001e e e we could reconvene our meeting to open session the board has been an executive session since 6 o'clock to discuss a contractual matter and two tenure candidates we could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge algi to the flag the United States of America and to the rep stands one nation God indivisible with lice introductions Dave first Katherine Nat you mcnight John walon jod mono Holly delau M Mor Lauren grao and John MC Phillips and Bob Kean are unable to be with us this evening um do we have any Pig students visiting welcome thanks for coming um your obligation is to stay until 9 o' or until the meeting is over whichever one comes first and just make sure you sign out on one of the sheets that's up here so
002you get credit for being here uh first up is the approval of minutes it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the December 4th 2024 regular board meeting so move second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extenstions that carries item three meeting reports and first is our superintendent report sure thank you uh so tonight I'd like to recognize a couple of Staff members who it's a very unusual situation I'm going to start with um one of our teachers who unfortunately was not able to be here with us tonight uh Mr Jeff M he's a middle school teacher and on Friday November 15th a student in his class in his Home Room actually was choking and he acted fast and perform the highli effectively dislodging the
003blockage while the student was frazzled Jeff acted with ease and conf confidence and was a true hero that day the students parent did write to the board of ed you all saw that and stated thanks to Mr M's attentiveness his quick thinking and composure what could have been a tragic situation was averted averted it's not an exaggeration to say his actions were life saving a big thank you to Jeff for your calm and Swift actions and we were going to get him a pin even though he's not here can I give it to you m uh yes um our next staff member Tom Maldonado is here so Tom do you want to come up with your kids and be recognized I told kid most absolutely he said this is his children's first board meeting hey
004kiddos you're welcome anytime so I'm GNA tell you what your dad did if you're not sure you already know well I'm going to say it so everybody knows okay teachers make every effort possible to make their lessons relevant and meaningful students in Mr maldonado's health class not only found relevance and meaning in the lesson on November 13th this was two days apart mind you uh but saw what they were learning in action on Wednesday uh Tom was teaching his health class about the heck maneuver and during the middle of the lesson a student who was eating a snack in the class suddenly signaled they were having issues catching their breath although some students thought this was staged uh Tom knew it was a real situation without hesitation he went through all his relevant steps When
005approaching someone in distress and administered the Heim after a couple of reps the student's windpipe was clear and the student began breathing deeply Tom's students witnessed his calming demeanor expertise and technique without hesitation uh Mr Maldonado has approach Mr doml about providing future trainings during faculty meetings related to basic first aid uh primarily the himik maneuver so thank you Tom for all you do and for saving your life so we have a pin for you you're welcome thank you thank you we do like one too what do you want a pin is that do you want to get a get it want to get a photo yep can [Applause] and my last uh comments is just to for everyone to have a wonderful holiday and a break from school and come back 2025 terrific so
006thank you that's it um and and I would love to see encouragement of as many additional staff um to be trained in uh in basic first aid um um throughout all of our buildings uh because clearly based on both of those instances it is critically important and next up is our board report um and first I just wanted to thank um the community and also everyone within all the buildings that helped with the caring and sharing uh drive both the collection of the um all the food items and getting it out to um families and I also wanted to um congratulate the um cast and crew and directors of radium girls that was up at the high school um this past weekend I had a chance to see that and they did a terrific job
007um as usual um but uh that was I just want to throw that out there for them I know I think Katherine you had said you had something you wanted to share yeah absolutely I just wanted to share my deep appreciation to the Middle School staff who hosted me earlier this week for a little board member field trip it's nice to get out into the uh it's really nice to get out into the schools and to see our teachers our students and our staff in action and this was absolutely no exception I got to be part of uh Mr kerney's science class and see his just like absolutely chill and engaging demeanor with his students uh I got to see coach McAn and um some of our fantastic AIDS Kelly d and Margo working in
008adaptive PE and just making those kids smile along with two of um Middle School eighth grade coaches who were helping out in adaptive PE as well and doing a great job um Mr van bruntz uh I got to participate in my first ever escape room activity um I don't know if my team escaped or not I was only there for part one of a two-part uh lesson but I'm rooting for them um and that was that was a very cool experience to see all the work and thought that he had put into developing that lesson and really engaging the students on so many different levels uh Miss biter science class I would love to go back and take science again with her uh the students were literally dancing and moving in anticipation as she was
009uh unfolding the lesson and as she was engaging them in some demonstrations and uh and talking about uh whether or not air takes up space was very cool um and in Mrs lunden's class uh Spanish which I did not take Spanish but luckily I was uh paired with a student who was quite good at it um and he helped me through and uh we were able even to get a little a ticket to put in the class bag because part of her activities engaging students it has to do with uh the Bean Boozled game and they get to choose whether to Bean Boozled her if you have played that I don't recommend it but uh she's a brave soul and and the students absolutely loved it and then I got to meet with the admin
010team and it was just a truly truly wonderful day um from start to finish and I'm again I'm just deeply grateful for everybody who invited me in and welcomed me as part of their classes and uh just really made me feel part of the community it's cool and every time I do one of these field trips I'm just like man can I do that again can I do that more so I know Middle School can sometimes get a get a bad rap but uh just because of the ages it can be a tough age but these kids and these teachers and this staff just knocked it out of the park so thank you than go anybody else have anything you want to share couple small things I was going to Echo your comment about radium
011girls we actually went to the capital rep the day before we went to the radium girls and the the quality of acting from the high schools was as good as the rep which it was very impressive um I know we recognized a bunch of athletes last time F the girls cross country te has gone on to come fifth in the nation um which is continues to be impressive so and I think we're going to have them in in January the next meeting they're coming excellent yeah anybody have anything else uh next are our student reports do we have anybody here from high school student Senate anybody here from the Middle School Miss lingers home run won the right to keep the B bcms totem in her class classroom for the next month by being the
012leading home room and collected food donations the collected on average of 8.3 items per student congrats one more time to our girls varsity cross country team who came and fit that Nationals and to our peer eighth grader Sophie C who once again had had an amazing show the winner of our November and December hero of the month is Audie Murphy who is the most decorated enlisted American soldier in history and who was an advocate for soldiers mental health affected by their service now for this we would like you guys to please look in front of you and guess which strength you think came in first for the first which strength came came in first um throughout the Middle School surveys for the first time ever Miss delin what do you think what do you think
013which which one do you think that came in first a quiz um curiosity no um um Mr McNay what do you think C no um and one last one miss Monroe which one do you think which one do you think gratitude no it was actually um forgiveness I know Middle School surprising The bcms Helping Hands Club took home two medals in their recent canstruction event at cross's mall even more importantly the food will go to shelters around the region to help needy families have a safe and happy than holidays thank you [Applause] guys uh next up is our presentation this evening uh we're having a presentation on restorative practices multi-tiered systems of support all right welcome every everyone uh and welcome all of our guests you might recall that almost exactly a year ago um
014sitting in this Library the presentation that was done um was about District level mtss um so what we've evolved at the middle school looks very different than what they've done or what is typically done at the elementary level primarily because when you meet with teachers at the elementary level you're talking with one teacher about their 24 25 students um we've taken that concept and now evolved it into a an entire team context so when we talk about team size we're talk typically talking about we're in a three over three or nine team building so we have three teams per grade level Hudson Mohawk and Patroon on average there are for 950 students there's between 105 and 115 students per team so when Jackie and Nicole visit team meetings they're typically starting out kind of with
015a huge data set of talking about 110 to 115 students uh at each team meeting and then you'll see we distill that down into individual student conversations but we'll get into that uh in a moment so welcome uh mtss once again uh stands for multi-tiered systems of support it's sort of an the the successor of what some folks called response to intervention or RTI uh it's a lot it's it's a lot more robust than what RTI was and later on in the presentation I'll talk to you more about why New York state has made this a model that they're going to use I I think for long term um this is a a really dense graphic but it it speaks um or underg gurs the the structure of of all the things that we look
016at when we look at all of our data sets across 950 students so if you can imagine for every student in the building we have somewhere between 10 and 20 data points um so we're literally looking at thousands of different data points as um we look at students and we're trying to create patterns off of that concept uh and then in the next slide you'll see how Theory kind of gets translated into practice um and basically the theme of this slide is taking a really big data set doing some pattern recognition across a lot of different stakeholders including our our teaching staff our psychologists um obviously Jackie and Nicole uh and then having discussions that get distilled down to talking about individual students and whatever their needs are not just academically but across mental health
017domains you know Fitness and and physical domains when kids are absent from school um and we try to take as much as we can and measure as much as we can about the whole student and one of the misnomers about mtss is that it can be maybe overly clinical and not necessarily personal um and when we distill out of that big data set down to conversations about the individual student we are truly talking in a team environment about what we can do to help that student be successful no matter what it takes whether it's friendship Dynamics um whether it's relationship Dynamics between teachers and students um so everything's on the table in those discussions and Jackie and Nicole talk talk more about that in a minute next slide please um so what you're going to
018see Nicole present about are and I just you can kind of see it up at the top there but these are all fictional representations of three students uh and they're kind of amalgams of excuse me the three most C common patterns that you'll see in student performance so Nicole's going to tell you more about these good evening everyone so as Dr kugman just mentioned we're going to go through three different examp examples of common patterns of performance that we see and we talk about in our team meetings and then into mtss so our first student sorry Britney our first student uh when you look at their and this is some of the data that we look at with our teams if you look at their report card their quarter grades clearly you can tell looks
019pretty strong however when we dive into the I ready reports we see that this is a student who we need to monitor throughout just to make sure that we are keeping on top of them in case they might need RTI intervention based on the Diagnostics that they took earlier in the year we do know however that not every student performs well on standardized tests so a student such as student a they would get pulled by an RTI teacher for additional testing which often times indicates less of a defici or Le less of a deficit as initially indicated by those scores student B again looking at the report card grades not overly concerned about them however um it's definitely a student that we need to discuss further as a team based on their chronic absenteeism and
020so the question would be is this a student who is capable of higher academic performance if we were able to successfully address the attendance issues we oh the other thing I want to mention about this before we go on to student C is that these grades if this is a student who is working to their potential they're putting in a great deal of effort we would recognize and applaud these grades by no means um does this represent a failure in terms of a report card if students working their potential that's all we ask for and we applaud that next slide please so student C is a student who is clearly on our radar for a multiple of reasons so there are multiple concerns the report card grades are concern uh they're part of two of
021our subgroups chronic absenteeism and then identify deficits in both reading and math so with a student like student C we would pull together a number of stakeholders to devise a comprehensive plan that we would use to support support this student next slide I forgot something on that one okay um so the counselors we hopefully everyone understands this the counselor's role they are really the bridge between all stakeholders they play a key role in that they are at every single team meeting and they are in regular communication with parents especially our students they're struggling but even students who are not struggling they maintain regular communication with parents homes if the student has a social worker here in the building and outside providers they're often the first person to bring a student to our attention if they
022think something's going on that we need to know about it's usually from the counsel initially and they are in a unique position to identify concerns early on and then provide the team with suggest sus in terms of interventions or supports that they think would be helpful for the student okay so taking one step back when we're talking about our uh mtss mtss structure the first thing that we're providing to all students are tier one interventions so this is a support that's offered to all students in the gened setting the idea behind this is uh giving students important instructional practice so that can be working with students providing interventions inside the classroom working with students during their homebased period which operates similar to a study hall but where they have contact with those teachers and getting
023additional support and uh guidance that they need from any number of their teachers during that time uh could also be working with teachers after school another big part of our tier one is relationship building both with our teachers and our staff and uh with our counselors our counselors go in and provide whole group instruction to our students to provide them emotional um social emotional learning and then the teachers are providing feedback on a tier one level through progress monitoring for any number of Assessments through I ready and the goal really is to support uh solid foundation so students can Thrive and so that we can reduce the number of students who would require more intensive intervention so we're talking about our 85% perhaps of our student population so we mentioned a bit about our team
024structure so once our teams have identified and sorry next slide identified students that have not been successful with the tier one interventions then we're looking to see are there additional supports that we need to put into place so during team meetings when teams have talked about all of the supports and interventions they put in place the length of time that they've provided these supports and the students are still not meeting success they may then bring that student to the counselor and ask them to bring them to our mtss meeting so our mtss uh Team includes us administrators school counselors social workers the school psychologists and both our math and Ela RTI teachers and the idea is to have all of these stakeholders able to look at the data for that student like the examples you
025saw that Nicole had shared and really try to narrow down what is it that we need to address first some students see there may be a number of things that we want to address but we want to prioritize what we think is the main goal for the student at the time to help them be more successful in school so we really rely heavily on our data um um R ready data having additional uh curriculum based measures that our teachers can do in the RTI setting um and then we're taking a deeper dive a deeper look at those kids so there's any number of interventions that we can provide to those students sometimes our team is looking in be able to identify perhaps some tier one strategies that the team maybe has not tried so it
026could be that we meet and ask the counselor to go back to the team and have a discussion about an intervention we'd like that to try before we move on to tier two and tier three supports it could be that we're identifying a skill deficit in reading or math and then we're looking at additional RTI support and that could be two days a week during home base at a tier 2 level or some students requiring more intervention may be meeting with a reading or math teacher uh five times a week um could be a student who's struggling with executive functioning so their organization their time management their study strategies and our grow program which I know has been presented to the board in the past uh is another opportunity for us to provide an additional
027level of support um for looking at more of a social emotional behavioral concern with a child it can be a referral to uh the counseling team so the counselors may bring that to their committee and determine if any other supports are needed through counseling social work outside supports that we can provide the family um our attendance committee is another Avenue so if it's a student who has been you know showing chronic absenteeism and I'll talk more about the attendance committee we may bring that student there and then if we have then looked at all of this data provided all these additional interventions and we're still seeing that there's a need that may be a student that then is referred to the committee for special education to see if there's additional testing that needs to be
028done there but our ultimate goal is to proactively address student challenges and help them to thrive academically and socially um one of the very important committees on the next slide is our building attendance team uh our attendance committee meets weekly so each week I'm meeting with a different counselor and this way we're able we have four counselors in our building so every month we're able to discuss each of those counselor's case loads um the other essential member of our team Miss Conway joins us as well and our school nurse um so we're really trying to an analyze data see if this is a pattern of attendance concern uh a year like this when we have a number of students out with pneumonia and other things things where they've been out of school for a week
029or two having the nurse there is really critical because we're trying to determine who's the next person that's going to reach out to intervene due to this attendance so if it is something where there's just illness in the home or an long-term injury that's going on the nurse would be the next point of contact to connect with the family to see if they need any additional supports or if we can help them transition back into school and get them help to be caught up um other times if it's perhaps a school anxiety or some social emotional need that that's preventing the student from coming into school our counselors would be the next person to connect with the families and see what support is necessary there uh and then there are times that it's more of
030an administrative if we're having trouble connecting with the family where we may invite the family in um and again you know perhaps connecting them with outside agencies but the bottom line is the attendance is an extremely important piece of mtss because in order for us to look and see if any other interventions are needed we need to have them in our building and have them in school so that we can provide support and um and look at other data that they may need help with I'll turn it back over to Mike thank you Britney if you can go to you got it you're good um I've actually observed this in a former District where one of the fundamental success measures of the mtss process was keeping students away from um the labeling or the testing
031phase uh of the CSE process where students might go for either a 504 or IEP um that's not really the function of mtss um mtss is defined by how well it can support students who need interventions and don't need an IEP or 504 it sounds similar but yet they're not the same thing because ultimately if mtss can successfully triage and diagnose a problem and we can solve that through academic or other intervention if if it's social emotional um then the student may not need an IAP or 504 and ultimately there's no change to their program as a result so one of the things we're most proud of is how well how well our mtss committee um diagnoses triages but there's also a credit that goes to our entire staff because of how receptive they are
032to implement and brainstorm and be creative with some of the interventions that they're willing to try so it's it takes an entire Village in this case um to make this process successful um next slide please um and I I mentioned that New York state has picked up mtss as a Statewide construct primarily because of this that when you look at mtss as a systems-based model uh it can do so much good for all students um as well as raising the overall bar of of teacher communication and teacher efficacy not necessarily because it's helping one individual teacher grow it's helping teachers collaborate on their best practices especially as they might inform um benefiting one student or a group of students um and that's clearly what's going on here the more communication we have and the more
033that Jackie and Nicole are working with teachers and students um the less we're seeing them come you know to our attention or be surprised by by fall-offs and their performance at the end of the year um and we're fortunate like for example in sixth grade there aren't a lot of summer programs that can be used to catch those kids up to speed or or help us promote them into seventh grade uh and for our seventh and eighth graders um we get more intense each year with the the expectations that we hold them to with regard to work completion and maintaining their academic progress because even the options that are available for them aren't great options either next slide please uh and with that said if folks have any questions of myself Jackie or Nicole we're
034happy to answer whatever questions you have one in eight students out more than one in 10 days is that an increase is that why uh well the the I think the first thing that most public schools would point to not just in New York state but throughout the country uh the message that we sent in the first two years of the pandemic was keep your kids home um with snipples with coughs like not even if they had a temperature but any symptoms whatsoever and quite honestly I think parents took it to heart if anything they were doing a great job keeping our schools open because when and if kids got sick they kept them home um coming out of that however we rored our population um to have this hypervigilance about when kids might be
035sick and not infecting other people we're still coming out of that a little bit and then I don't disagree with what New York State sets as its thresholds but to give you an idea of 10% which is the high water mark on The Chronic 10% of of as we stand here tonight is somewhere between six and a half and seven absences on the year so if a kid to Jackie's point with all the stuff that that I had the last week that our kids have for a student to miss an entire week of school over one sickness is not necessarily uncommon so again we're a student today standing here today um would be if they miss six and a half days of school they would be labeled as chronically absent and I I think the
036last point is a tough one for parents to understand until it's too late um a lot of our parents at of younger students at the Elementary grades um re recognize that there are things you can do as a family that are a lot cheaper when school is in session than when it's not so for example on our February break week um it's a lot more expensive to do things like Disney World than it is to do it at some other week when you're traveling out of New York State the the piece that parents seldom realize is what the Tipping Point is for a student to become School phobic or have school anxiety issues based on attendance patterns what we know as staff is it's harder for a student to come back back with each successive
037day consecutive day that they've been absent parents don't realize that sometimes until they're in the midst of that Dynamic going on um so the easiest way to stay out of it as a parent is to be proactive and try to get kids back to school as much as and as early as possible until you've gone through it as a parent you might not have the same urgency that we do to keep your kids in healthy attendance patterns I have a second question your example student a where you've got you know someone with 90s but three grades Below on the irus is that because they're not taking already seriously which is a thing we've heard from Administration sometimes is that a normal pattern like it's funny you I was coping someone might asked that um because
038one of the things we talk about all the time is we had before we had I ready we had a thing called Scholastic was a similar assessment there was no lesson structure behind it though so it would basically give us the Lexile that the student was at but no Interventional report where I ready gives us that piece so imagine even before that where we weren't testing what students Lexile was we would see student a in the building we think no big deal um I think it's really possible when you look at all the standards that are present across math for K8 and across English for K8 there's a multitude of Standards so it's very possible that some child whether for attendance or not goes through fourth grade and misses this standard while still performing really
039well because it's one standard among 50 and and then another student similarly goes through sixth grade and misses doesn't do well on one particular standard before these Diagnostics we had no system to catch that and for kids that are really well organized really hard workers we have found that that's while not common it's not uncommon either we have a lot of students who because of their work ethic because of the support that they have from home do really well academically but who have gaps small gaps in their standards-based accomplishment um which is why you know we've had conversations I know Dave and jod have led these about a standards based report card for these same reasons but the diagnostic results that we get kind of give us they give us exactly a standards based report
040card and I think what we've seen similar to your question is not that students aren't taking it seriously so that students and parents sometimes don't realize that there are gaps that need to be filled when their students grades look like that cool a couple questions if you will first of all um just so we're all speaking the same language I'm going to ask you to unpack a couple of terms um Lexile that's not one I use every day can you help me with that yeah so for example I think um I've read that the New York Times is written at a 12th grade reading level so Lexile is just another term that they quantify what reading level is um fontas and penel used to have a letter system still do I I guess um so
041this is based on it's a nationalized normed Quantified and I I almost said quantile because Lexile is for ELA quantile is for math so basically what they did it's even more Concrete in math is they assign when they built these quantiles they assigned them to individual standards as kids approach algebra so all the way from kindergarten right up till whenever kids take algebra in eth or nth grade um every single standard has its own quantile achievement measure and then what the computer does is based on the assessments they give you um I'm going to oversimplify it but based on the computer-based assessment you and I sit down to take one of these Diagnostics we get a question right we get a harder question we get a question wrong we get a weaker question and we
042bounce around it's almost like a Plinko game we bounce around and the more times we take the assessment the more honed in the response gets closer to what our actual performance is and then of course as students progress and they demonstrate that they've mastered things like an eighth grader might get a question in eighth grade that they got wrong in seventh grade they get it right in eighth grade the computer pushes them up a little bit great and then iepa is the um individual educational uh wait why am I for to pay plan I like program that's not right um and then just remind me 504 504 is for something that's not quite as intense as an individualized education plan but it's for a student who has demonstrated Health needs or uh academic interruptions based
043on diagnosed issues um and what we can do with a 504 plan is design accommodations that would basically make up for for what they're um whatever disability or physical impairment like for example students who have a traumatic brain injury um could be a short term it could be a long-term thing um they may not necessarily have an IEP but they might get a 504 because for example their processing speed we've had this with kids with concussions um their processing speed might be implement or impacted for a short or long term and we can for give them an accommodation of of a longer testing time oh cool thank you I appreciate that um and then I think this is more geared toward um toward J or Dave but when we are identifying that students um are
044you know socioeconomically disadvantaged they're in that poverty category are we able to provide some connections and make sure that the families have some um broader sense of the support that is offered both in the schools and the communities yeah that's that's what we do that's when they mention the counselor that's a big part of what the counselors do for outreach great thank you um thank you I appreciate it well any other questions thank you very much thanks for having us also thank you for the company chairs uh next on the agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item so if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on an agenda item now would be the time to come forward I do have a list um of people but
045I my maybe for non-agenda items okay all right uh 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 one and two second any discussion uh all in favor I I any opposed any extensions that carries uh B Professor professional Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following professional Personnel action items one through 14 um any discussion one question um one of these is a resending of appointment what was reason for that a ice hockey yeah I'm not sure if the person just didn't want to do it anymore um okay yeah um I think he just to clarify he let the athletic director know in advance of the season starting so
046it just got on the agenda correct all in favor I any opposed I'm sorry that's my fault um any extensions that carries cly say we have some uh retirements announced of long-term employees and I just wanted to say thank you to them for their service yes definitely um see support Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following support staff action items 1 through 7 any discussion all in favor noting you I'm really glad to see beinged 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 any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries um e resolution to uh
047certify the 2024 Bethlehem Public Library Bond project vote results um it is recommended by the chief election inspector that the Board of Education approve the following foll ing that whereas the board of education has examined and tabulated such statements and determined the number of votes cast for the 2024 Bethlehem Library Bond project it is hereby declared that the 2024 Capital Bond project referendum failed with 33.2% uh voter approval and 66.9% against second all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries and then item seven is recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item um and I see um I think six names of individuals who would like to address the board um now would be the time to come up um please uh just reminders um that speakers have three minutes to address the
048board the board uses public comment period as a time to listen to concerns but will not engage in debate um commenters should not discuss individual District personnel students and um if possible we uh definitely encourage speakers to provide the board with any a copy of any written um a written copy of your comments um if that's possible um so the first person I have on my list um is D Ley um and I think I need to speak over there because there's a mic over there just let me know when you are ready go ahead good evening community members and esteemed members of the board my name is D Levy and I live in delmare in the Bethlehem School District thank you to the board and everyone present here for allowing us to speak tonight
049I'm a co-founder of the group amida Albany our group was formed by concerned individuals in the Jewish community in the wake of October 7th after personally experiencing several eye-opening instances of anti-Semitism locally including a violent shooting at one of our local synagogues and Jewish preschool an anti-semitic speaker at our public library and unfortunately bullying of Jewish children in public schools we realize the necessity of organizing ourselves and standing up in the face of rising hatred towards Jews and misinformation being rapidly and systematically spread about Jews in Israel what we saw happening in real time was terrifying and motivated several of us to quickly mobilize we are a group of very diverse Jews and allies across all spectrums of political and religious affiliations United by one common goal the need to stand up for ourselves and
050the truth amida means standing in Hebrew we chose this name to represent our need to stand up for the Jewish community of the capital region and Beyond to stand up for Israel and to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms we stand here as an organization with over 200 members and the support of the larger Jewish community and our strong allies we have members and representatives from every local Jewish institution including all synagogues in the Albany area as well as connec in Saratoga we've organized many well attended events focused on dissemination of Truth and fighting anti-Semitism have partnered with local elected officials and other local organizations to pursue our initiatives and have received WID spread local press coverage for our efforts I would like to share the following data with you as recorded by the US
051justice department in 2023 44% of all hate crimes throughout the state of New York targeted Jews 80% of religion-based hate crimes targeted Jews 60% of felony assault hate crimes in New York state were committed against Jews in 2023 Jews account for 7% of the population of New York state yet are over represented as targets of hate crimes in addition to these official statistics anecdotally speaking the amid lead ership team which includes myself teaches at the local Jewish high school program at The JCC for teens from 8th to 12th grade and we hear stories on a weekly basis of anti-Semitism experienced by students from across the Capital District many of them from Bethlehem from Friends lost because quote unquote we can't be friends with zionists to finding swastikas carved into a music stand to being called
052oppressors the stories are endless and extremely painful for the children in our community our children's mental health is truly suffering because of the unchecked anti-semitism that has been spreading like a global cancer since October 7th 2023 a few parents from our community are present tonight to share with you how anti-Semitism has impacted their children in these schools we are gratified to say that we've heard most parents praising administration's actions in response to their individual incidents and we commend the district for those responses thank you for your time thank you um Karen hi my name is Karen and I'm a residence of bleim of Denmar since 2009 I have four kids two already graduate from Bethlehem and my my youngest son last year he was here in Middle School not too long after October 7 when
053he was outside in a recess one of the students one of the students came to him and just told him that we deserve what happened on October 7 he was standing alone he really waited for him to be alone that he deserve what happen on October 7 Israel deserve it my son called me after since that day and I believe that I was talking with you Mrs Monro and you bested he refused to take the bus back and from school ever since then we are driving him we are both working my husband and myself but we are trying to do it and I lost my brother on October 7 he got murdered by these people and I believe that whoever went he didn't want to say who was it but we believe that in you
054that he lost his uncle and it was really yeah so that's what happened to my son here in bit thank you um Evelyn we're gonna Swit order switch it's okay yeah thanks H sorry is is it all right if we switch the order that's fine if you could just introduce youry myself absolutely my name is Leanne pinchuk I'm also a District Parent um I have a daughter in the middle school as well um she has unfortunately been the victim of a couple of anti-Semitic acts um both um I'm going to say diagrams and comments that were unquestionably and blatantly anti-semitic um to the school's credit the counselors dealt with them with the appropriate uh gravity and urgency um and I really do appreciate that um I choose and hope to believe that these comments are
055the result of ignorance as opposed to Pure malice um the diagram um but she was uh somebody was drawing swastikas um and I hope that this person did not understand um sort of the the tragedy um and how horrible what they were doing was um but I think that while the district has been great um at reacting to this that the lack of Education um these are 12 13 14 year olds um the lack of knowledge and the lack of education is a problem and that we as a district and a community need to start dealing with this proactively um instead of just reacting appropriately thank you thank you good evening uh community members and board thank you so much for allowing us the time to speak my name is Evelyn L and I have
056lived in delmare for almost 40 years and also in the betham school district my children have graduated from here um and I am the daughter of two Holocaust Survivors I am a longtime Holocaust educator as well as having worked for the Anti-Defamation League for almost 27 years I also worked at the high school here in the middle school as a bosei social worker for a number of years with one the special ed programs here so I have a lot of connections to this district and very interested and involved in you know positive um situations here and do appreciate all the things that the board has done um I um also worked on college campuses teaching about anti-Semitism to college students so I have a longtime experience with this um as mentioned um by uh Karen
057and Leanne and D um you have heard these examples of anti-Semitism and it does sound like you really have done a very good job in responding to these these incidents but I'm here today to talk about being proactive about these these situations because you know reacting to something is great but having a plan in in place is really important um and um there are research has shown that there are a variety of best practices around addressing anti-Semitism in schools with the aim of ensuring that every Jewish student feels safe in their educational community and invested in their education so this can start with the just basically defining what is anti-Semitism there are a lot of questions around what it what it is and we usually uh we use the um International Holocaust um remembrance association
058definition which is um uh the something that United States Department of of state has accepted as a definition and I'm just going to read it to you right now uh anti-Semitism is a perception of Jews which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews rhetorical and physical manifestations are directed toward Jewish or non-jewish individuals and or their property toward Jewish Community institutions and religious facilities and examples are calling for aiding or justifying the killing of or harming Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view or religion making mous dehumanize izing demonizing stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power exclusively the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy and or of Jews controlling the media economy government or other Society institutions denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that
059the existence of the state a state of Israel is RAC as an Endeavor and I also just want to add legitim criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism it's when it moves into these other Realms that becomes antiemetic applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other de Democratic Nation accusing the Jews as a PE people or Israel as a state of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel or to the alleged priorities of Jews were wide than to the interest of their own Nations using the symbols and im images associated with classic anti-Semitism for example claims of Jews Killing Jesus with uh the blood liel or characterizing Israel or Israelis doing such uh drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that
060of the Nazis holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel this is something that we are seeing all over the country today and certainly you know unfortunately in this town I wanted to share this with you because it's important to understand the full scope of anti-Semitism and the various forms that it can take and it's a shape shifter it takes the form of whatever narrative currently fits the moment and one thing remains constant that it's Insidious and destructive and we need you to help us to combat it thank you so much for your time hi everyone I'm Michelle Sanders and I am uh I live in delmare Caroline Drive our three children uh went to school through through um elementary middle school and high school here were very involved in different
061sports and and uh theater and um we just feel very very connected to the school Community here um I'm going to be handing out a sheet of best practices for the board to review for self-grading as a very first proactive step we would deeply appreciate the opportunity to present at your convenience our one-hour review of both the scope of the problem of anti-Semitism and an overview of those best practices for school boards to consider and implement the problem of hatred towards Jews is very real very present and very urgent we urge the board to review the best practices and to schedule a time to engage with us in our presentation a few of the best practices we are suggesting are as follows host anti-Semitism education programs using resources like the ajc's translate hate glass glossery
062which helps identify different sources of anti-Semitism and exposes antisemitic tropes words and symbols that often hide in plain sight convene mandatory anti-Semitism training for school administration and Educators by implementing mandatory anti-Semitism education programs for school administration teachers and diversity equity and inclusion the Dei professionals incorporate Jews and anti-Semitism into the school's Dei philosophy and Dei Department to ensure that Jews are equally included with other minority groups that the school actively seeks to support and that anti-Semitism is equally included among the hatreds that the school actively combats prioritize campus physical sta safety by establishing and publicizing a system to report anti-Semitism within the school anti-Semitism is significantly under reported in the United States included in school settings Jewish students often hesitate to report anti-semitic incidents as they may believe that their experiences are not bad enough
063compared to other forms of of Oppression faced by their peers have a clearly outlined mechanism for reporting anti-semitic incidents this could include designating a point person for students or setting up an anonymous reporting portal include school counselors in these processes provide educator training on discussing the Israel Palestinian Conflict by offering to train teachers on how to approach discussions related to the Israel Palestinian conflict in the classroom that promote balanced and respectful dialogue engage with parents and Community leaders convene your parent teacher Association to discuss anti-Semitism and consider encouraging Jewish parent Affinity groups to perform to provide a platform for open dialogue and mutual support attend and encourage other administrators to participate in programming organized by local synagogues or Jewish Community groups to express solidarity and better understand the needs and concerns of the Jewish Community
064invite amida Albany to come meet with you and other interested parties to learn more about the Jewish community and resources we can offer plan events with attention to important Jewish holidays and become better acquainted with Jewish culture including the acknowledgement and celebration of Jewish Heritage Month students exposure to Judaism in the Jewish Community should not only be negative couch solely in discussions about anti-Semitism in the Holocaust Jewish American Heritage Month provides provides an opportunity to discuss Jewish contributions to our nation and expand students understanding of the nation's thriving Jewish communities these are just some of the suggested approaches before we leave we would provide you with all the reources and information and again respectively ask to be given the opportunity to offer a training on anti-Semitism to the school board administrators Educators and any other
065interested parties thank you so much for your time and attention to this important matter we look forward to connecting with you very soon and I have these to pass out to you you thank you so much thank you thank you there is also a I think it says Chenille or Cheryl on the list okay all right I just wanted to make sure I didn't Overlook you uh do we have anybody else uh who did not sign up ahead of time who would like to address the board okay um next um item eight future meetings and events um our next regular board meeting is going to be January 8th 2025 um anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to open session at 7 and that will be at the high school we have a policy committee
066meeting scheduled for January 13th um at 5 5:30 at the high school is it is it at 5:30 usually there we don't usually start until 6 if we can check on that one 13 yeah um and then our meeting after that is um on January 22nd um again anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to open session at 7 and that meeting is at Glenmont Elementary School I have the policy in my calendar at 6 you have it at 6 o'clock okay so policy committee meeting on the 13th is at 6 pm. I seeing no need to go back into executive session um could I have a motion to adjourn the meeting all in favor all right meeting adjourned