001good evening everyone my name is ann savage and i'm the president of the city school district of albany board of education on behalf of the board i welcome you to our special meeting on the feeder pattern i'm joined tonight in person by most of the board damaris mans ferdar jitter vicky smith tabitha wilson and alan krejci and of course superintendent adams and also by board member hassan al-manawi who is joining us virtually tonight and by board clerk tanya bowie we thank you all for being here boy on the dais and in the audience thank you for being with us tonight this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting are at albanyschools.org forward slash boe if you want to share those with anyone we will show the relevant slides and documents
002in the virtual meeting screen as well as in the screens here in the room you can also access the slides yourself at albanyschools.org forward slash boe if you prefer to be able to control them yourself you will notice that the school district continues to follow kobe precautions masks are no longer required those who choose to mask are worried are welcome to do so and those who choose to not are welcome to not with that introduction we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance [Music] in addition to the pledge of allegiance we always focus our meeting by say 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
003a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success normally i say superintendent adams do you have a report for us but because this is a special meeting we're only here to talk about one thing and one thing only and that is the feeder alignment process so we are now going to move directly into public comment um so let me pull up my public comment sheet in the back here [Music] because we are going to start with our in-person comment so i just want to get people's names and make sure i know who's here to speak in person excellent i love people who take initiative even when their name is not called excellent thank you so much so are you miss judy excellent it's nice to meet you we'll see you
004again i think right so if i appreciate you taking your seat i do have to read the public comment statement which i think will be familiar to most of you this is the time we set aside to hear in person from the members of the public the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making per our long-standing public policy the board sets aside up to 30 minutes of each meeting to hear from district residents parents students and other members of our community if there are more comments than can be accommodated in 30 minutes which we don't expect to happen tonight we may choose to extend the length of the public comment period or alternatively to establish a second public comment period later in the meeting per our new and our
005new new public comment policy we also accept comments in writing by virtual live participation and by voicemail comments that are not in person must be made at least six hours prior to the meeting to give us time to collect and verify them as needed written comments are limited to 400 words and voicemail comments to three minutes all comments must include the commenter's name in place of residence we do not accept anonymous comments if in the future you would like to submit a comment in advance we encourage you to find out how to do so at the albanyschools.org website on the boa page we have an area called addressing the board we ask all commenters keep in mind that information about individual students and specific district staff cannot be shared not only is it a violation
006of privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be aired in public so make sure i don't miss anything important here i think that's it we do have i think only one person signed up in common two two two people signed up in person and then we do have a few letters so miss judy when you're ready dr couture has signs that say ten seconds and one minute so it's a good idea to look up occasionally and look at him but he will keep the time for three minutes so whenever you're ready thank you superintendent adams president savage and members of the board of education my name is kim judy and my husband caleb and i are the parents of two children who attend new scotland
007elementary school we moved to albany in 2015 and purchased a home in 2016 knowing full well that our children may not attend hackett or myers i attended the community forums at that time and supported the purchase of the north albany building i share this to underscore and demonstrate that i'm not here to undermine the district's plan to realign the middle school theater system or because my husband and i don't want our kids going across town my family is in full support of the vision and efforts of superintendent adams to achieve equity in albany city school district wherever that leads our children providing an equitable school experience for all of our children's is a value we share for this realignment to work families are going to have to make sacrifices to see it through most of
008these sacrifices center on proximity comfort and transportation we will make these sacrifices because of the greater goal we believe this realignment is right for albany both for the students and the larger albany community at the same time there are a lot of concerns for parents on transportation issues my my family's concern is that the district is not paying attention to these concerns over the past several weeks i have observed a disconnect between what families are experiencing every day on the buses and what the district reports in terms of travel time safety and reliability we have heard that the district is working with cdta but have not heard concrete solutions to address the current issues let alone plans for contingencies associated with the feeder realignment if transportation needs and concerns of families are not addressed clearly
009then it runs the risk of jeopardizing this entire effort our ask of you is that you make your decision about the feeder alignment and then immediately turn your attention and efforts towards a comprehensive review of the district's transportation system you must clearly communicate your approach be transparent about any obstacles realistic about what issues you can address and accountable for the outcomes otherwise transportation issues will persist and for some will become a convenient way to avoid some of the shared sacrifice of achieving equity thank you for your time and consideration thank you very much let me sullivan whenever you're ready i um appreciate all the effort and work miss silvan i'm sorry can i you can either change tears or pull the microphone closer to you whichever is more comfortable for you um i just wanted
010to say i fully appreciate the time and effort that's been put into this process i understand that it goes back multiple years and a lot of families may just be learning about it now but i fully understand that process one question i do have is i don't i did did have an older student go through middle school already and yes we did go to hackett middle school and one thing that seems to be strong there is a strong administration it's been a consistent principal um and the other two middle schools do not appear to um there's a lot of changing through the administration and both my understanding is both myers and north albany so i guess mine is more of a question of what does that look like next year are the people who are
011in those positions currently going to be there to follow these changes through um will parents who have some concerns or reservations be able to maybe have a meeting with those folks as well um again the folk people who have had people go through middle school mr polino was always extremely approachable and um any feedback i've ever heard has been that any concerns have been addressed and um again the consistent administration i don't know if that's why hackett appears to be the school that um you know is the desired school but what does the administration look like at all three middle schools going forward from here thank you very much and thank you for being here in addition to the two in-person comments we do have four letters to read miss wilson is going to read
012the letters now the first is from maureen smith thank you to the board and the district for the march 3rd meeting i have two children in the district one of which will be impacted by the middle school feeder change i have listened to most of the board meetings and feeder alignment committee meetings the amount of data is overwhelming and i have been struggling to understand it all the march 3rd meeting had many nuggets of great information and answered most of my questions i would encourage any parent concerned with the process to listen to this meeting the inclusion of the community concerns via the in-person and online forms was a great way to strengthen the relationship between parents and school decision makers going forward i hope the district and board do more of this thank you
013to mr lesko for his clear answers and comments as well as his acknowledgment of current transportation problems there was a discussion about hiring bus aides for the cdta triple buses i hope that board seriously pursues this plan safety on cdta buses is a major concern for parents and is just as if not more important than the trip times this was the first time that the history of the middle school process was discussed in a meaningful way i think it is important for parents to understand this process has been going on for years especially when it seems as if these decisions are being made in a hasty manner this was great background information board member creation referred to research that supports some of the whys behind the middle school changes i think it is vital that
014the board and district share some of this information with the community the board and district need to do a better job of selling the benefits of these changes tell us why diversity can lead to positive outcomes in all areas for all folks academic social emotional cognitive economic etc lastly i would suggest that the board meetings on youtube include time stamps this may increase public engagement by making it easier for folks to listen to topics they are interested in the work of the board and district does not go unnoticed we may not agree on everything but we can agree that you all work very hard for our children and community thank you the second comment is from jim mcfaun good evening i'd like to take a moment to thank superintendent adams the board of education and
015the school feeder realignment committee for the time effort and amount of work that has been put into this so far knowing that blind data coupled with middle school enrollment surveys has driven the potential scenarios of realignment gives me great comfort data is what should drive these decisions i ask that a final decision be based on the data minor inconveniences for a few should not determine the outcome for the majority the district's pursuit of equity is valid needed and well overdue once again thank you third comment is from heather maltby i'm writing to express my concerns with the middle school feeder alignment specifically transportation i do see the need for a change with the current feeder pattern and i do support equity i'm not concerned about who the children are going to school with but rather
016how these children are going to get to the school in a safe and reliable way i attended one of the in-person meetings and listened to several of the online meetings and what i hear from the board is a lot of non-answers and assurances that don't actually have a plan behind them the lack of distress and confidence among families when it comes to the school district transportation is valid as these are real families who have already experienced issues or are still experiencing issues right now with their children who use the bus system at the february 28th in person meeting at arbor hill elementary a mother expressed her concerns to the board that her neighborhood has not seen a trip or bus in the last four years that her son attended middle or high school mr lasko's
017response that this was news to him is a great example of why there's a lack of confidence among many families for reliable transportation it is unacceptable that the dis the district's director of communications and operations was not aware of an ongoing transportation issue as he stated in a public meeting at one of the online meeting president savage made a comment how she could be very surprised if she heard from families that didn't think equity is important i know there are many families mine included who do believe in equity and do understand that something needs to change we want to continue to be all in for albany however we also expect the board has clear and realistic transportation plans already figured out and doesn't just give us assurances that it will be figured out at a
018later date and the final comment is from erica little they're members of the board after having some time to digest the week of meetings i write to share some thoughts and observations first i'd like to remind you that families can question this process and the proposed realignments scenarios while also standing behind the desire to achieve equity in our school the two are not mutually exclusive admittedly i am a sensitive person but i am unsettled by the tone i detected at re recent meetings that seem to imply that questioning aspects of realignment means not supporting equity second families seem justified in a feeling a sense of distress for the district under the circumstances we currently find ourselves in personally my distress was solidified after attending three in-person meetings held last week i hope for more information
019i had the more i felt i had hoped the more information i had the more i would feel confident in the decision being made but after hearing a few real answers to community concerns i am now less confident in you finally i appreciate the member of the board who suggested that providing resources about educational equity as well as real numbers associated with student success across our district would be helpful in addition to the chart setting for so much information that it can be challenging to process i've heard the phrase best practices without much explanation and statements that seem to be more in line with the concept of equality than equity i realized that i don't know your definition of equity or measurement that was used to determine economic disadvantage or non-disadvantage i'm trying to remain
020optimistic that the concerns raised by the community have not fallen on deaf ears but if i'm to be honest i'm struggling on this point thank you very much again the board really appreciates public comment we appreciate you being here in person and the letters that you write to us as well we're now going to turn to the presentation prepared by the district administration on the feeder pattern process and new information to share with the board whenever you're ready superintendent thank you so very much madam president and members of the board we will start with our presentation i will go through pretty much in a rapid rate i would hope we won't go into detail because we can listen to the very detailed pieces so that we can at least have the majority of the time
021for discussion and comments from the board but prior to getting started we would like to take an opportunity to congratulate our girls basketball team on the win last saturday our girls basketball team defeated defeated shin and they have been named the sec the section 2 champions they will compete sunday the game was originally scheduled for saturday but it's been changed because of the weather sunday march 13th at 6 p.m these are the state quarter finals and they will be held at hvcc this is the first time that we have been in the state playoffs since 2013 so congratulations to our lady falcons thank you moving on with our theater alignment committee update we always start with our guiding principles and we make sure that we are looking at our vision mission and goals with the
022decisions that we're making so that we're able to provide those equitable opportunities for all of our students our agenda this evening will cover the middle school enrollment background briefly the committee overview briefly enrollment pattern considerations the enrollment model metrics proposed scenarios transportation considerations and then the results of our community engagement and survey feedback and then we'll talk about our next steps recalling the work from 2001 facilities referendum where the foundation was laid for rebuilding or renovating the elementary and middle schools in the district and then moving forward to 2009 when livingston middle school closed and a reef reconfiguration committee was established to begin the development of a new feeder pattern sets that groundwork for the work that we're doing today zooming forward to 2015-16 that also laid the groundwork for a grade configuration model where
023all sixth grade students would be attending middle school in addition brighter choice closed and presented an urgent short-term facility solution whereby a temporary feeder pattern was planned to be in place for three to five years in 2016-17 phase two of the committee reviewed the options of a fourth middle school or a third larger middle school with that the voters approved a facilities project in january of 2017 and o'neill opened for the 2017-2018 school year to temporarily accommodate the influx of students in september of 2017 the district looked to achieve balance among students in an equitable enrollment structure which would be the least disruptive the board made the decision to have three 650 seat middle schools north albany was selected as a third middle school in may of 2019 voters approved a facilities project to expand
024and renovate north albany in order to serve the 650 students with the facilities aligned with hackett and myers and so the highlights are included on slide 10. the current committee then looked at feeder alignment beginning back in july of 2021 through the present this committee was formed so that we could engage our community members and the district personnel in order to partner in a partnership to develop criteria and make recommendations for an equitable feeder pattern for all of our students as they transition from elementary to middle school the committee began its work last summer with one representative from each school five members carried the work forward through the fall an ad hoc committee of three board members joined in december along with statistician dr ken robin our parents are dorian salat william lemon daniel katz
025talia harrell and marina marco o'malley our board members who served on the ad hoc committee president ann savage secretary shadar shattur and member hassan al-min the goal was to establish three middle schools roughly the same size and all three middle schools having students with similar needs so that resources could be allocated appropriately continuing to feed elementary schools to middle schools would allow student relationships to continue and the timeline would be the that the new feeder pattern would start in the 22-23 school year for sixth grade only adding a new sixth grade cohort each year until the the pattern was fully implemented in 2425 and then students currently in grades six through seven would remain in place until moving on to high school so the enrollment pattern considerations balancing the total enrollment looking at the needs
026of the students a number of school changes in the current feeder pattern and then transportation factors other factors considered in projecting the enrollment included current students in grades three through five the number of students that would be new in entering the district returning and new entrant self-contained special education students continuous enrollment of students from elementary to middle school and then our dual language program expansion from one deep to too deep as we look to build that program the enrollment model metrics included academics attendance discipline and risk score and for returning students there were factors that were weighted um with regard to academics being 50 percent attendance 20 discipline 15 and risk at 15. and then new entrants we developed a typical new entrance student so that we could include that information in our composite score
027in looking at all the possible scenarios there were there were a little over 500 000 possible scenarios the committee and the ad hoc board members worked very hard looking at all of the data and narrowed it down to 60 and you can get you can listen to the meeting on february 10th to hear how that near that i'm sorry that list was narrowed from 60 down to the eight that we have shared out with our community the next slide shows the eight scenarios that we have shared with our families and we have received feedback from our community members and i know mr lesko will cover that in his particular portion so that information is there we held our community engagement meetings and we had an online community survey the first initial survey was in november
028of 2021 we had about 448 respondents we held virtual meetings for all of our 12 elementary schools during the week of february 14-17 in-person community meetings february 28th and march 1st we've had our frequently asked questions posted on the website also the second online community survey opening it will be open through tomorrow so far we have about 617 respondents today it's been translated in multiple languages if you have not completed the survey please go to albanyschools.org survey so that you may have your voice heard and participate in that survey our community feedback these were some of the items that we heard throughout all of our meetings the equity with regard to academics and honors classes being offered at all of our schools and we do have honors classes being offered at all of our middle
029schools sibling preference we have looked at those numbers and based on those numbers that we have right now we should be able to accommodate sibling preference in alignment with the guidelines that we have and open enrollment we have a process in place based on space availability and the needs of the students and so those pieces will become a little bit more clear we'll be able to provide more guidelines after we move forward facility readiness was also something that came up with north albany and at this time i'll ask ms bo if you could click on the link and i can give you an update of where we are with the facility north albany and the renovation of that school and if is there a way to make it a little bit larger please okay so
030slide two so we still have this is where we are right now this was the area e former ymc daycare that's looking it's occupied january 2022 these are the items that have been completed but this is what the classrooms are looking like in this new area we can go on to slide three this area also is occupied this is the 952 wing and it's on the second floor i have been through the building and teachers have moved into those spaces um so you can see there's still a list of work that needs to be completed but this is where we are we are scheduled to have you can go on to slide four we are scheduled to have um ready for occupancy in those new areas in the fall of this year which would be
031you know august september of 2022 so it should be ready for the beginning of the school year um because we're looking at that our cafeteria kitchen and serving areas you can see the development there there will be more detail presented at the next board meeting when we have our capital project update but i did want you to see just the progress with north albany you can go on to slide five these are our gender neutral locker rooms you can see where they are we have made those accommodations slide six this is also to be completed by the this is the another classroom edition that is to be completed summer of 2022. and i think it's important to note that with the phased-in process of students coming in this piece will not be impacted and students
032won't be impacted in a negative way and so these are coming forward and then you can go on to the next slide and this is area a so you can see those pictures science classrooms and the first floor facts classroom you can go ahead the auditorium we are looking at a summer completion of 2023 and so by the time the students arrive in the fall the major area that we're looking at for completion would be the auditorium by the next summer and the next slide and then the third floor you can see where we are with the progress that we're making on the third floor so the facility readiness for north albany um i hope that answers at least some of the questions right now but on the 17th there will be a much more
033detailed explanation and backup information so you can listen in on the third on the 17th of march to hear the full report of where we are with the capital project and then the next item for community feedback would be transportation and so at this time i'll turn it over to mr lesko [Music] can you double check that your mic is on getting ahead it's never i know you are it's always on when i start so i figure it's just me so i'm beginning with a review of where we are currently which is which is how we plan for the year ahead uh that's the baseline that we used to plan for anyway i wanted to correct a mistake in the slide i was including the two uh aic routes so there are 13 uh trooper
034buses that serve our middle schools currently uh five serve north albany five serve myers and three serve hack at the scheduled ride times for those routes range from 14 to 42 minutes as we discussed last week six of those 13 routes are scheduled for under 30 minutes there's only one route that is scheduled for over 36 minutes and nearly every student on the bus has a scheduled ride time of 28 minutes or less that is as you recall from our conversation last week the north albany tripper currently that serves the western avenue eagle point corridor and also the point of woods neighborhoods at the far end of washington avenue extension the routes may be five to seven minutes longer some days depending on road conditions and traffic all eligible students also have free access to
035the full cdta route network every year and that's you know from the time the first buses start rolling in the morning until the time the last buses go to bed in the evening our planning for this year as we do every every year we work with cdta to design routes that are based on where the student students going to school live we we plot all those students on a map and develop our routes to serve those schools based on where that current year's students live so that is always the process that we use and all these processes that we follow in the process that we would follow for our new feeder patterns next school year we've um i appreciate the conversation last week about the potential to invest in additional additional trooper routes for next
036year if we need them i'm going to propose that we uh that we invest in six additional routes up to six additional routes to make sure that we are prepared to serve uh the new feeder patterns in in every way that we we would need to um the the total additional budget request for transportation would be 270 thousand dollars for six additional trippers we are reimbursed as you know for our transportation expenses in state aid we're reimbursed at the 79 level so the total uh of the total expense to the district for those six tripper buses would be 56 700 that funding would be lagging by a year we would receive that in our in our funding for the 2023 school year that's how the state as you know uh allocates its uh transportation aid
037some additional factors that that we are taking into consideration as we as we planned for next year depending upon the feeder pattern the board ultimately settles on there will not be a major shift in the number of students that we're transporting next year no matter which of the scenarios that the board that the board selects so it'll be approximately the same number of students that we are that we are transporting currently um cdt buses for our middle schools will continue to serve all parts of the city and we will be sure that that is that is absolutely the case our goal will be as as it always is to make sure that students have no more than a half a mile walk to get to a to get to a trip around i don't know
038that we achieve that every time but we achieve that most of the times and we'll continue to analyze our our routes to make sure we are doing the best that we can to minimize that walk for students to catch a tripper um we will ensure that the riot times remain consistent with our current ride times and look to shorten the rides wherever possible and i and and i appreciate the board's willingness to invest in additional trip or service to to help us in doing that uh we had a follow-up meeting with uh with cdta last friday morning one of the one of the reassurances that they gave us is that cda bus cdca buses can safely operate on on our local highways to create express routes which would minimize ride times and maximize route efficiency
039again depending if that's the need and depending upon the the the students who are going to each of them each of the middle schools cdt is evaluating the entire secondary route system as well including our troopers that serve albany high school and the aic to to ensure that you know we're being as efficient as we possibly can and that uh in serving all eligible students for uh for next year and that's part of and that's part of what they do every year they're rebuilding the routes to serve the students we'll be going to school in the next in the next year i think i got me yep i did i'm going to jump right to that so as the superintendent mentioned we've uh we have had a good response to our our survey to date
040um the number that we were up to right before i left the office was 622 responses uh so far and you can see on the slide the number of responses by school or or program and and this this won't add up to 622 or the 594 that was based on what i created last evening uh because if if a respondent chose albany high and hackett and eagle point they're reflected in each of those in each of the individual school uh school respond responses the um the overall data that you'll see as we go through this is just one vote per person so no matter whether they selected one school or four schools it's just one vote per person when you're looking at the overall of the overall data that we'll see tonight the new scotland
041community has the most responses so far and right before i left the office they were up to 158 i did want to note that giffen is up to 82 currently and that which would make them the second highest responding elementary school uh to date so that they've done a fantastic job in that school community and in getting their school community engaged in this process montessori has had a strong response as well uh ash also is up to 71. schuyler achievement academy increased significantly today there they're up to 24 responses um sheridan prepped at 16 and arbor hill at 18 are just some additional examples of increases that we've had during the day today academic equity was the uh the most significant criteria for for all of our respondents uh the uh overall and on these
042next charts that you'll see the overalls the the bar on the far left it's highlighted in green and then the individual school uh school response rates and percentages uh obviously to the right uh two-thirds of the of the people who responded to the survey selected academic uh equity as a very important criteria to them and again you can see some of the some of the levels for each of the schools total total enrollment didn't seem to be as important as a criteria to uh to the folks who have responded to the survey to date 35 percent of the respondents indicated overall that total enrollment is a very important criteria for them and again you can see that the individuals individual school response rates are trending lower as well there minimizing long walks the walks that
043would be between one mile and uh just short of our our threshold for transportation of 1.5 miles was overall the second most important criteria to the folks who responded to the survey 55 of the people who responded said that criteria was very important to them 45 percent of the respondents overall indicated that maximizing bus eligibility was very important to them and minimizing changes the number of schools that would be going to a new school next year was um nearly half of the nearly half of the respondents said that that was that was very important to them and then at the next slides we'll take an overall look and a by school look at each scenario and the percentage of respondents who said uh to them that the scenario fits well with the criteria that we
044just that we just reviewed the scenario 25 828a 28 of the respondents today have indicated that that that scenario fits well with their priorities scenario 25 828 b of the respondents indicated that that fits well with the things that are important to them you'll notice we go through this there are two scenarios in which the fits fitzwell responses are higher than the fitzpoorly responses and this is one of those scenario 26 225a there are 27 percent of the respondents who indicated that it fits well with their priorities scenario 60348 b is that 28 percent 67759b is at 26 6759c had the highest has currently the highest percentage of folks saying it fits well with with the items that matter to them at 33 percent scenario 76882a of the respondents indicating it fits well to them
045and the final scenario 77107a uh has 24 of the respondents indicating it fits well for them this slide shows you the fits well responses in blue or green and the fits poorly responses of the percentage of those responses in in red as i noted there are two in which uh in which the respondents uh indicated it more respondents indicated it fits well uh with their priorities then fits poorly 258 258 28b and uh 67759 c 60348b is you know the fits well and fits poorly are they've been sort of neck and neck the last time i looked it was a percent as a percentage point difference and and uh the other five scenarios have a bit of a spread between the those who think it fits well and those who think it fits poorly with
046the criteria that they they prioritize did i do that sure i'll hand it back off to the superintendent to go over next steps and some additional resources i'm sorry next steps we have our board meeting on march 17th at 6 30 and we just we do have a list of resources and additional links that people can reference on their own and we will open it up for questions and discussion so thank you very much i particularly appreciated your very brief uh review of the history it was like my entire life flash before my eyes in about a minute for those of you listening at home or in the audience who want a much more detailed review of the history of how we got here we did cover that in quite an extensive detail at the
047last board meeting which is all recorded so you can certainly listen to that we are the superintendent also covered very briefly the process by which we got the scenarios determined and that is also available to you in much more detail at any of the seven focus groups meetings that we did both virtual and in person right around spring break if you want more detail on that one of the challenges of all board activities that people enter the process at all different times so we always try and start at the beginning and bring to the end but um we do that very efficiently for these later periods i also wanted to draw attention to talia harrell and ask her and thank her for being here she served on this committee all the way through and we
048thank you for being here with us tonight um board colleagues um now is our time to ask questions we're going to not yet talk about the sort of preferred scenarios but ask questions about the presentation so i don't know if you guys are comfortable with starting with sort of like does anybody have any questions about how we got here oh ms wilson my questions are about slide 12 and 13. so let me see slide 12 i just want to catch up to you and i'm wondering if anybody has any questions before slide 12 just so we can try and do them in order slide 12 slide 12 i'm going back to slide 12. okay yes go ahead so here um we talk about that there's currently 13 school buses and the potential to do six
049additional trippers and the routes would not be at risk of any budget implications because they would be aidable as well so as far as my my one question or part one would be as far as ride times the trippers are exclusively for students like the roots that way they're designed and i'm wondering if they could be designed to shorten the stops like maybe an aggregate model where you talk about no less than 0.5 miles for example and can they hold for a minute before or a minute or two after let's say two minutes can they hold for two minutes before and after an estimated arrival time to ensure that no one's like getting left or missing you know that sort of thing that we've heard feedback about we could certainly uh ask cdk to build
050that into into the schedule they are not while they're designed to serve our schools the cbt is a public transportation entity so they're not we they can't deny anyone access to that bus if if i wanted to hop on at a stop onto the 806 brown for example uh they would be perfectly able to get on uh members of the general public typically don't ride yeah ride the trip or buses well that was my experience too in high school i said albany high and there was a rare occasion someone really got on if you know i do understand that just can i ask a part two of that is that i understand that for the bus cdta in general if you go to google and you put in the 22 or something you actually get
051a more up-to-date live update of where it is in the whole scheme of things and do we apprise parents about that like the fact that it's supposed to arrive let's say 7 15 but it may in real time be on its way at 7 19 or parents thoroughly advise that that's a feature on google i'm just curious so we do we do make them aware of uh all of the fun all of the route finding capability that cdt has on his website but that's certainly something we can continue to remind folks about as well absolutely so we started with transportation so why don't we continue with the theme of transportation does anybody have questions other questions on transportation dr now we talked about tripper buses and what we can do to add to them but
052if you don't if you ignore the tripper buses and look at the normal routes for any average person to currency which of these schools has the least amount of bus availabilities from wherever they are to you know let's say the north yeah north albany myers both are in similar situations in that regard there is there is not a lot i would say north albany even has a little bit less service than the 106 percent provides on whitehall whitehall avenue but both myers and north albany have very limited access to regular cdta line routes hackett is more centrally located in the city so there's much more access to regular regular buses that run on delaware on delaware avenue or have access to to that but both myers and north albany both and that's why they have
053they have more trooper buses than hackathons because there is a need for more direct service for the school what i was actually going to say is from the elementary schools to wherever whether it's not on your or myers which one which of the schools the elementary school catchment areas would have less of a cdta service line i see ash being on whitehall road would it would have less service montessori where it is located in a in a neighborhood would you know you can walk out to central avenue or probably uh over to lincoln but it's it's not directly there's nothing directly there um the rest of the schools all are located on or near main thoroughfares so they would have they would have good access to uh to regular line routes for example uh one
054of the routes that we run for north albany is that comes out of the south end it comes down mount open and then it takes us it's a straight shot uh on pearl out of the out of the south end to nor to north albany that's the 922 i believe it's a line it's a regular line route that runs extremely frequently uh on that uh on that road and it's a it's a again a straight shot and a relatively quick a route uh down down pearl uh from you know one end of the city to the other and going as you as you know that's one of the few places in the city where going north and south is easy in the city north and south in the city is generally more difficult in albany
055than going east and west so it's more of a challenge typically to when you're traveling north and south what is your question specifically there no from new scotland to about myers it's probably walkable but not all of me actually that's why i was a few minutes late i just did that drive today so and i did the eagle point drive earlier today as well see what the difference is on the highway the difference is significant on the highway from from holy names to north albany on the highway is 17 minutes from where whitehall hits new scotland is 19 minutes uh on the highway it's uh 19 and 21 on city street so the the diff the difference isn't significant but there is is a difference and it is a heck of a lot easier obviously
056taking taking the highways around to get to that to get to that part of town the difference is much more significant on western avenue in in that area it's from the ualbany entrance on western avenue it's 6.4 miles to north albany and that's a 20-minute drive it was mid-morning but that was a 20-minute drive on city streets it was 12 minutes on the highway uh seven miles it's a you know half mile longer but it's significantly quicker and i was from north albany to eagle point elementary school was 10 minutes that way so that you know that is something that cdta was emphasizing as as a a good option using the express buses and taking advantage of the highways that do circulate around the city to to make the make the travel time much more
057efficient for families if depending upon what the theater patterns are my question about transportation i have a couple but one is whether you have started thinking about how many late buses would run out of north albany with a larger student body and a different distribution i know from just from my experience as a parent that myers generally runs two late buses they run sort of a headed uptown bus and a headed downtown bus and i'm wondering if you've anticipated additional late buses and budgeted for those um as well as the additional trippers that that would be service through first student and most of that is provided through grants so we would absolutely work with with the grants department to make sure that those the the buses for the after school programs are uh are accessible
058there won't be significant change in the numbers in year one the the changes in the numbers really balancing between uh as north albany grows and myers and hackett are reduced we'll be in years uh years two and three but um the uh yeah absolutely we will plan to make sure that after school services uh is in place for all the students we have that now but the students who attend at north albany middle school are you know primarily from the north end of the city so it's it's it's much more accessible but we would absolutely make sure that there's after-school service for all the students who go to north albany in all of the middle schools irrespective of where they live because i don't think that's been perceived as a strength um among the secondary
059families that the late buses have been not considered a really terrific reliable predictable way to get home after an after-school activity um because they aren't sort of at least my understanding on a predictable route they vary them based because they don't know what kids are going to be there they're trying to get home so it creates a little bit of unpredictability so i think that's an area where we could um emphasize improved service quality somehow across the whole the whole district and that's something that the transportation director and i have talked about a couple of different times of school here is that exactly what you're describing there's not a there's not a route sheet for that for that bus any day and it's neither of us at the moment see any way around that because
060we want to serve the students who stay after school and there are different reasons that students stay after school every day but yeah that has been that has been a challenge for uh for the better better part of the school year and that's that's something that we're and that's something we're trying we're trying to address and as you know the biggest obstacle we have there is simply that it's simply drivers and that's true that's more true for for student than it is for cdta but it is still an obstacle for cdta ms man how do we stop the uh trooper buses are they um are they staffed by um district employees or no it's entirely entirely cdt's [Music] ms wilson um one of the mentionings i know were monitors and i'm just curious uh what
061does that entail what would that look like basically for what is the vision for that for monitors on the ctk so one of the things that we have to look at we it's a little bit more complicated than that but this is not to say that it's an obstacle it's just this is how it works currently there's not a position for it currently what we do is we assign our home monitors because it is within their responsibilities of supervision and so what we're looking at are some scheduling options we have to absolutely talk with our union heads with regard to that our union leadership with regard to what that staggered position might look like but it is absolutely doable that's actually affirming because a hall monitor would know our students versus a non-staff person so
062thank you so just to be uh make sure i understand that at some point in the next couple weeks as we develop the budget we will see some sort of budget expectation in terms of the additional staff for bus monitor or hall monitors that extend into the afternoon busing again can't say a yes or no but there are possibilities because if you recall we still have positions that are funded through arp and so we we have um quite a few positions that are funded through art and based on that we can look at how we either extend those hours shift those hours that's the piece that we have to work with the union about and our hr department will be working through that i understand that's helpful um other transportation related keep going sorry this
063is the transportation section i know at albany high we looked at the research and figured you know there's many benefits to a later start time for our students and are we investigating the same thing for middle school not only because of distance increases but just in general and it's part of that factor factoring in transportation and distance so one of the things that we have to look at is when mr lesko talks about how they're working through the schedules and we're talking about maybe tiering them a little bit differently to accommodate we you know drivers that drive like an early shift and then they can circle back and pick up the second shift um that staggered time yes we're looking at that but if everybody starts later then we're still in the same position that
064we're in so i'm not going to say that middle schools will all of a sudden start later what we're going to have to do is work through those schedules to see what that tiered start time would look like so that we can number one best accommodate the instructional program but also have our students arriving to school on time if i could just add on to that a little a tiered system for cdta like we have with the yellow buses for the late start in the early start of elementary schools takes the driver shortage out of the equation for cdta that in that case that they can tell us that there would not be a problem with the number of drivers the challenge for us is getting getting the schools on a schedule that's spread enough
065that allows that to happen and that's that's going to be a challenge for us from from a scheduling perspective if we put them back on the same schedule as they were there are definitely some efficiencies that we would realize there as well that would take a full complement of drivers and cdt very may very well be back to a full complement of drivers or much closer than they are currently when we get to next school year because i think all organizations are starting to feel that the the hiring market open up a little bit and we've had success in filling positions that we had a difficult time with for the first half of the school year i i know they have to they've had problems with attrition as well which is sort of made that
066uh you know take two steps forward and you know 1.9 steps back so it's been a it's been a ch that has been one of the big challenges for all organizations during the pandemic and it continues to be for uh for cdta so but those are a couple of the conversations that we had last friday morning as we were talking through how to address how to address all the needs that our students have but also the the labor realities that we face so i have one more transportation question before we move on do we have an ability to generate percentages of students at these service levels like it says um only one route is scheduled over 36 minutes the route being scheduled that means like the last the very last kid is over 36 minutes
067but that doesn't really tell me what percent of kids like are they are 80 of our kids being served at 30 minutes or less like that that's the understanding i'm trying to get of not just the worst case scenario which is what you've given us here but what's the bulk of the service expectation is that something that's possible to to get i am certain that's possible i don't know how easy it is it may be simple or maybe it may take us a little bit of time but we will get to work on that all right it would be helpful to know what our current service level is in that way and then be able to understand if we think we're going to be able to meet that as as you've said on the slide
068that you're going to drive to basically maintain service level um even though the um oh i'm sorry and i see mr almanawi's hand too so i don't want to skip him sorry about that hassan um but so just trying to maintain that service level knowing that would help me understand it better board member el mignali um so thank you ron um i just my cons my overall concern about uh adding the new tripper busses and you've kind of answered the question with saying that like you would need to stagger them so i mean adding 16 tripper buses we would be at 21 tripper buses and i still am concerned about uh labor issues and like it does seem like a reasonable solution uh to be able to stagger entry times so that you know their
069same employees can take you know different routes and um that is a good way of consolidating um i think so that's something i didn't think about um not really a question in there but more of a more of like emphasis that like if i mean we are going forward with choosing an option here so i would absolutely start working on um the start times for figuring out the start times and lining them up with cdta trippers miss me and super dinner i just wanna i really do also uh like the uh idea of uh you know uh the hall monitors or current employees being able to assist that doesn't mean that we won't be hiring additional people correct because right okay so we definitely look forward to hearing more about these possible um staggered times
070and why not we know you're working hard on that and appreciate all of the forethought that's gone into what is essentially plan a and plan b um i know that that is something i know that many community members have raised as well like but what if what if um and that this is a really i think of an understandable answer is we're going to circle the buses twice so that we need half as many drivers essentially is the shortcut for the people who don't have to actually make it happen that is one option that we are we are looking at yes okay all right are we done on transportation anybody else with transportation okay um we didn't talk about anything before transportation which is all things that we'd heard before which is sort of like
071the history and the committee feedback if we don't have any questions there that's fine okay so the thing that was most new tonight was um i just want to make sure i don't skip any important slides we're on slide i did want to make sure that everybody had noted and not board members but also community members that the sibling preference thing which had been has been open an open question for some time they did pull that data the superintendent feels confident that um barring unlikely situations you know if a charter if three charter schools close things happen that is how we got into this in the first place so you know barring those kind of unexpected situations the intention would be that the district would be accommodating sibling preference for families that currently have a
072child in one of the district middle schools even after before or after the feeder pattern change any questions on that slide about open enrollment sibling preference honors classes i think will hold a little bit on facility readiness because we are going to talk about that extensively next week um ms wilson just in the thematic area of the um sorry yes i'm not at the microphone of the honors classes and i guess the larger questions about our commitment to equity and academic excellence and things of that nature i know the forum presentations um for most folks and then they got to ask their questions where feeder committee process heavy because of course our goals were providing transportation transparency and having people understand how the data-driven process works and everything else and many people do not get
073to benefit from the material in our board meetings where we elaborate more so about when we go over in details our plans for academic equity or how we plan to provide stability and such during during the transition so um it's are there highlights we can provide and you've spoken to the fact that there definitely will be honors classes but how we um basically are creating equity at all the schools regardless of what the transition and decision may be i i'm going to ask is it can you repeat the question sure i'll just summarize because it was almost like you answered exactly what i'm what i feel like what i want to say more so is i feel like we do go over it in board meetings and it's embedded in a lot of our presentations
074but you know do people get the benefit from that when you know they don't maybe they maybe they don't they didn't follow the board meetings per se that where we went into that so i'm curious if we can talk about um outside of the fact that we're you know aligning the feeder the enrollment design what we're doing at the schools each schools to or what our plans will be at these schools so i'll start and then miss mckenna can speak to the i'm sorry miss mckenna can speak to the middle school with the course offerings that we have and then uh dr wilson turner can talk about the accelerated and enrichment component that we have at the elementary piece so you know we we look at how we are making sure that our students are
075prepared to take the higher level courses and so for me very high level i have to start with the end in mind which is at the end of the day we want all of our graduates to be college ready that doesn't mean that they're all going to college or that they're all going to make that choice to go to college but the choices of what they make are not limited by the courses that they've taken in high school and the preparation that we have done for them so just as we are very very proud of the fact that at our high school in the capital region we have more accelerated offerings than any other school and i think that was a very wise decision that our district made when investing in one high school because
076then we can put all of our attention there and we can offer the honors classes the ap classes the university and the high school credit the ib program we can offer these courses for our students in offering those courses we do have to make sure that we have a pipeline built for our students so that they can all be successful and so one of the ways in which we have worked on that for years before me as well as while i'm here looking at the higher level critical thinking skills that we embed in our instruction and so with that particular piece then we have to back up to what are we doing at the middle level to engage and encourage more students to be in those accelerated classes if you remember a few years ago
077we looked at how we place students in the accelerated classes at the middle level and then not just stopping there looking at what we do at the elementary level so now we have a full pathway to our accelerated courses in the high school because we can't start preparing students in the ninth grade for honors classes and accelerated classes in the junior year or senior year it really starts and i'm going to throw a little shameless plug out there right now it really starts with our pre-k programs it starts at the very beginning i know that's a shameless plug about upk and funding for upk but it starts at the very beginning utilizing those critical thinking skills um uh looking at that quality instruction from the moment we engage with our students so at this time
078i'll turn it over to miss mckenna for secondary and then dr wilson turner can jump right in with the elementary component great thank you um great segue into my response and at the middle level um regardless of the middle school that students attend we will have a complement of honors and accelerated courses in each one of our schools starting in sixth grade we're adding accelerated math um new to the 22-23 school year and then we will move into seventh grade for honor social studies ela science and math and then of course in eighth grade we offer living environment and algebra and we continue with our honors social studies and ela so regardless of the middle school we will absolutely continue to offer the wide range of programming programming to meet the needs of our students
079good evening um when the similar question was asked at one of the in-person presentations for the feeder alignment feedback from the community um i talked about the importance of the partnership between elementary and secondary and making that clear alignment to what students need to be prepared for and i'm sure the board remembers when we brought forward the acceleration and enrichment policy that was the purpose of that policy right to make sure that we're creating this foundation for every child to be able to make the choice of courses they want to take and be prepared to stay in those courses and so that work continues it's actually a committee at the elementary level that continues to meet to refine what that preparation looks like and what supports are needed to ensure that preparation so the new
080sixth grade accelerated math course that ms mckenna spoke about is something that sarah mcgraw and frank del cignar brought to that committee so that we would have an understanding of what the connection is between elementary and middle school math and to make sure those students are ready and then mr delsignore was able to work with each elementary building to determine which students are going to enroll into that classroom and make sure they're appropriately supported to be successful so that i can't emphasize enough the importance of that partnership that happens between elementary and secondary schools and then in addition to that um the board approved a budget that allowed us to bring in additional support resources at the elementary level with the purpose of accelerating learning and one of the things that we've done in addition
081to using that to close the gaps is we want to be able to leverage those same resources to accelerate students at the level which they are ready to learn furthering the the concept of students being prepared for the courses that opportunities that are available to them thank you so much and i appreciate everyone's responses and as i indicated i know we talk about it in individual board meetings at different presentations and different times and i just feel like it just unifies it makes it very holistic for people understanding that we're doing it at all levels we're planting those things so thank you miss smith and then miss gracie sure and and i do appreciate your question miss wilson um and also the responses because to not do as you've described superintendent miss mckenna dr uh
082wilson turner is not equity we we would be undermining we'd simply just move be moving students around for no good reason no intentional reason so um to do and i and i but i do appreciate your question because it's something i think we have to keep reminding um ourselves of and so that we continue to do the things that we need to do to ensure that equity is happening and that our outcomes are equitable and that students get and receive all that they need and deserve um so uh but we we do have to get that message i think out there about what exactly this looks like and what it means um because otherwise it's not achieving the goal board member crazy thank you i'm really excited to hear about the proposed accelerated math at
083the sixth grade level and the increase in emphasis and preparing students for success in high school i know anecdotally forgive me uh there's always a few kids in middle school that are double accelerated in math and right now they take eighth grade math for the seventh eighth grade eligible with the seventh graders and my understanding is their bust to the high school to take geometry in eighth grade and my question is for students who are going to north albany they're double accelerated but they're the similar provisions for them to be able to take geometry in the 8th grade miss mckenna i'm i'll go ahead and answer and then you can jump in we would definitely offer that students and i just want to add one of the things that i think is a real credit
084over the last couple of years both for honors and for this acceleration and for double acceleration that the district has become much more um sophisticated and data driven in those decisions um i know that years ago it was the perception was that it was a very parent-driven kind of a situation where if the parent knew to ask and they called then maybe they could get this but that does not happen anymore the sixth graders to my understanding are all evaluated and looked at their data is looked at and they are um reached out to assertively from the district reach out to the parent to say would your child like to consider this that's a another one of those things that has happened behind the scenes people may not be aware of us trying to make
085sure that our decisions are more equity driven um and not driven just by um folks who might feel like they know how how things work better all right anything else on that slide with uh that that's on there slide 19. if not any comments or questions about the survey feedback anything people want to share about that board member man i do want to acknowledge the leadership in in all of the schools for ensuring that parents had access to the the survey i want to especially note the high number of responses from giffen uh from scotland and from ash i think that's fantastic i think it's fantastic that we we were able to receive such a large response from from from given and that's that's it thank you [Music] just i just wanted to point out
086one thing about the survey and i take responsibility which i take partial responsibility for as a board member which was i think as a board we assumed what people's transportation needs were and we we kind of phrased these questions accordingly assuming that people would want for example to minimize long walks we're assuming that people would want to increase accessibility to the bus i think in retrospect we might have asked a question about you know it seems like people won't wind up being more interested in shortening their bus journeys or being closer to school and we do we didn't really get that entirely right i wanted to apologize we assume i i know i spoke up at board meetings about reducing long walks and it turned out that that wasn't of the importance that people thought
087it was i'm apologizing for my assumption and thinking that that was a key thanks anyone else with anything on the survey i'm sorry i just don't um i don't know if there were assumptions made i think they were they were we were trying and i just don't i'm not trying to disagree but i just want to understand that i don't think we personally made assumptions i think they came out of the committee and not the committee but the design like the data that drove what the survey what we tried to match the survey to so i understand and agree that we can always of course have a survey be super responsive and we can continue to have ongoing dialogue with our community but i don't want to say that we assumed because i definitely didn't
088you know i didn't assume i was very open-minded in the process and i think even when we had forums we went to great extent to hear what people said about their transportation situation so i agree but also wanted to state that too just to have that out there because i i definitely didn't walk in with any assumptions about anyone or any school i just want to state that [Music] on the government relations committee we've lobbied and tried to understand the whole transportation needs and as the regulations in the states stand you know 1.5 miles state will fund you if you drop it to one mile zero miles what have you you have to you will not be funded by the state and so it has to go through a referendum in the waters to agree
089to it and it goes on your tax taxes right so this is something that we've been hearing consistently over many years and we've been trying to see how we can fix it the other thing is parents have complained that their kids have had to walk long distances right so it was not a pure assumption it was something to say this is an existing problem can we remedy it in any which way in a meaningful way and especially for economically disadvantaged students who don't have a car you know you know or access to a personal vehicle that will bring them there to their school so this that was the intention and we did the best we could based on that if you want to call it an assumption it wasn't truly an assumption it was an
090intentional assumption if you want to say it uh let's see he's uh his son let me know his is actually not on the survey results so i want to stay on survey and survey results for a minute is that what you're on yeah go ahead mrs wilson and again i apologize i'm not trying to counter what you stated i just wanted to put then of course more eloquently stated what i was getting at i know the options of course um caused some sticker shock for a disproportionate amount of families in different communities and for some more than others and i think you know of course um what we were evaluating and what we continued to well what drove that of course was i think somebody call it blind data i prefer to turn mask data
091to not be um ableist in any capacity but appreciate that we used mass data so it was and i know many people are like well how come you're sending my student here to fix equity and it wasn't that we you know knew when we were going in what school would promote equity these eight options that we narrowed down to were based on mass data that indicated a large you know tilt towards equity and with that being stated we of course are evaluating what the students feel families feel and evaluating the cost and the benefits of this decision and the impacts on logistics and transportation of course which is a huge challenge for humanity not just us so um and all these social cultural implications for every student and i appreciate that and i want to
092reiterate that i appreciate the strong support for equity work because i think we've been doing this in tandem with the community community tells us what they want to see and changes they want we have community schools that are rooted in equity and you know we're doing it from as the superintendent indicated having universal pre-k is a commitment to equity so we appreciate that and i appreciate all the feedback and of course every single one of us i could not to speak for let me speak for myself all i read all the survey responses and definitely intentionally went over the data it tends to went over the maps and that's why for people who um the certainty isn't there for them yet i think that's why it's because we are still making this decision in tandem
093with that reflexive standpoint like you said we want the feedback and to understand better and i think we can always we'll continue to have surveys throughout you know moving forward we'll have surveys and community discussions about many things so thank you all so i wanted to add a thought about the survey results which i just want to take a note of caution which is that in addition to the number of responses by school and program that mr lesko presented it's important to see that they are not um even as a percentage of each school right it's not like we got the same percentage of each school new scotland is both our largest school and the largest number of respondents but they responded disproportionately so when i did the math just very simply dividing the number
094that i had as of whatever a day or two ago the last time i got the numbers new scotland had turned out um almost a third of their student body you know the number of responses divided by the student body at new scotland was almost 33 which is tremendous and fabulous and one of the things i've learned over the years as a community advocate is that when people are concerned about something they turn out right it's really hard to get people to turn out for something that they like um or that they feel neutral about when people are concerned about something they turn out and so um so i just think it's important when we look at those overall survey responses that mr lesko referred to about the couple that he highlighted is having um
095and over you know a more fits well versus doesn't fit well that is in part because the new scotland families um responded disproportionately right some of our other schools um and again all credit to um the wonderful staff at giffin for turning out their folks they turned out at 17 which is extremely good um and some of our schools turned out at three percent or four percent right so so when you take an overall when it's disproportionately impacted by a large school that that also turned out at a high percent um you're getting essentially their their choice as the one that becomes the overt the choice of everyone and if you do the math to just um pretend i don't know a better word for that but pretend that each school had had turned out
096at the same rate the choices do not stay the same and i just think that's really important for us to to recognize when we evaluate survey data because i know this board is really committed and we have talked about it a million times to making sure that we're aware of the voices that we're not hearing as well as the voices that we are hearing and that's tricky to do when you're looking at numerical survey results but i think it's important to at least recognize that so miss smith yeah and i guess i just uh want to say i'm not uh i'm not disagreeing with anyone i think though that it does um what i have tried to do more of uh even though i'm working and putting in a lot of hours with the board
097i cannot minimize the importance of the phone calls listening to the the folks who call me and also being visible in some of our schools and you know particularly when there are parent kinds of activities um you know and again i i'm not judging because we all have other responsibilities and lots going on but i you know i was sharing with the board that i spent you know time with the jrotc this weekend traveling down with the drill team um on the bus staying up with them going to fun flex you know being on the go carts with them and it is amazing the amount of data uh information that the youngsters were conveying to me um and i thought i knew stuff right um and and boy did i get you know an ear
098full of really cool good things and also things that are challenging for them so i just i was i'm not sure what we're doing right now here um but i i want to just uh acknowledge that clearly we there's something we're feeling here um and we we need to kind of look to see what that is and then look to see what what you know what's what are we saying do we need to do something else uh individually collectively um to ensure that we're helping to support the voices um to get to the table um you know and i've also learned some other things there's some parents that just will say to me listen i got so much going on could you just tell me where i'm going to school next year that's really all
099i really want to know right now so there's a whole mix of everything here but we have to do some listening um and and creating those opportunities and we've talked about that so i'm not going to belabor the point but but thank you all board members um i also wanted to thank everybody who took the survey i'm always impressed by the number of people that take it actually and i also appreciate uh anne's breakdown of the survey results in terms of who's disproportionately accounted for and i speak for myself but i know other board members understand that as well and we take those you know perspectives into account um i am also very impressed by from top down everybody that helped get that survey out um i was picking up my son from ash and
100like uh miss callahan was out there like telling people to get their surveys done so just total thanks and gratitude to everybody that uh has helped with this um regarding the surveys that's all i've got to say anything else on survey or community feedback in general process questions anything about that otherwise i think board member almanawi you had another question you wanted to go back to something and i can't remember what you said but something yeah um i think i missed my opportunity about open enrollment questions so i just wanted to get i mean because i myself don't understand it very well um so is that something where like we would take some kind of variables or characteristics into an account if somebody was trying to open and roll into a school like how does
101that work so our process for open enrollment is that anyone can request open enrollment but it is based on uh this availability in the school uh the size the needs of the students etc so it's not an automatic or anything like that it's based on the criteria of what's you know what we can accommodate at that school so it's not necessarily based on like any characteristic about the student though like there's both a policy and a procedure for it that and i don't know if ms mckenna is still on the line if not the um you can you can certainly read it if they they look at if you have a sibling at the school if you've attended the school before how far away you are there's several characteristics that are factored in and there's
102an application you pull i think in june but they don't actually assign the open enrollment seats until just about the beginning of the school year because they're waiting to find out who is enrolling in that school to find out how many seats are available so the challenge with open enrollment from the family's perspective is it's not guaranteed until you um you know be very very close to the school year and what the superintendent said for this is that as much as possible which she thinks will be predominantly possible um this siblings would be able to be accommodated through a process like open enrollment um because we understand that this is a transition period where we've got our um our folks having to have two middle schools happening at the same time otherwise very good thank
103you helpful okay so any other questions on the presentation otherwise we're going to shift to board discussion and we the officers met and made the decision that for this conversation which we have become a very um informal board which has been great because we're able to have a real conversation with each other and there have been times when i was on this board where there was much more formality during the board meeting but for this to make sure that everybody gets a chance to say what they feel that they need to say about the scenarios uninterrupted and the full and have a full few minutes to present we're going to go back to doing it in the very formal structured way where each person will have a couple of minutes to say their piece we
104will then after that go back to the informal way of having a discussion on those and um you know we all like each other and get along well so we can usually manage that conversation well but we are going to do in our traditional way which is in reverse seniority order which puts board member el mignali first and we are actually going to time these to four minutes and we're going to have conversation after you don't have to say everything you want to say in those four minutes just the the most important things that you think are critical to say so um whenever you're ready board member el nino ready thank you um so i just want to acknowledge acknowledge acknowledge this board and how um how we've taken equity and really focused on it
105and this feeder alignment committee and this feeder alignment process really reflect that um so want to shout out the feeder alignment 5 basically that have been around for a year you guys have done excellent work um dr ken robin has done excellent work alongside ann uh the entire cabinet the superintendent we've i want our families to know that we've really worked on this um it's been a process there is a history behind it and there's a reason why we're doing this um it's not necessarily because we want to even out scores or it's not because we want to you know make your make people's lives difficult we're doing it because of historical matters that have uh are proven aka you know redlining uh matters where uh parts of our city were not treated correctly um
106and groups of people in our city were not treated correctly so that's why we're here and i want to kind of focus on these options that we've come down to out of 500 000 options we have come down to eight and they are really the best eight they're of the like we obviously got rid of a lot because they just wouldn't work but i have to take dr robin's opinion that these are miles ahead of anything that we've got right now and that i shouldn't be too picky about them in terms of any statistical differences they are all just as good as one another so that basically makes me kind of shift my focus because that element of and it's not entirely but that element that we are trying to get a more equitable layout
107for our middle schools of equal size and you know equal resources that academic attendance discipline risk assessment that part has been done by an expert and that is data driven it's analytical and i could rest assured that these eight are good that's how i'm looking at this so going forward i looked at it as a matter of primarily transportation and and we have to acknowledge that the new scotland to north albany corridor is a problem personally speaking that's how i see it um i don't i wouldn't discount it for any other reason but it's the longest drive in if you're not going to take the bus and that's the other the other thing that i'm thinking is that if if all goes well with the buses we get reimbursed for most of our buses people
108who are going to take the bus or students who are going to take the bus they will be secure in taking the bus so long as we do our job and then it comes down to those that don't take the bus sometimes people don't take the bus so uh we need to hear what our families are saying and i think that uh the survey results really show um and if you look at any google map during you know 7 am 7 30 am traffic it is by far the worst drive to north albany so in my i'm trying to narrow the options down that's where i came out uh with trying to get it down to my top three um so i didn't i didn't like the idea that we would um send north albany
109uh or new scotland to north albany um besides that um sir i'm so sorry you've exceeded your time perfect yeah you just hit your time that was your the happy beep from dr cher's phone was was four minutes did you want to give us just the numbers of the scenarios you said your top three do you just want to give us those numbers and then i'm happy to give them really quick um my top three and i have a top one you know i'll go down the list from top one to top third third so the first is six seven seven five nine c the second was two five eight two eight b and really i don't even wanna particularly consider this one uh six zero three four eight b but i mean those are
110the three that were remaining after i made that cut of new scotland i understand thank you very much appreciate you board member man it's your turn i'm gonna read my scribble scrabble here um no but actually let me just start with i do appreciate the work of the feeder committee and just uh just the discussion that we've had for me having a balanced and lined up feeder into the middle schools is um a commitment it's one that's extremely important i want one that's heterogeneous in how students perform because what we know based on research is that students who are performing a bit lower tend to rise to the occasion um and that is uh that's pretty great i'm going to cut right to the the choices that i that that i have i really have
111two that i'm very fond of and the feeder community surveys actually support the two that i'm very fond of um 25828b uh is my number one choice it balances the higher performing schools in the lower performing schools um it allows for uh the dual program to looking at the scenario in my i'm getting my notes here um it allows for dual to remain at hack it um it allows for uh a nice distribution of we have um let's see we have skyler at north albany we have giffin at meyers we have sheridan and hackett so it allows for that kind of equal distribution and i think that's um that's uh pretty great um some other things that i'd like to highlight about my uh first choice um is that transportation is comparable um regarding the
112number of uh students served so that's what i'd like that's my first choice my second choice is uh number six seven 67759c um and uh that has um uh montessori going to north albany eagle point to north albany skyler in giffin to north albany that has uh with myers uh going to myers toast ash pine hills in delaware and it has hacked it at new scotland arbor hill um at i'm sorry it has new scotland at hackett barbara hill at hackett sheridan prep at hackett and the dual program remains at hackett so there's that continuity in both of my choices you'll see that um it does address perhaps some of the concern that just kind of naturally came up regarding uh the new scotland elementary school right so um and these choices were made before
113i even saw any of the the results from the new scotland uh peter surveys if i had to have a third i would have 60348b it's a very odd kind of um configuration though what i will also say let me go back my first choice um based on the feeder survey results had 30 percent of folks feeling in the community who responded to surveys feeling that that fit well and my second choice had 33 of um respondents to the surveys feeling that that was a good fit so um so that's that's where i stand thank you very much mrs wilson you're next thank you i'll give you my numbers and then read my statement so um and interestingly these were pre-surveyed that i arrived here so if there's alignment which is amazing which shows that
114we're your community so first is 25828b second is 67759c third um 603 48b and the fourth are 76882a and i'll state there are some that if i could remove them i would so the various survey responses indicate a strong support for the equity work we are doing and as far as the options my emphasis remain of course we're trying to root this decision in fairness for all we are a district with the lady falcons team that have been crushing it for years but they became undeniable when they became section 2 double a champions we are a district that once have schools and receivership and a graduation rate everyone cascaded our graduation rate has soared to 80 thanks to years of work and this also cannot be denied our the years of work we spent with
115middle school and feeder alignment committees construction projects aetna building equity into each of our schools to create an equitable enrollment design or feeder pattern will also not be denied some points of emphasis i want to make poverty and side effects are decentralized and everyone will suffer from assuming that it's only on the marginalized side of town violence and criminality are not reserved for a single racial economic group and consider that the non-public or suburban schools are likely not situated in your neighborhood consider that suburban schools are centralized and long bus rides with many stops without sidewalks are common these schools can be homogeneous and your child could likely be the other at these schools know if you google the past two weeks that drugs bullying and violence are rampant in those schools as well but
116the media racial economic bias doesn't hyper focus on that lastly everyone's comments on a neighborhood school led me to research this term and what i found is it's really truly something we all say which is okay i found an academic paper by gary j hennessey the neighborhood school concept as a deterrent to desegregation in the 60s and 70s and essentially this use of this term has been a source of controversy for over 200 years in a few incidents in history where it has come up some of the objections he felt being leveled against the practice were in objections of transportation the school being too far away failure to see advantages of the new school in the 60s it is the closest school to the student's home is a geographic center of an attendance area it
117is part of a culturally identified community neighborhood and he also cited donald morrison of the national education association in the 70s who stated by and large with exception of schools in small towns the neighborhood school is a mythological institution which does not exist in our cities and outlying suburbs the attendance areas of schools are constantly changing to adjust to population shifts in new school construction and new school program the schools in these areas do not serve clearly divine neighborhoods regardless of whether that term is understood to mean a patriarchal or political or geographic area or community with the identity of interest end quote so education will not and should not be a zero-sum game and for those directly impacted with whom we empathize because change and growth is uncertain unpredictable and scary i want to
118highlight the quote from reverend dr martin luther king jr the arc of the universe pends towards justice my interpretation is equity is coming for every aspect of our lives and every branch of government not just in our schools and all the historical fights for justice were uncertain unpredictable and scary but look where we are and would you not prefer we had fought them thank you very much miss wilson board member creatine thanks i'm going to start by telling you my top two options so i don't run out of time my top option if my top choice is 67759c my second favorite choice is 25828b um it's i would very much like to thank the superintendent president savage mr lesko all the members of the feeder committee both board members and parents and all the members
119of the community that came to our forums who wrote us emails who called us who filled out the survey we couldn't have done it without all of you and i know a lot of members of the community were really confused as very confused and puzzled as to why the eight options that we presented to you as to why so many of them had new scotland going to north albany which seemed kind of counter-intuitive and not like a great idea uh the the algorithm in the database that took the 500 000 possible options and narrowed them down to a set of 60 that would work in terms of enrollment numbers in terms of transportation and in terms of academic equity did a brilliant job in narrowing down the possibilities to possibilities that would at least work
120on paper but some of our assumptions unfortunately kind of skewed the data for example and with the best of intentions on everyone's part one of the things we wanted to do is minimize the number of schools that changed because we knew this would be a difficult process but by choosing to minimize the numbers of schools that changed we pretty much guaranteed that the biggest elementary schools including new scotland would change that's something we didn't we weren't trying to buy it be biased but it happened because with the best of intentions um also we looked at these results the committee looked at these results without looking at the names of the schools and looked at the aggregate transportation impacts at first rather than looking at the individual transportation picture for each school and the number of
121students that lived in each place once we looked at that it became clever for me why option 67759c is the best one and i note that in general although the community responses are not equally spread out among their schools a large number of the community did support this option i support having my montessori uh routed to north albany in part because it is a magnet school so magnet schools are designed to promote equity through going to a different geographic area than your home i support eagle point going to north albany because when i looked at the map at where eagle point students live they lit they're very tightly centered in that western neighborhood it's not really near hackett or myers and it is pretty convenient via the highway to north albany i strongly support this
122plan because it sends ash to myers where the ash well ash is a magnet school it's students whom are closely concentrated in the immediate ash neighborhood where the students at montessori lived all over the city it didn't make sense to have a specific neighborhood preference i support this plan because the new scotland students will stay at hackett which is geographically convenient for them i also support this plan because it keeps dual language at hackett which is important for the stability of the program because it has a dedicated spanish teacher that would be able to teach both sixth seventh and eighth grade transition spanish and that's it i didn't run out of time thank you thank you very much secretary couture you're timing yourself honestly right yep hey what's good for the geese is good for
123the gander right um so you know i've been watching the committee come up with their plan being part of the board committee so i put some thought into this and i'm very happy with the eight scenarios that we came up with however there was a disproportionality in the number of new scotland going to north albany but that's the way the numbers played out right we picked them up before we got to disclose what when who and where transportation is an issue i mean there was a parent who talked about you know who lives by holy names and there's no bus service i live there i know there is no bus service right so i i experience it myself so there is that corridor which really is a problem where you don't have reliable cdta service
124and i asked this question company too where we talk about triple buses but let's face it we all have great morning sometimes we don't get out of the house in time so the yellow bus might be waiting for you cdt is not waiting for you so what happens if you miss the trip or bus you have to find a route and that corridor doesn't have a lot of different options right so again that made me a little not too happy about the fact that we are going to and then it's a large school so you're going to convince a large number of families by by putting them on the road so that that's why i took those out of the eight options that left me with three choices which my colleagues have also narrowed down
125to the six seven seven five nine c two eight two two five eight two eight b and six zero three four eight b on looking at these six zero three eight four you know six zero three four eight b actually has um when you look at the the composite range which is what we've used it has the highest composite range so really is not a good feat not a good fit also a disproportionality puts the number of schools at each school and and having you know at conversations it's like if one school and enrollment at any one school changes drastically that's gonna shift a lot of things over there so let's take that out of the table now that leaves me with two choices six seven seven six seven seven five nine c and two
126five eight two eight b so i based on what the surveys have said when you look at the number of respondents across all the schools 67758c seems to say 59c seems to have the you know more people fits more people's needs than the other one okay however i would like to question one thing that that puts sa and giffen together they are both high needs districts schools so that is something to consider this is where i'm torn however when you look at the other choice you have pine hills and saw also when you look at the number of uh economically disadvantaged three to five fifth graders uh pine hills is not that far off from giffen i mean it's 113 and 140 so it is there's a difference but it's not we are talking 50
127and 140 right so i would caution but um the service is people like that it's one of my two choices so that's why i'm going to pick that one vice president smith are you ready good thank you um it's tough going uh at the end because my colleagues have been so eloquent and passionate about their choices and i don't disagree with a single one of them but let me just just bear with me because i did take a little time to write a couple things down and so i i just want to first join my colleagues in thanking uh members of the community who served on the middle school feeder alignment committee the superintendent and her cabinet mr lesco included and dr robin suny albany i'd also like to extend appreciation to all elementary school
128principals and staff who worked to ensure parents received the information about the feeder alignment and also to those parents who communicated via the survey or other means their perspective and comments on the process and the proposed scenarios i want to just uh share this with you in a recent diversity equity and inclusion training that i was in one of my coaches made two important statements that resonated with me uh and throughout this feeder alignment process one was missions are designed to create equity but organizations are designed to perpetuate inequities i thought how true this was but it doesn't have to be and so i was proud in seeing the survey results where our community uh vast majority uh verified via the survey that equity for all is greatly valued and with the middle school feeder
129alignment community work um the community then recognizes that we need now the conviction to say it is time to move further and deeper in this direction the time is now achieving equity doesn't mean that factors like the transportation concerns safety concerns walkability concerns won't or are not going to be addressed indeed we as a board and staff recognize that to achieve equity we must direct resources regardless of the preferred scenario to to to eliminate to prevent any obstacles that impinge on that achievement of equity via the budget process and certainly via policy mechanisms that we have so with all that in mind i really tried to look very closely at uh all the factors but really my number one goal was of academic equity being the most important and uh and of course again i
130want to just reiterate that that doesn't mean i wasn't considered considering the long walks or maximizing transportation but i uh chose to rely on my scenarios on the lowest composite scores and the best fit for from my perspective is an agreement with the survey results and really my colleagues and that's 25828b um and truthfully if i had to just pick one of the eight that's the one for me um so i'm going to leave it on that um i also um no i'm not going to talk about any other survey stuff so all that i really wanted to try to communicate mostly was that equity is so important that that is the that's what i'm looking for that's what i was trying to get to and again there's there's nothing perfect but these are all
131good models right nothing perfect um but or and it is important for us as a board to make sure that we support that equity and all of the schools and superintendent and cabin and others have described how we intend on doing that mr lesko has talked about how we will do that via transportation and that means then the board has to respond accordingly with a budget that matches that supports all of it that also means that community we need your support around these things as well so this is something that uh somebody said this before but we equity also means we're doing this stuff together we're figuring out together um and so i do want to say i appreciate everyone who was involved in any way in the process and that together this is the
132change that we need to see and we need to begin to see this now and i don't want to take away from things that have been in place even long before i got to this table small incremental things that made a difference but you can see over the course of the last three four five years here that this is the direction in which we're going and one final comment on this it didn't take the death of george floyd it didn't take the death of brianna taylor and many others it didn't take black lives matter for us to get here have we arrived no but we are starting and we're going to do everything we can to get to a place where everyone every single child is valued and respected and i can tell you i
133as much as i was like exhausted being on the bus with 37 kids um and pizza and music and but they gravitated to me miss smith can i talk to you about this can i tell you about this oh my god you need to know blah blah blah and it was the most excited exhausting experience i have had really in some time they informed me and for that reason i know that we're doing the right thing here and i thank all of you who are with us uh with and i thank us for being with you as well thank you thank you very much miss smith so i also hate going last because everybody said all the things um and i said them with more passion and um eloquence than i will say them but
134i did write my things down so i do hope you will bear with me as well so that i get a chance to say um the things that i wanted to say um like all of you i have great confidence that every single scenario that is on this list would put us in a better place than we are now there are literally none that i would not consider under any circumstances if seven of you or six of you said this is the one for me i would get on board with whatever that was i also wanted to draw attention to the times union editorial that was out this morning that i thought did a very good job of um sending the message that concentrating students with the most need in a single school is just
135simply not an acceptable solution even if it's caused by long-standing residential segregation and this is always the tension for a northeastern city is that the transportation decision will always continue segregation until we can solve the bigger problem and that is a real tension for us as it is for every other northeastern city i also wanted to emphasize that the research is perfectly clear i like the way you put it ms mann that people will rise to the occasion at-risk students do better when there is a better distribution of students and students who are not at risk continue to do just as well as they did before and the research is absolutely blunt clear about that and i know that the parents in this room and the parents in this district know that because that's why
136they're here right they would have made a different choice if they were really concerned um and that is why i said at a prior meeting and i still believe and i'm i'm gratified by the results that when asked parents would say that equity was very important to them because otherwise you would have made a different choice a long time ago in combination with the many many other things that the superintendent assistant superintendents have been have described having a more balanced set of middle schools will definitely improve things overall for our students it is not about moving kids around it is about an overall improvement and that is the most important thing now trying to differentiate between the scenarios is a lot harder knowing that we need to get to the eight that's easy figuring out
137between the eight that's much harder so i looked at three things i do ultimately come out very similar although not the same as my colleagues so don't anybody worry there's going to be a big surprise here i looked at balance staffing needs i looked not only at the composite score but also at the risk score range in particular and when you look at that um they are they're close and as board member el mignon we said dr robin has counseled us to be cautious about fine-tuning on that but they're not exactly the same and so that was to i was tuned into that transportation obviously is a factor and there's two ways i looked at that one there are certain elementary schools including montessori including eagle point that have a high percentage of bus eligible
138students no matter where they go it doesn't matter whether they go to hackett myers or new scotland uh or um or north albany they're going to be on the bus and there are others that vary quite a bit new scotland is one and given is one right they vary quite a bit depending on where you go secondly i think the availability of a direct bus line as dr talked about is really important i love the fact that our secondary kids ride cdta my children are both secondary now and they ride cdta and it is a gift to them they will never be afraid of public transportation for the rest of their life because they had this experience and i consider it a real gift but a direct bus line is way easier for an 11
139year old to handle than a change in an unfamiliar neighborhood so having a direct line is really important to me and number three sustainability over time so sustainability over time eliminates for me the one that has the three four and five schools i just think that that is it creates the risk that something is going to happen at one of those schools and it's going to throw our our thing out of whack we don't want to do this again ever ideally but certainly not anytime soon it's a very hard thing to do so that brought me those criteria brought me to 25828 a and b and six seven seven five nine b and c right those two pairs they were the two pairs that we had and between them two five eight two eight is
140slightly better and i know i'm out of time i will try and finish very quickly that's when transportation makes the difference because if i'm going to choose between 2 5 8 2 8 2 5 8 2 8 a and b i will choose the one that keeps new scotland from having to deal with that non-direct bus line i really think that that's important and that keeps um i think that that is is an important factor so that's how i get to 25828b followed by 25828a which i know is not one that other people had identified as a high priority and then my third is in fact 6 7 7 5 9 c and that is the end of our statements we can have further conversation um i don't know if people had any questions or
141follow-ups that they wanted to do between each other board member man you have your hand race well i just wanted to be real clear i i forced myself to pick three but really there were i i had two top ones and i think the transcript will reflect that i see that okay thank you um board member wilson i'm just one i want to be clear because i did listen and try to track but i don't think anyone chose the ones that um the survey also reflects we're not popular and am i correct in that no one on the board is in favor of two six two two five eight six seven seven five nine b or seven seven one o seven eight i think actually if you don't mind i'm gonna do it a different
142way because i think you're right i just don't have those numbers in my mind but i think everybody had on their list the three where new scotland does not go to north albany right which are two five eight two eight b six seven seven five c and 60348b right i think those those three were all and so you know one of the things that we could do at this point is say okay we went from five to three or or maybe five to two because i thought there was a fair amount of um discomfort with 60348b um and so we could just say okay from now till next week we are going to reflect more on these those two and c which would be two five eight two eight b and six seven seven five
143nine c um but we can certainly talk about them more now as well board member smith yeah i actually would agree with that and only on the basis uh as you said of i have like four people who even selected i'm not saying that there was a first or second choice but um but the set selected 603 4b 48b um if that's correct and i would almost want to eliminate them and for the reasons that a number of you also pointed out so that would leave us leaving tonight with those two two five eight two eight b and six seven seven five nine c and i i don't know about you you all but i find i found um and i do see your hand um remember give me one sec but i found those
144two to be deeply similar and um difficult to differentiate between as i went through um my pros and cons lists they weren't exactly the same but they but one would have a pro and the other would have a con and i'm like back and forth back and forth back and forth so i feel like i could use more time to look at those two to differentiate them in my own mind um so board member almanawi did you have something to say you had a hand and now yeah um so i'm with the uh board member smith on this about uh 60348b um and as well as dr chatur and everyone else that said the 345 makeup it's really troubling um so i would i would remove that one um i guess i want to touch
145on an aspect of 25828b that um i didn't get to when i was talking about it but um when we looked at it and i mean the main thing that new scotland parents i believe wanted was you know not to be sent to north albany so they they got that okay so they got that with that scenario and in order to like that's so that's been done if we remove them from the equation in terms of like the survey results pretty much everyone really disliked 25828b um if you look at if you remove the results for new scotland from um 258 to 8b it's overwhelmingly negative i have a note on it here somewhere hang on one second oh um i don't think that's true i don't i think it it i think it was
146but give me one second while i look for i don't think so yes all right so it was there's only six votes different on new scotland it was number six after we took all right so survey choice number two overall two five eight two eight b was survey choice two number o overall but when you took out the new scotland parents it became the sixth um favorited choice among all parents i think that that was six seven seven five nine b that was the sixth choice six seven seven five nine c um i think well that was number one or number two when we took out new scotland it was it was number one overall but when we took out new scotland six seven five 67759c was still the second top choice so again i
147think i'm going to again suggest that we continue that piece of the conversation over the next week and we can at least make sure we're all looking at the same math and not trying to do that on the board floor um and but i'm i'm happy to to look at that question that you're raising i'm just not sure i see it the same way and i don't want to try and do higher math mrs wilson maybe that's the benefit of not going down from eight to two because that's where i kind of was going is i think there's some we can eliminate but maybe we'd still have to do what you know he's doing and still cross reference and things of that nature but yeah i mean my recommendation is that we don't formally eliminate
148any of them right because because my feeling is that all of them are decent and if in upon further reflection we suddenly went like oh my gosh we really missed that um and we want to go back and revisit i i'm not i personally don't think we should take a vote tonight we said we were going to vote um on the 17th um i think we ought not to um to formally do anything so we can always go back and review and revisit um so but that's that's my thinking board member man i do want to say while it's not formal when you look at folks responses overwhelmingly 2 5 8 2 8 b is number one for majority of the folks so i just want to point that out yeah so so then if
149based on what you're saying i'm happy to take back removing of 60348b and just stop right there for the night if that's what stick with three that's what you're suggesting yeah we'll keep all eight but the the general sense is that we think as a team i mean it's pretty clear from everybody developed their individual remarks individually and we had essentially very comparable responses so i think the direction that we're headed in is relatively clear but i do think we all owe this decision a um a really deep thought as we differentiate um uh board member tour i mean given the survey responses overwhelmingly the two choices that we've all talked about seem to be there whether they're first or second or whatever so i'm happy with sticking to that you know at the end
150of the day that yeah we can keep all but most of us are leaning towards those one of those two i would like to hear from the parents of those schools that are being affected we've heard the new scotland that's not happening so they're fine i'd like to hear from the others and you know that might change it's our thinking if need be so mr lesko did you already intend to send an update to the community about the board's conversation tonight is it was that part of your thinking about what would happen next yes although i've been listening to the conversation and i'm not you're not finished yet so i'm not sure exactly what that would be but yes is the short answer so knowing um that the survey responses from several of the schools
151that would be impacted are were high right you know montessori followed new scotland as did eagle point and ash were some of our highest responding in the first in this most recent survey i think it's extremely likely that once the communication from the district goes out to say the board had a conversation they are leaning in the general direction of these two or three however we're going to frame that um i think it likely that we will get some feedback from the community that is what i think is likely ms wilson just segwaying away from decisions um i just want to highlight maybe three this points here that you know um some of these options just create some exclusivity between things and um we did highlight this in the earlier part of the presentation but
152just for example when 25828b which is very popular since um potentially arbor hill to hack it but we did highlight that there is still open enrollment and sibling preference just in case there's someone who's like i live right there you know so i just want to elevate that and then to your point about community feedback i really thought we and i have to look now um but my computer doesn't work in here but um i thought our youtube did have time stamps but to your point about ron summarizing can we highlight the point in the video that people should fast forward to like if it's hour and 15 minutes and maybe we can so i um youtube has a timestamp all the time i think there is a feature of board docs that we're not
153using that allows you to align the agenda items to the timestamp so you can actually like click on the agenda item and it will take you to that moment in the video that i think is what um the commenter was referring to because it's a really kind of cool feature um but absolutely um i mean it's in this particular meeting unlike most of our meetings was a special meeting is a special meeting so really there's not much of the meeting you could skip unlike our normal board meetings where there's like 75 things we're talking about and and it is more helpful so but i know that we usually the as soon as the meeting is over the video is immediately available as soon as like basically it's done um bobby's back there he's like yeah
154uh-huh it's done um so it's on the calendar so and i imagine mr lesco can link to it from the communication for folks who would like to listen to the conversation its entirety um uh ms miss smith sorry and i'm sorry to go back on this but i just want to touch on something um when mr romania was talking about pulling out new scotland my concern is this i could go through any of these and pull out something but i'm then changing the model the scenario so i i really would not like for us to do that i mean if we're gonna i'm not sure how to interpret that yeah it seems to skew and i don't want to create another kind of inequity by doing that um if if that's accurate but i'm i'm
155just saying what i'm trying to do is just stay with the full you know uh configuration of the model and make a decision on that model it doesn't mean that something else won't happen but i don't want to like say oh if i pull this one out then that change you know that means that nobody agreed i just i don't know i don't know what that means i hear what you're saying i also think this is always a tricky thing for me to talk about community feedback is incredibly helpful i read every single comment on the every single survey results it is really important we really value it it brings things to our attention that we might not otherwise have seen super valuable however this is not a referendum the board has to make the
156decision that we think is in the best interests of the district we do not have direct democracy on this point we are not asking people to vote we are asking people to provide input and then the board has to make the best decision that they believe so the input is important but i really i hope we're not going to get to a point of well the community like this one one percent better than they like that one that's to me that's that's not really in my to me and you always just as elected as i am you have to decide how what feels right to you but what feels right to me is to take that input and make it one of the things that i consider and and how it takes influence but it
157should not be in my opinion the number one thing the number one thing is what do you think is in the best interest of the district based on the extreme number of hours and commitment that you've put into understanding this district and learning this whole process board member creation board member wilson um i think in response to miss smith and i don't want to misinterpret what mr elementary always said but when i think he was talking about taking new scotland out i don't think he was talking about altering one of the eight scenarios to take new scotland out and change the scenarios i thought he was talking about when he's reading the survey results definitely the overwhelming response from new scotland if you just look at the oh if you just look at the total
158survey results they disproportionately wait for scotland i think he was looking at the survey results and if you say if you take survey results from new scotland families out then you'll find the other schools prefer another prefer these other options i think that's what i think that's what he meant he didn't want to change the scenario yeah i think i think you understood that right yeah i think she understood that she didn't think he meant changing the scenarios she just changing the survey of results i just want to note that new scotland parents overarchingly wanted to they picked whatever situations and scenarios that didn't send them to north albany so under under the circumstances of uh options 59c and 828b i think they're happy either way so essentially because they waited so heavily on this
159survey i feel like we should look at the other schools and how they look at that specific scenario board remember i hear you i heard you the first time i heard the second time um i think what i'm really gonna encourage us to do is talk about this next week because we all need to reflect on what each of us has said tonight and the various things that may or may not be important to us and we will further have this conversation on the 17th um unless somebody has something new that they think is important that we say now so that people can reflect on it member wilson go ahead sorry um it was this dovetailing off of your original comment before ellen and to your point like you said we all it was free
160will so if you do that you do that but um just for example i think something that just a dovetail on what you were saying the point you were making about how it wasn't a referendum for example the one that was overwhelmingly not favorable because it creates a design where there's lopsided um 435 or something of that nature 60348b if we use this logic of overwhelming positive responses there was a school with 80 percent wanted that in a school with sheridan um 78 and i what i want to indicate here is that naturally you like what you like and i you you saw this as an advantage but again there was the design you didn't maybe didn't have the holistic view of the design not being favorable or sustainable for that matter to your point
161about us not coming back to the drawing board too quick so i think there's these nuances that yes we can look at where there's overwhelming responses but then we have to do it in a district-wide sort of thing so that was all thank you very much anyone else with a last comment that they think is important that we have tonight before we see each other again in a week and several committee meetings i think next week um okay just making sure yes okay well then i am pleased to entertain a motion to adjourn motion by miss smith second by board member wilson all in favor of adjournment that is unanimous have a good night folks we will see you a week from tonight same bedtime same bat channel good night everyone