001e e for good evening I very much apologize for the delay um and appreciate your patience with us my name is Vicky Smith and I am the President of the city school district of Alban's Board of Education and on behalf of the board I welcome you to to our meeting which of course is in person and also accessible to the community virtually I am joined uh tonight in person by my colleagues member Hassan elwi member Ellen CI secretary Dr shadar shatur Vice President Anne Savage board member Tabitha Wilson and member Demmer man also a good evening to our staff uh first uh Miss Naya timens our board or excuse me our district clerk superintendent Joseph Haw Rider uh our director of HR Human Resources M Kate th good evening and I also see Miss Karen
002Beall in the room and we have some other uh school officials with us uh from the Arbor Hill uh community school and um we will have them you'll hear from them shortly and we do have some cabinet members who are uh online virtually and good evening to all of you this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting are available at Albany schools.org booe and that the materials will be available for you to negotiate and review and we will show the slides in that virtual world as well as here uh in the meeting room and again you can access all of these documents at Albany schools.org gboe I want to make sure that those of you who are here to uh speak and uh make public comment please be sure to
003sign in that's probably already been taken care of but wanted to make sure uh that you um check in with u Miss tons uh our district clerk and with that introduction we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands for nation indivisible Justice for All okay thank you and uh now I will turn things over to our superintendent for his report yes we have uh a different uh District update and District highlights tonight because we have members of our team uh meeting with different uh community members and groups uh regarding our budget so I'm going to MC tonight we're going to turn it right over to our
004team from Arbor Hill to share some of the highlights of all the great things happening there good evening hello good evening good evening good evening to the board cabinet um and all of those in attendance I'm rosin gain Carell principal at Arbor Hill Elementary School and I'm Janet of scoy the assistant principal at Arbor Hill so we'll go over the district Vision as is tradition the city school district of Albany will be be a district Excellence okay okay withing relationship and engaging learning experiences that provide Equitable opportun all students to reach their potential the district mission is we will work in partnership with our diverse Community to engage every Learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the Knowledge and Skills necessary for Success the district goals are to increase student achievement enhance the
005delivery of quality of instruction build our leadership capacity Empower families part and partner with our diverse Community our school Vision at Arbor Hill is at least one year of growth for one year of education and our school mission is to stimulate and nurture the intellectual emotional social and physical growth of every child our school goals under student performance are to include student voice social emotional supports attendance parent involvement and engagement our community as well as social justice and as administrators here at arbit hill we hope that you see how we embrace our school mission and vision throughout our presentation so as you can see from this slide our enrollment since the fall has increased uh we now have 59 additional students that attend arboro elementary out of those 59 44 of the students are from
006out of districts other districts and the remaining students um our enl students that have joined us as of December 1st um they bring to us a in addition to our spanishs speaking students we have three more Spanish speaking students we have more French speaking students students more Persian speaking students um poshto and a new language that is a first for Arbor Hill is basa which comes from Nigeria um in regards to the demographics of our school building um our general education classes each have two sections our special education classes have uh two sections of kindergarten and the rest all have one section and we're really really excited that in the fall we're welcome we're opening up another section of SPC students in the [Music] building when we look at our um the highlights from our
007set plan one thing we wanted to uh talk about in the areas of math and Ela is that we were um one of the areas of change we're working on is increas in student proficiency um and we decided that when we're looking at the tier one data we we did not want to wait um until we had another exam to come along to fix um some of those areas that we needed support in um and in in doing so we're starting to see a lot of change and we'll get into that further as we go along with the slides um one of the things that we have done is we have um our our our professionals at the school um are amazing we have en engaged in a lot of professional development curriculum and planning
008uh with the focus on doing those things with Fidelity um with intent of of improving student um growth um we're going to be in an area of student engagement you're going to hear a lot about student engagement here at arbit Hill um we provide as you see here um opportunities um to create trust within the students and building on um their participation in the classrooms and um to increase overall engagement the other thing we work on in the PBIS and cell world is we um do a lot of self-reflection our students can identify their emotions but we're working with them on not only identifying them but being accountable for those things and to improve their responses when they're upset even though they're at such a long young age it is very important that we're able
009to address our emotions appropriately and they're doing a really good job with that so at Arbor Hill every morning we start with attendance matters all day every day you could hear this all over the building when it said and as you can see from the data that's in front of you in comparison to the last year at this time our chronic attendance rate has decreased we are hopeful that with a lot of the incentives and things that we're going to be implementing which you will hear about shortly um that that rate is going to even go down more um our students in the building continue to work on their student data trackers this includes an attendance tracker where every day as part of the announcements we will say okay take out your trackers if you're
010present put that check and um we ALS they also have um a Tracker with the NWA scores and their grades and our students are able to present that data they know how to read that data um to their parents they use those folders and those data trackers when we have our parent teacher conferences or for any conferences that we have and they speak to the data um so we just we established with the help of Mr Austin Morgan who is our attendance teacher and Jerome Perkins our homes school coordinator and attendance committee composed of our chronic students this was challenging because a lot of them weren't coming to school so we did it later on in the day when we knew that they were going to be there especially if they arrived late and it
011was very successful because we were able to find out reasons as to why they're not in school um and some of them were very blunt and honest as to tell us that they just didn't want to come and reasons why they didn't come and others you know also put it on their parents or Transportation um but this committee and it was only for a six- week trial um helped us because we had incentives for them like we provided food for them when they came we promised them a party at the end and then they were able to speak to other students and while they were participating in this we noticed an increase in their attendance so it was it was something that that really worked out for us during our assemblies our students continue to
012receive Awards and and rewards um one of the things that we instilled this year um is individual attendance awards for those students that deserve them and the class award they get a banner and now we provide goodies that our own community members have um donated to the building so we walk over to the class and we give them like boxes of goldfish and or things like that that mean the world to them we meet weekly with the attendance teacher Mr Austin Moran and that has helped us in I in diving in and identifying more specifically those students that are um absent and as to the reasons we go over the attendance letters that are sent out and then we look and track those that come back to the school which in turn provides us um
013the information we need we need to make more home visits as to why they're coming back so okay so um what you what you see here is um an example of the questions that we ask students and that in you know know influences some of the decisions we make in the building so we asked um it was about increasing active engagement activities at the start of the school day the question focused around do you look forward during those enrichment days do you look forward to coming to school so when we looked at that data um we we decided to put some some additional systems in place but we also know that there are some hindrances that I'm sure other buildings have spoken about in regards to attendance um our buses arrive between 9:00 and 9:30
014um in school starts to us at 8:55 so we are missing about 30 minutes of instruction per day um and so it this does not include students who are also Walkers or parents in cars um who are trying to get their kids to school because some of them are also late so it does present some challenges to us academically um for our students but we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the other things we've been trying to do to encourage them to to come in so our school highlights what makes our unique we are a community school um we've increased the number of vendors that service our students exposing them to activities that many had not been preved to before um so now they partake in African drumming uh they've learned
015Spanish um cooking so these are all things that many of them had not experienced before um we know that many of the schools all of the schools in our district are student centered however um in our school we are really pushing the envelope with this because we know that if we push it uh we are going to see an increase in student voice and student engagement as well as in student achievement um we pry ourselves on bullet number three because we hear it from the community members and I think Miss Smith could attest to this in regards to the great culture and climate that our building has from the moment you walk in and it's it's natural it's not like anybody because nobody knows when anybody's coming in it's just the staff is is always
016welcoming the kids are welcoming to the point that if you're there for a meeting they will make you late because they want to talk to you so much so we really really pry ourselves on that uh we have inter teacher intervisitation um as you know the best way to improve PD is when you're coached by your own peers um we have exceptional Professionals in our building who want to lift the entire building and they welcomed each other into their classrooms this started very slow because everybody's always fearful you know all eyes are on me but it has increased substantially to the point where we have many of our uh teachers visiting each other uh repeatedly throughout the year uh the next to the best buddies program and our prek through five Autistic Program are are
017are working in sync we reached out to the middle school which is north Alon Academy where our autistic students go when they graduate and we asked what is it that you guys need from us or you need to see from the students that would help them and they responded by telling us that they wanted us to work on their eye contact as well as them having um uh better conversation better verbal skills and preparing them for their future in jobs and so due to that um we we we started uh the the the students have jobs now the autistic uh upper grades have jobs they collect the envelopes that are put out by teachers uh they help us with our distribution of our one school one book uh and they take them very serious these
018jobs they um help at times with the the the food bags um and in turn what that has done is they it's made them more visible amongst the other students and they feel like they are a part of something not that they weren't but they really feel like they're a part of something and then due to that to help in that we are starting a best buddies program which is being run by one of our special education teachers a jenet teacher and a spa and uh we'll talk a little bit more later about an event that we're going to have to promote that even more so on the AC oh and Mrs I was going to talk to you about the Thematic PBIS work or I could you can go ahead oh okay it's fine
019it's fine all right so school school highlights um the academic portion um if you we spent some time um working on some academic pieces that we wanted to share um when we talked about immediate course Corrections if you look at the chart that is on the left hand side we have tier one I'm sure you've heard that we had do some tier one work with the students um which we tracked in the fall you it was approximately 75% of our students were red underperforming right and 25% were yellow um with the interventions that I'll speak about here we're now at that 50% um red and you know the yellow and the green um we're at 50% so that's a that's a really big Improvement in a very short amount of time we attribute that to
020a couple of things but one of the things that we would like to talk about is that the course Corrections that we mentioned before it's more about um we we have representation at the Standard Institute I know you guys know that many people have have um traveled there in our building we have at least one representative from every grade level who has attended standards including our coaches um and because of all of that intervention that they have had that training they have had one of the things that standards did this past year was they introduced a um a change management um change management program and as a part of that we have en engaged ourselves because we like to implement we don't want to waste money right so we Implement what we learn and what
021we did is we implemented the 90-day plan which allows us to cycle every 90 days looking at our data um and PRI and and making some immediate course Corrections um and that's where the that's also a part of the teacher intervisitation work that we have been doing um and we also we needed that intervisitation because everyone has different strengths in different areas and so we use those strengths um to to bolster our understanding of the curriculums that we currently use um in addition to that we um also track as you know our um um AC um behavioral data our behavioral data which is that PBIS piece and one thing that happened is we noticed that um in in March everyone calls it March Madness for more things than basketball but um we noticed that it
022was an uptick in our in our um behavioral data so we were in high alert for that because we've worked years to get that decrease and although 10% is maybe a small portion we like to keep our numbers at 5 6% um when it comes to behavior so what we did is we instilled a March Madness theme and every week we had a different event and activity we also took the time to do um immediate reters every Friday when there was there were a couple students who fell you know fell below their points for PBIS we did immediate retes on that um and then after they were done they were able to go and partake in whatever the event was that we had um and we did track track that on that and we did
023get you know within that um five six week's period of us continue to do this we saw a 3% decrease in the behaviors and so that also created the students um when we did the surveys the students were like we still want to have more March Madness are we going to continue doing that so when they put the pressure on you you have no choice but to continue so they do you know so and we and we did and we did so we're still I mean we just finish ending our last round I think our last round ends tomorrow yep last round ends tomorrow so then we'll it was it's a lot of work but we we we um but it was fun it was included like Bingo the whole building got involved with Bingo
024and it was virtual so you would see them you know they had their their speakers off and their cards but you we would see them just cheering you know and that I think they asked for that one again they painted canvases last week to bring home uh to moms or Guardians right they did paintwork um they just a whole SCH of things that they really really enjoy building wide Community things so challenges the next steps so one of our biggest challenge is the student academic proficiency and our goal is to have an overall proficiency rate of 70% or more and when we were looking at our data we realized our students were failing short on phonic instruction and specifically it was the upper grades that were falling short so we created a phonic lab to
025help with this um which is still ongoing and will continue to be ongoing uh we we designated um our coaches to you know help and support the reading teachers and and pinpointed on who should be part of this um and these steps like I said are going to continue through next year and another challenge is attendance you know and though we've had a decrease in the um in The Chronic attendance it's still a challenge some things we can't control like the buses but some things we can um and what we are planning for starting in the fall is we are going to have am um enrichment and it's it's what it's going to have is it's Choice clubs so it's going to be student centered and we're going to have an Ela Club a cell
026Club a math club where there will be fun activities pertaining to those topics that the kids will be involved in in the hopes that they know okay between 9:00 and 9:30 this is what's taking place let's go to school and we saw that this works with that chronic attendance group of kids that started coming to school so we're keeping our fingers crossed and our legs that this is going to pull through and we're going to see them every day so some of the successes that we won't read through all of this with you but um we do want to um acknowledge the facility upgrades that we're beginning to see um in our building um they did do a lot of lighting work we saw I mean the the gym lighting is incredible the building is
027so bright now and we already have a very beautiful building but now it's really showcasing what the building the potential that the building has had in the past so we're excited about that um and also we know that we had a lot of roof leaks um that has been fixed many times before but we actually you know have very there the the rain is not in the building um we so I mean I I do want to acknowledge that the other thing we want to highlight is one of the activities we did through Community Schools was the health and wellness Fair it was very well attended and um it it was Mo multiple agencies came and joined but the health and wellness was not only for the the kids it was also for the parents
028and we had like uh we used different parts of the building um to have different events so we had yoga in one room we had like uh cake what's that cupcake decorating um we had um painting we had different movement and we had a lot of vendors who were out there just distributing some of the materials that help them people had blood pressure taken they had Co shots um done they had flu shots done so you had a variety of things that you could do at the school to help support health and wellness so that was an exciting event the other thing that we always like to highlight is our College grow your own program that we created and that was in response to a lot of the teacher shortages that we have experienced you
029know Nationwide so um our students who come in from um all the area colleges a lot of colleges talk to each other and they try to get in but we um use that opportunity to um most of our teachers do take on student teachers um and we have students who come in for professional for the hours that they need prior to teaching and then that encourages them to come back and after they're done with their student teaching um we we um ask them to get um ta certification because you know like most of most of our college students they work at restaurants and things like that but they have an opportunity to work for our district um in their own profession which is a nice thing for them and so they they already have that
030ta certification and um we encourage them to they they cannot work five days straight we encourage them not to work 5 days straight we ask them to take at least a day off um and when it's time for finals and all that we do push you know make sure we're trying to make them responsible in that area and they um and so they have like a scatter plot of days that they come to work which makes a whole person okay so um and after they uh complete their degree as and they're so they're ta during the day they're doing some evening classes for their Masters program which our district supports that that abil that growth with the work that we do in the district for um giving them some some monies for for school so
031it all works together and then um after they're done with that we encourage them to apply and we have some several applicants who have applied through that process we're at that point now where they're starting to apply so we're very proud of that program um the other thing I wanted to mention is the two pictures that are in there the top picture represents the silent auction that we had and so when we talked about some behavioral incentives they get these golden tickets which I will definitely recognize DCS had these golden tickets and I said to Dr dos we're stealing that idea but we use it for a different purpose and um so whenever kids were doing um doing the right thing they had to come to you get a ticket if you come to school
032on time you get a ticket if you come to school you get a ticket if you have um great Behavior so we're just trying to pull them so they were all like coming in constantly that's another reason for that dip that we saw in the attendance piece and then what they get to do is um we had to explain the silent auction because it's not like a random ticket poll so they were putting things in different spaces but once they understood it they put all their tickets in the in the basket that they wanted to win and there were a lot of different prizes and um one of one of the prizes that we were one of the prizes you know you could be principal for the day you could be assistant principal for the
033day so we had to walk around and advertise ourselves for our children and and they and they loved it um so we wanted to recognize that piece because those the kids would come down and they would try to fill the the baskets up the other picture that is there is that this is like M she is so excited about this Sho I can't even tell you so we have had Turtles a turtle pond for many years in our building but this is the first time we we turt yeah see see see yeah yeah it's it's beautiful but this is the first time we've seen them lay eggs so we have like eight eggs like buried hidden hidden in there and you know the kids saw it they're like oh my gosh so we were taking
034pictures and we had to do research yeah on the turtles and prior to the the last eight eggs we had three that were laid and we told we sent out an email so the teachers could tell the kids and of course there was such excitement and if you know ARB Hill where the pond is every CL walks through it to get to the lunchroom and to the gym you wouldn't hear anything because of the eggs and they knew there were eggs there unfortunately those three eggs weren't viable and I got rid of them but then they laid eight more that are still dug up in there so we don't know what's going to happen but we're hoping that we have little turtles walking one day and it's going to be really exciting so yeah the
035next slide to so we have a whole listing there of all all the things that our students participate um in regard to equity and student voice but I'm going to speak specifically to three of them uh the third uh the second bullet for our fourth and fifth grade autism strand jobs that I spoke about earlier on June 10th we're having uh an exciting autism event where they're going to be able to showcase the work that they do to the Gen ed students so that um they will once again get to know each other more and there will be more involvement from more of the staff so we're really looking forward to that and um it's going to provide more opportunities for them and then next is the principal of the day that Mrs hero spoke
036about one of the the jobs that the principal of the day did was she did a class visit like we do and we asked her to um count and track the five to1 preventative strategy where it's five compliments to one negative and we want and the teachers did not know that that's what she was doing she just sat there you know and when she came back and she gave us her information her data we were really happy to hear that she saw what we saw is that there were no negative things being said it was just you know it wasn't even five compliments it was on and on and on and on so it was a good way for us to CL calibrate ourselves with the student though because we saw she saw what we
037saw and then the last thing is uh we've had the student assemblies the the um our assembly once a month for the longest but now we've are at the point where it's completely student run every every part of it they do the pledge they do the awards they do the mindful moments they hand out the birthday pencil they they run the whole thing and we have other grades asking now when is it going to be our terms because right now it's just basically the the fifth grade that's running it so in the future our hope is to be able to expand that to the other grades so and that's Harbor Hill thank [Applause] you I I want to thank you both on behalf of the board uh I also want to say I had a
038great visit and the turtle area is just beautiful and I I think you indicated that there was someone uh from is it Eddie's aqu Edd's aquarium do a great job and uh he found the eggs okay and he came running up to the main office very exciting and it was a pleasure to visit good thank you all so much okay thank you okay um move on with our district update a few topics uh some that we've uh spoken before and some uh some new topics to speak about uh we want to provide an update with our work with the um ncbi group uh the National Coalition the building Institute uh we have scheduled our Forum our community form will be Tuesday June 4th uh we worked really hard to make sure we could find a
039day with no conflict uh as the high school uh has already become very busy this time of year uh the update will include the key findings from the focus group groups uh and we'll also talk about planning uh next steps this is going to include reconciliation sessions with students and building uh creating the build bridge builder team of allies and so this will kick off opportunities for summer planning with the uh high school students and staff and certainly we'll follow up with our uh with our community as that work unfolds as we know the marching Falcons are on their way to France next month uh they were recently recognized by the New York State Assembly in Albany County Legislature this week uh and they have a very busy Memorial extended Memorial Day weekend in uh
040some events into June as you can see here so uh if uh you need something to do on on Memorial Day weekend and the days around that please consider um checking out the marching Falcons and if you want to learn more about their trip or if you'd like to donate or if you know someone who would like to donate you can check out their specific website we also want to uh highlight a member of our High School teaching assistant team Mr James Cheney he was recognized by the New York State United teachers uh School related professional member of the year so he was recognized by net he has worked with us since 2011 he's been at Albany High School and has had a tremendous impact on on students in our programs and later in June
041we will invite Mr Mr Cheney as well as a nicet president to recognize him here uh in front of the board and the community it is also spring Sports season they're they are winding down and what that means is it's time for playoffs and sectionals and all sorts of uh exciting times and tomorrow night uh the Albany High girls flag football team will start their playoff run they have a game at home at 5:00 p.m. uh they have uh SE or or secured the number one seed after a 10in one record and if they do win tomorrow night they will play on Monday and if they are successful Monday they'll play Wednesday we believe uh if they're successful tomorrow Monday's game is at home and we're not quite sure uh if they make it to
042the championship where the game on Wednesday will be held also our tennis team uh is in sectionals and our defending section two singles Champion Masami sisawa is 15-0 and he won his match is today and he will be playing tomorrow at Central Park in skincity and if he's successful tomorrow he'll be participating in the section two championship on Saturday in addition our track and field team uh begins their postseason um postseason quest with state qualifiers and sectionals coming up over the next number of weeks the team includes Malai young who is the number one seed in section in the 110 meter hurdles and 400 meter Hur hurdles he's also a member of our top ranked 4x100 relay team and second ranked 4x400 Relay Team he is joined by Samir Gardner who's a junior and a
043ninth grader it's his first year on the track team Rohan Edwards Grant uh are also competing in uh postseason and we wish all of them luck and that they run fast and I'd like to wrap up uh my comments with uh an update from a matter that took place at uh our monor magnet school last Thursday uh so I have a statement I want to read uh particularly for the board and our and our community so everyone understands what what transpired and what's taken place since uh so last week the monor magnet school principal Mr Powell sent a a letter to parents and Guardians regarding words and images that students Drew while playing with chalk uh at the school on a sidewalk during recess uh students Drew images of the Palestinian flag and messages that
044said free Palestine the school staff removed the drawings from the sidewalk before the end of the school day and we'll talk a little bit more about those drawings in a moment uh my staff did help Mr pow create the communication that went home to families on last Thursday afternoon our goal by taking that proactive step particularly amidst the tragic geopolitical context in war in the Middle East was first and foremost to ass assure the safety of everyone within the monor community the interest of every child and every adult in our school district is the responsibility to act in and assure that all of our schools are safe places we take that responsibility very seriously because we want to assure that every member of our school Community is treated with dignity and respect at all time
045and that was the goal of the steps that we took in regards to that matter before the images were removed from the sidewalk uh they led to some uncomfortable interaction actions among Monas students upon seeing the messages some classmates had drawn others began drawing as well and began stepping on the images and Crossing them out some students wrote USA and other students Drew images of American flags following these events monor Social Work team checked in with each of the classrooms in grades three and five who were out there during recess staff members engag students in conversations about how some messages can make people feel even when that is not the intended effect students shared thoughts and feelings from a range of perspectives some students indicated that the day's event made them feel uneasy or scared
046it's important to reiterate that school staff determined there was no malicious intent involved in these drawings and no students were disciplined in any way however we also want to notify our families so that if they had chosen to do so they could have conversations at home about how even well-intentioned messages can be inadvertently can inadvertently make people feel uncomfortable or even threatened especially on emotionally charged topics and especially during unnerving times in the days since this occurred we have heard from members of our school community and a few manasu parents that had questions and concerns about the school and the district's response I'd like to acknowledge that feedback and thank each person who took the time to share their thoughts with us we appreciate and value all perspectives that have been shared our world is
047facing Rising anti-Semitism islamophobia and hate crimes of all kinds we've seen an increase increased evidence of this in our own School District in recent years it was two years ago that symbols of racism and anti-Semitism were removed in some of our schools and we did that in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League this year as I previously mentioned we're engaged with the National Coalition building Institute in response to some racially and ethnically fraught conflict that occurred this fall at Albany High School and throughout our community we'll we'll continue this work next year and we also look for ways to extend this work to our middle schools and elementary schools we'll also continue to teach our students how to think not what to think and encourage them to use their voice on topics that are critical to
048our community and our world and we'll do so in an appropriate and safe way that takes into account the perspectives of everyone in this very rich and diverse Community we'll also continue our commit commment to training of teachers staff and school leaders and culturally responsive education and how to think deeply about the impact of their words and actions and help our students learn to do the same we'll also work diligently to communicate in a manner that's more sensitive to such matters we understand last week's email did not meet this expectation for many as superintendent that lands on me and you have my commitment that we will communicate differently again we are grateful for those who took the time to share their feedback with us about this matter these are critically important conversations for our community
049and our world our school district will continue to encourage them in meaningful safe and age appropriate ways that uphold and uplift the perspectives of everyone in our school Community superintendent thank you for that as the superintendent mentioned a letter went home a few days ago to families at montauri Magnet School regarding students drawing the Palestinian flag and the words free Palestine in chalk on the sidewalk during recess after reviewing the situation the board has crafted a statement which I will read shortly after I read that statement some board members may have additional words to share on the topic we will use our formal process for that with each board me member having up to three minutes officers will be last and the other members in reverse order of seniority so Mr Alman followed by m
050man followed by Miss Wilson then miss crae secretary shatur vice president Savage and finally myself the statement reads as follows the war in Gaza is a highly charged issue for many in our community our students staff and families come from a myriad of places and cultures hold different beliefs and have different lived experiences this is one of the things we value most about the city school district of Albany our diversity is our strength no matter what events transpire outside the classroom one constant remains prior prioritizing our students we look to the superintendent and his team to ensure that in our schools every child feels seen heard respected safe and supported that students develop skills they need to successfully navigate the world around them that we teach students to engage thoughtfully and critically with in terms
051of complex issues and that students learn to use their voice to make positive change with a deep respect for our shared diverse Community part of prioritizing Equity is creating awareness around intent versus impact the board knows that the district's response was intended to ensure that students felt safe and protected however the actions and subsequent letter had the opposite impact for some and for that we apologize we invite ongoing dialogue with students families and community members members to improve our Communications and maintain a thriving inclusive school and Community excuse me inclusive School environment rooted in a broad and empathetic understanding of the world we will be working with the superintendent to provide additional opportunities for dialogue moving forward thank you very much and now I would like to uh allow my opport my colleagues to uh
052raise questions if they'd like in their three minutes or present their own thoughts on this perspective Mr Elman yawi yes I do have a uh somewhat planned somewhat not planned statement um but I first wanted to Center this conversation um essentially by having a moment of silence um 8 seconds for each month that there's been this conflict where Jews Muslims Christians have died and um it's affected us all and it's not good so I'm going to start with that and begin by saying that I've had many tears about this and love people be you like be Jewish be you Muslim if you're a Hindu if you're zarrian it's it's all love and um I have um I have basically two things to kind of cover one as um not a board member so as a
053district parent as as an Egyptian American as an artist as a humanist who genuinely loves and sees the beauty in all people I personally found the letter distributed to montauri parents to be highly offensive and have confirmed that many of our families feel the same way and it's not limited to Muslim families it's not limited to any certain voice it's many voices who did not appreciate and like it it we viewed it as prejudice against our Muslim Arab and Palestinian students and families and as a father to to boys who are half Egyptian and Muslim and love their Jewish friends and understand what is happening in Palestine I found it extremely disrespectful especially um especially when I put my board hat on um this letter should not have been approved without board consultation is not
054a principal level letter and was written and distributed unilaterally without board approval the content and the tone of the letter was not only uh poorly delivered but it was offensive and I apologize even though I did not write it I did not get to see it I am sorry I do not put my name behind it our district families shouldn't be controlled into a perspective they do not share and it deeply disturbs me that our students were censored uh for what I can only describe as an artistically pleasing peaceful and harmless drawing of a Palestinian flag in the very cute words uh but slightly shaky lines of free Palestine and let it be known and clear that this is not the first nor the last time these two words which are not meant to be
055hateful and are recognized as not hateful that will be uttered in our schools all of our students deserve safe care love and grace thank you yes and um what did I say was next I'm I apologize damers Miss man is it possible for the next senior to go and then come back to me we can certainly do that I can come back that would be then Miss Wilson are you okay good good evening Dear Community um obviously as president Smith indicated many board members um put time and due diligence into the collective statement and so thus I didn't work on an individual statement I'm just pouring my heart out at this juncture because um just became a prized of that but what I will state is thank you um president Smith thank you superintendent Haw
056Ridder thank you to our community who have reached out or who haven't as well as thank you to board member Hassan what I do appreciate about our mission is that we start off with the affirmative statement we will work with our diverse Community not because we have to or that we're ticking a box but because diversity is our strength Albany schools is not comprised of a single race ethnicity or Creed which is evident if you walk into any of our schools or frequent the various corners of our city our chief task in addition to providing a free public Equitable education is crafting welcoming and inclusive spaces especially in light of the fact that our fastest growing populations are either immigrant or non-english speakers or both children and forgive me if this is not segueing perfectly
057may be emulating things that they see or hear in their household whether consistent with your values or not we will need to be a guidepost to understand what is right right right sorry what is the right or wrong thing to do as the adults this is our responsibility a rule of thumb especially with dealing with marginalized communities is prioritizing their voices marginalized peoples are often the first and easiest to eras tone police or silence whether deliberately or not deliberate action and strenuous effort is required to course correct for our own privileges that we may benefit from knowingly or not a best practice is in individuals and as a district should be to ask for whom this is uncomfortable for whom this is is difficult for whom this is the right thing or wrong thing to
058do for whom in our current climate efforts towards equity and belonging are seen as PC woke or things we simply do to tick a box it is our task in these times to make these efforts count to turn Equity from a noun to a verb as a board member I am committed to see our policies and practices fully aligned more training reading and exposure to Alternative perspectives marginalized voices and his historical context is needed and as a board member I'm committing committed to seeing this through as I imagine my colleagues are equally lastly deeper engagement and awareness that there is an octopus of Oppression that comprises many isms including sexism racism agism classism ableism xenophobia anti-Semitism islamophobia and Het patriarchy and Beyond it goes on and on as well as let's be mindful of student
059voice and that those voices will not necessarily parrot what we want to hear or what is easy to hear we cannot strive for something in self- select and pick and choose what is valid or not no one sets to do this no one sets out to do this and that's what Grace tolerance patience and empathy are essential and then closing dver diversity asks who's in the room eity responds who's trying to get into the room but can't whose presence in the room is constantly under threat of eraser inclusion ask has everybody ideas been heard Justice responds who ideas whose ideas won't be taken as seriously because they aren't in the majority I am deeply apologetic and we will work together moving forward we are all lifelong Learners thank you Miss man are you wanting me
060to move on or you ready so I I I just wanted to say that I truly appreciate the uh comments made by the superintendent this evening um I'm in total agreement with um our um uh Collective response that was read by um president Smith um I um and I hear my colleague Hassan um and so uh what I like about our district is that we're able to have these kinds of conversations and do this work and we're committed and I know that we will continue to do do better thank you and Miss C I believe you next thank you I want to thank the superintendent for the thought that he's put into this speech and the thought that he's put into dealing with this situation thank my other board members for working together on that
061collaborative uh speech that uh president Smith gave and thank the members of the community who have communicated with us and the members of the community that have come out out tonight to talk to us about this I apologize if I sound a little discombobulated we only decided as a board to have individuals speak themselves in this rather than just to speak in the one statement fairly recently so the disorganization my response does not reflect uh my feelings about the importance of this this has really been a seriously bothering me since I heard about it last Thursday um students right to free free speech and expression is very important to me we do have a student personal expression policy uh that as per students First Amendment rights makes it very clear that as they say students
062do not leave their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse door when they enter the door and they have the right to express themselves with verbal and written Communication in any media including arts and drawings as long as that does not cause a substantial disruption or materially interfere with school activities or the rights of others and it's clear to me that making a drw of a flag or making a making a statement uh drawing a slogan free Palestine is not that kind of substantial disruption it is not interfering with the right of others what I did what I did not find out until fairly recently because it was not included in the original letter was the was the activity of children that were stomping on other children's drawings I found that shocking and hateful and I
063would find that to be shocking and hateful whether that was stomping on a drawing of a flag of Palestine stomping on a drawing someone else had done a American flag or stomping on a drawing of a flower or self- pit portrait that's really that is sort of that is the sort of expression that is affecting the rights of other students and I'm very surprised that the letter was written in such a way to to imply that it was the drawing that was the offensive action and not the children stomping on drawings as opposed to the children drawing us Flags in response which is more that's the sort of appropriate response in discourse um I believe that we should be working with our staff and working with our community to make sure Free Speech continues to
064be valued as well as expressing things in appropriate and culturally diverse manners I do not feel that that the I do not agree with the sentiment in the letter that messaging that may offend any members of our community is never acceptable I believe there are often certainly some people are offended by Pride Flags some people are offended by black lives matter we we certainly cannot censor speech that might have the capacity to offend people and I want to make one more quick statement that we need to get other people other people's voices involved not just the ADL and the National Coalition building Institute but also organizations that have Arab Muslim and Middle Eastern nor North African voices uh to express their concerns about islamophobia thank you thank you Miss Savage I excuse me Dr shitur
065pardon me again um I don't have much more to add from what my colleagues have mentioned uh the beauty about our district is that we are diverse and with diversity it brings different challenges which are diverse in themselves and I look at our RCT as a family and any family has disagreements mistakes happen we have to own our mistake learn from our mistake and move on and unfortunately in this case the it was the adults perception of what was going on in my opinion was a mistake and that the tone of the letter was not appropriate because it conveyed even though the intent wasn't there the intent of the letter was not what we perceive the perception is what it what what comes through and and that is where we made a mistake uh if
066if I had seen the letter before it went out it wouldn't have gone out as as my other mode members I mentioned uh so for that we apologize U but again let's take this as a learning moment and make sure that we we learn from these things and we improve the professional uh development for our staff or ourselves our our kids have these these conversations which are about complex the world is a much more complex uh world that and the world we grew up in and these are hard discussions that we need to have amongst ourselves our kids and prepare them for the better uh so I'll leave it at that thank you Dr chature Miss Savage so like others have said I'm not sure what I can add I'll just try and say it
067in the words that mean the most to me so I appreciate so much the thoughts of the superintendent of my board colleagues I definitely stand behind the joint board statement and and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work on that with this incredible group of adults who commit so much to this District sorry I've known many of you for 20 years you know that I have given wholeheartedly of myself for this district and our students for that time and I do that because I believe that there are very few places in America that are as well situated as we are to build incredible citizens it is not many communities where we have the level of people with different experiences different cultures and different perspectives working and living together every single day in
068our schools I have learned so much and grown so much from all of you and all of you over the last 20 years I'm a totally different person than I was when I moved here in 1999 and that's what I mean when I say Albany the diversity is our strength we are truly making each other stronger by being together that's what I believe but it's really hard and it doesn't always go as planned it absolutely requires space and room for students to express themselves and to disagree with each other we all learn the most when we're exposed to new things and we have the opportunity to engage with those new things in a trusting environment and I know that's our District's goal we have worked so hard on that for so long using many of
069the techniques that the superintendent referred to looking at the history you can see that that commitment is clear and demonstrated but it's not always the way we expect it to be and despite the commitment we can make mistakes and in this case I think it's clear that in attempting to ensure that students felt safe and protected the result was that some students felt unseen and that's not okay and I think where are is what Dr an Angelou said do the best you can until you know better then when you know better do better and I really look forward to working with the superintendent and his team to do better by engaging more broadly with our diverse community and thinking harder about how our messages may be heard because if there's one thing that we should
070all have learned by now even with positive intent there can be hurtful impact and only by having more voices at the table can we better align the intent and the impact and that is a step we need to do better at together thank you and thank you all colleagues um I I really don't have uh much to add here I stand by our statement as well and um I do share the sentiments of of my colleagues um I will say this in that um you know one of the things about all of this equity and diversity world um and I sometimes wish there were other names because it just I don't know I don't know we just need other names but um what what concerns me always is we certainly know how to we're very
071smart people and we know how to write the language we know how to say what we want to you know what we believe in and where we want to go where we want to take our youngsters it's hard doing it um I wish it wasn't um but it is work to get uh ourselves in the place of one where we have meaningful discussions and I will be honest with you as a board um there are many many issues that we have not spoken deeply enough about and it isn't just anti-Semitism islamophobia uh you know other things it's racism it's LGBT issues it's gender issues um we do this and I'm not sure we do go deep enough now I think this situation uh reminds us of that work that we still need to do as
072as individuals as a collective and important more importantly as a district um so it is and that is not to say that there isn't work going on in all those levels but this you know I keep saying to myself in my 65th year here does it have to be another 65 years like when my daughter's turned 65 and we're still in this same place of where we are not able to uh coexist to be kind mostly to be kind to be sympathetic to be considerate um we are really living in a time of such disrespect and dismissal it is just mindblowing um and so I want us not to be a part of that um I want us to be different and I know that is possible because we do do it um but we
073need to be much more aware and conscious of it and and more uh I think Collective and less self absorbed and focused so um I um that that's really as much as I want to say and I want to uh thank the superintendent and my colleagues again and we have much work to do um and we will do that during our tenure on the board and I do hope that we are uh down the road able to get um you know uh to fill seats with a more even more diverse group group of people going forward um and so um that that's going to matter and make a difference okay so colleagues uh I do want to um uh stop oh I'm sorry Miss Wilson is there oh open question yes so I at this
074point I want to open up questions and we will move into the public comment period but I want to make sure that you have some uh have your questions uh for the superintendent on the rest of his program uh presentation okay thank you go ahead Miss oh excuse me I'm sorry that is not correct I'm I'm going to try to stay with the formal format all right I'll come back to you um Mr alwi any questions for the superintendent on uh other matters that he raised or presented tonight no thank you president Smith um Miss man well I'm glad to hear that we're continuing our conversation with ncbi I think the next form is on Tuesday so that's wonderful um and secondly I know we don't respond to the um the school presentations but I
075sit on the facilities committee and it was wonderful to hear from um the uh wonderful principal at um at Arbor Hill Elementary School that um the the lighting is bright and they've been brought in on conversations about um what's going on around uh about the school in terms of um upgrades Etc so absolutely and please don't forget the AC because that has been a big big issue and we have done a great deal of work and investment in that building as we should and I'm proud that we were able to complete some of that this year yep I agree okay uh Miss Wilson you are now on sure my question was was about ncbi as well and I know that we have um more developments to be discussed but I'm just curious if there's been
076any sort of um insight into ways to incorporate the community more for example for years I've sort of highlighted that our homecoming would be sort of um enhanced by the present of our community members and I'm sure if there were people tailgating on Washington Avenue that would have like a calming effect perhaps on the traffic so I'm just curious if um there's any sort of insights at this juncture about things like that incorporated the community and its um impact on school culture yeah I know that there are going to be recommendations to that effect uh around school culture and climate and um uh be able to turn some of those uh ability to generate ideas to um not only the students are participated in the focus group but also various uh student leadership clubs so
077I think that will be touched on on June 4th um let's see Miss Cree thanks no other questions on the presentation tonight thank you you're welcome Dr shatur no questions but just a comment I want to congratulate all our teams and I wish them all the best for all these competitions that are coming up that's great thank you and U Miss Savage nothing okay there we go thank you um and we're we're good to move on uh Miss Wilson I was just also curious if the M marching Falcons are all the students covered and if not how far are we from the goal I believe um they're really really close to the goal that was um identified by families in terms of their um comfort level in terms of paying and I know uh the
078group continues to receive thousands of dollars each week and I know that has been over the last number of weeks an additional push to try to close that Gap but uh talking with Brian Katy the the director he feels very confident great news thank you very good uh anything else colleagues once twice okay very good we will move on um I wanted to now is the time that we um we set aside to hear from members of the public and I want to greatly again thank you for your patience tonight um the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making um I do have a number of sort of uh I don't know instructional things to read but I would like to have the uh and we have three speakers
079at the that have uh come forth tonight and if you all would come to the table and uh if you want to take two at a time or one can sit here one can sit here or you all three of you can come up up and I want to make sure I uh pronounce the names uh properly Karen Carelli okay you may come forward Barbara Smith also come forward and Mark michler great and uh while you're doing that just give me one minute to go over some uh protocols if you will uh per our long-standing policy the board sets aside up to 30 minutes of each meeting to hear from District residents parents students and other members of our community if there are more comments then can be ACC accomodated in 30 minutes we may
080choose to extend the length of the public comment period or alternatively to establish a second public comment period later in the meeting also important for our community to know that we accept comments in writing uh also through virtual live participation and by voicemail comments that are not in person must be made at least six hours prior to the meeting to give us time to collect and verify them as needed uh those written comments must be limited to 400 words and voice mail comments to three minutes and tonight we do have uh I believe uh five um yes five uh U members of our community who submitted public comment forms and we will uh as board members uh take turns uh reading each of those uh letters and uh we do read them in their entirety
081uh we also ask that comments uh must include the commenters name and place of residence and we do not accept Anonymous comments for those of you you in the future who would like to submit a voicemail or written comment for a future meeting we encourage you to submit excuse me to review uh the section of the board uh on our website called addressing the board and that is available at ALB schools.org forward booe and that will give you the instructions on how to participate uh we do ask all commenters keep in mind that information about individual students and specific staff cannot be shared uh this is a violation of our project privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be aired in public um and for
082that reason as we read uh statements we may uh pass over or substitute alternative words uh in place of individual names as as mentioned uh we will eliminate those names and descriptions also from recorded voicemails uh and one other additional note uh please keep in mind and again this is for those listening to uh please keep in mind that public comment is not necessarily the best place to First Alert the district to a concern that you may have we ask that you share those concerns first with relevant staff such as teacher or principal if you feel that concern is not addressed adequately you may appeal to the person's supervisor up the chain of command if necessary to the superintendent decisions made by the superintendent may be appealed by the board um each of you now
083uh at the table will have three minutes piece uh secretary Dr shur will give you a signal when there is one minute remaining and I believe a 10-second U also notice as well um if you're in the middle of a uh final sentence we will try my best to make sure that you're not cut off um so um I think I have uh Miss Carelli did you would you oh excuse me one other piece I'm sorry thank you very much uh my little sheet here I forgot one other thing um I want to uh also uh have everyone understand that we as a board will not respond to your comments um in public um if you would like for us to provide a response or there's a question that you have that we uh you
084know that you'd like for us or the superintendent respond to we will do so but we will not do so in the public meeting okay so thank you very much and uh Miss Carmella you may begin all right thank you my name is Karen carmelli I live in Albany I'm the mother of two young children a four-year-old and a one-year-old so I apologize but after my comment I'm going to have to get out of here um last year I tried I entered my daughter into the universal prek Lottery she did not get in I entered her again into the universal prek uh lottery for the four-year-olds with montor magnet as our Top Choice she did not get in again but I will keep trying maybe third time is a charm uh montor magnet was our
085top choice because its mission is to quote from the website create and support the development of a responsible and culturally diverse community of individual Learners the school's mission statement goes on to say quote it is our belief that the mutual respect exhibited between teacher as guide and our Learners results in Greater student confidence enthusiasm and achievement I would say recent events have demonstrated a failure of adherence to that mission I am Jewish my grandparents survived the Nazi holocost in Europe as school AG children by the time my grandfather was 13 years old he was an orphan his father younger sister and mother were all murdered as an adult living in Israel he was often invited to speak to students about hisory Story of Survival and it was my greatest honor when he spoke at my
086fifth grade classroom The Motto never again was instilled in me by my grandparents and growing up in Israel a country of which I am a citizen and in in Israel it was repeated often but Israel's latest genocidal acts in Gaza that have displaced over a million and killed more than 34,000 demonstrate a failure of adherence to that mission too never again means never again to anyone and that is why I've been a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights my entire adult life and it's The Motto by which I choose to raise my children children in Gaza have borne the brunt of this horrific genocide hundreds of thousands have been displaced tens of thousands have been orphaned over 14,000 have been killed and thousands have had limbs amputated many without anesthesia as Israel continues to deny entry
087of Aid trucks to the trapped population I watch these Horrors unfold on Instagram res on my phone and I try to Shield my children from the graphic images but as a family we have decided to live by my grandfather's motto and we are compelled to act that is why my children have attended dozens of protests against this genocide in Gaza with me over the last seven months including two at our nation's capital and in those rallies and marches surrounded by thousands of people waving Palestinian Flags en chanting free Palestine I know that I as a pro- Justice Israeli Jewish woman and my children are safe as my children grow I will teach them that our safe and freedom should never come at the expense of anyone else's that there is nothing anti-jewish about saying or
088writing in chalk free Palestine just as there is nothing anti-white in saying black lives matter would an email have been sent to All parents if that slogan had been scribbled in chalk I still hope my daughter can attend montau magnet next year because I know you do aspire to create a community in which diverse responsible and compassionate conversation can take place and where students can be nurtured to help this very broken world I sincerely hope Mr Powell apologizes to his students who did nothing but embody monor's Mission thank you and I just want to say that my sweatshirt says Palestinian children deserve Joy thank you thank you I sorry my name is Barbara Smith I'm a resident of leam New York but for 20 or 37 years or so 38 years I was a resident
089of the city of Albany uh I used to come to school board meetings uh on a regular uh basis uh some of you know that because you have been on the school board that long and some of you have never seen me before uh my profession is teaching African-American literature women's studies queer studies and I've been doing that since the early 1970s so I'm actually a teacher too my most recent position was at the College of St Rose now sadly closed um I don't see this as an issue of diversity I've heard you speak about the situation today and I appreciate everybody's sincere commitment to trying to alleviate and to alter a situation that was handled very badly but this is not about diversity as far as I'm concerned and I also heard very little
090said about what's going on what would motivate these children to write free Palestine on the pavement of their school why and why did they draw a Palestinian flag um when the history books are written uh however many years hence into the future people will look back at this time and they will ask the same kind of questions that they ask at other points of human history when ethical stances divided people from those who saw no ethics and had no care about what is going on and as I said the fact that you talk about diversity but very little I heard a few comments about what was actually happening uh to actual real children and adults in a place called Gaza and in the West Bank that's what needs to be instead of T you know
091bringing in diversity trainers or whatever why not curriculum about the history of the region and that history did not start on October 7th rest assured um so so suppose that some children in some long ago time in the city of alany or elsewhere wrote Somewhere maybe on a slate with chalk you know not on a sidewalk abolish slavery now that would probably make some people feel unsafe particularly slaveholders what if somebody had ridden any time from the post civil po period until what right up until yesterday sto the lynching some people would feel uncomfortable about that what about free the Scots boys if you don't know who they are look it up what about closed the Japanese interment camps I find it really offensive that children knowing what is going on probably to relatives family
092members and to people much like them wrote free Palestine and they were the ones who were reprimanded and as one of our the board members said not the children who stomped on those uh words and stomped on those drawings but the kids who wrote them in the first place thank you very much thank you even Mr M would you um hit the button with the person oh it's on now oops there we go there we go thank you okay um good evening board members uh superintendent and and other staff um thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight um I did send a letter um which I hope somehow becomes part of the record I'm not going to read that letter um and you don't have to read it if if you were
093going to read letters that you received um but I hope you have read it each of you and there's a few points I want to make and um one is to emphasize that um the only thing I can understand about what happened uh at montauri is that somebody believed that there was a particular group that has some sort of privilege that comes from I don't know where and that there was concern that that group was offended or insulted or might be discomforted by um a child writing F Palestine and that that that at its core is is inaccurate because the group that I think people were trying to make sure was not offended uh were was the Jewish community and it is shortsighted inac accurate and does not reflect an understanding of the Jewish community
094in this country to think that the Jewish Community needs to be privileged in a way that no Jewish child uh can risk being possibly made uncomfortable um when there's a genocide going on and it's also inaccurate because the Jewish Community is far from monolithic and I support the district's uh work with ncbi I think they do good work I would urge you to completely disassociate yourself with the Anti-Defamation League this is a group that does not believe in any real way in diversity they don't believe that everybody has a voice they don't believe that everybody has rights in fact most of their effort is spent attacking other Jews who disagree with their position on Israel they are not they do not come with a clean slate they do not come with Clean Hands and I
095I think the school district should absolutely stop working with them um I I think that I mean I was when I first saw the principal's letter it it hit me really hard because all I could think about and and and at that point I didn't know who the children were who had written on the sidewalk I've since uh found out to me it could have been anybody my kids you know if they were Elementary School age now just like Karen's kids would have spent the past seven months going to Rally after rally after rally for Palestinian rights it could have been my Jewish kids I one minute or 10 seconds oh my gosh um could have been my Jewish kids um who wrote that in fact as I understand it was a Palestinian child and
096I think that that just makes uh the superintendent said no student was disciplined which I appreciate but students were absolutely stigmatized and stigmatized publicly in a humiliating way even though their names weren't mentioned and I think that that is absolutely atrocious I appreciate a lot of the sentiments that board members said and I just hope that um the board and the district will in a deep way work with the broad section of the community to move forward in a way that respects um Palestinians Arabs Muslims and Jews who don't agree with perhaps the mainstream Jewish Community position thank you thank you Mr micheller and all of our uh commenters tonight um uh again not specific to addressing comments I do want to um acknowledge that some of the work and again I I needs to
097be ongoing uh but the some of us have uh had conversations really with everyone who has written in to us and commented as well as some of the um organizations that uh are out there that are speaking on these topics topics uh we know that we need um your guidance your support and particularly when we're talking about uh ways in which to to communicate with youngsters about and talk with youngsters about historic events and also uh where there might be uh conflicts or uh or disagreements um but I do want to just thank all of you everyone who has um been uh providing us with picking up the phone and uh giving us uh some insights um there are a few commenters uh who did submit uh forms I would like to have those read
098um now I miss Cree I was going to start with you because it's a it's a one one off um you know it's not on this topic per se um but I I want to go ahead and have you do that and then we'll go around to the others thank you sure thank you I'm I'm going to be reading an email from Aaron Waterhouse my name is Aaron Waterhouse and my daughter is a student student in the Dual language program like other schools her building is located on a very busy street and we currently do not have school crossing officers there have been near misses with vehicles and illegal dirt bikes that do not obey the speed limit stop signs or crosswalks other students have multiple Crossing officers and some even have police officers at
099crosswalks as well how do some schools have multiple Crossing officers and others have none how is this Equitable we are working with the APD to try try and get the appropriate coverage to keep our children safe but at this point they are at the mercy of Drivers School staff are doing their best to get the kids safely across the roads but they are already stretched thin and while the city has been putting speed humps on other roads they have not put any in the school zone around the building to try to keep vehicles from speeding through Additionally the electronic speed sign on L Street has been broken since the program was moved into the building and parts are so difficult to find for such an old piece of equipment there is no date of completion
100available to get the sign working I have contacted almany traffic engineering about replacing the sign which would seem to be more cost-efficient and expedient I understand that these issues are controlled by the police department but I feel the board should be aware of an ongoing safety issue that is affecting our students and I am requesting any assistance possible to help fix this issue before a student is is before a student is injured trying to get to school our kids are also ending another school year with no playground as the district strives for equity for all students we hope next year we'll bring our school a little closer thank you for your time and assistance Aaron thank you Mr alwi I think you have the second one there okay the second letter um is written by
101mahak jam and it is um signed by the Albany Muslim advocacy Coalition Al Aram Center for Saratoga Al Fatima Islamic Center aldea Center the Islamic Center of the Capital District um the iccd and mid of Salam in Al it states dear superintendent Hawk Rider board president Smith and members of the board the undersigned Muslim community's right to you today to express our dismay at the montauri magnet school Mont montau magnet school's handling of its students drawing a Palestinian flag and free Palestine with chalk during recess the montauri magnet schools School administration's interrogation of these students immediate eraser of the drawings and strongly worded letter to parents is wholly tonedeff at best and willfully discriminatory at worst by emphasizing the school's commitment to tolerance and inclusivity while singling out students who dared to speak up against
102the grain up against the grain School Administration has shown hypocritical discrimination the signatories of this letter are Grassroots organizations and places of worship dedicated to empowering the voice of roughly 50,000 Muslims in and around the capital region advocating for justice equality and understanding for all part of our our Collective mandate has been working against the censoring of speech or actions in support of Human Rights and speaking out against anti-muslim rhetoric that has skyrocketed these past few months anti-Semitism also on the rise and abominable has been weaponized to silence criticism against the Israeli Administration our community is buried under a tsunami of grief we are bombarded with images of our relatives friends brothers and sisters in faith being decimated each hour many in the Muslim Community and others who support Palestinian human rights have been expelled
103from schools fired from jobs blacklisted from future jobs evicted from housing simply for daring to speak out against the brutality of the Israeli War in Gaza when our governor flies the Israeli flag or the Empire State o or over the Empire State Plaza or the Empire State Plaza is lit up in blue and white to celebrate isra Independence known to Palestinians as the NECA due to the forceable displacement of 750,000 from their homes there is no thought given to how those actions may be hurtful or exclusive for a school that is meant to represent Alban's beautiful beautifully diverse cultural fabric the Aly montauri magnet school has grievously missed the Mark we urge you to do better to represent your entire student population We Stand ready to assist in providing more inclusive messaging and and support
104to your stakeholders thank you and uh Miss Savage do you have the next I sure can so I'm going to read a letter now from TAA silly dear superintendent Haw riter and Albany Board of Education last week I read an article on CBS news about a letter sent to All parents of moneri magnet school regarding the actions of students who wrote fre Palestine and chalk and Drew a Palestine flag a Palestinian flag I have since read the letter in full as a parent of a former monu magnet student a former member of the monu diversity community and awarde by the city of Alban's Commission on human rights I'm deeply disturbed by this letter although the principal claims to be upholding a school environment of Tolerance and inclusivity the letter and the actions by the school
105described within it are far from it children are becoming aware of the atrocity that is happening in Gaza where tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians including children have become collateral damag our brilliant young people have been able to get to the heart of this situation in a way that some adults have yet to access that killing innocent families is wrong for some who have loved ones in Gaza this hits even more deeply students need a place to express their grief and outrage and to have the adults in their life wrap them in love as they do so these children innocently with chalk in their hands were using art as an important tool for expression and instead of being embraced with compassion their art was immediately washed away and they were publicly shamed in the
106form of the email and later in the news further the letter seems to insinuate that the message free Palestine or the image of the Palestinian flag is inherently offensive or problematic Palestine is a nation it is a nation of origin for many people in the capital region and many students in the Albany City School District All Nations have the right to sovereignty Palestine has the right to be free and children should have the right to express that if they so choose this should not be offensive and does not imply anti-Semitism or any other form of discrimination finally I'm concerned about the precedent this action is setting for the rest of the school district and as the capital of New York the ripple effect it could have on the entire State I request that the Albany
107Board of Education make a public corrective statement I also ask that the board give clear directives to the school district so that a situation like this does not happen again additionally I recommend continued professional development on equity and inclusion for mon staff to truly embody and enact what that means sincerely to Ena asil and uh Miss Wilson are you up next are you ready okay good the following comment is from Jennifer Marlo I'm a parent of a third grader at monor Magnet where on Thursday May 9th chalk images were drawn by students on the sidewalk including images of the Palestinian flag and the sentiment free Palestine the images were quickly removed and a team of workers addressed the classes I do understand that the issue of the Israel Hamas war is a challenging one to
108address for any school or any District but do feel we need to improve our response and be better prepared in the future for I'm surprised that this is the first incident but cannot imagine it will be the last I have three points concerns I'd like to share one per District policy 5225 student personal expression students do have the right to freedom of expression as long as there is no material disruption to the school's educational process there is certainly no evidence that these images were which were created during recess and outside of the school in classroom created any kind of disruption to the school environment and it seems the Eraser of a Palestinian flag could be interpreted as a Viewpoint discrimination it follows then that we need a clearer protocol for how to handle incidents relating
109to Israel and Palestine or at least more careful adherence to our own policy two it appears that the district would benefit from having professional development for staff and teachers on this fraught and sensitive issue I agree that the individual families need to be discussing this with their children and the incident last week that open up a space for having these in important conversations at home for all of us but if the students are bringing to school then there is a need to to some specific training for how to handle this in a more sensitive manner lastly I'd like to request an apology be issued to the family or families whose students were involved I'm concerned about the negative message that the immediate eraser of the chalk images sent to the children and their families in
110the school who are Palestinian and have relatives in Gaza we need to be creating safe spaces for multiple perspectives to be heard the email sent around to families felt like it foregrounded the lives and feelings of Jewish students over those of Muslim and or Palestinian students I appreciate you taking the time to review my concerns and ideas thank you Miss man okay this letter was written by Noel Gentile I am a former Albany City School District theater teacher and a parent of a third grader at montor Magnet School I am writing with great concern in regard to the school district's eraser censoring and ultimately shaming of a 9-year-old who created a chalk drawing of the Palestinian flag with free Palestine in quotes written alongside it as an Arts educator for 18 years I always strove
111to create opportunities for my students to understand that their art their diverse voices and perspectives and their actions can change the world it is disturbing to erase the expression of a student who is aware of and deeply concerned about the atrocity currently unfolding in Gaza and then to publicly shame that child in a schoolwide email Palestine is a nation of origin for many families within our school district neither the Palestinian flag nor the calling for the freedom of Palestinian people are inherently offensive or anti-semitic it is the right of all people to be safe and free as it is also the right of all children to express that students Express themselves openly only when they know that they will be respected despite any differences that might occur as Educators we should be working towards Building
112Bridges of understanding and always seeking mutuality within our desire for a better peaceful and just world for all this level of censorship in an elementary school sets a rather scary precedent there were many missed opportunities to process the trauma that students are experiencing there is a clear and urgent need for districtwide continued professional development on equity and inclusion I will end with my child's letter quote I believe that saying to free Palestine is not harmful nor intimidating or offensive my friends have wrote this because there is a war going on I feel that not a lot of people understand that Palestinian people are losing their Community we should not be silenced we are trying to say that we want peace and a ceasefire it is the wrong thing to erase their artwork instead you could
113have kept kept it and they could have added on to it and learned from it they made it with their own hands and that is Art I also want to acknowledge that I still saw USA quoted Pier quoted they did not erase that I hope now you understand why we're doing that end the war close quotes that's it thank you Dr chatur this letter is from Leila novakowski I'm writing about the letter sent home to monri Magnet School families regarding chalk drawings of the Palestinian flag and free Palestine written on school grounds principal Paul's letter was an attempt to sensor SCH student of expression and to erase pal Palestinian identity and allyship from the mon Community he cites MMS as a place of Tolerance and inclusivity but it's apparent that the sentiment doesn't exent extend
114to Palestinian students his use of the terms offensive and intimidating read like many headlines flashed across a news outlets seeking to diminish Palestinians Arabs and Muslims as scary and violent their mere existence in offense he could not be more wrong the term free Palestine simply means wanting Palestinian children to have access to food and clean water to leave with to live without fear of being killed in a d strike or have their home level to ensure the safety of their caregivers and family to want the Palestinians to be able to travel freely throughout their country without military checkpoints and arbitrary arrest to want functioning hospitals and safe places for mothers to birth healthy full-term INF infants free Palestine is an expression of love and solidarity principal p is setting a dangerous precedent is a Palestinian
115family permitted to display their flag at Mont Multicultural night are any countries involved in past or future conflicts barred from celebrating their culture because their identity might be deemed offensive is alienated and devalued an entire demographic of students Principal Paul anyone involved in that uh impulsive and poorly worded letter owes everyone an apology as a parent I'm always urging my kids to speak up against Injustice I know all many schools often Trout the same principles so why in an instance like writing a simple message of solidarity would we certainly stifle them the series District of Albany has done a poor job in supporting our Muslim Arab and Palestinian students the district rightfully so put out a message in support of those affected after the tragedies in Israel last October I have not seen one message
116of support for students who see gruesome images of kids just like them being slaughtered by the Israeli military I'm a parent of two Arab American children and I'm traumatized by what I see and and the support for the crimes against humanity that our nation's leadership blindly upholds if you stand if you truly stand for equity inclusiveness please be consistent thank you good thank you so that concludes our public comment period I again want to thank everyone who uh commented uh in person virtually um and in writing and encourage you all to as a community continue to um comment on the decisions actions that we've make um uh or anything that we're attempting to do your input is valuable and appreciated um and again thank you all for for being here tonight and submitting comments okay
117and uh now we have um see routine consent me one second here apologize I seem to have lost a page it's okay um so this is a time where we do um set aside now um an opportunity for excuse me that is not correct where we uh are making decisions of on contracts and other routine matters um yes so that includes things contracts field trips uh Personnel HR matters and so each board member has an opportunity to review these items uh prior to our meeting and uh we tend to vote on those things as a uh straight forwardly without uh much comment however each board member is able to set aside any of those routine consent items in order to require separate discussion and vote on that item so I would like to uh ask
118my colleagues here with with that uh I'd like to entertain a motion to adopt the routine consent agenda I have uh Miss Man seconded by Miss Savage thank you Miss Savage are there any SE asdes yes Miss Cree thank you I have two set acides I'd like to set aside E4 field trip Margarita Resort and e16 Center for Applied Linguistics okay very good are there any others okay seeing none uh all it excuse me hold on sorry all in favor of of adopting the routine consent agenda minus E4 and e16 um I have it yes may I get that um action okay and that is unanimous and uh those that passes all of those items except for the two now may I have a motion to adopt item E4 Miss Wilson second Miss man is
119there any discussion Miss Cree would you like to start us off sure uh regarding the Margaritaville one I just want to say this is actually a field trip for the Health Sciences class to the NYU Grossman school of medicine for doing some simulation training um it sounds like a wonderful trip and I know that they've gone in the past but I did have a concern about the lodging it looks like the estimates the three quotes for the lodging and the information were gathered by a teacher rather than business staff or the travel agency that we've been working with it doesn't look like there was any attempt uh just just from the the quotes are presented with tax which school districts don't pay on lodging so I wanted to make sure that an attempt was made
120to try to find hotels that were more in keeping with the uh the government the the Government rate which is $258 and at the $500 a night quoted I know sometimes the rooms can be more if they have four students in a room uh but but uh it would be great if we could use our travel agent to do that so I'm definitely voting for the trip but I'm hoping that we can find rooms that are a closer to uh the NYU school of medicine because the hotel they're booking is about 2 miles away and also closer to the government limit that's all thanks yes Dr shatur so one of the things with this I wish there was more uh what what the students were actually going to learn there's no details in this uh
121presentation of the the the paperwork uh I actually looked up what in New York Sim was and I figured okay because the description talks about training of firefighters and stuff so how does that relate to our students is what I wanted to see um in terms of the uh hotel rates I actually looked that up too because I found that a little uh strange however uh if you look at those rates are close enough in the fact that uh when you look at the of the resort fee being waved that works out about $40 um which would be normally charged so it works out about the same so I'm not as concerned about that in this case anyone else on this topic um I have a question did you want uh do you and Ellen
122want any comment uh or information from the superintendent on your I'm fine I'm fine I'm I looked I wish that it was already presented so anybody retrospectively looking back at this contract would know what's being understood okay okay and Miss CR you okay no no I'm fine I just wanted to point out this was added a little late otherwise I would have submitted my questions in writing but and I just and I just wanted to let the public know because the title of the field trip looks a little odd but this is to NYU Hospital for Medical Training thanks you got it you got it okay thank you very much uh so um let's see so we'll go ahead and on this one are all in favor of adopting E4 that is unanimous and passes
123thank you okay uh may I have an excuse me a motion to adopt e16 and again that is having to do with the Center for Applied Linguistics Miss Man seconded by Miss Wilson uh is there any discussion yes I had had a question about this one which I had submitted in advance and uh thankfully thankfully we did I we did get an answer today on that from Miss McKenna but I did have follow-up questions about the contract amount because it looks like from the revision it looks like the net cost of the Consulting has changed as well as the travel costs so my question was whether the revised contract amount of $33,150 includes the revised estimated travel costs because it's not clear from the form yes Mr Caris um yeah so on I'm going to
124try to get to the page in the revised contract that has it listed but in a different spot so it's there I I saw that because if the revised contract amount includes the travel costs then the cost of the programming went down by $2,000 but if it doesn't include the travel costs that the cost of the programming went up by $2,000 but it the programming cost went down in addition to the travel costs I'm looking right now on page 26 they have travel cost for two facilitators at 4,48 because if the if the 33 includes the travel costs then the net cost is 29,000 but in the original contract the net cost was 31,000 maybe we could I don't know what the I can't remember what the time frame on this one is but I
125know we're meeting next week would it be can may I move to pull this and until next week until we get those numbers straighten up I'll get so the only the only challenge there is that um this um group is coming in to do professional development on Tuesday so we would have to approve it as a confirming order next week I see yeah okay um is uh Miss Cree would you like to make that motion and also just ackn I'm acknowledging Miss McKenna's piece thank you Miss McKenna I would like to make I would like to make that motion to pull this and do it as a confirming order once we get the numbers correct okay and colleagues may I get a second on that Miss Savage and all in favor of that motion did
126I see everybody's hand that motion to table this and make it a confirming order in which case we would vote on that at our next meeting okay that is unanimous Dr Shure oh I'm sorry Miss Wilson no so that yeah yes I'm sorry yes uh in confirming order we are going ahead with the activity with the professional development and all we're doing is um making uh the decision to vote and approve that that at the next meeting I'm very sorry for that okay okay that is unanimous and Carries thank you thank you Miss McKenna okay uh I believe that concludes our uh routine consent agenda and up next my apologies here yes um we have um Miss Beal and guest um I just and I know that the colleague with you is Miss Jennifer and
127I'm forgetting the last name oh my gosh how could I forget that thank you Miss Justice and good evening to both of you good evening Board of Education um feeling a little somber after um tonight's topics uh but I am looking forward at the same time of having a little celebr option of my department and the good work that they do um so I am going to drive the um presentation but I might let me see how do I do this no there we go I think that's it proud of myself there we go Al righty so um this is the division report on curriculum uh instruction and professional development and as you've stated I'm here with my colleague Jen Justice for this presentation our Mentor coordinator and our professional development person uh extraordin all
128right we've beautifully heard from Arbor Hill the vision mission and goals so I will not repeat that and these are the division goals really around instructional supervision curriculum development and implementation and professional development which I'm going to speak to uh more as we move on so I will keep going this is um a list of my department St staff these are the instructional supervisors the content supervisors they do amazing amazing work um with our teachers with our leaders with our coaches and have really grown our um content in a way over the past eight years that we are fully staffed that is um just been incredible and I'm going to highlight some of those things tonight um in instructional supervision just as Miss McKenna and Miss Brown said we have a you know structure for
129check-in meetings that's once or twice a month depending upon the uh the person we have a standing agenda we always speak about their goals uh and their progress with APR to make sure that we're getting those tasks done and then we talk about the walkthroughs that the content supervisors do and uh and then the leader and assistant superintendent items that come up in our meeting we meet quarterly as a secondary group we meet monthly as an elementary group and that is my folks with the appropriate uh assisted superintendent and so that gives that vertical alignment we are responsible in our department um for leadership support we our job is to support the principles as um they are leading the buildings uh so we work together with um our Prin principles at various meetings that take
130place and then the walkthroughs which I will speak more about on another slide instructional coaching Falls in my department um and the supervisors supervise those folks we have a lot of coaches that have been with us for a long time they do just um amazing work with staff right at the uh ground level and then the common planning time is uh is supported by both coach and and our supervisors are as well our supervisors are coach they are also instructional coaches um so the walkthroughs and classroom visits uh my the people in my staff the supervisors they work collaboratively with building L uh leaders in this uh they have goals that they're looking for right from the beginning that are uh established collectively they do paired and group walkthroughs um or classroom visits with those
131building lead ERS to um to just sort of see how the instruction is being implemented they engage in frequent walkthroughs uh as I just said to measure that curriculum implementation they get Trend feedback that they talk about in common planning time we leave quick Post-It note feedback um we do some more intensive feedback at times and and this informs our PD uh the supervisors so far have conducted 723 classroom visits and 288 walkthroughs in this school year um which is really quite a number um and that is either alone or with others uh but that is the work that they do their work is to be in the classrooms as you know we have a curriculum implementation plan with a fiveyear cycle of review PE and health is in year one of the cycle of
132review I believe we are pushing that presentation to August which I've been trying for June we've got off track for the last few years but I do like people to be ready to go next year it'll be year one for uh Career and Technical education and also English as a new language so those are two um sort of different kinds of departments that we will see uh the work that they are doing when we get to this time next year we do ongoing revision and curriculum just as as we teach and learn um we revise we've got some new and some phased in standards that we're still working on computer science um our full implementation of the science standards World Language uh really raising that awareness to have um uh oh the expression is uh
133from the world language group is they have a term that they're using but really what it is it's about speaking it's they are getting away from a um the grammar and the focus is on can you communicate in this language and it's a shift uh for our teachers and it's really been fascinating to uh be on that Journey as they are shifting and as that uh shift in the world language program is happening and then of course our next gen math and Ela is we're still in that with the full implementation and the new assessments coming up the web page is really comprehensive as you will see oh and I actually wanted to add something I think on this one I wanted to let you know that we um we engaged with Hudson Valley this
134winter um the Sunni system and the community colleges were um working on alignment about where the college and the high school and the university and the High School courses uh belonged and the Community College really sort of has first um rights to deliver those courses that's kind of their rules or their um codified in their in in the Sunni system so we worked with Hudson Valley and it was very exciting because we did switch a few courses over from um uh Sunni Albany to Hudson Valley and Sunni Alban's well aware of of this uh change so some of them were just simple changes uh doesn't kids still get the credits and so on and so forth but what I'm excited to report is that we have brought on many uh accreditation for college and the
135high school credit of additional courses so we were at five with Hudson Valley which was not great and now we're going to be at 24 for fall of 2024 so we have three or four that are still in motion but 20 of them are solid and ready to go so it was a really wonderful process I had a weekly or bi-weekly meeting with Hudson Valley and we got it done so they just want to let you know about that um we we are working on our social justice integration into the curriculum um you've heard us speak about student voice you hear that from everyone that uh all the principles that come forward with their presentation that representative texts and topics uh the research units with social justice themes you know about the one book one
136school at elementary that's been pretty clear but we this past year really tried to do something at the secondary level and that uh took the um the form of having authors come in so we had Jerry craft come at the middle level and uh kayn Bayon at the high school and I actually think she might be there tonight I think um she was supposed to be there a month ago or so and then she uh got postponed but um and that and then we bought the associated books so to distribute to not all kids but kids that were um interested in actually the Jerry craft we got for all the sixth graders um and then literature circles the 1619 project that's embedded the Seal of Civic Readiness I'm going to speak a little bit more
137about but um that has been uh that partnership with our community- based organization is have been amazing these are views they give you a little bit of information it's a percentage so I I I did and you know the four cores clearly are going to have the the most views it's the most teachers but I did go back and look at the numbers and I want to say on average it it indicates at the secondary level that is that um we have a teacher views the curriculum about once a week which is uh sort of an you know uh appropriate getting in looking at seeing what's needed and moving from there we also do professional development and I could not do this work without Miss Justice um we have plan with goals we have uh
138four PD days um we've taken one for the the conferences we're doing the half days now um makes those half day PDS a little awkward but we're working some things out with that I do like to try to show you when I can this crazy schedule that we do um I don't think I'm going to be able to get it to come up oh you know what it's in the background let me see how good I can how good I can do what's that yeah there it is yeah so here is and if you got had a minute and you want to take a look at this this is um it's intense I showed it to my daughter she thought I was pretty cool she said wow Mom this is some schedule um so we
139really try to uh meet the needs of individual teachers and I also wanted to let you know that we're doing a little different thing um Tuesday and that is our staff college fair and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes but we have seven colleges coming on the May 21st PD day uh we're having the um Empire State University Hudson Valley Malloy University Sage colleges Sienna College Sunni Alban Sunni newps and they are here to speak to staff about careers in education whether it's um t as a TA or a teacher and I will can speak more to that um when we get to those pages let me come back here I love how this is working is going pretty good all right and oh the uh out of District
140conference management I do want to point out that my office has processed 443 conferences to date this year and that is compared to 271 last year we have had a lot of grant money and that grant money is often uh targeted and identified for um professional development so there has um been a lot my I'm afraid my secretary is going to leave and become a travel agent um but uh she seems pretty satisfied with the work that she's doing and she also does an excellent job that's Lisa um we do PD surveys as a matter of course these are our results they tend to be pretty M pretty much the same but we feel they give us the information that we're on target we share comments with individual PD providers and then I'm going to
141turn it over to Jen um for these next couple of slides so as you know our mentor program has um taken off because we have a lot of new teachers and a lot of people coming into the district from other other districts um in 2003 the New York State education department adopted the regulation that required that all new teachers have a mentor and we are fortunate in Albany to provide mentorship for any new ABA employee that comes in which is really a selling point because it means if you're a social worker a nurse or a behavior Specialist or you know one of the uh non-classroom professionals you're going to have somebody Hold Your Hand guide you through your first year and mentors get paid to stien to do that um it's a strong program it's
142growing this gives you an idea of the co year obviously compared to the other years we're at about 173 I think we actually have three new teachers starting over um we had one yesterday we have one Monday and and then we have one on June 3D so we just keep adding and I I do want to mention that Jen when uh Jen visits with every single new teacher when they come in on that first day or two to try to help them acclimate to the new environment she really provides on the ground service to the new teachers in addition to their mentors we wanted to take some time to talk about the teacher certification uh Pathways um this is a changing landscape of what of uh how this works so we are um we are
143supporting teaching assistance we are supporting substitute teachers teach um substitute teaching assistant and even community members the Boys and Girls Club YMCA um to talk to them about ta certification or further uh regular teacher certification we are trying to tap into that audience that is right in our district and we've been doing that for a few years uh We've run Jen has run workshops she's um become quite a certification expert because what ends up happening with these folks is there's also uh there's um often alternate Pathways that uh can be taken to certification they're not a traditional 18-year-old kid that's gone four years of college um we're helping people you know who might have bachelor's degree but no teacher Ed we're helping people that are seeking out those supplementary or extension certifications um we we
144have those in enl we have those how about this one CTE education and so uh there's been it's been very challenging to find CTE teachers particularly at the middle level and we've been thinking about well what about CTE education as part of we have CTE agric an agricultural teacher now um so we're expanding from the traditional fax and Tech we're exploring these other areas um I think actually Jen is working on her CT education because she wants to know how easy it is to uh access and it's seems pretty good if you're a teacher it's it's pretty simple to get and so that was one of the things we thought well if if we could have a CTE um education professional in each building for the Middle School you'd have the equity piece because everybody
145would have one we could have a you know new teacher club or something like that after school get kids excited and then when they come up to the high school they could follow the CTE pathway and end with a TA certification and if they want to go on to college they could they want to come home and work with us they can um in the Summers and on their breaks and continue their education and then if they just want to get a job right out of college or high school because they're not sure what they want to do we would have someone that from our community in our buildings so we are working on a multifaceted plan about how all these threads come together um and but at the same time it's a little bit
146of a work in progress so there's these we have the traditional programs that we've always had but we have had we've have some now some non-traditional programs and partners uh we're working with the Clarks Clarks and teacher Residency program this is a grant that's coming from the Department of Labor it is funneled through us um and we have four residents we have one resident this year four residents scheduled in 2425 now keep in mind there's different rules they're they're they're getting different kinds of money even it's not even it's wildly wildly disperate um and uh and they have different things they can do so the residents cannot sub but the interns can sub and these are students coming from the same program so keeping track of these things is pretty interesting Empire college or Empire
147university has the talk the teacher opportunity Corp um we did two out Outreach uh meetings we had 125 invites uh with a dozen staff at each um we don't have talk participants now I I'm I put that sentence in there because I was thinking that we did but this is really our year to build it up we hoping that we'll have four at least we can have up to nine I think for um are you sure that we have one for sure one one one for sure was accepted into the program for the fall so far but it's kind of an ongoing rolling admission kind of thing so we're still working on it and you want to speak about the Staff College Fair a little bit more uh so the college fair came together uh
148for a lot of reasons obviously we need enl teachers and we have people that are seeking their supplementary certification that as well as special ed and they're not really sure how to do that and it really is an individual kind of thing depending upon what courses you took in under grad or graduate program so it makes it it's just it's kind of a crazy Pathway to do all this and stay that is not helpful in a lot of ways when it comes to the teach website um so I spent a lot of time sitting with people and talking to them about you know well did you know did you do this did you do that how do you do the workshops and how do you get all those things in um Ken Ziggler I owe
149him dozens of oatmeal raisin cookies um and he's coming to um the the teacher or the staff Fair as well just you know he said that's the moment that's when you get people when they want and they have that little bit of interest in their sort of whatever and those are our high near needs areas so we're hoping for that um boys and girls club we've invited some people to come from that I have a former student that I really hope comes because she's interested in teaching so it's really a wide range of people yeah and uh we also or you may know that Sunni Albany has uh picked up they are going to pick up that uh P6 certification so because with st roses uh no longer H being here and we we need
150that Elementary certification program and also Malloy University um they have very robust online program we met with them last week they too may be uh seeking to implement a P6 uh certification um program um so we're exploring and capturing and doing but I I am committed to getting the um the actual written plan together while we're uh doing this work we have uh I plac student teachers we were low this year um than in past years but we're hopeful that that's going to increase there's some grants that I'm involved in as as everyone knows I do the district calendar I have Athletics I'm not expanding On Athletics today only because it's a a area all its own um and a couple of highlights and then I'll we'll be done uh the social studies and World
151Language I was so excited because I sat in um about half of the Seal of biliteracy presentations there were 22 seal presentations we have never had that there are generally about four so that was super exciting we had one young man that did it both in Albanian and in Spanish and uh yes so that was incredible 13 seniors will be awarded a seal at this graduation um yeah really good stuff took a while to get off its feet but um we're getting there uh the Seal of um uh Civic Readiness um Bob has informed me the the presentations are happening most of them will be I guess on June 6 he's anticipating about 100 students being awarded the Seal of Civic Readiness at uh graduation and then in addition um we had kids go and
152meet with the court uh Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sodom Mayo mayor I think I said that right there were kids from various high schools in the area we had two or three from no actually I think there were four students that met virtually with the justice and I have to tell you that the um Zoe vulmer who I happened to see in her seal of biliteracy presentation a few days prior she was one of the kids Chosen and her um question made it on the uh New York State Bar Association sort of press release her name was in there with her question so I thought that was really cool and these are the kinds of content opportunities when you have administrators in charge of content they can open up doors stem you know a lot
153these North Albany we we did the Arbor Day planting I don't know a month ago um we've uh the grades four through seven science fair which the ladies are insisting that everybody is participating in we've got the ISS program to for space uh sending the experiment in Space the steminist summer program for both Elementary and secondary and then all our Community Partnerships um with radics the vegetable project Etc I mean these are really wonderful ALB goes green these are wonderful Partnerships um that has expanded children's ACC access to stem activities and Fine Arts I you know yes we've got the 50 to 60 regular concerts that we do probably every year but then on top of it we're at the Food and Wine Fest we're at the mayor's reception we're at impact we're you know
154we've got parades we we did the superintendent conference and then we have programs Galore our summer arts program visiting artist murals we have uh Partners a a um with the Albany Symphony Orchestra coming into the buildings um and then uh the kids went up to spa and saw sort of a the theatrical musical performance this year uh the muralist from ALB Center gallery and 21 art shows for students 21 amazing so um that's it superint tolded superintendent told me to be brief and I wasn't I'm sorry but uh but it's really um it's really great when you see uh this kind of output from the department and the enhancements that they're providing our students that's us this is great thank you both very much for being here tonight and and presentation fabulous um I would
155like to see if my colleagues have any uh questions comments um Mr Almani would you start us off please so um I'm so proud of our students and the national recognitions that they receive year after year and um it really puts a spotlight on what is great about our district you know that we we care about the Arts we care about music um we encourage students to learn different languages we're trying to get people on board to teach our students and you guys are finding all kinds of programs and ways that get new teachers in the fold and I'm I'm really happy and um like super satisfied CU you had you know me mentioned somberness you know this is really the opposite this is super happy and super um good news so thank you and
156I also love that you highlighted the 21 art shows it's fantastic I think um we have the best artists in the state I've seen some of their I've seen some of their stuff in the regional art shows and like I I had a school visit and popped into one of the art classes it was phenomenal so thank you thank you Miss man let me I was reading a text from the email anyway I was reading an email that was school-based and uh I got distracted but here we go there is no shortage of proud moments when you present and uh on the tail end of uh a somber topic this was well received so thank you Miss Wilson hi I was just curious uh as far as the mentorship program can you elaborate on the
157type of um training and support they get to be mentors and to ensure success uh we offer a training in the summer and so we do have people that come to that we've probably done maybe maybe five six Summers um if people and there are a large chunk I became the metor coordinator because I took uh the certificate of advanced study through Union College that was a grant through the district there was a whole bunch of us there was probably 80 people that were trained formally in that matter and then many people that do it on their own um a lot of people go to the greater Capital Region teacher Center Alexi Ryan is still doing it and she's Fab um and I if they don't do it I try to meet with them ahead
158of time and do like a little Min training but we have a lot of mentors that have been with us for a very long time and you identify like basically veteran teachers I assume like people have been at it for a while so not always but mostly we occasionally have a situation where like right now we have a lot of new school psychologists so in order to meet that need we have someone that's non-tenured but she came from another District so year three she's kind of figured things out in Albany and she's got the experience so that's that's how we try to do it very good um and uh let me turn to miss Cree uh thank you for the presentation it's exciting to hear what's going on and I was particularly interested in all
159the things that you are doing with the teacher certification teacher certification Pathways because I know one of our biggest issues is getting qualified people in the classroom that really want to be here in Albany so you're doing a lot of work toward that you did kind of touch on the issue of not having enough CTE teachers at the middle school level and this is probably really oversimplifying matters but if we have more than three CTE teachers is there a way to sort of move them move them around to put one in each building or are there other other issues at play here that prevent that we have discussed that um it is a little bit of a logistical Nightmare and um to do and I know what you're saying so that if we have one
160business teacher can the business teacher go to each of the three middle schools you know for or maybe at least a semester here and a semester there and we've talked about that kind of a structure but we haven't gotten much further than that there's um there's some uh sense that uh PE I don't know what all the resistance is but yes it's been discussed it's definitely an idea that's out there um we'll see what the future holds so which which school lacks a CTE teacher no everybody has CTE teachers it's just that they have different contents oh okay so not all three middle schools have all the same exact program thank you so much yep great thank you um Dr shatur I two questions really uh one's really easy and the one's budget related so
161would you prefer to that I hold the budget later or okay the easy question is what is MLP I'm guessing it's a leadership program or something I know what AP is MLP I wasn't aware of MLP MLP that was on one of his slides uh I think it's my learning plan the are you talking about the evaluation system for leadership oh MLP oh yes that's what it is thank you m MLP is the evaluation system for nonpr it's mppr for principles it's m LP for non principles those are of that abbreviation yes can I ask my budget related question so in our budget we have in all the extra positions that we are hoping to involve there's one that was a TOA for music uh what is this person going to be doing we um
162actually Kate and I just completed the job description last last week um and we sent that down to Kate and we're going be prepared to do the um the posting I think it's really going to be a combination of a coaching position uh to get around to the different buildings uh work with our uh our music teachers and those kinds of things maybe troubleshoot at that building level it's also about all those concerts um and maybe sharing the burden not they're not a burden to go to but maybe when you go to 55 in a year you might want a little bit of a break so it's it could be a shared responsibility to um provide Su you know not supervision but just to be a presence there um and provide support for our music
163teachers as they're doing that great work um then there's also some logistical stuff with instruments I mean it's amazing because Kate has Mini Cooper but she runs around the City with her cellos and violins and um so we you know so there's that piece there's some inventory pieces and and making sure that our instruments are staying in in good order and and and just managing that so we have quite a long job description and I'd be happy to share that with the board if you'd like to have me put it in theu or but yeah great presentation I mean so many positives you know and then this is the time of the year I enjoy because you're getting to see these graduations you're going to see these cele ation these concerts and you're right I
164mean there might be 55 concerts but when you go to each one of these events it's the passion that comes through the the staff you know they're passionate about what their students are doing the students are happy in presenting the parents are happy in seeing what these students have you know they they gone through the painful process of getting them to that point and now they hear their kids you know presenting and everybody's enjoying it it's been great so thank you great thank you uh Mr Savage so I think several people have said this but I always love this uh presentation because it really gives us a sense of the things that are happening throughout the curriculum and in particular getting to see the growth and change in the curriculum over time which has been
165pretty significant in the last 10 years that I've been really paying attention and in particular I wanted to honor and recognize the commitment to social justice throughout the curriculum I know that was really intentional starting a couple of years ago about not just sort of like let's hope it happens but like let's put intentionally social justice throughout the curriculum so I recognize that on one of your slides and I just wanted to thank you for that commitment and thank our teachers for taking that on because it is a uh complex part of their curriculum but so important in engaging our students and really committing to them so that was my comment and my question I wondered if you could just talk a little bit more about um the multitude of efforts you're doing to increase
166Staffing and increase the support for Staffing well um Miss Wilson stole my question about mentorship which was really helpful and I appreciated that so I wondered instead if you could talk about barriers to transition from ta to teacher it's something that comes up from time to time that it's like an extra challenge because they have a job and how do they move from this job to that job without losing their health insurance and make sure they get their hours and all of that stuff and we're always pretty confused about that topic and would love to be smarter about it so one of the things that we did Karen mentioned we met with Malloy College last week they have an online program what I have seen in talking to a lot of people in that situation
167they're missing so sometimes it's someone with the Bachelors that needs the core credits and they don't know how to get them and before maybe two years ago I approached Margaret mlan at St Rose and I said can you package 21 credits for the people that just need that because that is really what the barrier is then they could get into a classroom start teaching you know the retirement starts to roll and they could figure the rest out and it didn't happen so Malloy talked to Karen and I about possibly down the road maybe doing an online program because that's also the key piece if you can do that for the working moms the T that they can sit at night when their kids go to bed and and do it online so that that's one
168thing um I think the other part is um finding the workshops that that are affordable for people to do which there you know there a lot of there most of them you charge for but right now there's a um the mandated reporter one is free so that saves people 30 bucks we talked about having an in-house daa trainer because if we had that then we could offer that as you know a package deal um it's it's pretty complex um I went to the Dasa training maybe a month ago to see what it was like because I was thinking can I get my CTE certification in education and then maybe I could feel like what it's like to be on that end of thing um and the daa trainer stayed on with me afterwards and she
169said I'll meet you for coffee anytime there's not enough people in this area to do the daer training so how do we get that rolling and I also spoke to to our friends about it like do we want to do that from the union you know get an ABA member to do it from the ABA office not the district or how do we work on that um Joe and Karen and I and Jim Laura um Fred and Joe Slicker we went to a leadership conference I said oh I we call him super Jo super Jo anyway um so we and we came up with some really great ideas and that's the plan that Karen's talking about there's so much out there right now that we're trying to grab a hold on and try to come
170up with like a real plan to do this and so far I mean I've met with I come back to the office like twice a week I have another ta I met a subta today and this is what she needs and I have um a young woman I'm working with at North albony right now and she was all day long texting me I finished this Workshop I finished this Workshop a lot of people just don't know what to do so when you know we have a one pager now we send it out do this Workshop do this it's like an order of things so um we're working very hard to get as many people as we can that's super interesting and I know it's complicated and stated does not make it easy does what you
171just describe deal with this hours question that I'm always hearing like you need to get like how that's the part that I'm trying to figure out is there something we could do hours that's entire so there are two things and this is the biggest question I don't me interrupt I just want to make sure that my question is clear that there's something about you have to have so many hours in the classroom before you can be a teacher to jump from a TA to a teacher you have to have so many hour you you only need so there's a student teaching requirement yeah however if you have 40 consecutive days and Kate has been great about doing this you can get that waved through stay dead so if you're 40 consecutive days in the classroom
172as aary as a sub but you can't be an absu member and a sub right you have to resign from your absu position to take that sub position that's the part I'm always confused about Kate's going to jump in I I thought okay you don't have to resign from your position um there is a there is a provision in the appsute contract to pay you out of title pay if you are asked to cover for a classroom teacher so if you're asked to cover for a classroom teacher for 40 days we can use that in the te in teach for credit but for a formal program and I think this is what you're asking an is um have we had in the past a TA I think we had a hall monitor who needed their
173nine weeks of student teaching and they do at that time they had to take a leave of absence um we and which meant their insurance would be suspended um and I've asked various questions um at the assistant superintendent meeting that I go to um about that what are other districts doing for staff that internal staff um and I think it's a very gray a area how districts manage that because SED is pretty clear that student teaching they're not pretty clear they're very clear student teaching cannot be a paid experience however having said that I think that there is a shift that is happening now we're seeing it um you know for example in some of this paid work the Clarkson uh stien I think is a 30 I think it's a $30,000 that those individuals
174are getting their student teaching half the day the rest of the day they're either working on their college work or they're you know doing other observations so there's a sense that we have to find ways to financially support people and these Endeavors uh Empire's doing at a lesser scale um they're they have some money that they're getting folks that they could help people but suspending the health insurance is is a challenge and um and I think that's when and I know with I've yielded my time but I just want to say if it if the district can legally cover health insurance for someone who is in that temporary position where they are no longer an absu member that would be in my mind and this is I'm just one board member it's not a directive
175we already have adopted a budget but I would like the district to consider increasing our commitment to our insurance cost like if it's legal to give them Insurance even though they're being paid as a sub we could do that because I hear frequently that that's the challenge is people can't give up their health insurance it's too big of a risk um and too big of a challenge for them so that's that's sort of like where I'm going and thank you very much for the information I was going to say that's only if they're in a formal program and that's that's part of it that's why that 21 credit is important because I talked to people about that as well if the college is of course want you to pay for student teaching that's part of
176this whole puzzle very good thank you um I um I'm not sure I'm going to try to pose this question but I'm not sure I'm looking for an answer this evening um because it does relate back to the topic or the incident that we were just talking about at the beginning of the meeting um but when I saw the the social justice integration the curriculum uh it it just made me want to know a bit more about what that looks like um and how we uh present the material how do we engage students um and how do we you know get to the different and varying views and so forth um so uh you know I try to stay in my Lane as a board member but on some of these topics even 169 these
177are these are and racism and all those things they are Global issues and so I just want to try to have a better understanding appreciation for how that work is embedded in the curriculum and also delivered uh in instruction so maybe at some point and again I am one board member this is not a mandate um but I'm sort of wanting to uh look to some answers in so that we can help move uh all of us to looking at some of these issues uh and concerns that we have um and more deeply duly noted um I think I would talk for another half hour 40 minutes I'd have to get call Jen hulahan phone a friend get her here to talk about some things uh but I I I know what you're saying I
178note what you're saying and um perhaps we can give you a taste of that in in an sbu maybe break down a curriculum unit or something so that you can see how it it lives in the classroom thank you very much for that um colleagues is there another go around and I'll come back around um Mr elwi no thank you okay um second Miss uh Miss ban I do not miss Wilson no Miss cring thanks I figured we were being more formal so I'd save my second question for the second go around um my question was regarding the professional the you mentioned in the professional development uh that were up on our conferences since we've got 443 conferences a year to date we do have I know we have in our policy that we get
179an annual report on the conferences but but we haven't had that in a while so I don't know if it would be helpful to do that like going forward at the time I don't know if it would be more convenient for you to do that annual report at the time of this annual presentation or if there's a better time to schedule it so that it does get done every year but if we could get that you know I don't want to say in your ample free time because I know you guys are extremely busy but when you when you can that would be wonderful thanks and just not more important than getting it is finding a time to put it on the schedule so that it gets done automatically thank you thank you um let's
180see Dr chur okay Miss Savage I just wondered if you had a hypothesis about why our student teacher numbers are down because that seems like an important pipeline that it worries me that it's not as full as it as it usually is well I do I I will say that um for example you heard Arbor Hill they have their program I they're the teachers that they're funneling through I I have a separate list for them they have completely self-managed this piece in their building it's really amazing uh there's a teacher there that and Her Name Escapes me but she does it all she's wonderful and we talk every year in the beginning of the year when she's getting uh folks set up so some of those kinds of you know people coming in for observation
181hours whatever but I do know that that has been um more a consistent number and it's not and I'm thinking I'm hypothesizing that during covid we somehow got the kids that were in programs or the people that were in programs through that awful year and then it was the next year and then it was really a weird experience again and then there seemed to be this sort of um where we were you know unfortunately so and it's Collective effort chasing people away from our profession which is a terrible thing because of you know a and some of the some of the the yeah there's just an a a lot going on and I I think that um I'm wondering if students were not in that pathway in that 2021 2122 which would lead to their
182uh fourth year all right I'm ready to do my student teaching or I'm in my Master's now ready to do my student teaching this is for the traditional program so I don't know if in those traditional programs it they've lost people too I mean that's some of the reason your hypothesis is that it's not an Albany thing it's an industry thing oh absolutely there the and let's speak to miss th I mean it is it is it's tough to to find folks and we have to find a way to to show people that this is a an honorable and meaningful profession and that um that where people can be respected um and there has to be you know sort of there's a culture change around the teaching profession so we'll see what happens okay thank
183you and um I think um I think we're are we good folks so miss Justice M pel I want to thank you both very very much um always a great presentation and thank you so much and sorry for keeping it the late evening here um okay and I think uh up next um we're going to be t uh having a budget update Mr Caris will join us the table good evening um so this is probably the last budget presentation in front of the board prior to the budget vote on May 21st um and I'm sorry that I was tardy today we had two additional presentations at 6:00 and 7:00 uh one was at the Arbor Hill library and one was at the Pine Hills um neighborhood association so I will move forward with the presentation
184as always uh our Guiding Light or Northern Star is a district vision mission and goal um highlight of the budget proposal it's a no tax levy um second year in a row fourth time in the last nine years uh we are maintaining all the current programs and Staffing um and so it will support additional Investments to maintain key distric initiatives and provide opportunities for our students need students needs and deserve sorry uh we still have our pre-day I'm sorry our full day prek program in our 12 elementary schools our three Magnet Elementary schools and our expanding dual language program our band chorus Orchestra starting in the third grade which is unique to school districts as it's one of the youngest grades for districts to start students in our community schools at uh Arbor Hill Clement
185gfin Myers North Aly Skylar Shar and prep and toast it also supports the social emotional um supports our behavioral specialists psychologist social workers our intervention positions um math reading Ela our marching Falcons our 65 athletic teams um which I found out tonight we have our girls flag football quarterfinals tomorrow at 5: um S I had to say that um our AP IB University and the high school CTE Avid career Readiness programs at the high school our theater emble um and as always we want our culturally relevant teaching and learning practices uh the budget also has 25.6 new positions the new feeder program for the north Al midle school will be complete with this upcoming budget or the upcoming school year with 6.6 new FTE uh we also have five additional special ed teachers for growing
186needs for our students um and then I'm just going to highlight one more the human resource staff member that we looked for in this budget where this is a a exciting position for us for Recruitment and help to recruit diversity in our Workforce um this is one of my favorite charts thank you an um and it shows from 201617 where 49% of our um budget was comp was made up of property tax or from our property tax owners and 42% was from state aid as you can see in this upcoming budget that we're presenting 38% of the budget is made up from property taxpayers and 53% is coming from state aid so you can see a nice shift from relying more on state aid rather than the property taxes on this slide here you see
187the expenditures mesch revenues for this upcoming budget present or upcoming budget um a zero difference and a 0% tax levy increase um in this slide it's the nine years prior with a 4 z% tax levy increase asks with this upcoming School year as well so with an average of 79% uh for contingency budgets or if this budget is not approved we have three options to put up the same uh budget for another vote present a revised budget for another Vote or adopt a contingency budget if we did go with contingency we would decrease our budget by $126,000 but we would have to um ask our community members to pay for whenever they use our facilities that normally don't pay that is one of the biggest things with the contingency budget we' also have to decrease
188some spending on student supplies and some other things that are outlined within the regulation so on the ballot uh proposition one is the budget proposition two is to ask our community members if we can open a savings account and that's just to open a savings account for a capital project Reserve that may be funded later this is just to ask to create the capital project Reserve uh proposition three is to purchase two 10 passenger vehicles um at a maximum total cost of 140,000 this would also be offset by upcoming state aid uh reimbursements for transportation cost so at the end of the day for these two buses or these two Vans um it would be about $30,000 that the school district would actually pay for these two vehicles uh proposition four is to purchase the
189parking lot on Spruce Street as near Academy Park um the cost would be $170,000 we currently lease the lot for $221,600 per year so after eight years this um investment would pay for itself because we would not have that recurring cost uh Board of I'm sorry Board of Education Election son Elman elwi sorry yeah I apologize um is running for re-election there are no other candidates uh on the ballot uh open public library proposition number five uh is their budget there's also three Library Board of Trustees positions up for election I think there's 12 candidates that are running for those three seats for more information please visit the alyu library.org or call Stephanie Simon um for the 21st for the vote day we have 15 locations Citywide the polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to
1909:00 p.m. we do have one new voting location voters in the eighth Ward districts 1 through 4 and Ward 14 I'm sorry the 14th Ward will vote at Steven and Harriet Myers Middle School located at 100 elbow Court off whiteall road at you to be at Maria College um if you would like to see where your voting location is you could also go to our website at Al schools.org vote put in your address it'll tell you where your voting location is um we did have this year the new opportunity to vote by mail you still have an opportunity you just can't ask for it to be mailed to you at this point the last day for a mail and ballot to be mailed to you was Tuesday May 14th you come down to Academy Park
191at this point pick up the application fill it out and then you'll be handed a ballot um you have until May 20th at 400m to do that you could return your ballot by May 21st by 5:00 p.m for it to be into the election or into the vote um so we have added a few things to our budget calendar uh the super super Joe and I are going to be on a virtual Q&A session uh we had one today we have one for tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. one on Saturday one on Monday um the link is right there on that screen it's also on our website it's not a presentation but um we will be available for any questions that are within the budget or the budget presentations or any kind of voting questions you
192have again we had uh two presentations tonight along with this presentation and then we have our vote on May 21st more questions very good um Mr Alano any questions for Mr Caris um so essentially just wanted to say thank you for uh your due diligence in getting all of the meetings to the public out um on our budget um I am also super pleased with the status of it in terms of um taxes and in terms of where our priorities lie um so I'm excited to um you know see how the city votes I you know I know I'm the only board member or the only member um up for reelection and it's an honor to sit on this board with the folks that I'm here with today and I will do you know my
193best in making sure that I am a good board member I also want to reiterate like I last last time I reiterated that um it's important to have other folks um you know with multiple opinions and diverse you know um essentially uh perspectives on the board we can't all be on the board forever um that would be almost um it wouldn't be it wouldn't be helpful let's just put it that way we couldn't do it I couldn't do it I know I couldn't do it um as was mentioned earlier there's you know 10 20 30 plus hours a week um it's a lot of work and um yeah I'm I'm super excited to see what happens with the library trustee vote it's uh if you haven't already uh witnessed or watched their um U their
194program for the NES I would highly encourage you to it was really eye opening and useful for me so thank you thank you Miss man so as I shared in our last uh board meeting uh this is a budget I can get behind and I've been able to just speak with confidence to um my neighbors and other members of the community so um so thank you I would like to piggyback on um on my uh colleague um Hassan's uh statement um uh this is an exciting election we're voting on a great budget um we have a um uh uh one board member running and that should be pretty exciting to see the outcome of that um and um and we have the library um the library trustees up for a vote so um this is
195very exciting thank you Miss Wilson I'm ball set for questions comments I would just like to urge everyone to visit our website for information about how to vote as there are new methodologies and ways for more people to participate and I'm hopeful that would increase participation great thank you um Miss Cree I thank thank you so much for your presentation i e Echo what my colleagues have said um it's exciting to see 12 people competing for three seats on the library Board of Trustees and and not only will we have not only will three of them be successful but we will have I view them as we will have nine potential Board of Education candidates the next time someone the next time one of us chooses not to run for re-election um but my qu
196that which I strongly encourage anyone to do it is a very rewarding experience although it is very timec consuming my question for you is what's the turnout what what was the turnout and what are people asking uh the Arbor Hill Library there was I think four or five in the audience but it was also recorded so that it could be um distributed that way it was a little earlier at 6 so the Pine Hills neighborhood I'm going to say 12 to 15 people um now it just good questions about the the vans that we want to purchase um what we are going to do with the Vans uh they asked a couple about the positions that we're going to put in place um but very good questions and they also I asked them if they
197had any followup questions it was kind of a I want to say I want to say rushed but it was kind of a speedy presentation that they would reach out to us as well so it was very good questions about FTE that were're adding um the property taxes we had to explain that what we can control um and that's about it thank you for taking bre in you've always been really knowledgeable for our questions about what is actually going on the nuts and bolts so thank you for your ambassadorship to the district thank you Dr Shu first and foremost thank you for doing all those neighborhood presentations uh it's no small task I mean making sure that we go we take the our voice across the community and reach out to people offer them uh
198virtual options and what have you so we can can engage with the community and and going back to the the question about the uh Vans I that came up in a couple of presentations so I'm glad that today you mentioned that these are reimbursable it's just that we we have to put the money out first and then be reimbursed by state to 80 to a dollar something like that right Transportation So eventually that even even though it's going to cost us 140 to buy the Vans it's the in the eventual prices like as you mentioned 30 or so and then we are also doing CT programs where we are teaching our kids to uh do the oil changes and things like that so when it time comes to fix these vs and keep regular maintenance
199that's another option for us uh my question uh is actually a couple of days ago ni said came out with a news releas press release saying that uh the state was putting uh $34 million for upk funding and we were going to get 1.26 million uh is that is that new money for us uh so did they finally hear our our advocacy for Equitable prek funding that we've been doing for all these years or you know we because we were putting in 1.3 million or something from our P from the general fund to subsidize our upk funding and make that happen for full day pre uh pre uh so will this money actually fill that Gap it will help fill Gap but I think the bigger thing that we are looking for right now we're
200feeling I think it's 27 five full-time seats for 30 year olds um but we're still getting paid at halftime where we're asking to get it paid for full-time and expander program for three and foury olds so so my my I should ref my question would this money actually fill the Gap in the fact that is it money for new centers or money to increase a rate to Equitable funding so we're actually paying our staff what they should be paid compared to new uh centers that are opening which are being where the pay is at a higher rate question I'm trying to think so this is the grant that we actually applied for that um I'm sorry I'm going to recommend that we actually I would really love to spend a air significant amount of time
201talking about prek-k funding and I'm wondering if maybe we want either a separate presentation or an sbu on prek funding because it is very complicated and it is something we advocate for as part of our government relations work so we'd like to try and understand it really deeply so maybe we could um put this in a a memo what you understand now and maybe even have a board Q&A after that yep that's good that's great thank you good question and that's great U Miss Savage you are up I forgot I was up thank you um so thank you very much for the presentation and all the work you've done on the budget I have to because it's sort of like in my government relations hat I have to say every time we talk budget I
202have to say thank you to the state legislature and the governor for fulfilling the promise of foundation Aid it is making an enormous difference in the city school district of Albany in our ability to provide the resources that we need for our students which we were not given the money that the foundation Aid formula provided as of even two years ago and now we are that is an enormous difference and that explains in large part the graph that demonstrates how much less we are relying on our property tax owners because the state has picked up and delivered what they had committed to some time ago but had not actually provided until really very recently so thank you very much to the governor and to the state legislature for fulfilling the promise of foundation Aid and
203then one more thank you to the district for the excellent communication on the new uh polling place I happen to live in one of the wards that is served by the new polling place and we got a brightly colored very clear beautiful postcard that said your polling place has changed it used to be here and now it's here so um it was it's been in all of our Communications including the big eight GL eight page glossy thing that we sent home and then on top of that the you know sort of boring budget newsletter budget card has that but also this very pretty postcard so I think we've done a very effective job in communicating people where their new polling place is even though it is considerably less convenient honestly I mean it's it's quite
204a bit far for for most of us um to have to make it down to that lower part of I'm not actually sure if Myers is actually in the eth but lower part of the city is it is it okay they they know I I I don't live in so I don't know you guys they live in the eth I live in theth but so it's not a huge deal for people who drive it's not great for people who don't drive it's kind of far but um unless the communication was was very effective so thank you for that very good um I don't have any questions I do want to say that I uh had a couple of neighbors that stopped me while I was walking the dog in my pajamas uh asking me about
205the uh Vans and I think I was surprised about uh some a number of people and maybe it's because they don't have to interact with the school district you know in a with with children but a number of people uh asked me well why don't you just go get the yellow buses and so I I think PE some people do not understand fully um how how the transportation piece works and that one we don't we do not have um control over we don't have our own Fleet in other words so um so thought that that was interesting um and it was very good to be involved and I appreciate um that my colleagues were able to attend um some of the uh presentations I think we were represented at pretty much all of them and
206uh thanks to you and and uh Mr leco and um superintendent and others for the work that was done there and um I was amazed there weren't too many questions um really uh even the common council did not have a particular budget question they had other questions um so that was quite interesting too so want to just thank you all very much for that and I wanted to Echo that um it it's been truly a team effort um from building the budget to working with the board about the budget to the superintendent to the cabinet to presenting the budget to all the neighborhood associations um or any group that will listen to us or hear us um but it's been a group effort I mean it's the superintendent myself Ron uh we've been to pretty
207much all of them and a variety of uh board members that help come support us as well so again thank you it's a team effort and I appreciate it thank you and colleagues are there any other questions that you have yes Mr elwi I just had a thought super Joe and like Joe money like we gotta have like Joe money okay that's a good one or like business Joe but Joe money sounds better I I am a little jealous about super Joe but it's all right he is super Joe I know Joe money is that that means a lot too you know you know he can be super but you got the money okay take it okay so anyway um anything else from my colleagues okay not seeing in anymore so um Mr Caris thank
208you again and and the staff who participated in all of the development of the budget and uh wish you a good evening there so we will um see you uh again soon all right okay colleagues um that is bringing us to uh the end of our meeting and um or close to it first uh let me ask if there are any board committee reports and uh let me start with uh audit Miss Cree uh audit has not meant since the last meeting okay we will not meet before the next meeting but we are scheduled to meet in June I can't remember if we're going to meet before or after the next ad hoc Contra ad hoc routine consent committee but both scheduled to meet in June okay very good and so you covered both good
209thank you um and uh let me see government relations Miss Savage so I sent you everyone an email I draw to your attention that the ne the next government relations meeting is on June the 3 and one of the critical topics there will be will we submit any resolutions to New York state schoolb boards Association for their consideration so I offer that to Cabinet as well as to board members we can influence the behavior of our um State advocacy organization by submitting resolutions we have done that in the past it has been somewhat successful in shifting that that Titanic of an organization towards things that are important to us um and I sent along with that their um they do a survey where they survey the membership and I sent you that that's included the
210results of the survey so you can see what topics they surveyed on to see if there's any of the survey questions that you would like to submit as a resolution um do you mind if I just roll straight into um School Vis ask your question on that goe but uh but time is of essence here for this we need we would need to get the government relations will meet on June 3 and if as long as we get your ideas by June 2nd we can put them you know into hour Hopper and discuss them and then we will come to the next board meeting which I think is the sixth on um with a recommendation for consideration and then we can write the details of them for a couple of weeks beyond that till I
211think the 17th of July very good uh thank you um and Facilities uh I do not have the date in my mind but we do have a June meeting as well it's usually that second um week so we have another meeting um and we will be able to tell you at that point when our date is um and let me see Ellen mentioned the uh ad hoc committee or Miss Cy mentioned at our committee on routine consent uh we do have a meeting we we had we postpone one never rescheduled the other one but we have one coming up okay and I and I can I fill in on school visits while he looks at up uh yes yes okay so I just wanted to give a quick update on our school visits first of
212all a great big giant thank you to miss Naya Timmons who has been doing the job of three people planning a vote running a board meeting organiz in school visits it's like amazing uh what she's doing but because of her hard work and the hard work of all of you um we have completed nine School visits three more are scheduled and ready to go and there are six that are in the process of finalizing the schedule so we should be caught up by the end of the year so that is fantastic and we will um not tonight because tonight was complex night but um probably at our next boarding board meeting do some reporting out and sharing of what we experienced with each other which I know has all been very positive great thank you
213uh policy policy is going to meet the day after the budget Wednesday the 2 second and I know the district has uh put a Communications out to the parents in the community to to if they have any comments on the code of conduct to please submit that because that will be on the agenda for Wednesday after the the day after the board meeting so hopefully we'll work on that and then it'll come to the board for discussion all of those things so and I remind my policy committee colleagues you will probably be operating without me as it is both a school concert a school art show and I will have flown in on the red eye the day before so therefore I expect not to be at the policy Comm we'll have you virtually very
214good uh did I forget a committee I don't I don't think so there okay and um um there oh Joe yes Mr Mr Mr Caris I think ad hoc is June 3rd I have on my calendar June 3D and that's okay folks right we can we can hang out there till June 3 yes I think so okay okay very good all right thank you and sorry as as you all know it been very busy and I just couldn't get another date in there so um uh the other thing and I apologize because I I need to clarify this um and Miss Tims I might need your help and it's certainly something I can do after the meeting with miss timens tomorrow but I don't think I have we have settled or at least I haven't
215communicated the next board meeting so we have the board vote on the 21st oh that was in routine how did I miss that okay so we will be meeting that even how did I get that okay I think are you talking next one after the voting yes after the vote so I know we have the 21st but the the vote you didn't me I I you were talking the summer meetings you're talking about the May the the next May I'm sorry yeah so we have the C yes where we vote 23rd okay so folks that yeah that's two days later yes so we are scheduled for the 23rd I don't know if I saw it up on the calendar but I'll double check um that could be just my oversight and that's going to be
216a special meeting for the sole purpose of adopting the canvas right super and and maybe some uh pressing Personnel okay got it okay okay got it okay thank you and we'll make sure we get that uh covered if it's not I apologize folks for not having that out in advance for you um and Miss Wilson did you have a we can be yes go ahead I have a question it was not easily could not easily fit anywhere but um a Community member asked and I wasn't aware whether we do or do not do this if part of graduations are receiving like certificates from elected officials such as like our congressmen and things and if it's not our you know can you to highlight whether we do that still or have we done that or if
217that's a practice if if who receives um grad graduates like for example like you uh let's just say it's Milestone grade like 8th grade or high school will there be like a certificate from the senator state senator and things like that was there question if that was the practice of ours and I literally could not recall I have been to the Albany High graduation but I don't see what they're given so I'm just curious so if if I'm uh I'm going to tr a stab of this if I recall I mean there there are all sorts of things that are handed out and I like uh I know we have our scholarship pieces that we give but I think there are also other school level celebrations where uh those certificates special kinds of things are
218given every school school every school is different is my experience um and there are some for example I'm um tuned in the Attorney General's office gives an award this the Triple C award and oh I can yes my mic was acting kind of crazy it turned yellow and flashy and I was a little strain weirded out but it seems back to normal now but yes um every school is different some schools have uh arranged for awards like the Triple C award from the Attorney General's office I'm not aware of any that are congressional level I don't remember seeing that we there was a presidential something uh it's not a it's just it's just a certificate because I remember there was one with with Obama's signature at Middle School level at at the middle school level
219at the middle school level yeah we try and limit that my impression is that the intention the high school level is to limit that as much as possible and they do only the like the Board of Education gift certificates which by the way for anyone listening we don't actually pick those people there's a formula for that we just hand them the certificate um right it just says Board of vation um and we celebrate the students but we don't actually pick them um but because that graduation is um a very significant Endeavor with 600 students Crossing we try not to get um much more happening than that does that do you think that's going to answer the question from your I do I hope they're listening but if they're not I'll Point them to this thank
220you so much and um and Miss Wilson um is it um I I just want to try to understand do that does that person uh wh why the question was asked what's behind it was so out of the blue but the question was literally I was just wondering a school district will be getting certificates okay so I just curious okay thank you very much um let's see any other business here do we have any U Miss CI um it sounds like we're going to save that for the next meeting with our school visits I didn't have a report but I'd wanted to thank principal rivers and principal cheris Francis for their hospitality and also mention I was lucky enough to be at Roots Academy for teacher appreciation day last week and and see a great
221uh assembly giving thanks to the teachers and also wanted to thank the teachers in general districtwide for what they what they're doing it was great to be part of that very good thank you and uh we'll look forward to those uh visits um yes Dr shatur oh uh last week there was the Confluence of events at Myers where we had a lacrosse game a softball game uh we had the vegetable project going there was the uh monu uh concert happening so that that presented some parking challenges but it was great to see the community come out that so many people are with what our kids students are doing in the district and people people were willing to work through it and it was fun so that's a good idea to have multiple events collocated so
222people can see what's happening in other school events too tough if you have multiple children however so anyway very good all right I think um folks that that is that concludes our business for the evening and again I want to thank every everyone uh for uh being engaging tonight and I know it's a long evening but uh want to thank uh both staff and my colleagues and Community who who came out as well and so I would like to entertain a motion to adjourn the public meeting Dr shatur second by Miss Ki all in favor of adjournment and that is unanimous I want to thank you community and good night