm thinking about marketing I'm you
251know I'm not the best person probably on that but I I I'm just you know um there lots of groups I mean here you know the NAACP is gearing up around other things like I'm on their stuff and and so that group is active we've got the neighborhood you know associations we've got the ptas we may have to visit some of the more uh the ptas that are struggling but you know just making a making an appeal to them um and really playing up the importance of of their involvement in in the decisions that we're faced especially budgetary I think this is really part of that same question from before like how do we how do we engage parents in this like ramp or this um let's call it a triangle of opportunities for influence
252right like you can be on the school board that's a huge time commitment but you don't have to be on the Schoolboard you can be on one of these committees that meets regularly that's more commitment than maybe other people but less commitment than being on a board or you can attend a public meeting or you can you know call your friend neighborhood board member or you know there's a there's a whole sort of like PID of per messaging so do do we participate I mean I know in the past and this Wilson I'm looking at you because we've talked about doing some of that as a past goal I remember do we just go ahead and like say hey on this one thing we're going to we're going to begin to get some word out
253to various folks in all the mediums have to work with Mr leco of course and do it right but that kind of messaging yes I think um in this season it would be a great opportunity given um the past events of the past couple days 100% people are interested in figuring it out and also we know that there's at least the um committee that we've just appointed today probably not too late for people to be added right if there was more folks that were interested if we could get it quickly and also there's the um committee that I know Assist superintendent for secondary is working on which is the safety Safety Committee um so so there there might be a way we could combine more than one ask in one Outreach and it could be
254around um it could have some introductory uh messaging that could be coordinated um around this is this is part of a overall campaign to try and increase the engagement of folks um and here's some ways that you could do it now um so so again without um I know we it's easy for us to make those suggestions but if you I'm willing to volunteer you know a hand in some of that kind of communication um because I don't want to just say hey let's do this and not offer so if somebody says Hey yep go ahead then I'm I'm willing to to help with that and so anyway so I would like to make it the superintendent's job to think about this with cabinet and figure out you know how board can be helpful and
255um how to start conveying this information and we will AB absolutely be helpful but I think we've overall we have in the past and I the different boards do this differently and different boards in different states do this very differently that's right um and we all participate in National School boards information so we watch how things are done in Texas in Los Angeles and various other places that that have very activist communication from their boards um and we have generally not done like sort of board member on your corner and those kinds of things we've always been very cautious around that um because we know we're not the the staff um so we we could definitely do more than what we've been doing in terms of Outreach we do need to be cognizant of the
256um social media aspects I know there's been a lot of information coming out from newk State School boards Association about the way using your own social media even your personal social media creates an expectation of you behaving like a public figure when you're using it that way which means you cannot it it challenges how you deal with um uh negative and sometimes um dangerously negative c um commentary on your Facebook page or your social media so you just have we just have to be I agree with you and and I you know I think Paul's listening um council's listening and Joe's listening so I'm just I'm just saying however I can be helpful I'm I'm as you know as part of the board I'm happy to do that um with the right guidance and you
257know let me know we let this open take the lead on that so there are no more questions I I have a question I hav an actually that was just commentary I'm sorry I just wanted to draw to the board's attention and confirm my understanding with the ass superintendent about um the very rough calendar for April it's really rough this year it's very very difficult um if the state adopts the budget on time which is a big if because they have not the last two years um we will hopefully have a budget with an actual known Revenue Source by April 10th which when we have a board meeting but there's no guarantees that that's going to happen we could not have a state budget with enough time to give to let us finalize our budget
258by April 10th if that does not happen I don't have the calendar in front of me me but immediately after that it's break week and then we can't come back really the earliest SEC meeting we could come back for would be April 22nd which would be a Tuesday or the currently scheduled April 24th um and I think this is the part I wanted to confirm with you Joe we have until April 28th to submit to the state if we needed to right is that your understanding that is my understanding yes and that's just for the budget because we can't put the ballot till after April 30th but the budget has to be submitted in the 28th and then have you coordinated with Mr leco because I know this is always the challenge which is even
259if the state doesn't need it till April 28th do we need it earlier than that to be able to print and get into people's mailboxes in a timely fashion I have not met with Ron yet Mr rco um so maybe you guys could do that I'm not asking you to do that on the fly right now but and when you come back with this in two weeks to really understand what the mail date is Mr leco is checking his calendar and he's shaking his head does that mean forget it I'm not looking at my calendar I'm sorry I can tell you I have to go to Alban schools.org and look at the calendar to know this that's how I week of April 14 right so um hang on I'm just now I'm going to a
260real calendar so I can have this conversation so the week of the 14th is break week which means the 21st do we have school on the 21st which is Monday Easter Monday I think um we do we do have school on the 21st okay so Ron Mr leco I do not want to put you on the spot you do not need to make this statement right here right now you can say could I please go back and look at this for some more time and then get back to us in two weeks but we will need to know if we can meet on the 22nd or the 24th to adopt a budget which would be natural for us or if that's going to be present a major challenge for you but the 22nd is doable
261which is okay so what he's saying for those of you listening at home who cannot hear him because he's not on tape is that if we approve it on the 22nd he thinks he can get the mail in people's mail blockes around May 13th and the vote is May 20th so that's not terrible right so we is that is that what you said is okay so the 24th makes it much harder because it makes it even closer to the vote so I'm I'm proposing that everyone right now put on their calendar a tentative board meeting for Tuesday April 22nd because the 22nd is much easier for Ron to get information out to people than the 24th um that is my my the reason I'm drawing all this out in this way is that I'm I'm
262really concerned because that this is very unusual the way this has played out and typically we've asked to see a budget two or three times before we approve it so that there's an opportunity for the public to comment right because we don't know if the lack of state aid is going to cause a problem where we need to make any reductions until we know what the state is going to do and so if they don't adopt their budget till April 10th we might see the first balanced budget on April 22nd and have to adopt it right then or else miss these State deadlines you see this is this is the challenge that I'm witnessing nothing precludes us except for our own travel schedules for meeting over break but most people don't want to meet over
263break and many people are on vacation many administrators are on vacation so it's a it's a problem and many of us are on vacation so anyway I think we should we should anticipate that we might need to meet on the toy second that's probably the most important thing I wanted to say besides I do want to get the legal advice around pre-clearance because that's going to affect a lot of stuff for us all right I mean we have more extraordinary circumstances available to participate virtually if we need to if we need to hold the meeting the previous week potentially we need to have four people physically present to have a quum okay thank you Mr Caris board committee reports facilities so you already go good sure um I think the first one I just wanted
264to uh talk about was the um ad hoc committee on routine consent um and and I want to say that uh Mr Caris uh the committee thanks you for all your work and I know there others in working with you on some of this um and so I wanted to make sure the board understood a couple of things that we're doing uh we're focused first uh and have been for some time on the contract process and um I know Dr shur you asked me about sort of some of that and when we'd be finished up but that's just one piece uh of what we're doing and I would say that's looking pretty good in good shape if I'm looking for my committee to maybe nod and so yeah yeah okay um we're in there and
265you've seen some of the these results you get to see a bit uh you know at every um at every meeting um and we are more you know um we're focused on what that process looks like for staff but how it also uh yields the kind of information that that we need as a board to um to really you know move on those contracts um you know um in good speed and good process so uh that's the first piece and um the next piece that we will be focused on and I think we probably have one at least one more meeting on the contract piece would you say Joe Mr Caris at least one more meeting on that um which is coming up and focused s on the contracts then we'll move on to the
266field trip um form development uh and process and then there's a third piece which has to do with the um conference request uh that staff um will submit to um Mr Carrison superintendent for approval so those are three components of the process so I'm I'm sure that we are not looking to come back to you all with a finished product until after the first of the new year um and and I'm not even going to say how far out that is but you know we'll I'll we'll keep coming back and Reporting our progress but uh you know I think it's certainly safe to say after January but I certainly hope before the budget process um you know really gets fully underway um I my colleagues if you want to add anything feel free Mr Caris
267you as well okay okay and um and so I I will make that I now I can't look and find that meeting but it's coming up um or we'll have another one here soon um the other thing uh let's see the um facilities committee uh is also coming up I apologize because I did not look up those dates but it's uh we should have we should be having another one on that one too Mr El always kind of looking around um but we will um I believe that we do have on our agenda I think it's for December another sort of little project update I believe that we that's been moved now to December um and so we will just be meeting in um November to sort of get ready for that um as well
268as uh uh kind of get an update on a couple of specific things you know we've talked about um some um concerns over at New Scotland we still won't have a complete you know kind of plan for that but we're working on some things um we have some things underway at at the high school uh that are um uh that we're dealing with the the leakages around the windows and the panels and some things that we that are ongoing but we'll give you more information on that thank you sir the our meeting is on the 12 both your meetings are on the 12th oh both of them are on the 12th okay so uh we yeah okay we'll come back and one's at 5:45 and one's at 5:30 right okay well we'll just talk about
269that on yourself yeah we'll talk about that a little bit um because usually with the ad hoc that's that's that can be a one too so I'll come we'll talk about it we'll work it out okay so I think that accounts for my two meetings oh the uh on the uh committee for the the adoc committee uh regarding student representation um I do want to make sure I get to Miss Wilson and Mr Elman tonight because we can actually move on getting a date for our first initial meeting um and we also uh now know when the high school students meet um and it's usually a Thursday afternoon after school and um so they are ready to have some chats with us and and as not only the students but also their advisers um so
270we're getting input uh um from all of those groups and we'll figure out uh ways to get the other input from uh as as needed so I think that's good we'll keep you posted thank you thank you policy policy committee had a successful meeting yesterday evening we have SE we reviewed several policies that we will be having for discussion at our November 21st board meeting great thank you relations uh so I'm going to do a couple committee reports so first on the subject of government relations we had a brief meeting last week and we will be reconvening on November 13th to um bring the uh the written portion of the legislative um priorities up to date Mr leco is working hard on that but the great news from the last meeting is that our legislative
271priorities are going to be jied so there's been um excellent work done to try and make those more um compelling visually both with um some photographs to to make things more Humane but also with some infographics and charts to make it to con convey the material more effectively um so I think that'll be a really great way for us to have our legislators really understand both um in written word and in communication through um graphs and charts and other kinds of infographics and through pictures what the what the the heart of the matter really is for our school district so that's government relations I will also do school visits um we did uh most of our school visits last year um we were able to accomplish all but four and so miss Timmons is working
272on uh confirming those four that we're going to start with um so she worked on that um over the last couple of days and she she's coordinating with um three board members and three schools because one of the schools is um the two program uh building so there's four um four visits in there and then um for audit which I'll speak to since Miss man is not here we are trying to get the audit ready for everyone to see at the next board meeting we received it just literally today and we had coincidentally scheduled an audit meeting on the 18th of November which is a Monday and so Mr Caris is determining whether that meeting will suffice if it will it would mean that we'd be a little bit late right we wouldn't get you
273that the audit report like the formal committee report um on the Friday before the board meeting it wouldn't come till the Monday we can get you the audit right now it's it's here here it is um but we haven't even seen it yet or if he needs us to meet prior then we need to find a date this coming week which we have not even begun to schedule so it will be one of those two don't do it on the 12th what is the 12th the ad hoc meeting and the facilities right the one that we're all right so what we'll do like five six and seven we'll just but everybody will be here it'll be crazy okay but it might be actually a challenge I know I'm traveling a little bit next week so
274I'm a little concerned about next week's um scheduling capabilities but as long as we've got two we can have a quorum so okay that's it sorry okay any other items sure so I was just hoping um I know it's late but could we get a little bit of an update on some of the transportation issues we discussed last week or uh two weeks ago uh particularly about uh Tripper buses it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be now um but like in an sbu yeah sure okay this Saturday is the capital of New York State um Black Expo and I just wanted to let everybody know and remind them um that event is free correct yes um and you can attend beginning at 10:00 a.m. until I want to say five or six
275so that's an all day thing and it'll be great um the last time I went I was able to complete all of my Christmas or related holiday shopping in one day okay at the capital Center was Capital Convention Center yes the capital Center thank you okay we done so motion to return to exec session okay oh did you want to okay I have a motion to return to exec session M CR for purpose of talking with personel okay second M Wilson all in favor okays