001Hello everyone. Uh this evening the city school district of Albany is holding a public hearing pursuant to education law section 2857 subsection 1 and section 119.4 4 of the regulations of the commissioner of education. My name is Lauren McCleskkey and I will be moderating this evening's hearing. I'm an attorney with Honeywell Law Firm. We are legal counsel to the City School District of Albany and are in no way affiliated with either the Sunni Charter Schools Institute or the New York State Board of Regents and Charter School Office. This public hearing is being held to solicit comments from the community in connection with the following applications for charter revisions. Nurses Middle Middle College Charter High School Capital Region is approved to be located in the Albany City School District and chartered to serve 130 students in
002grade nine for the 2023 to 2024 school year and growing to serve 500 students in grades 9 through 12 by the 2027 to 2028 school year. The school requests to temporarily incubate in the Runsler City School District for a period not to exceed two years while facility acquisition and construction are completed within the Albany City School District. The rules governing this public hearing are as follows. The public hearing shall last one half hour or until all speakers have had an opportunity to speak, whichever occurs first. Speakers shall sign up on the sheets provided to indicate their interest in speaking. Speakers will be called in the order in which they have signed up. Each speaker shall have a maximum of three minutes. I'll hold up a 30 second remaining sign. Speakers and attendees are expected to
003participate in this hearing in a professional and courteous manner so as to not disrupt other speakers or the hearing process. Any speaker wishing to have his or her comments enter entered into the The hearing is now closed. Your comments will be shared with the charter school office. Thank you. Good evening everyone. So nice to see champions in the room. I apologize my mic is on for some reason. There we go. Thank you again. Good evening. My name is Vicky Smith and I'm the president of the City School District of Alby's board of education. On behalf of the board, I welcome you to our meeting. I am joined in person tonight by uh my board colleagues uh member Hassan Elmanawi, member Ellen Crerachche, secretary and member Dr. Shar Shatur, vice president and member Anne Savage, member
004Tabitha Wilson, and uh unfortunately uh our member Dammer Man could not be with us this evening. also wanted to acknowledge Miss Jeda Ray Gale who is uh to my left at the end there. Uh and should you uh have any uh or would like the opportunity to provide some public comment tonight, please uh see her. I also want to uh introduce and welcome again our superintendent of a matter of how many days did you say it's been? 11. 11 days on the job. Well, thank you Mr. Hawk Rider. Superintendent Hawk Rider and uh we look forward to hear hearing from you later. Also, assistant superintendent for business and finance um Mr. Joe Carris. Uh joining us in person as well is communications director and op of operations as well. Uh Dr. Ron Dr. Lon RCO.
005Hey, Mr. Leco. I listen you have earned that. I'm gonna tell you. All right. and also uh assistant superintendent for um curriculum and instruction, Miss Karen Beal. Good to see you. And I think many of you have seen u Mr. Kent Baker who's in the back. He is our uh assistant superintendent for um data or accountability assessment technology. It's I will get it right one day, Mr. Baker. Um and he is retiring us. I'll know it. I'll know it before he uh I hope I know it before he goes out the door. And also just on the line there, uh our assistant superintendent for um elementary uh education, I believe she may be on later, and that's uh Dr. Cesley Wilson Turner. And I do see uh Miss Lori McKenna is also on the line.
006She is our assistant superintendent for secondary education. And there may be a few others that we'll acknowledge throughout the meeting. So again, welcome everyone. Uh this meeting is being livereamed and introductions to view the meeting are available at albschools.org. We will show the relevant slides and documents uh on the virtual meeting screens as well as the screens here in the room. You may also again access these me access these materials at albonychools.orgbee. Uh we do tend to speak uh uh through every meeting. We talk about the COVID um we speak about the uh COVID situation. Our numbers are down and thanks to you all who are keeping your hands cleaned and um covering your face uh when coughing or sneezing. Um all of those things are very helpful in keeping the numbers down and um
007thank you so much for that. And if you're here in person, of course, and plan to speak in public tonight, please make sure that you speak to Miss Jed Ray Gail here at the uh end of the table, far left and uh right end. So, in addition, tonight I want to uh invite those of you who choose to join as we stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. In addition to the pledge of allegiance, we always focus our meeting by state restating the mission of the city school district of Albany, which is to work in partnership with our diverse community to engage every learner in
008a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success. I want to now turn to our superintendent, Joseph Hawkriter. Um, do you have a report for us tonight, sir? I do, but I believe we're going to begin with uh Mr. Leco and some of our district highlights and uh celebrate some of the folks who are with us. Absolutely. We begin tonight with uh two opportunities to celebrate recent achievements by our student athletes. Uh first, we will welcome Alb High School junior Masami Surawa, the 2023 section 2 singles champion in boys tennis. That will be followed by our Alb High section 2 champion unified basketball team. [Applause] to get us started and introduce Masami and tell us more about his exceptional season. Please welcome Coach O Anthony Omaragbon. [Applause] Um I don't
009know where I've ever coached. Um all the praise I got to put it on his plate. He has put in the work since he was four years old. Mastering that ball toss, mastering that forehand, mastering the backhand, going through all of the grind of wins and losses, ups and downs, highs and lows, the physical the physical strife, the the mental strife, all the emotions that go on in a tennis match. He has put in the work. He deserves all the praise. I can't say I can't say enough good things about him. He had one of the best seasons I've probably seen in section two in a long time. went 21-1 on the season. He um went into section two tournament with a focused mindset, determined to get that section two championship. He beat one of
010his arts nemesis. That's one of his best friends, too, though. All right. That's his best friend. All right. And Masami Masami likes to laugh when I say this, but he played like a master in that match. In that section two championship, he played masterful. It was like death by a thousand paper cuts. He really he really put in the work. He's 21 21-1. Went down to the state tournament down in Queens, New York. Played at the USA National Center where the US Open is played. He played his heart out in 95 degree heat. Went toe-to-toe with the number three seed. And you know, sometimes it doesn't go the way you want, but I'm so proud of his effort this season. And I think um he deserves all the praise. [Applause] Do you want to talk?
011Um, go ahead. Speak up. Oh, no. Was obviously it was an incredible experience. um winning section two of course, but then traveling down to New York City and um having the opportunity to play extremely high level tennis against some of the best um young athletes in this state and uh that that opportunity I did I did a lot but I can't you know do it by myself. I need people to support me. Of course, my team this year. This was probably the greatest team I've ever played for. The most fun I've ever had playing tennis in my entire life this was this year. And my coach, Mr. Mr. Omar, Coach Omar, he's he's really he really helps me through tough situations. He he helps me through, you know, to get my mind straight and to
012to to focus, to prepare. My parents, my parents have always supported me. Um Yes. Thank you. I chose maybe an unconventional sport at a really young age, but they've always they've presented me with every opportunity to to play and to improve my whole life. I'm eternally grateful, eternally thankful. I couldn't be here without them. Thank you very much. So, Misami, we want to uh congratulate you again. So glad that you were able to join us this evening so that we could do that. Coach, thank you and thank the Albany High School tennis team. Uh I also recall uh not too long ago that you were met with a challenge and it wasn't me. Now, I did play tennis in high school, but I'm a doubles player, so I know I'm already out of the game
013and at 4 foot 11, it's just not going to happen. Um, but I believe someone over there challenged you to a match and I can't wait. I can't wait. I Oh, but it wasn't a challenge. My my first public speaking as superintendent, I um I I did I did challenge our champion to a match. Uh I I had the opportunity to play college tennis and um my thinking was that you were graduating and and and my my thought pattern was oh let's have this challenge match and and try to uh you know scare you with with tactics of Andre Agassi and John McEnroe and um and and then my my my um my plan was to delay the match thinking you're going to go away to college and then I understand you're a junior. So,
014well, you'll have to speak to my agent about this. I will be in contact. But again, thank you and congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you. I think it's I think that's fine. You're so far over there now. No, no, no, no. You're good. We'll need the room. Um, it is now my pleasure to welcome uh, director of special education Ela Gryler and coach Joseph Burke to tell us more about our unified basketball team's exceptional season. Thank you very much. Um, I'd like to uh thank Superintendent Hot Rider and the board of education for recognizing the achievements of our unified basketball team. Our unified program offers students an opportunity to participate in school partnerships with our athletics department, the New York State Athletics Association, and Special Olympics. It's a tremendous opportunity for our students both
015with and without disabilities to play sports and create lifelong friendships. I'm excited to share that our unified bowling and basketball opportunities have experienced a steady increase over the last three years in terms of student participation. This year we had 30 students on our bowling team and 21 on our basketball team. [Applause] And tonight we're celebrating the basketball team's third section 2 divisional championship win and we are incredibly proud of that. [Applause] We could not pull this off though without our dedicated staff and parents who return every year to support and encourage our players. Without the passion and collaboration of our teaching assistants, teachers, nurses, transportation, and administration working in unison, this opportunity would not be possible. It is my pleasure to be able to introduce our unified basketball coach, Joe Burke, who would like to
016say a word few words about our incredible team. Thank you so much, um, Elaine, and and thank you to the board, uh, for recognizing our kids. Um, I'm not going to take a lot of your time, but I do want to speak about our families of our our our student athletes. Um, our families have uh really uh some great great kids. I think that's important. Um, so I appreciate everything you guys have done and trying to get to the games at 4:15 every day regardless of where the games were. I also want to talk about about our our staff, our teachers. You know, it's easy for me to roll in uh to Albany High and and and get out on the gym floor with 21 kids and for me that's fun, right? And but there
017has to be a foundation and the foundation that not just the families but the teachers um and the staff that works with these kids on a daily basis is way more important than anything I do. Coaching basketball is pretty simple when you got great kids uh that that have some some athletic ability as well. But I I' I'd like to just uh talk about Donna and and Bridget and Teresa and Sonia and Stanley and and Cynthia and Jackie and Cheyenne and and our chauffeur Ray Shad. [Applause] These are the folks that set the ground the groundwork uh for for a championship team and uh three straight years. Um a lot of these kids are the same kids. Um I've been fortunate for the last two years to be a part of this. Um, I will
018tell you this that I've been coaching high school athletics for 40 years and coached over thousands of kids. Worked with a lot of families in those times and these past two years really really rank right up there near the top. Uh, the time I've spent with these kids in the past two years, as short as that time is, it's a very short season. and it's about five weeks, but the uh memories that I will have from the last two years will last with me forever. But thank you all. [Applause] So, just to share our experience over the course of the season, we do have a little presentation that we hope that you enjoy. Sorry. Hell yeah. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] We [Applause] love [Applause] Isaac, [Applause] Why are you so black? [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Miguel expecting.
019[Applause] Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] this again. So, so fabulous. Uh students, athletes, congratulations uh on your season, on your success, and uh next year we'll get them again, right? Um and Miss Grestler, Coach Burke, and all of the staff uh who support our student athletes. Thank you. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. And I don't know how you're getting after multiple rows. I saw that a suggestion that you just get up chair put in front members. I think this is it. This is good. Oh dear. Oh, Dr. We got everybody ready? Big smiles. [Applause] Thank you. [Applause] [Music] Congratulations. Thank you so much for being here. Your hair looks adorable. Love it. [Music] Well, that was fun. I think I missed your camera. How are you? Congratulations. Right, Mr. Leco. That was that
020was great. That was fun. Absolutely. And uh you have more. I do have more. Absolutely. In what has become an annual tradition, the 10 Albony High seniors with the highest cumulative grade point averages are photographed as a group on the school's roof, signifying the amazing academic heights they achieved during their high school careers. This year's top 10 students joined that tradition this week. You can see photos of these falcons in flight on our website and social media pages. The top 10 students in the class of 2023 and the schools they will attend this fall are validictorian Neil Chhatur, Stony Brook University, Saludiatoran Kevin Cam, University at Albany, Zay Sears, University of Rochester, Kevin McCloud, Harvard University, Kayleanne Athens, Sunni Jio, Isabella Plaster, University of Rochester, Sierra Weirsham, Wshine, Stony Brook University, Sarah Heler, Middbury College,
021Rachel Andrews, Sunni Onian, and Saddaf Amadi University at Albany. Congratulations to them, their families, their teachers, and the collective Albany High community. We are looking forward to celebrating celebrating the achievements of all members of our class of 2023 at graduation on Sunday, June 25th. Students and staff at all of our elementary and middle schools have been engaged throughout the year in the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate program. No Place for Hate is a national program designed to combat prejudice and create effective tools to address these these issues in the classroom and the community. As a result of that work, students from two of our schools were recognized recently with the No Place for Hate Gold Star student award for 2023. Monasuri Magnet School fifth grader Jinny Levy and Steven and Harriet Meyers Middle School
0227th grader Heaven Marsh. Jinn's efforts as a leader of Monasur's No Place for Hate team focused on building an environment that is safe, supportive, and affirming for transgender students. At Meyers, Heaven also was a leader on her school's equity team. In collaboration with her peers, she used her strong analytical and writing skills to develop a presentation on uh reducing disproportionality and suspension rates for students of color. Jenny and Heaven received their awards during a ceremony last Friday at Proctor's Theater in Skenctity. They were selected from their peers at 80 participating schools throughout the Capitol region. Thanks to the Albany Fund for Education and a host of community supporters, Edmund J. O'Neal School of Excellence has a new food pantry. Superintendent Hawkriter joined O'Neal Principal Rachel Steed, AF Executive Director Mari Shopsus, and several community partners
023on Wednesday to cut the ribbon on the pantry, which will serve students and families at Albany International Center and the dual language program. AF also is supporting three more school-based food pantries. one at North Alb Middle School, one at Steven and Harriet Meyers Middle School, and one that will open this fall at William S. Hackett Middle School. AF led the drive to create these pantries with support from the Albony County Legislature, Regeneron, and the Seymour Fox Foundation. We are grateful to these partners and the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York for its ongoing assistance in establishing these new food pantries. In addition to the AF sponsored school food pantries, the regional food bank also supports pantries already in operation at Albany High, Philip J. Skyler Achievement Academy, Sheridan Preparatory Academy, and Tony Clement Center
024for Education. Students, employees, and community members donated 57 pints of blood at Alb High's third and final blood drive of the school year last week, potentially saving up to 171 lives. Superintendent Hawk Rider and Dr. Shhatur were among those who rolled up their sleeves to donate. Due to the success of Alb High's blood drives this school year, senior coordinator Elise Rupy will receive a $1,000 scholarship from the Red Cross. She'll attend the University of Rochester in September. Congratulations to Elise, fellow blood drive coordinator Jake Walden, and faculty adviser Alicia Abdul for their great work this year. A reminder for everyone that all of our schools and offices will be closed Monday in observance of Junth. We also are looking forward to the city's African Heritage Parade and Junth celebration this Saturday. The parade steps off
025from Washington Park at 11:00 a.m. Saturday and the Junth celebration follows at noon on South Pearl Street. And as we look ahead to summer, mark your calendars for Saturday, July 8th. That's the date for the district's annual summer celebration and safety day in partnership with Mohawk Ambulance. Summer celebration will be held at Toast this year from noon to 4 p.m. We'll have music, food, games for the kids, lots of giveaways, and information for our families from an array of community partners. Summer celebration is a great opportunity for the district to give back to our community in a fun, stress stressfree setting. Community Engagement Coordinator Kathy Edmonson does an excellent job bringing it all together each summer and we hope you'll be able to join us. It is now our pleasure to welcome Principal Michael Pino
026to highlight the great things happening this year at William S. Hackett Middle School. Thank you, Mr. and thank you to the board of education for the opportunity to speak tonight. Mr. Mr. Mocher and I were just sitting here trying to figure out there is no way that we could bypass what just happened with the young man playing tennis and unified basketball. Uh Mr. Burke and I both ref high school basketball games together at the highest level, not to brag. Um and I had my opportunity to ref a unified basketball game two years ago and it is the most amazing thing that I have ever been a part of. um you laugh, you cry, and uh so I thank the board and everybody for that work. And it's I'm proud of our students and proud to
027be in the district with that piece. And so how we're gonna top that one, I have no idea. Um we talked about it. Neither one of us can can beat you in tennis to the new superintendent. Vicki, you and I can play doubles one day, but I'm not sure I'll be the best partner, but we we'll show up and have we'll have a lot of fun. So, but with that, thank you for allowing us to be here. um as I was uh listening to the unified piece uh thinking my god this is my 14th year in the district um presenting and how fast time goes by um but we always appreciate the support of the board our our families our teachers um for the great things that we do at Hackit and so if we
028can spend hopefully a brief five minutes with everyone um tonight we do appreciate that um we were going to be joined by by Miss House we're going to uh uh do an administrative piece unfortunately Miss House is unavailable uh tonight uh So, Mr. Moltry and I have decided that we will uh kind of carry the presentation and hopefully he'll keep me quiet for a little while. We'll get through this pretty quickly. Um, we begin tonight um with our first slide. Obviously, uh the district vision, mission, and goals. I know we go over it uh at the start of every meeting, so we appreciate that. Um I will not take time to to reread it um because I think uh Miss Smith, you've already done that. And we will kind of move right into the vision,
029mission, and goals of Hackett Middle School. Good evening everybody. Thank you for your time. Uh our vision, our mission, and our goals at Hackit is that we're going to provide a sta a safe and nurturing school environment for all students. We're going to implement culturally responsive practices to establish a positive school climate and set high academic standards for all students. Uh we're going to utilize all human resources and student support committees to ensure the academic and social economic needs of all our students and families. uh that are being met. Um as we transition to the next slide, our administrative team is Mr. Pino, the building principal, Mrs. House, uh the assistant principal, myself, Lawrence Moltry, assistant principal, Mr. Harris, our home school coordinator, uh Mr. Hughes, our head of director of security, and officer Nicole
030Reex, who is our SRO, our uh school resource officer. So, Hacket Middle School, uh, since those 14 years went by, has has grown dramatically. Um, for those who who know, and I appreciate it, we used to be a a one grade level or excuse me, a one team on sixth grade, um, two teams on seventh grade and two teams on eighth grade. And over the past couple years made the move that we are going to have uh, two teams at every grade level. Um, I I truly appreciate that. Um, I think it has a positive uh opportunity for all our students because they do get a full block of the core ELA, math, science, and social studies. Um, and the extra opportunity to explore in those areas. Um, when I started 14 years ago, our
031enrollment was in the low 600s. Uh, as of the other day when I completed the presentation, we stand at 678 students. The numbers to the right, uh, the 203 students in sixth grade, 228 students in seventh grade, and 247 students in eighth grade also include our six self-contained classrooms. Uh, back again when I started 14 years ago to draw a comparison, we had three self-contained classrooms. We are now up to to six self-contained classrooms. And as Elaine Gryer was right here, she does a tremendous job. Um, so those numbers do include that. Of the total 678 numbers, we wanted to give you just a very quick breakdown uh of what our demographics looks like. We have 134 students identified with IEPs, 97 ELLL students, 470 of our students are economically disadvantaged. And then our breakdown
032demographically, 78 Asian students, 251 African-American students, 167 Latino Hispanic students, and 146 uh white students. Uh again, I always say when people ask me what's the best thing about Aken Middle School, it is the cultural breakdown of our building. It is a true representation of our society, of our community. Um and we're proud of each and every one of the students that are there. As we move forward to the next slide, um we have our SE focus and our SE uh highlights. Our focus has remained pretty consistent over the last three years. Um we changed it around a little bit uh in terms of priority for tonight's presentation. Um right now our number one focus in a middle school is on equity and our social emotional behavior. Um I talk a lot about it. Um
033co co hit us all at a very weird time. Um it changed the dynamics in the playing field and we're trying to um adjust to that right now. But a lot of our students are coming back still trying to get acclimated to uh being in school having homework doing ownership and accountability and responsibility. Um and so equity and social emotional have become our primary focus. Um, we have established, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, our No Place for Hate program, uh, that we're really proud of. Um, there'll be a video at the end, so I'll wait for that piece. Um, our equity team has, um, engaged in a book study this year. I would recommend it for everybody. The book is entitled, "So, do you want to talk about race?" Um, it
034is an outstanding book. Um, it has been a great way for our teachers and staff to continue to have those conversations around equity, what equity should look like, and how we can continue to be guardians of equity in our building. ELA and math. I saw Mr. Del Signor walk in a minute ago. We continue to work closely with uh Mr. Del Signor and Miss Hulahan to support our focus in ELA and math. Um again, I appreciate the board and the moves that they're making. We will now have a literacy and a math coach in our buildings full-time next year to uh to continue to facilitate the work that we do in our common planning time meetings. Um, we continue to do our weekly classroom visits and our weekly classroom walkthroughs for the purposes of not
035only providing our teachers with meaningful feedback, but also to highlight the great things that the teachers are doing um that accelerate our kids every day. Um, and then our last focus is on disproportionality um at a discipline level, at an attendance level, at an academic level. Um, we have done a great job this year as a building uh doing our schoolwide implementation of our ruler initiative. um trying to help kids identify um and be able to communicate what's going on so we can keep them in the classroom. And then this year um similar to the elementary schools, we implemented our SS uh excuse me, our SRSSIE screener. Um it's a an opportunity for us to identify students who may be struggling behavior um and then to meet as a team and as a subcommittee to
036identify interventions to support those behaviors. Uh this was our first year doing the SRSS screener and we did see our tier three, tier 2, tier one numbers uh decrease um because we were able to identify kids early and provide the supports we need to address those behaviors. I turn it over to Mr. from Moltry now who is our facilitator of our attendance committee at Hackit. So at our attendance committee uh we meet twice monthly and during that time period we we go through all the students we look at our attendance we analyze the data as you can see um on the presentation over the course of the last four years the trend has been pretty steadily around 90% attendance rate here at Hacken Middle School. Um during these attendance meetings, we meet, we analyze our
037our data, we look at the students that are missing or why they're and why they're uh missing school. And what we try to do is review the data, look at it, and see how we can correct the attendance matters. So, what we're looking at is home visits. We're calling, we're mailing letters home uh monthly trying to and sometimes um bi-weekly trying to make sure that we're addressing the needs of our students. We're getting parents into the building. We're doing virtual meetings to make sure that we can address any needs of our students and how we can get them back into school and adapt back into um everyday situations um since returning back into the building. As we transition to the next slide, Mr. Baker, can we go back one real quick because I do want
038to give Mr. Moltry uh credit. If you look at our presentation, um the work that he's done this year and the work that Miss Stokes did when she was our assistant principal, chronic absenteeism is a thing that we're all trying to to focus on. And if you notice for this year, um it went down almost nine percentage points. That number is probably higher. Um we still have some students on the role who have withdrawn from school. and until we can get their actual withdrawal papers from the schools they're in, we can't drop them. Um, this is the work of of Mr. Moltry. He is the head of the attendance committee um and working with our grade level teachers and our teams. Um, obviously we want that number to be below 20% and a little bit
039lower, but it is going in the right direction. Um, to get that number down takes an incredible amount of time uh and effort. Um, and so just wanted to highlight his work um, as the director of our attendance committee um, and the work that we're trying to do to uh, lower our chronic absentee rate. So I want to uh, give him an applause right now for for his efforts on that. Now to the fun stuff, the the good stuff and I promise you we will fly through this. Um, I'm getting old. I'm getting older. Um, I did celebrate that centennial uh, birthday this past year. And when you get older, we all know sometimes you see things a little bit differently. Um, as we return from CO, we thought it was important and there's a
040focus in our building to make sure we do the little things that still excite kids about coming to school every day. Um, yes, we put a lot of focus on the SEAB goals, but it's the little things that I think are still really important. Um, and this is just a brief list of some of the things that we do. We always do our opening barbecue and our clapping, and I want to thank our PTA for that. Um it may not seem like a big thing, but it's exciting to see the kids uh come in in that first day, first week of school, we do it um and and be re re-energized about what's happening in the building. We celebrated our bring a special person uh day to school with a breakfast. Paul Tonko was in
041our building um thanks in large part to our librarian Sanji Greenway. Um Hackit was a recipient of the Library of Congress surplus book program. Um we we had a a musical invitation from musician uh Shauna Silver Lucas to Hackit. Our honoral celebrations we'll talk about always the numbers continue to go up. Second year in a row we had a new channel 13 teacher of the week. This year it was Miss Kelly McNab, our self-contained uh special ed teacher. Last year it was Miss Ava Hull, our social worker. Um we continue to do spirit week. I do not know how we got spirit week into it. This week being the last week of school and I have no idea how it's pajama uh day tomorrow at Hack Middle School. I got to talk to the building
042principal when I get back. With the work of uh Fran Del Signor um and and the support of Karen Begdall, we now do districtwide um drama productions that include not only students within our district but without our district. We did Elf, we did Lion King Jr. and if you missed it, Mean Girls was outstanding. Um this past week, um we've implemented our No Place for Hate with our student committee, which again we'll talk about in a little while. The no place for hate committee did our first annual hacket literacy poetry jam um which had many outu outside agencies there to provide free resources and books to our families. Um we had numerous not only individual but team Joseph Henry science fair winners last week and with the hard work of our uh extended day quarter
043Miss Darren Lewis um we have also continued our heck uh extended school day program which services about 200 to 250 kids uh every year. Today was our last day for extended day. The next slide just tries to show a couple pictures that highlight many of the um events that we talk about in the building all day long. And again, I know it may sound a little like kissing up, but I want to thank the board for for all of your help because I know all the things and all the pictures that we share right there um cannot be done without your support and the support of our superintendent um Lori McKenna in particular. And so I just want to thank you because uh those pictures probably have more stories than you can actually tell. So
044so thank you for that. So our challenges and next steps, we we have a bunch. I tried to highlight them to three. Um first and foremost is to always continue to um provide rigorous academic growth for all our students. Um and that will always be our focus. Um we continue to try to do early identification of our academic needs of our kids. um our academic interventions or after school tutoring supports and services. Um that will always be our number one challenge because our goal is we always want to increase the number of students who are proficient on grade level uh from year to year. Uh the second one and it's been a challenge for us this year is continuing to fill all of our open teaching positions. Um I know it's a challenge for all
045my colleagues in the other buildings as well. Um we're trying to get out there for early recruitment and interviewing. Um trying to modify our master schedule. Um the hard part is we have so many great interventions in challenge one that it requires more uh dedicated and talented teachers that that require challenge two. Uh and then for us um is we're going to address our our late arriving students. Um I saw Mr. Miles here. Um I've worked with a lot of great transportation supervisors. He's one of the best. Um anytime you call him, he is always there to support. Um but I know we have a shortage of bus drivers. Ron and I have spoken a lot over the years um trying to get there. But our big challenge is we want the kids in school.
046We want the kids prepared um so that way we can continue their growth with them. So those are our three challenges. We have um you know working in in-house and with the district um on those uh resources to try to make those be uh goals for the upcoming school year. So our successes at Hackit uh just to highlight a few the implementation of our tier 2 and tier three programs, our AC academic interventions across all grade levels, our effective implementation of our ruler program, our data driven approach with subcommittees to ensure academic and behavioral success. And as Mr. Mr. Pino was saying earlier we have over 600 students in packet but each marking period we'd had over 300 plus students on the on honor row and that is an average of 84.5% or higher. So
047over 50% give or take each marking period of our students in Hackey Middle School are on our island row and we are identified as a school in good standing for the 22 23 school year. And and I just want to add and I I know I'm going to brag on this but I but I have to. When I started 14 years ago, I said it was about 605 kids. Today we're at 678 kids. So I can still do the math. That's an increase of 73 kids. In my first honoral ceremony, I recognized 168 students. Today, we're at 325. So, although we increased 70 students, we've increased by more than 75 students, the number of kids who are achieving academic success in our building. And that is a testament to our kids, our families, and our
048teachers. Um, and so I just want to just doing the numbers because I'm a numbers guy, right? The number of kids that make honor role is always going up. And we we always want to celebrate that accomplishment of our kids. So although it's a 78k increase in enrollment, it's about 150 plus student enrollment in terms of making honor every day. So we wanted to celebrate that. And lastly, um we got two slides left. Student voice at Hackett has been one of our primary focuses. Um I want to thank uh Mr. Harris. He's our home school coordinator. Uh Mr. Russ, our school psychologist, and some of our other teachers. We started at the request of our past superintendent, a no place for hate committee at Hacket Middle School. Um we currently have, I believe, 80 students
049in our building who serve on the studentled No Place for Hate committee. Um this year they began the school year by doing a No Place for Hate student assembly in front of the entire building to communicate to our student body um what No Place for Hate stood for and what we were going to try to do. As I mentioned, they plan their own literacy poetry night jam in conjunction with our sixth grade English teacher, uh, Mr. Burgess. Um, they have, and Jed is going to pass them out to you very shortly. Um, just recently created a No Place for Hate bracelet. We are all wearing them. Um, they have different colors and different combinations. Um, I get the generic blue one because I'm just a No Place for Hate supporter, but if you were a
050No Place for Hate captain, you'd be getting a yellow one. They wouldn't give me one. Um, so I am just a No Place for Hate supporter. um they are all coming around for for each of you. Um the one big move that we made this year and and Dr. Chhatur is always there to uh to support us and I appreciate it. As you can tell from this board meeting, I can talk all day long and I know I can. But we had three honoral ceremonies this year led by our uh No Place for Hate students. And if you can believe it, and I know you can't, I didn't say a word in all three of them. We had a student led facilitator, one in eighth grade, one in seventh grade, and one in sixth grade
051this year, who led the entire ceremony. And to give students even more voice, we used to have a teacher come up and announce the names of the kids. This year, a student in each grade level announced their own classmates for all three years. Um, it was truly successful. Um, I enjoyed making fun of myself a little bit for it. Um, but it is a tradition that we will carry on and something that we're very proud of. And then the last thing our students did is they lined every locker and every teacher door in the building this year with a valent Valentine Day hearts campaign um with a word of praise and confidence in the building. If Mr. Baker we had the last slide um you'll see some pictures there and then the last video is
052two of our sixth grade captains talking about what student voice looks like at Hackett. Hi, my name is and we are at school. We are also captains of the No is a program that stops hate and bullies and people around the entire building messages. We also have a poetry where students got to share their favorite songs or their own. This year we made to represent the street bracelet that we captain speaking of braces. Show our appreciation by gifting you as a great event that will bring up people's confidence and we are committed to a safe school environment. [Applause] That is our final slide. Again, thank you. Thank you for another great school year. Um, if there's any questions this time, Mr. Moltry and I will be more than glad to answer them. [Applause] That's great.
053Thank you. And just uh want to thank your students for for these and we will wear them with pride. And uh I know that uh we are going to be making our rounds to the various moving up ceremonies. Um and so uh if you don't see all of us there because you're not likely to, we're going to we're a little stretched. So, we're trying to make all of them, but there will be a member attending. Is that going to be I was just going to chime in that there are six graduations at that very instant. So, you will be you will see one of us since there are six graduations at the time. So, we have managed just barely to get somebody to every single one. No, we we appreciate it. Thank you very much.
054Thank you guys. Oh, that was wonderful. And Mr. Moltry, it's very good to see you. Uh, it's been a while. Thank you very much. We're glad to have you back. I know it's I know you've been here longer, but I haven't seen you. So, thank you so much. Okay. Uh, let's see. And I'm sorry, Mr. Leco, you do have more. Nope, that is the end of the district highlights. Okay. I just got nervous for a minute because you were still sitting there. That's okay. I I didn't want to run away unless just in case. Thank you very much. All right. And Superintendent, may I move on? Do you have anything else? Uh, uh, just a a few updates as we uh reach the end of the the school year. Um, we'll go to our uh
055topics that we want to uh remind the board and uh our school community of. Um, this is a very exciting time of uh of the year where we recognize outstanding student achievement. And just over the last number of days, I had the opportunity to uh participate and um speak at a couple events. Uh, as we heard earlier, I opened my big fat mouth at the athletic awards night and I learned uh to keep my mouth shut on the awards night for the uh uh recognizing uh scholarships of our of our high school students. But um two really outstanding uh opportunities in our high school auditorium to recognize the achievement of our student athletes and and the um and our scholars. On June 8th was the 51A elevated scholar celebration uh at the Italian-American club and
056and I uh was joined by Mr. Leco in uh recognizing six of our high school students who completed their uh college prep uh mentoring program. And and if you're not uh familiar with 518 elevated, um there are a number of uh too few communities I should say across New York State um that have this level of commitment and collaboration among a number of nonforprofits and uh universities and folks that uh volunteer their time, efforts, and energy um to help students uh aspire to make sure that they uh not only finish high school, but they have a plan after high school to to attend a college or university or pathway in a career of choice. And last Friday was the uh JOTC leadership awards night also at the high school. And 12 of our seniors are
057graduating with various uh degrees and um recognitions. And uh next year, Ryan Lynn will has been promoted to cadet colonel. And uh for those of you who aren't familiar with the the org chart, uh he's basically in charge and what he says goes. uh not only for the other cadetses but um any adult in the room as well uh as I learned. So uh just a sample of um some great opportunities uh to celebrate our our students here in Albany. And I will uh turn it over to uh some of our team members uh to walk us through some of the other updates as we close out the school year. Hey Lori, we can't hear you. Shall I jump in Laura? Okay. All right. We want to remind folks of um the end of year
058important dates. Albony High School, our classes ended Tuesday. The region's exams have started. We had two very big busy days um in regions yesterday and today. It goes through June 22nd and our graduation is Sunday, June 25th in the MVP Arena at noon. The middle schools, um the last day of school will be Thursday, June 22nd. That is a full school day. And the moving up ceremonies are um all on Friday, June 23rd for grade 8, North Albany at 10:00, Meyers at 9:00, Hackett at 9:00, and Albany International International Center. The um classes ended Tuesday. They have the same schedule as the high school uh with the regions through June 22nd and graduation on June 25th. grades six through eight, their graduation will be um on Friday, June 23rd at 10. Last day of school,
059of course, Thursday, June 22nd. Tony Clement, similar, same schedule as the high school regions through June 22nd. Graduation Sunday, June 25th. Grades seven and eight, last day of classes, Thursday, June 22nd. And grade 8 will take part in the moving up ceremonies at their home school. I don't know whether Cesaly is having a similar issue. Keep going. Okay. So, uh, for the last days of school this Thursday, June 22nd and Friday, June 23rd, there'll be an early dismissal on both of those days. The early start schools will dismiss at 11:45. Ash, Eagle Point, Montasauri, Pine Hills, Sheridan Prep, and Toast. and our late start schools will dismiss at 12:50 with AIC um dual language Arbor Hill, Delaware, Gifin, New Scotland, and Skyler. Moving up ceremonies are many. Um so you would need to consult albonychools.org
060for the dates and information on on those and lunch will be served uh prior to dismissal. And now we have some academic and enrichment opportunities to share with the board. Um the first slide is with about summer school jump start which is for students entering kindergarten in September and that's going to be at Gifin and Pine Hills. The elementary summer school for K5 is at Gifin and Sheridan Prep. Middle school uh is will be at North Albany this year. High school will be at Albany High School. And our extended school year summer program for special education students in K12 begins on Monday, July 3rd. And that will be at Albany School of Humanities. The newcomer summer school for ENL students in K10 will be at the Albany International Center. Uh our summer reading program, our
061elementary, we align with the New York State Library summer reading program in partnership with the Albany Public Library. middle school. Uh the teachers and school librarians have compiled a list of recommended books that take into consideration the varied interests of our middle school students. And at high school, students entering grades 9 through 12 will do a summer reading journal assignment. Students entering grade 12 will do a common app essay assignment in preparation for uh grade 12. and our API students will also have summer reading uh writing assignments as well. I think next is the enrichment program and we have our summer arts program which will be at William S. Hackett Middle School. Open registration is now closed but you can contact our Kate Wright at this email address and to discuss program availability. She will
062try to get people in. Uh the girls STEM scam STEM camp for grades six through seven. This is year two for them will be at Albany High School and uh capacity for that program has been reached. We are also uh continuing with our STEM andistas for the elementary girls. Um that isn't up here but that is also taking place and is filled. Middle school sports academy grades six through eight. is new, something we're doing in partnership with um Alby's Liberty uh partnership program and that will be at Steven and Harriet Meyers Middle School. And then we have the community summer programs which people can take a look at on our website for more details. Some summer PD opportunities. Um we have four things up here for staff that we offered to staff this uh last
063week and that is um partnership with local learning the greater capital region teacher center. They're running this I think it's in colony but people would need to um consult MLP for more details and we're running a mentor training this year and we have had great interest um um I believe we're up to about 25 people that are interested in participating one of those two days and we need we need mentors the tech integration academy uh we have three weeks this summer and I saw an email from Jeremy Dudley today saying it's going to be the best tech camp yet. So, pretty excited about that. And then Unbound Ed, um we partnered with them to come to us rather than always going with them. Um we partnered with Boseies where we will have the uh conference
064there on August 8th and 9th. And this was an effort to get those folks who can't go away for five days uh for a whole variety of reasons. This is a two-day um event. and health and wellness. I don't know whether you would like me to keep going, superintendent, or if you would like to have anything to say about that. I'm fine with if I'm Well, as as we heard earlier, our co date our COVID um average is going down steadily. In fact, each of the last three months um you see a decrease. Uh our team is discussing the extent to which we'll continue to report this next year. Uh we know that the uh we believe the um DO um expectation is that districts do not have to uh report, but we'll keep an
065eye on that and um perhaps be able to provide that information electronically or or online. And lastly, make sure that if you're not feeling well to take care of yourself, especially um use hand sanitizer and wear a mask um if you feel the need. Other than that, I'd like to thank Karen for stepping in and pinch hitting and we'll turn it back over. Miss Beal, you might not want to go away, but I'm just kidding. We'll be back. Okay. Uh, and I'm sorry that we are not able to hear you, Miss McKenna and Dr. Cesley Wilson Turner, but uh, we'll see what questions the board may have. Questions? Anyone? Not Not a one. Okay. Um, but I did want to just acknowledge the plethora of summer opportunities and really grateful to the district uh for
066being able to provide those opportunities for our youngsters and uh so it's a really nice uh thing to see. Um so uh we will move on to the next one. Thank you all on that that um on the uh superintendent's presentation there. Thank you. This is the time uh we set aside to hear from members of the public. The board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions that we are making. Thank you. For our long-standing policy, the board sets aside up to 30 minutes of each meeting to hear from our district residents, parents, students, staff, and other members of our community. If there are more comments than can be accommodated in 30 minutes, we may choose to extend the length of public comment period or alternatively to establish a second comment period later
067in the meeting. We accept all comments in writing, virtual live participation, and also 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. Written comments must be limited to 400 words and voicemail comments to three minutes. All commenters must include your name and place of residence. We do not accept anonymous comments. If you would like to submit a voicemail or written comment for a future meeting, we encourage you to review the quote section addressing the board information at albonychools.orgbeoe org/boe as well as the instructions on how to sign up for sign up for virtual live public comment. We ask all commenters keep in mind that information about individual students and specific district staff cannot be shared. Not only
068is that a violation of privacy, but every student and every staff member deserves to know that the concerns about them will not be aired in public. And tonight we do have a number of people signed up for public comment. And uh please let me know if I mispronounce your name. We try hard to get that right. Um but we do appreciate it when we are corrected. When I recognize you, please stand and state your name and city of residence. Statements are restricted to a maximum of three minutes. Dr. Shhatur, our board secretary will give you one minute notice and a 10-second notice and will and I will notify you if your time has expired. It's a good idea to occasionally look up to see those notices so that you won't be surprised at the end
069of your three minutes. Also, please note that the board's policy is to not respond during the public comment period. If you would like a response, please contact us by email, phone, or postal mail. Our contact information is available at albschools.org. org/boe and I will respond on behalf of the board and at this time I'd like to invite apologies Miss Johnson or Mr. Johnson. Is there a Johnson? Okay, I'll move on to the next. Uh, Supreme Fitzgerald. Okay, I have a second. Fitzgerald. Okay, maybe they were just thought they had to sign it. Okay. And let me then move on to um, Miss May Williams. Would you like to come forward? And I believe our speaker to follow, you may come to the other table. And that is Omika Aken Yi. Is that correct? Oika. Okay.
070Thank you very much. You may go when you're ready. And you may press that button so that your mic lights up in green. The the one with the person image person. You got it. Thank you. Um good afternoon everyone. Um my name is May Williams. Um I'm a teaching assistant at the Albony City School District. I love Albany High. Um I stand before you today to speak about the growing um number of concerns about the lack of diversity. You know, I'm the queen of diversity and the desperate need to hire more black educators. Um our minority children and are struggling. So much so that at the last board meeting, I heard the staff at the TOES mention that they were training white women to teach our young black boys. I gasped. I was disappointed and
071in non understanding of why the effort to train white women to treat our young black boys and not focus on hiring more black staff, males in particular, that knows our population and can teach our young boys than anybody. I think that we must get out of the Leave it to Beaver era. That's what I think that we are. I think that um we need to focus more on, you know, 2023 and going forward. I think that we're going backwards and not forward. Um one more thing that I would like to address is just that some stats that I was looking at. Um Aubony High has approximately 2,600 students of which 80% are black and minority. And there's a very handful of African-American teachers. I think that's really sad. I think that we should work hard
072moving forward to change these numbers. and um there's a ratio of 14 to1 with the white teachers. I think like I said before, I think it's time that we need to do better and move forward and change these numbers. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hi everyone. My name is Oman Kiny. I'm the dance teacher at Albany High School and also the adviser for the cinema dance musical theater club. Um, I am going to speak about unconscious bias and how it impacted my life as a teacher of African descent here in the district. I'm going to go back a little bit to my childhood experience. When I was 9 years old, I had been studying ballet since kindergarten. And one day at a recital, a young white girl decided she didn't want to dance with me.
073She moved away. Uh my mother was so disturbed by the girl's actions that she pulled me out of ballet and I could not dance for the next two years. I had to find a place for myself. This incident sets the stage for unconscious bias. That girl's unconscious bias ruled her actions. This year I was teaching photography as a substitute teacher. I have a master's in of fine arts in film production. I am a noteworthy and award-winning um filmmaker. I was happy to create lessons that engaged the students and they were very well engaged in my classes. I had been teaching the class for five months. I had applied myself for a position as the teacher for the leave of absence and was denied an interview. I was denied an interview even though I've been to
074the can film festival with my films. My students were so disappointed to hear that I had to leave by January 26th and that I had to tell them in front of the teacher who had been selected. I later found out that this teacher wasn't even certified in visual arts or photography, but was allowed to take my position with these students. After I spoke out against this at a meeting with the administration, I felt like I was targeted in my dance classes where I teach as a certified teacher. During this process of preparation for our spring dance concert, the administration sent someone to constantly write us up and comment on how our classes were going. And by the day before our spring concert, our show was cancelled. We demanded as a class that we be given
075a chance. And within that evening, our show was put back on after we showed it from start to finish. It was a really aggressive action that the administration took. I want this to be looked at for unconscious bias. How the administration handled that incident, how they handled the discussions with myself and the students as well as the students ability to overturn it with a successful production that was noted by the community. We were allowed to and asked to then present at the Skyler mansion and we were then disrespected when me as a teacher was asked and told not to return. This is an incident that should not go un recorded and looked at for unconscious bias. Thank you. Thank you both. Mr. Vicante, would you please come forward? Good evening. Good evening, everyone. I was
076here about a year ago. Tom Vicanti. I'm a 17-year veteran of the district. I'm also the GSA adviser and the chair of the LGBTQ committee for APSA. I'm excited to tell you that the Albony city teacher and staff participation in the Capitol Region Pride parade was higher than ever this year. In its second year, the district messaging to celebrate Pride Month continues to be wellreceived, appreciated by most community members. Epa's LGBTQ book giveaway pride reception included more teachers than ever before, and that's the good news. But I do come with you I do come to you in a bit of crisis. I know it's another one, but this one's pretty severe. And truly, there's lives at stake. So creating the LGBTQ committee for ABSA has turned me into a little bit of a lightning rod
077for all your LGBTQ issues and it truly has become obvious to me that we have some serious work to do. There are a good number of teachers and community members that feel we are not meeting the need especially at our lower levels but even at the high school twice in as many weeks in the past couple weeks I personally have witnessed unacceptable occurrences from students and staff. LGBTQ students have always been at a higher risk for mental health issues, being mistreated by society, and it's only gotten worse postcoid. The Pride Committee discussed administering the Glisten survey. We'd like the district to do that locally, but luckily GLlisten has regional data. 68% of students experienced harassment based on identity. 41% of LGBTQ students have considered suicide and 12 have attempted it. Those are New York statistics.
078Especially now with the increasing anti-LGBTQ sentiment, book bannings, heightened security at LGBTQ events, our students most at risk are in need of your help. You need to aggressively support LGBTQ LGBTQ students. The Alb City School District's LGBTQ task force, which met last year, we didn't do anything this year. Look into that. Let's get it started again. Continuous PD. Most of your staff are not comfortable addressing LGBTQ issues, whether for their own ignorance or lack of training. Let's address that. We have access to local organizations that are extremely well-versed in this work. They can help. And most importantly, inclusive curriculum. I talked to the students in the GSA. They tell me that the most they learn about is war. and the number of times that they've learned about LGBTQ characters is one or none. That was
079shocking to me. So, specifically in ELA, social studies, let's get some inclusive curriculum. You can email me. I'm on the district email if you have questions. I'm happy to talk. Thank you, Mr. Vicante. We very much appreciate public comment and we find hearing from our community members very, very valuable. And again, our contact information for both comment and routine correspondence is at achools.org. I would also say that you may reach out to the board uh directly and that is uh BOE alb.k12.ny. us. Thank you. We now move to the part of our meeting we call routine consent. During this portion of the meeting we approve routine matters for the district. These include items like contracts, field trips, personnel matters and the like. Each board member reviews those items very carefully, but we vote on them
080as a group with no discussion. That allows us to use use our meeting time more efficiently. Nonetheless, each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require separate discussion and vote on that item. And before we begin, I want to uh clarify u item six, budget transfers over 10,000 and also item 40, excuse me, 40, it may be 40 now. Um budget transfer under 10,000. Uh there are no transfers uh to report at this time and we will uh I ask you to just scratch that. We'll not consider any of anything. There's nothing there actually to consider. Yes. I'm sorry. Oh, Mr. Caris, I apologize. I have to pull number four as well. The uh bid award for print service. The bid award for print. Okay. And um
081sorry, just need to get to that number for me. Four. There we go. At the top. Okay. Thank you very much. Can I um make a motion to amend the agenda to remove item number four, six, and 40 from the agenda? Yes, please. Motion uh by Miss Savage, second Miss Crerachche. All in favor? Okay. We will remove items 4, six, and uh 40 from this uh agenda. Thank you. Now with that I will now entertain a motion to adopt the routine consent agenda amended agenda. Um mot excuse me are there any set aides? I have set aides. Okay apologies. Okay so my instructions are that I entertain the motion to do that because and then I second that and then I ask if there are any set aides. Right. Okay. So I want to entertain
082a motion to adopt routine consent and I have a hand crides. Yes, Miss Crerachche. Yes, and I apologize. I think I got confused by the little bit of a change there. Yeah, that's right. About the normal procedure. I would like to set aside item 16, College of St. Rose and item 25, NTS data services, please. 20. Uh I'm sorry. Number TW NTS data. I'm sorry. Yep. 16 and 12. It's now 25. 16 and 25. Okay. Yes. 16 and 25. Yes. Thank you. Any additions, Dr. Chhatur? Um I think it's still 38 Vanderhiden. I'm sorry. I did not hear you there. Okay. 38 on my second page. Okay. All righty. Any additions? No. Okay. No. All righty. So all in favor of adopting the routine consent agenda minus uh item 16 College of St. Rose item
08325 NTS data services and item 38 uh Vanderhiden. Okay, that is unanimous. Okay, thank you. And I guess we'll take these one at a time. Um may I have a motion to adopt item sorry 16. Miss uh Wilson, second to Dr. Chatur. Any discussion? Um I haven't really had a chance to look at this super closely because it was posted today. Um ideally I would normally ask if we could table this till the next meeting, but I notice it's for something that's June 26 through 29th. Um so my qu but I did have a question about it says that we need classrooms for it says that we need to rent classrooms from St. s because we don't have large enough classrooms to um support all the security guard uh sorry to contain all the security
084guards for training. So I just had questions about that whether that was a question of the uh district buildings being closed or some other reason. I can answer that. I can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you, Miss McKenna. You're welcome. I'm actually on my computer and on my phone. So, great. So, we have uh over 120 hall monitors um and security staff that we need to train. We need um large um spaces um to utilize for the entire week of um the week after. So, the week of the 26. Unfortunately, um our high school will be offline for a complete day and we don't want to go back and forth um do one day at um at St. you know a couple of days at St. Rose and then go back
085to the high school. Um so we made a decision to use um classroom space and large spaces at um St. the College of St. Rose uh for this large scale um training and breakout breakout rooms that we need. Thank you, Miss McKenna. You're welcome. Miss Gracia, are you satisfied? Uh, yes. Thank you. Okay. Any additional uh discussion on this item? Okay. All in favor of adopting uh this item 16, College of St. Rose. That is unanimous. Thank you. And that carries. Okay. May I have a motion to adopt item 25 insata services? Miss Wilson, seconded by Dr. Chatur. Is there any discussion? Miss Cr. So, let me just pull this back up again. Again, this is another one where I had very limited time to review this because it was posted today. Um, ideally, sorry,
086the addendum looks like it was posted today. Not not correct for NTS data services. Maybe I have the wrong one. I apologize. Um, but I was not sure. But my question was the page says something about that the normal total services were approved not to exceed $6,000 but then it says increasing it by 6,000 increasing the total compensation amount to 45. But it looks like from reading the contract through it looked like the total the nor the main compensation amount was 39,000 with an estimated additional $6,000 for the preparation of 1500 absentee ballots. And then it sounded like after the fact we would pay for however many absentee ballots were actually created. So, I think that was I think that was just my question and that why wouldn't the amount of absentee ballots be included
087in the in other words, if we know ahead of time how many absentee ballots we'd print, why wouldn't that have been included in the contract? But just to make sure have the numbers correct that it's 39,000 plus 6,000 for a total of 45 that it's not an additional 39. Mr. Cares, so that should be a total of the $45,000 for the contract. Um, as for the um, absentee ballots, this was created back in March. So, I think it was a a guesstimate at that point of 1500 absentee ballots. And as we got closer to May, it was tightened up to how many absentee ballots were required. So, was it actually 15? So, was it actually 1500? Because that's what I was confused by because it says 6,000 for 1500. I'll have to go to you
088the exact number. I don't think it exceeded the 45,000 as a total amount of the contract. Okay. Could we table this? Do we have the exact amount that we pay? Miss Savage, were you about to comment on that? I just have the the original contract open and I was looking to see if I could quickly find it. Um quantity was estimated at 1500 in the original contract. So, do we know what the final number of absentee ballots was sent? Okay, then I guess we should table this while we figure out what really happened here then. So, I need to entertain a motion to table that motion made by Miss Crerache, seconded by Miss Savage. Okay. All in favor? So, we have t Thank you. That carries and we've tabled that item. Thank you. Um, may
089I have a motion to adopt item 38, Telicia? Oh, excuse me. That is wrong. Item 38. It is renumbered. Vanderhiden. Um, motion made by Dr. Shur, second by Mr. Almanoing. And discussion, please. Yeah, for this one as well as the one we just tabled, the wrong John signed it. Oh, so it's just a matter of crossing out John Nicholski's name and putting the right to Okay. Excuse me. May I get a motion to table that one? Dr. Shhatur. Oh, we just I'm okay with We can just scratch scratch. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought you said I heard table again. No, the last room we tabled also had the same issue. Okay. All right. All right. So, we can move on this one. All right. All in favor of adopting item 3 and 38 Vanderhiden.
090That is unanimous and carries. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Now we have uh our action items. Um first up uh discussion with policy. Actually your combination of discussion and uh action and discussion. Is that correct? Okay. Dr. Members of the board. So yeah today we are acting on one policy which we discussed last time and then we have three policies for discussion and a Tom's section for discussion um of which actually the top section should be discussion action right we want it to be discussion action the memo was slightly incorrect um so for action we have 5411 which is intercolastic coaching this policy was discussed last time and basically We simplified the and had references to the New York state education department guidelines for coaching document from 2019 2018 and uh we discussed the issue of
091appropriate C training for non-district staff because some of the staff who are not employed by district don't receive that training that we give all our coaches and our staff. Uh so uh at this point in time we wanted to get this policy on the books. uh uh but we'll bring it back again to policy in six months to see what you know how how the process has been working over those you know from now on six months later and see if any uh things need to be tweaked so may have a motion to approve 5411 interlastic coaching miss Wilson M cr all on favor thank you so uh of the three policies we have for discussion I'll take the easiest one first which is 60 to 40 investments are basically this policy was revised in
092keeping with the effort to avoid the gender specific language. So we we're getting rid of all this his her language and in changing it to their um so this is another one of those where there were a couple of incidences where we had to change that 5030 is the next policy. We changing the name of this policy from student complaints and grieviances to student concerns and appeals. uh this is in keeping with the NESBA language and this policy was also revised to better describe the process and how the various issues related to various student issues are tied to different board policies. Um any questions on this one? Okay, a big one that we have for discussion is the 5200 code of conduct. Um as as you may know we this is one of those policies
093that has to be reviewed every year and we make adjustments as things change. Um so this policy was edited to revise the contact information for the various coordinators. Uh there's a new addition in section six which is the therapeutic crisis intervention for schools suicide risk assessment and comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines CTS CST and then some of the language and intervention criteria were all also revised. Now the details of these changes are provided in the final in the document that Mr. Gail has on the screen which is called the final code of conduct comment section which walks us through the different changes that were discussed in the policy meeting. Along with this policy there are three other policies that have to be reviewed. Uh so this that's the information section. I'm just reading it so
094they're all this one big chunk. Policy 0100 which is anti-discrimination equal opportunity. There are no changes as this point. There is new guidance coming from New York State Education Department regarding creating a safe, supportive and affirming school environment for transgender and gender expansive students. So this policy we we are planning to bring it back. There's no changes at this time but we'll bring it back on in Jan 2024 when these guidelines will be more established. 0110 which is sexual harassment has two sub policies 1110.1 for students and 110.2 for employees. No changes were made to the policy at this time but the regulations were updated to reflect the titles rather than names. Uh in the past we've included names of people along with their titles people change. So this way this makes it more relevant
095to you just have the contact information for the right people. Policy 115 which is student harassment and bullying prevention intervention was again re reviewed with no changes. uh the policy mentions that the board will receive an annual VA report for each building and for the district as a whole with particular attention to the trends in the incidents for bullying and the uh so we requested that the district provide this as an SBU but also include reportable and non-reportable uh data by subgroups so when we look at it we can actually break it down and see where you know how these issues are correlated. So going back to the code of conduct, uh the um is anybody from PPS online? Not a problem. Um so if you go back to the uh so the code of
096conduct, the book as such as you can see it's the old book which still needs to be revised. Um but if you look at the comments section you'll see that you know some of those changes have already been identified. We have a new superintendent there's a new message u some of the headings have changed uh the complaint procedures have been have been revised. Um there the big changes are really the addition of section six which is therapeutic crisis intervention for school. uh suicide risk assessment, comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines, um use of ruler, um some of the restorative practices. So there was a lot of discussion on on on changing the um the heading from illegal drugs, marijuana in inhalence and vaping device to illegal drugs, marijuana inhalence and authorized unauthorized medication. Um because a
097lot of these new things didn't quite fit in the category. And so it was like, yes, you found somebody vaping and there's a criteria in which they would fit into, but what if they weren't vaping, but they had a vaping device. Where does this device fall into? What kind of a violation that is? And and so the terminology was just that the the glossery was changed so that it reflects all of these things. Um we uh and and you know the the u student is not the the student doesn't fall into a higher tier category for offenses that don't really fit that category. Uh so any questions? Yes, you do have one here, Miss Wilson. Thank you for that summary and I appreciate your efforts to update the code of conduct, especially the additions of
098the therapeutic crisis intervention because I think that makes it like a well-rounded and holistic document that promotes um healthy behaviors and overall well-being. I was curious about the segment, which one was it? Bear with me. I think it was 0110.1 where we obviously sort of um take individuals names out and make it more the role of the person who is to contact. Do we still have those links bring you to who you would still contact in case of needing to contact that person? So you yes you get the titles and the plan is we would have those links the online version will have the links directly hyperl so when you click on it it will give you the contact information of that person or it'll take you to the communications page where tells you if
099you're in this building then you go to this principal and so on so forth. Thank you. Because that, you know, we have ours is a big district and so there's lots of people and people and if if you're not in the building and know everybody, it's hard to find out who do I contact, right? So, we want to make it as simple as easy. So, if you can click on it at least, okay, here's my three choices. Who's my principal? Who's my next level up? You know, DASA coordinator, whatever it is. Very good. So there will be a public hearing before our next board meeting on the 13th. Um and the we will be acting on these policies after that. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Uh we do have one portion that is also a
100discussion action item which is a Tom section. Sorry Miss Savage. That's okay. That 5300 is a lot. There's a lot there. So that's fine. Um, so we have one team operations manual section today. I want to in particular thank Dr. Chhatur and Miss Jedere Gale for their efforts to get these policies to you today. I want everyone to know that the policy committee only met 48 hours ago. So there's a lot of work that goes into just moving these things forward. And so we tried to limit what we did tonight to just the essential things that had to be done tonight to try and limit the effort that it took to make that all happen in 48 hours. So the one that Dr. Chhatur rightfully said we better do tonight is the uh team operations
101manual section around organizational meetings since the next time we meet will be our organizational meeting. So it didn't make sense to allow this to drift beyond that. So I believe he's proposing that we do this for discussion action tonight um so that it will be in force for the organizing meeting when we meet in approximately a month. So when you take a look at this, you'll see that there's both a team operations manual section and there is a policy. The policy has been long-standing and you can see the red line um version and you'll see that it is extremely similar to what it was. We have consulted with um our legal adviserss to make sure that we are fully in compliance um with all the things we're supposed to be in compliance with and that's
102what's in the policy. And then the team operations manual section is quite similar, but just gives you a little bit more of the how um that this happens. As with everything that we do, we're trying to make the team operations manual section a little bit more like a regulation, like how we implement the policy. And the policy is the part that states what we are obligated to do. And so I am certainly happy to entertain any questions about either team operations manual sections 12 or 2210 the um board organizational meeting policy. Any questions? I'm seeing none. No, I'll let you all do that. I I don't get to do this very often anymore. I'd like to entertain a motion to adopt team operations manual section 12 along with 2210. Motion by doc Mr. Elman Mowi,
103seconded by uh board member Crerache. All in favor and that is unanimous. Thank you very much. Great. Thank Yes. Go ahead. I just wanted to point out a feature. If you notice in the last couple of meetings when you look at the red lines, there are things that are highlight that are marked in red font and others that are in blue. That's to distinguish things that are getting deleted and things that are getting added things. So, very good. Thank you all for your work. Uh and that includes staff. I want to make sure I not don't leave you out of this. A lot of hard work on your part. Thank you. So, now that we've um uh this is generally an action comes first, but this has been a combination one uh action and discussion.
104We will now go to our discussion presentations. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's one more action. H Mr. Carris, I didn't want to leave you out. Um do would you like to introduce this uh or Yeah, go ahead, sir. Uh so the next action is the resolution for um as we finish closing up our our books. So over the summertime with this resolution, it allows us to actually move money above the if we have excess funds above the 4% surplus that is allowed. We can move it over the summertime because of this resolution. So, as we finish up the books and do our audit in August and have a finalized number, I'll come out to the board again and say we need to adjust this uh balance and move it to this fund
105balance or to this reserve. But this reser resolution allows us to extend that time until we do close out the books. Thank you, sir. Uh may I have a motion to adopt this resolution? Uh Dr. tour seconded by Miss Crerache. Any discussion? Seeing none, uh I mean okay all in favor then of adopting this that is unanimous and carries. Thank you there. Geez, I was doing so well I thought. Um anyway, all right. Thank you, Mr. Caris. All right. So now we can move into our discussions presentations and I believe uh first up here is a we have three uh under the category of program and academic program review and goodness it's good to see you all. Hi good evening board of education. This is my favorite presentation of the year. The concert is to
106the musician, the exhibition to the artist, the game, to the athlete, to the content folks. It's the curriculum review. So, here we are to uh celebrate our work in the um office of curriculum and instruction. And we are going to start with the math review. And I'd like to introduce to you u Mr. Frank Delenor who's secondary math and business supervisor and Mrs. Sarah McGrath, our elementary STEM supervisor. And so take it away, folks. Good evening, members of the board. As always, we start with our vision, mission, and goals. The curriculum review process the the curriculum review process ensures that we can continue to deliver robust educational programs that engage every learner. Our presentation will begin with a brief overview of the shifts in mathematics that started with common core and will continue with the
107adoption of next generation learning standards. We will then discuss our findings and recommendations at the secondary and elementary levels. The common core state standards proposed three shifts in mathematics and the next generation standards continue to raise expectations and ensure students are college and career ready. The shifts ask us to center the curriculum strongly where the standards focus, to link major topics both within and across grades, and to attend to rigor in three aspects: conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and applications. The illustrative mathematics program is a problembased curriculum that integrates research-based instructional routines that increase student voice and facilitate learning and is beginning to be used across the district in grades K through 12. Illustrative mathematics was adopted as a resource for grades six through eight in the spring of 22 and began and we began using
108it this year in grade six with grades seven and eight plan to follow in consecutive years. High school teachers um have implemented at least one activity per unit in 2223 with plans to continue to grow that moving forward. and Sarah McGraw will discuss uh the implementation of illustrative mathematics in the second part of the presentation. At the secondary level specifically all three components of rigor that I talked about with the shifts in mathematics um we need to work on addressing them in equal intensity. We need to uh increase our focus for conceptual understanding and application, decrease our focus in procedural fluency and we believe that illustrious mathematics is going to serve as a resource that will help us in that effort over time. Another resource that we're using at the secondary level is Delta Math.
109It's emerged especially during the COVID shutdown um as a digital platform to enhance procedural skills and fluency. The founder and CEO of Delta Math, Zack Cororsik, is actually a city of school district of alumni uh city school district of Albany alumni and he was recently inducted into the district's hall of fame in 2022. Um, delta math is used as a tool for differentiation to target individual needs of students for remediation and acceleration. There's an infinite number of problems that allow multiple opportunities for success and are aligned to standards and skills across grades 6 through 12. Uh, the modules have embedded videos that help students and the assignments are self-paced. Sarah will discuss EXL first in math and bridges during the elementary portion of this presentation. Continuing on specifically in secondary mathematics, um I think we're
110skipped one slide. I wanted to talk briefly about acceleration in mathematics. Um I think you're two ahead now. There we go. Perfect. Um so beginning in the 22 23 school year we started a new class for acceleration in grade six. The old model was acceleration began in grade seven. When Mr. Pino was talking about um how things have shifted at Hackit. He talked about there used to be one team at grade six and now there's two. Um that shift that we made to have grade six at all three middle schools opened up that opportunity for acceleration to exist at grade six. And we believe that by having uh two years now to cover the three middle grade standards, we're going to be able to better prepare our students for algebra in grade 8. While we
111implement that pathway, when I presented this last year, the board asked that we continue to look at students in grade six for the double acceleration option. That process has continued this year. We've identified our students. We've made outreaches and offered that opportunity. Families are currently making that decision in preparation for next school year. And with all of our acceleration uh and honors options that we offer within the district, we use a data-driven process. We want to make sure that there is equity and access and we want to provide on-roads and off-ramps for students. And we review our criteria annually. Student voice we know has been a priority across the district. So, it only seemed appropriate to ask our students to be part of our curriculum review process this year. We conducted a survey in the
112spring of 2023, and 889 students in grades 6 through 12 responded to our survey. Students responded most favorably to our question about having their voice be valued in math and enjoyed uh their math class. We were really proud of that because, as I said, student voice has been something we've been focused on. Um some areas that we need to continue to work on in math are making the curriculum relevant to the real world for our students and um that is something that we'll see as one of the re recommendations as we move forward. The second part of this survey was an opportunity for long form responses for our students. We asked them for um some strengths and opportunities that they saw in our curriculum. And as you can see with some of the comments that
113I've highlighted here for you this evening, um the areas that students identified as our strengths were often also the areas that they asked us to continue to develop. So namely our students wanted more applications of math uh to be relevant to the real world. They wanted more collaborate collaborative activities. They wanted more spiral view. They wanted more games. These were the same things that they enjoyed when they occurred. Um, our students have clearly provided valuable feedback through this survey and it will inform our curriculum writing over our next five-year cycle at the secondary level. At this point, I'll turn it over to Sarah McGra to discuss elementary mathematics. Hello everyone. So, in 2018, it was the last time that Frank and I were here. And it was 5 years ago and we were literally we
114were literally I was 5 months into this job though Mike Pelino's comment about being old with 14 years. This is my 30th year working for the school district. So I was saying 14 young young gun there. So, um, with that said, in 2018, we showed up and did our review and one of the things that was very clear from the findings and recommendations for elementary math. What there there was a lot of work to be done in regard to our resource to be aligned to next generation standards around we had little if any uh electronic platforms uh which was a a piece that the board brought forward to us and said how are you communicating with each other you know via hard copy pieces of paper essentially was how we were communicating with each other
115and um math RTI or that that opportunity to address unfinished learning and or enrich was somewhat non-defined and that was the findings of 2018. So we went about our work starting in 2018 at the elementary level addressing the findings and implementing the recommendations. We had a wee bit of a two-year hiccup with COVID. Um but it didn't stop us. And in fact, as you look at one of the slides at the end, COVID catapulted the elementary um all of elementary to be honest, both ELA, math, science, and social studies forward because of the technological uh component pieces that we had to develop to communicate with teachers. We didn't have Rubicon. We weren't using Rubicon. And all of a sudden, we needed to come up with something. And and you'll see that in in the results
116of the finding. So when 2023 came and we were looking at our review, what we were really noticing is the results of 2018, that garden of seeds that we had been planting since 2018 is growing and the pieces are now in strong standing and almost all of the recommendations from 2018 have been realized. So what I thought I would do in regard to my my slides is to talk about what's actually happening, how these findings are now being applied and how these findings are now in place um in the in the elementary world. So we I want to start with the core uh Frank referenced illustrative math. What we started doing in 2018 was taking the primary resource we had and enhancing it because it wasn't meeting our needs. and the math coaches and myself
117were developing sort of supplemental materials to either replace um pieces that were inside our primary resource or to to layer on so that there was more opportunities for student voice and student engagement. As we were doing that work, it became very apparent because elementary classroom teachers are generalists. They're not content specialists. They are teaching ELA, science, social studies, ruler, and everything else. um we needed to make sure that we had a primary resource that was a full meal so to speak and when we got back from CO it became very apparent this supplementing on to the resource we had was not efficient it might have been effective but it wasn't efficient and so we started looking illustrative math was where we were finding all the supplemental pieces for the years prior illustrative math was what
118we were being trained in when we went to the unbound dead standard it was the resource we were pulling from. So all of our training over the last five years around uh launch explore debrief which I believe you all have heard about when principles come and speak about the elementary level that's a structure of how to deliver math specifically conceptual math learning and conceptual standards uh number talks and three reads and all of these other component pieces that we have been implementing. Many of those pieces were coming from illustrative. We were as the coaches who are almost all moms um we were hiding the broccoli and the macaroni and cheese. We were using illustrative as our resource when we were doing PD. We weren't telling the teachers necessarily we were using a new resource. And
119the reason why is because the 10 years prior to me coming into this role, we changed primary resources on elementary classroom teachers four times in 10 years. The research says three to five years before a teacher's comfortable with a primary resource. And we were flipping every two years, every two and a half years. So that's why we stayed with the resource we had in 2018. But after we got back from COVID, we realized we can't. We need to move. So for the last year and a half, we've been hiding the broccoli. We've been doing illustrative math across the district. Every single teacher has used illustrative math either in a PD modeled by a coach in a in a cycle. Some teachers have been implementing whole units, taking the whole illustrative unit instead of the prior
120uh resource. So you'll see that this piloting has been happening in all the buildings. It is the best practice research routines and strategies. And to Frank's point, we are now vertically aligned. We are using illustrative math all the way up. As as the the children that I service in the K5 get more comfortable with problem based learning and more comfortable with that type of engagement, they it will be so much more effective and efficient when they hit the middle school and are asked to work in that in that way. Um and so our course starting in September of 2023 will be we're all in. We're not waiting into the pool which I always love to do. We're cannonballing into the deep end and it's K5 going into illustrative math and we have been uh all
121of our assessments will be aligned. All of our materials will be aligned and this is the is this is the program we are hoping will be that final piece. The other component to elementary math that did not exist in 2018 with any kind of flesh out is really uh robust at this point. Um, we were referring to it as math RTI, but we're rebranding. And the new name, I believe, starting in September will be math E and I because that really captures what we're doing at the elementary level, which is enrichment and intervention in this period of time because we have children essentially in four levels. We have children who are below approaching the stand the grade level standard on or beyond the grade level standard. So we wanted to come up with a platter
122of materials and opportunities during that time period to push every child forward wherever they're standing in their learning. So the first thing that we did and we started implementing two years ago was the bridges intervention program. This is an intervention program for children who are below or approaching the grade level standard. It is a standardbased resource, not a grade level resource. We have hired math interventionists um and now they service all diff all of the elementary buildings have at least one intervention if not more than one interventionist. They're supporting grades 3, four, five with some of the needs that that exist there in regard to some of the COVID pieces and and some of the unfinished learning uh that is present in in our students at the intermediate level and they're using exclusively the bridges
123resource. It is the fastest way to address unfinished learning that we have been able to find and it's been highly effective and that's showing itself in NWA data and other data points. The other thing that we have been actively doing and we started doing it, it went into effect this year is we've created math lending libraries at each site. These are overseen by the math interventionists and essentially they're games speaking to Frank's survey results. The idea of having active hands-on fun ways of learning that is all about the K5 world and that game learning and those center activities. Teachers love to use those. But the one thing no one has enough time is time. Time to make those games. Time to laminate and cut out the pieces and get it all set. So we have
124created massive lending libraries in all 12 elementary buildings. They're available for teachers to take them out like the regular library. And when they're teaching a particular standard in they can go. They have a child who needs enrichment. They have a child who's beyond. Get a game that's addressing a standard above or a standard that's a harder one to do. Those materials are right there already aligned. The third and final piece of our RTI programming or our new ENI programming is our digital platforms. We were using Dreambox in 2018. We started with Dreambox and to be very frank that was because we had nothing else. It is a teaching platform. It is rigorous. But now that we have these other component pieces, we need a platform that allows children to practice the learning that they've had
125and allows the teacher to stay working with her small group and not have to pop up all the time because the child is sort of lost in the sauce and dream box. So we are shifting to first in math was provided by New York State as a free resource um that came into play about a year ago and it's still we still have another year on that contract. Both and First in Math are what I'm going to say as practice platforms. They're not teaching platforms. Will say they're a teaching platform because if the child gets it wrong, the answers are below, but they're really a practice platform. So, this is a period of minutes in the art in the ENI time, maybe like 10 minutes a day, think and all the electronic platforms um increased
126their uh what they look like, how they behave since co, right? because everybody had to get better because of COVID. And which teachers had been using at the K5 level for years prior to Dreambox is now back and is is wonderful. It has data reports. It has other pieces in it and special ed self-contained has been using at the K5 level all of this year sort of piloting it for us with great results and um some really positive feedback. So, we're really excited. It sounds like we're implementing a whole bunch of new things next year with a new platform and a new core, but we said, "No, this this is what needs to happen." And I've spent the last 12 days visiting every single elementary school, every single teacher who teaches math or supports math
127in small groupoup sessions. Um, essentially rolling this out as the beginning of our roll out and to great uh enthusiasm especially about this digital platform. Which moves us to why Frank hates me because I have all these cute pictures of little kids doing math and he's like that's why I'm going last. And he So these these are pictures of games. These are pictures of children doing games. If you're walking through buildings and you're looking at math ENI time, RTI time, you will see gameplay happening in those buildings. You will see children working on their fluency, working on their automaticity, um developing, some of them are money games, some of them are time games. They all are addressing in different ways. And every child has an opportunity to play these games. Even the children who are
128below and approaching who would be necessarily working with an adult at using bridges, there's periods within the RTI ENI time to also have access to these to these resources. I put that quote up there just for a minute. I'm sorry, Karen. And I highlighted the blue because this is different than maybe how you went to school and I went to school. And it certainly is different than when I first started teaching in this district. The idea of time tests and fast facts and bang bang bang bang. We are not creating little baby calculators anymore. We are creating children who can have number sets, children who can really think about math in a different way because that is what the new standards speak to. And that is what we're doing with these games. Here's an example
129of lending libraries. Those are three different buildings with with pictures of sort of shelves. And every single building has a lending library. I want to draw your attention to the third one over with the green carpet in it. Those little file boxes are um sort of ziplockc baggies. Every one of those boxes is labeled with a standard that is taught in K5 math. So it is, you know, it's every domain, every standard. And there's games. we are adding to them. So, it is an easy grab for the teacher to come in and say, "I'm teaching this standard in the classroom. Let me grab a game that can be put out in the center. Um, a game that's been aligned by the coaches and by the interventionists." So, it it just working in collaboration with the
130teachers helping lift their load. So, you'll see these when you walk around. Um, please by all means when you're visiting buildings, ask to see their math lending library. And finally, G Oh, Karen, one more click. Okay. So again, more pictures, right? More pictures of little muffins doing math and enjoying math. And one of the ones I wanted to draw your attention to is the center picture. That is a core activity because one of the biggest pieces to K5 math is the use of manipulatives. Not just for games, not just for RTI, ENI time, but embedded in the core lessons. That is a self-contained specialed classroom where they are working on area and the teacher taped used you know um painters tape tape down that shape and the children are trying to figure out area concretely
131with those manipulatives. A very abstract idea for little people but yet they can do that. And so you will see manipulatives being used across the board. And speaking to manipulatives and the games because I know that this has possibly bubbled up here to the board. We have had an outpour of support around developing those lending libraries. Albany Fund for Education wonderfully supports us. Donors choose every one of the interventionists because we're all about finding where we can find it. As Karen always jokes, you find things falling off the back of a truck. But I do because because we it's all about getting materials in children's hands. And so uh donors choose every interventionist. Um Deb Whipple is one of our interventionists at Delaware. She's the highest donor choose writing teacher in the district and so
132she taught all the interventionists how to write it just the right way. So things are pouring in but the district also by all means is supporting our manipulatives that we need. We sent almost everything we had home during co all our chippies or all our little discs so that children could use manipulatives when they were working with the teacher through the screen. Well they didn't come back right. So we're we're restocking but we uh we want to thank the board because you know the money is coming but we do re we do have external people who give us money as well to support these lending libraries to support these hands-on materials. So that is the end of mine. I no last one. Oh I thought I was done terribly sorry. Um I love presenting with
133Mike because Mike talks too. So I'm not the only one who talks a lot. Okay so here we go. Frank's over here going, "Yeah, she talks a lot." Um, okay. Last bit is the electronic platform piece. You all asked me specifically, "How do you communicate with each other if you're not using Rubicon?" March 16th is when we started communicating with each other. On March 13th, we closed this district down. On March 16th, one of our math interventionists, most of the math coaches and interventionists are techies, right? And so one of our math coach on March 16th created a K5 math Google classroom and we started loading everything inside. We now have a complete uh classroom set up where all our assessments sit there. All our curriculum resources uh copies of games, copies of this, how
134we communicate data and how we're doing that. We use all of our assessments are now loaded in e doctrina. So it's not it used to be literally hard copy pieces of paper, right? And now it's any teacher can see what it is. We load them in. We can look at trends across the district. K5 both math and ELA. Co was our catalyst and it it forced us in there and now we are there. Starting in September, we had a K5 math Google classroom because we needed to move fast. We now have grade specific classrooms where all the illustrative support materials live, all the assessments live, and then all these games, but every teacher can join whatever classroom they want to join, not just the ones they teach because some of them tutor after school. other
135grades. Some of them do other kind of work. They're allowed to join any classroom and and and uh uh and we've even had uh administration from external districts um who you know I'm friends with say can I join your Google classroom you know and and see what you all are doing. So it's been a high success for us now having this sort of electronic communication tool. All right now I'm definitely done. Questions? Well, thank you both very much. Oh my goodness. Um, this is exciting. Colleagues, questions. Um, we'll take them one at a time. Miss Cree, you want to start? Uh, just a comment that I enjoyed your presentation and I especially like the games and manipulatives because learning through play is so important for especially our younger children and learning through manipulatives is also
136just a great way especially with mathematics to get that knowledge of how many you know how many apples you've got and so how many people how many apples etc. So, thanks for thanks for putting all that work in to give our kids a more fun and more effective way to learn the Savage. So, I also was very excited to see your presentation. It's always fun to have you guys come. I think you all know that I'm a mathy kind of person and so I love to hear about the math curriculum. Um, and it was very exciting to hear the um synergy between the survey and the moving forward. It was really very rewarding. One question I did want to follow up with you on is um you talked a little bit about the you know
137whether this is something new and is it going to feel new to the teachers and is it going to be something where it feels like more load or lifting their load and I wanted to ask how you plan to both for the new grade six curriculum which we're done with year one right so we have one year but under our belt and with the new um math resource both digital and um paper resource how you're planning to evaluate the teacher buy into those um at the end of the year in the middle of the year because I know that they were very enthusiastic when you come Sarah when you talk everybody's enthusiastic because your enthusiasm is so contagious it's fabulous but we do sometimes hear concerns from teachers about like oh god it's one more
138thing oh no it's another thing and I I really appreciate you're saying we really tried to keep the brakes on so that we wouldn't be changing curriculum but I I wonder if you're planning on a quantitative and qualitative a way of evaluating how the teachers feel about this and the parents and students feel about these changes moving forward. So, anything you have to share about that would be very much appreciated. You do six first. Part of the reason why we launched sixth grade was because every year we would have a handful of parents that would come to us and say, "My child is not being challenged at grade six math." I can tell you tonight I did not have one family reach out to me or a building principal um complaining that their kid was
139not being challenged in grade six accelerated math this year. So I consider that a really big step in the right direction. Um also the work of curriculum writing never ends. I have a team assembled already for this summer to take the anecdotal notes that teachers have from their work that happened over the course of the school year. We're going to modify what we did this year and make it better for next year just like we do every year. So I think that answered your question um for six. So um I completely agree. You know, you show up, you roll out and they all smile, right? And then you leave and then someone says something grumbly grumbly. Um because I was a teacher for 25 years. I am in a weird supervisorial role where um real
140transparent comments are made to me because these are the women that I taught with for 25 years, right? And so they will come right at me and so they absolutely um have articulated how are you going to help us lift this new resource and that's when all of a sudden I say what are you talking about you've been lifting it for a year and a half you just didn't realize it the math coaches the math interventionists myself we have been trained in the program the unit planning we are all the math steps for all 12 buildings speak to like the real focus this year in the math steps is the unpacking and the implementation with fidelity of illustrative there is not the extra launch explore debris for the number all those other things because all
141of that is baked into the pages of this resource teachers for the last five years we've been doing PD around the stuff that they had to add to the old resource they're going to say oh wait I don't have to go hunt through the Google classroom for a number talk that aligns because it's right on page three here and it's the one that aligns where what our plan is is to do something that Miss Morphe, the new ELA supervisor, did this year in regard to wonders is um what I'm going to say is listening tours um and going to the building as they're implementing having during their CPT time having them be able to say how's it going? What supports do you need from us? the the coaches this year at the buildings are not
142talking about modeling as much as co-eing this year about getting in there because they don't need to model a number talk or a launch anymore. Everybody's seen that unless you're a brand new teacher, you've seen that PD. What you need now is how do we do it here in illustrative? How how do I do this? Getting in there and teaching it. Um we have had um probably a dozen or two dozen teachers who pretty much have been using Illustrative all year long replacing the other one and they have been somewhat of our um champions at these buildings. We were strategic. Every coach worked with at least one if not not another more than that individual teacher so that at that site that teacher can speak to this work. We also worked with the ABSA union
143and had conversations with them about what our rollout plan was. We have rolled out curriculum at the elementary um level over the course of the last 30 years with mixed results, right? Sometimes we roll out really well and sometimes it kind of drops. We it is all about illustrative roll out next year and what can we support? Right now, math interventionists are currently making all the center games for kindergarten teachers. Like that's some of this June work that we're doing because it's a heavy lift to make those materials for centers that go that tie to core. We're literally laminating and cutting out and using our resources standing at Academy Park with the color photocopier as as Mr. Grass has seen me there. Um we are we're making these resources again how we can help but
144the real front line are the teachers. So we are feedback loop. There will be a survey in January and then in June saying where are you? What unit are you in? Because the other research says it's it's a challenge for teachers to get through the entire pacing map of a new resource the first year. So we we have placed in padded days where we can we're going to be looking closely at that work. So we have a plan we don't have any issue. We know that's going to roll out seamlessly. That's not going to be a a concern. I'm looking forward to that. And it seems like that survey, those midyear survey things might give you an opportunity to get some not just where are you, but h how is this actually working? Oh, yeah.
145I'll be interested to hear more. Thank you, Miss Wilson. Thank you so much for your presentation. Um there were a lot of profound insights. So I'll just without taking up too much time just want to say that um applaud the shift not that it requires an applause but the shift from calling something RTI response to intervention to um enrichment and intervention because every student at all level needs support in various things. they may be strong in other areas and need support in others. And I appreciate also when you spoke about um you know basically sort of uh frontloading people with new initiatives, new ideas, new things. And there is a prioritization of the new thing I think in our society and you know sometimes we're presented with why don't you do what you know another
146state, city, school districts doing. Um and sometimes people are not apt to understand that there's a lot of startup costs and like you said the emotional toll, the intellectual um labor to do that. So where we want to be eventually is having things embedded and as you mentioned we have to stick with it for a while. Um, also full circle for me was the illustrative learning and the learning through prey. And I love that research is aligning with what we kind of inherently knew for like centuries that when you gamify something, it opens up the lines of receptivity for people to see yourself in that role. And um, math is of course foundational to being techy or STEMI if you will. And we know there tends to be disparity in terms of representation of um,
147different groups, individuals. Um, so that's very important also. And I also appreciate because I know um I kind of brought up the manipulatives. So I appreciate that you brought it up as well. And I think when I talked about it the last time I called them derivatives, I was tired. But um the I appreciate that because it very much is a counternarrative about why are we eating so many resources or when we obtain well basically we obtain these resources for our students. It's for them to use, to have, to hold, to learn with. And of course in terms of cost, I do think that's money well spent. And I appreciate that you shedding that light so that people who may be donors, supporters or community members understand that yes, we do use them. They get
148used. They're for this. It I think it just simplifies or kind of reverses the concept of where are they going? What's happening with that? So I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Dr. Chhatur, as always, you know, this is always fun subject to talk about. Uh you guys do a great job. I have a comment in that question. The comment is about uh the acceleration process. Um I know when when Neil was at hack and he went through the process. So there was you know as a parent you were like is it good for the student to be putting them and is it high pressure that they'll go to the high school they're still a middle school kid. So there are all these concerns on the other hand there were some parents like why
149isn't my kid you know and so we address some of those but is there a document that that can be available like an FAQ kind of thing public facing so parents in elementary school can look at those things or or even you know sixth grade parents can look at those things and be made aware of it even before coming to the district right because some of those questions are the same questions that are asked every year and you can uh so that's a common uh suggestion the question I had was uh it's great that we we we hit the broccoli and we sort of trained people and we have a good PD for our teachers and they're all you know now into that not learning stage but yeah being there seen that we know how
150to do it stage but in the STEM in science and math especially in science and math we have a hard time recruiting new new teachers new staff right so when we when teachers leave the district we don't uh it's really hard the market isn't there and we have a lot of subs coming in who haven't gone through that PD. So how do we address the training for those people so that they understand what is it that we are doing so that they can do it the same level that a teacher who's gone through the PD would be offering our students. I think one of the um wonderful component pieces of adding math interventionists at the K5 level, we've always had reading teachers, right? and but we've never had these math interventionists. We have been training
151both the math interventionists and instructional TAs who work in the K1 to um be able to use Bridges. Bridges is incredibly user friendly. So if there are subs coming in um the resources are Bridges for example is scripted and so it is a very easy uh resource for someone who maybe does didn't have the training. We have math coaches at every building. Um, some buildings share a math coach, but we have a wonderful team of math coaches. And when someone comes in at the elementary level, um, and say is covering a maternity leave or something like that, it's the coach's job. It's part of the coach to come in and wrap around in there and say, "Let's make sure you understand the structures that we're using, the type of math, because most likely that sub
152is going to try to teach math sort of old school." And um this way the coach would come in and maybe teach the lesson so that that the sub could see this. Um at the elementary level because they're generalists. We I am having no problem with people wanting to be math interventionists. Um in fact the math interventionists we have are almost exclusively district veteran teachers who were just looking for sort of a new experience who maybe wanted to do something other than classroom. So at the elementary level from a math science lens, we're not having that issue that maybe you're having or are you all set? You don't need to speak to that. So I I hear what you're saying. We are wrapping around them at least at the elementary level because of the having
153coaches as many coaches as we have to be able to do that. And kudos for the gamifying of math. you know, that makes it more fun. And you're doing math on a daily every time every day, but you're not realizing that you're doing it and oh, it's math and it's just something that is uh uh that creates a fear, but you don't have to be. So, thank And just regarding your first comment about something to think about the illustrative resource which is in Spanish and in English and has wonderful parent pages that explain what is problembased um how what is problem based math and how does it look. It's also an online resource so parents could literally see the lesson that was being taught in the classroom if they were if they so desired. These
154communication pieces with parents are absolutely being pushed forward for open houses and these opening day presentations and theformational packets people get to understand how math looks is going to look different for their child. Great. And I guess I would just add that regarding the acceleration pathways that information is posted on our district website um in the middle level section under honors and acceleration. and it gives a a brief description of criteria for uh being part of the various pathways that we have. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. That was great. Um perhaps this uh doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway. Um I'm as I as you were presenting, I was just immediately struck about uh how this how these resources uh this curriculum is taking us uh to the heart of the
155matter, equity and access, right? And I know for myself that um that I was fortunate to have had math teachers who got that I had to understand what I was doing and why and the games or manipulatives as they called it then were really important. Um and so I think that this seems to I hope that we'll see this in the results. it starts to uh provide a more uh even level playing field it sounds to me. Um and um and I'm excited that uh I know you were talking I think you said the uh special education classes were using uh the XL and so I'm excited about that too to you know because certainly if these resources can work for those youngsters then it's going to help some of our more struggling youngsters as
156well. And so anyway, I'm just delighted to hear all of all of this and the parent piece. I'm glad that you mentioned that because that's where I I was also struck um some of these u approaches that my my teachers used for algebra for geometry for algebra trig in particular. Um it I I it was a one-on-one with them or one-on-one with some person. So I would go home with these things. my mother who was terrified of like mathematics, you know, beyond the simple stuff. Um, she was like, "Oh my god." So, but I could I could once I learned it, I could explain. And then that became like kind of a a thing that she and I would do uh after school, you know, even right on through the high school. So, um I
157just I think that that is a really wonderful way to now bring parents back into the fold that the math has been so unaccessible um for you know I don't I don't even know once once my daughter was past first grade I think that was it. I don't even I couldn't make sense of it at all. And so I really want to uh just support that piece is fantastic. So thank you. Thank you both very much. Uh are there other questions? Mr. Romani. So, um I just want to point to something that I've been a proponent of myself. First of all, illustrative visual representation, mathematics, which is dealing with numbers, dealing with critical thinking skills, problem solving. Now, I've been really on this kick of we need to get creative and we instill and inject
158creativity in all of the subjects, not just art, not just uh music and theater, but um creative problem solving or the be the ability to be creative is a preerequisite in having strong mathematical skills because math is all about logic. If this then that. So, um I'm happy to see that we're moving towards this. I also am happy to see that there's, you know, these innovative instructional methods that use students working together, not necessarily like against each other where like, oh, don't look at my paper, don't look at my answer. Um because they're a team. we need to work as a team and to withhold info from your fellow student is not team member Lee. Um so I'm really happy about all of that and I'm also um excited that there's you guys have instilled
159or instated this double advanced math. I know it's not for everyone it but it should be an option and I like that. Um, we live in a visual world more and more so every day and we need to use visuals for our um to our benefit and to our students benefit. So, um I'm very happy about all of this and um I look forward to seeing how you know the mathematical rigor um will essentially cultivate discipline and creativity um within our students. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Savage. So, I did have one more question which um I don't know it wasn't technically part of your presentation now. So, if it needs to come after, that's fine. But I know that um we had been told a couple weeks ago or months ago that there was
160some possibility of moving towards using Chromebooks less at night for at the middle school level and not having them shap back and forth. And I know that that was mentioned at Hackup PTA and some parents have strong feelings that that's fabulous and some parents have strong feelings that they're concerned about that. And I was just wondering about um whether you've started thinking through how we're going to address digital divide issues um since some families have access to digital media at home and some of these tools are digital and it sounds like some of them are um self-paced so that you could work on them on your own but if you have the materials if you have a Chromebook at home or a computer at home you'll be able to do that but if we're not
161so I'm just wondering if you've started thinking through all of those implications of um reducing chrome Chromebook use at night. Um, which I also think has many wonderful things like not having kids shupping 50 lb backpacks home and not using their Chromebook, which is also something that I witness a lot. So, I think we're still developing what the plan's going to look like for next year. Um, I hope that we can ensure that there will be a process for allowing students to bring Chromebooks back and forth and sign them out if need be. We haven't yet got there fully with that plan, but part of the reason why we're shifting the model is because we were experiencing a tremendous amount of Chromebook loss at the middle level. And as a result, we didn't have we
162our teachers couldn't ensure that students were going to have their Chromebooks every day. And as a result, they weren't able to plan effective lessons that use those Chromebooks. because if only 25% of my kids have their Chromebook with them on any given day, what am I to do? I have to have several different plans um in place. So I actually think this is going to see an increase in the use of digital tools at the middle level because it may be in the classroom more. Um but knowing that I have a dedicated cart that's one to one and every kid will have access. I think we'll see a reemergence of the digital platform at the middle level. But you are anticipating and just to go ahead I just I just want to just add to
163what Frank um said. I've been partnering with um um Kent Baker on the initiative uh for the middle school to keep Chromebooks in the in the classroom and not be that onetoone. Every instructional space including our intervention classrooms um will have um onetoone Chromebooks. Our large classrooms will have 32 Chromebooks in a classroom and our smaller intervention classrooms will have 15. And then we will also have um loaner towers um in our libraries as well for um our students to uh take loaner Chromebooks home. So there will be no digital divide um either at school um or at home. Students will have the same level of access um that they currently have. We are just eliminating um the uh damaged uh devices and the lost devices. That sounds that sounds really reassuring, Lori. Thank you
164very much. And I look forward to what I'm sure will be very clear communication to families and parents written in language that's understandable by families and parents as to how they access those loaners um if they want to be a family that's got a Chromebook at home because there are families for which that really is the difference between access and not. So um thanks that really helps a lot. And I also will say great minds think alike. Uh Mr. Baker and I had a conversation yesterday um or today maybe the days seem to blur um as well as with Mr. Leco and we are working on a communication um to our families to explain that whole process of the onetoone at school and then the loner access as well. That's great. And I I know
165that we will want to move on or need to. Um I just just again I just um I'm just sort of taking what has been on my mind. Um I also believe again because this is so uh fundamental to equity and access that uh it is possible they take time that this is where we have more students excited about becoming teachers right um and so I love love love the approaches uh curriculum and all the things that are going into this and and especially back to the students comments about make this real for me. How does this have meaning in the world in which I live? And so I I want to thank you all very much for the presentation. And colleagues, I'm I'm going to end us on the mathematics piece. Sorry. Um we
166could be we could spend all day with you. I I know. Um but we also have two other um presentations that we could also say the same about, but thank you very much. And we look forward to uh seeing this actually in in action in the classrooms. Thank you both. Okay, back. I'll turn that back over to you. Thank you very much. Um, we have the world language presentation at this time and um, so I invite my two colleagues over here. Bob Lass who is our been here a year uh social studies and world language instructional supervisor and Jenny our world language chair and French teacher at the high school um to the table and Jenny's been here far longer than a year thank goodness uh and I'm going to turn it over to them
167as soon as I can make this go from the beginning and I'm in you're on. Good evening everyone. Thank you very much. Uh, Miss Bectall, you can go to the next slide. Oh, you can go to the next slide. I'm sorry. So, our, you know, vision, mission, and goal priorities. Uh, um, we've talked a lot about them today. So, okay. Thanks. Um, but I really just want to like hone in on the one to enhance the delivery of quality instruction. I mean, really, that's that's that's what why we're here. That's why we're doing what we're doing. So, next slide, please. Um, so our process, um, the grade level and course reviews are conducted by our stakeholder teams, um, with the world language department. Um, I had, um, everyone involved in it and I had them
168looking at their own curriculums and, um, I was at first kind of apprehensive about it a little bit, but then once I received the rubrics back, I I kind of turned to some of them, like, you guys are really, really hard on yourselves. if you're not giving yourselves credit where credit is due. Um so so I was really pleased with the outcome and and how um how supportive they were in the process. So we were looking, you know, through the reviews, you know, and and once again with this uh alignment to standards, ri rigorous and relevant uh best practices, high quality instructional strategies and resources, assessment quality, and of course high expectations for all. So our review plan um this is part of that fiveyear cycle. Um, so obviously I I wasn't here for the
169first one in 2018, but um, so I'm learning as I'm going here. So that this is used at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. And I'm going to turn it over to Miss Edson to as as my resident expert on the new world language standards. It's an exciting time in world language. Um, in 2021, the state uh adopted new standards that we're going to be rolling out um with uh seventh grade this year, this fall. Um, and it was a lengthy process to revise the standards. And when you look at it, it doesn't look like there was that big of a change because there's two standards like there were before, communication and culture. Um, but where the big shift really happened is that I'm sure a lot of you know, like listening, reading, writing.
170Um, those were the skills that the old standards covered where now we've shifted to these communicative modes. interpretive which is when you are interpreting you're hearing, you're reading. Um if it we're talking about sign language, it's what you are um uh interpreting from that as well. Interpersonal or those spontaneous conversations that you didn't have a chance to really think out and plan. And then presentational, it's not just what Bob and I are doing here, but it's what our mind goes to. It's anytime you can think out. It's that Instagram post, something where you're presenting to an audience. Um, and then we can go to the next slide. So, our um implementation process and timeline. So, um, in September of 2023, our seventh grade will be um this will be the first year for their new
171standards. Um, so after the adoption of the New York State Learning Standards for World Language, the Office of Bilingual Education and World Language uh began providing online workshops to assist schools to transition to the revised standards. Uh these free trainings uh are available publicly. We're after the initial um workshop date and then the world language department here in the city school district of Albany has been attending and then with Miss Edson here turnkeying those workshops since 2021 uh to rule out these new standards. Um, so while the standards are something we base them off the national standards for New York State, so it's something very easy um, for teachers to shift to, what is a big shift is a shift in best practice for how language is taught in a classroom. And I'm sure a
172majority of people can think of a time where they were in a language class, learned Spanish, French, some language, and now you might sit here and say, "I don't remember a word of it at all." Um, and the shift there is that in those classrooms, you were probably taught through grammar-based instruction. And that works for some, namely world language teachers because we're language grammar nerds. Um, but it doesn't work for the majority of students. Um, and so that shift is coming um to a high lever teaching practice called comprehensible input. And it's it's based on the way that humans naturally acquire language, but set up to work in that 40inut, you know, you go to French, then you go to math and and you're not immersed in the language, but it's designed. Um, and one
173way to look at how CI works is through this really really great quote from Grant Bulon. Um, and it's when acquiring another language, first we learn to listen. We learn to read what we've heard. We learn to write what we've read and heard. And finally, we speak because we've heard, read, and written it. And that's a really good breakdown of how comprehensible input looks in the classroom. Um, one thing and I talked with um, some of my colleagues who are much further into their shift in this practice is that comprehensible input takes a lot of input in the beginning that listening and um, when we did our practice presentation um, someone from the AIC mentioned the silent period um, for our new coming students from different countries. ries and that's very similar to how comprehensible
174input works is that the kids are taking in, they're listening and it's input that is relevant. It's something that they want to listen to, they want to learn about and they slowly move through that process so that they're writing it and in the end the end goal is that we've created confident speakers who have actually acquired the language as opposed to learned how to conjugate a verb. Yeah. So the findings from our um from our our rubrics and our stakeholder groups looking looking at our curriculum on Rubicon um our obviously our sixth, seventh and eighth grade courses are further along in the alignment to the new standards because you know they there was there was an impetus behind that knowing that they were going to be here you know in the coming September. Um our
175sixth grade transition class is the um earliest grade receiving language instruction and those transition students um you know they're further along in the three modes of communication due to their experience in the dual language program. Um and also we have the transition program in seventh and we have a transition program in eth all at hacket uh to move them further along. Next slide please. So our middle school recommendations um again with the three modes of communication um we're looking to develop more authentic 21st century skill work you know those life and career skills learning innovation skills information media and technology skills. So using all of those those modes and then using technology and obviously having the students you know conversing with each other um and then obviously you know receiving the input not just from
176the teacher but from you know multiple ways that that we they would receive input. Um I saw a great couple of lessons this year in our middle schools um our Spanish and French teachers during the March Madness. There was a March Madness sort of um competition with um music in in French and then music in Spanish and then it was the kids would vote on it and then kids from all over the country would vote on the the music that they enjoyed and then the there could be a big reveal like every week over the the songs that that had won and that our students were voting to and then the students were submitting YouTube videos and then singing along and I'm in there and I'm watching our students and they're they're singing the harmony,
177you know, to the songs in French and songs in Spanish and and that was just a, you know, and I'm not a world language person. I'm social studies by trade. So So that was a big sort of eye opener for me and I'm like, wow, they're they're they're so early along in in their language acquisition of these second languages and yet here they are, you know, they're tapping their feet and they're singing harmony in this other language. And that was like that was an amazing thing for me um, you know, to see. So, you know, again, we're going to look to continue to align the course curriculum to the new standards with an eye toward weaving in the comprehensible input strategies and obviously these 21st century skills. Uh, next slide, please. Thank you. Um, you
178know, and then in terms of of of where we go from there, um, in terms of checking for understanding of the content from unit to unit is updating our our common summitive assessments so that we can align to these new standards and then start with a baseline. you know, we we we don't really have we don't really have these common assessments yet in the language um in in our language because we knew that the new standards were coming. So, we didn't want to create them and then have to rec recreate them. So, um so we are going to start that process, you know, moving forward and then we'll have a baseline for for seventh grade and then eighth grade and then and then we'll be able to sort of say, all right, students at this
179particular time in the year are acquiring language in this way, you know, and then we you know, we'll build our lessons around that. So, I want to segue into the seal of biiteracy before we get to the high school. And um so the seal of biiteracy is a nationwide effort to recognize high school graduates who can speak and write in two languages. One of those languages must be English. So when the seal came out back around 2019, you know, there were quite a few states that had adopted it. You know, since then looks like all but one. Um what's going on there? Next slide, please. So who is a good candidate for um the seal of bi literacy? So students who have English as their second language that can read write well in their first
180language. Students who have English as their first language and have achieved um an intermediate um high level in a second language um at Albany High School that might be Spanish, French or Chinese. And third one here is any student who has received and um I want to sort of make a change here a little bit. anybody that's received an intermediate high for French and Spanish uh level in a second language and anybody that's received an intermediate mid for Chinese because Chinese is is a little bit more of a difficult language to um to acquire. So, and even in even in those that are not offered at the high school, which is including ASL. Next slide. Um so the state really left it up to schools to create their own sealed by literacy program and how
181they were going to award that based on criteria and they would approve that. Um and what's really great about what we did at Albany is it's very flexible. Um and so this is an example of a timeline for a student. They may be in Spanish 4 um their junior year. They're going to apply and then they're going to plan out their project. We're going to be communicating with them knowing that if we need to schedule assessments, what they need and then their senior year um April, May, they would present it and then yay, congratulations, they have their um their seal. But that's not every kid at Albany High for sure. Um, so we have our students coming from dual language and they are going to be done with Spanish by the time that they get
182to their junior year if they're on that path. And so our projects leave it open for them to be able to start that when they're in Spanish 4 when they're younger. They're going to be in nth grade and then be presenting in their 10th grade year. Um same for students that are they're coming in with any other language when they're ready and when they want to apply are it's left open for them. And the project itself as well is something it can be based from a class from an internship. It's very flexible for for our whole student body. So moving on to the high school. Um so high school is a little bit behind um the middle school when it comes to implementation of the new standards. Um what we noticed what the teachers noticed
183and what we noticed in the rubrics is that um you know we have some resources that are aligned to New York State they're just curly modeled after the old standards. So we've got some we've got some work to do there. you know, the essential questions, the engaging learning experiences provide, you know, few opportunities to explore the breadth and depth that that is now required um within the new standards. Next slide, please. Um the level three curriculum is currently aligned to the checkpoint B exam. However, we're going to have to develop a new checkpoint B as we as we sort of begin to so there's some work involved here. So, it seems like a snowball effect. Um and our project based learning rubrics do not align with the new standards either. We are shifting to the
184actal standards now which is what we use for the seal of eye literacy. So that actually made it kind of simple you know we just we didn't have to create our own rubric. We have the actctal standards uh the New York state standards use actipal. It was it was really um really sort of a simple thing. um and obviously our geographical skills to promote those interdisciplinary connections like I talked about with the music you know so now we're talking about not just you know um students who are learning language from you know Spain they're learning from the you know aphro latatino countries as well and they are you know getting that sort of sense of you know where the Spanish language is spoken the different dialects all over the world next slide please so um
185so where do we go from here so obviously converting these existing units into more general units that are more aligned to the actical standards. Um, aligning our pre and post assessments to learning objectives to create that culture of data driven instruction. Um, and aligning our curriculum that we have, you know, currently sitting in Google classrooms since COVID and now getting that um into Rubicon Atlas. Uh finally um you know looking to create common summit of assessments that align to the new standards creating that baseline and we will continue to align course curriculum to new standards participating in professional development. Our teachers are going to um be receiving uh professional development from the ARBurn in September. You know so one of those first PD days that we have the Arburn is coming in. We're going to
186talk standards. We're going to talk comprehensible input and strategies that they can use in their classrooms to you know to begin to build this. Um, and obviously weaving those 21st century skills in as well. And now the fun stuff. Um, so even before the shift in standards, we wanted kids to live out and experience the world. But we have just some highlights of this year. Um, next slide. Uh this March uh the French classes, French club, a few extra students joined us on a trip to Quebec, Canada for three nights, four days and the kids had an amazing time. Some of them said it was the best experience of their life. I'm not, you know, trying to brag too much. Um um my favorite picture up there is we went to a sugar shack where
187um traditional French Canadian culture is to cover everything in maple syrup and then they get the kids up dancing. So which is good after all that sugar. Next slide. Um, our Chinese trip, um, our Chinese class was able to go to Boston this year. Um, which was good because international travel is slightly more difficult when you're flying right now postco. Um, and you can see them there. were there at a um traditional Chinese monastery and then they were able to do um some Chinese food and just I had a great trip and our Spanish Sunni classes took advantage of U Albany does a cultural day and they were able to go there do food do dancing and again practice the language and experience outside of the classroom. All three of our languages have their um
188respective national honor societies running as well. Um this were these were pictures from last year's ceremony. Um but it's it's just a a um cap uh stone to the students that go above and beyond and um become proficient in the language in a way to honor them. So that concludes our our presentation for the evening. Again, once again, I want to thank, you know, my entire world language our entire world language department for their active participation, their input, and and just how how hard they worked um to um to see this through. That's great. Thank you both for the presentation and and also it's nice to meet you because it's the first time I believe I've even with you. So, so thank you very much. Uh colleagues, any questions? Yes, Mr. Elmanawi. I don't have
189a question. I have a comment. Um, that I am semibilingual. What is up with that? I'm semibilingual, right? And um, I can understand Arabic really well. I can read it decently. But just having that bit has opened so many new doors and relationships and opportunities that it's just incredible. And um our language learners like being able to acquire a new language um basically will allow them to have contextrich and meaningful activities throughout their lives. Um so seeing the trips is just one of them. It's just going to make them want to travel. It's going to make them want to learn new cultures and it makes me really proud of our students. Um I'm excited to see what you guys do with the um the communicative modes and these new kind of ways of learning um
190that are really kind of about input. And I've always thought that like language, learning a language puts you you have to put yourself in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation like where you will advance through that uncomfort. So take it as you will, but that uncomfort is probably a good thing when our students go through it to some extent where they're like really kind of throw them into a language, throw them into a country that they're forced to speak to servers who are serving the maple syrup in French, you know. So thank you guys. That's great. Thank you, Miss Cr. Hi. Thanks for the presentation. I I think it's really great the way you're teaching the languages more holistically now and really focusing on that communicate communication rather than just mechanics of the language.
191I had a quick question about the slide as it relates to um the seal of biiteracy for the dual language program. Just a question about the vertical alignment because I know in the past the typical path for the students that go from dual language to the um continuation at Hackit is normally to start Spanish three in the ninth grade normally and you have it down as um dual language freshman in Spanish 4 which I know there are some but that that I think duel does some three some four usually three unless they test into four I think. Um so the the students um take a placement exam when they're coming out of 8th grade and based on that score they have a choice to go into level three or level four. They go in with
192the understanding as well that um nth graders cannot earn Sunni credit. Um but some um parents they make that decision with their student to go straight in to level four and then they would want to be on that pathway to the seal so that they have that support of the language class when they're earning earning the seal. So, a student, a dual language student who is taking Spanish 3 in the nth grade could still do that seal of biiteracy later on. Okay. I just want to make sure. Thanks very much. Excellent presentation and good graphics, too. Sure. Before we move on to I just uh I'm not sure if I missed it in the review, but do you have the number of students who have achieved the seal of literacy? You said it was two.
193I I know that at the awards night there were two um this year. I don't know how many but but there were two people who were on the program this year. Okay, great. Thank you. Um now Dr. I don't have that number offhand but I do I I have a I inherited a list from Mike Elliot my predecessor and I can certainly get that to you and then we actually have a running list there of students who have already expressed interest that you know. Oh excellent answer. That's excellent. Dr. Chhatur, before we go on is yours about the seal? Uh Miss uh Savage had a seal question. Can I Okay, go ahead. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, yeah, because I figured we just knock out all of our seal related questions. Not the kind that swim,
194but the other kind. Um, so I was a little surprised that it was only two. That's why it stuck with my mind because we have such an enormous ENL population and a huge refugee population, and it seems like they they should all be getting the seal of biiteracy because clearly they're all leaving um, Albany High if they're graduating in English. um biling bilingual and biliterate. And I'm wondering um first of all, my understanding and I haven't done a lot of reading on this is that some of our local competitive schools are seeing more of their ENL students get the seal and I'm wondering if we are having those conversations with connectedity in with Troy and seeing what other folks are doing and whether we're working and maybe maybe your colleagues behind you want to talk
195speak to this later. I don't know but whether we're working with our ENL students to in really promote this opportunity because it's a wonderful opportunity for them. And then I think you said you didn't have this in your head but I am curious to know I think it says in here somewhere you have to register and I think the timeline said like in March or something um and so we would know right now how many people are registered for next year. So if you don't have that in your head that's fine. I could I could receive it later, but I am kind of curious to know, are we on a path to do more than two as we go forward? That that's definitely my goal. You know, when I when I got here, that's one
196of the first things I noticed was a school this large, you know, we didn't have that many. And, you know, again, coming off of COVID and and that kind of a thing. So, you know, one of my big pushes moving forward is to increase, you know, the the communication out there, the advertising, you know, for it, you know, and just letting them know, especially when it comes to not just the seal of biiteracy, but the seal of civic readiness, too, because I oversee that one as well. And um that they can take any presentation that that they've created in school and and and translated into into their language, you know. So for that particular portion of the points, you know, that that that's sort of a simple thing, you know, that we're not asking them
197to to reinvent the wheel. They can take the presentation that they that they do in their language and then use it and then put it into English and then and do do something similar with a social justice bent, you know, for the seal of of civic readiness. And that was one of the things that was a really strong contrast, right? There was probably a hundred kids got the seal of civic readiness. Yeah. And that was and that was this that was our first year. And um a lot of that um a lot of our students that that did that came through our our civics class and many of them received exemptions on the regions exam. So there are some some numbers there even even in the the seal of biiteracy that you have to hit
198certain percentages in classes and on tests you know and those kinds of things. So this year we knew our numbers for civic um readiness were going to be pretty large because many of our students um received the exemptions in global and US. Um so so getting them through the capstone as and that's their project for that class that four points plus the plus their other points they were able to earn it. They just had to present their presentations to members of the committee. That's great. And if you don't mind could we get that data maybe from you to Miss Beal and and we can get it that way for the seal of bi literacy. Yes please. Yeah absolutely. Yep. Yeah. And actually I think even on the seal of um I'm sorry civic readiness just
199to have that as well. So that's that this is our first year so we're just baseline. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think this the fact that you had so many that that were able to do that and a nice cross and a nice cross-section of kids too ENL students special ed students um AP students in Jennet. So that that was a really nice mix. Wonder okay terrific thank you both for that Dr. Jour. I think Ann was reading my mind when she asked that when she talked about the seal of billet because this is exactly what I was thinking. We have so many ENL students who have so many languages being spoken. All of those kids should be able to you know pick up you know they come in they learn Spanish or think well you
200you qualify. So knowing how you know do they have to register does the school have to register that particular program that is where I was going with too a lot of Arabic kids right it'll be great you know as you you're doing all this here's another thing that you get as you're you just have to do a little bit more and now they're more marketable as they graduate than they were otherwise and it's not a lot of effort they already know how to do that right so what is it that we as the district needs to do to put those paths in place for them and what they have to do to know what those paths are and fit into those. Uh I think we need a little bit more FAQ kind of thing on
201that. Um so to date we've probably had about half the kids that have been ENL kids that have gotten the um seal of biiteracy since we started six or six years ago. And then the other half have really largely been dual kits. Um so I just wanted to point that out. I would there is um we what we've have in our plan is to identify the um the forever L's so that that's it's forever L's. Ever L's. Thank you. And um because those are the kids that are have become competent, you have really great competence in English um from when they were here in fourth grade and now they're in 10th grade and actually sooner because we did have two presentations a couple years ago from the in two Arabic uh presentations which were amazing.
202And the one young man I remember asking him how when he came to our country and it was in grade eight and this was like grade 11. I he was so fluent in well clearly in Arabic but in English as well and it was h very impressive. So I would say we're split. Um we do have a marketing communications issue. We're always going to have less of the seal of biiteracy because you have to have kids that are achieving you know that four that level four um space in order to be able to demonstrate uh their proficiency in that. But I think we before COVID we were on a pretty good trajectory. We had a good plan. We've revised our plan over time. We found out we were being too hard on ourselves from the
203state and so you know we were able to massage some of those things but there are some pretty strict rules about the tests that they have. they have to get an 85 I think on the English regents and um so different different uh pieces but I think it's marketing and communications and Bob and I have had conversation about that because we agree there should be more than a handful that we've had every year since we started so we're on it and exposing them to these things early on saying yeah you know you can get it and you'll be better you'll have one more thing than everybody else in your class but you're going to get that 85 that sort of sets the standard for them to motivates them to achieve you more than if no
204one had told them that they could be getting something more in return. Dr. Shhatur, I'm going to pass the torch now to Miss Crerachche. Thanks. Um, I had a follow-up question. This question I think is perhaps equally for Miss Beal as for Miss Lacass and Ms. Edson, which is my understanding from reading up on the seal of literacy, full disclosure, trying to talk my kid into it, don't know if I'll be successful or not, is it involves a major independent study project that they expect you to put at least 80 hours of work into uh on the culture in the language and then a paper on the language. So my question is for students um either for L students that want to do their project in English or legacy students like Mr. Elmanawi that might
205want to do a project in a language that's not taught at the school. Um, is there a system for getting uh that student an adviser to help them on the project and then that kind of uh I guess you'd call them your thesis adviserss in grad school but the equivalent of uh the people that do your you know when you defend your dissertation the the equivalent of that um do we h how how is that done and also for kids that are not in a language class do they have the possibility of doing independent getting some kind of independent study credit for that massive I'm not sure about uh getting credit for the massive project. And I actually um 80 hours, Jenny. I was not on the original um committee that planned it, but it
206does say 80 hours. Um kids turn in logs at the end. Um, and that's why we've been encouraging kids to take projects that they've done already in class and go from there because they've already put in work. They would be they would be getting those hours in doing that work. We have had we had one student who came to us and spoke uh um Italian and English fluently and uh we connected that student with a language teacher in our building who were was able to mentor her uh through the process. We also um have had um was it what was the language we had this last year? Was it Albanian? Albanian. Yes. And we um had connected with a lovely young woman who worked for us one year. No, that was the Arabic uh teacher
207from AIC who came and judge did the presentation judging with us and then the um Albanian um speaker we connected with another just a family we uh and Tom is always helping me with that to make those connections so that we can have someone um help with those pieces. So yeah, and the and the hours what they what we're really looking for is just a reflection, you know, and a lot of times too when the students are filling out their logs, you know, their reflection is, you know, I started out really well and I was really excited about this, but then, you know, basketball season started and then I got a job and then, you know, and then they will say that in their reflection and and you'll see their hours sort of dwindle a
208little bit and then they'll pick it back up again, you know, a month or two, um, you know, before we, you know, ask for their presentation. and stuff. So, it's really just about the reflection and that's certainly something that we can refine refine because we have control over that. That's correct. So, you're saying people shouldn't be scared off by that because I mean, you you know how much students do with athletics, extracurriculars, and a full slate of classes. So, it's a little bit scary to think about, oh, do I want to take on something else? That's very helpful. And especially if if we're telling them that they can take something that they've already that they've already created and and translated. So, yeah, that's great. Miss Savage, you had another. I did have one and I
209think this will be short. I I have this sense that the last time you spoke to us about this, which was maybe just a year ago, it couldn't have been five years ago. There was a discussion about offering like a sample in sixth grade of the two languages offered in that school so that um that children would be making a more informed decision. Did that idea take root or No, that not yet. That did not come to fruition. Okay. But it is a good idea to have. It wasn't my idea. I think it was your idea. So yes, it was actually I would love to see that because that exploratory would um really help kids because it is very uninformed. It is very illinformed the decision-making process um for I have a seventh grader right
210now who did sing in French a lot recently. So um so that did work. Um but it was fairly ill informed um the decision-making around between Spanish and French. Okay, any additional questions? Dr. Here's your tour. Lower my hand first. Okay. Um you pointed out you know the whole logic between having students listen first then start speaking writing and that's so we have these software like you know babble and hooked um what's the other one rolet as stone do they use the same logic of of you know you're listening to something more first and before you start speaking um I I don't have a lot of experience with ros Rosetta Stone or Babel. Um, the most the one I have the most experience with is Dualingo, which it gives a lot of that initial input.
211The difference in like a CI classroom is how much it gets targeted to the specific students. Like you're you're talking about when's your birthday? What you all those things they want to talk about initially from the beginning and turning that into the input that they're getting. They're listening about their own lives. Um, and it makes it that much more um, appealing to them as opposed to I think of Duolingo, it's all really like stock phrases. Um, I did some in Spanish and it was always like something about an apple and I lost interest. Whereas the CI is is meant to be very very honed into the group that you have in front of you and it's very tailored and is going to be daily work for the instructor to take what happened one day and
212then go into the next day to create that input. So I I think we're at an interesting uh position in time where with AI for example chat GPT and whatnot you also have your Siri and Alexexas that talk back to you and so bringing new languages into that mix and with whole artificial intelligence. I think there's a lot that that these students will see in the future. Um because language I I love languages and you know it is is one thing when you can talk to somebody in their language you break down those barriers of communication and um so the more you know we have I love the fact that we have so many languages and I'm waiting for the next uh presentation which is going to talk all about it right so many languages
213in the district and um anything we can do to maximize those things the the resources we have and the talents we have Um, agreed. So, uh, give you much. No, no, it's okay. I'm I'm uh chuckling internally. My daughter who went through Albany, I believe she might have had like one year of Spanish uh when in the elementary level or something, middle school. Um, but uh it's been nothing like being in a relationship with someone who speaks another language. And this young man spoke no English. She only spoke English and so in a year she's gone from knowing Zippo to chatter chatter chatter. very interesting and they do do some babble stuff but mainly it is that listening and learning and uh so as you were talking about sort of the the process it made
214me think of her um and again thinking in my own experience it was exactly as you said it was all about you know the grammar and really very little conversational interaction kind of thing so um we've got a we still have a ways to go in this country um and uh but I'm very excited excited about what we're doing in Albany in our city. So, um, any other questions for our guest? I want to thank you again both and I know we will have lots of conversations with you down the road. This is all exciting and uh we look forward to just seeing a little bit of that data come in from you. Um, and just really grateful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, any trips planned next year? Do I know? Do I
215know? I'm uh I'm putting one together right now for the fall. Oh, secret. We can't know where that is yet. Um, well, I want to go to Montreal and uh go to the bring the kids to a market and do some shopping. All right. Food tasting. Okay. Chaperones. No, just kidding. Thank you again both. And Miss Beel, you up with dual language. Yes. Um, I'm not sure if my colleagues want to say anything, but I'm actually excited to introduce Miss Rachel Ste tonight because she's sort of doing a combination presentation and um going to talk about um dual language program at um Alb International Center and make some of those connections um to curriculum and curriculum review. But she has also modeled her presentation on how the schools present. So, we're gonna get a a
216mixed um a mixed presentation. So, I'm sitting in between Heckit and the supervisor's presentation with this, but I have to tell you how excited I am about all the talk about language. I think I could stay here till midnight. We won't, but I'm just saying and we we could keep going. So, so yes, thank you for having me tonight. Um and giving me the opportunity to present on the dual language program. Um and and we get a little bit of a sense of, you know, what their experience is before they go on to middle school and high school. As we just saw, um as always, the district vision, mission, and goals inform our work. But I did want to share with you some pictures of something that started last year. Those are former dual language
217students who were graduating seniors last June, and they came to our school to receive their dual language cords from their teachers. And this was something that um you know we started last year, we are continuing this year and I think it's a great example of the reach that our program has and the impact on on the rest of the district after they leave our program. So next slide. Um our school vision is one that we share with the Albany International Center. As you know, we have the two programs in our building. Um but I want to focus on our program goals because this really is something that makes the dual language program different. Um and these are the three goals of dual dual language education. Um the first is the development of bilingualism and biiteracy.
218The second is high academic achievement in two languages and the third is so socioultural competency. I will be going into a little bit of a deeper um dive on those three. Um our school administration um my my assistant principal, Miss Anderson, um unfortunately wanted to be here tonight. She had a family commitment. Um but you can see I have the moral support of our um partner, Mr. Gillio. um and um you know all of the work of the teachers obviously um in terms of our demographics. So you can see starting in the middle we have had an increase of 64% since um the 20 2021 school year when we had 118 students and this is just dual. So duel represents um twothirds of our elementary population at AIC. Um then in addition you can see
219the breakdown um in in race and ethnicity. Um so we have 79% of our students are Hispanic with 8% white and 6% black, 6% multi-racial. And there's a little little um you know sliver in there of 1% indigenous um populations. And we do have, you know, given the the recent migration, um, some of our trends that we're seeing are that we are, you know, welcoming families who are coming from, um, you know, Central America and some indigenous, um, communities. Also important to note is that, um, you know, the number of L's that we have in our program, 52% of our students are L's and 47% of our students are non-L's. So, while I don't have a breakdown um of, you know, I know we often talk about Spanish dominant and English dominant, I think that
220that provides a picture of who are the students who are learning um English but already have those Spanish skills in our program. Um, and you know, I think it also is important to point out, we've talked a lot about part 154 in the past as the rules that govern um, rules and regulations for ENL programming, but it also governs rules for dual language and bilingual education programming in New York State. And um, by regulation, when L's register in our district, if the parent wants them to be enrolled in a bilingual education program and we have one, they have a right to a seat in that program. So um we have experienced you know that kind of influx and and we have welcomed newcomers um to the dual language program. In fact sometimes when the dual
221language classroom is full students will go into the AIC classroom in the same grade level and we've moved a couple of students over to dual once spots have opened up. So, um, with regards to our areas of focus, um, one thing that we did, um, over the last, I would say, year and a half is update and review our language allocation policy. Um I'm going to talk a little bit more about that on a on a further slide, but um this included stakeholders with um you know discussion with the newly established dual language advisory committee which we began this year and consists of um parents, staff members, um other you know staff from across the district um and also um you know our local Arburn the the you know who provides professional development. they are
222also sitting on that committee. So, um we reviewed that with them as part of that process. Um we also started thinking about our assessment practices and wanting to align them. Um, and and part of this really is rooted in equity because one thing we noticed and started to have conversations about over the last few years is that many of our assessments in our program, our English assessments and you know with that eye on equity um it didn't really paint a full picture. Our data didn't really paint a full picture of what all of our students can do because when you think about our dual language students um they are representative of their full linguistic repertoire. So we don't think of them anymore as like this is what they can do in Spanish and this is
223what they can do in English. It's like this is what they can do in language and they use Spanish to you know to strengthen their English and and vice versa. And so, um, we added some assessments this year, um, and and actually last year as well that, um, better align, you know, and and kind of elevate the the status of Spanish in our program to the status of English and also give us information about how students are doing in reading and how students are doing in math as they are tested in Spanish. And then um the third goal which is ongoing um and a multi-year goal is um you know developing our curriculum to support the three goals of dual language as I mentioned before. Next slide. Um so attendance um for our program our
224daily attendance rate um is 94%. We do um you know we know that we need to focus on our chronic chronic absenteeism especially postcoid um but we have seen that number come down since last year um and some of you know we've done a lot of the things that that other schools um you know I I know I've talked to you about that they do as well um but one of the things that I think is a unique challenge for us um is the you know the language and so one step that we've taken is to take um like preprint um you know like student um like um excuse notes, right? That parents can send back in and all you got to do is check the box. My child was out for this, this, this,
225and this. And of course, all the boxes are all of the um excused reasons that you can be out of school. But like that that helps us educate our parents. Um especially when it comes to the Spanish speaking families and newcomers. Um and so that is something that we've done. Um, Miss Anderson also takes the lead on attendance and she has brought some families in to do attendance contracts um, you know, with students. Another unique kind of a challenge is that with with the ties that are back in the home country, we do have children who will leave for, you know, a number of weeks um, for a period of time. And so that's also reflected in our number. But I think, you know, our team is doing a good job trying to raise awareness
226around, you know, helping families um take those trips during school vacations if they can. Um so these are the three pillars of dual language education and these are really what makes our program different um because we are focusing on these three things and this comes from the center for applied linguistics. I'm going to mention that agency a couple of times in this presentation. that is an agency out of Washington DC that um really is a funnel for all of the current best practices and research um that is related to bilingual education to English as a new language education, second language acquisition. And so um we get a lot of our resources um and and our ideas from them. Um and so they identify these three pillars as a way to kind of organize the foundation
227of dual language. So bilingualism being the ability to speak, read, write and listen in in um both program languages. And then biiteracy is when you can do that and you make the connections, the explicit connections between the two languages um and you use those connections as I said before like as a resource to kind of strengthen um the other language. As adults we do this because we are you know our brains are always looking for patterns. Our brains are always looking for rules. So when we see something in a language, we we can quickly try to tie it to the other language. For children, that doesn't come as easily. However, that is part of our goal, you know, as an instruction, you know, instructionally. We want to make those connections explicit and that helps build
228their language um proficiency. The grade level academic achievement, that is a goal for every building in our district. Um the difference, however, for us is that that grade level academic achievement is in two languages, and that's what we want by the end of fifth grade for everybody. And then finally we have the cross-cultural competence. Um this is really the ability to see the similarities and differences in each other. But instead of seeing the differences as challenges, we see them as opportunities to connect. And that is also something that um dual language has been you know um infamous or famous for right in our district. And and I know that those are all the things that um people really love um and and that's been going on for a long time. So in terms of just
229to give you a little you know shed a little bit of light on what we do and our program related to bilingualism and biiteracy. Um so on the right you can see where it says bilingu which means being bilingual is a superpower and um we really have focused on ory um in our program. Um, and the reason for that is because the research shows that the the the stronger the foundation you have in your oral language development, the greater the outcome you will have in your literacy skills. And so that's why it's really important that um not even just in in our ELA and our SLA, but in all of our um content, you know, subjects that we teach in dual language, that students are given the opportunity to speak about what it is that
230they're learning. um we you know we do provide the foundation and um want to continue to strengthen that pathway to the New York State seal of by literacy as we just saw in the previous presentation. Um we do think it's important to um to honor the native language through multi so through activities such as multilingual literacy week. There you can see a pair of reading buddies. Um, but but it means an awful lot to a child when they see or hear a book in their language. It really validates them and and it supports all the goals of our programming. The last one, there was a video there. Do you know if there's still a video? Yeah. So Karen was saying before, right, like the baseball player to the game and and whatever. What I can
231what I'm about to show you in this video is um there the the former executive director of the center for applied linguistics is in this video. He's on Instagram. I highly recommend you follow him. Um he is like the so is not about English for all the dual language educators. Okay. Because like we had that opportunity um through the Arburn this year to be able to have some embedded professional development virtually through him. Um he he's incredibly inspiring. Um he has deep knowledge around the topic. Um and he's going to talk he will talk in this little video clip about um one of the reasons why we have dual language education. So I just wanted to share him with you. Just a quick reminder that dual language education is not about English acquisition. It is
232about ensuring that our emergent bilingual and multilingual students who have historically been linguistically oppressed in US classrooms have an opportunity to work towards the three goals of dual language bilingualism and biiteracy grade level academic achievement in two program languages and socioultural competence and critical consciousness. Again, dual language isn't about English acquisition. Adios. He's great. And and so he uh met with our leadership team. He did some embedded coaching with some of our teachers. Um I'm hoping that the Arburn will bring him back because we would really like to be able to access um more of him. But his point here, I think, really speaks to what what we're trying to do because um you know, for for the Spanish speaking L's, we they we are approaching them from an assetbased perspective and we are creating
233what are called additive bilingual. So in other words, they're coming in and they're adding a language to what they already have. Um sometimes in English only environments, they become subtractive bilingual, right? So they come in and and the um you know the there's a really um strong pressure to learn English and sometimes to lose the language they already have and that can create um you know academic difficulties for them down the road because you have to have that strong foundation. So um so really providing them with this um education in their native language is really an equitable practice. So with regard to biiteracy development, I mentioned the assessments um in in a previous slide. So what you see in that first chart is our spring um NWA data um and it is measuring growth from
234fall to spring. So you can see it for each of the grade levels. What is interesting about this data is you're probably used to seeing it only in English, but what we have done is this year we started testing our students um in both languages. For K2, we test them in their dominant language in the fall and the spring. So those numbers represent how the English speakers did also with the Spanish speakers. And then in grades three through five, we test them in both languages each interval. Um, and so those data points include the higher, so if a child has two data points, one in Spanish, one in English, they take the higher data point. Um, and I didn't mention, but I will say with K2, we test them in the target language once a
235year. So the winter NWA, they'll be tested in in whatever it is, the language that they're learning. Um, so we won't have growth data on that until next winter. But I think that this is really interesting data and I can't wait to see, you know, what we continue to do with this because again, this paints a picture. This comes from an assetbased perspective. We are giving our our Spanish speakers credit for what they can already do in their native language. So that's our NWA data from um this spring. Um, if you just go back, I'm sorry, Karen. Um so so that last the the one on the right this is a pro um a biiteracy um progression map and I what the reason why I put this on here is because I just wanted to
236show um that biiteracy is not a linear kind of a trajectory um and by literacy and I think um you know there's been discussion about everyone's different experiences right with learning languages it learning languages can be messy and it doesn't happen in a straight line and so when we are talking about by literacy. Sometimes children may fall below the mean. They may fall below the grade level in one or the other because they're acquiring both. But the research says that by the time they get to um in dual language programs, by the time they get to the end of that sixth year, that's when we should start to see the effects of the biiteracy. Um, so one thing that we did and there's going to be another video embedded in here, but I just want
237to highlight what we um have on the left, which is dual language discovery at night. So um we wanted the parents to really experience what their children um experience while they're sitting in our classrooms. And so we designed a night all of the dual language teachers um came in and taught lessons to the parents in the target language. So if it were English speaking parents, they would go to the Spanish lessons and then the um you know the Spanish le speaking parents would go to the English lesson lessons, the ENL lessons, but then they would all get together and do some of them were all together in the same language. So you can see that you know on the right they're working on math manipulatives. There's a literacy lesson, but the thing that um I
238wanted to share with you is a video of prek and you're going to hear parents doing a chant in Spanish the same way our prek students learn. Maria can Jason Michelle. So, um that was a lot of fun and we are planning to continue to do that in the future. Um so, you know, a couple of other things related to that grade level academic achievement. Um, we had a living wax museum where our fifth graders during Hispanic Heritage Month um researched um an important figure in uh Hispanic um you know history and culture and then became that person um in the wax museum and it was really cute because like they really held to being like wax until you walked like right up to them and then they would you know but um it was
239you know that was a nice event and then um we were very proud on the far right that we had a third place winner in the Henry Joseph science fair and she did her project in Spanish. She has been here since November. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I talked a little bit earlier about the language allocation plan. It is good practice to review this plan and really what the language allocation plan is is just the map for um how much time of the day students spend in one language or the other. There are different models. Um, I know we we are a 50/50, but even within 50/50 programs, you can have a model where maybe preK starts with having all 90% in Spanish and only 10% in English and, you know, kindergarten has 80 and
24020 and then first grade has 70 and 30 and so on. Um, we reviewed a lot of different models. We engaged the teachers in this pro process. We enched the dual language advisory committee in this. And what we learned and what we found is that everyone was really happy with what we have. And so um but but it is a good idea to just review that process. Um so that's the language allocation plan. On the right you see the content allocation plan. There was one little um tweak that we made. You probably remember that u dual language used to be an every other day. Monday is you know one day Tuesday is the next is um is a different language. Um based on some of our PD from Dr. from Medina and some of the
241resources we read. Um the teachers decided to pilot um doing like week one in in a couple of content areas in one language and then week two those same content areas in the other language. Um they really like this. Their feedback is that they can go deeper um into the content that way. Um staying in one language. Parents have said that they like it because they feel more confident in helping with the homework, right? when it's always in for at least one if they know it's Spanish week then they you know then they can they can help um a little bit better. So that is one um minor change that we're going to make but we will still remain you know 50% Spanish 50% English throughout every day. Um and then you know cross-cultural competency
242I talked about a little bit earlier. Um, you know, ideally this goes beyond the fairs, the festivals, and the fashion, right? The three Fs of of learning about culture, but these are the most vis visible and they're important because they bring people together and that's what allows them to, you know, interact and engage with each other. And so, um, we had, um, multicultural celebration that was not specific to DU. It also involved AIC, but it was like a little world village where uh families signed up to have a table. They brought food. They brought artifacts from their country. People could go around. I had a parent email me and say, "That was the best meal I've had in Albany ever." So, um so we'll we'll make sure you all put it on your calendars for
243next year, but um but that was a great event. Um, we also had, you know, we still have our our cultural celebrations like Dia de los Muertos, um, which is a Mexican, um, holiday. And then we, um, had the Hispanic Heritage Parade. We are expanding, um, our Hispanic Heritage Celebration for next year. Teachers are already planning. There's already a committee that has been formed. So, we're very excited about that. Um, so some of our successes, um, and I think that these really do reflect what I talked about earlier with elevating the the status of Spanish in the program. Um, we we purchased some Spanish language materials that accompany accompanies Wonders. It's really it really is a true companion to Wonders. Um and so that way to go from that week one to week two um
244in Spanish and English that that you know is a little bit smoother for planning um and for instruction. Um we purchased and implemented a Spanish language reading intervention program called ESTAS. So again now that we are assessing more in Spanish we can better recognize when our our students are beginning to struggle in Spanish and then we can provide them with interventions in the same way that English interventions are provided. We have translated the report cards to Spanish. They're not electronic. We have to We still print them out in English, but we're sending home a Spanish companion so parents can look at them side by side. Um, and then something that is really important is to add the Spanish language arts indicators to the report card. I mentioned part 154 before. That requires that native language
245arts instruction is aligned with English language arts standards. And so those standards never appeared on the report card before, but now you know parents can see not only how their children are doing in English, but also Spanish. And then I mentioned that dual language advisory committee before. So challenges um and next steps. We we do have curricular work to do um and professional development. Um I've already mentioned, you know, a lot of it is underway. Um but you know, we are in year two of being where we are and and doing everything we're doing. And so um but we but we do have um you know plans to continue so that we can continue to enhance our capacity to meet those three goals of dual language. Um this involves work with our community partners, with
246our students, with our families. Um we have a very active PTA as you know and they are also seeking ways to be able to engage you know all of our families um in our program and in our school. Um and then you know um Mr. Pelino talked earlier about retaining or recruiting and retaining staff. We know that even when we're not in a hiring kind of a um crisis, you know, that it's it can be a challenge to hire bilingual teaching staff. Um I'm happy to say that going into September at this moment, we are fully staffed. Um and so, you know, right, yes, I know things can change during the summer. We know this, but um I think the staff is out there. I think we just have to do a little bit of
247extra leg work to um to find them. And one a couple of things we're doing is we're partnering with Clarkson University. Um we're working on a grant with that actually two grants with them. One of the grants would provide um teachers with the opportunity to get their bilingual extension um with a tuition reimbursement. So that's one. Um and then the other one is a grant with the Department of Labor where we would bring um inter like pre-ervice teachers on board and they would get a stipend. Um so we're excited about those two things. Yeah. Yep. And then um these are just some examples of our student voice. Our student equity team um you know um traverses both the programs in the elementary. They're called the junior ambassadors. Um and our high school ones are in
248middle school are called the ambassadors. But they have, you know, there's lots of opportunities for student voice um with our student led announcements. They came up with the idea that they wanted to do regular reading buddies in the native languages. Um in the middle you'll see pictures of um something called student scooter city. Um the students generated um and and created this whole thing. So you can see those little PE scooters, right, that the kids love to ride on. They created a city and then at each stop in the city there was a STEM project to do. So, it was a very busy night, but um it was fun. Um and then, you know, they serve as multilingual guides for school events. We had a talent show this week. They've done bucket fillers. So, we're
249really looking forward to expanding um that as well. And I think that's it. All righty. Thank you. It's so good to see you as well. Thank you. Um and let's see if we have questions for you colleagues. Uh Miss Cratto, you want to start us off? You know, you actually answered my most critical question with your statement that you're fully staffed for next year. So, I'm so very excited to hear that. Thanks for the presentation. It's really uh the cultural richness and vibrance of the program is so clear throughout the pictures and the videos. And I thought it was really interesting. Um I liked the video. I liked the video you showed. It was interesting that Dr. Medina said that the true main purpose is the socio I was sorry the so the socioultural um
250competence and the cultural awareness because thinking back um my son graduated from the dual language program in its previous location and I I think those are the two biggest things he got from the program as a native English speaker. So, I also just wanted to ask how many how are there still vacancies left in prek for next year? So, we're keeping an eye on enrollment. So, Oh, you mean like for student or for students? Okay. Yes. Yes, there are. Please let you know, let your friends know. It's it's really great. It's really great to hear. Congratulations on the Congratulations and everything that's going on and best wishes for the future. Thank you. Thank you, Miss uh Miss Wilson, did you have a question? Okay, Miss Savage, I just wondered if you could expand a little
251bit more on enrollment. It sounds like you do need a few more kids for prek, which is um but you know, we have invested fairly significantly in expanding duel. I think it's something we're all very proud of that we um saw that through, which was a you know, an uh an interesting time in our district. Um but we're very excited to be able to offer a two deep duel program, which was a real serious challenge with our old dual program that it was only one deep. But I think we'd all like to get just a sense of whether you're being successful in growing that program to two deep um because it was you know there was some confusion about whether uh grades had been compressed and whether you have enough kids and all that stuff.
252Yeah. So we did um we did collapse the pre-K section this year um and we have 19 pre-K students right now. Um our average class size in kindergarten and first grade is about 20 21 um in those grades. Um I am confident that like we will feel because what we have seen at least for the couple of years we've been there is that we do enroll more kindergarten students especially as the L's are coming in. I mean this expansion happened during a time when the city saw enormous migration you know from Spanish speakers and so it's great to be able to have programming for them. Um I we are you know I think that the spots that we have going into next year um will be for the English dominant side and as you know
253we can still enroll in kindergarten like that can be part of the magnet lottery and I'm also hopeful that with things like the dual language discovery night that can be a way that we can help raise awareness about our program um with families across the district because we did open that up to everybody. It was I mean we had mostly parents come but we did have one prospective family come too. So, you know, I I think that's a great way to get the word out and help raise the awareness around our programming. But yes, Mr. Elmani, is Ron still here? I don't think so. Or he might he might be outside, but I just had a a thought and I might have not seen it, but I know we have a lot of ads at
254bus stops, but can we get Spanish language ads at bus stops? Good idea. because I think that would be I can ask communications about that. Yeah. Thank you. Uh any other questions or comments? Okay. Seeing none, I want to thank you very much again. Thank you. And uh also wanted to acknowledge your another partner there, Mr. Jillio, director of our ENL services program. Um, and uh, some of us will be attending the moving up ceremonies. We'll let you know exactly who that is. Okay. But is it I'm sorry, Miss Crerache. Uh, for both or one just one. Oh, sorry. I'll be do attending the fifth the fifth grade moving up ceremony. Not not the eighth. Okay. So, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get off. We have a list that's coming around. You'll see hear
255from us tomorrow, but we look forward to seeing you. Okay. Thank you both. Okay. Thank you, Miss Beal. We have uh another item here on the table for tonight and that is a discussion uh our cap I say our capital project update and so I know we have uh our construction and uh partners in the back architectural partners and and you may be last but you're not least okay I assure Thank you all so much. Yeah, good evening. Uh we'll start off with the uh with the high school. Next slide, please. We're currently in the uh home stretch of uh phase three. Exciting times at the at the high school. Uh wrapping up phase three and getting phase four off the ground. Um with wrapping up uh phase three, uh items punch list. Uh primes
256are doing a pretty good job. Uh they're at about 95% complete. Uh as additional areas are uh complete with uh with construction. um CSR will go through and continue their punch list items for a few of those u rooms and this percentage will fluctuate over the next month or so uh until they're they're closed. These are just some uh overall updates of the connector corridor up on area 3D uh and uh also to the wrestling room. the connector corridor, all the metal framing and and drywall is done taping and painting. Uh and now they started the ceiling grid uh down on level one. And that's the next step before the flooring goes down. the weight and fitness uh and and cardio rooms. Uh those finishes have been installed and uh they're just wrapping up the
257athletic flooring and the doors and hardware going into those units. Uh the temporary kitchen uh is well underway uh with the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing uh rough fins that have been uh ongoing uh with the uh blower coil uh installation. It's basically a unit heater that had to go down into uh the kitchen. um the sink installations and electrical panel installations. Uh one uh item pertaining to the kitchen and cafe uh is uh the flexibility of the the programs within the high school to accommodate and understanding the the goal of having this uh in place for the students for um you know for the start of school next year. U the athletic department uh gave up the the rubber gym several weeks before the end of the school year. So um the cooperation is greatly
258appreciated. Uh this is a bit of an eye test for me. Uh so uh the the the EEO and MWB update. Uh the goal for the EO is is 10%. Uh the current is uh 17 uh percent. uh and the project average has been around 9%. Okay, just some of the uh standard uh or some of our uh potential uh change orders uh is a change in the uh from MC cable to conduit in the weights and fitness. Uh this was originally around a ROM of $10,000. Uh we have the current proposal from the electrician for 2174. Um the uh credits that are up here for the site contractor, those are still under review. We are currently holding a rough order of magnitude estimate of a $15,000 for doors and frames for the two passages
259into the gym off of the new L3 corridor. And the temporary kitchen added scope. Uh we budgeted roughly uh you know around you can see the figure up there 10,500. U as we get into doing the the work. Every once in a while you'll you'll come across uh in an existing condition. Uh the sprinkler there's a sprinkler relocation in the in the first floor in what's going to be the temp kitchen. That's part of this 10,500 uh duct work modifications in a few areas in order to make things uh fit and and flow properly. And then uh door hold power and CO detection down in the down the kitchen area. Uh overall this on on the changes um the beginning contingency was 3,324271. Our remaining contingency is 47,199. So that's 1% uh remaining on the
260overall and the percent remaining based on remaining volume is 2%. Which is an indicator that our burn rate is going in the right direction. Now this is the real exciting part is is phase four is getting off the ground. Um all of the contracts have been uh bids were received. Uh contracts have been awarded uh in construction. Uh uh we have here is the start of June 23. U it has uh started with the uh temporary power relocation. So we're underway. Had a project kickoff meeting with all the primes on uh May 30th. Uh then we had a principal safety meeting uh where all the prime contractor owners uh come in with their safety officers and we uh have a discussion about the project. Uh that was on June 1st and then the project labor
261agreement with the building trades council and all the primes. Uh that first meeting was held on uh on June 2nd and those meetings will continue uh bi-weekly until um all the primes have all their subcontractors on board. Um and uh this way uh it's a great method of communication between all the parties. Project schedule overview. Um these uh are previous uh commitments uh by the by the project team. The temporary kitchen cafe and the serving line uh is to be uh complete for the health department review uh which is slated for August 14th. um the first floor classroom uh slashoff space which is part of the swing space that's the level one under the uh the auditorium uh that's ready for staff to occupy on uh August 25th and then uh temporary power and fiber
262to the trailers that work has started uh that's to be complete uh by next Friday and then towers five and six uh the uh start uh the first full day uh the kids are out of school uh starting on the 26th of June and then the uh needing to have both towers down and out uh by the uh by the start of school. Okay. So shall we do we have questions? Do you want to start the high school or do you want to hear the whole presentation? Okay. Any high school related uh questions update? Okay. Seeing none, we we'll move ahead. Thank you. All right. So, next up would be North Aubry Middle School. Um this is the uh the auditorium which is uh 99% it's it's complete. They're going to be holding graduation in
263there. Um just a couple little things, some minal minor paintings, some punch list items. The uh uh wheelchair accessibility lift um has some tweaks yet to you know to finish in order for it to be operable, but there is there is handy uh capable access to the stage via the side corridor. Yep. So if you haven't seen it, I'd recommend you you get over take a look at it. It's it's nice nice space. the uh some of the other construction updates, the PE office that is done. It's uh complete, turned over. Um punch list is uh um it just has a few few items left. Site work, if you've gone around the building, you start to see the some of the site work on the south side and in the center courtyard starting to come
264together. Uh we're just waiting on the next next week is uh some asphalt paving, some sidewalks, uh and then get the uh the roadway in on the on the south uh south drive there. Uh once that's done, all the all the the grass will be planted and button some things up. Uh just some summer work that we wanted to note for uh upcoming uh most of this is uh has to do with some chain changes and some material lead times that uh you know put the work into the into the summertime. Couple of the bigger items is uh you know as soon as soon as school's out we're going to be sealing and this is not change work. This is just work that had pushed the summer. Uh sealing the north lot, which is the
265all the the library. We'll be sealing and striping that as soon as school is out. Um one of the other bigger uh pieces of work is the music room acoustical panels that you know based on when the material could be delivered that uh plus we need the space. Uh it's best to do that in the summer when school's uh school's out. Rest of them, most of them are door modifications where doors and and hardware are there's a lead time for it, but we're setting that up so that the primes can get in there as soon as school is done to to finish the work. Not a lot of continuing work through the summer, but work here and there, and we'll we'll manage that to to completion. And uh just the a punch list update for
266the work that's been done. The these percentages fluctuate as punch list gets added to certain areas that are finished versus what's been completed. But um the the the big push will be the first part of uh of July to wrap the rest of this up. Um and then there's some just some change orders. Like I said, the biggest one was the acoustical panels um uh for the music room. Um the other one that is we're we're just wrapping up here to to to present is the front lobby uh security desk al cove. Uh that's another one that we'll um look to we're looking to to finalize the pricing with the primes and get it in for approval and get that work done this summer. And then one of the, you know, slides that you're used
267to seeing here is the the if you want to call it the contingency burn. Um, very healthy here. Um, the the work, all the major work is is done. The rest of the work we have is already been uh processed via change orders or coming up and has been accounted for. So contingency left is 217,000 which is 15% of the contingency and almost 50% of what we have left to to put in place. So it's a it's it's healthy. See no issues uh you know financially finishing this project out. So North Albany comments, questions and that auditorium is beautiful. Just beautiful. I see none or hear none. So we can proceed. Thank you. Group three, uh the district-wide project, uh there's been uh great progress uh made uh since this report was uh developed. We're
268down to minimal items. U the Tetratech uh has gone through and performed their final uh architectural inspections. They'll be issuing those over the next week or so. So these numbers will while the numbers have gone down, they'll fluctuate and go back up a little bit. Uh some of the um items that have been uh that are coming up for work is the primary to electrical primary electrical service at Arbor Hill. Um that is uh starting on June 26th and the uh New Scotland uh elementary school. uh the exterior lights, the all the stone work was completed out front. So, we're uh we're moving uh in the right path there. Um as far as the uh one of since our last quarterly update, uh the Meyer uh Meyers Middle School tennis courts have uh been uh
269refurbished uh totally recoded and they were operable a day ahead of schedule. So, This is uh just uh before uh the top is the uh right after the the stone was pressure washed. Uh and then the bottom um photos uh show where the new stone caps have been uh installed. In the center picture, um I almost feel like this is one of those contests uh you see in the paper was what's the big difference? There's there's there's two there's uh two face stones that didn't call for being re replaced, but they're of different tint in the top and then down in the bottom you can see they're all pretty much uh the same color. Manufacturer did an excellent job. Uh and once again along lines of the of the high school u uh principal Leslie
270Buff and her team facilitated uh or accommodated this work being performed on the weekends which meant that it didn't uh uh go this summer when uh the forces are at their at their busiest. Uh budget update. Um we have a a new uh potential change order here for infill and installation m some old roof curbs. Um there was value engineering that was done at the beginning of the project and uh where the roof curbs uh are uh it was not u picked up to leave into the scope of the uh the reinstallation and some reinforcement on on the covers but everything currently is watertight. Uh the credits for since this uh uh been published the the credits have been issued uh uh for the painting of the not painting of the duct work uh in
271uh five of the facilities plus at the Arbor Hill. Uh right now the remaining contingency is uh 169,502 um with the percent remaining 17.7%. And then percent remaining based on remaining volume 5.68%. So colleagues uh any questions? Yes, Miss Ky. Yeah, I just had a question about the change orders because I I was trying to find a master list of the change orders with the numbers, by the way, to see which schools they lined up to and I could not. But for the one with the roof curbs, um what building is that? And then for the one about the duct work, is that for one building or multiple buildings and what was going on with removing duct work? PCO272, that is uh that's for Arbor Hill Elementary School. That's where the value engineering occurred for
272the uh for the roof. Um there PCO 161 is for five schools. Um five of the elementary schools. Um and then 221 is for Arbor Hill Elementary School. So what what would the removing duck work what's the rem what's the removing duct work entail? What why was that removal of the duct work? They didn't paint the the new uh some of the duct work. The district decided not to have painting of the new duct work. We're still having the duct work, but it's going to be unpainted. Correct. Now I understand. I thought the credit on painting duct work was we're not going to have it, therefore we don't need to paint it. See, totally misunderstood. Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you. Additional questions, comments. I just wanted to make sure I fully understand
273about the Arbor Hill roof because that roof has had many issues over the years. Could you break that down a little bit more layman's terms? What was the value engineering? Why did we do that? Is the building now perfectly watertight? Did was there any reduction in quality in terms of that? I just I'm sure you've explained this before and I've just lost the thread. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and and I was not involved at the beginning of the project. Not that that's a pre-quall, but at the beginning of the job, there were a project before the contracts were awarded, there were value engineering ideas to scale back and draw money back into the coffers for other potential things that district wanted to do. So, the decision was made by the district that a section of the
274roof at Arbor Hill did not need to be done. There's an area that is uh over uh the garage where the existing chiller is and then there's a part of the back roof, but the roof is is watertight. Uh there is one area that uh we thought that there was a a leak in the roof. Uh the district hired beyond the the capital projects because this roof was not part of the capital project. Hired uh the roofer directly to take care of uh or investigate some items. They found that the leak was coming through the storefront. But all in all, and I know I'm just trying to oversimplify this, the roof is good. We're not going to have problems with that roof. This is the whatever happened here with the value engineering did not reduce
275the ability of that roof to keep the water out of the building. Correct. I just needed to make sure I fully understood that because I definitely didn't before. Thank you. Question. Okay. Anything else, colleagues? I seeing no uh further questions. Uh Mr. Beckham, did you have any you were like thinking or something? I was like, "All right, he's not thinking at all." Okay. I know it's it's the hour. Yeah. Um I think that then uh we have no further questions on this uh piece. And uh thank you. We the committee did meet the other night. um we were right here and uh spent quite a bit of time going through all of this. So, um I think we're we're all good. Yeah. Okay. Thank you all very much and I'm sorry you had to go
276on last at this hour, but appreciate you. That brings us, I believe, to our committee reports. um anything uh I mean we had two committees that were meeting this week so I think you've both we've gi given that update uh from from on both counts. Miss Crerachche, did you want to start off with Sure. Uh the audit committee did not meet since we've last met but I did speak with the audit committee members about meetings for next year and I did shoot an I just want to let say Mr. Carris please check your email. I have suggested dates for next year so you know President Smith but I am on that. We'll get those to you shortly. Thanks. Thank you. Appreciate that. Um any government relations or I have two I will do two committees
277quickly. Um team operations manual is meeting Monday. We will only be reviewing two sections. So that should be relatively quick. If I could remember what they were, I would tell you, but they have just left my mind. So you'll have to be wait and get the documents tomorrow, which I will send tomorrow. uh government relations, we um agenda setting committee friends, we were going to have a discussion and it slipped, but we do have at least one if not two NISBA resolutions that will be on for discussion action at our next meeting because we will be out of time to deal with them. One is the one that was proposed by board member Wilson having to do with um uh aligning education votes to the election law in terms of early voting so that it
278would be less confusing to voters who right now get early voting for their regular regular political races and um not for uh the election law races. And then we have one other that's under development and I'm just going to keep that under my hat because it has not been fully uh vetted yet by the government relations committee. Okay. Thank you. Uh policy, anything you want to say there? No, policy is working hard over the last two meetings and what you saw was just the prequel. We decided we we would save everybody and be fair to everybody and not only bring the most important ones that have to be done today. There's a whole bunch of them coming next time. Okay. Very good. And uh again, the U facilities committee is meets regularly and uh we'll
279be back at it again in July, I believe. And um and we're just keeping track on all of these uh be uh work on all of our buildings and getting them all into the best shape. And uh and I think it's going fairly well. And um and you are I think this was a report that you'll see more updates on. uh letting you know that we've finished uh and completed certain elements of the work uh going forward. So I really need to go and see that North Albany auditorium. You do. If you remember the board meeting where we switched the direction and made it, you know, equitable to and more seats, wasn't that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a beautiful thing and actually that that building is uh just what they've done what we've done there
280is just absolutely fabulous. So um looking good. Okay. Um any uh let's move on here to see if there any other business items anyone has. Okay, seeing none, may I entertain a motion to return to exec session uh for the purpose of discussing details related to pending litigation and also uh student information um issue within the context of special education. Uh motion made by Miss Crerachche, seconded by Mr. All in favor that is unanimous. Thank you all and good night.