001mr honeywell whenever you're ready we are ready [Music] all right now is it working okay perfect i'm chris honeywell of honeywell law firm i'd like to open the meeting and as usual we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance so if everyone could please stand i pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic where we could stand one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and i'd like to ask if there's any uh motions on the floor to elect myself as a chair pro tem so moved first by and second by vicki um so we'll first begin by welcoming the new uh or re-elected board member to the office with their uh oath of office here we'll begin with uh ms vicki smith if you
002could please stand raise your right hand and repeat after me and i'll break it up into chunks so it's easier i do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of uh of member board member board member of board member of the board of education of the city school district of albany according to the best of my ability thank you and welcome [Applause] we'll move to the second which is dr sridhar chatur i do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states [Music] and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i
003will faithfully discharge faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the duties of the office of member of the board of education of the city school district of albany [Music] thank you and welcome to the board now we'll entertain nominations for the positions of president vice president and secretary and we'll begin with president any nominations remember el monyawi i would like to nominate board member ann savage for the office president thank you are there any other nominations or shall we proceed with a vote okay i see no other nominations at this time were you raising your hand for a nomination or a vote okay who would you like to nominate wait i think we have to vote for president first unless you unless you're putting up your hand to be president you're welcome any other
004nominations for all right then we'll move to a vote all in favor of ann savage as president all in favor anyone opposed all right that passes we'll elect all then do the us [Applause] we'll do all three and then the oaths in that order um that's fine yeah that that will work normally i've done the second two but it's up to you then we'll do the oath for president and then move on to perfect all right let's do that so if you'd like to repeat after me i do solemnly swear or affirm i feel like i need to stand i do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and
005the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the duties of the office of president of the board of education of the city school district of albany president of the board of education of the city school district of albany according to the best of my ability and now i'll gladly turn the meeting over to the newly elected president thank you mr thank you all so much now entertaining motions for a vice president i'd like to miss creatine i'd like to nominate ms vicki smith thank you very much any other nominations for vice president seeing none all in favor of miss smith for vice president that is unanimous and now shall we do the oath now we'll do it
006that way um miss smith alrighty next vote here raise your right hand i do solemnly swear or affirm i do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the duties of of the office of vice president of the board of education vice president of the board of education of the albany city school district according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities thank you thank you and now i'd like to entertain motions for a nomination to secretary of
007the board ms wilson i would like to nominate dr shiddar chittor as secretary are there any other nominations seeing none all in favor of dr chatura's secretary to the board that is unanimous doctor you can vote for yourself if you would like that is unanimous and i will turn it back to you mr anyway all right if you could please raise your right hand again i do solemnly swear or affirm i do solemnly swear to reform that i will support the constitution of the united states that it would support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the duties of the office of secretary of the board of
008education of the city school district of albany secretary of the board of education in cities for district albany according to the best of my ability thank you very much dr chatur and now is the time and the meeting we generally call musical chairs as i ask ms wilson and dr tutor to switch seats so that we are in our official seating arrangement and bring your name tag too unless you want people to think you're the opposite person while the two members of the board relocate i remind board members that you have the opportunity at this time which is our organizing meeting for those of you watching at home this meeting runs differently than the rest of our meetings because it is the official organizing meeting it's the first meeting of our fiscal year and at
009this time we give each board member the opportunity of up to three minutes to give a statement about their thoughts on the upcoming year or anything else they would like to say we do ask people to hold it to a maximum of three minutes because we're all um cognizant of the time board member manawi you are first if you would like to make a statement i would um it's going to be very brief i just want to reflect on the past year and really give my full support to the superintendent the cabinet and the staff of the city school district of albany uh it's been extremely trying and i think we have all come through it together stronger and it makes me very excited for this coming school year because we are in a position
010to do better and reimagine things that we are working harder on uh you know better better schools better grades better classrooms um better programs and you know hopefully uh more events that we get to be face to face with parents and teachers and staff and i'm just honored to be on this board with this group and working with this district thank you thank you very much mr el manawi ms mann if you'd like to make a statement no statement yeah excellent ms wilson you're next thank you everyone and i'm definitely watching the clock because i don't want to take up three minutes but thank you all it's a pleasure to serve with all of you and i appreciate everyone who works in cabinet and especially the superintendent um during my time of joining the board
011to the present and never anticipated we would see something in our lifetimes like a pandemic and to work through it together was again an honor and i do um have a lot of things i'm so pleased and excited to work on with the board one of them i proposed and i um nag ann and vicki about this a bit but i do feel like it's important for us to embrace certain things like a um what a story a land acknowledgement for example i've been researching that and some things that are important also are you know really we are tasked with educating our students but there's so many things that we interact with at the crossroads of doing that and i'm deeply concerned about you know naturally i'm happy that we have vocal parents and people
012who engage with us directly we work with them collaboratively and it usually ends up modifying our processes or we end up incorporating things as suggestions and i do want to um highlight that there's sometimes parents who may never come forward and we have to think about them or the concerns of that and things of that nature too and um lastly i would say that again from the time i've joined i've learned so much and it's a pleasure to work and volunteer with all of you and when i went to albany high school i definitely reap the benefits of leveraging all the access the deep resources that we had and i think for example inspired me to join many clubs and organizations and become a volunteer and to this day i'm still doing that so i
013thank everyone in the community for working with us their patients and communicating with us and their suggestions and collaborations it's been an honor thank you board member gracie um as i was preparing for this as i was preparing for this meeting a couple a day or two ago i saw a reminder on my social media that four years ago uh the district shared the announcement of mrs scalia adams as their superintendent and it was it was amazing to reflect on that that that's been a four year period i think in education that four year span just seems like like a generation and it's also really important to note that at least at the time we appointed mrs adams the average tenure of a city superintendent was about three years so as we've gone through this
014as as we've gone through this life cycle and as we've gone through what we've gone through especially in the past year we've been so lucky to have mrs adams to lead us through um this past year has this past year especially a year and a half has been one of such such enormous change and such enormous loss and yet and yet we've had to rethink our processes and we've we've very thoughtfully i think reworked some of our things and some of our processes in a way that's going to be better from here on out even once we no longer have the pandemic to work with and i'm thinking of things like the fact that we're live streaming our meetings on video i'm thinking that we have a much more robust public comment policy i'm thinking
015we just have many more ways for students to participate uh in their classes and we've really had to rework everything so i think as we get back to this more normal way of life we're going to take the things that we used and really come through stronger together i also i'm reflecting it in the past four years there have some been so many changes in so much growth especially in racial issues in this country and in this city and that's something that as a board we've continued to work through and really adopt not just work to adopt an equity policy but actually work toward anti-racist education as a board and as a district and that's something that in the years ah and the year ahead i hope we'll continue to really move forward with that
016as we've been doing thank you thank you very much doctor [Music] you know over the last four and a half years it's been a long learning uh journey of learning new things and you know when you get on the board you think you're going to change the world and then you realize how many rules and regulations exist that actually handicap you and the district from doing what we really want to do but in spite of all of those things i'm i'm really proud of all the growth that we've seen in the last four years thank you to mrs adams um you know being at the helm things have really taken an upward trajectory big academics i mean the graduation rate has gone up the facilities i mean this beautiful building that's coming up half of
017which has already been open to the students and the students have noticed it they've responded in you know in to the attention that we have given them and the resources that they've given that we've given them and you know they're excelling in sports and in art and music and you name it and albany is there when i talk to people from outside of albany i hear good things we are always in positive light now last year has been really challenging and uh for everybody especially us uh with the all the other things that the state put on our plate and in spite of that i know we were resilient we survived and we actually did more than what we thought we could do so we know that there's potential and it's an honor to be
018on this board and serving alongside all my colleagues and you know with the cabinet and when we started we talked about you know wanting to do something about communication today this board meeting is is you know you can sit in your homes and attend the board meeting that's a means of communication and as tabitha mentioned there are so many more avenues for the public the community our partners to interact with us and make this decision better so you know thank you for the opportunity to serve vice president smith thank you very much and i will try not to be too repetitive um first um i am honored again to be of service to the city uh residents and also to serve with my colleagues here on the city school board um and i too want
019to just just say how tremendously proud i am that we have a tremendous board excuse me superintendent her leadership is just just unbelievable and her instructional leadership in particular i also want to uh lend my support to the cabinet um and the teachers and just really everyone and i think mr elmanawi started out by thanking everyone and i just want to add to that our parents and of course our students that i am so very very proud of what we have managed to come through and i know that it hasn't been easy as my colleague ms krejci said there's been a lot of loss a lot of challenges a lot of inequities that that we always have known about but have risen up um but we all have kind of coped through together differently perhaps
020but we're still in it all together and i specifically tonight wanted to just say that i too have been doing a great deal of reflecting um pre certainly pre-pandemic before that and certainly right on through it and i think that there is no uh greater work than the work we need to be doing around equity diversity equity and inclusion and if you want to add on that you know specifically anti-racism work then let's talk about it and and basically all this comes down to me is always always trying to be a better human being always always trying to get others to be a better human beings um we're going to make mistakes we're going to falter but we have to do better um because we have children's lives that are at stake that are in
021our hands and we must come to to deal with our own insecurities around that our own faults around that but to ultimately say we want to live in a very different world and we have to make that world different as uncomfortable as it may be as challenging as it may be we have to do it and we also have to not just from a personal level but from that systemic institutional level deal with the barriers the inequities that keep our kids from being successful yes there are a whole lot of things that are in the way in the mix but we have that responsibility as educators to ensure that barriers are free from their learning environments from and that means treating everyone with respect with dignity loving them and caring for them and if we
022can't handle that business that particular work then we need to get out of it just that's what it comes down to for me and so i have seen however that we do have a very dedicated staff very dedicated people working on behalf of our district and i want to encourage them to keep growing and keep moving because it's only going to become better for our students we also you know again we've got a lot of societal things uh you know whether it's health care whether it's food insecurities whether it's you know inadequate resources for clothing and all of these things jobs you know but we have a part to do we have a role in that and i want us to do that at our very best and to ensure that we are not the
023problem that we are working to build the solutions so that every one of our children can be successful um and i urge you that it's about how we want to be in the world how we want to live in the world don't get caught up in critical race theory don't get caught up in i mean even anti-racism there i just want you to understand that we're gonna we're in this together there is no us in them it is us and if the pandemic showed me that showed me anything it was that we're all in this together and so every level of uh ism institutional or systemic that we have to take care of it begins here in education and it will extend in other areas of our lives so again not to be preachy but
024to me the work is in this area and everything that we do whether it's the communications whether it's our policy whether it's our budget has to be looked through the lens of equity inclusion and and diversity so thank you and i look forward to continuing this work with my colleagues and staff thank you very much um so i i'm going to use part of my three minutes to reflect on the mission of the city school district of albany which we usually read as part of our opening and i think it's important that we do that um because everything that i think all of my colleagues have said tonight comes back down to the question of what are we doing here what are we doing here our goal is to work in partnership with our diverse
025community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success that is what we are doing and as vicki just said so eloquently it requires us to look at every student and understand what their unique situation is as has been um affected by the complex um and as we say in the um equity policy the complex societal racial and historical factors that create and perpetuate barriers to access and opportunities within our own system we have amazing staff every staff member is working super hard but there are complex structural challenges that no one person can fix or solve it does take all of us working together and trying to change the structure and the system and one of the things that i reflect on as i look
026back over the last six and a half years and certainly the last four years under the leadership of the superintendent is how many things have changed big and small so that goes everything from as people have mentioned tonight live streaming the meetings which came as a result of a silver lining out of covid to the change in the way we allow our elementary students to matriculate to middle school to reduce some of the barriers there to our radical increase in graduation rate over the course of my board service to the fact that we passed the budget at the highest percent ever this year and even the year before with our highest turnout ever we had an extremely high budget turn a positive pass rate so i think there's real indications that we are doing big
027and small things that are making the difference in children's lives and that is the goal i know that's the goal of all of our staff members from teachers to maintenance workers to building leaders to cabinet members and certainly the superintendent who's a staff member who i know best are all doing that work and it is truly a great honor to serve in this role i often say i believe this is the most important work i will ever do in my life this is probably the most impactful thing i will do in my life and i expect to treat it that way and i hope that every board member and every staff member in the city school district of albany treats it that way because truly we are impacting children's lives and building a better future
028for our city and for our country so i don't mean to sound too so boxy but i really do believe that it is critical work that we are doing together and that building a district where everyone is rowing in the same direction where we have clear policies and procedures that everybody understands what we're doing and why is how we're going to make those changes and so as i look forward to this year i am very excited to see us once again leading the curve we adopted an equity policy two years ago nisba finally adopted proposed an equity policy within the last few months we are now involved in a process of identifying good metrics for measuring the effect of our equity policy and i've been looking for exemplars to see who else has done that
029work and there are a few seattle is a really strong one but there aren't a lot and very few and districts of the scale of albany with just say 10 000 students that are doing this level of work so we are once again leading and i will almost guarantee you that three years from now nisba has a sample set of equity policy metrics that come out to guide other people and they'll probably look familiar so i appreciate the fact that our work is forward thinking and it is deep and it is not just can we fix this problem today and that's the difference between being a board member and being a teacher and so we are really trying to keep that push on how are we doing and are we making the right progress in
030the right direction that will pay those dividends long term so thank you all very much i appreciate each of your board statements i appreciate each of you with your separate skills and capacities and abilities that you bring to this board because i really feel very lucky to have served on this board in this way anyone else superintendent oh ms man declined to speak she said no thank you let's see so that brings us to the end of board statements and on to the next part of our agenda which i need to go find my agenda so that i don't steer us wrong oh the next part of our meeting is going to be our public comment um do we have any in-person public comment no okay we have one public comment that came um in
031advance of the meeting i will read the brief public comments statement the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making we do allow up to 30 minutes each meeting to hear from district residents and we can't extend that if necessary per our public comment policy we do also accept comments in writing and by voicemail as i mentioned we did get one comment in writing today no comments by voicemail we do require that all commenters include their name in place of residence and we do not accept anonymous comments if you would like to submit a voicemail or written comment for the future meeting we encourage you to review the addressing the board information at albanyschools.org boe so miss smith if you would read i'm sorry miss gracie if you would read
032the one comment i would appreciate it thank you we received one comment from fern reese i'm a non-binary parent of a child in registering our child with my co-parent for her first year of school in the albany school district i noticed there were no indicators for non-binary people i was forced to choose either male or female though our child does fit into this category i noticed the school did not have this option for children either with the recent passage of non-binary status being accepted on new york state driver's licenses i would like a board member to commit to specific specifically taking on the task of making a recommendation to the board about how to better handle nine binary individuals vern reese so the board does not generally respond in public comment but i did want
033to mention in reaction to this particular public comment that this was directly a result of our new since covid online registration system and and the writer is absolutely correct it does not adequately reflect the values of the city school district of albany which is absolutely to honor all of our non-binary and transgender students and parents and i know that the superintendent has been working with staff to correct this issue and we appreciate it when it's brought to our attention but it is well underway of being addressed one of the other things that we have solved it took several years but we did solve was the paper form problem it should be the case that every paper form in the city school district of albany says um parent guardian one parent guardian two if anyone finds
034a leftover form that says mother father we would appreciate you bringing that to the attention of your principal because it should not be that way that is not the way we do things here in the city school district albany so thank you for allowing me to react to that although i do try not to do that generally in public comment i think this was one that deserved a full a more full information and mercedes it's sorry go ahead no can i just say i do think it was very important to address this again this is about how we want to live how we want to be in the world as a classic example and so i appreciate the person bringing this issue forward and your response so now we're going to move to the part
035of our meeting we call routine consent during this portion of the meeting we approve routine matters for the district these include items like contracts field trips personnel matters and the like each board member does review each and every item carefully but we vote on them as a group with no discussion that allows us to use our meeting time more efficiently and nonetheless each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion and vote on that item with that introduction i will now entertain a motion to adopt the routine consent agenda moved by miss smith second by board member el manawi are there any set-asides board member man i am going to set aside uh number 33 and 34. and just give me the names so
036we make sure we've got them right northeast parent child society and parsons child and family center okay all in favor any [Music] waste management contract okay any other set-asides uh with that uh all in favor of adopting the routine consent agenda less those 3wmi northeast child and parsons that is unanimous if it's okay i will do these in order all can i get a motion to adopt number 20 waste management board member man seconded by board member smith is there any discussion doctor the only question i have is uh in the contract it says it names two schools new scotland elementary and myers middle school where pickup must be between 6 am to 7 a.m or 3 pm to 9 p.m i just want to make sure that other schools also depending on the neighborhood
037there and the pickup need should not happen at 3 o'clock at 4 o'clock because there have been comments that is correct so can we get that wording in the contract that um all schools or whichever schools um we've identified as being close to residential neighborhoods um are have that time limit can we set yes we can update it we can pull it and we can have it ready to go and we can we can do this next time we're not going to run out they're not going to not collect our garbage if we um don't make that change i would have to research that because the contract is covered from the first of this month um and it julie it's usually a continuation i don't think that they would stop services but we can research
038that we'll definitely research it okay so um if it's okay then we will not act on item 20 unless you think we ought to because we really want the garbage to be picked up but we could act on it with a contingent language that we're acting on it sub subject to but i do know that there was some concern about whether waste management could make that commitment for every single school so i just don't want us to be in an awkward spot on that front either so what we would have to do is go ahead and approve this one and then we would have to do a separate contract that contains other names of schools and then that way we would be able to work that out so i guess the challenge then becomes what
039happens if we've now approved a contract where waste management will not agree to additional schools being given the same privilege that new scotland and i think the other one that's in there is myers in particular ash has been a recurring question and as well sheridan prep and skylar are both located in very dense urban areas with lots of houses right next to them so those are the kinds of things we're concerned about is 5 a.m pickups in residential neighborhoods so if those schools are not listed in the original contract anyways then you'll have to do an either a new contract to include all of them or an addendum to the contract so just to be clear the language in the contract clarifies that all garbage is picked up at all schools but two schools are
040called out specifically as not being allowed to be picked up beyond outside a particular time window and so we had talked when we had this challenge at ash about extending that to other schools and that did not make the final language in the contract so we are i think um i think i speak to my from my board when i say we're hesitant about approving a contract that does not reflect the intent of the district which is to not allow pickups in residential neighborhoods prior to whatever the what time is 6am or something um so i think the board i'm looking for nodding i think we're comfortable with adopting it with language saying we're contingent upon adding all the schools that live in that are in residential neighborhoods to that timing or we're comfortable with
041setting it aside and doing it in two weeks i think we're not comfortable um approving it and then hoping that it gets resolved in a separate contract so so why don't we approve it with the contingency language do you want to specify the additional school districts in the residential neighborhoods i think i don't want to personally do that because i'm sure to forget someone so why don't we say schools in residential neighborhoods or where there are residences in close proximity and which is going to be the vast majority of them so let's let's say it with where there are residences in close proximity so i'm going to amend there's already a motion on the floor to adopt number 20. i am going to uh entertain a motion to amend that motion and to include the
042language contingent on a change to the language to extend the time limitation to all schools in neighborhoods where they're in areas where there is residences in close proximity can i get that amendment motion motion by ms smith seconded by ms krejci and now we are going to vote on the motion all in favor of adopting the amendment this is the adoption of the amendment to the motion and that is unanimous and now and i'm sorry i'm going really fast nancy and paula would you like me to slow down okay and now motion is still on the floor because an amendment is like a sub motion the motion is still on the floor for item 20 to adopt as amended so all in favor of adopting item 20 as amended that is i think unanimous okay
043thank you all for allowing that um bit of robert's rules which i pulled out of my brain now uh may i get a motion to adopt and can we do 33 and 34 together motion to adopt 33 and 34 which is northeast parent and parsons motioned by ms smith second by board member cretchy is there any discussion ms mann i i just i'm not going to vote because i'm an administrator at those agencies thank you very much we always do these quickly because we've been doing this now for uh quite a while uh so all in favor of adopting 23 and 24 that is unanimous except for miss man who abstains all right and that allows us to say that we have achieved the um routine consent agenda and now madam president ms mrs adam
044good evening and thank you so very much i wanted to take a moment if i might after the routine consent to number one i need to express my gratitude and all the support that this sport has demonstrated for me the respect as well as just the endless collaboration and support means so very much because the relationship that the superintendent and the board as well as cabinet that we have is critical to the success of our district and i think we all know exactly how important that is so that we can take care of our students and take care of our families because as we all know this is not an eight to three job for any of us and we appreciate the fact that you volunteer so endlessly when you get my calls in the
045middle of the night madam president i do appreciate the fact that you respond and i do appreciate the support of all of the board members i will acknowledge and say thank you so very much for extending my contract i am so very fortunate and happy and moved in order to be here and to work in service for the students and the families of the city school district of albany but i would be absolutely remiss if i did not acknowledge that the true value is in the work of the people that i work most closely with and the people that you see sometimes and you may see them behind the scenes and they're working endlessly my cabinet colleagues i say thank you to them because without them this work could not be done i say thank
046you to the ladies in our office uh mrs tibbetts um paul uh kala rainstorm who was just recently married uh brittany pierce and of course tanya bowie who is not with us right now but she'll be back and nancy vigiani who has stepped in so graciously i thank those ladies because they help us so very much i also have to thank our legal team with chris and paul and jeff i i thank them so very much for all of the support that they provide to us and i just appreciate the fact that you value the work that we do you understand a lot more than what many people who serve on a board do you take the extra time to truly understand what our district is about how the operations work you have a very
047open mind with how we can do things differently and when i have crazy schemes you know you give me that look but it's like okay let's see how this is going to work and and so i appreciate that willingness to be risk takers to do things a little differently um and then to realize that everything that we do is really with our students at the forefront and the center of of all of our decision making our vision mission and goals are always ever present in every decision that we make i know that sometimes we see things differently however what i can always rest assure is that while we may see things differently at the core of it we have the same core value and that we want equitable opportunities and access for all of our
048students in our school district and as we continue to strive for that each and every day i see the evidence of that and i appreciate the just the support that you provide and so i say thank you very much for honoring me with the privilege of being here and i am just so excited and always excited i'm still getting up at 4 30 in the morning and i still don't go to bed until after 11 o'clock um that hasn't changed and every single day i am excited to come to work so thank you so very much so that's the first thing that i have to do the second thing and i have a couple of announcements to make because we have several appointments from vacancies of our administrators we have found and we are so
049very excited to appoint our assistant director of school safety mr matthew fargioni and we are so very happy to have him joining us we have a director of facilities planning mr donald operman and we have a print our principal for delaware community schools who has joined us this evening mrs stacy dobbs and miss dobbs is on the screen she is present and if she would like to have a few words i would really like to turn it over to her to say a few words and congratulations and welcome to the city school district of albany thank you so much i feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to work in the city school district of albany i'm really looking forward to getting started and meeting our students faculty staff and engaging the community and i
050know that we're going to have a really great school year at delaware community school thank you very much for this opportunity thank you very much and i appreciate the time to acknowledge our new appointees and also to express my gratitude so thank you thank you very much and welcome aboard miss jobs we're happy to have you principal dobbs that brings us to another set of actions these are actions that we take once a year only once a year and i ask you to reflect on the fact that there are items i one through five and each of these items includes multiple multiple items within it i have conferred with our legal counsel who tells me that we can do this all in one giant motion to save time but you should reflect on each thing
051just like we do with um routine consent because i will offer the opportunity to set things aside so with that introduction can i get a motion to adopt all of the stuff in items i one through five dr tour seconded by board member man are there any set-asides seeing none all in favor of adopting a million people and a million bonding things and everything else that's listed that is unanimous for those of you following along at home you can find all of those things listed on the agenda these are routine authorizations designations and appointments that we make every year for example the bank where we keep our money which we're not changing so that brings us now to the policy portion of the agenda and i turned the microphone over to dr tour thank you
052madam president members of the board we have policies that we discussed at the last board meeting so today these would all be action items for us to vote on um should i talk about all of them and then have one board unless actually we did talk about these in some detail last time do you wanted to see if anybody has any questions um or i'm going to ask my favorite question is there any reason we cannot take all of these policies all at once okay with that i would like to entertain a motion to adopt to the policies listed on your agenda board member el manawi seconded by board member krejci is there any discussion on any of these policies i do want to draw your attention to 1230 which extends our ability to accept
053language comments and languages other than english which i'm really proud of that is another really big step for us and also entertain some flexibility in the deadline for uh comments which we've been held at 12 30 for the last year or so i mean as we've gotten used to the administrative work of dealing with voicemails and sometimes voicemails coming in and not english and what if we get 500 emails and how are we going to handle that so we've softened the language in the policy so that the deadline um is it is 12 30 for sure if you get it in by 12 30 for sure it gets red that night if it gets beyond 12 30 we will do our very very best to read it so if we get one at 12 35
054we're just going to do it but if we get 500 then we start running into some administrative challenges so also the code of conduct today there was a public comment period at 5 30 so if anybody had any issues with the code of contact assets written or redeveloped that would have been the time to say it and then finally the wellness policy also talks about staff wellness you know again when you're talking about wellness we want not just your students but also staff to be healthy and well and so there's some good improvements very much yes okay so all in favor of adopting these policies as identified on the agenda that is unanimous that brings us to the end of the action portion of our agenda as we always do we have front loaded the
055meeting with our actions the rest of the meeting we anticipate being just a discussion portion and it will be relatively short tonight because again this is our organizing meeting but i turn it over to the superintendent for a discussion and update for us so i'd like to start with just a little bit about our summer school programs before we get underway with the update the majority of our summer school programs were underway this week one of our newest options for our albany high school students is the opportunity to earn first-time credit during summer school we are offering high school summer enrichment courses and a variety of topics to allow our students to get ahead or take some of those courses that they may not be able to fit into their schedules during the school year
056the one summer program that starts a little later this month is our jump start program for students who will enter kindergarten in the new school year the jumpstart program begins begins july 19th you may visit albanyschools.org for more information about all of our summer programs you can't miss the bright yellow bar at the top of our home page that will link you directly to all of our summer school information our summer meals program has also kicked off this week we are serving free meals each weekday at eight locations throughout the city the program serves breakfast and lunch either on site or grab and go families may pick up breakfast and lunch at any school and can also provide meals we will also be able to provide meals for multiple days so you may visit food
057service the food services section at albanyschools.org for times and locations of each of the summer meal locations looking ahead to next school year a reminder for families that need to fill out a new transportation application the deadline for the new application is friday august 6th to assure that your student will have a bus for the first day of school on thursday september 2nd most of our families will not need to fill out a new application however if you are moving this summer you will need to submit a new transportation application you may find more information about additional circumstances in which you may need to submit a new application by visiting albanyschools.org transportation or you may call our transportation department at 518-475-6170 if you need help with the transportation application in languages other than english please
058contact our enl and refugee services department at 518-475-6147 also looking ahead to the new school year registration for albany high fall sports teams will begin july 23rd tryouts and pre-season practice for albany high's fall sports teams will begin august 23rd registration for our modified sports teams for students in grades seven through eight will begin july 30th and practices will begin august 30th you may find much more information about all of our opportunities for our student athletes at albanyschools.org athletics as we move forward with our district update again just looking back at our vision mission and goals we are always making sure that these are kept at the forefront of all of our decisions we look to continue to increase student achievement enhance the delivery of quality instruction build our leadership capacity empower our families and
059partner with our diverse community tonight through the update i have several topics that we will discuss the covet 19 update the new york state covet 19 guidance 2021 and 22 back to school planning our american rescue plan update and the feeder alignment committee update as of june 30th we had a total confirmed cases of 380. the on-site individuals 201 and off-site individuals 179 we are looking at even a greater decrease in the month of june with 0.1 new cases per day and that was three total cases for the month of june which we are so excited to see the numbers headed in the right direction we are still following the guidance that is in place we know that there's been new information that came out yesterday and we've already received some additional information today so
060we are in a holding pattern and we are continuing with our current practices until we receive clearer guidance and we're hoping that we'll receive something by early next week so that we can determine whether we are continuing with our masks when you look at where we are right now we are wearing our mask indoors and it is optional outdoors and so we want to maintain that so that if any guidance comes about over the next few days we will absolutely communicate that and then we will make those changes accordingly as we look to back to school i will emphasize that we are planning for full in-person models uh however in on the back burner we are keeping in mind should we have to continue with social distancing what hybrid models would look like as well
061as the virtual option which is pending our state education department guidance looking at each of our levels starting with the elementary level reminder to our families that the first day of school is thursday september 2nd and at this time we're planning orientation programs for our students on the following days september 2nd grades one through two september third grades three through five and pre-k and kindergarten these will be determined later this summer and more information will be coming with regard to pre-k and kinder we do ask that you please watch for more information and details this summer because as we as we know um information will be forthcoming and so we will have to be aware of what those changes are and we will get them out to our families as soon as possible for our
062middle schools we are looking at orientation days on dec on september 2nd with the last names beginning a through l september third last names beginning with m through z at the high school on september 2nd we are looking at grade 9 orientation in the morning a through l in the afternoon will be m through z september 3rd grades 10 through 12 orientation in the morning last names beginning with a through l and then afternoon beginning with m z more detailed information will be forthcoming but this is to get you started so that you know which days we have orientation and what those staggered schedules would look like next with our american rescue plan update based on the feedback that we did receive from our community just a reminder we did have 540 responses to our
063community survey that was conducted in late may and early june this feedback we have also posted that information at albanyschools.org arp the priorities were as follows social emotional mental health supports education technology safety and security hvac ventilation and air filtration and then of course the accelerated learning and academic support our plan is posted is a draft because we know that there are changes that will happen along the way and so we are able to make some revisions but more detailed information with regard to some of the funding that were some of the items that we're looking at funding as they align with the priorities and that's what we did we looked at the priorities and then we listed on our website what those items are that we are looking to address under each category and
064again that is at albanyschools.org arp last night we had our first meeting for our feeder alignment committee we did have a few technical difficulties so the first 10 or 15 minutes are not captured but we did start as soon as we were able to correct those challenges the slide deck for that presentation is also posted and the purpose of this feeder alignment committee was to engage our community and our district personnel in a partnership to develop criteria and make recommendations for an equitable feeder pattern for all students transitioning from elementary to middle school you can see the list of our committee members we do have each school represented we did have a little bit of homework after that meeting uh which i thought was very exciting we did take the time to go through where
065we started in 2015 up to the present so we gave a little background information which we did provide to the committee members and they have it to read through we also uh went through the most recent demographic study that was shared with the board we hit some of the high points they had a few questions about the demographic report but we also provided that to them so that they can have that information to look through there were several requests that were made at our next meeting we will be looking at current and historical academic data for our middle schools and also the criteria for determining feeder patterns the other recommendation that came from the community engagement piece was that since every school is represented when we finish our meeting in september at that point work
066to develop a presentation that they can take back to the schools and so in late september october they would share that with their communities locally and then bring that back to the committee so then we can have a larger discussion after they've done that outreach and then they would come back as always we are continuing with the input from all of our stakeholders each of our meetings will be live stream so that we can receive feedback and the feedback form is located at albanyschools.org feedback so that will be open throughout and i'm really excited about the opportunity for our committee members to take information back to their school i thought that was an excellent recommendation and then they can bring their comments back to the larger committee the next piece will be you can see
067the dates that we have left wednesday july 28th wednesday august 4th and then wednesday september 29th and all the meetings are six to seven and these are virtual meetings we are also looking at perhaps having an in-person meeting um after that september date and so we will just simply play that by ear based on the guidance and the the comfort of the committee members so this concludes the district update and i'll open it up for questions so thank you very much superintendent adams a lot of material covered there as usual i want to kind of chunk through it in the order it was in does anybody have any questions or comments on the covid19 update which is pretty much just where we're at and the things we've seen before any questions or comments about the
068new york state coven 19 guidance which is shifting under our feet as we sit here um any questions about the guidance for summer school or for 2122 which is pretty much not we don't have enough final information on that yet uh okay anything on 2122 back to school planning this is a new topic anything here any questions on this miss smith this is really a question but i just wanted to point out i was very excited to see the music video that was online so i'm sorry i know that wasn't exactly on point but just uh how excited i was to see that so i wanted to thank the music department music teachers etc and they did an outstanding job and it's it's just so energetic to watch it and it does exactly what we
069want to do which is to encourage and engage our students and our teachers did a phenomenal job with their video we are so excited for the work that they're going to do and i was really excited about the programming that the video supported which is essentially like an ongoing opportunity for second and uh sorry third and fourth graders to visit with the instruments before they make a selection that seemed like a fantastic idea board member eliminate you had a question or a comment um more of a comment i just on the district update and back to school planning i wanted to thank uh the superintendent and the team for setting up the orientation dates with the plenty of lead time for our families to get it on their schedule it's september 2nd and 3rd and
070uh all that information is on our website so i encourage families to look at that thank you we we know that this has been um you know that that it's it's just where we are right now as much information as we can provide we know that it is helpful um because coming uh through covid and and now where we are even though it's not over but now where we are we know that people are trying to make plans and it helps them in their planning and their families and so thank you very much we were very excited to be able to at least post the orientation information on another note that was like my favorite time as like a child like i'd get everything set in my little book bag and it was great so
071i hope that all our students feel the same way so i just want to make sure i understand the orientation piece um if you're not in orientation then you're not coming to the school building is that right so for example it says the morning is students eighth year whatever so if you're not in that you're going to not come to school that is cool it's not like you're going to come to school and have non-orientation and those count as instructional days even though not every student is eligible to attend excellent um so i know you had said in your opening remarks that you're going to be sending pro you know an outgoing email of some kind of snn or something school messenger sorry school messenger um so it would be helpful i think to parents
072if you would make that crystal clear that on the days that you're not being oriented you're not to come to school because i don't think it's going to be very obvious to correct schools will have that information and we will do it district-wide as well excellent and i wanted to definitely note that you it looks like you're doing an orientation day for every single middle school student which is different than what we've done in the past so i really appreciate that especially this year i know that every student is really going to need that orientation so appreciate that extra step yes little resetting all right anything else on instructional planning for next year i know that everybody is waiting for the magic word about whether we're going to be able to provide 100 percent five
073day week education for every student and we are still waiting for the new guidance on that i know that everybody is excited that the executive orders have been lifted and are hoping that that means that good things are about to come but we are still subject to the new york state department of health requirements which still require six foot social distancing at lunch and in public hallways and large spaces so i'm sorry superintendent three feet in class and three feet in classrooms right um we need to see that be zero um so we can make progress okay so that brings us to the next topic which is the american rescue plan any comments or questions about american rescue plan ms wilson um a question yes because i'm wondering if there's um for example in educational
074technology i was reading that among many other things there's a homework disparity with many students because of access to broadband or stable internet and i know we made many advances with sending home hotspots and things of that nature is there any sort of coordination concerning arp and the the uh what's the word i'm looking for the proposal to get municipal internet are we doing any cross-coordination as a district with other entities that are getting arp funding around that is the question around whether municipal internet is gonna are we coordinating on municipal internet efforts is that was that the question yes thank you so we've i guess i have to answer this a little differently we have recently engaged in and i think mr baker explained we have recently engaged in another outreach to families that
075do not have internet access which is free of charge to them and so we have been able to identify those families and connect them so that they would be able to have internet access one of the things that we did have to do which we are going to reissue them you know we had to pull everything in so that we could make sure that we had our proper inventory and then as we distribute them we will be distributing um our hot spots again because we still have that in terms of working and partnering with other agencies for example if we were to share costs that's not something that we are necessarily doing because of what we have already done to facilitate internet access for our students i don't know if that answers the question no
076it's very helpful i was it was more like a thinking in terms of i know they're shared services but because of the outreach that we did um and we're already engaged in those activities the shared services right now would not benefit us so i would say if it were at the beginning before we made our commitments yes those shared services would be beneficial but right now because of where we are in our commitments um with the different agencies that we're working with we are able to provide internet access for all of our families that need it and i i think the biggest piece is if a family does not have internet access they need to speak with their principals so that the principal can contact our technology division and we can make that happen because
077we do have enough devices and enough connections to make sure that all of our families are connected well that's excellent thank you board member miami so i just want to speak on that topic as well um i'm glad to hear that we have um the systems in place for our families currently i also still think we need to put our um i guess voice and efforts behind the uh the uh internet um not community internet but um municipal municipal yes thank you because it's just another uh amenity another asset that our community needs and i think it also makes us stronger in a stronger city and people we need people to come back to the city and it's just it's a positive amenity we put our efforts behind as well it seems like something that
078we could do a uh support letter for if there's a grant opportunity or that kind of thing i know um board member wilson you're in relatively close connection a regular connection with uh councilman um anani who's been um really spearheading that so if there is an appropriate point for us to do that kind of letter certainly there are many many advantages to municipal advance municipal internet beyond what it does for our students directly and i think superintendent that i'm correct when i say if we could get municipal internet then three or four years from now or whenever our contracts for our current hotspots expire that could reduce our costs going forward so it certainly would be an ultimate benefit for us even though it's not this year so we would definitely be in support of
079municipal internet free for all um as if it could come to pass so i personally would be in support of a school district letter of support if it were appropriate for whatever their grant opportunities or whatever is upcoming and if you recall there was a bill from senator mayer with regard to the infrastructure and internet access broadband access so absolutely those those things do help and regardless of the municipal the hotspots that we have i mean if you do have a multiple internet that you can probably take some of this education outside of the houses and the classrooms in the open spaces which as we know in code everybody wanted open spaces but you would have internet connectivity so that would enhance things anything else on uh arp i wanted to just attach back to
080music this is not an idea i have mentioned to you before superintendent but it does occur to me that musical instruments would be a one-time cost that might be a good way of building equity in our district we hear repeatedly that students who have a trumpet that's 25 years old and is a little banged up don't participate as well as students who have a brand new instrument so it's a one-time expenditure kind of feels appealing as an arp cost and it wouldn't be a huge amount of money in the context of the arp money and the other one that i know i have mentioned to you is an investment in some sort of two-way communication tool similar to what they have in shenandoah or schenectady where people could just ask a question because there is
081a frustration among parents that they feel like they can't always get their questions answered quickly um and sometimes at all so that if we could find a way to build that in um as part of the education educational technology it would be a wonderful thing to see all right anything else on arp if not we'll move on i think next is feeder pattern right feeder pattern any comments questions about the feeder pattern so it was actually i attended the meeting yesterday um and you know yes there were technical clutches and what have you but it was a quiet group and so thank you for you know seeding those questions and getting them thinking but they had some good interesting questions and so you know being on the great configuration back in the day you know
082huh it was not a question it wasn't a quiet meeting so this was like in a different but then towards the end they started piping up and start asking questions so i'm looking forward to what what what's going to happen in the next meeting so i'm very excited uh last night was really just the orientation to get everyone acclimated with you know that history of where we've been and where we are now and why it's so important and so yes i think that um it will definitely get very lively and so i'm really excited about the committee good group of people how many people came last night because one of the things that was strange about the video is i couldn't everyone anybody but everyone was not there there were some people who could not
083make it and so we're looking at definitely doing some more outreach they were people were aware of it but they told us that they had conflicts and so we have the dates out and so we're going to send the reminders and everything but in the future will the meetings be like a board meeting where you can see everybody because all we could see in the recording was was you and the slides we couldn't i hope so that's what we're working on that's why i said we had some technicalities so we're going to complain just curious about what the plan was going forward absolutely um and then just just a comment i really did also like the suggestion about members going back to their home schools and communicating and getting input and again again wanting to
084find ways to continually increase community and parent involvement in the process ms wilson yeah i want to echo what vicky said and also i think when we originally designed the feeder pattern committee we also talked about doing some uh district-wide virtual um input public input sessions hosted by the superintendent or hosted by the board um and i'm not sure when we'll do those whether those will be at the end of the committee's work in the middle of the committee's work i don't know i think we have to play it by ear and see when the best fit might be for that um because we are you know i i think probably after the if we if you know in doing that if we have if we implement that then we're looking at after the small
085groups have happened because i think before that so many things can be answered when people are more local because people are going to want to know what's happening at my school what's happening here and i think those questions can be answered there yeah of course i do think that'll be difficult because the answer is going to be we don't know until the board makes a decision which isn't going to happen until probably november right so but i i think it would be beneficial if it's you know toward the end so that that way there's more input and then i think we just play it by ear to see what we what we're hearing at that point i could see it happening in between like the committee comes to the board the board has an initial
086opportunity to read their their recommendations um and their ideas and then react to it and then maybe community i don't know um mrs wilson thank you i'm so sorry i had to get my thoughts together so the first we're in a stage now um where there's the advisory committee meeting and i know that in september we anticipate um public forums and such at that stage is when we would start to investigate things like um buses not necessarily our buses but even cdta transportation and um the nest like basically traversing our community on foot for students and things will that be at that stage or are they doing that much earlier it just depends on where our conversation goes so that we can bring that information forward we will look at transportation did come up last
087night but we'll look at that especially because i think it's important to note what 1.5 distance means and if it's going to be less than that so there are some other impacts with regard to transportation also when you look at middle school students use the city buses not for student so you know those are some other things that we need to address so i know that there's so many questions that are still to be to come on that we're really at the very beginning of this process our objective as you all know is to try and get to the end of this process where we've made a determination on the feeder patterns ideally by the end of this calendar year which would allow parents to have the entire spring semester to get their heads wrapped
088around where their um baby will be going to sixth grade at least and again this is another sign of progress they will all be fifth grade parents who are having that thought and not some fifth grade parents and some sort of great parents in some schools having two sets of kids who are trying to figure that out so it's a really it's a smoother transition because we were able to accommodate the sixth graders in middle school this year so that's a very good step and thank you for that i would also recommend parents since the list of all the members is included just find your local representative from your school and you know talk to them before they come to the meeting so you know any of your questions can be addressed when they make
089these discussions anything else on feeder committee if not that brings us to the end of our agenda uh our formal agenda tonight unless there are committee reports anybody have a committee report for tonight miss smith um no uh nothing to report other than uh i just wanted to thank those members and and also encourage others we had a tour of uh the high school um oh my gosh two weeks now it's two weeks ago god cannot remember um and uh quite amazing uh i still feel lost like i feel like i needed to have the floor plan in front of me now as we were guiding around but it's really coming together and looking terrific and very exciting to to know what our students will be experiencing um and our next meeting of the facilities
090committee which is where i should have started is uh right now july 21st and we'll uh stay tuned through the um not smn but the messenger right school messenger uh for the details on that so thank you board any other committee reports yeah first i missed the tour but i missed it because it was the athletics uh night and i'm glad i went to that because that was awesome i mean these students got celebrated uh and the each of those athletes went home with a big uh poster frame which had this cool uh t-shirt and memorabilia that they could hang in there it was everybody loved it so kudos to ashley for for putting that show together um but you know at some point but thanks to remember we got pictures of what we missed
091and so it was sort of got a virtual tour thank you i'm happy to share those um with the district if need be maybe maybe ron can do something with them thank you very much anybody else with a committee policy will be meeting next week on the 14th policy meets next week i need to read my policies apparently check on one thing um uh dr couture just wanted to make sure that you had those policies from facilities okay i didn't know what the schedule was but they're coming on in august okay great thank you anyone else with committee reports any other business can i entertain a motion to adjourn board member wilson seconded by ms smith all in favor of adjourning we will see you all in two weeks that's unanimous thank you so much