001e e e good evening my name is Vicki Smith I'm president of the city school district of Al Board of Education on behalf of the board I welcome you to our meeting tonight um and what a crowd it's good to see everyone uh I would like to before uh introducing my colleagues just to acknowledge um today uh remembrance of D-Day 80th anniversary and I know there'll be some other comments uh as we through the program but again we um want to acknowledge the service of many many of our veterans males females and uh want to thank them for their service and uh as well wanted to uh so happy to have our students uh over in um Normandy participating in the event uh very um uh special occasion for them and an experience they will
002likely uh never uh forget uh that they participated in and so congratulations to those students who are participating in honoring uh the service of our veterans and and modern day Veterans as well and also wanted to thank the community for their support to ensure that our students were able to um make those trips um twice and uh that uh they have the experiences of uh being there so thank you all um I would like to uh let you know that I am uh joined by my board colleagues um tonight there are four of us present uh member Ellen CI uh vice president and member an Savage member Hassan elwi and uh we have three that are not available tonight and that is Dr shadar shatur uh Miss uh damis man and Miss Tabitha Wilson and
003I'm sorry they can't be with us tonight and uh good evening Miss tons our board clerk Naya ens and I appreciate I know that you don't feel well but thank you for for your uh getting up your energy this afternoon and being here uh for this board meeting and to assist us uh good evening superintendent Joseph Haw Ridder good evening uh assistant superintendent for business and finance Joe Caris and we also have from our legal council Honeywell Associates Paul aloy and I see Mr wild John wild is uh our technology one of our technology folks and uh he's joined with uh his um supervisor okay um Dr April prestino and uh Mr Barber back there thank you also he's on the technology team and he's um quite helpful as well and uh Mr Ron leco
004who will say more uh good evening and cabinet I think there are a couple people here in cabinet yes Miss Karen Beall our um assistant superintendant for professional development curriculum professional development and uh and there's some other faces back there and good evening to all of you uh who did I miss okay and we have a school or two that is coming to the table so uh so good evening to everyone and um very good to see you and to have you here tonight um if you um would like to speak in person uh comment during our public comment session please be sure to speak to miss Naya tons so that we can get you set up uh for uh your um comments and and I want to make sure that uh everyone understands that
005our meeting is being live streamed and you may View and there are folks who will view the meeting online and all of that information is at Albany schools.org booe and we'll show all the relevant slides here as well as on those virtual screens so that you'll have all the information um that we're going to be presenting or presented with tonight um and also just again a reminder uh should you wish to communicate with us the board we really appreciate your comments um on whatever concerns um comments um joyous occasions whatever you'd like to uh have us know we do present uh or have an opportunity for you to make your comments and uh concerns known to us and you can do that in a variety of ways um certainly here on the in the public
006floor and uh and there a recorded uh messages that will be virtual virtual and shown to everyone you may also phone in uh your comments or concerns um and also of course you may uh submit written comments and concerns and there are some guidelines for how to do that uh on the website at Albany schools.org booe so with that introduction we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the andice in addition to the Pledge of Allegiance we always focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district of Albany which is to work in partnership with our diverse Community to engage every Learner in a robust educational program designed
007to provide them the Knowledge and Skills necessary for success and with that I'd like to turn things over to Mr leco and the [Music] superintendent I'm more used to flipping papers here give me just a moment to get myself situated okay we have a lot of exceptional achievement to celebrate this month as we wind down the school year and that includes two special recognitions this evening we are excited tonight to recognize four members of Albany High School's Henry Johnson JC Battalion who will be participating in the prestigious boy State program this summer as well as Albany School of humanities principal Marie Khan principal Kahan was honored earlier this spring as the Capital Area principes and supervisors Association administrator of the year we will begin with our boy State participants and it is our pleasure to
008welcome major David Erikson to introduce us to the students and tell us more please come on up and we have lots of available chairs so right here you're going to sit next so I welcome all thank you all for um bringing us over here tonight um I wrote down what I'm going to say so I won't talk too much um I've been told Council several times on that so I'll just please you know mind I'll read this off um boys and girls states are sponsored by the American Legion is a program where where students go to learn how government is supposed to work the best two examples of several years ago when Emanuel Tay and khil Hamlin went we had five students go the year and Emanuel and Taye were best friends but they ended
009up in two different parties the greens the oranges whatever they call them down there and both were nominated to run by their party for governor so the governor came out of New York out of Aly High School a thousand boys descending this thing and the governor came from M high school and Emanuel won yet the two of them are still best friends today and when Emanuel came back I told him he'll go someplace in life because he got all the people from down state to vote for him he got all the people from upstate to vote from and he's the African-American immigrant kid from Liberia and so Emanuel um today Emanuel Emanuel went to Marine Corps afterwards he did four years as an infantry Soldier and now he's out in California going to school to
010become a movie director and I believe that his success is no small part due to the opportunities offered at Al high school and what he got from boy state so the opportunities from boy state would not happen if the North or American Legion Post not sponsor of students the post has the funds to send two students but wanted to provide uh even more opportunities so the Goldstar mothers stepped up and sponsored one student paid paid for that student and the third Cadet was sponsored by the Tri County Council of Vietnam era veterans um and with us tonight we have Jackie Jones who's the commander of the north alvany post Jackie if you just stand up real quick Jackie just was uh uh came on as the post [Applause] Commander sitting next to me at Mr
011Larry whis a past post Commander I have uh Dr John Saka who used to be an Aly High School teacher several years ago and John still teaches at Russell sage in Troy um and Miss Carrie Farley who represents a Goldstar moms and Carrie is back here and I have uh three others to mention Don Perry who's a first vice commander and his uh other half his wife uh Bonnie right here so and last but uh not least we have Mark Rosen W who's the commander of the um post over on Central Avenue and what I what I've done is that Larry's been involved with boy state for a long time so I'd ask Larry to say a few words about that and after that I'm going to let I'm going to introduce the boys and
012let them talk because they they uh they'll probably keep it shorter than me and they're more interesting Larry please thank you um oh yeah yeah yeah thanks thanks it's my pleasure to be here uh again I say again because I believe uh many years ago I was here with a couple other veterans and maybe a handful of uh uh two or three Albany Police Officers when the subject of should there be a junior Roc program in Aly High School uh was put before you all and it was resoundingly approved and uh the rest is history it's been a great success um and you know I'm very proud of Dave uh who when he had a party of the ways with I got to say this when he had a partying of the ways with the
013principal of another High School uh which name I even though it's my Mo I I won't bring up the name uh it was like Mana falling from Heaven on alany high school because at a point in time Dave came over here asking if you wanted a program like CP and uh he has transformed uh uh a bunch of kids into a a Henry Johnson Battalion and uh I'm not going to take a lot of time but uh credit where credit is due uh try as we might we couldn't get the cooperation in the United States Army uh to underwrite much of the expense of this I even had a classmate General retired who who did his best in would to no avail and uh one day Dave brought down uh uh Chuck Schumer and he
014spoke with uh several of the cadets back then some years ago and uh they all gave little presentations small presentations brief presentations and and uh uh he basically get up and says you'll have the program in six months or within a year he said and the program came within six months so what generals can't do you know certain Senators can can make it happen so that was a a wonderful gift uh from Washington DC uh when I got the paper read the paper about the band you know i' I've been putting parades out for the city of Wy for 35 years the 33 of which I had or so I had Dave's job as a PR adant and talked him into succeeding me you know but uh I was always really fond of the alany
015high school band I watched it grow and develop it's it's a it's a magnificent band and you know this this uh after the uh pandemic we lost a lot of bands the high schools and even before felt they couldn't afford a marching band uh or they couldn't get the kids together to present it to the public as a marching band but Al high school was right there bamed pandemic bam they they were out in force again those wonderful Falcons so uh we had uh uh briefed the four uh Juniors from the J Junior r2c program who are going to boy State I never went to boy State uh I'll be honest with you I when I was a junior in high school I don't think they had a boy State uh and uh uh and
016I wasn't even active in the legion until maybe a decade ago uh but uh what I know the boy State down every summer down a Morrisville Community State Community College I think it's got a a snappier name now but they set that facility aside for as Dave say these these boys that come from all over the state no many high schools not you know a big high school but they have an inordinate number of successes at this boy State thing before the two faced off against each other I believe they're both uh boxers as well yes uh there was another member of the Junior ROTC a couple years prior that became the governor okay so let me uh finish by I could go on and tell you what it's about but I'm going to read
017it just a a brief paragraph uh from a pamphlet that and I'll I'll be brief and and give you a taste of a flavor what it is uh the America the effectiveness of the American Legion voice State and teaching state government is found within its instructional program the instructional program consists of some classroom instruction and general Assemblies of instruction but the program is primarily comprised of functional quote Hands-On close quote activities that promote learning by doing the majority of program hours are directed to government instruction and practical exercises known as quote citizens close quote at boy State each young man becomes an integral part of the program by assuming responsibilities and Performing duties either as an elected or appointed official or otherwise fulfilling an assignment entailing the duties of responsible citizenship participants are assigned to
018a mythical political party which results in involvement at the precinct level the city County judicial circuit senatorial or legislative district as well as the state level of government the government organization provides for elections at all levels and includes party caucuses and conventions platform development uh and the organizing and operation of local government units such as County boards agencies and courts so um that's what they do but it's it's there's a little flavor of boot camp to this boy State they get up early they do calisthetics they go to breakfast they they have athletic uh uh stuff going on throughout the several days that they're there but this is the primary mission to teach the students how democracy works in the state of New York and hopefully much of the rest of the country I can't
019speak to the feds at the present time but uh at least uh they get a flavor uh and a lot of these uh cadetes don't have a good sense until they go to boy State and come back with that knowledge of uh what goes on down the street in the state capital so or in the city hall things like that so this is a wonderful experience I will say that any Junior that goes to boy state has a credential on his resume that uh years later when he's applying for a job uh as often as not somebody's going to look at that resume you went to boy State because that person was a member of the American Legion or his father was a member of the American Legion or his mother or sister was a
020member of the auxiliary uh for the American Legion they know what boy state is and that Anonymous uh candidate for that position uh just Rises with that simple credential that he went to boy State okay so thank you for making this happen before I introduce the boys oh yeah I can do that before I introduce the boys I just want to caveat Larry was saying there is also a girl State program yes on they go to Brockport my daughter went to that um you uh and so it's a little bit smaller program Aly County only get six slots I will say two years ago the north Aly post sponsored and he gave us two of the six slots Aly County and the gold star mother is actually paid for one of the girls to go
021so it'll be our turn again next year so this time if it's okay like's introduce the boys let them come up and talk so we've got four students this year and um I don't have got sha Keefe they're all Juniors okay Shan Keefe Muhammad Al Al Alim I pronounced it correctly Muhammad okay I'm probably scre next time Sean dwire and John Gormley and I've asked the boys to come up here and just uh their name where they're from um what language do he speak why they join J you see why they stayed and what their plans are for the future okay guys have at I'm just going to introduce myself um my name is Sean Kei I'm a junior at Albany High School I'm one of the cadetes uh I only speak one language and
022that language is English uh I joined the program because my brother told me it would be fun and I think a lot of the the other cadetes uh have the same story and I stayed because all the connections I made throughout the program uh I wouldn't have met some of these people people here if I never join the program thank you my name is Sean DWI I'm a cette at Albany High School I'm a junior uh I speak English uh I speak speak Point English uh I don't know what I'm going do after high school and I join JC because it looks fun hi my name is Muhammad amim I'm a junior at Al High School I speak two languages Arabic and English I'm from the Middle East Syria to be exact and After High
023School I'm planning to study Dentistry hopefully after I get a four-year college degree one day hopefully and the reason I joined jar is because one of my friends told me about it and he said it'll be fun so I decided to give a shot and the reason I stayed is because all because of all the connections that I made uh my name is uh John gorley I'm a junior at Albany High School I'm from Albany New York I only speak one language uh English I joined Roc because my brother did and he said it would be fun and I stayed because of all the friends I made and all the trips we get to go on and After High School I want to go to college for engineering this is great thank you now I'm
024just going to say I have spent a lot of time with you all and you certainly are being very modest um I just want to just applaud you and your and your uh really your whole platoon would that be the right word is it how do we say what's the the whole Battalion excuse me thank you you can tell I you know um but I I just think what a what a great uh crew of youngsters um I love watching how you take care of one another how you create family with one another um and how your leadership just you know you exude that and uh and particularly when you have your uniform on you know so I I want to thank you for all that you do um uh with each other and for
025each other and also for Albany High um congratulations to all of you thank you and good luck at boy day thank you thank you take some photos get you e e e okay uh Mr leco thank you very much and uh you have other you have some additional okay we do we have one we have one more guest to recognize tonight it is now our pleasure to welcome principal Marie kalahad from ALB School of humanities she can we congratulate her yes thank you she and the entire Ash Community have had a pretty amazing school year uh and we are glad to have this opportunity to salute this well-deserved recognition of her outstanding leadership thank you so much um so to end this school year with receiving the principal of the Year award has been such
026an honor and um I feel like it's a every staff member at Ash is a piece of that award and I said to them I'm the glue that holds it together but they all represent a piece it has been an amazing year for our Ash Community um we are excited to keep this trajectory going um but I would be remissed if I didn't thank miss coriel and miss Bridgewater for all of their help and support over the last s years um to get Ash to where it is today and thank you to the Board of Education you have supported me I feel like I just sat here being appointed at Albany High School um you have supported me all along the way um and I'm very grateful for each and every single one of you
027thank you and this will be a much simpler picture e e so I accidentally closed my district highlights and now they won't reopen aha there they are okay thank you albony high held its third and final Red Cross blood drive of the school year Wednesday and it was a huge success once again the drive collected 64 pints of blood surpassing the the goal by more than 20% kudos to student coordinators Nathan Martell and Ana ster for their excellent leadership and of course to faculty adviser uh Alisha Abdul who always does an excellent job helping our students and our school Community shine we are excited to salute Alban High's newest participants in the State education Department's prestigious My Brother's Keeper fellowship program Juniors Rashad Miller and Troy tce were inducted into the seventh class of MBK
028fellows last week joining more than 90 of their peers from communities across New York President Obama initiated the MBK fellows program to expand opportunities and create Pathways for for success for young men of color through public private Partnerships ALB High also has its own MBK program with 20 students participating under the guidance of citizenship Academy assistant principal shaine Mo boyaki congratulations once again to Rashad and Troy for this wonderful opportunity and we will have them here uh in a upcoming meeting to recognize them for that great achievement the creativity of our youngest students is on Full display this week at the opala gallery on Russell Sage College's Albany campus we held an opening ceremony Wednesday evening for the 10th Annual District Elementary art show the exhibit highlights work from all 12 of our elementary schools
029and covers a range of mediums the exhibit will be open to the public tomorrow from noon until 5:00 p.m. stop by if you have some time to enjoy the works of our talented student artists it has been a very successful successful spring for our student athletes we will have the opportunity to recognize several Al High teams and individuals at our next meeting but tonight we wanted to highlight the achievements of unified basketball team and members of the boys track and field team ALB High's unified basketball team won its division championship for the fourth consecutive season last week I think we can safely say now that we're talking Dynasty the team beat Guilderland 51- 33 for the championship uh our congratulations to each of our student athletes as well as to Coach Joe Burke and the
030full coaching staff absolutely [Applause] five members of the boys track and field team will compete in this weekend's state championships in Syracuse freshman Rohan Edwards Grant qualified in three events the 10200 meters and the 4x400 relay Malachi young also qualified in three events the 110 and 400 meter hurdles and the 4x400 relay he and Edwards Grant are joined on the Relay Team by Adam Elia and Darren harell Samir G partner also will compete in the long jump at States We wish all of our student athletes success this weekend and look forward to lots of celebrations at our June 20th meeting and to conclude tonight's District highlights it is our pleasure to welcome principal Leslie buff to tell us more about the great things happening at New Scotland Elementary School good evening everyone um before we
031begin I just wanted to take an opportunity to thank the Board of Education and superintendent Haw rider for allowing us to speak a little bit about New Scotland elementary school today and the wonderful things that are occurring within our building um I am the principal Leslie bof and here with me this evening I have Miss T Rose our assistant principal and two members of our student leadership team we have our president lyanna kagi and our vice president I keep wanting to say assistant principal and she could be um but our our uh vice president Lydia kavachi and I know that um these presentations and these slides are kind of set for us but I hope the board does not mind that I tweaked a few of the slides um and instead of um I took
032out the Highlight slide and instead of me talking about some of the highlights um lyanna and Lydia throughout our presentation are going to give um highlights but from the students perspective so we begin every presentation with our district vision mission and goals and then our next slide is also our school vision mission and goals and instead of talking about these um lyanna and Lydia are going to share our student pledge and this was written by our student leadership team solely by the students and my hope is as you listen to The Pledge you will see the district's goals and our school goals married to that pledge um so I'm going to pass the mic oh I don't have to pass the mic they have one okay at my school I want everyone to feel accepted
033respected and included even if they're not like me I promise to treat people with kindness and fairness and I pledge this to thee working together we can create a safe place to learn so to be great let's make our school no place for hate [Applause] and you can go to the next slide so there are a number of people that support Tetra and I in the work that we do within the building and each time I present to the board I like to talk about a few of those people this year I really wanted to showcase our building leadership team at the beginning of the year I sent out an email to our staff to ask if anybody else wanted to join our building leadership team because it was getting kind of small um and
034I had a number of um staff members say that they would be willing to join um to the point where I was really overwhelmed and super excited um about the number of um staff members that said that they were willing to participate in BLT and this was very important because the work that the BLT does is the work of the building it's writing our set plan it's meeting to ensure that the activities that we wrote in the set plan are being followed and if they're not making midcourse a judge adjustments and it's also a committee that looks at building level data extensively and has conversations about what we could do differently to grow our students um and so I'm not going to name all of these people but if you can just look even at
035their titles you can see that our committee is very diverse um and that's really important um it was important this year to um get viewpoints from different teachers and their different perspectives because it makes our plan when we're talking about our seep that much stronger go to the next slide and then of course um a part of our leadership team is our student leadership team and we do have two students with us today um but there are other students on the committee as well um they are comprised of fourth and fifth grade students our fif fifth graders actually run an election and then they interview our fourth graders that would like to be part of the student leadership team and although the committee might still look small I want to stress that um they are
036a representation of our building and we ensure that all of our students voices are heard within our building because they are assigned to um grade levels and work with classes and push into those classes so they are able to talk with the other students in the building and get feedback from them and I do want to give credit to Miss Rose because um it's really miss rose that works with these students she meets with them weekly correct Miss and trust me if she's late they let her know they are the the security monitors are on the walkie saying where's Miss Rose the leadership team is waiting to meet with her um so they're really instrumental um to the work that we do in the building um and with that I am going to turn the
037mic over to Miss Rose thank you good evening so new as you may already know New Scotland Elementary School is the largest Elementary School in Albany in in the Alan City School District I should say um we're just north of 500 students 40 of the students are at the Albany International Center but the remainder of the students are right there on New Scotland avenue as far as the culture in our school um I won't have you try to read those numbers there but if you look at the pie chart in the middle you will see the slices are they kind of look evenly uh distributed and that just really shows that we are quite diverse um uh and that is in race we um our culture is also comprised of economic background the gender uh
038student abilities as well as language um uh despite what people may think or say about New Scotland and that is that we are not diverse we are and um lyanna is going to talk about some some of the activities that we do throughout the year to celebrate our diversity some of the things that we did this year to celebrate our diversity were our one book one school read although we had two books the name jar and my name is Maria Isabelle in the beginning of the school year every student and teacher completed an All About Me poster which hung in the hallways this gave everyone the opportunity to learn more about the people that make up our school Community during our assemblies a student was selected to tell us about their name and why it
039was chosen for them next slide attendance matters and we've been working really hard to improve our attendance um this year looking at the table there you see last year our chronic absenteeism was quite High versus this year um it has greatly improved and now it's because of some of the initiatives in our school but I just do want to acknowledge that things are getting better since the pandemic so I'm sure you know a lot of um our attendance has to do with just things being more settled but we had a new uh attendance program in our school called the pause attendance program where we give daily shoutouts for classrooms with 100% attendance in our assemblies we shout out our recognize students as well um we have an attendance teacher that makes home visits when we
040are concerned about students that are out for um a significant number of days in addition to that we also make daily phone calls so if our students are um not uh in school they will parents will get a phone call by 10:00 inquiring about their um attendance and seeing if there are any barriers that we can help them overcome in order to get them to school um I think Lydia in fact will tell you you all a little bit more about our schoolwide uh attendance activities and incentives some of the things that we did to boost attendance this year were daily shout outs over the loudspeaker for 100% class attendance students really like this each month we recognize students with 100% attendance for the month by giving them a golden ticket at our assemblies this
041ticket allows them extra play time in the gym also this year is our new program pause because we are the tigers the goal for each classroom is to spell out the word attendance by having 100% attendance on any given day once this word is spelled out classes are given extra rewards for example ice cream extra recess or dancing and with donuts and Duke Duke is one of our is one of our therapy dogs we have seen an improvement in attendance this year so for the last few years our Focus primarily around the step has been around Ela instruction math instruction and then Equity within the classroom for ELA I'd like to just highlight that second bullet with that 90minut grade level meeting or what we call our unit rollouts that's something new that we um
042decided to implement this year and it really allows the teachers time to immerse in the unit it allows them to take a deeper dive with uninterrupted time time built into the teacher schedule which we call CPT time is 40 minutes but honestly in in this the real school world it's 30 or 35 but time but takes time for the teacher to drop off the students to their special and then also they have to leave in time to pick them up so giving the teachers this 90 minutes of time has been ve very valuable to them and I've received a lot of positive feedback and this is something that we'll continue to do next year um and I think we'll start to see an impact in instruction as we continue to do this for mathematics I
043wanted to highlight the first bullet which is teacher facilitated CPT in the past I've had our math Coach Ron cpts um and obviously the teachers are working with the math coach and doing that work um this year I made the decision to pull the math coach from the CPT time so she could concentrate more on bullets two and three with embedded professional development and coaching that studio model um and um have the teachers run their own CPT time in hindsight with the new illustrative curriculum um it did cause a little bit of heightened anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed in the beginning um and I don't want to make it seemed like they didn't have any coaching support but because they did um but they they were a little bit overwhelmed um but reflecting and
044having the privilege to be talking to you in June reflecting back on the year um I actually think it was a good thing because they really had to Grapple with the curriculum and have some difficult conversations in terms of how they were managing their time to make sure that they were covering the lesson um in a way that they needed to um making sure they weren't taking shortcuts during that student debriefing time um and I think because they had to figure that out on their own it made the work that much more meaningful and I think it made them stronger teachers and so we're going into year two of illustrative having that behind us and we'll be ready to hit the ground running um and Lydia wanted to just share a little bit about some
045of the differences that she saw in math instruction this year in this year we notice teachers are incorporating more group work for example we get to go with different classmates and share our experiences and thoughts based on the question that we're learning about um and I'm not going to talk a lot about Equity because that's going to come up in one of my later slides when I talk about a success in this building but lyanna did want to talk about some of the work that the student leadership team did around Equity just like we mentioned earlier our school is very diverse our student leadership team includes students from all backgrounds we are even inclusive inclusive of students with special abilities the student leadership team created presentations about our fam's cultures and shared them with the
046classes that we are assigned to and finally if you were to you visit our school you would notice over 400 purple hearts on our walls each with the name of a student along with the meaning of their name go to the next slide so our challenge is the same challenge that I spoke about last year and it's really raising student achievement and attaining that 80% and that will continue to be our challenge until we get there until we attain that 80% there are a number of things that I could talk about that in terms of challenges and I call them fires that principles put out during the day but the real work is Raising student achievement and um we have plans to continue to do that um increased accountability is one of them Miss Rose
047and I are constantly talking about how we can fine-tune our building schedule we actually had that conversation today in our elementary principales meeting um and it was nice to hear some um ideas from from some of my principal colleagues on how we can maximize instructional time but also build some time into our schedule to allow for those teachers to meet and have those thoughtful conversations um we're going to continue with our data review meetings we're always looking at data again um our tier one plans and revisiting those and ensuring that our students are mastering the skills that we expect them to master and if not having conversations as to why not continuing with our CPT and also our administrative classroom visits this is something that Miss Rose and I started out really strong doing we
048would meet weekly discuss what we wanted to see in a classroom and we would schedule classroom visits but um as a school year progresses and we get into APR evaluations in New York State Testing um if I'm speaking candidly it fell a little bit to the Wayside and we know that that can't be the case um to quote two of my um brilliant uh partners that I work with um Miss Jasmine and Miss Michelle Bridgewater they both say the same quote to me um and it's things um things that aren't monitored don't get done um and so that's uh on a poit that sits on my desk um and it's going to be something that Miss Rose and I are definitely going to focus on next year making sure we stay true to those classroom
049visits so we can support our teachers in the work and then obviously continuing with embedded um professional development that we build into our seep and then also our equity PD and the focus there really Shifting the conversation from relationships with our students to the instruction that's happening in the classroom and that can lead us actually right into our next slide which I think is the successes I wanted to speak briefly about the work we've done this year around Equity we have an equity committee that is small but very devoted and passionate to this work um and we started the year um really focusing on building relationships with our students um so we had conversations um and we compared um our students to an iceberg and we could know our students at you know just the
050tip that surface level or we could really dive deeper and get to know our students on a more intimate level what's underneath the surface um so we built in things like having our families complete a survey before the start of the school year and having them mail it in so we could give it to the teachers before the school year starts and they could learn some information about the about the students we had our students complete an All About Me poster every student and every staff member did this they decorated our halls for like the first trimester of school um and uh you could get lost uh reading those um but again um really just learning about each other um and uh we started to read or or we did read the book yard sticks
051um and one might think how does that tie into Equity but if you're familiar with the yard sticks it's about child development and it was an aha for a lot of our teachers because often times we would hear they're not acting like a second grader or they're not acting like a fourth grader and when you really examine what's appropriate for a child the years of child development it's wide so an 8-year-old may act like an 8-year-old sometimes but it's perfectly appropriate for them to sometimes act six and it's also perfectly appropriate for sometimes to act 10 and so in a classroom when you have children that could be a year apart and then you add that age um span um it's wide and so we had many discussions about that as we moved to midyear
052we tried to shift from those relationships to the instruction um and we used data and had our teachers pick two students that they really wanted to focus on and that certainly doesn't mean that we weren't paying attention to the others but a laser focus onto students that we definitely wanted to um know better and grow um and the teachers at the end of the year um were really surprised in the difference that it made in terms of the students data and how far they they grew um throughout the year um and so I think we can go to I don't think there's a next slide it's the video um and before we play the video I just wanted to take a moment to explain what you'll be seeing um last year we showed a video
053on the coaching model um between a coach and one teacher this this year we expanded that to the coach in the grade level um and this grade level worked um throughout the school year meeting as a team on the lesson that they wanted to teach talking about misconceptions that the students may have um Team teaching a lesson in a classroom um and then debriefing and having conversations as to what went well and what they could improve on and then contined that cycle um but we decided not to show you the the Educators but actually the impact of that so this is a short little snippet of student conversation really highlighting student voice in the classroom around math and I think you'll be pretty impressed by um the conversation our third graders have so you're going
054to be opening your book to page 11 and you're going to that's the next card sort that we have so I'm going to have friends just take 30 seconds to think about what you notice about these shapes and be ready to share out what you think I know that they're all quadrilaterals which means they all have four sides cuz um that see look they have one this one 2 3 4 One 2 three 4 and then one two three four and then one two three four we're sorting them into the two pairs of opposite sides parallel like you would be opposite sides parallel cuz these two would go up they'd never cross and these two would never cross and like and one that was an example of one that's not parallel as this cuz that
055would cross if we kept it going and those two wouldn't but glad clarify that because I didn't know what you meant by Crossing all right anybody have anything to ask um no cuz that's basically also also like if you know something parallel like this why it has to go opposite it can't be like this and that cuz that's going to intersect thank you thank you have a good evening thank you so good to see you all thank you students and that concludes our district highlights okay thank you some districtwide updates for the board and community and I think are we we're good you're ahead of me okay so as we always do we um share our vision mission and goals of the city school district of Alban and I have a number of of updates
056uh for folks one is around cell phone use so last month uh yes last month in May um our team presented some recommended changes to the annual code of conduct and one discussion that we had was around uh cell phone use there have been a lot there has been a lot of discussion uh in the community and now Statewide in terms of uh some proposals in terms of uh restricting or limiting student use of cell phones and so uh there have been surveys within our district there are a couple schools that are um working to uh Implement restrictions on student cellone use during the day that's uh GIF and Memorial at fourth and fifth grade and they're considering moving that the third grade next year as well as uh Tony Clement so uh we felt
057that we're at the right time with the governor making some proposals other school districts not only in the region but certainly nationally has have taken this on um a lot of clear research there have been some instances uh particularly in in our schools around student use of of cell phones creating some um environments that were U not as safe as we would like so we're going to uh commission an ad hoc committee uh to study the use of cell phones for the upcoming school year we're going to ask our people Personnel Services Department uh to lead that work it will look and feel a lot like our grading and policy task force that the that was kicked off a little over a year ago that that Karen Beck doall uh and her team led so
058uh we believe we're at the time to start uh asking questions of our diverse uh community of students parents teachers uh and community members to weigh in on this um we've I've I've had a number of discussions with our uh PTA leaders uh the teachers uh conversation with the teachers union so everyone is sort of talking about this but we're not talking about it at the same place at the same time and uh as the board uh I'm sure is aware uh and our community that Governor hokel wants to address this through some Statewide policy practices and while we all may have feelings of that I I know that uh our school Community believes that that's a it's an opportunity for for the school district to talk about um this uh issue for uh City
059School District of Alban students first and so we want to be able to have that conversation and create a forum um for those discussions to take place so we'll be launching that committee uh hopefully by the end of the school year and we'll get some dates on or opportunities for folks to identify their interest and dates on the calendar in short order uh our tenative timeline is that any recommendations would uh come to the board mid year well in advance of when we typically address uh policy changes by way of the code of conduct that that usually happens in May and June so uh we'll have more details but wanted to uh let everyone know that we're going to uh launch this community Committee in the very near future another update is around our work
060with ncbi uh we were excited to uh share our findings from the 10 focus groups uh that participated in this work throughout the school year that was uh to take place on Tuesday earlier this week at the high school uh we had a a small But Mighty uh Team of of District staff who attended but no one from the community so um we waited around a little bit we know that uh the end of the years is tough uh for families to get out uh but tomorrow in this room uh ncbi will share their findings with our community round table that will be live streamed that also will be recorded and that will be sent out to families who are interested it is no secret that we are uh excited that our marching Falcons are
061in France and it is lour at AR that is French for the big day has arrived uh I rehearse that just a little bit so they are they are there they performed today um the uh Albany marking marching Falcons were one of only two us-based bands to perform today uh and and the other is the uh Florida State marching seminal so we were in good company uh so they have been on tour they departed on Tuesday they landed Wednesday morning and uh had a really really big performance today we're in constant communication with uh Mr Katie the director and Kate Wright our Arts Fine Arts supervisor is over there as well uh and make sure you check out their uh Facebook page for updates and Mr Katie is also sending us and posting YouTube videos
062that we'll we'll push out as well so very exciting for those students this month is pride month and uh throughout the month uh the district will be um sharing uh various celebrations around uh pride month in our lgbtq plus uh Community uh the school district will have a presence at Sunday's uh Capitol pride parade at Washington Park uh we're proud to uh to participate in that we'll have a presence we'll uh actively participate we'll have a number of Staff including myself uh will be there and throughout the month our our faculty students and staff are engaged around discussions around uh inclusivity and gender identity and this is part of our work to make sure that all students and staff within the district feel supported and welcomed uh and it's um very heartwarming as as still
063a new superintendent to know that our school district um gives special attention to supporting not just students but certainly our staff in in this very important Endeavor lastly some end ofe reminders uh it it is June we're approaching mid June uh quickly uh June 19th is juneth and schools and offices will be closed uh a lot of activity at the high school over the next number of weeks uh particularly even uh late last week and this week kicked off a number of uh endof Year celebrations and honors Awards and athletic awards throughout the next uh few weeks but the last day of classes at the high school is next Thursday Regents exams span the 14th to the 25th uh and graduation is at noon at the MVP Arena on Sunday June 30th uh at at
064our middle schools AIC and Tony Clement uh last day of classes is the 25th of June and we have a number of moving up ceremonies uh we will share that with the board as well I believe we have shared it with the board maybe we haven't it's coming we um we all signed up as as our executive team cabinet members signed up on Tuesday and we'll share that with the board to make sure we have representation as well our elementary schools will wrap up on uh early dismissal on June 25th and the 20 six we have uh some some half days for early and late start schools and moving moving up ceremonies whether it's pre kindergarten or fifth grade and those are posted on our website so very busy time of year very exciting time
065of year to honor all of our students and uh all of their achievements and uh there there are not many free nights uh between now and graduation but that's uh it's always an exciting time of year great thank you superintendent uh colleagues will entertain some uh questions and uh I'm I'm going to I'm going to go back to a little bit of a different order because we're all sitting in different places and not all the board is here um so miss CR do you have any questions or comments that you'd like to make um and Miss Timmons if you would just start us off on the cell phone uh I think that was the first topic we'll start there okay Mr Mr Barber there we go okay I don't know why I was pushing the
066wrong button so this is kind of a sneak preview of the code of comment of the code of conduct and as part of the code of conduct annual review We solicit recommendations for the community from the community and I believe we had more feedback from the community on cell phone student cell phone use than any other issue any other single issue this year so it's a big issue for families and I'm glad that we're starting to look at it it's it I think it's the right time because you don't really want to be the first the first school district to do this but it's it's good to let some other people be the uh people who started to kind of work out the wrinkles but I'm glad that we're taking a look because it definitely
067is a serious issue thank you Miss Savage I'll just second that that I'm glad to see that we're making formal progress I know there's been many many informal conversations among variety of people across the district on this topic but to see it coming together in a formal way and with the explicit intent of inviting formally input and participation from folks who are non-staff right so from parents and community members who don't also happen to work for the district I think is a really important aspect and I think you also said students which I think is super important um particularly on this issue I know that there will be a lot of um reaction um from various folks for various reasons and I think it's important that everybody be heard so that we can come to
068a decision that works for everyone I'm also glad that you acknowledged our uh existing Pilots at giin in in elementary and at Clement um where because we have actual lived experience of how this is working although in a obviously in a relatively small settings in both those cases so thank you very much for pushing us forward Mr ywi on this topic um no not particularly also it's fortuitous I guess the timing is right because um I think these issues have come to a head and more and more young students are sent to school with cell phon so I know my 10-year-old has a cell phone yeah and so um superintendent on this um my only uh question was uh the two schools that uh currently Implement restrictions uh those schools have had experience for how
069long I believe a couple years Jasmine do you want to comment on on gin quickly while she comes to the mic I can comment on TCC because I just did a school visit there and we and I asked that very question and it has been in place for a very long time there well over a decade oh okay that's that's great it has not been in place at given that long um I believe it's been about 3 years and it came by way of parent and students wanting to do something um we started with one class and then rolled it out to others after a pilot was done done um as a community school we were able to use um some of our community school funds in regards to the Yonder pouches so that I
070don't know if that's the same that's used at um at tcce but the students were a part of that process and selection and um but it was a multi-year kind of roll out at given and it flashed red I don't know what that meant um but a TCC they do not use pouches they collect and return um so it's a different different model so that'll be all I'll share about tcce since I don't actually work there I just talked to them about it for a few minutes and and um Miss Brown I'm not putting on the spot at all but I I think what this is great feedback that we would we have from both of these two schools and so I I'm interested and you don't have to answer now just how that was
071rolled out like I don't know what grade level you started at if you don't have to answer that if you don't want and it's fine it was it started with our fifth graders um um and like I said there were some things happening and parents and students wanted us to explore some options and it started with one class um and there was a number of communication opportunity for parent and student input as well as the teachers um so it was a slow roll out over a couple of years um and again I know next year they're looking to expand it to third grade very good thank you very helpful um let's see any other questions on on the cell phone news thank you Miss Brown on that and um and superintendent for the questions on
072that matter um I think next up is a is that the next one safety update yeah any uh comments or questions Mr Elman I'll start with you there I do not have any questions about this Miss Savage no questions just you know it's a ongoing challenge um particularly as we roll into the end of the school year it's a it's a challenge and I think it's one that we we really have struggled with not only on this issue but on many other issues people are people's interest in participating in a community Endeavor is driven by a couple of different things and usually it's driven by some very strong emotions and when the topic is not hot um it it can be very difficult to draw people's attention and and I think that's something I would
073love to see us research work on figure out I'm sure there are phds and EDS who are doing all kinds of research on how do you engage your community in a meaningful way we struggle with this on so many issues because when we try digital things we get involved in digital divide questions when we try surveys we get involved in disproportionate results so we really have struggled about how to get not just some feedback as we did in this case but Equitable welld distributed feedback and I think it's an area that we really we need to keep doing better on and I know it's not just all bunny it's uh it's every District in in the in the in the world probably so thank you and um Miss Cree yeah thank you I share some
074of the same thoughts I'm I'm proud that we've kept up this work and we're continuing this process even though there's no immediate hot spot you know hot issues that because those are what really tend to get people out and say saying we've got to do something about this right now but it doesn't it won't uh really change until people do some long-term long-term work so I'm glad we're continuing to work with this and I hope we continue to work with uh various Community groups that are representative of the community to get more input thanks thank you I just wanted to add that superintendent and I have talked about this quite a bit and Miss Savage to your point that that's that is the that's the discussion that we have and I think um and again
075it's I I have had personal experience in other you know previous years where we've been able to maintain something but it's gotten harder in in today's um culture and Society um I think for a variety of reasons but I think what's important I hope and superintendent uh has I think spent a lot of time attempting to do this uh in his in his first year and that's developing those relationships with a variety of community organizations and and parties um because I think what what is concerning is we don't what you're probably looking to do and don't want to do is you don't to have just one per something happens or something gets big and you have only one or two people to call um we know experience tells us we need to have a variety
076of of voices and um knowledge base you know coming from a variety of sources and so uh that that is what I'm hoping and and that you are able to continue to do is to maintain those kinds of relationships so that we're not just having a call one group and then figure out oh my gosh this happened how do we call who else do we call you know so and I think we're that's an ongoing uh effort that uh not just for you but I think all of our schools um our school leaders are doing that and certainly I know as a board we're we're trying to also engage in a process to to keep uh the conversations going um so so thank you for that that work um everyone um let's see okay uh
077anything else on safety here okay okay and our next uh well March and Falcons again I think any want to want to add to that love the pictures I just wanted to mention um that folks if you subscribe to the paper Times Union the folks who are in France were not here to receive their newspaper and there is an interest in collecting papers for memorabilia boxes so if you happen to col receive the paper Times Union and you have yesterday's paper with the big front page newsletter um it would be great if you would just let the superintendent's office know and he can let me know and I will connect them with the folks who I know are looking thank you excellent do you think the TU would donate some papers I will go to
078the TU if we need to but I think that this is a community Endeavor and we can come up with some newspapers that are otherwise headed straight to be the recycle bin already unfortunately my recycle day was Wednesday night and by the time I realized this was happening all my neighbors had recycled their newspapers okay very good all right well we uh wish them safe travels and uh glad for the experience that they're having um let's see superintend is there is there one more topic ah pride month um again we're these these celebrations are important and give visibility to um our lgbtq plus Community um and also within that Community just a great deal of diversity so another uh great month of Celebration and support for uh our differences and uh as well as our
079similarities so um I hope to see you all out there um I know I tend to get uh use that weekend to do other things but I'm thinking about a walk with the puppy in the park and and showing up at the district table would be a very good thing so um colleagues I hope that you're able to join us um let's see and um let's see superintendent I know you already know about this uh and the board does but on Friday tomorrow um at 600 p.m. at the high school uh there is a a ceremony awards ceremony for the JC students and uh I know that Miss crae indicated she would be uh present and I am heading back from New York City I hope to make it in time or at least not
080too late uh to join the celebrations and I know um Mr Hawk Rider you'll be there as well yeah great okay um so it it's very good to see our uh Cadets today as always um anything else uh let's see colleagues anything else here for the superintendent questions comments I just wanted to say how proud I am of the district regarding the marching Falcons in France it's great that this is a historical tradition for the for them it's nice that we've built up that institutional uh history and culture where these are some of the younger siblings of people who went a number of five seven five years ago and the work the work that these kids are doing and the honor that they show these veterans is really character building um and I'm also very
081proud that we're part of a district that celebrates pride in an open way and has the booth the representation I've marched with the a Aba in the past and I've got my t-shirt ready to go if they're marching again this year and really really looking forward to it so thank you thank you righty so superintendent thank you very much for your uh report okay one second get my agenda okay and uh M tons I want to just check in with you any public comment and we had no written comment either okay and so um folks all I just wanted to um say on that front we have no public comment tonight um but again uh during this time of our meeting we uh do um encourage and like to hear uh from the public and
082again you are welcome to um participate live uh uh in person uh virtually uh through the phone uh through email uh we want to hear from you and do very much appreciate all the comments and feedback that comes in and uh information about how to do that is available at Albany schools.org booe thank you and now next up is routine consent and this is the uh part of our meeting um that we uh approve routine matters for the district these include items like contract tracks field trips Personnel matters and the like uh each board member reviews each of the items carefully uh but we vote on them as a group with often no discussion that allows us to use our meeting time more efficiently nonetheless each board member has the option to set up set
083aside any routine consent item to require a separate discussion on and vote on that item and with that introduction I will now entertain a motion to adopt the routine consent agenda as presented here do I have a motion Miss CI seconded by Mr alwi uh are there any set asides yes Miss CI thank you I'd like to set aside the E6 the field trip to state championships okay and do we have other set of sides okay and uh with that um could we uh I'd like to get a motion to or or rather all in favor of adopting routine consent minus E6 the field uh trip um I see all four of us have voted unanimously thank you and with that I'd like to uh entertain a motion to adopt um E6 the field trip
084M um Savage seconded Mr Almani um and is there a discussion uh yes there is go ahead Miss cring I just wanted to I just want to take aside this moment to congratulate the track team on their accomplishment and I know there was some worry that would they be would they be able to get District funding to go for this last minute qualification I'm glad that we're able to support that I think one of the things that our ad hoc routine consent committee was formed to do was talk about issues with field trips as well as issues with routine consent contracts we haven't met for a little while but when we go back to meeting more regularly we may talk about I may want to talk about if there's a way to pre-plan these things
085because we have an excellent track team that you may not know for sure if you're going to States you may not know how many kids would be going but if it's something where we usually send kids every year is there a way we can kind of pre-approve things so that no one's scrambling or worrying so that a coach knows if kids if your kids are going to State don't worry we've got you I would really like to I know some of the honors our kids get are sort of the rare once in a while you're not going to have a national level Championship Barber every year but for things like yes we go to States and and some of these Sports we're really good at it would be great to find a way to plan
086ahead just so nobody is Ju Just just so our students and our coaches and our families are not um scrambling and struggling and worrying thanks thank you and Miss CR on that note um and I don't want to preempt anything but I was uh at Academy Park this afternoon and was having a conversation uh with uh Paula tibits who is the superintendent's um uh Administrative Assistant um and we were talking about this very thing um there there are things like especially like jrc and other groups that have certain things that happen every around the same time every year or that they do every year and so there has been some discussion about about that very thing could we go ahead and pre-approve some things but I think this might be a discussion also for for
087policy I I don't know because it seems like that may have to change um I'll let the policy committee decide but um I think I think that there's I don't know that it's that simple I think we have to go back and make sure we have that that discussion and and know exactly what those events are um and and what information needs to be provided upfront to the extent that that it's available at those times but I think that's a good idea and something that uh Miss Tibbits had raised with me earlier so thank you for that okay um anything else on these items I I want to uh for a minute we have a want to turn things over to the superintendent with a HR um item that we approved can we vote to
088approve the track field trip I forget did we oh I'm sorry did I not do that okay my apologies that was discussion they're leaving soon yes thank you very much um I think also because we weren't talking uh opposing anything I I guess lost track of that so uh we have discussed that all of in favor adopting E6 the field uh track team field trip that is unanimous thank you very much for that okay and that uh carries let's see and I think that concludes our routine consent but I want to turn things over to the superintendent yes thank you uh with the board approving routine consent tonight uh part of uh uh part of the number or one of the employees that the board approved tonight is uh our new athletic director that will
089join us in mid July and I'd like to welcome uh Karen Beall uh to the podium to uh share the process and introduce our new athletic director to our Board of Education and Community good evening good evening Board of Education very thrilled to be here to introduce you to our new athletic um director lost there for a minute um and I just want to let you know that we had a very comprehensive interview process um very diverse community of folks that uh went through the interview process in three rounds um so I am very very pleased at this point to uh introduce Kimberly pill and let her say a few words good evening everyone I first like to say um I'm extremely humbled and honored excited stoked um to be a part of um the
090albony community Albany school district and be a part of the Falcon team um I would like to um extend my gratitude and um for just a great process um in in vetting me and also in selecting me so thank you to assistant superintendent Beck doll superintendent Haw Ridder the entire committee and the board of education for um investing in me and I can um I can guarantee that um I'm going to give 200% um to the district and um Mo move the athletic program and the physical education and health program forward so I'm looking forward to being a part of the dynasty thank you thank you and and M I say we really appreciate you're wearing the Falcon blue yeah it's a nice jacket thank you and congratulations thank you all right all right very
091good um thank you superintendent and so next up we have uh a uh let's say let's see let me make sure it's our policy discussion no action tonight but policy and in the place of of um Dr shur um Miss Cree will um prepare the discussion thank you thank you I think this might be the first time I've delivered the policy committee update but uh Dr chor is away and Miss Savage had a conflict for the last meeting so I'm the last person standing um May is one of the biggest uh policy committee meetings of the year because May is when we go over the code of conduct um in addition to the code of conduct there are some policies that traditionally travel with it because they are related so the policies that we I
092would like to put forward for review and discussion tonight are policy number 91401 staff complaints and grievances uh the only revision to this policy is additional cross references to 9645 The Whistleblower policy and 8130 do do2 the relatively new work workplace violence policy um there's also a very completely revised 0115 student harassment and bullying prevention and intervention and the only change to this is the cross reference to the 81302 workplace violence policy that was added in the past year regarding the code of conduct this the policy was mainly modified to reflect current practices rather than uh implementing new types of practices and there are a variety of changes that I'm going to walk through very quickly just build these up so the first change was to categorize physical attacks they were categorized into attacks on
093students or individ or other individuals and then attacks on faculty or staff and the decision was made that for others for adults that are in the building who are not faculty staff or agents of the school we would like if you're going to physically attack those people we feel that that should we feel that for students that should be the same uh consequences so we changed that we also see we also slightly modified oh we also slightly modified The Vaping category uh up until now I guess I shouldn't say we're proposing these we're proposing these changes right now using Andor possessing tobacco or Vapes is treated the same in terms of consequences and uh staff reported problems where they felt that uh actively pulling out a vape or a cigarette and lighting up during class
094is more egregious a wrongdoing than simply happen to happening to have Vape in your pocket so we've decided to separate out possessing and using and make using a level two or three violation uh We've also expanded our definition of weapons to include BB guns pellet guns toy guns water guns water bead guns cap guns and the like uh those are becoming more of a problem some of them are exceedingly realistic looking and could create some very difficult situations others uh such as BB guns and cap guns have a potential to cause injury um these new water bead guns can also pack pack a little bit of a well up they're not something that we want we want to make sure that our code of conduct explicitly forbids them and provides for a range of consequences
095for the students there's also a proposed small change to the dress code to eliminate uh the prohibition of underwear as the primary attire or outer layer and there are a few minor um changes regarding the wording on some of our discipline of students with disabilities but no changes to our practice for that um we also as I spoke earlier about the cell phone issue received a number of comments from parents staff and members of the community regarding the code of conduct there were 13 comments total of which six of them expressed concerns about student use of cell phones and suggested that those people would be in favor of either total phone prohibition during the day or more strict practices on that there were four comments that were less about the contents of the code of
096conduct but more complaining that the code of conduct is not consistently Implement implemented across schools or within buildings and in response to that the district plans a deeper overview of the code of conduct for administrators this summer there were two comments ments uh expressing concern that in our code of conduct about attacks on other students we don't distinguish between unprovoked tax versus self-defense and it was felt that rather than change the rather than change the words of the code of conduct because each disciplinary violation um the staff member implementing can select a range of consequences depending on the individual situation that that allows for the flexibility to choose a different consequence if a student is simply defending him or herself themsel rather than uh provoking an an attack finally there was one comment that I
097would probably just categorizes general comments about their own child's experience in the schools and for that the plan is target targeted followup with the administrators at that school to offer support to them in handling the situation uh as well as reaching out to the family uh now that we know that they are concerned about some things that are going on do I have anyone who would like to discuss uh the changes to staff complaints and grievances student harassment and bullying prevention and it I oh is do I say is there any discussion I believe that might be what I say there there's no action just just discussion thank you thank you Miss CR is there uh discussion Miss Savage I just wanted to I was not at the policy committee meeting as Miss gra noted
098I had an unavoidable conflict unfortunately um but I definitely approve of the changes that have been recommended here I wanted to just draw attention to the one item of language being removed around uh underwear as the outer layer this is a piece of the code of conduct that we have talked about innumerable times and one of the main challenges is that there is a lot of uncertainty in this day and age about what is and what is not underwear it is not always clear when somebody is wearing a particular item whether it is purchased in the underwear section or not um and so part of the objective in removing this line is to avoid unnecessary confrontation we believe that the dress code is clear about which parts need to be covered um and that that
099is the the critical item regardless of how whatever name you know however you title the particular piece of clothing so I just wanted to draw that out that it doesn't change in any meaningful way the result of the code of conduct it's just a matter of nomenclature yes that is true students students are still required to cover the areas that are typically covered by underwear however uh staff are no longer tasked with being the fashion police to determine is it underwear or isn't it and should it be on top or should it be below that's really especially if you look at some things coming off runways that will that our kids will be wearing in the next couple of years it's de it's definitely uh an interesting categorization but it's really not something that's relevant
100so it's nice to take that out as being somewhat obsolete thank you Mr alwi any um I just wanted to comment on the differentiation between having tobacco and smoking tobacco and I do like appreciate that differentiation I think it's a good one to make so just wanted to make that note yeah I think that there I don't obviously no one should be using to tobacco or Vapes given that the no student should be using them given that they're terrible for your health and that the the age of being legally able to buy them is 21 but I I do think there's a certainly there's a physical addiction built into them and the student that simply has their Vape in the backpack and doesn't plan to smoke you know is not planning to use it during
101the school day is not committing the same level of offense is I was very surprised to hear that there are students that are simply pulling out the Vapes and smoking in class so it's good to be able to deal with that for the teachers uh to have the tool in the code of conduct to deal with that a little more aggressively I'm glad I'm glad that's happening any additional uh questions okay thank you and next meeting we'll uh be acting on those policies okay very good thank you so next up we have a division update and that's from the technology division Dr Dr PR patino and Mr wild and oh my and a whole crew oh strengthen numbers tonight April April brought them all the whole department and you know because I've I know I
102I've met you all and I remember you now but at the time I didn't I just saw these people in the audience like who are these people yes okay well good evening all Bobby do you want me to give it a test run yes all right I think we're good to go thank you can you all hear me okay you want me to get a little closer okay sure good evening Board of Education superintendent Haw Rider and members of cabinet I am April prestopino the recently appointed um assistant superintendent for the office of assessment accountability and Technology Innovation I've just completed s months and it has flown by it's been amazing I have to remember to actually click so we always um keep in the Forefront of our work the district Mission vision mission and
103goals which drives directly the the goals of our division um we make sure that those are aligned also with the district vision mission and goals this particular graph represents um the organizational structure of the highly talented individuals that work in in the office of assessment accountability and Technology Innovation the longest title in the history of the world um this you know this uh graphic is just a representation of the broad overview of the areas of responsibility and support provided by each department in the division this is a graphic that Mr Kent Baker had in his presentation last year and I carried it over into this year because the reality is is that it's still true that will probably never change so we keep this as a visual reminder of the dependency of technology in all
104areas across the district one of the modifications I made um you know last year Mr Baker had this triangle but it was a tiered triangle instead of like an integrated triangle and I looked very carefully at what he had those three areas integration and efficiency support and management and Innovation and when I listened to again to the recording he talked about integration and efficiency and support and management being necessary before you can get to Innovation and he was 100% correct however in my short time here I have seen how innovation has actually become more prevalent with the work of the department and I feel that this particular triangle actually is um a very accurate representation of where we are now with how these three areas are Parts equal parts of a whole were working together
105so our first um area is the assessment update and uh Shaya Barbera is our testing coordinator and I will be sharing these updates with you on her behalf I would like to focus specifically on the transition to computer-based testing um as you all hopefully are aware the district obviously for years and years and years students have taken their tests on paper um State Ed has has started the transition to moving the 3 through eight assessments to computer-based assessments it's been optional for many many years um however starting with this spring spring 2024 there's a phased in approach for certain grade levels where it's mandatory so that in three years by 2026 all grade levels in 3 through eight Ela in math and science will be taking their tests via the computer so this particular table
106just kind of shows what it was like last year because all ALB was primarily a paper based testing District um and then what it has been like for this year having the majority of the grades test on computer the biggest differences are that instead of having the the the three set days and five makeup days prescribed by stayed we now have a six- week window where we can uh determine where we want to administer Ela Math and Science anywhere within that window um that was different this year and we're I'm looking forward to debriefing with the other assistant superintendents and the building principles to to consider what worked what didn't work and what we may want to shift to do a little differently for next year um the other thing that is sort of new
107this year is that because that window is six weeks long it now overlaps significantly with the nicest slot testing window the the test that our English language Learners have to take um so AIC in particular but also the other schools really had to look at their schedule and and really calender out a lot of how they were um administering the tests the state the state assessments and the nicest lot to those students who have to take all of those tests this particular um slide shows three piie charts as you know there's a requirement for participation rate and and um what we usually get from stayed or from naric after we scan all the answer sheets is who did not take the test and why right so this particular one um we have that data right
108out of the gate with CBT what I want to point out is that you're looking at test sessions not number of students each student has to have two test sessions for ELA two test sessions for Math and one test session for science science so you have the number of completed test sessions and if they if the test session wasn't completed you have the reasons why it wasn't completed via CBT or at all um absent first year L refused taking the test on paper those types of things so this information actually we have it now immediately instead of waiting for the scanned data to come back from Nar I do want to point out that grades six and seven tested on paper for math because that was allowed um it was only mandatory for 8th grade
109next year it's mandatory for sixth grade and 8th grade and so possibly seventh grade would be the one grade to test on paper but we don't know how we're what we're going to do yet so opportunities challenges and opportunities with with assessments um the changes the workflow changes for computer-based testing are are very significant from paper based testing and actually it's not a bad thing um what it does is that it forces a significant increase in shared responsibility from from the testing coordinator and our office down to the building level and um you know really strengthening that communication with building principles and whomever they've designated as their testing person within the building um instead of just kind of waiting for everything to come from us there's a a lot of work that has to occur
110at the building level before students sit to take their computer-based testing so it's not a bad thing um it's actually been a really good I see it as a very positive change however um there is a lot of upfront work and so that first blue bullet and the information there really leads to how we handle those other three categories um in the future and it will be on us to kind of look at how things went this year and how we want to improve those Communications and collaboration for next year and now I would like to turn it over to Miss Trisha wolf good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board um tonight I'm going to be giving a brief overview of some major highlights of projects and accomplishments from the data and accountability department
111so I'll just start with data and information systems ongoing um so as you know we deal with an immense amount of data um we take data from many different systems integrate it and we use use that to communicate and operationalize information um and we can do that um through various dashboards uh mostly we focus on kind of two areas one is progress monitoring we want to make sure that we give you know information at people's fingertips so that they can make informed decisions and then also sort of that end result reporting uh which would be State accountability reporting as well as um reporting on different program initiatives another big as aspect of what we do is supporting data privacy um as you know with covid it really shifted a lot of educator practices so that
112they were using many many different web-based systems and applications because of that this year uh we have implemented um learn platform and basically one aspect of that is that we are collecting information districtwide on all kinds of different applications and websites that are being used throughout the district and you can see we've got our approved apps um our district bought and approved apps and then all the things that are being used and you can see uh you know the the um contrast between the two we have a huge amount that we're basically reviewing systematically we prioritize them by the most used and we're going through them but more about that project on the next slide uh so here's our three kind of highlights so under data privacy and governance is that learn platform uh project
113so it has many parts to it one is it is our uh software library that um teachers and the public uh have access to um but also it has a few other areas one is it has a built-in portal where vendors um we can actually keep on top of all of our agreements um by sending it directly to the vendor and they put it back right to us um there's also um workflows so we are using the workflows to approve um applications so we're um every new request has to go through a vetting process and we look at that through a technical a curricular and a data data privacy standpoint and then the next phase that we'll be really using um or aspects of this Pro of this um product that we'll be using is
114there's two pieces there's a feedback component well now we can ask Educators to give their feedback and we can actually use that in conjunction with there's an analytics component where we can start to look at the return on investment um for different products and making sure that um we are um you know looking at the efficacy of things that we're buying um the next project highlight is under the records management and paperless system and that's um laser fee so that continues from our previous um year and uh basically the main object of that is to make sure that we have a comprehensive data store where everything about a student is in one place it's not uh lost in um separate files um we're also it also supports our uh data privacy adherence by making sure
115that the access controls are in place that we're limiting dissemination uh this year our main priority has been on um basically recreating the central registration portal which is almost uh ready for beta testing and also just continuing to import historical data so this year we've done over 880,000 records of imports of historical information and we're continuing to work on getting all the paperback logs microfish everything back into that system um we also have started using the forms and workflow so similar to learn platform that has a workflow laser Fe also has workflows and that really kind of makes sure that we're routing things and that um you know as efficiently as possible things aren't being missed and um it automatically stores things in the correct location yep and then um last U but not least
116is our third system linkit and uh we are basically developing this system in collaboration with people Personnel Services and it is really uh focused on our multi-tier support system where we are you know helping with the creation collection and monitoring of the mtss data under one umbrella and that um we provide all the different data sets that are necessary in order to make inform intervention decisions but um we it also has another aspect of uh Educators and staff being able to kind of create their own dat dashboards and reports of things that they want to look at and um we feel that that just gives the flexibility for buildings and people building and people to get what they need when they need it and so next um so for our challenges and opportunities um as
117we uh it's very similar to last year we have exponential growth of Burden you know as our systems increase and our users increase um there's many different interdependencies uh we do feel like um implementing learn platform has been an opportunity to make sure that we can help uh evaluate sustainability and efficacy and it can also inform users of what we're using and why we're using it also the hidden support burden we know that we're always going to have unanticipated in the moment requests for data um but we think that uh Educators being able to make some of their own reports and dashboards can help alleviate alleviate some of that um and then communication so this is a very large organization we know that communication is very important and things can get list missed and you
118can get uh under email overload so because of that we are using um workflows wherever possible so that's embedded in a lot of different um areas that we're developing and um it really kind of helps with interdepartmental processes um vetting products contracts Etc and then lastly is that continuous need for professional development and support So once again as the number of users and various systems grow they're always going to need support and training um and as a division we are exploring AI tools to help in all of those areas where whether it could be data or technology so example of that could be you know in the- moment training help desk Etc and now I'll turn it over to Mr wild good evening Board of Education my name is John wild I am the director
119of Technology uh I would first like to start by recognizing the Technology support team as whole uh but I have also asked Mr Barber to join us out here this evening uh usually he is The Man Behind the curent in a lot of these board meetings um but earlier in the year uh Bobby was promoted into a Technology support lead so he is a supervisor for our division now and does oversee the day-to-day operations of the technicians within the building so I would be lost without Bobby so I do do want to acknowledge Him to begin sorry about that there we go so Technology support by the numbers I always want to start with with this slide uh and for for the first items that you'll see at the top presently we have two 23,
120824 managed devices and I use the term managed devices specifically because it's devices that we need to be Hands-On and phys physically touch and configure uh I did also want to do a year-to-year comparison uh you will know that every area has increased with the exception of wireless access points uh but we do still have a high school building that has uh classrooms that are no no longer in use and have had access points removed that will then be readded moving into next year um for this year we have had 11,669 tickets submitted to date uh with 11,493 that have been closed uh I also do want to draw your attention to the graph in the the bottom because a lot of times we hear you work for a school district the Summers must be
121your quietest times uh so you'll notice a couple of things with that graph the tickets that we're getting in we are closing the tickets closing the tickets out as quick as they are coming in and our summer months which the slower months um are almost the same average as our quieter time of the year you do see a spike uh obviously in September October when we first uh get back to school additionally uh we've received 20 24,43 phone calls uh which you see the monthly and weekly breakouts uh and I mentioned that because of the almost 12,000 tickets that we receive in a lot of those uh what I'm going to call first call resolution uh tickets sometimes don't get tracked and we're trying to be better about that um finally on this slide I
122I did want to break it down by building so what I did is a three-year comparison of tickets uh we have had a little bit over 35,000 tickets entered in 3 years with an average of almost 12,000 and since we've returned from Co you'll notice that our larger buildings uh especially the high school and the middle schools we have seen a significant spike in tickets we've spent a lot of money on technology which is an amazing thing but it is then about the support of that technology nextly I I I do want to discuss cyber security which should be on the Forefront of everyone's mind um I know that we have discussed in the past about ALB being part of a cyber event uh so we have our Spidey s senses up even more so
123just to give you an idea of of just from email traffic because that again is where we see the entry point being a lot of of attacks um so the total number of emails that we received was close to 800,000 just for the month of April um we do have tools in place mcast is our uh email content content filtering and it does have items in place uh to verify and check links and attachments before users receive them so you'll see some of those statistics on the right hand side but a April alone we had 117 fishing attacks which equated to over 9,000 emails that staff members received in some type of fishing activity so again that is just one singular month of of the school year sorry was trying to tie uh road map
124and uh uh initiatives and achievements and challenges and opportunities all into one slide uh and there was nothing better than a roundabout when I'm thinking of of a road map um obviously we uh do fantastic jobs of what I'm going to highlight in green as far as the constant cyber security monitoring the day-to-day support the network connectivity and monitoring inventory management and replacement but that's that's all inside the the roundabout and we're just continuing to go around in a circle um but then entry points in uh a a big thing for for district of our size is the Chromebook sustainability um another is summer preparations we have many summer programs in many of our buildings we then follow our operations and maintenance folks so we are literally the last ones to get into buildings for
125the September prep um large scale districtwide projects again we've had the the high school project go on um which we are anticipating that will gear up next year for the uh September 2025 opening uh and the other challenging opportunity that's sort of entering into that roundabout is ongoing S software increases um a lot of these software vendors um across the board are are increasing yearly um at a steady steady rate spiking spiking rate correct uh and finally staying with the roundabout theme um we all know why we're here and and with the tech coaches we'll be discussing in a later portion but we're here for Technology Innovation we are here for instruction um so so we do a phenomenal job at The Innovation but then tying that in to the other two pieces is the
126technology sustainability uh we have spent a lot of our covid relief money to ensure that we have standardized equipment in every single classroom now it's a matter of continuing that sustainability and the Technology support to ensure the Technology Innovation occurs so with that being said I'm going to hand it back over to Dr prestino thank you I wanted to take some time to talk with the board about the AI task force um just to refresh the board's memory uh probably a little over three years ago the district was awarded the learning technology Grant three-year Grant $100,000 each year and the original submission was tied to e-learning for students who struggle to attend or participate in the regular school environment and so those funds were used to hire an e-learning coordinator who who was tasked or
127charged with uh finding an um um a learning management platform and and working with key individuals in the district to establish courses within that platform that students would engage in probably somewhat synchronously and asynchronously um this year is the third year of that Grant um the e-learning coordinator resigned in October I started November 1st and um through some conversations with the other assistant superintendant um it became clear that there wasn't a whole lot of support necessarily unfortunately for the project and so I spent a few months trying to figure out what to do with the remaining funds con you know talking with State Ed talking with the other assistant superintendant we tried a few running a few ideas um past other people and nothing was really sticking so AI was coming to the Forefront of
128my conversations with the technology coaches and in terms of like what do we do with it how far do we go with it things like that and so I thought State Ed can we shift our Focus to um really figuring out how we may for this very purpose just vet AI tools right um and so stay dead was was happy to allow ow us to shift our Focus for the remainder of this school year so that we could utilize the funds to invite um a group of of teachers to be part of the task force so I wanted to so the task force um had a primary goal when I sent out the flyer to teachers and administrators to create a robust framework for selecting and integrating AI tools across the district now mind you
129the the technology coaches had already been um providing professional development and support and introducing teachers to um a select number of AI tools uh for at least a year if not a little bit longer but none of them were um being paid for or anything like that they were utilizing what was available on the free side and they made some really great progress with that so I wanted to show you um the task force by the N by the Numbers uh there were 42 teachers who applied to be part of the task force and that just somehow happened to be the magic number I was looking for in terms of funding so I had 42 teachers and six administrators who wanted to be part of the task force so this shows um what their breakdown
130is in terms of of grade level um and and where they teach in what areas they teach one of the things I asked them in the application was why did they want to be part of the task force and I know there's a lot of text on this slide but they didn't have to submit anything lengthy however these are real paragraphs from individuals as to why they wanted to be part of the task force and so when I reread these it just really speaks to the desire to want to know more and to um really figure out where this fits within the district and so I wanted to share with you some of their wise I also asked them um some key questions how they feel about AI in general how they feel about AI
131in education and how experienced they are with using educational AI tools so what draws my attention to these particular charts or tables is that for the first two questions optimistic curious and excited share the top three spots um which was which was very positive um and so it felt good going into who you know that the 48 people were going to be you know very open-minded about this but they also said that they weren't very versed in using educational AI tools so I was like excellent we have a very captive audience did I just skip the slide yeah okay no B it's acting up there we go okay so then the other three questions uh were are you currently using AI to support your professional practice should teachers use AI to support their professional practice
132and then should students have access to AI in school so you can see that they were very supportive of them having access to Ai and using it for their professional practice but they were a little hesitant as to whether or not students should have access to AI in school oh my goodness definitely some hesitation okay so the task force met uh five times two hours each time 7 to 900 p.m. with last night being our last session which actually was very Bittersweet um you can we met for the better part of a month and a half and these were you know these statements were just kind of the things that we focused on for each session the primary focus obviously sessions three and four we're establishing the criteria for the rubric in session four and
133five we actually applied it to uh a few different tools that we're using in the district magic school being the first one that we applied it to to see how it kind of worked and if there were any gaps last night we applied it to um a student facing tool and a teacher facing tool and discovered some gaps within the rubric and so we now know that we have to go back and kind of look at filling in some of those gaps we had partnered as you may remember with Renaissance groups um I think you approved that contract at the last board meeting and so after all of this work um they are now starting the process of developing uh like a written action plan for us to to you know consider for me to
134share with the cabinet and the board and to consider how we're going to move forward I wanted to just um show you the the topics of the of the rubric itself we spent a great deal of time um viewing different Frameworks and guidance documents from all over the place and um these were the areas that we came up with in terms of of vetting a tool for consideration and these are some of the possible headings that will be in the action plan um these were things that I that we Renaissance groups and uh and I sort of came up with and then last night we asked the AI task force to to help us kind of determine whether or not we had the right categories what we were missing things like that so those are
135subject to change I asked I gave the AI task force the same survey again because I wanted to see if their perception about the use of AI tools after these five sessions changed at all and so this data is is hot off the presses since last night was the last meeting um and so you can see that what I was excited about was that their feelings about AI um optimistic was three you know was ranked third in the pression now it's it's number one in the post for feeling about Ai and in education excited is their number one choice um obviously they can pick more than one but what I also was really excited to see was how they felt about their um own experience being able to use AI tools and how that shifted
136from not feeling very confident to feeling more confident also I loved this because um their thoughts on whether or not AI should be used in in school for professional practice by them and or students really has shifted quite a bit as well to be much more like yes yes with proper supports and and systems in place to make sure that pii is is being taken care of and things like that however that definitely is as great as this was um we know the work is not done obviously it's just beginning and there are many challenges but also many opportunities to come from this and so trying to organize the thoughts of the task force I came up with these four areas and then the challenges and the opportunities and this just is a small representation
137of what's on their mind you know um and so it's just we just have to admit that this is going to be long-term work but we will get there and after last night's session they kept saying can we come back how are we going to come back what's next how can I support so they are an exciting group of individuals to work with and now I would like to turn it over to the technology coaches starting with Jeremy Dudley all right good evening yeah so uh first i' just like to say I am so incredibly proud of the work that's happening inside of our division right now it is incredible I'm also excited to share with you uh the work that our talented and Innovative team has been doing uh we represent the full-time Tech
138coaches and in addition there are 12 part-time members who contribute to our work as well our mission is to enthusiastically help teachers be the best that can be for their students and we love what we do uh this evening you'll hear about and see examples of our work which is rooted in the istd standards this includes our Outreach professional development in-class support support of the Magic School pilot and many other ways that we positively affect the district our Outreach includes one minute Tech tips which are housed on our YouTube page and our monthly newsletters which currently has over 150 Pages this year uh we also have over 800 hours of watch time and over 44,000 views on our YouTube channel and that includes 320 6 hours and 24,000 views this year alone so since September
139we consistently create fun and engaging professional development sessions to help our teachers intentionally design learning experiences that integrate technology in authentic and innovative ways this of course includes our technology integration Academy which we look forward to every summer we believe that when teachers have access to highquality purposeful and engaging professional development they are better equipped to provide the best possible learning experiences for our students thank you Jeremy uh Terrence MCM instructional technology coach good evening like our PDS our work with teachers is tailored aligned with their goals and completely collaborative we do much more than just training uh we support our colleagues through the planning implementation reflection and iteration of new lessons activities and projects we have a couple of mantras that appear at the start of every PD we present uh first when working
140with us our teachers are in a judgment free zone uh we meet our teachers where they are in a positive and supportive environment the other is let your purpose be your guide uh we never advocate for tech for Tech's sake our work is very intentional and teachers instructional goals and objectives always lead the way one way we' like to share our successes and amplify this work is through our bright spots which are sadly not playing we expected videos to be going there that was going to be live but we'll just roll with imagine that those are live video shots and they feature teachers sharing their projects in their own voices it's because of we're doing the PDF instead of the live Campa yeah all right good evening I'm Kevin maringo and in addition to my
141role as instructional technology coach I've also been assigned the duties of assistive technology Specialists I'm excited to share some key updates on our assistive technology initiatives the instructional technology coaches have been providing the assist of Technology support to alternatively assess classrooms per their program description this year we've adopted a team-based approach to collaboratively develop technology Integrated Solutions for our alternatively assessed student students we've delivered Magic School AI training sessions specifically designed for special education teachers School psychologists and speech language Pathologists additionally we've held multiple sessions on Camy focusing on developing accessible materials for special education classrooms another bright spot has been the use of seesaw for family engagement the high interest among special education teachers led to new deployments of the software um in multiple classrooms enhancing communication and engagement with families I've provided Tech
142assistive technology consultations for a case load of about 60 students these consultations include direct support to students and indirect support to teachers service providers and parents ensuring our students get the best possible assistance at Albany High School we have a fantastic group of student volunteers who play a crucial role in our school Community these students not only repair Chromebooks and support their peers and teachers but also take on various technology products to enhance their school environment their contributions extend to evalu waiting new technology for school use their feedback on new AI programs has been invaluable and I'm proud to say that most of them are now Magic School certified this certification not only recognizes their skills but also motivates them to continue their excellent [Music] work good evening my name is Su McCoy the department
143of assessment accountability and Technology Innovation prided itself on adopting a Forward Thinking approach to the evaluation and implementation of AI tools our methodology is grounded in rationality focusing on identifying potential benefits with a major emphasis on using best practices we continually assess these tools to ensure their efficacy and Alignment to ensure our educational goals among the tools we have evaluated magic school has notably emerged as a leading resour Source by harnessing the power of AI with magic school we have successfully reclaimed valuable time for our Educators since piloting since piloting magic school we have amassed nearly 750 logins and tens of thousands of generations which has allowed faculty and staff to divide more devote more energy and attention directly to their students enhancing the overall educational experience and as we wrap up tonight I would
144just like to quickly um say thank you to the team the entire division actually for the uh warm welcome I received and the smooth transition I've had to into coming into this role it's been a pleasure and I could not imagine coming to work every day without these people sitting here next to me um that being said I've never met the in the man but I would like to thank Mr Baker for setting all of this up and to for giving me the opportunity to inherit a group of individuals who are so dedicated and and so professional so thank you and if you have any questions please let us know well thank you um just wonderful presentation um boy there's a lot in here isn't there very packed um so I will see if there
145are questions from uh my colleagues um Miss grae would you like to start off uh I just wanted to thank everybody for an excellent presentation uh these this Department's presentations are always so great graphically in terms of the data presentation that always stands out to me that you guys are really good at using the technology to present information and I'm sure that that trickles down to the teachers through your programs I'm excited about the work with AI and I was also really really excited to hear that these kids on the um help desk are using you know are actually learning and becoming certified in the AI resources I would I was a little disappointed to hear that there was not student representation on the AI focus group and I would encourage for the uh what's
146the word for it the group task not the task force is what you had but what you will have whatever we create forward whatever you create it would be great to have student representation because I know that the students are interested in AI a lot of them have experience in it a lot of them have very strong exper opinions both pro and con on it and since they are the Next Generation it's great I feel like this is an appro I feel like this is an appropriate area where student impact input could be really useful so thanks so much for your time great presentation Miss Savage so I want to Echo my colleagues comments I always look forward to this presentation it's always very um energizing to think about how your work is fundamentally powering
147the work that our teachers are able to do with our students and as somebody who's done a lot of Technology work over my career I really appreciate so much more than you can know um what it is that you do and I love the fact that over the years I've been on the board almost 10 years and the whole uh emphasis of the presentations from this department has changed from being sort of like oh we the help desk can typal is when there's problems to being more we are driving change and improving matters for our students and it's really no noticeable to me how that has changed in that time um I wanted to come and also on AI in addition to you know wanting to have some more students and parents and community members
148involved because particularly people who are not dealing with it every day are intimidated so the more we can do to get people at the beginning the less we're creating potential for for some ition um but one of the things that I uh was hearing about in some some things I was reading outside of what I was hearing from you guys but you echoed I think very strongly is that um one of the key tools one of the key uses use cases for AI and education is to simplify practice for teachers right students need to learn to do things and it's nice to have ai as a tool but sometimes they need to do them without AI so they learn how to do them but teachers can create more time by using AI to simplify some
149of those routine tasks what I think which I think really came out in your presentation so I I wanted to just Echo that back to you um that that's what I heard in the outside world and here so I really appreciate that I did want to ask one question which has to do with um sustainability was one of the topics and I know we were struggling with sustainability particularly around Chromebooks I know from back in my old days when I used to do Network Administration and and deal with technology in that day-to-day way that we always tried to have a replacement schedule for all of our technology uh you know with every third year every fifth year and I'm just wondering if we are on track to be able to complete that kind of replacement
150um routine in particular on Chromebooks but on all of the district technology given what I know you know budgetary constraints really are absolutely so so right now we have a five-year replacement plan um as far as desktop computers within the buildings we try to break them down evenly across the district so we're replacing the same number going into those years uh additionally we're replacing at the grade level uh for for Chromebooks so student comes in kindergarten kindergarten receives the new set of Chromebooks that then follows them for the age of of the time that they're there uh same thing for the middle school and the high school so A k6 and N replacement cycle and I'm sorry is it okay if ask followup It's s right so especially on Chromebooks are we I I know
151we were having a fairly High number of loss and um you know Chromebooks being you know injured damaged um are we at a more meaning reasonable number that need to be replaced every year so that we can meet that replacement schedule we we are we've also moved especially at the middle school level the Middle School uh it was a district decision to move to a remain at school model which has definitely helped the the breakage and the loss um so that has has also helped but it also means means that we have Chromebooks in each classroom MH to to uh to cover the amount of students that are currently enrolled in that course so sometimes we have more Chromebooks in the Middle School levels to to meet that need if that makes sense but yes
152it has cut down as long as you know the real question for me is a budgetary one are we budgeting sufficiently and is there outside resources sufficiently to to keep that going indefinitely because Chromebooks are not particularly sturdy as correct equipment goes or cheap Mr Elman uh thank you for the presentation it's always fantastic always eye opening I really liked the avatars that you guys had I could tell who they were um and the road map references just anything to do with you know here where here we are on this path which is really useful to understand um what we should be expecting and where we were I've got two questions one just kind of specifically about um the digitizing of paper docks and like grabbing the historical data so is there like just because
153I don't know is there a requirement to do that are we getting rid of paper docks are we like essentially utilizing um the historical data for like um I guess gauging year to year is that why we're doing it I'll let you answer that one first because the other one has yeah yeah so we're really trying to just eliminate paper um but also you know this kind of becomes the students permanent record and in this system I mean whole cities and towns and states use this where you can you know you've got backups to make sure things are um you know not lost and then on top of that you can do retention rules so there's certain rules at a certain point documents should be purged and so that's automatically can be happening so um
154we're you know that's one piece of it and then also just you know using ways to track things through a system and interdepartmental communication is really helped in making sure when someone registers when someone gets working papers whatever it automatically is stored in the kids folder nobody is manually filing it it's not paper piling up so uh it's our challenge but people love paper so no I I also wholeheartedly agree with kind of moving away from the paper um I just was curious if there is some kind of requirement about it um and the other thing about tracking I also really appreciate how you guys track the calls and track you know the work that you've done it's really important to I mean essentially justify the things that you guys continue to do and um
155uh about just Hardware so I know Chromebooks are expensive but like when you have 30 kids or you know 20 kids in a classroom all using their Chromebook without headphones and I like some kids with headphones some kids with broken headphones like do we have um do we have any like I guess backup headphones or like headphones that literally cost like you know a dollar or like you know the airplane headphones like can we do that cuz um I just I've seen um I've seen some of the struggles with that like some kids have headphones some kids don't and like you've already got a you know classroom full of you know seveny olds and it gets very loud so just thoughts on that absolutely so so prior to to me coming to the district so
156I've been here for almost seven years um our Department had purchased headphones for every single room and we were placing them every single year and that that cost continued to Skyrocket for our department um approximately three years ago um the headphone purchase was moved over to a building purchase as a as a supply as a consumable um some buildings have uh tried to look for more sturdy headphones um I I do know that around the co time we also looked at getting cheap sets of of headphones and really those those didn't go anywhere and it was really because um different ages of the students comfort in the ear so I understand what you're saying as far as can we invest in a a cheaper set um those just didn't seem to really cut the mustard
157at the building level with the varying ages of students yeah it was just a it was just a thought as um um I had seen essentially uh I I saw a classroom and everybody was very happy in doing their work um but one of the things that some of the students specifically said was like oh you know like I can't hear this because I don't have my headphones and there's all this kind of stuff going on so thank you for just explaining that it went from your department to building um makes sense uh lastly about the AI um okay I just wanted to say I'm glad you guys are on the ball on it um I've been keeping up with it as well and like just the developments over the last year have been kind
158of wild wild doesn't begin to describe it yeah um you know just image generation for example you know you're like talking about like oh a drawing from you know a high schooler to a drawing from a master and um with like all these newer you know computer chips processing faster and faster it's really it's really important that our students know how to use it and how to inter interface with it so great work and I would just like to say I think that's one of the primary the the technology coaches have made that their mission to stay on top of what's happening with the development of AI and um they know things I swear before they even actually become public not just with our software tools but in general right um you know across the
159country or wherever across the world so without them being able to dedicate their time to staying on top of what's happening with advances with our software that we have purchased all of our software and the world of AI we would not be able to do what we do in terms of offering PD and being able to make informed decisions as to how we approach this so their work has been integral to this process thank you I I had a a question um and it goes to the sustainability one and maybe it's really just a government relations superintendent question and that is I mean clearly the state knows that we've gone to onetoone computers all this technology you know it's just flourishing and so are we are school districts supposed to out of their um state
160aid continue to you know use those Monies to replace funds or are we are we uh is there movement um affront by the districts to say to the state you know this is just not going to be possible without some additional year-to-year funding on top of our state aid um so I'm just I don't know that we've talked about that at all in government relations and it didn't come up the other day but it's just as you're talking about the sustainability seems important to me and and especially now that we're having to do the testing uh yeah and so it's just a question yeah yeah I can share some of the movement over the last decade plus from State ad around ISBN numbers that's the fancy um code for what is a textbook purchase and
161what is not and that the state has created a little more leniency in terms of what you can use uh categorical um textbook funds for you can purchase um some online um instructional software that counts and there has been a push around um technology as well that if we're buying instructional software and we're buying digital versions of textbooks or educational resources or putting them online or on the Internet or on the intranet should the vehicle you know to access those also be re reimbursable or aidable in a different way and I know that has um traditionally been a discussion but when computer-based testing came out there were there were two two issues one was Fidelity and the second was um District affordability around sustainability but it it has still become or still is one of
162those last well not last uh unfunded mandates that are alive and well and and just to add add to that so outside of our state aided Hardware line item that is where we are purposeful about identifying the numbers looking at enrollment seeing how things are fluctuating to be able to use our general fund budget to to budget for the the replacement of those devices um and I did want to add that what has also helped from a uh sustainability standpoint is the lock and charge Chargers which is it's right in the back corner over here uh those have been placed in every middle school classroom space um utilizing some uh ARP funding um and we are talking about doing the same thing at the elementary level uh that will also then essentially from k through
163eight that'll help us immensely with with the lifespan of those devices very good okay thank you and then I um uh also on the uh AI um which I don't know I I love that stuff um I I think and I'm loving the work that's uh that's happened I was surprised May and maybe not really but on some level I think I think I was about teachers uh um uh sort of hesitation for student usage I mean you know uh because a lot of times students are ahead of us anyway and so I'm I'm always curious about that and and then um relatedly I was um just out of a habit I was uh I found a few resources uh that I wanted to share with my colleagues about how how a board might look
164at AI in terms of you know its policy development so I I want to share that and I don't know if that's if that's been kind of included in your uh task force uh deliberations at all yeah the policy component wasn't part of the task force work because that's so specific and and very targeted towards a group of individuals to have those conversations however it's on my radar absolutely um nisba does have a a um a generic AI software whatever template that I find actually very appealing because it it's it is generic enough and forces you to go look at your existing policies computer use code of conduct other policies which is exactly where this should live um so I'm looking forward to working with the policy committee um probably getting some guidance from our
165attorneys on on how to get all of this started um and to to fles all that out from the policy perspective in terms of the hesitation um it was actually already mentioned that um you know as adults it it helps to alleviate some burden and release some time back but um not unexpectedly the the idea is that students need to learn how to do things first before they should be able to have the benefit of an AI tool um that's one perspective although part of the work that we will be doing over the next several years is I AI can help actually how how can teachers use AI to help the students think more uh critically in the moment in the classroom because the other idea the other automatic perception is that it's cheating or
166it's plagiarism or something like that so um and not unexpectedly the task force came in with a lot of that perception as you sort of saw in the pre-session survey data um but through some in and learning and discussion it it helped and you certainly can't accomplish all of this in 10 hours but you saw what that data shows that okay now maybe I understand this a little better and and how it's not necessarily the the plagurism and the cheating that we're that we're traditionally thinking of um and so I'm just really optimistic for how we can move this forward and a lot of the feedback from the participants said don't don't wait like they think about their colleagues right and and what the they know who they're working with and they're like don't wait
167um the first quote on the first slide said we need to have our tomorrow glasses on not our today glasses and so someone wrote in the feedback we need to have our tomorrow glasses on and put on some sunscreen too so yeah um it was it was a great it was a great opportunity to work with them additional questions colleagues so miss CR Miss Savage I just have one little kind of funny um alignment of today's presentation and it and the um District update talking about Pride because one of the things that we did in this District a few years ago long before anyone else um was update our Central registration system to allow for a variety of genders um in the in the input from parents and Guardians um and then trying and deal
168with the state requirements around gender reporting which make things a little more difficult for the student level but so it was just a nice um alignment that you came to talk about one of the things you talked about was the new Central registration system and it was also the pride day so I can't wait to see how that flushed out in the new version of the system so it's just a nice circling of of things today so I think oh Mr Alo question okay so I think that uh concludes any questions that we have but thank you all again one more oh yes go ahead I promise it'll be short um PDFs and not getting to watch your videos this is something for you guys this is not a Direction only superintendent can give you
169Direction but you know when you're in the shower and you're just like what am I thinking about the reason we do PDFs is that we need to have a recording of what was put on today and if we allow people to use their slideshow right whatever their slideshow is then they could go change that tomorrow right and so we need it to be what it is and maybe there's a workaround for that that you guys can figure out but that's really been kind of a challenge for us is that we need to upload something to board Ducks so that we know what was presented on the day of the board meeting um but it does have the limitations that you you hit against today so that's my was my thing Miss cachu I think that's
170an interesting it's an interesting and important perspective and I know you guys help other departments create engaging and meaningful slideshows and PowerPoints because yes some people come to meetings and look at it on the big screen some people are looking it at it you know on the laptop a board member might be looking at it at the laptop they're using but in addition these meetings are all uh recorded and posted on YouTube so some a member of the community might be looking at the screen in a little YouTube in a a little little YouTube window and might not be able to go back to board docs and sort of coordinate o what was that I want to look at that so it's always great to make these things as big and readable to a general
171audience as possible just if it's if it's information that you really want to um appeal to a wide audience because with these meetings being on YouTube people come back and watch them five years later 10 years later they will live for a long time thanks so okay um and maybe I'm not quite following I don't want to go down a rabbit hole or create one um but a couple of things so how does how is this different than uh our schools are presenting they're making their presentations and there's a a video embedded into their document just I'm just want to make sure I understand I don't know okay I leave it to I leave it to the folks who are making these things happen Okay when we did our rehearsal we came down here and
172we rehearsed this when we did our rehearsal we rehearsed from canva the platform we were using and so it's just that um they were surprised that they didn't know that we were presenting tonight from the from the PDF as a static document and so that was just a genuine surprise because when we rehearsed we were rehearsing with our live information so we would just make sure that we had the videos separate next time just like the just like the schools do and have you know Mr Barber behind the curtain show the videos yeah exactly okay great so so it sounds like we've got there's a solution here so all right does that answer your question I just know that this topic keeps coming up um so I'm not so it's it's come up before in
173sense of it would be better if we didn't use a PDF because we could do more Dynamic presentations that would be available to the public on board docs where they could click on the buttons themselves if we didn't use PDFs but then there becomes this whole how do we ensure that they don't get changed after the fact thing so I'm not asking them to solve it um I'm just raising it as a creative technology I just wanted to understand what the discussion because it actually hasn't been on my mind but I just wanted to understand what we were focused on okay very good so I want to thank you all uh for the presentation was fabulous and I know we could go on a little bit further with this but but we won't um and
174uh thank you again and uh want to wish you all a good evening thanks okay got it [Applause] yeah okay who's that so that brings us um up to committee reports and um Miss CR I'll start you off I think you have a meeting coming up yes yes I'm I'm while I'm the only member of the audit committee here tonight I will no that's I'm sorry I forgot I forgot about the committee change I'm sorry so we have the major we have a quorum of the audit committee here tonight and we are going to be meeting on Monday we are will be joined by our claims Auditors which is the first time they've come to meet with us in a while so it'll be a great opportunity to go over our claims auditing issues and
175of course this is the last meeting of our fiscal and Academic Year so we'll be working our year-end evaluation of the financial audit uh workings of the district thanks terrific and Miss Savage government relations and uh School visits School visits yes so uh government relations met last week as you guys know the primary objective for last week's meeting was to start talking about whether there are any resolutions we'd like to put forward to the New York State School boards Association for their consideration at their annual meeting in October I know it seems early to do that but they they have a July deadline for their process um there were two topics that we would discussed as a possibility and Mr leco was charged with going back to Cabinet to raise these and to see if
176they um seemed uh valuable one was some additional flexibility in the state regulations around the school calendar as we continue to insert new holidays um but yet have not changed the statutory start and end day of the calendar do we need to look for some statutory relief on that was one Poss possible NBA resolution to put forward and the other one was a more generic conversation around the fact that we know the foundation Aid formula is going to be a very hot topic for the next legislative cycle and whether there is any appropriate uh resolution for us to put forward to nisba they do have a pretty broad existing position statement around um the changes in Foundation Aid that need to happen and Mr lco was going to go forth to cabinet and see and
177get some feedback on those too um and we'll see where we are oh School visits um School visits we have completed 11 School visits out of 18 already um the we have four that are currently scheduled so we'll be completed shortly and there are three that are in the process of being scheduled still so we are looking good to get that knocked out by the end of the year but time is of course coming close as the end of the year is coming close thanks that's great um let's see and Facilities um uh we have a facilities meeting on Tuesday 5:45 and uh that that will be interesting we will be get some um sort of final uh getting final information on what the summer looks like in terms of our uh completion of uh
178Albany High School and some other uh aspects related to that um and uh one other thing that we we always get an update on and and I think we're pretty much closed out now now but we we've been checking to make sure that uh a lot of the work that was done in the fall around AC and heating and so forth all of those things has been taken care of and it was nice to be at Noms today and and understand that AC was working um pretty much in every single room I think uh it was pretty comfortable over there and uh so at any rate uh things are looking good and we'll be meeting on Tuesday and I'm trying to think uh other committee policy did you mention that I'm sorry one of you
179uh we did not our fearless leader is not with us today so we meet in policy committee next week on Wednesday and I do not know what's on the agenda and I'm waiting to hear from him about that because I fear that I'm supposed to do some things for that and I need to know very good so we have so actually um M Timmons is asking not on mic if it's this if it's the 17th or if it's next week and we've had a variety of conversations around the date because we're all caught up in the end of year craziness um and let's see the N did you say 17th you thought it was the 17th it's on the public calendar for the 12th um so that's what's publicly noticed right now if we are
180there was some conversation about shifting that but I don't know where we are on that so I will send an email Emil to Dr St and ask him to address the next date but that's what's on the public calendar right now sounds good um okay so I think that uh takes us uh pretty much here to the end is there any uh new business or item that is on the agenda yes yes please um I went to the Elementary art show at Opel Gallery it was really beautiful I went opening night and um a few highlights Arbor Hill had an amazing dress that they like worked on collaborative collaboratively like made out of trash um uh Ash had this like felt wall with like each student had their own um piece of work and it
181just kind of made this big felt piece of artwork and it was a really great night a lot of a lot of folks came very nice um and I I will say that uh the Nom's the um there was Art all over the place including the walls I've never seen so many murals in in in a building were beautiful and also a lot of the student work was um in in the uh hallways as well um and not on the walls but even in a like a kiosk kind of arrangement and so it was really really cool and fascinating and they also did some work that almost looks like and I was thinking of you it doesn't look quite like well it's something they do that and it looks like a stained glass there's a
182name for that process but um I was just there too right before I came here because they had like a welcome barbecue forom oh you were there too yeah yeah well excuse me cross I know we'll chat about this but no um but there was a I had a visit today the tour um and then I went to um uh you know Batman and what it Nightwing is it Nightwing I don't know all the characters but they were um uh having a shark tank competition and so there was that going on I was upstairs and Miss Wilson was actually one of the panelists judges so I was like oh and um and then I went downstairs uh to join the barbecue and might I ask did you happen to see uh a set of uh
183food truck competitions so it was a like a marketing campaign they they each there were about I don't know 10 or so youngsters that had participated in this um campaign around the food truck what what they're if they were marketing one what that would look like and so they had their boards actually had little miniature buses and all kinds of really cool stuff and there and you could vote on it you know so anyway I just thought there was just lots of skills as well as just creative arts in the in the picture there so it was it was a great day yeah so um which is why I didn't make it home in time to get my computer for this meeting so thank you Mr Barbera for having a handy one for me at
184any rate I think uh think thank you for that Mr Elman anything else colleagues yes we are so if there's nothing else I'd like to entertain a motion to go back into exec session briefly um where I believe we may be just getting a quick um legal uh advice from Council and also just uh sort of an up wrap up on the collective negotiations pursuant to article 14 of the Civil Service law pertaining to appsa okay um may I have a motion please miss Savage seconded by Miss Cree all in favor that is unanimous thank you um so good night everyone and thank you very much