BCSD Board of Education 11/5/2025

001You guys good? >> All right. If we can um reconvene our meeting to open session. The board has been in executive session since 6:00 to discuss um a personnel matter and a legal issue. Um if we could please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Uh, if we could have introductions starting with you, John, >> John McFillips, Dave Hurst, >> Katherine Nadow, >> you Mcnine, >> Meredith Morani, Holly Denbuff, Jody Monroe, >> Lauren Graasso, >> Claire Legay, >> Rosem Story, >> uh, and John Wston and Bob Ten are unable to be here this evening. Um, do we have any Pig or SUPA students with us

002tonight? Thanks for coming. Um, you have an obligation to stay until 9:00 or the meeting is over, whichever one comes first. If we get to 9:00, we will take a break so that you guys can um, go home. There are signout sheets up here um on the board table. You just have to make sure that you sign out before you leave so you get credit for being here. Uh, first up on the agenda is our approval of minutes. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the minutes from the October 22nd, 2025 regular board meeting. Approved. Second. Any discussion? [clears throat] All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? Uh any abstensions? That carries. Um and next on our agenda are meeting reports. But before we get to those, um I wanted

003to take a moment just to acknowledge the life of Michelle Atala who passed away on Sunday, November 2nd. Uh Madame Atala was a beloved French teacher here at the high school for more than 37 years. She was a mentor to many colleagues and she inspired generations of students with her passion for language and culture and her unwavering commitment to excellence and above all her genuine care for all of her students. She was a cherished member of our school community and we will miss her. Um I would like to ask for a moment of silence in her honor. >> Thank you. Uh thanks Holly. It certainly has been a challenging week for the district. I'd like to take a moment to thank our staff uh for all their support, not only of each other, but also

004for the support they provided to our students. I'd also like to thank our parents and community members who have also reached out to offer their support. I'd also um in turning to some more cheerful topics, uh I'd like to recognize the Bethlehem girls varsity field hockey team who captured the section 2 class A championship on Sunday. Uh they in fact were supposed to play tonight, but due to the weather, it was rescheduled. So they're playing tomorrow night um Rome Free Academy in the sub regionals at Camden High School. So we wish them good luck. Uh and finally for my report this week is um actually it was a couple weeks ago but we do it that it's board recognition week. Uh and [snorts] so I'd like to take a moment to express our appreciation to

005our board of education for their dedicated service to the district. Um as volunteers they give countless hours to ensure our students receive the best possible education. Uh their commitment, thoughtful leadership, and steady guidance do make a lasting difference. and I'm very appreciative of all of your service. So, on behalf of the entire district, I'd like to thank you for your time, energy, and unwavering support of our schools. >> Thank you, Jody. Um, and uh, you know, I guess to start our with our board report, I'll just acknowledge the um, all the lovely books that are being given in um, honor of each board member to our different school building libraries. Um, and I I do love this tradition because you know what better way to um be honored than to give books to libraries, right?

006Um, and my books this year are going to the high school. Um, and uh, the one right on the top caught my eye um, because it's all about different um, different holidays uh, that uh, different kinds of festive holiday stories celebrating all different kinds of holidays from Lunar New Year to Solstice to Diwali. Um, and I love the idea of um, a book uh, talking about all those different things especially as we're going into um, sort of a holidayish time of year. Um, so Katherine, if you want to mention your >> Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, my books this year are going to Blenmont Elementary. Um, and it's an honor. I've get to I get to, uh, be, you know, kind of commemorating a book in about a snow day, one about all the different little

007moments that make up our lives, and a delightful book uh, bedtime story called Tomorrow most Likely. So, I'm grateful for this and grateful um that we're able to support the libraries. >> Mine are going to Eagle. Um and several of them are books to read aloud with your kids. Many of which seem to say make lots of loud noise, which is some sort of the best bedtime encouragement. But there's a great one about dreamer dress dreamer poet which is the life of Myra Wilds who was a just post civil war just post reconstruction um black dress maker from the south who was also a poet and talks about her journey as a dress maker using her own poems and it's a it's a beautiful book. >> Uh my books are going to Elmir Elementary so

008I'm so excited to see them there. Um, two that caught my eye were um, one, Fighting with Love, the legacy of John Lewis that tells his um, story of his childhood in Alabama and uh, Real to Me, which I just took a quick um, look through the story uh, of an imaginary friend and what he does when his human um, disappears. So, it was a really sweet book and I I'm so excited to see these go to Elmir. one couple pictures. Um, my books are going to Hammer Girl this year. Um, and they all look fascinating, but my favorite in this stack is a story of a girl who relocates to a new city with her mother and she has trouble connecting with people and making new friends until she rescues a sweet little dog.

009So, I think uh change and adjusting to new circumstances is something we can all relate to. >> And we also want to thank our um our student board members who are with us this year. So you guys have a couple. Michael is going to elementary school and this caught my eyes experience some discouragement on her passion for surfing yet she still is called home and about all the different types of places that can be called home and how to deal with if your home might be taken away with you. >> Thank you and thank you for organizing that. Um uh other things that I wanted to mention um I had the opportunity to attend the um NISPA conference uh down in New York City um and went to a number of different uh educational sessions

010um including uh one where they're talking about the expansion of um unified sports across the state and other possible um sports uh that might get uh might we might be able to look into um including flag football and volleyball I think were two that were mentioned. [snorts] Um I attended a um rather I will say rather terrifying session on the online exploitation of children um with by some FBI uh um agents. And I hope that uh my my hope is that all of our our schools continue to um do educational sessions for our parents um about the dangers um of phones and in particular and online use especially even all the way down to elementary school um because some of the stories that they conveyed were um as I said terrifying. Um and then uh

011lastly I just wanted to mention that um you know the keynote speaker and I think um Dave was [snorts] there also. So uh um I think he also heard this part um was uh Tim Shrivever spoke and um his message was all about uh treating others with dignity even when you disagree with them. Um, and I thought, uh, going into the season that we're in, that's a good message to um, to be conveyed and to remember that even when we disagree about things that we are all still um, we are all still people and should be treated uh, like we're humans. Um I did also have the opportunity to attend the music faculty recital um last week which was terrific and so I you know congratulate um everybody who participated in that. >> I think

012you and I think you were there as well. >> Um and uh one of my favorites was um the the opening number with the uh the classroom instruments when they played uh they played Eye of the Tiger um on some uh I'm not even sure what they were playing it on. That's amazing. >> Um, but they did a great job. And then lastly, um, since our last meeting, we did have, um, an audit committee meeting. Um, and we have an audit, um, presentation this evening. Um, and then we also had a policy committee meeting. Um, and those will be on, um, at our, uh, at our next meeting. I think that's an upcoming. So, anybody have, anything else they want to add? Uh I just wanted to um say since our last meeting um I

013believe there was a bunch of Halloween celebrations. So I wanted to thank uh the various schools for what they did and uh for all the parent volunteers especially um I helped out with the middle school haunted hallway which was uh an addition this year and I was blown away by the amount of work and preparation that a group of parents did in getting it together. Um, I was amazed at how big [clears throat] and detailed it was and how quickly it was put together because of the planning and preparation of of a group of parents. So, I wanted to thank them because from what I heard, the kids had a great time and were really excited and hopefully that will be a new tradition at the middle school. You >> I was going to mention

014the faculty recital. We also had the first high school student orchestra concert of the year which was was excellent. I think there's another one tomorrow night. We're we're in the season of concerts now. So go to those if you can. >> Um I was looking at, you know, Meredith's book from John Lewis and reminded tonight is Guyforks night, which is always my favorite holiday of the year. And if you guys don't know Guy Forks night, which is pretty British, you should go look it up. >> But in the the wake of, you know, a pretty dramatic election and John Lewis's exhortation to make good trouble, it's a good holiday to keep in mind. That was all. >> Thank you. Okay. >> Um, I just wanted to share we had the uh select choir from the

015middle school head over to WHT earlier this week to record uh for the music for the holidays program which will air in mid December and then around the Christmas holiday. So, um the community will get to hear all of our fantastic middle school singers over there. And just big thanks to the music program and to the teachers uh who you know made made a field trip happen. So that was super great. >> Anything over there? >> Um next are our uh student reports. Claire Rose. So, we had a a Holocaust survivor speaker and he was able to share his experience and although it was tragic, um students and teachers were able to learn about the history and it was nice to hear um a firsthand experience. With the holiday like Halloween, Students Demand Action Club,

016they raised over 300 costumes to give to gun violence survivors and it's a great way to give to the community. Um, I'd also like to provide an update on the backpack program. Uh, for those of you who don't know, it's a program that provides food over the weekend for um, some of the students in our district. Um, and that's going great and donations would be appreciated if anyone would like to reach out to Mr. Irons, agronsbamschools.org. Um, that more information he would be able to give you. >> Thank Is there a drop box for in the high school if people like out in the front if people want to just drop food the items off there and a list of the items we want? >> Yeah, in the uh athletic entrance there should be >>

017a drop box. Yeah. >> Okay. Maybe send a reminder out to districtwide if people want to drop it off there. >> Yeah. >> Thank you, Holly. >> One last thing just to flag. Um there is going to be a district-wide winter gear swap this weekend, this Saturday over at Elmar Elementary. Um so if there are families who have uh winter gear that they've outgrown, they can donate and it'll go to a a home, a good home. Um and if anybody needs anything or if their kid is just growing so very very fast, uh you can pop over and grab what you need. So that'll be happening this weekend as well. and that went out on parent square. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. >> Um, do we have any middle school students here tonight? >> Think so,

018but I'm just double checking. >> But not not to you're you're not not to um give a presentation on behalf of Mr. No. Okay. Um, but thank you for coming. So um moving on to our presentations this evening. Um our first presentation um is our audit report and end of year financials for 2425. >> Hello everyone. Um so I'm Heather Lewis with MMB, your external auditors and I met with the audit committee um on October 29th. We reviewed the financial statements, reviewed the letters, went through everything in detail. Um, answered any questions, discussed specifics. So, this is more of that highle review of how the audit went this year. So, um, we issued the financial statement audit, unmodified opinion on that. So, that's that clean opinion saying that the financial statements are materially correct and

019in accordance to generally accepted accounting principles. We had one finding that we reported that was related to the unassigned fund balance. It was in excess of 4%. which is the limit for that amount. And then um the finding from last year related to adjusting journal entries was not repeated. So that was corrected which is um great progress. We also issued the extra classroom activity fund audit. Um so that purpose is where all the clubs and everything are reported. We issue a qualified opinion on that just because there's limited controls over the money before it makes it to the bank which is our our standard approach to extra classroom audits. um we do have some recommendations and findings in that area. Very common with what we see with our other school districts. So um we didn't

020have any, you know, major concerns there. The other piece that is in a draft form that you can't approve yet is the single audit and that is because we are unable to issue it because the federal guidelines that were required to follow are not yet available to us. They're in draft form. So we're not able to issue that part, but that is consistent with every district. um you know any any governmental entity that needed a single audit in June uh is not done. So there there's no no progress on that at this point. Um so any questions on that information? Okay. I'd like to thank John and his team. They were um very helpful for the audit process. We ask a lot of questions. We ask for a lot of information and they're um always

021very amicable and and provide us with whatever we need. So we really appreciate that. >> Right. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> So, while folks are at the beach or at poolside or in camp, Heather and I are, you know, up to our elbows and audit entries and everything else. So, uh before I start this presentation, I I do want to take a moment to thank the business office staff there. There is a lot of work that goes into the preparation of closing out the year, opening up the new year. um over the course of the summer. Uh there's a lot of information in there in terms of deferred inflows and outflows and what compensated absences are. Um but there was a lot of work uh put on by by district staff. And usually it's

022it's pretty difficult to walk out of an audit without some sort of finding. Um as Heather had indicated, there was one finding associated with with fund balance which was a known issue. It was was somewhat deliberate. Um but all other uh findings were um at least corrected and no new findings for this year. So that was a huge accomplishment for for the business office. So I did want to give them just a little bit of credit. [clears throat] So in your your packets which you'll um consider for authorization later tonight is the approval of those financial statements. It's a 75page document filled with a lot of information in terms of the overall net position of of the district. But I wanted to sort of do in this presentation is drill it up in terms of

023where we are on the operating side uh as of June 30th, 2025. Start off with the budget versus actual expense for 2425 in the key areas of general support, instruction, pupil transportation, uh debt service, operating transfers, uh and total what those totals look like. So, um, in most of those areas, we, uh, ended 2425 with a surplus. I will say that I was overbudget on debt service by $1, and we'll try to do better next year, >> but overall, we ended 2425, at least on the expense side, with surplus funding of roughly $4.5 million. On the revenue side, the key revenue streams that the district relies on to balance its budget, school taxes, um star pilot penalties, interest in rent, um and state and federal reimbursement. You can see how those stack up um between

024budget and actual. Um on a couple of highlights here on the pilot payment that was roughly $618,000 above budget. That was the additional payment that the district was not anticipating that was received in January. We had used that funding as a source of funding to balance 2526. Um I also want to highlight on interest in rent that was roughly $600,000 higher compared to budget. Uh the district was uh took special effort this year to maximize interest in earnings on its investment. Looking at a different investment opportunity through New York class, which provided uh the district with a little bit more flexibility to manage investments on a daily basis as opposed to investing on a 30 or 60 to 90day CD. Uh on the state federal side, I do want to highlight that there does show

025a a deficit in in revenue and that is a timing related issue in that we had anticipated some additional funding from the state um from state aid, but the district can only record revenue if it's going to be received within 60 days of the close out of the fiscal year. So that would have had to put all state aid to be in receipt by the district by no later than August 31st. The state because of its um own financial maneuvering paid us state aid for 2425 a little bit later than anticipated. So we did receive our full state aid allocations in September. So what this will show is a deficit in state aid for 2425 only because our reporting period had ended. But when we uh are here next year, you'll see all else being

026equal, a increase in revenue for 2526 because it will be recorded in that 2526 fiscal year. transfers are a little bit higher compared to uh the the prior year only because we had some additional funding left over from the middle school auditorium project that was originally allocated uh but that was not needed. So we transferred that back to um to reserves and we're done. I'm sorry. It's a It's a battery issue. All right. Two more. Forward, please. One more. I'm sorry. Other way. >> Trying [laughter] to It's trying to kick you out. >> Yeah, I know. I'll take the hint. >> One more down. One more down. All right. Um just a a quick highlight on overview on fringe benefits only because it's a large expenditure item for the district. Uh roughly a 1.9 million

027increase in health insurance uh for 2425 compared to 2324. That's roughly an 11% increase year-over-year. A lot of that is driven by the district's pharmaceutical usage. Um we are anticipating even higher utilization for 2526. So that's something we're keeping a close eye on. Um TRS and ERS are the retirement plans. TRS being the teachers retirement system, ERS being the employee retirement system. Those saw increases. We are also anticipating uh increases in 2526. Um but um the the other fringe benefits were were relatively stable. So when we end the year, the uh business office recommends the board of education ultimately authorizes transfers to various reserves that are considered the district savings accounts. Um I want to highlight a couple of these. Our workers compensation reserve is at $800,000 which uh is the floor for the amount

028of incurred claims. We could be a little bit higher on that if uh we had some additional funding available. We could have as much as $1.1 million in our workers comp reserve. Our employee benefits are associated with for all the incurred liabilities that the district has for um all employees as of June 30th uh 2025. So that's roughly $3.3 million. our retirement and ERS reserves at roughly $6 million should the uh TRS or ER ERS required payments be increased significantly from one year to the next. Capital reserve uh or 22 capital reserve is roughly at $16.5 million. That funding is being proposed as part of the December 2nd, 2025 capital project proposition to be used to offset the $60 million capital project being proposed. That would more or less liquidate that reserve. Um there is

029still about $500,000 worth of funding authority for that reserve. But keep in mind that the district has the 2025 capital reserve which was approved by voters in May of 2025. That's a $30 million reserve that anything moving forward will put another $500,000 in the 22 capital reserve and everything else in the 25 capital reserve if we end in a positive situation uh for 2526. uh the appropriated fund balance that was a decision made by the the board to balance the budget for 2526 $715,000 and that was tied to that uh unanticipated pilot payment that was received of roughly $618,000 that I referenced earlier. So money that was not necessarily anticipated, we shared that um as part of a revenue with the budget to to minimize impact to local real property taxpayers for 2526. And our

030undesated fund balance of roughly 6.8 million. That's as of the close of 2425. It represents about 5.9% of the district's operating budget. That's what Heather had highlighted as as a finding because it's just on the other side of the 4% threshold under real property tax law. The 6.8 is at the close of 2425. At our last meeting uh of the board, the board appropriate appropriated another $400,000 out of that $6.8 million to offset the cost associated with the emergency replacement of the GMA roof in the high school. So, while it shows 6.8 8 actually in terms of our pockets were about $400,000 less than that. Um, quickly uh discussing the the school lunch program uh which is a separate fund uh administered by the district. Uh again a comparison of the revenue streams between 2324

031and uh roughly $391,000 in additional revenue uh amongst those various categories. And on the appropriation side, next slide, please. How the expenditures stacked up between salaries, equipment, other contractual costs, and benefits for for the school lunch program. That was uh roughly $2.2 million or $224,000 higher than the previous year. [clears throat] All told, uh, we pay particular attention to the food service fund from an operational perspective because it's supposed to be a self-sufficient fund, meaning that all expenses are covered by all revenue associated with the food service fund without a general fund transfer to balance the food service uh, C fund account. So you can see that in in prior years the closing fund balance was roughly you know above uh $200,000 with only a minimal transfer from the general fund and those minimal transfers

032were really associated with the offset of negative student debt because that is required to be offset with general fund money. But when we closed out 2425, because of various inflationary factors and increases in employee benefits and um salaries, the general fund actually transferred roughly $200,000 from the general fund into the food service fund. So that was something that we were um very cognizant of not only for 2425, but how we were building our 2526 budget. I don't anticipate for 2526 that um the food service center will need a general fund subsidy of that size only because of the change to universal free meals where um foods um breakfast and lunch are being offset with both federal and state dollars. So I anticipate that um if anything we will have a positive balance at the end

033of uh 2526. We're keeping a very close eye on that. we're only two months in uh but um we we seem to be reversing that trend which is you know it's sort of a swing in the other direction. So uh that was important for the food service fund and to ensure that the general fund isn't necessarily subsidizing above what it has to do for for food service. A couple of key points I just want to reference because we're coming into our 2627 budget process relatively soon and there's a few items that the business office is paying attention for our 2526 year. Uh the federal funds um rate saw a reduction both in September and October. Uh for 2425 we ended interest uh earnings at roughly $2.1 million. Our 2526 budget assumed roughly a million 7

034a million8 of interest. I had anticipated a cut of some sort in our preparation for our 2526 budget. With the rate cut in September at uh 25 basis points and with a rate cut in October at 25 basis points, we're right on budget now. All else being equal. If there's any further reduction in the federal funds rate, our interest in earnings are going to most likely be under budget compared to not only budget, but where we were in 2425. So, we're we're keeping a close eye on that. U particularly if there are some sizable rate cuts because not only will that impact 2526, but it will also impact our 2627 budget preparation as well. The impact of the big beautiful bill is still being worked out in terms of what the impact is to um

035to to states. I don't anticipate a direct impact to school districts per se, but to the extent that u federal changes, particularly with regard to Medicaid, may put pressures on the state of New York and other avenues, it may translate or cascade into impacts to state aid or other reimbursement streams made available to the district. uh federal education funding that has been a subject of conversation over not only um the last budget cycle but the budget cycle we're going into. Again, not a significant amount of amount of funding when you compare the overall size of the budget. Uh we get roughly $1.1 million in federal funding associated with special education services and roughly $250 $270,000 in various title grants. That being said, if there's a change to those funding uh streams, it just puts additional

036pressure on the general fund and other areas of uh the district's financial plan. Health insurance and uh pharmaceutical costs still continue to sort of grow unabated. Um for anticipating roughly health insurance costs to be eight or 9% uh possibly 10% higher uh next next year going to 2627 and pharmaceutical cost really driven by the GPL GPL one prescription and usage has really driven up pharmaceutical costs almost up to 14 15% year-over-year. Um and some nominal increases in retirement retirement rates for 26 27 at roughly 7%. >> That's all I got. >> Questions question you >> one totally trivial thing it's GLP1 only because it's my field GPL because like gluceptide doesn't matter. I want to also remind folks, you know, you mentioned it briefly. We have that $4 and half million dollar excess of money

037this year and we made the collective decision to basically keep that unassigned which we knew would trigger the audit flag but allow some more flexibility going forwards. And so just wanted to remind that context that was on >> um if we could go back to the budget versus actual expense 2425 slide. So, I'm curious about the $2 million surplus in the instructional line because I'm curious because it's it's large. That's a big pot of unspent dollars that we had intended to spend. So, I was just wondering if you could shed any light on that. >> Those are usually tied to timings of new individuals being hired, vacancies on um teaching rosters and the like. So, a lot of the expenditure side is tied to vacancies. You'll you'll see similar one on on the student transportation

038side. We have a deficit, I'm sorry, a surplus in that line. Not because we uh we didn't hire drivers for, as an example, there weren't drivers to hire. Uh similarly to uh on the instructional side that when we were putting the budget together, you know, we were interviewing for teachers, we may not have been able to to get all the teachers that we wanted for um for the class sizes that we we were hoping for. >> Yeah, that that makes sense. I wonder if there if we if we're seeing swings that large in in future years if there are ways to or opportunities to kind of reassign because I think you know if the goal is to get those dollars into the classroom if it's not via filling positions are there other things that could

039be benefiting students. So, just something to keep an eye on. >> Thank you, John. Thanks, John. >> Our second presentation this evening is our academic update um by day first. >> Okay. Thank you. So, um this is my annual academic update presentation. Um basically taking a look back at our prior year um assessment results, graduation results, and then some other programming um information from either last year or heading into the new year. So, in terms of assessments, I do just want to caution that typically I give comparables um in terms of where we stand um in percentile ranking across the state. That data still isn't available. Um so, I do not have that for you tonight. As soon as that is available, I'll populate it into the slides and share that out with you. Um,

040so in terms of the New York State testing program, again, just as a reminder, um, this program sort of updates itself every 7 to 8 years. So we're now about year six into the new testing cycle where at least we're now, well, it was canceled for a couple years because of COVID, but at least we're now about six years into the new curriculum. Um, so we have a pretty good understanding of what the assessment system looks like. um we've made adjustments to our curriculum and um we're on pretty solid footing in terms of where we are with that. Um that's not to say that we don't look at items every year and make adjustments um because again you're always looking at um are you spending enough time on what would be sort of considered a

041major standard um and not too much time on some of the supporting um standards. But just a reminder that there are four performance levels um in the state levels three and four are considered proficient um where level four is sort of you know above expectations. So for the past um several years now you can see that we're maintaining consistency um in terms of the the students in ELA um achieving proficiency and the same can be said for math. We have seen um ELA this year we saw an overall uptick of about 5 percentage points over last year and in math we saw an overall uptick of about 3 percentage points from last year. Looking at individual cohorts. So this is important because you you you kind of want to see consistency across a cohort, right?

042If the same group of kids takes a test three or four years in a row, the proficiency level should remain somewhat consistent if not increase. Um and you can see this is where a little bit of unpredictability in testing comes into play. Um right like the class of 2029 um you know this past year they were 76% proficient um but just um two years prior they were only 57% proficient. So they've made substantial growth. Now is that because they've made substantial growth or sometimes the construct of the test there could be one or two questions that that swing causes a percentage of students to go from not being proficient to proficient. So just kind of keep that in mind. Um, similar with math, you can see the cohorts, you know, for the most part, we're

043we're fairly consistent from year to year. So, English language arts, we're just going to run through um grade by grade. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time in each slide. Um, but you'll see that our proficiency rates um continue to be um excellent. Um we're we're consistently in the 90th or better percentile um across the board. Um huge gains this year in grade three. Um, and again, you can see we're making gains grade four, grade five, um, grade six, grade seven, a little bit of a dip, and then again gains in grade eight, but overall about a 5 percentage point, um, average gain. The one thing I will notice, if you take a look at the students that are taking the test, our optout rates are quite low up through grade six.

044Um once students hit seventh grade that opt out rate tends to tick up and then in eighth grade it ticks up even more. Um so um I would encourage you know families to encourage their students to take these assessments. I know it's difficult as students become middle schoolers they become more and more vocal about not wanting to take these. Um and that's typically why students don't um end up taking them. But it it is important information for us. we're able to, like I said, we make adjustments to our curriculum based on how we perform on certain standards. So, we really need as many students to take these um tests so that we can do that. Um, we also take a look at I Ready versus New York State comparisons. Um, although it's not really apples

045to apples. Um, in other words, for for ELA, um, for I Ready, you're only looking at reading, whereas for the New York State tests is reading and writing. So, it's not quite apples to apples. You also have five levels of performance versus three or versus four um where you have three levels of proficiency for I Ready and only two for the state. But if you just look at the greens and the yellows or the green, yellow and blue for the state, you know, those bottom bars tend to be very representative. And last year I did do a um I presented for you a um correlation between the two and they were very highly correlated. So, it's good that we're now getting information three times a year from the I Ready, once a year from the

046state testing program, giving us very similar information. And again, that just helps us with developing our programs and assisting students that are in need of support. Um, math similar. Um, we're up overall about 3% um from the prior year. So, you can see grade three up, grade four up, um, grade five up, grade six up. Reminder, once we get to middle school, seventh graders, those that are in the accelerated program, if they're taking algebra as seventh graders, they do not take this exam. So 13% of our students took the regents instead. Um but when you look at that opt out and the regent number combined, that's about 30% which is what the opt out rate was for um the ELA. But when we put those students in um or before we put those students in

047that took the regions, we're at about 69% which is always lower than um when we put them in obviously. So we're about 77% once we put them in. So slightly lower than last year um but nothing too alarming. Eighth grade similar except for now we've got almost um almost half of our students take the reg exam in eighth grade either in algebra or geometry. Um, so only 35% actually take the test, which obviously has a huge impact on results. Um, which is why we see pretty drastic swings from year to year. Um, this year we're way up over last year. Um, but you can see the the number kind of bounces all over the place. Um, and when we put our region students in there, we jump up to about 86%. So that's our highest

048in five years. Um, and I will say that I did take a look um, last year when we did the IDEIDA um, determination from from the state. Um, one of the areas that we got dinged heavily on was our eighth grade math for special education students. And I can tell you that this year the rate is much much much higher. Um, so that's good news. Similar with I Ready versus the state testing program and math very highly correlated. Um so again, four points of information that really help us um make adjustments to our curriculum as necessary. Moving into science, if you recall, science used to be given in fourth and um eighth grade. They've moved that to fifth and eighth, which is why you're only going to see um a couple years worth of trend

049data here. Um but we made pretty good gains um in both grade five and grade eight on this exam. Um and we're in these ones, I know for sure, you can see we're at the 98th percentile last year. We're far exceeding um just in speaking with our suburban council counterparts, we're again at the top for both grade five and eight. Regent exams, similar results. Um we have our students continue to not only pass regent exams but um demonstrate mastery across the board. Um so I'm just going to go through that sort of quickly. No comparables. Again, a reminder that the social studies exams um math and social studies, hand sciences are all transitioning to new exams over the last 3 to four years. Um so we've seen some fluctuations in results, but again that's helped

050us inform um what our curriculum can look like. And there the new exams in sciences. So no longer is it called um earth science, it's called earth and space. No longer is it called living environment. It's now back to life science, biology, um chemistry, and physics are on the horizon for this year. AP um I I think these are um just really a testament to the drive that our students have. Um when we get to my favorite slide where it's what they consider the AP equity index, the percentage of our students taking exams and succeeding on exams um just blows away all the other suburban schools. Um it's really impressive. But overall, our students are not only taking AP exams, they're doing an amazing job on them. Our average last year on a five-point scale

051was 4.03. So if you think of it sort of as a fivepoint scale being sort of a five being an A, a four being a B, and so forth, our students are doing really, really well. Most colleges will take three, fours, and fives. Some only take fours and fives. So our students are very well situated when our average overall is a four. Um, so overall we had 540 students take an AP exam. Um, and that's 1,200 exams written. So several students are taking more than one exam, which is extremely impressive. And you can see as we go through again, um, overall we're averaging 4.03, which is quite impressive. The one exam I do want to highlight is pre-calculus. Last year was the first year that we formally offered that. We had almost 150 students take

052it. Um, and we had 4.55 average on that one, which um, you know, exposing students to the rigor of that course is going to help our calculus courses down the road as well. So, here's our science results, world languages. So, again, summary, you can see we are now up to 40% of our students um, are taking AP exams. That's an increase just in the last four years of from 31%. So that's pretty dramatic. Our exams have gone from 800 total exams to 1,200. Um and that's again that's with you know enrollments going down and our number of exams just keeps going up and up and up which is why again 40% is an impressive number. And not only are we taking the AMS but we're exams are excelling on them for 96% of our students

053that take the exams score three or higher. So you can see that we've steadily been making progress over time. So we're encouraging more and more students to take these exams. we're providing the necessary supports and our students are being extremely successful. So, this is the equity piece I was talking about. Um, graduating class summary. You can see in 2021 only about 50% of our seniors um had taken an exam and scored five or three or higher. And now we're up to 2/3. Uh, so we went from half to 2/3 in a pretty short time frame. And here's our comparison to the other suburban council schools. There's always a lag on this one just because of the way it reports. But we have a higher percentage of students scoring three or higher than any other school

054even has taking the exam. Right? We have more students a higher percentage of students scoring three or higher than any other school even has taking them. Right? So we have 52% scoring three or higher. The next highest um Saratoga has 49% of their students taking the exam but only 38% getting three or higher. Right? So again, not only are we expecting our students to challenge themselves and take these exams, but they're doing very, very well. So in other words, I mean, you really want the blue and the green bar to be the same height, right? Um, and so when you look at the gaps, I mean, that's really impressive that we're able to have 60% take and 52% achieve a three or higher. And this is from two years ago where our rate are actually

055better now. In terms of graduation rate, this is something that we're obviously always keeping a close eye on. um 94% graduation rate based on 339 students that entered um as freshmen in 2021. Um and you can see the breakdown there. Again, super impressive. Almost twothirds of our students are not just um graduating with regent diplomas, but with regent diplomas with that advanced um designation. So, one of the things I wanted to talk about tonight is our Boseies programs. This is something that our curriculum council at the high school um sort of keeps an eye on and they're the one that approves which programs we do um subscribe to and which ones we don't. So just we I used this slide last year when we were talking about some other courses. Um but basically courses are

056developed um either internally or externally departments come to consensus as to whether or not they should be offered. They then bring a um recommendation to curriculum council. Curriculum council reviews that recommendation. they vote and then after they vote um they bring anything that was positive on the vote side or negative to the board for their approval. So I want to focus and I know some of you are going on a tour um of both the Albany campus and the CT extension center tomorrow. Um but these are the programs currently that our students are involved in. Um and you can see I'll go to the pictures because I think it's easier. you can see why we need to send our students external for these programs, right? We where we'd love to support all these programs inhouse,

057we just don't have first a number of students nor the capacity to do this, right? Um so this is why Boseies is such an important partner because they allow us to send students to work on, you know, their passions um that are not in a um traditional academic setting. So you can see some really really cool things going on there that our students now have access to. Um and in fact the the large machine um so the the bulldozers back and those sorts of things. It used to be only housed in Scaherryi that has just recently been moved to Alman. So now our students have access to this where in the past they had not. So it's um really cool. So, another program that we took a look at um that we haven't visited in

058in about seven or eight years now, um we did um Bill Claremont, Dave Del, Dan Hash, and I visited Tech Valley back in September. Um we spent quite a bit of time meeting and interviewing the principal. We got a basic overview of how they um utilize project-based learning. We took a tour. We visited classrooms. Um so some of the things that they highlighted they emphasize are um agency and selfcorrection, collaboration, communication, knowing and thinking, technology information and after our visit we debriefed um and we kind of came to the conclusion um that what we have here um exceeds what's being offered there. That's not to say we don't have room for growth, but we still believe that what we offer here exceeds that. Um we are expanding what we're doing to align with the New

059York State portrait of a graduate. Um, and if you read the areas on the inner part of the wheel there, you can see that they are all pretty much analogous to what TBHS says they emphasize. Um, we so we believe that um, opportunities for critical thinking, collaboration, innovation are already available and growing here at BC and sending students there would be an unnecessary taxpayer expense. sort of back to Katherine's point that when if we have money year after year sort of left over in the budget, are there other ways to get that into the classroom? And our view after the visit was um we'd prefer to spend that money developing our own curriculum, providing professional development for our own teachers, investing in students here rather than sending um students to another location. Um I also

060wanted to give an update on elementary curriculum. I know last year you saw quite a few presentations on bookworms um in terms of the implementation process. So I wanted to just give you an update on how that is going. Um so this year we're running what's called a lab classroom. So we have teachers throughout the district and you can see them listed there that are hosting lab classrooms. And this is where we have our instructional um coach Allison Heer is pushing into these rooms and they're she's either teaching or they're co-eing or one of the teachers is solo teaching. It depends on um where we are in the process. um they will teach sort of demo lessons um and then those lessons will be recorded and it will provide an or teach other teachers can

061push in and observe um but that'll provide opportunity for um observing the lessons reflecting on the lessons and just giving teachers a chance to reflect and grow in their own professional practices as we implement this new um curriculum. This is something we did. It's about I guess about 15 years ago now with math and it was very very successful where we had an outside consultant come in and do something very similar. So the way this really works again the the the classroom teachers themselves um they either do the weekly lessons, they co-e or they could solo teach. Then there's a debrief section. Um there's going to be monthly meetings so that you can kind of come to consensus about what the program looks like, some um things that went well, some things that didn't go

062so well. Um, and it should be same same grade level, not sane. Um, just noticed that. Um, and then again, we're opening the classroom to teacher visits, videotaping, and so forth. So, it really allows colleagues to observe one another, gain strategies, apply them in their own classroom. It's just a very collaborative way to improve one's instructional practice. Um the other issue um if you recall um last year so in the spring of 24 we did a survey um asking elementary teachers should we explore additional specials at that level and at the time about 3/4ers said yeah we should explore um specials and I reran that survey um this month and it's kind of flipped right now we're at about twothirds are saying no um and I think you know a lot goes into that and

063I'll get to that in a second. But when I asked which special should be explored, you can see that um you know STEM, PE um and introducing elementary students to um another language were the three sort of top vote getters all all fairly equal. And now actually PE sort of pushed itself to the top with STEM second and flesh fell back a little bit, but the three of them are all still fairly high. But in looking at the anecdotal comments, a lot of people put um not necessarily PE, but recess actually ro that it would be a special, but can we get more time for recess? Can we get more time for kids to move? Can we get more time for kids to just be active and do um kids stuff? Right? We've, one of

064our teachers kind of said the other day, you know, we've all of this curriculum that we're sort of being charged to do with all of the new standards is sort of forcing us into such a structured day that it's really hard for us to time find time to just kind of let kids be kids for a little while during the day. And that's something that we're really cognizant about and something that we're looking to address because while yes, we're here for academic purposes, kids still need time to be kids and they need time to learn how to play and collaborate and do unstructured things. Um so that is certainly um on our minds. But in both surveys, the most dominant theme again um the schedule is already overloaded. Um we've got all these new um

065curriculum that we're implementing curricula um and the specials as they stand now are already fragmenting instructional time. And then there's just some comments there um from some teachers that it it's just this isn't the time to do that. And there we go. That's all I have questions. Um, with respect to Boseies, I just had one uh quick question, which is that um where where do we stand with respect to programs that our students want to get into, but they're like they get too full and they can't take them? >> It's gotten a lot better. Um, we still have students get weight listed. Um, some of the more popular programs, college is a very popular program. Um, some of the ones that just because of safety concerns, they can only have a limited number of students.

066So some of the building trades tend to get closed out fairly quickly which is why I mean they built the beautiful new campus and like 3 years later they just had to build that extension center. Um they can't keep up with the demand for um the number of students that want to go into the trades. So we always do end up with students on weight lists and it varies from year to year what program but cosmetology is definitely one. Um and some of the building trades um like welding um there's one other one but But welding comes to mind is one of the bigger ones that gets shut out pretty quickly. >> Okay. >> Um, other questions? >> First, I wanted to say, you know, thanks for reserveying, right? You know, I've been an advocate

067for >> um what changed between the two years? Is it just so much more fragmentation? And if so, why? What's driving that? >> So, one of the big changes is the bookworms curriculum, the amount of time. So if if you were to follow that completely with fidelity, you you'd be spending 2 hours a day on ELA. So our cabinet came to a decision that we're going to stay with an hour and a half. So they've made some sort of adjustments to what that looks like. But you you you're looking at you have an hour and a half for ELA every day. You have an hour for math every day. You've got 40 minutes for special. You've got recess. You've got lunch. You've got science. You've got social studies. You've got other things. again trying to

068work in um not being structured the entire time and it's just um we have small group instructional blocks for every day for students to receive either interventions or enrichment. Um and that's also where we try to pull students that need services. It's just if you look at a schedule it's just packed from >> start to finish. Yeah. >> The data were sadly convincing. Right. Yeah. Um so >> on the some of the very early slides we got about a 30% sometimes maybe 20% but mostly about 30% either one or two below proficiency. >> Um >> that seems poor. What what are we doing to address that? It does and and and we so we have um the MTSS process where we are working with students to you know bolster their skills but I know you

069always look at that's terrible but then when we you know there's years that we're twothirds proficient we're in the 95th percentile so that's why >> like what does proficiency really mean right and then I also look at our like our our ELA results on the for the 11th grade regents and we're typically 99 100% passing rate. So how do you go from saying an eighth grader only twothirds of our eighth graders are proficient and then magically three years later they all pass. >> So I think there's a little bit of that too. Um >> but yeah that which is why I think the I already helps as well. It gives us just another data point so we know who our struggling students are. Plus we have classroom data, teacher information and our students that struggle

070we give them the support that they need for sure. the 3 through8 assessment data historically has always been significantly below proficiency compared to regions results. >> So do we think that the metric is just flawed or do we think that there is a change? >> Well, I got to be careful how I say this. Um I won't use the word flawed, but I'll say this. before they changed the structure of the exams in I guess it was about 95% of our students were proficient in math and ELA then they made a switch >> when the federal requirements changed because it used to be the exams are only in fourth and eighth grade then they bec when they switched from fourth and 8th to 3 through 8 when it was just fourth and 8th we were

071about 95% if not higher in both math and ELA then it switched to a 3 through8 structure in and the federal government got a little bit more involved in setting guidelines and immediately that following year schools across the state that were at 95% proficient all dropped to 60% proficient. So I wouldn't say flawed, but how how do you go from a student that was in say fifth grade or fourth grade it took it the prior year 95% of your students proficient the following year that same cohort of students is all of a sudden at 60% proficient >> right? >> So >> um do we have any way of comparing with other states? I mean this is a New York state metric. >> It's it's New York state specific exam. So we're not part of um

072some of the they used well I think park fell apart but there was like park um was an assessment consortium which like 10 states belong to um Smarter Balance was another one um so when you have multiple states taking the same assessment that's helpful um we don't have that New York is independent um the state creates the assessments themselves um they're all the questions are actually created by teachers >> okay >> um how with the book bookworms of rolling that out. How are we making um room for teachers to provide feedback um on the program? >> Yeah. So, we've done Oh, [laughter] I've lost track of how many um release days we've had where teachers have been able to come in and for professional feedback, for professional development, for feedback. Um our cabinet structure obviously

073is another mechanism for feedback. I feel like we've we've gotten a lot of feedback. Yeah. Katherine. >> Um, so first of all, I mean, congratulations and we've we've got a fair number of students here. Hats off to you all who are who are striving and who are reaching for these AP exams. That is incredibly impressive. It's been impressive. For the entire time I've been on the board, it remains impressive. So, to our teachers, our staff, and especially our students who are putting in all of this hard work, um, that's it's it's mind-blowing and it's really fantastic. So that is wonderful. Um the question I have is around the the kind of stated need for more flex time, free time, PE time, that sort of thing. I mean it seems like that's the kind of thing

074that could shift from year to year or even day to day depending on what's going on in a classroom. But you you mentioned some really um important reasons why that exists. And I'm wondering to what extent you and the faculty have and and uh and the administration have started to think about where that balance lives and how do we how do we meet those needs? >> Yeah, we we've had several conversations about this. actually our last elementary principles meeting. Um we spent quite a bit of time talking about um ways in which we can again not reduce sort of the academic expectations of what in the end what we want our students to be able to do and produce, but how can we do that in a way that still um you know celebrates the

075ability to to be kids and to to to play and to um have other purposes within the day to get up and move around. Um, so that's something we're actively looking at how to because there's something to be said for structure and making sure that you're um, you know, like implementing a program with fidelity, but if you're implementing it to fidelity at the cost of other things, right? >> There's got to be a >> there's always trade-offs. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And if this trade-off isn't >> right on balance isn't working out. Yeah. >> Right. And if it's to the point where you're the kids are stressed and the teachers are stressed, how much are they getting out of right >> the instruction if they're thinking about I much rather just be up and moving

076because we haven't moved in however many hours. Right. >> So are you looking at this as like I'm curious is this this is still a new program. Are you looking for this as like, okay, we've got to iron out the kinks, or are you looking at this as an opportunity for course correction, as like, okay, we've gone really far here and maybe we need >> I think it's one of the things you have to live through, right? Until until you've sort of lived through curriculum as close to with fidelity as you can, you don't really know what adjustments you can make. >> So, I think as teachers have get through it for a year or two, they'll get to kind of see like where the gives and takes can come in. >> Um, I mean,

077this is no different than years ago when we first implemented um Teachers College. It was the same thing. It was very scripted program. Everybody stuck to the script and then after going through it a couple times like okay here's where I can you know pull this in push that out um without losing you know the overall um intent and structure of the program if you will >> right. >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you. >> So I have a question um in terms of data collection. >> Yeah. So, does the superintendent's office collect like data about ACT or SAT scores? I think that could be like >> we do get that information. >> Okay. >> So, the college board just like they provide the AP information, they provide that information. Um, so yeah, should I

078have presented that as well? >> I don't know. I was just wondering if it was useful for like data on proficiency. Um, so I mean it's useful just in the terms of um are we are our courses kind of preparing kids for sort of um more broad standardized testing, but it doesn't speak necessarily directly to standards because they're it's not 100% aligned with what you're trying to do. But ideally what you want your programs to do is you want to be able to expose students to enough information um that they become sort of critical consumers and can think and analyze and adapt to new situations without necessarily having learned that but they have enough experience in other areas that they can transfer it to a new situation. Right? So if we saw trends in like

079AP type or um SAT type questions that kids are consistently getting wrong then yeah we it could help us inform like okay we're not teaching our students a certain ski um you know problem solving skill set say yeah >> okay that makes sense >> thanks yeah that's good >> and if Dave if we're going to come back and do an update on this it might be interesting could you gather some of the information around SATs um to >> so I could do a separate because in terms of update I was just going to push the thing out. I didn't think you'd want to sit through 80 slides again. >> No, I'm Let's do this. What are you doing next? >> I could definitely um but I could provide an update on >> Okay. >> Um

080SAT PSAT at some point. >> That would be great. Thank you. >> Thanks. It would be interesting to see any other questions. >> Um our third Thank you, Dave. Our third uh presentation this evening um is on our elementary zones of attendance discussions. Um, so I'll turn it over to Jody. Sorry, >> is this not working? >> The white button. >> Okay, so uh tonight basically this is a followup to from our last meeting and some additional information the board had wanted me to follow up on. In addition, we had uh a committee meeting on Monday. Uh so I went through some of this information with that group. uh and made some changes to the presentation based on their recommendations. So uh the district challenge is really to address an enrollment disparity among the five

081elementary schools. Uh so some of these slides are redundant to what you've already seen um beginning last year when we started having some of these conversations. Uh but essentially overall the district has um you can see the downward trend in enrollment since 2006. we were um close to 5,200 students. Uh we're now down to, you know, there's a little bit of an upward trend, but nothing uh significant. So, what we've seen with our elementary schools is the enrollment has declined a little over 20% between 20056 and the current 2425. Uh there is a projection for some modest increases in enrollment. uh again not significant about 3% or so uh based on the capital region planning commission and in working with Tyler uh similarly the enrollment patterns have changed K5 since 2011 to 12 this was

082a year after redistricting after ele um Clarksville elementary was closed the enrollment has shifted from Hamigrell Slingerlands in Ellir to where uh those schools were a little more balanced and we have seen some increases particularly in recent years, which I'll highlight, uh, in Eagle and Glenmont, uh, which are both at or near capacity based on our current class sizes. Oops, back up. So, this is just an overview of the enrollment again to highlight uh, where you'll see Eagle uh, and Glenmont kind of on the uptick and you'll see the other three schools uh, basically decreasing over that period of time. And I think the next slide, this is uh the discussion we had at the committee meeting the other day to really highlight um some of the data. So I think one of the things

083that's important to note back in 201920 you can see that Eagle and Slingerlands were very close in size and the number of classrooms each building has reflected that. You also see that Glenma and Hamigril back in 201920 was also very similar in size. Uh Elmir has always been our smallest building. Um there's only so many classrooms there that um we can accommodate. Uh what you'll see here is beginning in 2022 23 we started to see some shifts and that has significantly shifted to the current year and then you'll see the projections out to 203031 uh where you're seeing increases in Eagle at 10% or a little over 10% Glenmont at 26% or over almost 27% Slingerlands a decrease of about 15%. Hammigril a decrease of almost 5% and Ellir just under 3%. Uh so this

084has been adjusted slightly from May uh based on current classroom use and current enrollment. This enrollment is from beds day which is in October. So this is the current enrollment in each of our elementary schools. And I'll note that for Ellir and Hamigril, this does not include students in the special classes because they are in separate rooms. So it doesn't factor into the actual section size when we get into the general ed instruction, but they're accounted for in the classroom spaces. So currently based on the number of sections we have, Eagle has 23, Ellir has 12, Glenmont has 19, uh, Hammerrell has 14, Slingerlands has 19. You'll see that we currently have 15 unused classrooms with the majority of those being at Hammergrail and Slingerlands. There's seven at Hammergrail, six at Slingerlands. The one at

085Glenmont is noted is is a classroom that's available. However, I highlighted it uh because in speaking with Laura um it's a very small room. So, you might be able to have a class of 17. It would be tight uh 18, but beyond that it would be tough to have a class and it is being used for other purposes currently. So, uh we kind of highlighted that is there's 21, but technically we're counting that as 20. So this basically is just a pictogram highlighting the the prior information. So what you have here is the actual classrooms that are available highlighted in red. So Ellir has one, Glenmont has one even though um that caveat that it's very small and you'll see Hamigril and Slingerlands have significant classroom space available. So what I want to highlight here

086is this is the current enrollment. We have 87 sections uh 1780 students again based on beds data. And one of the things I do think is important we and I'll I'll talk about this a little bit more in a few minutes. Um in our last presentation we talked about what should class size be and since the pandemic we've been keep trying to keep our class sizes between 18 and 20. You'll see based on this, we have very few classes this year that are at 18 and we have some sections that are at 23, 24, 25. And that gets into basically the number of students in in each building and how we have to decide on section counts based on that. So even though our targets have been 18 to 20, this year uh we've been

087not as consistent as that. And what I think is important to note, if you look back to 2022, we had virtually the same or similar enrollment, we were able to have 95 sections. And that's because of the the students were actually dispersed more evenly. And so if you look at these numbers, we have a lot of sections at 18, uh, 19, and 20. And we have very few that are 22, 23, 24. So they're much more balanced across all the elementary schools um from that from that data point. So I do think it's important we've talked about the equity and the inequity of facility use. So some of the impacts uh when you have overcrowding in particular buildings is you have that they're competing for shared materials, shared space. Uh, one of the things I

088do think is important to highlight because we've heard about this from some of our parents of special education students that those students have been shifted around more and we have had the connections program and foundations program at Ellir and Hamigrell for for a number of years and so if you are in those programs and you stay in those programs you tend to be at that same building throughout your elementary career. One of the shifts we've seen more recently is we also have more integrated co-eing programs and how we decide where those programs go are based on where the majority of students home school is. So for example, if we are planning on a first grade co-eing program and let's say we we know we only need one section of that. Sometimes we have two and

089six out of the nine students are Eagle students. That program will be scheduled at Eagle because that's where the majority of those students that is their home school. So the two or three other students who are at other schools go to Eagle for that program. So when you see the shifting in stu overall student population shifting to Glenma and Eagle, that's where the majority of the integrated co-eing programs goes because that's where the majority of students are. where you have a more balanced um overall student population using all the schools, those programs would tend to be spread out more, therefore potentially having students attend their home school if they're in integrated co-eing programs. Crowding also creates noisy, stressful environments. Think about um the lunchroom. If you have four sections of a grade level or three

090sections versus two, that's a very different environment. Um, same thing in a gymnasium. If you have, for example, every school has one gymnasium. If you have two sections at a grade level versus three or four, those gymnasiums are shared by multiple classrooms at a time and potentially multiple teachers. So, it does create going back to the shared material, shared spaces, uh, the inequity and workload, support, and facilities also can impact staff morale. I think a couple of real specific examples this year is that Eagle currently uses conference rooms for reading instruction and related services. Glenma has a room that they are using for occupational therapy and physical therapy. However, when they have CSC meetings where there's a large number of people, those service providers are displaced because that's the only meeting space they have and

091they have to find another location to provide their services. Also, using spaces that aren't adequate for related services limits what activities can be done. Again, lunch and recess is more congested. uh everyone has a playground, but if you have double the number of students on a playground, obviously there's less space for all of those students. Uh and also students may be placed in different buildings because of overcrowding or capacity issues in certain buildings. Uh so last week uh we talked about how many students are currently in buildings outside of their home school zone. We currently have 130 students. 39 of those students are general ed students and they were placed in different buildings because of capacity issues at a building or grade level specifically. 78 of those students are special education students. Again, about half

092of those students are in one of the foundations or connections programs. The other remaining students are placed in other uh buildings because of integrated co-eing programs and our English as a new language students are uh the programs we have are either at Slingerlands uh Glenma or Eagle. So that's the 130. I also think it's important to note in Ellir that there's 19 students who are currently assigned there. Um, and that gets into one of the challenges we had this year where Ellir did not have enough students projected for kindergarten to have two sections. Glenmont, we have three sections of kindergarten. And so we had thought about adding another section of kindergarten at Glenmont, but they didn't have a classroom to have another section. and Ellir didn't have enough students to have two sections of kindergarten.

093So, a large number of those students um at Ellir are in kindergarten placed there to make sure that they had two sections of kindergarten this year. So the purpose of the committee is to balance class sizes um not only in the classes but also to create some better equity across the buildings to optimize district resources and facilities and reduce the need for transfer of students unnecessarily to balance enrollment. So I want to talk about the class size targets because I think this was a little bit confusing uh at our last meeting. So uh when the consultants were presenting they used terms they used lows and highs and the low was simply that the goal the district has been trying to maintain since the pandemic has generally be been between 18 to 20 students. Again, you

094saw on the current sizes, they're not 18 to 20, but that is the target we've we've tried to achieve. Um, the consultants recommended a high for the district to consider um based on their ideas in regards to the numbers and how do we u potentially look at this district-wide and those numbers were 20 to 24. Uh the 24 I think is personally I think is too high because 24 ultimately will not be 24. It potentially could be 25 26 27 and we're looking at then class sizes what that we had prior to the pandemic. So the recommendation that I brought forward to the committee was to consider something in between which gives a variation of 18 to 22. So trying to keep our primary grades at 18 to 19 in grade 2 uh 20 21

095and 22 um up to grade 5. Um so this all of the pictograms that um I'm going to explain now. It's really not that that hard. So this basically shows this is current enrollment 202526. If we use the low numbers 18 to 20, the black pictograms show a deficit in those buildings just by the math formula. Not making real world decisions. If you just took in kindergarten, every section is 18 or 18 or below. This is and if every grade five was 20 or 20 or below, you'll see that Eagle, Ellir, and Glenma would have deficits and Hammerrell and Slingerlands would have a surplus. If you use the high range of 20 to 24, you'll see Eagle still at a deficit. Um, Ellir has a surplus. Glenmott's flat if you use 20. If you use

09621, they would technically have the one. Um, and then you'll see Hamigrrell and Slingerlands have still significant capacity. If you use the middle range of 18 to 22, then you're at a def deficit of four um still but real world decision-m but you can see those defic the surpluses are still um at Hamigrell and Slingerlands. This is without adjusting any numbers. This is keeping it keeping everyone as is. Looking at the 203031 projections, which is what the consultants looked at last week, if you use those same numbers 18 to 20, you'll see that um if the enrollment projects to 3% or around that, you would look at a deficit of 11 classrooms without making again real world decisions. However, Hammerrell and Slingerland still have a surplus. The higher range there would be overall a surplus

097of one. Um, still some deficits in Eagle, Ellir, and Glenmont. And the middle range you have about seven as a deficit uh with surpluses again at Hammigril, Slingerlands and Eagle, Elsmere, and Glenmont uh still in a deficit. So this is what I think is really important to understand. If we change nothing and if we just continue with the enrollment as is using next year's projections, we have 70 students projected to go into K um at Eagle. Now everyone knows kindergarten is uh the wild card here, right? Um that's a little unknown but based on the projections we have and you would Eagle is projected to have 458 students next year if we wanted to meet the target of using the middle range which is what the committee and I'll show you in a second decided

098this that would be the range we should use and you just do the math. Those would be the number of sections you need and that would be the section average. So Eagle would be at a deficit of three classrooms with the projections. What we would do is we would look at where do we reduce this. So we we have this many kids and we have 23 classrooms. So then you have to make decisions based on how many section how many kids are we going to put in each section. So let's say we just instead of four sections of K, we had three sections of K. If in grade 1, instead of five sections, we would have four. That would get us to 23 classrooms. And you will see that you have class sizes of 26

099up there. [clears throat] So the committee based on a lot of discussion based on looking at the numbers agreed that moving forward our class size targets should be 18 to 22. And so when you see future uh presentations from the consultants, the committee is looking at the data. Those are the numbers we would be looking at. Again, they're not caps. They're targets. They're guidelines that we hope to get to around those numbers. And finally, I want to address the survey results that was were presented last week by the consultants. Um, I think it's important to provide some pers perspective on the work of of the survey and particularly the reasoning committee. As part of the process, the committee was asked to evaluate five key criteria. class size, school equity, minimizing student moves, neighborhood continuity, and

100transportation. While all five are important, the committee collectively determine class size and school equity should take precedence. The priorities ensure those priorities ensure every student, no matter which elementary school they attend, has access to the same quality of instruction, resources, and learning environment. We do recognize that minimizing moves is important to families and also a factor the committees discussed, but it cannot be the sole factor guiding such a significant decision. At present, some of our elementary buildings are at or over capacity while others are significantly underenrolled, which was highlighted during this presentation. This imbalance affects class sizes, programming flexibility, and long-term planning for staff and facilities. The goal of resoning is not to disrupt to communities, but to use all five of our excellent elementary schools effectively and equitably, ensuring the best possible learning experience

101for every Bethlehem student. Change is never easy and it can evoke strong emotions particularly when it involves our schools and neighborhoods. The parent and teacher representatives serving on the committee have devoted t their time, attention and thoughtful perspectives to the important and necessary work. Always keeping the best interests of the students and their community at heart. I'm grateful for their dedication and hope our community continues to extend to them the same respect and support they have shown throughout the process. Ultimately, this process is about doing what's right for the entire district, balancing enrollment, preserving small class sizes, and ensuring every student continues to benefit from the outstanding education Bethlehem's known for. We have the classrooms, the capacity, and the community commitment to make it successful, but it requires cooperation, understanding, and a willingness to look

102beyond individual interest toward the greater good. And finally, I want to highlight the next steps from the committees. We have another meeting November 12th. We have uh the consultants will be at the next board of education meeting on the 19th. There will then be a community forum on the 20th. Recommendations will be made to the board of ed for consideration by December potentially or January or a combination of that. And then the goal is for imple implementation of any changes for the 202627 school year. So I will open that up for any questions people have. Um, and you know, this is probably obvious, but you know, with that little the wheel, the puzzle pieces, um, you know, I think we need to keep in mind that even though you want some to be, um, to

103be more important, there's like transportation, for example, is not one that we have really talked about at all. >> Correct. >> And if transportation comes back and says, "This is a great idea, but we can't do this." >> Correct. Then um then we're going to have to take that into account. >> Correct. I mean there the consultants also are working with our transportation department. Uh when we get to recommendations on potential changes they would be looking at that. Um obviously before final recommendations are made to know that yes this can be done or no this can't be done. I think everyone is well aware of the driver shortage. Uh that every >> really big piece. >> It's a very big piece. Correct. Yeah. >> Um, you know, one uh comment that we've heard um from

104uh different uh different people is why it we can't just put modular classrooms um at Glenmont or Eagle. I was hoping you could speak to that. >> Well, clearly we don't need to. We have classroom capacity. And I think the fact that if we have classrooms available, we should be using classrooms. we wouldn't want to set up portable classrooms. Also, uh we've talked to our operations and maintenance director, Nick and Sonia. Uh there's a a very challenging um it's very challenging to get those approved by the state education department. Uh also, how many people where do you put those classrooms? Do you put them on the playground in the parking lots? We don't have a ton of space at our elementary schools to put portable classrooms. Um, and quite honestly, we just don't need them.

105We have plenty of classroom space to utilize. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, a few things. Um, easiest one first, slide nine, which is the current sections. You've got three fifth grade sections at sling loans at 24, 24, 25, but you've got excess classrooms. I'm just wondering why those aren't split up to have [clears throat] four sections of >> slide. Which one? >> Next one up. >> That one. Do you want me? Oh, >> do you want me to speak to that a little bit? Yeah. So, me that did not start like that in late August, early September. We had I believe it was like 130 registrations this summer, >> right? >> Late summer. Um, and those numbers were much lower to start. I want to say that I could I'll double check, but I want

106to say about 13 of those were super late registration. >> Fifth graders. >> We have a lot of new >> coming in from outside, >> right? >> And at that at that time, >> not typical. >> It's not typical. And at that time in the year, >> it it's virtually impossible to add another section because of staffing. not just a classroom teacher, but you also have all the special pieces and it it just doesn't work. But yeah, we did have a lot of late registrations this year for some reason. >> Your real world example which is labeled slide 28, slide 24. >> This this one right? [laughter] >> Nope. One more. the one with the number 20 on it. >> This one. So >> you said you'd end up with classes of 25 26. You

107wouldn't, right? You only need to save three classrooms. So in this example you give here, you reduce section by one in first, second, and fifth, which is the boxes you have shaded. You wouldn't reduce sections in kindergarten, third, and fourth. So numbers numbers wouldn't exist. >> Right. Exactly. >> So you'd end up with one class of 23, >> but no one's 25 26. >> Right. Only the highlighted ones. >> Right. They're highlighted, right? Correct. >> Sorry. >> So, you said 26. Just I want make clear. You wouldn't have classes that big. >> Correct. >> Bigger point. Um I guess previous slide labeled 19. >> So here, right, this is the committee's recommendation on class sizes and our actual number of classrooms. We're in a deficit of seven classrooms, >> right? you you said, you know,

108we have plenty of classrooms, >> right? That's without making any adjustments. >> Sure. Um but it's not as though we have huge numbers of spare classrooms lying around, right? Maybe we can meet our classroom needs by moving, which is the whole point of this process. >> But it's not like we're going to have large numbers of empty classrooms sitting around ideally, whereas we kind of do now, right? At Hammerdale and Slingland, we've got all these empty classrooms who we're not using, >> right? Those were three main points. >> Yeah, a couple of questions. Um, so I guess one of the things that I'd like I mean I've got a number of questions, right? And I'll start with a bucket that's just kind of like process if that's all right. Um, so the first question I've

109got is we're getting a number the board of ed is getting a number of emails. for getting um comments during public meetings or during meetings. Um how are those comments and those emails are those getting back to the committee? How are they being uh sent back to the committee and being considered? >> So after the last meeting, there were several emails sent in about um things people noticed on the maps, the boundaries, the neighborhoods, and we brought those to the committee for review. At Monday's meeting, uh Tyler brought forward the maps with what with the initial work they had done, uh with some questions they have in addition to some of the emails we had from community members. Also, some of the parent reps who received questions from through the PTO's or their their role

110as parents also received some feedback and they brought that forward to the committee as well. >> Great. Thank you. Um and then can we talk a little bit about the public information session um that you mentioned that's that's coming? How can you talk about what that will look like? How that is intended to incorporate um feedback? What is the vision there? >> So I don't have specifics on that. I mean that will be following another committee meeting we have next week. Um my expectation I guess uh is that there would be a presentation from the consultants about the committee's work to date uh where we are in the process outlining obviously the enrollment the projections the facility space the the boundaries that the committee um identified as neighborhoods. Um, and then the goal of that

111forum is to gather feedback from the community on some of that. I don't know if there will be recommendations at that point or not. I can't speak to that because we're not that far along in the process yet. But the purpose of the the community forum is for uh to gather feedback from the community. >> Okay. So at that time, so at that time it's the if community members come up with concerns, questions, that'll be taken back to another committee meeting or taken back to to the consultant >> or both. >> Both. Yeah. Right. Okay. >> Great. >> Um and then my last question on um process is you know who let's talk about who approves or denies the the final proposal here. are is this um is the administration asking for a formal board

112vote? Is this an administrative decision? Can you talk a little bit about how that works? >> It's a I I I checked on it. It's state ed requires the board of education to approve any boundary changes. So there will be recommendations from the committee which is what's happened in the past. I think the last time when Eagle opened there were I think initially there might have been five or six propo or recommendations or maybe initial proposals came that came from the committee I think wanting some board feedback as well and then they ultimately I believe if I remember reading correctly because I wasn't involved in that uh there might have been three final recommendations that went to the board for board approval. >> Okay. Thank you. I've got a couple other questions on some substance,

113but >> questions. >> Yes, questions. Um, so you you talked about um certainly wanting some board feedback um to the committee and to Tyler. So, I just wanted to say that certainly I'm coming from a place um where I absolutely recognize the need to equalize the schools um but also at the same time impacting as few families as possible. I do think that is a very important goal. So, I would just um ask that Tyler keeps that at the forefront of their mind when creating these various proposals. Um, regarding Holly Holly's comment on transportation, um, am I correct in that we are legally required to provide transportation to all of our students and that we can't rely on parents to drive? >> Correct. Okay. So, um, we have heard a lot of requests from, um,

114public about, um, grandfathering in um, current students. Um, so I would ask Tyler to uh create a model or a proposal that takes that into account grandfathering in um but also you know to show us what that would look like and whether that would um allow us to get to where we need to get to um next year. But also in doing so um I'd like to model the transportation aspect of that as well because as you mentioned we have a bus driver shortage and if we can't get um if we don't have the capacity to get multiple buses into a neighborhood and then to different schools to deal with grandfathered in children. Um it seems to me like legally we can't do that if if we don't have the capacity to transport students from

115the same neighborhood to different schools. >> Right. And I think the certainly that's something that the committee has discussed and obviously we're not at that point yet. >> Right. But I do think it grandfathering would depend on how many students you're talking about because once you get to a larger number of students, I I don't think transportation could manage that given the the drivers that we have. >> And that's why I would appreciate just that modeling um to see are we talk, you know, are we talking about just a handful of students who um or are we talking about large numbers of students and what that transportation would look like. It's my it's my understanding that Tyler is also a transportation uh consultant and that's why we hired them, >> right? They actually are transportation,

116>> right? So, um I just want to emphasize that that piece has to come with all of the different proposals to see whether or not this is legally possible for us to do because if we can't provide the transportation, we can't do it, >> right? Um, also I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about you talked about um how when uh the pandemic happened we reduced sizes to 18 to 20 >> and at that time we had a lot of discussions about what that because before that we had lots of classes that were sizes 26 27 and what the reduction of class um sizes what benefits we saw to that. So if you could just speak to that a little and and the level of um >> differentiation that our teachers can

117now provide with the smaller class sizes. >> Right. I think that during obviously the pandemic was like no other time. I I never want to relive again. Um but ultimately yes we had much smaller class sizes out of necessity. But I think when we um returned and we had our um K5 back every day, we kept our classes small. And I think that the feedback that what we observed and what the feedback from our teaching staff was that obviously with smaller groups of students, you can more easily provide enrichment. You can more easily rep provide additional support for students who need it. You can work with smaller groups of students if you have uh for example if we had there were many years we had in grades four, five, 26, 27 upwards of 29 you

118just realistically cannot give the support the individual support small group support you can if you have a class of 20 21 22 so I think that's where we saw the biggest difference and then coming out of that um ultimately we decided that because that we saw the difference it made, we wanted to try and maintain that and we had the ability to do that with the spaces that we have. Um, I mean ultimately it's a choice. If you want to go um if you want to go back to larger class sizes certainly you can do that and if you want to go lower you run into you have this many classrooms this this is your space you have to work with uh unless you add more classrooms on. So that's really the choice. So but

119we ultimately I think everyone was in agreement that the smaller classes and trying to maintain them were a benefit to to our students. >> Just you know back on the math right so we have 102 elementary classrooms available. If we think our projection is roughly 1,800 students you know if you could magically distribute everyone equally you could have all the classes be 18 students. So I think this is the point about in theory we have classrooms available to have small class sizes >> right >> exactly thanks >> but as happened at slingerland pointing out if you have like you think you're that which is why I think you're to your point that 20 turns into 22 or 22 turns into 24 just because you >> aren't going to right >> just with late enrollments or

120you're not going to you can't divide kids in half >> right say you go from 40 to 48 Right. >> You had two sections of 20. Great. >> Now you've got either two sections of 24 or three sections of 16. >> Right. >> And those both suck. >> Right. >> So it >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Um can you elaborate a little bit more on um with respect to our special ed students why um rebalancing the schools might help them not be moved around as much? Um, is it because there would be more co-taught classrooms across the district or because they would >> not nec Well, there I mean you could look at instead of just having for example one co-taught in one building. I mean potentially and this all depends on numbers, right? You

121could have a grade one co-taught in one building and another grade one co-taught in another building. Um that's a possibility but because uh the g the overall population has shifted a lot to Glen Mott and Eagle uh that is where the gen the most of the integrated co-eing classrooms end up in the last couple of years because that is where the majority of the students are. So if there's five or six of those students that's where we place that program for now. I mean, if we do nothing, that will be a problem because we wouldn't have the space to continue to do that. But yes, you would have a better balance. We used to have um more co-eing programs at um Slingerlands and Hammerrell. I mean, Hammerrell and Glenmont both have generally the same number

122of classrooms. And if you recall on that slide, they pretty much had the same student population for a while. In fact, Hamigrell had been larger than Glenmont for a while. Um, and now there's been a significant shift in Slingerlands and Eagle used to be more closely aligned as well. So, by having your overall student population spread out, you tend you would tend to be able to spread out those programs a little bit better as well. >> I just wanted to circle back to Euan's question. Um, I looked up in my notes, there were only a couple fifth graders that transfer. It was K and one where the bulk came in late. Um, but looking back, had we added a section there, there would have been sections of 17, 17, 18, 18. Um, and at that

123time, we don't have any, we didn't have any kindergarten or first grade classrooms that small. And all of our fifth grade classrooms were 21 or higher. So, we made the decision that it would not be appropriate to have classrooms that small in one building at fifth grade when we didn't have that in the primary levels at any of the buildings. and all of the fifth grades would have been substantially larger than that across the board. So it was sort of an equity decision if you will. Yeah. >> It would actually be 18, 18, 18, and 19, right? >> No, we did have a few students come in later. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions, Kathy? >> Yeah. So on I I just want to e underline everything that Meredith said about having a couple of

124different proposals to consider and whether it's you know grandfathering or phasing in changes. I think that's something that would be really good to see because there are going there's going to be trade-offs to any approach that's taken, right? Um, and I want to make sure that we just have our the clearest, you know, clearest vision about what those tradeoffs are. So, um, so having that mapped out would be really helpful. Another thing that would be really helpful is going back to the bond proposition, making sure that we have that mapped out as well as possible if we are talking about shifting classrooms around at various schools, even if for for a finite time. um as a result of the bond, but having those years overlap with the phase in of the new boundaries uh zones

125of attendance, excuse me. Um it would just be good to go into that open eyed and and having as much of an understanding as possible. >> That that's that's a big ask. I I don't think I don't think we're going to be able to have a proposal for the bond prop in a phasin. That that's just too far out. We won't be able to have a Sorry, say that again. You mean like >> Well, you're asking for a proposal for what the bond proposition does in relation to potentially having classrooms unavailable for a period of 3 months or so, which was presented during the bond, right, in conjunction with this. the bond proposition is several years out to try to figure out what that's going to look like and when I is is not possible

126right now. >> Um, >> do you have you had another question? >> I was actually going to go back to Dave a second. I because I think that's actually a philosophical point too, right? Yeah. I'd rather have four fifth grade grade classrooms at 18 and have that seen as be inequitable in a good way because some other classrooms are 21 then have three classrooms of 25 and have those kids suffer. I mean, if we're going to be inequitable, let's be inequitable in favor of making some people better off rather than some people worse off, right? That was >> Catherine. Um, and then another kind of question that I've heard in community conversations is like, well, okay, here we are now. How do we how how well can we trust our projections if we go through

127this? It is this something we're just going to have to do again in [clears throat] five years? >> Um, I mean, I wouldn't say five years. the we've been using the capital region planning commission for over 10 years and their projections have been fairly accurate. We have housing information from the town which Tyler has and will be factoring into obviously those projections. So the projections have been pretty accurate um overall. I think this year was the first year we actually saw a little bit of a a fluctuation with that. Um, but I will say that in speaking with other districts and in speaking with the consultants when we were doing the RFP process, it is not unusual for districts to redraw boundary lines every 10 to 15 years. Uh, in fact should be expected and

128if you look back uh we did it when Eagle was open, it was done again I think uh Doug Hamlin who did it in the 90s. It was done in the 80s and I think you said in the 70s. So, it has been done about every 10 or so years in our district. Thank you. Uh I appreciate that. Um, and then another question that I've heard is if we have schools that are under under capacity right right now, why would we be and trying to phrase this the way that it was kind of said to me, why would be we be moving anybody out of those schools? Wouldn't it just be moving other students in? I mean I guess in an ideal world you would think that but when you look at um at least

129in in in the discussions in the committee meeting and working with the consultants they've obviously shared this more in depth with the committee. Uh part of the reason for drawing the boundary lines is that you want to identify the the neighborhood boundaries and how many students are in those what grade levels they're in. If you shift if you need to shift a larger number of students from X to you know A to B then you have to backfill that with another and because of our neighborhoods are very contiguous and then they're a very small area uh I mean you can walk to all of our elementary schools pretty much except for Glenmont in a matter of an hour. Um you're talking about a very small area. So when you make a shift in one boundary

130potentially that does impact other areas. So obviously the goal is to look at that and minimize that to the extent possible. But you you can't just take this and plop it here. It doesn't work that way. >> And it also goes to Marilyn's point. You also have to look at the transportation piece as well. >> Well, so there's a domino effect. >> Correct. I was going to say, right, if you got four school districts and you got five excess kids here and five spaces here, >> Yeah. >> you're not going to make those five kids go an hour and a half on the bus over here. You're going to shuffle five kids a lot, >> which is going to disturb more people less. >> Thank you. Any other questions? Um, >> not for now. >>

131No, not for now. >> Uh, thank you, Joey. I appreciate it and I appreciate the the extra presentation. I know this was sort of a this was an an add-on. Um before we move on to our next item, which is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item. Um I'd like to take two minutes so that our pig and super students can >> sign up and go home if you want to. You're welcome to stay. You're always welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. Um but resume. Uh, next on next on our agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item. Um, uh, just as a reminder, the board uses the public comment period as an opportunity to listen to concerns, but will not debate issues or enter into a

132question and answer session. Um, and speakers are permitted to speak for up to three minutes. Um, and if you start to run significantly over that, I will kindly wave in your direction. Um, and let you know. And, um, uh, as expected, we um, we hope that all speakers um, and observers will conduct themselves in a civil manner. Um, I have a list of people who have signed up to speak. So what I will do is I'm going to go through this list and then at the end if you would like to speak um uh but did not put your name on this list I will ask for anybody in addition. Um so the first person that I have is and and I I'm going to apologize in advance for probably butchering somebody's name. Um I'm

133just going to say Aaron >> Critloow. >> Yeah, that's right. >> I got it. All right. And if you could please state your name again um in the microphone. Thank you. I feel like I'm really close. [laughter] Uh Aaron Critloow. Um I was What's this? I'm way too far away. Probably [snorts] being tall. Um so I just want to start off by saying thank you uh to Jody and the board for continuing to engage and the transparency and anticipation. I think um I know that that's taken extra time on everyone's days and schedules to do this. I also want to specifically thank our Glenmont parent rep, uh Sarah Bailey, who has been uh I think a resource for our our little neighborhood, our school, and just her extra time that she's done to write a

134very thorough, regular, honest, and direct update. So, I just want to give her an extra kudos for all the time she has done to just make this as quote unquote painless as we can since last May when we first started these conversations. Um, I was here a couple weeks ago. I hadn't prepared anything and I kind of went off the cuff. So today I've spent some time in the last few weeks thinking and talking to a lot of people. Um so hopefully this will be a little more um polished today. Um but in my mind it's really boils down to one thing and I think we've kind of hit it and I'm probably going to repeat a lot of things that have already come up but I've it's heartening to hear that I've kind of

135came up with the same common sense um solutions and ideas that it sounds like the board has already faced and the committee has already faced. So the number one really boils down to one question for me and I think I think this is kind of the essence is how should all of our taxes and our resources be spent to give all all of our kids the best education in this overall very amazing district. So there have been a lot of comments and questions about and possible solutions that I've heard proposed both tonight and in other situations. So um with the danger of being repetitive I'll just go through them. Um there is a letter going around to talk about the possibility of creating a guaranteed low disruption option that's you know fasttrack to the finals.

136Um this is uh well to me is pretty much a non-starter. Disruption to begin with is a relative term defined differently for every family and every student and every school and every neighborhood. Uh it's a variable that's already being considered as well. We've already heard uh disruption and you know moving students and all that. Actually, I believe it came in third in the weight and priority category. Uh, grandfathering exceptions and all those whole underut grandfathering underutilized schools and exceptions for individual schools as a whole doesn't really solve the problem for the other cramped schools. In fact, it may make those overpop populated schools situations worse. So, they say let's let's just keep everyone enrolled where they are. Well, that means functionally that portables or some sort of solution has to be created. That means in

137the winter months if it's a portal, my kid or someone's kid is going out in the snow to go to gym or go to lunch. We've talked about the lunch spaces um or even the bathroom um the lunch lines and the space in those situations. Meanwhile, your kid might if you don't have to move, you might have a whole my tax dollars paying for an empty room at your school. Um that doesn't feel very equitable when there's 15 spaces around the district already underutilized. or they say, "Well, what about a graduated or a staggered or a, you know, a cohort at uh each year that changes uh schools?" Well, that's a bus route and logistical nightmare we've already heard. I know we're going to look at some models that say that might work, but to

138me, that's also a non-starter. It certainly creates a lack of consistency and a lack of predictability, but also doesn't solve the overcrowding in the near- term at the affected schools. Essentially, we'd end up going through this every year, fighting over who has to move and constant zone border changes and route changes for buses. Then just trying to hit a moving target every year that the district uh has to shift those zones a little bit, grandfathering in a new group, adding a new group, just kicking the can down the road every year. Or maybe let's just wait. This another option was just wait until after the capital project. Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would we spend a bunch of money on a capital project when our schools are all shifting? Why wouldn't

139we settle, figure out what our new footprint looks like, and then spend that money? That to me also doesn't really solve the problem until those projects are done in 27 or beyond. Again, just kicking the can down the road. Look, the district must make decisions and plans for the future based on the data they have, even if it is imperfect. They can't make special accommodations for every unique child just because you love your neighborhood or its walkability to your favorite school or its proximity to a friend. Rather, they must find the plan that fits the best for the majority of all of our students and has flexibility to adapt into the future. Overcrowding is a problem today. The district is doing the responsible thing as they should to face the problem headon and so should

140we, not looking for our way out or for special treatment. I am sure all plans will require and include some one-off exceptions and exemptions for unique cases and special needs. [sighs and gasps] But why should any one whole school or neighborhood get special treatment or be excluded from a district-wide solution? What makes anyone think that doesn't come across as just myopic and selfish? Bottom line, I don't want any changes. Nobody wants changes, but changes are inevitable and kids are resilient. We can't and shouldn't insulate our kids from all the realities of this world. This is an opportunity, a chance to roll up our sleeves and do the work. I know I take on the parenting challenge already. My kids lives are already disrupted. Glenmont is full. I tell them every day that when I know

141where they are going to school next year, I will tell them. They are already affected. >> I'm going to stop you there. >> Okay. >> Thank you. If you would like to have something written you'd like to turn it, I'm happy to take it. Thank you. Uh, next I have Jason Harper. And just so you're ready after Jason, it looks like Megan Clower. Good evening. I'm gonna move this. I tend to be loud. Uh, good evening. My name is Jason Harper. Uh I have two children attending elementary school in Bethlehem. And um I am going to uh read said letter uh uh that um has been signed um by over 200 concerned parents from across the district. And um the final copy once it's been uh there are still people are still signing it. It

142will be obviously uh provided to you. Dear Superintendent Monroe and members of the Bethlehem Central Board of Education, we the undersigned parents and guardians from across the Bethlehem Central School District are writing to respectfully request that the board ensure the ongoing resoning process remain transparent, inclusive, and centered on what is best for all our of our district's children. We understand that the district and its consultants are studying enrollment and capacity across all five elementary schools and exploring ways to maintain balance in the years ahead. We also recognize that this is comp complex work that requires thoughtful consideration of both data and community needs. At this stage, we are not asking the board to adopt any particular outcome. Rather, we ask that the board ensure the range of options presented to it to it includes at

143least one model that allows all currently enrolled students to remain in their existing schools and prioritizes minimal disruption to students and families districtwide. The review should also account for how boundary changes may disproportionately affect special education students and others who are more vulnerable to the challenges of transition. Specifically, we respectfully request that the board ask the district and its consultants to first model and share at least one load disruption option that keeps currently enrolled students in place. Second, compare the educational and community impacts of higher and lower movement scenarios side by side and in particular how these scenarios impact special education students and others who may be more vulnerable to disruption. And finally, release those models publicly before any recommendations are finalized so families can provide informed feedback that can be incorporated into revised proposals.

144By including these options in the analysis and sharing them transparently, the district can ensure that parents and guardians are meaningfully engaged in a process that reflects Bethlehem's values of belonging, stability, and whole child support. It is the shared goal of parents across the district to help achieve balance and equity in enrollment while preserving the connections, friendships, and sense of community that our school that makes our school so special. Thank you for your time, leadership, and thoughtful consideration of this request made on behalf of all the attached signatories. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. [clears throat] Hi, good evening. Um, my name is Megan Clber. Um, I'm the mother of a second grader at Hammigrail and have been a proud resident of Bethlehem for almost 5 years. Um, I just want to start off by

145saying that I don't envy the position you guys find yourselves in, um, having to make such difficult and consequential decisions for our district. I also want to acknowledge the privilege we share in being part of such a rich and supportive community as a whole. I have every confidence that you are giving this matter careful consideration. As I often tell my clients, control what you can and surrender the rest. So, speaking to you tonight is my way of doing that. Um, my family moved here after a very difficult period in our lives. Um, we lost se we lost several close family members and we were searching for a fresh start and a sense of belonging. We found both here. My husband has no parents left and my family is fractured by distance and emotion and my

146son is an only child. Over the past few years, um, we've formed a new kind of family made up of our neighbors, and most importantly, the parents and children we've met through the community at Hammerrail. They have become our surrogate brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and siblings. Together, we've created traditions, supported each other through hardship, and built a community that truly feels like home. Our son is one of the most social kids you'll ever meet. After his first week at Hammerrell, even the fourth graders knew his name coming off the bus and wherever we went. Um, we knew that we had settled in a place where he could thrive. He also has ADHD and a 504 plan, which has made school a really tough challenge at times. Um, but thanks to the compassion of the school

147staff and the support of this community, he's found consistency, confidence, and joy in learning. That stability has been everything for him and for us as parents. People often say kids are resilient. And while that's true, resilience, I feel, isn't something we should test when we have the power to protect their stability. I completely understand that some of our schools are reaching or exceeding capacity and that equitable access to space and programming is essential across the district. We all want the opportunity to be distributed fairly and have all members of the community feel considered in this. My b my biggest ask is that the board move forward on this issue through the path of least resistance and with maximum transparency. And I'm really appreciative of all the information shared tonight. As parents, we all want as

148much control as possible over our children's lives and education. That's why we chose to buy homes in the neighborhoods and the school zones we did making those decisions with great care and sacrifice. The reality is resoning is going to disrupt people. It's going to split people up and possibly weaken the neighborhood ties that form the heart of this, you know, committee and this community. I ask that you and the other committee members consider alternative ways to address capacity shifts such as flexer buffer zones like Saratoga Springs and Isauna to balance classes without uprooting entire neighborhoods. Cap and flow uh overflow models such as used in Fort Ben, Texas where only new enrollies are temporarily redirected when a grade reaches capacity. And if adjustments must occur, obviously grandfathering and sibling productions to ensure families stay together

149and transitions are gentle. Each of these options offers flexibility while preserving the trust and continuity that make Bethlehem such a special place to live and learn. As you weigh these decisions, please also consider how the community's trust and our willingness to support a future capital project or bond referendum may be affected if families are not are displaced not once but potentially twice in just a few years time. Our shared goal should be long-term stability, not repeated disruption. Our greatest strength lies in the sense of community. Let's protect that. protect our children's stability and while managing our district's growth with careful care and foresight. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> I can take that from >> Thank you, >> uh, Gabe. Oh, maybe not that. Take it out. Hi, my [clears throat] name

150is Gabe and I'm in eighth grade at BCMS and I'm here because you're all talking about reszoning the elementary schools and I need to tell you why splitting up the elementary school friendships for hundreds of kids like my second grade sister Cesley is a huge mistake. Right before I started fourth grade, my best friend moved to Sweden and um we were able to video chat sometimes, but the time difference was made it very difficult and it helped seeing my other friends at school though. Um they um they were my support. But um this that's the idea why the reasonzoning is uh for the elementary uh students for the next school year is a bad idea because breaking up the friendships is not a small change. It is a painful change for a lot of them.

151And every every kid feels things differently. And while some kids might not think a new uh while some kids might think a new school is an adventure, others might feel sad. These past few weeks, I've heard grown-ups saying that kids are resilient and they'll get over the resoning. But when adults say um that they can still see their friends on the weekends, they don't get it. Cuz seeing your friends on a random Saturday is different from seeing them every day. like getting help with math, eating lunch, and playing together at recess. And I know how different it is because I live through it. So, you guys need to uh look at these kids as actual people, not just dots on a spreadsheet. Um, their friendships are everything to them, especially after everything they went through

152with the pandemic. Um, my sister's in second grade right now and I don't want her to feel that bad just because our elementary school zone would move on a map. So, please don't let her friends be taken away from her. And um I know Miss Monroe, you said um earlier that um what's right is like changing the school zones to get the most students where they belong, but what's really right is bringing people together, not farther apart. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> And Leah, you're up next. Good evening, board president Delimba, Vice President Morardi, members of the board of education, and superintendent Monroe. My name is Leam Montelook. I want to begin by recognizing that the district is facing overenrollment issues with several of our elementary schools. I am here to ask that the district,

153this board find a solution to this issue that addresses the overenrollment problem while also allowing students at underenrolled schools to remain in their home schools. Frankly, I know some may say differently that you cannot have equity across the district and achieve both of those things, but I strongly disagree. Equity in this resoning process means that every student re receives the specific resources and support that they need to succeed academically and socially. It does not mean that every student receives exactly the same thing. The superintendent stated this evening that the goal is to enable students to have the same learning environments and resources. This is a worthy goal, but it's not possible. Our schools, our elementary schools are different sizes. They are staffed by different people. Some have larger classroom or more classrooms. Some have fewer.

154Some schools are going to be noisier no matter what. They're larger. They have more students. I come here today as a parent of three district children, including a second grader, and as someone who has spent years serving children and families in crisis. As the former CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Capital Region, I witnessed firsthand what disruption can do to children. I know what you heard at last month's board of ed meeting and will hear again and again in the weeks ahead. Children are resilient and yes, they are. I have seen children overcome poverty, incarceration, homelessness, and abuse. And I have watched them find strength we adults can barely fathom. But here's what that well-meaning phrase, children are resilient, obscures. And even we heard today, change is never easy. Well, resilience is not

155unlimited. It is not evenly distributed. And it should never be our first strategy. During the pandemic, I watched children in our Big Brothers Big Sisters program struggles in ways that shattered every assumption I had about childhood adaptability. Some children rebounded quickly and others are still struggling to this day to rebuild social skills, manage anxiety, and trust that their world will remain stable. The difference was not one of strength or weakness. It was about the accumulation of disruptions, the presence or absence of support systems, and the fundamental question of how much change any particular child had already endured. No two children experience disruption the same way. And critically, we cannot predict which children will struggle and which will adapt smoothly. This is why unnecessary disruption is not a neutral administrative decision. It's a deliberate choice to

156test children's capacity to absorb change during a period when many are still recovering from changes they never asked for. The superintendent this evening shared with us that she herself would never want to relive the pandemic again. Well, I wouldn't either, and I'm sure nobody in this room would, but educational experts studying pandemic recovery explicitly warn against compounding trauma through additional institutional disruptions. The district is proposing to ask children who already proved their resilience to prove it again. This time in some cases unnecessarily before we impose any reasonzoning disruption for students across the district for the next academic year. I urge the members of the board of ed to do the following. Create a phased plan for the implementation of the resoning of this of the district's elementary schools. allow all current elementary students to remain

157in their current schools if they choose and if there is room through the end of fifth grade. This is not sentimentality. It is sound developmental practice. Children thrive with consistent relationships, familiar environments, and predictable structures. Children are resilient. I have built a career on that truth. But resilience is what children show us when they have no other choice. When life imposes circumstances beyond anyone's control. Resilience is what got them through the pandemic. The current reasonzoning process is different. This is a choice. We can choose not to test our children's resilience further. We can choose stability over disruption. Resilience is not a license for for adults to impose unnecessary hardship. >> I'm going to stop you there. >> Thank you. Uh, Rob Smith. >> Hello again. Is this okay? I'm I'm doing the opposite of of

158what Aaron did, which I wrote something last week and now I'm shooting from the hips. So, I apologize if I'm all over the place and I'm going to try not to straw man anybody else's arguments because I think that everybody's here for the right reasons and we're all trying to get to the bottom of this. I don't think I think there's some miscommunication between some of the districts and zones thinking that people think that they're better than somebody else or because they don't want their kids moved that that means that they don't want their kid to go to that school. And I think the reality is a lot of the concerned parents that I'm speaking with, you know, coming from a a current zone that is my house is on the line of a few

159zones and our zone currently is under capacity. So, it's my hope to see my kids not get moved. Um, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't welcome kids in that would need to be moved and I understand there's a moving part situation here. Um, I I have a couple of practical questions that I understand you're not going to answer right now. I just want to put out there because as we have these discussions and I think actually it was really helpful to hear the board members kind of asking um Miss Monroe about some of the follow-up questions getting a little bit more into the details of things because it it's helping everybody kind of get to the same place because at the end of this process I think the number one thing that needs to happen

160is whatever is decided the community is going to need to feel like it was reached in a fair way in a way that everybody can understand even if they don't like the outcome everybody's got to be able to feel like the process was correctly done and and one of My concerns coming from the last meeting was that the data presented at that time, I forget the gentleman's name, it wasn't the guy from Tyler, but it was the uh consultant. He kind of said that the data they were putting out at that moment was not accurate. And so, it's hard to have confidence in a process when the data being provided is not accurate. And it seems like that's tightening up. And I hope that we reach a conclusion at the end of this that everybody

161can at least appreciate is accurate and could be what's best um for the district. Uh so the questions I'm going to propose uh or pose to hopefully have addressed. Let me just open it. Um I I think it was mentioned in in somebody else speaking and and and Miss Monroe you mentioned it as well the number of sections and I think that there was a slide I think it was on page 20 of your presentation where it showed the 22 23 uh class sections and from what I could tell and from what you had said the class sizes at that time were just seemed like naturally more balanced. It was something where class sizes were good, but if you look, the sections were disproportionate by school because the school facilities accommodate different size sections, right?

162So, I think, you know, off the top of my head, I think Eagle and Slingerlands might have had four sections of different grades while Eagle, well, Ellir only had two sections of each grade. And we would all agree that that was equal distribution based on the building needs, which speaks to um the the facilities in the school. It's not a matter of getting the right the same number of kids in each building, right? It's about getting class sizes to the right places. And so, so one of the questions I have is if we're talking about moving NPUs, right, the neighborhood projected units or whatever the letters are for. Um, I know that my NPU, if I'm looking at a map, I can I can say we may be Hamburg, we may be Elmere, and my

163daughter is in second grade, and I'm aware of all the second graders that are in our NPU in particular. And if you were to move our NPU and the one immediately next to ours towards Elmir, it would inject like eight second graders into an already full zone of second graders that's full. So it would be counterproductive to the idea of and and it's not a school that could take on a third section. So there's these ideas of we'll just pick up neighborhoods and move them, but neighborhoods aren't equal numbers of kids. And so I think it's there's there's layers to the conversation that haven't been reached yet. And I think that that goes to the idea of this letter, which full disclosure I was part of, you know, trying to pass around. It's it's not

164about, you know, wanting to stop this process and and and keep everybody where they are. It's wanting to make sure that everybody has faith in the process and that the right questions are being asked and that the consultants are giving us the information that we need. Tyler Technology stood up here and said um in the last presentation that there were town houses going up on Kenwood across from Clinkies, but that those town houses weren't being factored into the numbers at Elmmeir because town houses for whatever reason aren't factored into high increases in enrollment numbers. But the reality is if we know that there's 40 units of town houses going across from Quinties, often what we see happen when these town houses go up is empty nesters in Delmar, empty nesters in Slingerlands or empty nesters

165in Glenmont, wherever else are going to downsize their homes and move to these town houses and then you're going to see turnover in those neighborhoods where there has been lower turnover. It's going to happen. So the question becomes are we addressing a 2 to threeyear problem that we can foresee now or are we addressing something in a way that faces these problems in the long term and in speaking with lots of other people I' I've heard you know the children are resilient thing I I was going to make the same exact point but uh and they shouldn't have to be but the other part of this is this this is a first world problem right like this is a thing where we all have great schools all five schools are going to be are are

166very good all of our kids are going to be fine in whatever school they end up in but the important important thing is that we can avoid unnecessary disruption and I think that that's the question where as as Aaron said and I'm not speaking to the back of the room but you know disruption means different things to different people but I think objectively if we are looking at three out of the five zones that have space and we can just balance those things out it seems like that would be the thing that would be the least disruptive and so at the end of the day the ask that I have here now is that we push and and and I want to say again the zoning committee and and our parent rep Alicia has been

167excellent and and this is not an easy job. But I I hope that we as a board and as a community continue to push the consultants to make sure that the proposals that are coming are addressing all of these complicated issues in the long term and aren't just going to be the thing that makes the most sense on paper. Because the other question I have that I would love to hear addressed at some point in a future meeting is how many of these challenges that we're hearing in terms of grandfathering or moving neighborhoods, how many of these things could be addressed if we just had the right amount of bus drivers and if we just had a little more staff? because I realize we have shortages of those things. Okay. Can I just >> you

168finish your sentence? Finish. >> I realize we have shortages of things, but we have plenty of buses and we have plenty of physical space. So, if we had the people to move them around and we have a surplus in the budget, could we emphasize the idea of adding people there to then alleviate the need to continue to move people around because that could also shorten bus routes for kids that are reszoned. So, I'll stop. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, Nicole Prieta. >> Hello. I'm sorry I did not prepare anything. Um, never know how bedtime's going to go, but I'm here now. So, [snorts] uh, first of all, uh, oh, I'm Nicole Propetera. Hi. Um, I appreciate the comment about the Slenderlands fifth grade because I have a kid in Serland's fifth grade and to

169hear about all these empty classrooms when he's sitting with 25 26 other kids in his class with these new beautiful but very large desks that you can barely even walk around the classroom is very frustrating. So, thank you for just pointing that out. Um, one question that I had, um, I would appreciate a little bit more direction from I'm not even sure who from on how best to share feedback on this whole process. I emailed all of you twice. Sorry about that. Um, I've been emailing people pretty broadly and I feel like different elementary schools have different strategies for how they're collecting and sharing feedback in a way that is um not necessarily easy to to access for everyone. So, I don't know if there's like one clearing house of one email address for this

170or like what should we be emailing Tyler directly for some of these questions? Should we be emailing the board? Should be we be emailing our reps? I feel like that facet of the process has been really opaque and it's been really hard to know to feel like you're being heard when you're not really sure who to even talk to about any of those issues. Um, and then lastly, I um have two kids at SLlands now. One in the pipe coming to Surlands, one graduate from SLRlands. I'm also a proud uh member of the class of 1993 from Glenmont Elementary School. So, I have some history with the district here and um I would love to see the district, the board do more to um address the elementary school as one unified cohort. And I don't

171know if that means like having a elementary coordinator who whose job it is explicitly to look at all these five schools to compare programming among the five schools to compare traditions that kinds of things. Um I don't know if that makes sense to maybe I know the busing is already an issue but I know at Slinglands we don't necessarily have enough kids to do a math club there but I bet we have enough kids across the district to do a fifth grade math club or a fourth grade math club. Maybe there's a district-wide elementary newspaper and it takes turns going to the different elementary schools or something like that. I really think that there's an opportunity here, regardless of what happens with resoning, to really think about the elementary community as one community and to

172put a lot of these efforts that we've been putting into. We have so many wonderfully engaged parents put them into sort of working as this cohort which it does become in middle school and working to um facilitate those connections between schools um within the grades just a little bit more. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um that's everybody that I have on my list. Um, if do we have anybody else who would like to address the board that did not already Hello. Happy Wednesday. My name is Brett Winnie. Um, we talked about change earlier here and uh if we could pivot back to the beginning of our uh meeting. Um, I enjoy uh exercising in the audit world myself and uh my got some laughs over here. No one likes hearing that word audit. Um,

173and I understand we can't answer questions but to not leave it up to interpretation. Um, was this a uh um a school hired external auditor that we heard from this evening? Um, and if we were to leave it up to interpretation uh myself, that would be yes. Um, and as far as Tyler Technologies goes and information security, database, uh, cloud services systems, um, is anybody familiar with the audit world? We we hear it and we kind of go [snorts] and as a machine whether you're a school district, a manufacturer, you want to make bread or cookies, you come up with your wish list, you get audited on your quality management systems to see how well you are performing. [snorts] Um, Tyler Technologies is uh not ISO 27,01 certified and that is the ISO uh international

174standard to not allowing uh information security data breaches. Um, and as far as the school district's audit goes, there was no nonconformities. Tyler Technologies has had nothing but nonconformities and um legal issues, etc. So it leaves questions to the community as far as the quality management system of the school, selecting the contractor, uh providing the services here and etc. And I just wanted to stand forth to the community today to let you all know that, you know, they're not keeping up their end of the deal essentially is the the English terms of that. And uh I would hope that as our school district and as our community that we could push them and hopefully help them achieve that certification. Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Uh do we have anybody else? Hi, my name

175is Morgan Talbett and I did not prepare something this time. Um, but I did want to just speak mainly to um the communication piece. I feel that um I had a kindergartener go through um the COVID the the final years of COVID where they got to enter the classroom with their masks on. And I remember talking to my family across the US about what are they doing? What are you guys doing? I emailed Jod non-stop just thanking her for the phenomenal work that you guys did during COVID. The communication was clear. It was transparent. You didn't know what was going on. Nobody knew. We were concerned. It was compassionate. It was caring. It was from a place of concern um for the well-being of the community and the kids. and it just put our district

176through the roof to me and to so many people that I talked to about it, including family across the US who were in different districts. Um, I feel like this is not the same, but it is a similarly chaotic mess in our community and the communication has really fallen short. Um in the last meeting we came to realize that um that Glenmont and Eagle were really well notified back in May that um that lots of changes were coming. And when we first went to our first PTA meeting in September, um our rep said that that they were this appointed school zoning person and everybody was like, "Oh, okay, whatever that means." And it was kind of just left at that. Um to no fault of hers, there just really wasn't great communication for the underpopulated

177schools is what we have come to find. Um, we really only got wind I mean we we were under the impression the the three underpop populated schools were under the impression that nobody was going to be moved out. People were going to be moved in not a problem whatsoever. We were really only notified that there is the potential that kids would be moved out just before the last BOE meeting which is why you had 35 hammer families there. um we felt that um coming to the public uh session in November for a decision to be made in December was too late. So we wanted to make sure that we came as early as possible in with as many people as possible to just communicate our plea to not disrupt our community. That does not mean

178we did not want equity across all the schools. That does not mean that we wanted you to not move ours and not touch ours but touch everybody else's. We were speaking about the community we know that we've invested in that our kids are at that touches us personally and we were pleading that you do everything you can to not disrupt ours and everybody else's. When I went back and relisted to everybody's speeches, everybody said this is my experience and I'm sure it applies to everybody else across the board. We were not trying to sound elitist. We were not trying to sound um unfair. We get it. The zoning possibly needs to the lines possibly need to be redrawn. What we were asking was the least disruption for as many as possible, not just hammer across

179the board. Um I think that the communications have really been lacking again. Uh and then after the the BOE meeting last time, we heard that Slingerlands and Elmir felt as though they were completely blindsided. They didn't know that they I mean they sent email their PTO sent emails out saying uh anybody else feel completely blindsided by this? So I know that um these individual reps, there's only one per school. That's unfair to the person who's in that position. It's unfair to you guys. You can't trust that that information is getting passed appropriately. It's unfair to the families and the parents in the school. We don't know they because that one person doesn't have access to communicate out to the school. They're trying to go through the PTA and PTO's. That's unfair to the PTO because

180they're inundated with all the things that they already have going on and didn't want to add this to their plate. Um then then we were told we can't um communicate through parent square. So, how are we supposed to be communicating? And why is it on that one parent rep to be doing that communicating? This really needs to be coming from you guys. It needs to be treated like CO was in the sense of just communication because in the end what has happened is a little bit of pitting schools against each other. Um miscommunications, misinterpretations of how people are feeling. And I feel like that is um unfortunate. The very last thing really quick is um I have really not heard you guys talk about um hearing from other schools, similar districts and similar communities about

181how they did it and what they did. And I would just love for you guys to dive into that a little bit further to see what has worked and not worked in other communities. Thanks. >> Thank you. Anybody else? >> Hi, I just have a quick quick couple comments. I'm Carrie. Um I'm resident of the district, graduate of Glenmont Elementary. My child is in Slingerlands. He's a first grader. Um, so I just have some questions about the study and like the data that this is all based on. So I've lived in Bethlehem my whole life. I'm like third generation Bethlehem resident. My parents lived here. My grandparents lived here. So I've lived in the area for a while. We've had a lot of changes. Was it taken into account that there was a building moratorum

182for like a decade? you know, when you're looking at projections and comparing data, like we don't, you know, some of the underlying data, it would be nice for residents to be able to have access to that. You know, what were the assumptions that some of the projections are based on? I think that would be helpful in encouraging competence that in the study and that the you know projections that everything is based on you know if we just had more information on that and also the housing units because you know my generation it's a little bit different than my parents' generation on affordability you know affording single family housing. Some people moving into the district might start out in apartments and then move into a single family home which might change where their home dis like

183home zoning is. Also, someone mentioned town homes are coming in. There's less single family homes coming in. So, people are kind of forced into different types of multif family unit if they want to get in the district. So, I'm just wondering if that was factored into those projections. Just some questions for consideration. Thank you. >> Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Uh, moving on. Item six, action items. Uh, A, finance action items. Um, it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following finance action items 1 through 7. So, >> second. Any discussion? Uh, all in favor? I >> I um any opposed? Any extensions? That carries. Uh B. Professional personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following professional personnel action items 1

184through 10. >> So move. >> Second. Any discussion? >> All in favor? >> I. Um any opposed? Any extensions? That carries. C. Support personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following support staff action items one through four. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Uh any discussion? All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. D. Other action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve [cough] the following action [clears throat] items one and two. So moved. Second. Uh any discussion? >> Yeah. Um Dave, can you give us a topline summary of the curriculum changes? That would be helpful. >> Yeah. I mean spelled out in the memo, but um art added college credit to the photography course. Um English

185language arts, pop lit, and film added college credit. We have a new music technology and production course. a new philosophy east and west course um ENL core support course which is just a change in course title and then the tech value piece >> all in favor >> I any opposed any abstensions that passes um item seven recognition of public comment on a non-aggenda item if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on a non-aggenda item now would be the time to come up uh item eight. Um, future meetings and events. Our next regularly scheduled board meeting is on Wednesday, November 19th, um, here at the high school. Um, and we're anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to open session at 7. Thursday, November 20th, um, as mentioned is the forum

186for the zones of attendance. Um, and that's at 6:30 and that's at the middle school um, in the LMC. Um on Tuesday, December 2nd here at the high school from 7 to 9, we have the 2025 capital bond project vote. Um and then our next meeting after that is on Wednesday, December 3rd here at the high school. Again, anticipating exe executive session at 6. Um and reconvening to public session at 7. Um, and I'll just add too that um if any uh board members um have questions or need of information about Michelle's um uh celebration of life on Friday, uh let me know and I can share that with you. Um and seeing no need to go back into executive session, um do I have a motion to return the meeting? >> So moved. Second.

187>> All in favor? I I Meeting adjourned.