001child must be a resident of the school district and be four years old on or before December 1st, 2025. So, they would need to have been born between December 2nd, 2020 and December 1st, 2021. Um, eligible resident students will be entered into a lottery similar to what we did last year and completed applications would be received by 3M on Monday, May 23rd to be considered. Um, so we will be sending additional details to families directly. It will also be available on the website. We anticipate that all the information and registration process will begin on May 1st. So that's the update on for the prek. What's the capacity now? 36. Oh, pretty pretty significant. Right. So two more classrooms from TSL and one from child time. So yeah, thank you. Any questions for Jody? So that's
002all I have. Great. Um, our athletes, you're welcome to stay, but if you would like to leave, feel free. Uh, next on the agenda is our board report. Um, and I hope everybody had a good week off last week. Um, and I just quickly wanted to congratulate the cast and crew of Anything Goes, um, who put on a phenomenal show at the high school. Um, since our last meeting. Does anybody have anything else that they want to share tonight? I'll just uh I'll add to that. I thought Anything Goes was was absolutely stupendous. It was it was an amazing production and obviously crazy amount of work went in with the staging and the the cast and the crew. So, kudos and congratulations to everybody because it really really was a great performance. You're going to
003learn how to tap now. Yeah. I was surprised that so many knew how to tap. Um, next up are our student reports. Um, do we have anybody here from high school student senate? Anybody from the middle school? Hi, I'm Maddox. Congrats to all of our sports, our spring sports athletes, and thank you to all of our coaches for their time and efforts. All teams are underway and games are just beginning this week and next. We want to all of our fifth grade parents and guardians that are parent/guardian orientations are on May 6th and May 28th. Parents and guardians from any of our elementary schools may come on either night and both nights begin at 6 p.m. We also are excited to welcome our fifth grade peers for their visitation day on Friday May 16th. The
004entire program happens during the school day and parents do not need to make any transportation arrangements. This completely handled by the schools and we'd like to acknowledge and thank our transportation department for their support. Our annual BCMS stage creations play production opens on May 1st. The production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory promises to be outstanding outstanding show dates promises to be out show dates are set for May 1st, 2nd, and 3rd from 700 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tomorrow will hopefully be the annual wrap on our annual New York State ELA testing testing this past Tuesday went far more smoothly than it did prior to break. Our New York State testing, our New York State math testing will be in two weeks on May 6th and 7th. And our eighth grade students will take their
005New York State science test on May 14th. Our eighth grade concert will be on April 29th, our sixth grade our sixth grade on May 13th, and our seventh grade on May 15th. a reminder that our spring concerts start at 7:30 to accommodate students after school activities. Lastly, we want to congratulate our eighth grade orchestra on their outstanding NISMA performance today. And we want to wish everyone a happy Earth Day, which was this which was April. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. And next up is our presentation this evening. Um and we are having an elementary math update um from Bill Claremont and Diana. You guys are gonna sing for us, right? Bill's gonna tap. So just say next slide, please. So just as a a little bit of an introduction, my name is Bill Claremont. I'm
006the map supervisor. Um here this is I think my fourth board presentation since my hiring. Um I'm very popular if you want to want me to talk. Amazing. Oh yeah. This is Diana. I'm just one of the principles of math for the other principles. Yeah. So just as a little introduction to our elementary math program and what our focuses are. Um typically we we look at a math program we're looking to make a change to a math program. We adopted the Tang math program because it is um committed to high quality research based mathematics instruction and methods. Um it has a solid foundation um from a lot of the educational philosophers of our time going way way back and focuses on conceptual understanding um problem solving and procedural fluency. The Tang Math program itself focuses
007on a CPA approach which is a concrete pictorial and abstract approach for students. Um so it starts off with a very concrete method. It's going to show them and have things manipulative for them to to utilize and then it's going to go so that they can teach them how to how to represent that themselves within a picture. And then an abstract would be you know 6 + 5 = 11. Right? So it it goes from a very very um staged approach to to ensure that if we have high, middle or low students that it's applicable to every single student, right? So, a lot of things that you'll see in the Tang MAP program uses use of many manipulatives, number bonds, bar models, um all these strategies that that are utilized within the program are all
008found within the nextG math standards um and are also supported by the NCTM. So, why Tang Math? Um, so it aligns with the New York State NextGen standards, right? Sorry. Yeah, thank you. Um, it aligns with the New York State NextGen standards, aligns with the NCTM principles um, of action, supports meaningful discourse, which the the discourse is extremely important to us. We want our students to be able to not only do math, but discuss math, right? It's important for them to be able to talk mathematically in class. and uh tang math does a really really good job of doing that. Um so uh it supports meaningful discourse and conceptual understanding um along with productive struggle. We want students to be able to think about the math that they have to do. We want them to
009be able to conceptualize what they should do before doing something right. Um and this program does a really really good job doing that. some of the things that might be a little bit different. There might be a change in the order of some of the topics that would take some adjustment to get to. Um but the curriculum itself is similar in content, right? The the curriculum itself is very similar. All right. Um a lot of the strategies that are used are all included within the standards. If you read the standards through and through, you will see a lot of the strategies will mimic what those standards are calling to do. A lot of programs fall short on that where this program does not the structural alignment. Um, I've done a few presentations to staff during
010some of our staff development days on three-part lesson structure. And part of that three-part lesson structure is um creating an opportunity for students to think about a problem, the problem of the day, right? You pose a problem to the to the students. It really sets the tone, promotes reasoning and problem solving for these kids. It just gives them an opportunity before the teacher instructs to think right, activate that prior knowledge, utilize what they know, utilize the strategies that they've been taught, and then it's it gives them opportunity to share out and again that PCA the the CPA progression concrete pictorial abstract. You'll see a lot of students move pretty quickly through that approach and get right to the abstract and they don't have a problem doing that. where other students might stick to the pictorial
011for a longer period of time because it's just a better way for them to understand mathematically how to do a problem. And then we'll have a few kiddos where we have to continue to give them so that it's still but again the same problem can be done in all three approaches which is very very unique and really good for our students. So uh the other instruction alignments common assessments uh for data driven instruction and differentiation through mediation and um this year I can say that teachers are seeing um students with stronger skills at the beginning of the year. The TAG math curriculum starts off with a review of previous year's concepts and it's a pretty robust review. It's one unit. It takes the the 11 units from the previous year, puts it into one unit,
012and the students are going to review all of the topics that they did the previous year. We're seeing a lot of students come in with a much stronger skill set. And having an opportunity to do that in previous years, the first year of implementation, we had a lot of students struggle with that very first unit because they just didn't have that solid foundation. And that was shocking to teachers that they were not really coming in the previous year's Yeah. And those are standard states, right? We are talking about the standards. We're not talking about a very specific strategy that is um set aside by Mr. Tang himself. These are these are not proprietary proprietary um by any means. These are all embedded within the standards, right? We're seeing an increase in number sense and automaticity
013facts. A lot of students coming in from the previous year are coming in with solid foundations, which is what we really like to see. And what we had what we didn't see in the past was the number sense. That's what we were very worried about. K1 two kids don't understand the relationship between numbers and um you know that was that's really sets them up for not success in the older grades and that is why we the third grade teachers this year said wow we've noticed them coming in with a much stronger sense from day one. So that was nice. Yeah. And our hope is next year that we're going to see fourth grade say the same. We'll hear the same thing. Um this the Tang math rollout timeline is on the board. In 2019 um
014we allowed K5 access throughout, right? Um we allowed the teachers to just explore the program themselves, go on pick up pick a few um skills that they wanted to work with their students on, embed it throughout their the Ready Math curriculum as they as they wanted to um and just have some of it. Um and you know in 2024 25 is when we went into a full adaptation of TANG. Um in that in 24 um opportunities were brought to the cabinet with different curriculums and the cabinet approved for the Tang Math curriculum um to be utilized as our full program um K5 and that was they did choose to roll it out in tears. Yeah. So the the initial the initial idea was hey we're just going to do it and then we made that
015we had to have conversations with throughout and that's why you see that our full adaptation post K3 um was set up for the end of this year next year fourth grade and then the year after that it's going to be fifth grade and so when we start looking at this we want to check that progression and ensure that I am hearing from the fourth grade teacher yes our students are coming in with stronger skills from third grade and fourth grade and then fifth grade the following yes those kids are coming in with those strong foundational skills So the instructional core features um I I will have to say like the the consistency in the daytoday lesson structure is extremely unique. It is an extremely unique consistent approach and it's not just within a grade level.
016It's within the whole scope of A5. One of the unique things about this program is that it utilizes a lot of a lot of the strategies that students have to use in kindergarten, they can continue to use in fifth grade. Number bonds can be utilized in algebra. This isn't something new. Number bonds have been around for for a long time, right? Um so when we start looking at a lot of these strategies, it utilizes those strategies one year the next. So the kids really aren something new, they're applying it in a different way, which is extremely unique about the, you know, the Tang Math program. Um, the teacher guide and embedded strategies is getting better and better every year. The digital tools to support, um, instruction again has grown vastly over the last three years.
017student le student lesson videos. By next year, you're going to have a student lesson for every single Tang le students will be able to look at a very small snippet and get an idea of where they have to go. And this year, it's most of the lessons, right? Many of them new this year. So, that was very helpful. And the puzzles for reinforcement enrichment are vast. There's there's so much that you could do on that program for students to continue to just um do math in the classroom, whether it be through puzzles or whether it be through um some of his number sense games that he has um on there. So, there's there's a lot of things that that we can utilize with this program that other programs just don't have. Professional development is I
018I laugh a little bit because it says included. It's robust. It is robust. So if a teacher is struggling with any concept, anything whatsoever, all they have to do is reach out via email to Greg Tang or Greg Tang Jr. and they will respond within an hour or so. Um the support that we've gotten from the the creators themselves of this program has been invaluable. They the the amount of time that they give us is is amazing. The support is great. Like you can read those. It's they have an on on demand video library, bi-weekly Saturday morning PD sessions. Um all this is free. It's all included within what we purchase for the program, right? Live office hours with the Tang team. There are there are three different members of the TANG team that you
019can log in at any point and just join a live session and ask them questions at any point you want. Free one-on-one scheduled PD with the Tang team. Um I was in a third grade class this year and a teacher asked um Greg Senior if he would do a lesson for them and he set it up via Zoom. He zoomed into the class, interacted with the class, and if you ever seen one of his videos, I think that the cutest thing that he does is he asks the kids to wave. And he's like, "Go like this if you're if you're excited about math or go like this if you know what I'm talking about." And when you see the interaction between the kids, it is it's amazing. And you know, when you start seeing you
020start seeing a lot of these things put into action, it's really exciting place. The one thing I did not that I really do want to is the um the pre-unit question and answer sessions unpack each unit. Um we had those three times this year and we broke them out into uh grade levels. So we took um we took a three-hour session with Greg Jr. and he would go through um about four or five units at a time and unpack the entire units for the staff. Oh, one third unit. So it was about three or four units. And he would basically say these are the looks. These are the things that we want our kids to be able to by the end. These are the prerequisite skills that the kids are going to have to to
021utilize in order to be successful in this program. You don't get that any other program. There there's no other program where they're going to sit down and walk your teachers through this is what you need to do. This is how you have to do it. These are the look for. It's it's just been it's been a really unique experience um so far being able to Yeah, it was very helpful because teachers I don't understand why we're doing this first and this second or vice versa. I don't understand why we're doing lesson 70. and he would explain the upcoming standards after let's say grade three like what grade four needs to do and why this lesson is so important for your colleagues that are inheriting your students next year and that you can't just skip things
022because it doesn't seem there's a whole reason into the curriculum K and speaking from experience teaching teaching is one of those things where you know it's not that we don't look about what we've did before or that we're not going to look about what we um we want our students to be able to do later on, but the here and the now, it just it consumes you, right? I want my kids to be able to multiply right now. And when we have these opportunities, it kind of lends some clarity to say this might not be your standard, but exposing them to it is, right? So, we want to make sure that these kids are being exposed to these types of strategies, utilizing this stuff so that they can be successful moving out, right? Um, so
023enhancements. Uh, I this slide could have been 10 slides to be honest because since we um started using this program in 2019, it does not look the same. It is it's not nearly the same. Teachers asked for a teacher guide, they got it. Our teachers our teachers ask for student lessons, they got them. They ask for more support, you get it. Okay. Specific things. I would love question these types of questions could change this way. So the support that we're getting from them, we're we're really getting a comprehensive program for curriculum for our students in Dublin. They're willing to make any changes that we ask. Right? So a lot of stuff that you're going to start seeing coming into 25 26 the getting started videos they're very short. Almost all of them are under five
024minutes and it's a little na um avatar narrating the lesson itself like this is how you're going to do this lesson and it's very quick. They take them right through the CPA approach, right? The enhanced fluency games, I don't know how much more he can add to this, but the fluency games that he already has are pretty good and the kids really enjoy doing them. He's adding even more. And then the support that he's adding for next year is just I'm I'm really impressed. I'm really impressed. The Tang Mask community allows anyone who has a Tang Mask subscription subscription to go on and post comments, ask questions, or find solutions and share ideas with anyone across the globe who is part of that Tang community. You can post any question you want. Anyone else can
025answer it or a member of the Tang Math team will answer it for you. The AI chatbot is basically going to be an expert on the Tang math lessons. Tell me how I can help my students be better problem solvers in unit five and it will spit out these are the things that you have to focus on. These are the things that you have to look for. It is it's all all and encompassing all of the Tang math lessons, the pedigogy. Um, it'll go through all the descriptions. It'll go through all the videos and it'll give you a comprehensive plan. Give me a plan for my four students who are not mastering this skill and it will give you a plan for those four kids. It's going to be it's going to be tremendous. And
026that gets launched this coming school year. So, I don't want to read all of all of these. It's just going to be redundant a little bit, but I'm going to leave it up for a second. We've got a We had a lot of feedback from teachers. We had a lot of feedback from students and some feedback from parents that that I just want to share with you all. Um I think the some of the key things that you're going to hear simple consistent design supports all learners exposing to multiple strategies. And the best part is that when when our teachers start doing more and more and more, it allows the kids to really pick the method that they really enjoy to do. Right? Our goal as all educators is to get them to the most
027efficient one, right? We're going to give you all these strategies. The concrete is not going to be the goal, right? I don't want you sitting there with Unifix cubes putting them into piles when you can use a strategy that's going to be a lot more efficient. But if that works for you, And if we can move you into the pictorial, fantastic. We won, right? If we can move you then into the abstract, we've done our job, right? That's our goal. Our goal was always to get students into the abstract. But you all know it doesn't always work that way, right? So having those three parts is going to be extremely important for our students and that flexibility. I think we've seen a a huge, like I said before, we we've seen a huge uptake in
028the fluency and the kids are having fun with it, you know. Um, I think he's launched three tournaments so far this year and basically the students log in with their credentials that the teachers gave them and they just complete math problems over and over and over and over and over again. And one of our third grade teachers classes won the from like through all of the kids that log in, their class was number one and they were so excited and so pumped. It was it was really cool. You go in and you see them doing it and they just get smiles and you're like you they're having fun and you're tricking them into doing math problems. I mean, how does that work? Right? And he does it. He makes it fun for them. The kids
029are really really having fun. Um you get from kids who say, "I hate math, too. I'm loving math." Right? And that's That's really really nice to hear. Um teachers are saying it's making them better teachers, right? Seeing this seeing this approach is making them feel like they're better teachers. And then some of the student feedback again, you'll you're going to hear this repetitive. It's awesome. They're having fun. The puzzles are challenging. When you look at some of those puzzles, I have to think about them sometimes. Look at my brain. Hold on a minute. Yep. They are challenging. We can challenge our students. And right there, March Madness was the best. That was from probably the third grade team that won the March. Again, kids saying, "I love the tournaments." Um, even though time map can
030be challenging, my teacher makes it easier with color and steps. And again, it's all coming from the program itself. Best part about math is we are always learning and always having fun. I love hearing that. Right. My teacher shows us a lot of ways to solve problems and it's fun to practice them all. Yep. This is the parent ones. As a parent, I enjoy tang math because it teaches me new ways of thinking about math concepts that I learned long ago. I think the hardest part, I think, as a as a parent, I can speak to this, my son's 15 now going through Coming Court, is that, you know, that can be a challenge for us. We are standard algorithm children, right? We were grown, born and raised into the standard algorithm and that's not
031the standard anymore. The standard is no longer standard algorithm. We have kids utilizing partial quotients and partial products long and long way before they get to that that standard algorithm and they prefer it. I prefer it. I prefer the break number. If I want to multiply two numbers, I'm going to break them apart. It just makes it so much easier. But the standard when we get to sixth grade is the standard algorithm. So um part of what I wanted to speak about too was that we want to make sure that we support the parents more moving forward right we need to have a more comprehensive approach to supporting parents at home right um I don't know if you all were on the board at the time when we did the TANG map parent night um
032it was probably 2019 I think and um we had the Tang team come in and they did a Tang family night and it was a lot of We had a lot of parents, a lot of kids. They were playing the Tang Math games. We need to get back to that. We need to get back to involving parents in part of this Tang community. Um, and that's our goal by the end of the night. Goal next year is to make it more of a district um a district approach to support. So, next steps and um I I think about next steps all the time because you know what's next? what's next? What's next? And hopefully the answer to what's next is not, oh, we're going to change. No, we need we need to stick stick with
033this and we need to make sure that we're continuing to support the teachers as they need, right? Um that continued implementation of support that includes that transition from fifth grade to sixth grade. Um we're hearing a lot about that. We're we're we're making plans to include the fifth grade and sixth grade teams together so they can see what our students are doing now in the elementary school. not the same, right? They need to see it. I'll give you one example, and I I said this already about partial quotients. We teach our students how to break apart problems and to solve them in non-rine ways. But what is the standard in sixth grade standard out, right? I think what we need to consider moving forward is that we need to have a better jumping off platform,
034a bridge to get from an elementary approach to a middle school approach. And that's our focus moving forward. Once we start seeing that transition move from fourth grade to fifth grade, now we've got to say, what does that transition look like from fifth grade to sixth grade, right? Because that's going to be extremely important to us. We can't just say, oh, you're out of fifth grade. Good luck in middle school, guys. I think you're going to have a great time, right? When math is now totally different and we're just going to say, "Hey, remember all the stuff you learned in elementary school? We're not going to do that here." We need to make sure that we have a great bridge going from fifth grade to sixth grade to make sure our students. So, we've already
035set up one meeting towards the end of the year. We're working on that right now for fifth grade teachers to meet math teachers to really have a conversation about what they're seeing in fifth grade. teachers can also talk about what they're seeing in fifth grade because we do have some fifth grade teachers currently using Tang. So, we want to make sure that we're not waiting. We're not waiting for that 25 26 transition. We have kids now that are going into middle school next year that we have to think about like how are we going to help that transition. Um again, we want to monitor that progress using those common assessments. Part of that monitoring process is have we seen changes? Have we seen changes in the IE data? Have we seen changes in some of
036our common assessments? The common assessments piece is going to be the one that's the hardest to answer right now. Right? We have not fully transitioned yet all grade levels. So looking at some of those you'll have right now some fifth grade like I said some fifth grade teams are using ready mat some fifth grade teams are using. So common assessments there invalid right we don't have all of that data but when we start looking at the third grade we start looking at second grade all of them are utilizing common assessments and we are seeing that these students are performing very very well right they are performing well I think when we start looking at that transition we need to give it a little bit more time for these students to get through these grade levels
037and have the tag program consistently from kindergarten to first to second to And then we can really look at that big picture to say, hey, now let's evaluate how our students are doing and how effective our program is. Thank you. Um, we appreciate it. Uh, you mentioned, um, student video lessons and then you also mentioned getting started lessons. Are those the same thing? No. So, basically, there are video lessons where um Greg Tang has a group of students with him and he's presenting a lesson to a group of students. He records them, upload them to his website. Okay. The getting started videos are just there two of them. One right now is Greg going through with no one and unpacking the lesson himself. Next year there is going to be an avatar that walks you
038through the CPA approach in every single lesson. Okay? So, one of them is him teaching a class lesson and the other is an avatar that's going to break it up and you know make it um approachable to parents to the student to the teacher. I would think the avatar you could use if the child is absent you could push that out too. Here's an intro that you weren't here today. Yeah, that was going to be my that's what I was thinking at most but you could use any you want. My next question related to that is like how are those student video lessons or the the getting started ones to use? Is that like an in-class thing or is that they're at home and they forgot how to do? It could be one of two
039things. It could be a student missed a day. It could be hey, you know, if you want to look at this again tonight with their parents, they can assign the lesson. They go home. They log into their Greg Tang Math account and they it's available to them in their their thread. They click on it and they can watch the video as a refresher. So there's I would say that you could use it either one of those ways and it would be very effective. Or if a parent want to see it, you could assign it to the kid and they don't have to take a look at it. But if the parents interested, the teacher can say, "I'm going to assign these lessons and it's going to be there every single day." Okay. If you want
040to look at it to try to help support the kid, support your child at home, you can review the lesson yourself and you can try to support them. And like any other program that we have, teachers use those tools a little bit differently. Some use tools more and others less. So whatever works for that teacher other questions. Um last I think it was last year we had a group of parents um who came in whose um children were more advanced in math and they were looking for more ways um to make sure those children were challenged within the math um lessons. Um so I was just wondering whether this program allows you to um continuously challenge those children are more advanced in math and whether there are not only within the lesson but also whether
041there are aspects of this that can be used outside of the the time in class in order to provide those children who want even more challenges for them. Yeah. So the answer to that is yes. I mean everything is open to the entire class as teachers want to give students access to content or to material. All of his lessons are leveled. assessments are leveled. He'll have assessment one through four, right? So, all of the assessments are there. He also has problems of the day. He has challenge problems on there. He has New York State preps on there. So, all of those things can be utilized. Um, but the New York State obviously is five, right? So all of those questions can be assigned to to students and does have challen Again, up to teachers how
042they do that. Yeah. I mean, you get four pages for every lesson and it's basically set up level one, level two, one of the easiest. Other questions? How do you determine which fifth graders do? Yeah. So, right now it's if a teacher wants to utilize the T program, right? right now can't we're trying to do is roll out so we're not just pulling out but if they want to get into it and they really want to I don't really want to do math I don't want to say no right so they have the freedom to choose whether they'd like to use ready math or tang a lot of times you'll see that the pod teachers will make a decision it's very it's very rare that you'll see I've got three teachers at e A lot
043of times they'll come together. But this year K12 had to use the following year. That was the way the cabinet decided they wanted to roll it out. Okay, everybody. questions. Thank you so much. Um, thank you for a great presentation. I appreciate this. What can I ask you? I've got a couple questions on a couple topics, but talking about the the parent portal or the parent not portal, the parent side of this. Um, one of the questions I have is can parents request can can I as a parent if my if my classroom is my kids classroom's using Tang say like hey can you assign these things so that I can help my student at home? Absolutely. Okay. I don't I don't see why the teacher I don't see why that would be an issue.
044Um it would take the teacher a matter of two minutes. Perfect. All right. And that's if the student has not already been set up online. So the process is the teacher logs in themselves. They click on their account. It comes up with your students. You can you can add your students right in there. Abby one, Johnny 2, what however you want to set it up. And then you assign them a password and they just give it to you and then you can log into Tang Math yourself using the student account. When it comes up, all the lessons that have been assigned are there. Right. Right. So basically also have a calendar that he utilizes and the teacher can go in there and preassign the entire unit. I'm going to teach this lesson on this day
045and I'm going to put it right there and they can set up the entire month if they wanted to. These are all the tang lessons so that if you don't need it one day, no big deal. But a week down the road, I really want to go on and see what that lesson looks like. You log in, you click on it, it's right there. I would say elementary teachers do that a little bit less. I would just they do a little bit more responsive teaching. Want to control you know they didn't do well today so I want to retach it tomorrow as opposed to I think you know 6 through 12 you're kind of you're in your 40 minutes you don't have that choice that luxury sometimes so to maybe take another day to repeat
046something you have to follow the calendar I would think people do that not a lot they can but they cannot do it here's a good question though because I'm Katherine I'm interested to know now that you bring it up how question. It's a good question because I I honestly don't know the answer to that right now. Um but the ease of use is is right there. That's great from, you know, from from a parents perspective, having a tool like this that can help me. As you mentioned, I was not I was not taught this way. Um so to to be able to have those conversations at home and be supportive um of my student is is really great. So thank you. Um you mentioned, you know, we've got this year's fifth graders who have been
047exposed to some reading math and moving up to to sixth grade. And you mentioned um coming together and working with fifth and sixth grade teachers together. Could you unpack that a little bit more? What what is that going to mean? How will that look to and and then in out years to help provide that bridge? Yeah. So, um, my job as the supervisor is to ensure that the transition is smooth for our fifth grade to go into sixth grade, right? If I hear things back like, um, the sixth grade team starts off and they're going right to the standard algorithm. I don't want I don't want that for our fifth grade students because they're introduced to the standard algorithm, but it's not their standard, right? We need to ensure, hey, we're going to expose them
048to it. It's going to help you guys as they get there, but they're not froze at, right? They're going to need a bridge to get there. So the example that I gave of the standard algorithm or partial partial quotients a lot of times even when you even when you get into decimal operations there's a little bit of a gap as you go from fifth to six. So we have to smooth that out. We have to make sure that they're talking with each other. The idea is the fifth grade team has an opportunity to talk with the sixth grade team to say these are our standards. These are what we this is how we've trained our students to address these types of questions. Your expectation is here but our requirement is here right so we have
049to bridge that gap so then the sixth grade team has an opportunity to say oh well that that's interesting we always thought that hey that standard algorithm that you end with in fifth grade it's going to be where we start in sixth so that's that's the conversation we want to be back and forth we want to make sure the fifth grade team has an opportunity to talk to six has an opportunity to talk to fifth and say how are you preparing your students so that we can make adjustments on and they're both open to both sides. So, it's been it's going to be a great conversation. Many elementary teachers end up tutoring in middle school. Yeah. So, like and a lot of them are fourth and fifth grade teachers just because they're upper level teachers
050and they're saying like, "Wait a minute, I'm tutoring this child in sixth grade and I don't think it's really the transition is not as smooth as we need it." It was actually request from the fifth grade teachers. Yeah. Start this and get together. We're going to target very specific areas that blend the fifth and sixth grade curriculum that we need to do a better job to bridge for our fifth grade students to get into sixth grade. We don't want it to be a jump over the canyon, right? We want it to be a step over. Thank you. Um and you mentioned we're, you know, we're we're in the process of moving entirely to TANG and away from ready math. Will students continue to be using the I ready diagnostic test and these two and I
051know you were saying like Tang is you know it's it's a way of of looking I think it's not the only way will students do you anticipate students um needing to translate almost between the way that the questions are asked in one realm and the way the information is presented in another. No, we're not seeing any dip from performance on our I read a K3 right now. Okay. So even students that are that so the the kindergarten well I'll focus on second grade because last year those second grade students did have tank the third grade students this year are having tank we're not seeing any dip in the results at all the confusing part is that the ready benchmark is not necessarily testing the units that you just taught in that that's the confusing part
052like they're not they're not parallel they're not aligned they're not is a responsive test to a child individual. You know, what standards does the child know, what standards do they not know in this grade, in last year's grade, in the grade before the gaps? That's totally different than a curriculum. And I think that's sometimes we hear like, oh my gosh, well, I look to see that the child what the child was taking on his I already benchmark and it doesn't and we haven't done that unit yet. That it's not supposed to be that way because it's okay that a child doesn't know that on his benchmark, you know. So, That's the confusing part. Yeah. I mean, if you were to look at a map that that's got, you know, a thousand squares on it, the
053I diagnostic is going to go from one point on the map to to another. It's going to move all over the place. Where our curriculum is is one, two, three, four, five. So, it's not a it's not a onetoone comparison. Um, but in terms of performance, we're not seeing any any changes in a negative way. Thank you. And then, um, I don't know if this question is best for for Bill or for Dave, but Um, looking forward, are there ways to continue to offer family nights and kind of districtwide opportunities? Yep. That is my goal. I I bring that back. I will sit down and and speak with the the TANG math team to see how we can um better incorporate a district-wide approach to supporting parents because I don't want it to be classroom
054by classroom. I want it to be a districtwide a district wide thing. that money was amazing and I'd love to bring that back. It was it was truly a great opportunity for our parents. Um six years ago, right? We need to do a better job. We can do that more often. Thank you. Even parent workshops. Uh I think some of the stuff might be virtual. Yeah. But you know, just having those opportunities out there for you to choose if you want to join or you don't. Kids want to join or they don't. It's just great opportunity. Any other questions? Very quickly, I I know part of what you really like about it is the responsiveness of the tank team. Um I guess two somewhat related questions. One is like how many districts utilize the the
055program and then two it sounds may you know is there any concern that if it grows too much more then the sort of responsiveness would would fall away just as a matter of logistical reality. That's a great question. Um, let me answer the second one first. Yeah. Um, they they've already expanded their team since we started using their program in 2019. Um, the team in 2019 was three people four people, right? So, his team now is is much larger than that. He's got teams of he's got teams of former teachers and he has teams of coders working working with them to ensure that their their program never goes down. never had to go down. Never never been on. Um, so to answer your question, I don't think it's going to be an issue because as
056they grow, he's responding to that in turn. I'm getting bigger. I need more people, right? So, he's done a really good job already of ensuring that if that happens, he's going to continue to add. He's extremely he is a very very teach, but you can tell that he's so passionate about ensuring that kids have an understanding of those math concepts that I guess maybe that's a follow-up question then given that um you know to the extent that you know it sounds like you know sounds like you're pretty pumped about the program and obviously we you know the more long-term something is the better you know once you takes x amount of years just to get it in place and now you want it going forward um you Do you have any concerns about this being
057sort of a topheavy thing? You know, that that it's his passion. This is individual's passion that's driving it. And to the extent he, you know, retires, let's say, no, because he's he's got his son who's also I've actually utilized and this is this is just a preference, right? I utilize Jun this past year, year and a half more than I used. Um, and Jun and he is Yeah. Another thing I would say is that um they are now they just received a few different rounds of venture capital funding. They're I mean they're really they understand that in order to grow the program they need to grow internally as well as an organization. Um and that's their main focus right now. This summer they're running um a two-day workshop where um just to bring more and
058more people in as trainers. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess I just I'm just wary sometimes of a of a family-owned business that that we're looking for, you know, a decadesl long, you know, solution to, you know, to good math. But thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. And I think I just to speak on that just a little bit further is, you know, since I've taken all those, this is our secondation program, right? I don't want to do this, right? I want to make sure that we're making the right decision. I want to make that doing exactly what he said. and his mem Calgary city starting to migrate itself to New York as far as the last time I checked a couple of It's mostly Midwest West. Any other questions? Thank you both very much.
059Thank you very much. Next on our agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item. If we have any visitors who would like to address the board on an agenda item, now would be the time to come to the microphone. Uh, next item six, action items. A, finance action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following finance action items 1 through seven. If I could just speak to one of those items for clarity. The roof repair resolution in front of the board. Just for some context, back in early January, there was a significant weather event that damaged the roof of the D-wing on the high school building. Uh turned out to be roughly just under $100,000 worth of damage. Usually a project that size requires a
060public bid. Uh a because it's a public works project and b because of the size of the size of the the work given the fact that it was on a roof in winter. It was declared as an emergency which sort of put that outside of customary bid process. In January, a roofing contractor who we actually had on site because of the capital bond project came up, shored up the roof, install uh reinstall the flashing, put on some ballast to keep the roof membrane down. Unfortunately, because of the temperature issue at the time, we weren't able to fix the new membrane because it requires warmer temperatures. So, I just wanted to put that in terms of clarity and the the schedule because I can see how wait a second, this happened in January. Why wasn't it
061bid if we're doing the work in April? So, still falls under that emergency declaration. I just want to clarify the timeline. Great. Uh, I need a motion. Thank you. Uh, all in favor? Any opposed? Any extensions? That carries. B. Professional personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following professional personnel action items one through nine moved. Uh all in favor? I. Any opposed? Any extensions? That carries. And I believe um Chris Jansen, our new music supervisor, is here with us. Chris, if you want to come up and introduce yourself to everybody. Good evening. I'm Chris Jansen. Um, and I just wanted to quickly introduce myself and say how excited I am to uh be uh the next music supervisor in Bethlehem. I've had the opportunity uh for
062the past several years to watch my own children go through the music program and the Bethlehem uh program as well, the district program as well. and uh I'm just they have gained so much from the music program here and I'm excited to join the program. So, thank you. Excited to have you. You're welcome. And thank you for um playing the pit for the musical. Always fun. Uh C, support personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve following support staff action items one through six. second. Any discussion? Uh, I would just like to point out um three, Mrs. Deragon, a school monitor, a lunch monitor at Ellir, is retiring after 47 years. So, I thought that that was a tremendous number. I just wanted to give um a personal
063shout out to her. I know all the children at Elmir love her and um missing her now that she's retired. She has had children of her first students and now she's starting to have grandchildren of her first students. So that is such a um tremendous Yes. legacy and I just wanted to point that out. Thank you and happy retirement to her. Uh all in favor? I. Any opposed? Any extensions? That carries. D. Other action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following action items one through three. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. Uh E. Uh the 202526 capital region Bosey's administrative budget. It is recommended uh by capital region Boseies that the board of education vote to approve the following capital
064district board of uh board of cooperative educational services administrative budget. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries? F. Capital Region Bosey's board member election 2025. It is recommended by Capital Region Boseies that the board of education vote on items one through four as a slate to elect the four candidates on the ballot for board members of Capital Region. Boseies. Any discussion? All in favor? I I any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. Item seven, recognition of public comment on a non-aggenda item. If we have any visitors uh who would like to address the board on a non-aggenda item, now would be the time to come up to the microphone. Item eight, future meetings and events. Um our next regular board meeting is on Wednesday, May 7th. uh anticipating
065executive session at 6 and then reconvening to open session at 7. Um that meeting will also contain the public hearing on the 2025 2026 budget on Wednesday, May 14th at 6:30. Um we will be having the meet the candidates night. Um do we know if that is virtual or if that's in person? We asked for it to be in person at the high school in D122. Okay. Um, and then on Wednesday, May 20th, from 7 to 9, um, 7 am to 9:00 pm, that is our 2025 annual election and budget vote. Um, and then on Wednesday, May 21st. Um, and I'm sorry, that should be a Tuesday, May 20th. Um then on Wednesday, May 21st, um is our regularly scheduled board meeting, anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to public session at 7 o'clock.
066Seeing no need to go back into executive session, could I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? Second. All in favor? I meeting adjourned. And students, don't forget to come up and sign out on a sign out sheet.