001e a little booster I'll I love it to the arrow you good if we could reconvene our meeting to open session the board has been in executive session since 6 o' to discuss Personnel matter three contractual matters and two legal matters if we could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation andice for all we could have introductions Dave Hurst Catherine John Walston Willow bear Jody Monroe Holly D B Mor you mcname Robert T John MC Phillips and do we have any uh Pig students with us tonight welcome thanks for coming um your obligation is to stay until 9 o' or when the meeting is over whichever one comes first uh when the meeting is
002done um there are sign out sheets up here if make sure to sign out um before you leave so that you get credit for being here uh first up on the agenda is the approval of minutes um it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the November 15 2023 regular board meeting any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries item three meeting reports uh first up is our superintendent's report sure thank you thank you um the only thing I wanted to follow up on is at our last board meeting we Revisited the walking distance for transportation given the driver shortage and there were um some follow-up questions the board had so John um put together a couple follow-up slides here to review this and
003Ellen is here our new director of Transportation if you have specific questions um we met the other day to talk about some other options that we could consider as well so turn it over to John thank you Jody um just as a refresher from our board meeting in November we highlighted that there the school district is not necessarily immune to the transportation shortages particularly with regard to bus drivers and monitors the district has roughly 70 uh full-time equivalent in positions for bus drivers for 70 available routes we've only been able to maintain a driver roster of approximately 50 to 550 two drivers consistently over the course of the the past two school years that results in longer bus rides more crowded buses behavioral issues on the buses because those buses are are are so full
004so uh Jody and the board had asked the business office and transportation to evaluate and research opportunities to address those challenges the current walking distance for all schools is 1/10th of a mile and what we looked at particularly was the impact of moving uh walking distances to point five miles or a half mile for elementary schools uh a mile for the Elementary uh for the middle school and a mile and a half for the high school so I I just want to give a a quick uh summary of the maps by individual schools in terms of what that impact of those mileage distance uh distances are this is for the Eagle Elementary School elmir each layer is sort of overlaid Glenmont hammerl Slingerlands the Middle School and the high school one of the followup questions
005specifically associated with the last presentation was well what's the impact in terms of both eligible students writers Ship by school so what we looked at was by Elementary School you can see the eligible students that would be impacted at 0.1 mile a half mile 3/4 of a mile and one mile and what that looks like in terms terms of percentage of eligible ridership the real trigger point for the elast the elementary school was the one mile mark because of the number of impacted students to actually decrease the number of buses to make a meaningful gain in terms of the driver shortage so at one mile the there's 34 students that would be impacted at roughly 10 point almost 11% of eligible ridership elmir and hammergirl because of their um their footprint within the town and
006the school district their impact is greater uh in terms of eligible students and Glenmont and Slingerlands are roughly uh on par um with each other so overall at a mile distance for the elementary school 330 would impact 330 eligible Riders which represents just about 27% of the total eligible riders for the elementary school in in in total for the Middle School 783 eligible students um at a mile distance would decrease anywhere between two to three buses uh for a impacted ridership of 22 and a half% and the high school just again given where it's located in that uh portion of the School District 81 students would be impacted if we were to increase to a mile and a half which is roughly 8% of the eligible ridership the challenge the district has presently is these
007are really estimates based on the information that we have available now on the current ridership and routes that exist so the the only way to truly get a absolute degree of certainty is to unpack the entire routing of the district and reformulate it based on um these thresholds overall it's 330 again on on the elmir side given the um the proportion of that impact and and the challenges from the community and parents that we have to determine whether or not this is the the best path forward so we did take an opportunity to to look at some additional Alternatives uh this may still at some point come to a decision point but I think there are opportunities for the district to research other alternatives and uh Ellen Dorado our transportation um supervisor and director will
008be able to to speak to those in a little bit more more certainty the current mileage for all of the schools is at onet of a mile we actually looked at well what if we were you were to make a nominal change to two10 of a mile what would that impact look like and again to really sort of plan that out it it's challenging so we did take a look at two routes in particular um specifically at hammer just because we were here and it's uh one of the closer districts and I like to speak to what that actual impact was okay so um we took two rout when when John says a tenth of a mile across the district it's really a tenth of a mile at the elementary level so uh if we
009I took a look at Hamil and maybe a less aggressive path or maybe another option for us and so we have the elementary students walking out to a tenth of a mile if we had the elementary students walking out to 2/10 of a mile which isn't really a long way um we can basically cut our uh routes in half stop wise and we can shave probably when I looked at the two in and Hammer Grail and like John says you have to unpack the district so I had to take it down to pay dirt put everyone back at their houses and then put them to one uh 0.1 mile but then put them to uh two10 of a mile so the two routes that I looked at here in Hamil there were 26 and 28
010stops um when I went to two10 of a mile I cut those stops in half um which was pretty remarkable uh also with every stop our routing software generates a computer generated time of about 30 seconds per stop so it's 5sec delay to stop 15 seconds to Lo now we know that that's not On Target I think that maybe it goes a little bit longer than 30 seconds for each stop but it does add up so those two routes that we broke in half um actually shaved off about six six minutes on one and nine minutes on the other so if we were to go down this Avenue it could segue into another a future plan for instance if we had buses coming um and it took 9 minutes to complete the route and they
011could maybe come to hammer Grail drop off and go back and get the other or another possibility could be if other drivers were coming back into the district from private and parochial school drop offs they could come back into the district maybe swing through and grab another three stops and get everybody here within a reasonable time and we're not counting on people to watch our students or coring them you know we would have to Corral them but it might be in that window so that's um that's that's the finding so far thanks Ellen and when we discussed these you know looking at um the real savings I guess and looking at decreasing busing you really have to look to almost a mile and I don't think that that's something the board really wants to consider
012if we can avoid it I that's a long ways for elementary students so looking at a 210 of a mile which um would still require a community boote because it's a change in the thresh threshold that is what many districts use and if we are still struggling with a driver shortage it would allow as Ellen pointed out the ability for a little more flexibility cutting down the ride times which have increased because of the number of kids on the buses because we are filling them at the elementary level um the other thing that um I know Ellen spoke about was looking at working with some of the other districts near us to see if there's a way we can um share some transportation for maybe some of the privater um privater parochial or special ed
013runs if there's a way to uh partner and do that so I think those are some areas that we can explore further Katherine good question yeah um uh not sure who I'm directing the question to but when we're talking about looking at um minimizing steps are we also looking at like hey can we just ask these three houses to walk walk five houses further so that we've got stops more space now is right we talked about even doing that for the middle and high school trying to have more centralized stops within the distance we have the tenth of a mile is very restrictive for the elementary so if we could go to two10 of a mile that would allow a little more flexibility at that level right yeah thank can you speak to like the
014maps um for the different schools because you would think that it should just be like the school is the center and there's a circle around it but it obviously doesn't look that way it looks very um like a funny shape yeah well you're a little more familiar with the well and trying to um do the walk out from the school it would be um where the people are and not it would be a boundary around the concentration of people but not necessarily the the distance that the crow would fly am I saying that right right it's not like a a circle it has to beout where the roads are you have to go by the roads and I just I bring it up in part because I know we've had a couple questions from the
015community about them so you have to measure your distance by the streets themselves exactly and also you have to also take into consideration um you know working on the roads or dark areas or you know no sidewalks four lane highways high speed limits and it does look for example Hammer girl seems to be pushed a little bit north uh Northwest you got to realize that you're looking at one district and the individual Elementary maps come into play in terms of where their locations are as well so it's not as easily as like okay we're going to take hammer gril or pick your elementary school and do a sort of Bullseye Approach at the three different um mileage markers because you may be bleeding into to either emir's geographical border or Eagles geographical border so what's
016not sort of shown here is where those other school districts lie on the hammergirl map because um we were trying our best to to give at least a visual representation of the streets roughly that would be impacted at those three demarcation points I think that makes perfect sense however I also know that uh rules and regulations don't always line up with perfect sense as perfectly so is this all is it allowed under I mean we are we're talking about we're talking about going out to a vote to comply with state law which says that we have to be very specific about the distance from the school does state law give give us the flexibility to determine that that distance is not in fact as the crow flies how but rather where the people are and
017the roads are and where the busing is how you calculate the distance you mean yeah yeah is that that flexibility is built into state law flexibility required that's my but but that's the way required okay yeah like you can't when we looked at for example the high school you could see where a lot of students could cut across the back fields right and it would be less but that's not the way you can calculate the distance under this you have to use it by the actual roads or in our sidewalks in that distance sure I was just making sure that like again that if we're doing this to comply with state law the law recognizes the right right okay because we were would be under the state maximum distance even at the two10 of a
018mile I just want to emphasize that that would be a ballot proposition for May should the district decide to to move that so um I I know that there was there were some additional questions in terms of would there be an opportunity to work with CDTA Ellen has made contact with um um her colleague in CDTA uh that is an option although the CD runs and routes are somewhat Limited in terms of the town in terms of your Kenwood Avenue your Cher AV um Delaware Delaware a and and elme a it's limited they're not going to wind up doing some of the uh spots or or off those main Avenues to be able to pick up ridership um we also looked at opportunities for Consolidated stops more in your rural areas because it it's not
019necessarily a half mile or whatever walking distance you choose whether it's half mile or a mile it's not necessarily from the school to home it can be from a spot to home so there may be opportunities in your more rural districts to have have pick a centralized location and have students either walk or be dropped off at that centralized location for a bus or two to come and pick those kids up at that point then then subsequently uh transport to school does anyone have any other questions we we're going to continue to do some work on options and we'll come back to the board with you know what our kind of what we're thinking we want to move forward with that works okay thanks for running all the different options thank you thank Youk you
020that's all I had for my report okay um any questions for Jody all right uh next up is the board report um first I just wanted to remind everybody that uh the theater without a net is performing clue at the high school this coming weekend on Friday Saturday and Sunday um I encourage everybody to go um and bring your friends um and uh I just very briefly wanted to put out there I know that um we've had a lot of athletes doing a lot of great things I think we're going to officially recognize them at our next meeting when we're back at the high school um but just so that uh you guys don't think that we forgot about them um and then the last thing that I wanted to bring up we had a
021policy committee meeting um since our last meeting um hence the policies that are up for a first read on the agenda but one of the things that came up um during our discussion um in our uh policy committee meeting was that um the district has been uh charging admission fees for only for boys football um Boys Hockey and boys basketball games um and uh we were talking about you know whether that was necessary um why we were doing that um and would propose that we move to not charging um for those games so that everybody feels like they can come and attend um and we just wanted to raise that with the entire board to make sure everybody was okay with making that change um and I believe you talked with um Len about it
022and he's yeah I spoke with Len about it and he was fine um doing that and it's a really less operational work for him and it allow everyone to come in who wants to come in do we know how much money that results in yeah not a lot $25,000 I think in total 29,000 was it 29,000 20,000 $20,000 is that going to turn into an additional $20,000 Athletics requests every year it goes to the general fund it doesn't go back to Athletics so just wanted to make sure people are Katherine did you want yeah and I was just I was just saying as part of the policy committee I supported 100 and 15% uh and part of the reason for um supporting it as well is because we wouldn't want to create the impression that
023some sports or Athletics are valued more than others and that therefore we're charging for some and not others um and it makes so it makes good sense to both open it up to make sure that there are no barriers for anybody attending and also making sure that uh the community knows at least from my perspective part of the reason I support it is to make sure that the community knows that all of the different um programs are valued so are we talking I'm sorry is the new policy that they nobody can can charge there's no policy related to it it came up what was the policy connection with petty cash petty cash but there's actually no policy on collecting money for it's just something that the athletics department has been doing we charge for tradition
024if you will plays right that's but not concerts some sports but not all sport right and the theater Productions are co-curricular and they have to raise money to fund the performances the um costumes and all of that the Athletics does not use that for that so that was the rationale okay um any other questions or anybody have anything else that they wanted to share youan so I have one comment on the policies think we'll do that when we discuss the policies the other thing I wanted to point out and raised it with the board you know briefly some of you may have seen the New York Times profile on the somewhat dramatic effects often on brain health and mental health of early contact Sports and I know it's you know an issue that's been increasingly
025receiving attention at professional level and so on um there's now a pretty clear correlation between early exposure to contact Sports which mostly means football um and subsequent damage to brain health and mental health there's a huge rise and positive correlation between risk of suicide and mental health in teens and 20s and the early exposure to contact Sports I'm not you know saying I have a solution here right I I think it's a really important conversation for us and for the whole school Community to have about the role of football in students lives versus the potential damage to their entire brain health for the rest of their lives um that I think really needs to be recognized and discussed rather than not discussed uh next up are our student reports um do we have anybody here
026from the high school student Senate hi I'm Amelia I'm the secretary of Senate this month at the high school we had a big dodgeball tournament which was very fun we also have been working on the caring and sharing food drive and we're planning a large winter event for before break so yeah thank you and thank you for reminding me actually I meant to um mention as a reminder to everybody about the caring and sharing food drive the drop off um and correct me if I'm wrong um there's a drop off at the high school on Friday morning yeah I think so from I think 9 to 11: yeah I'm not quite sure but that sounds right okay all right so I encourage everybody to drop off food and related to that I'm reminded by your
027reminder there's also a holiday toy and game drive right now so I know we have a big pile at home that are going to go in on Friday but that's also being collected and many of the elementary schools are also running individual food drives uh I believe hats mittens as well so people can keep their eyes out there's lots of opportunities to show the commun show our generosity as a district great so thank you Amelia thank you and for the reminder uh do we have anyone from the Middle School here tonight hi my name is an who I'm in seventh grade Hudson and just as a few reminders um at BB bcms there's also a carrying and sharing food drive and winter sports has begun at bcms and no sh our No Shave November fundraising
028topped our 3,000 last year by exceeding 4 ,000 being raised and bcms will be well bcms will be having an ugly day on December 21st thank you that reminds me I meant to shout out the sixth grade concert I sorry I'm totally going out of order I was so impressed the difference between fifth grade and sixth grade and how much work these kids put in already in less than a half a year it was it was phenomenal standing room only thank you thank you and then I think we have some friends from h mrail here to talk to us tonight ready good afternoon good afternoon I'm Penny B I'm Kieran Meyer I'm Jacob Heist I'm ay young I'm Shannon HCK I'm fiser Coleman I'm Eliana Dee I'm Mr KNX um before I toss it to
029them because they're really the show tonight uh you know a big goal of ours this year has been to empower fifth graders to truly take on a leadership role in our building not just for their own leadership and their own growth as as humans but really to cultivate a culture in our building of leadership so we're excited for them to share some things that been doing in the building this year and with that I'll take it away or give it away to Penny as a leader I feel accomplished I feel like a role model and that I did something to help my school as a leader I feel responsible this this year we have taken an active role of leading all School assemblies each month a group of fifth grade students take pictures of things
030happening around the school and create a slides show that we show at all assemblies we also lead the assemblies each month we do the morning announcements lead the school with our new motto learn laugh grow together and finish the assembly with a mindful minute each day we each day we have several leadership opportun unities in the morning each class rotates who raises and lowers the flag outside the American Legion came to our school and showed us how to properly fold the flag we also do the morning announcements each day as a group we update a Google slide presentation that announces The Pledge birthdays lunch and joke of the day Today's Joke was what do you call a math a kind of snowy a kind of math what kind of math do snowy owls like algebra
031this year we are taking a leading role in assuring that composting is happening properly in the cafeteria Mr Warford from the Middle School came and talked to us about the importance of composting and assuring that there are no contaminants in the compost bin social social leadership is a big part of what we are actively involved in each and every day just recently we helped the community by taping off booths for the craft fair and helping load a van of gifts for the unity home each week we connect with our kindergarten and first grade buddy classes and just last week we started a coffee cart to help with socialization we hope that you feel the s togetherness when you walked into our building because we worked to learn laugh together want to come up here thank
032you guys if you do you guys want to come up here for a second if anybody wants a pin I have pins for you you go thanks for coming how do you take and I love the shirts I think some of the board members want shirts they do maybe Mr Knox can can hook them up thank you guys uh Mr Knox I think some of the board members are envious of the t-shirts I'm just putting it out [Laughter] there uh thank you guys um you are certainly welcome to stay but if our fifth grade friends would like to leave um because they have things to do or homework that is also fine uh next on our agenda um this evening is our presentation on the K12 Library program um by a whole bunch of people
033so I'm not going to list everybody um and just as a reminder if everyone can hold their questions until the end well they are a hard act to follow we're going to try to be just as exciting as them um I'm Aaron chers I'm the chief technology officer for the school district and I also supervise the Librarians in all of the buildings and I have a few of them here tonight so I'll just introduce them really quickly I have chrisy from the high school Kaylee from Ham girl Chrissy from Slingerlands Monica from Eagle and Sylvia from the Middle School uh so we're take a little bit of time time to just share some of the highlights of the programs at each level and some of the data that's associated with it so far this year
034as a department we've been working on um looking at the curriculum that we have and the updates that we need to make and one of the things that we recently did as updated our mission statement and so we are our goal is to empower all students with information literacy technology skills and a lifelong appreciation for literature in order to nurture a love of learning critical thinking and creativity so with that I'm going to turn it over to Kaye and she's going to tell you what actually happens in the library thank you hi so in our 21st century libraries um our students learn through lessons and experiences that Foster their skills in both traditional literacies as well as new literacies we support their Library skills through read alouds um and lessons in Access and organization within
035the library we also work on their digital literacy skills through research and digital citizenship lessons because we value the creativity collaboration and critical thinking that is so important to our students students experience engaging and well-rounded Library experiences from K all the way through 12 thank you press the button you press the button sounds great okay our students experiences in our elementary libraries are rooted in child centered holistic approach meant to ensure that each child knows that they are welcome seen and encouraged to grow and explore within that Li liary setting an elementary student will typically come in and hear a story or a mini lesson with targeted traditional or digital literacy skills after which they have an opportunity to respond to that day's content through various methods that support all Learners including traditional writing or
036drawing Hands-On activities and collaboration with peers students practice navigating the library with the freedom to choose books with the support of their librarian cementing their perception of themselves as a reader in our diverse and representative collection students of all backgrounds and reading levels can both see themselves and have a view into the lives of others and explore topics of Interest these experiences in our District's Elementary libraries Foster a child's innate curiosity and support them on their path to lifelong learning and exploration hi um in the past three and a half years the Middle School library has been evolving um during the first year of the pandemic I was presented with the task of teaching Library skills to our sixth grade students as in all of them without the benefit of a district adopted curriculum it
037was wildly challenging yet despite there being 17 sections and over 300 students it was one of the most inspiring and rewarding years of my career since the middle school LMC reopened in September 2020 it has been a lunchroom a large group instruction space a rehearsal space for our music program and briefly a semi-functioning library during the times when I've been without a space to accommodate students I've pushed into classes primarily in ela and social studies with my goal being to see every class and grade at a minimum of once a month in addition to introducing students to contemporary in canonized literature and non-fiction texts I've LED instruction to teach literacy and research skills across the disciplines along with student volunteers we spent two years unpacking and organizing the boxes of books which had been hastily
038packed in August of 2020 it was a huge job and one that was made null as we only had to repack them nine months later as the LMC became a construction zone when space is available we do an author visit like last year and hopefully again early 2020 we'll have an author here as well in Spring this year we had Phil buner an author who was featured on page two in the November 26 Sunday New York Times arts and Leisure section as our guest he presented to our entire eighth grade class enjoyed lunch with interested students and also spoke to a smaller group with a focus on Sports I'm looking forward to welcoming a Hudson Valley graphic novelist in March the new LMC has an anticipated opening date of January 17th it will provide an
039environment conducive to reading research class instruction and group activities all of this is wonderful and I'm looking forward to witnessing our students excitement when they finally have access to a new facility however I do have concerns there are aspects of the design which don't seem to prioritize or support the LMC and its state ad Mission attempts to present concerns to decision makers have been generally unsuccessful while the space promises to be beautiful and modern the capacity of a single librarian to adequately maintain an awareness of the occupancy and supervise the space provide instruction to students continue curating the collection and assistant plan with faculty is questionable in conclusion characteristics of an exemplary Library program include a well planned and stocked facility adequate professional staffing and an instructional framework and means of delivery I sincerely hope
040all these elements be present in the new bcms LMC thank you um I'm here to talk about the high school library so I'm one of two Librarians at the high school Justin Nigro is our our other High School librarian and we have been lucky enough to go through our renovation um we opened in 2020 to promptly close uh 6 weeks later uh we were closed the following year but now we are up and running and if you have been lucky enough to come into our space is a welcoming wonderful environment we have distinct sections in the library we have the front which is for collaboration and working together if you come in at any time during the day students are chatting they are playing chess they are working on puzzles they are playing card games
041they are genuinely enjoying each other um if you go into the back of the LMC that is where we have students that are still working together but that is more of an environment where you are quiet and you are studying we have carols for those who want to work independently um and we do have the tables where they are they're working quietly together for group work we also have a classroom where we provide instruction to classes that come down mainly Ela and social studies and we also have a maker space and our maker space is fabulous we have a 3D printer in there that we're currently working with we have a Cricket we have a heat press we have all these materials that students can come in and they can tinker and play with and
042we help them by guiding instruction we do monthly maker meetings to work with these students to show them what we have available so during that time when they want to come in during a free period or a study hall they can work with it okay so now um we've highlighted the what we're doing at each of the levels and now we want to take a look at some of the data that um we have of our collection our physical and a collection for the entire District so Christie also has a special role in The District where she manages the system so I'm going to stand with her as she does this yeah so I'm also lucky enough to work with Destiny which is our online catalog and our databases and I manage that um with
043the help of bosies uh in our district so we we are constantly looking at our statistics circulation and to inter see where we can improve as Librarians in our collection so looking up here this is for entire District so it's showing you our physical collection which is books that we have in hand and also our Digital Collection so we are 77% physical and we are wow that is tinier than I thought okay 23% digital now our Digital Collection is books that we purchase to put into our advantage OverDrive account so with overdrive we have Sora Sora is the school Library equivalent of Libby for the public library and that's how we access our ebooks for our students we are also part of a Bose's Consortium where we do subscribe and access Bose's titles as well
044but those titles that are not in this number because those are shared across all of the schools that are in Capitol region bosis so we didn't include that um and there's one more thing overlap of titles um it also doesn't include our overlap of titles so if we have one that is um a copy we have physical and one that we also we also have digital so oh and one other thing we do have with our ebooks where um in Sora you can add the public library as well so our students not only have access to the B the books that we purchase for them the books that Bose purchases for them but also public library books as well which is very neat so our physical collection as you can see it is around even
045we're about 50% with almost 50/50 with fiction and non-fiction so this is very interesting so the American Library Association recommends that you have between 15 to 20 books on hand for students um we use some data from similar districts to see where we stood in terms of this and as you can see we are in orange and if you look towards the elementary schools you can see that we are we are doing very well in terms of hitting that 15 to 20 mark some of those elementary schools at the other districts you can see their numbers very high sometimes that means maybe they need to weed their collection a little bit too um for us at the middle school and high school we have gone through Renovations and when you go through a renovation we
046really took that time to look at our collection weed through what was there and decide what we wanted to keep because we really want our collection to be current so that's why our number is so low at seven per student and building back our collection will take time that is not something that happens overnight is something that that we are working on so that's why our number looks a little bit lower than other schools as I was saying we're working very hard on having a publication age that is a newer more current collection so our numbers here show that our range of titles in the 2010 to 2019 we have a very high number of books from that that publication range and if you look for the range from 2020 to 202 23 we're doing
047a great job in purchasing books that have been published recently to try to keep it up to date you will find we do have outliers and that could be either those are books that need to be weeded or those are Classics or they're Award winners that may have a an early publication date but are still books that are in physically good condition that we'd like to keep so weeding is something as a district that we make sure that we cover as much as we possibly can and this is an this is an ongoing process cess for us so as you can see with our publication years that in 2019 the age of our collection was older but with weeding and adding newer books now in 2023 our publication year is more current one of our
048district goals also is making sure that our collection is diverse so we want to support an environment that values and promotes diversity Equity inclusion across our district 38% of that physical collection does represent those values and same thing with our social and emotional learning collection supports the skills to be emotionally intelligent establish relationships and make responsible choices so this is every time we look at books and purchasing books we can look at different resources and see which of these goals that it that it hits this is a new data point within Destiny when we um curriculum last cycle it didn't exist and it does now and we also did this comparison for where we stand um with similar districts and they're around 30% so we are a little bit higher um for the average percentage
049of books in our physical collection for this and here are our circulation statistics you can see that in uh 201819 we were higher and then we dipped during the pandemic it is actually impressive that with a lot of our libraries either closed or Elementary Librarians on carts that the circulation statistics were still were still that high so that's a um a props to the elementary Librarians um we are back up and high for 21 22 and 22 23 you will see that our ebook is not as high as our as our physical books um I do ask a lot of students and um when they come in for a book and a book is currently out I'll say hey well we have it on eBook and I do get a lot of students that are
050just like I'm on my computer all day I still just love having a physical book and I'm like I I I agree I get it um I do also want to point out that for circulation statistics you will find that at the elementary schools you have a much higher rate of circulation they come in weekly for Library classes they're taking out between two to four books at a time Sometimes they come back during the week to get more or at the high school we have a lot of students who are reading outside of class and so for them taking a book they're going to have it for for longer uh so so that really influences our circulation statistics at each build building so that's why here we used it for the district and as Librarians
051we also manage our databases because a lot of our non-fiction especially at the high school we promote through our databases and finding our information so we subscribe to all of these databases listed above and um at the elementary school they love PebbleGo and at the high school we are big fans of our Gale databases you'll see that for um our current databases um compared to our projected databases projected is much lower the reason is is because we have been lucky enough for 20 years New York state has been a reciprocate of the novel NY Grant and that gives about 20 databases to our district for free every year unfortunately that Grant is no longer going to be after this year so those databases will not be free to us anymore so we are looking into
052whether or not we like to purchase these databases to add them to to what we currently have but every year we do review all of our databases we go through our statistics we talk to teachers we see are these databases still being used are they still relevant to what we need as a district so um in the upcoming months we'll be reviewing all of those that are going away and seeing if that's something we'll add to our our roster for next year so this is a direct rollover from current to projected it's not um and it would be to keep exactly what we have it's about a $220,000 cost to cover but like Christy said we probably will absolutely buy some of those databases but maybe we won't buy some of the other ones or
053maybe we'll buy them all but we're going to look at usage and we're going to talk to teachers before we make that decision and we come back to you in a month or two and that's all we had so if you have any questions for any of us um first I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for taking the time tonight to come out and and talk to us um I definitely appreciate it uh and I really appreciate what our libraries do for our schools I know for all of my kids they've been uh a safe place um one question I had and and I'm not sure if you it's something you can speak to easily but I'm just curious about how you when you talk about building out the collection
054particularly at the middle school and the high school where it's kind of dropped like what how do you do that what kinds of things do you look at in terms of um what books to acquire um we subscribe to some professional journals like School library journal and booklist we read reviews see what has been well reviewed often particularly in the kind of times that we're living in when there are so many book challenges and people questioning collections we usually make sure that we have positive reviews of books that may potentially cause a problem um we go to meetings I belong to Bose's um monthly meetings with all the Capital District Librarians and we talk about new books um conferences when we have an opportunity to go to them it's um it's not just going through
055a catalog it's there's there's all quite a thought process to it and then getting the books that we want has been a challenge over the last couple of years um with vendors not having stock and you know going through different channels um so collection development and enhancement is a time consuming but really important part of our jobs I have to say I I look at a lot of Instagram and bookstagram I'm on there all the time um I love it it there's such great recommendations out there for ya books um and I also listen to what the kids say the kids come in and they're like hey do you have this book this book is great I'm like oh let me look into it see if I can get it for you so um we
056do we have a lot of talking to each other a lot of listening to the kids um and a lot of stuff that's on social media So yeah thank you um other questions Yan thanks folks I really I mean books have been a central part of my life I know they're part of my kids lives I thank you for supporting you know our students with that um so when I saw the presentation ahead of time right I saw those High School midle school stats and I was a little terrified um am I to hear that there's no issue here that there was funding to replace these and rebuild these collections adequately we have a book budget every year so there's there's funding for books okay so um I wanted to give particular thanks to Sylvia
057for being you know willing to come and say not always just everything's happy Dancy but here are some possible issues let's say I handed you $10 million and said hey make the Middle School library perfect what would the first couple of things be you'd want to change Staffing do more staff yeah when I started in the district almost 20 years AO ago every building had a full-time librarian the high school had two full-time Librarians the middle school had two full-time Librarians they had both the middle school and the high school had a full-time secretary and a full-time clerk the high school had more supervisory um uh staff beyond that and at this point the middle school is one librarian that's it when I'm in the new space I should have I should have a um
058clerical assistant but right now because I'm in room 205 it just would be redundant it wouldn't make any sense but I mean it'll be potentially two people okay I one more question let me just make sure Catherine do you have a question or go ahead so last thing you know I I especially appreciate uh the commentary on supporting diversity and a variety of perspectives and so on as you say particularly when there you know attempts to ban books and restrict what students can read or exposed to I'm hoping and I'm guessing this probably happens that you guys can take the opportunities you know when a book is a tempt to be ban someplace to have that book available and say hey this is what people think you shouldn't read you should go read it it's
059kind of subversive because I think that's a great way to support that difference of perspectives that the students really need so I'm guessing that's already in place but if not let's let's do that more um we do we have a couple English teachers who during band books week they call down and we make a display and they send their kids down and you know we'll go up to the classroom and talk about why this was banned and then there's a a whole conversation that um revolves around those books so guess when mouse came under attack I tried to buy copies for like all my and I couldn't buy it because everyone had gone done the same thing that was that was super cool so thanks k um a couple first of all thank you I
060just want to Echo my my thanks and support my kids um library is is one of their favorite times of the week it's uh you all work magic with your stories and your Open Hearts and your open spaces and so thank you from the bottom of my heart um a couple questions on like some of the technical aspects as I was listening to the discussion on databases I was actually wondering um have we ever considered or do we have the ability to open up the licenses so that members of the school Community outside of the student body could access some of those databases as well well is that something that we've ever explored is that something that we could explore we've never talked about it but we probably could I know the public library also
061does have access to all of the databases same ones yeah so there sometimes they have a few I mean there might be a couple that we have that they don't or vice versa but yeah they do have most of them thing I think otherwise it would be redundant I think well yeah yeah no if if it's the same if it is literally the same data set then yeah there's no point but to the extent that maybe if we have something different that could be cool to explore to just put in put in there for consideration um when you were talking about oh boy you use the name of the app for um e-reading Sora Sora thank you um is that accessible to students on their on devices aside from their Chromebooks yeah cool yes there's
062a app for iPad iOS Android all that but this is great I'm getting a lot of good information thank you um and then on the Staffing question do we currently have Librarians in every school yes there is one librarian in all buildings except for the high school they have two and all buildings also have uh clerical cool and are they full they're not full we don't have fulltime in every building right now right almost every building if at least half time at least half time cool um those were my three questions thank you and I think Meredith had a just just a quick question um again thank you for all the work you do I know it's been a really challenging um it's been a really challenging couple of years so I just wanted to
063to Echo my thanks um regarding the Sora um you mentioned that students have access to the public library through that um but you were talking about it in terms of non-fiction do they have access to to everything in the public library oh yeah absolutely so yeah you just um so when you're on sore it says add public library and then you can just add Bethlehem public library and it's accessed to their entire collection the great thing is though if they're logged in in their Elementary School it only gives the the things that are labeled for elementary level students okay that's that's great to know and then regarding the Staffing um Staffing question Katherine brought up um I understand that um at some elementary schools we only have Librarians there their part-time is the library itself
064open if students want to come in and return a book and pick out another book if a librarian is not there that day do they have access to the library yes the clerical that's assigned to the library is it's not all day but when the clerical is there um typically they try in the morning because kids like to return books in the morning um to be there okay so it just depends on the schedule the claric for that day um do do I don't do we feel as though we have adequate Staffing for the elementary libraries or do you think that we could use more Staffing in order to have someone there full-time every day I think that there we have enough Staffing to cover the sections of all of the libraries that we we're
065offering um and because some schools have different levels of sections in order to keep the positions I think that we we're we do that by traveling some of the Librarians um so I think that they could definitely could they use more time everybody absolutely 100% they have hard jobs in these the staff work incredibly hard and I think that you know they value any support that can be given to them thank you yes Bob thank you so I'll I'll add my u my thanks as well and reiterate my thanks to you for all the the critical things you do for the school um how had asked a little bit about building up the book collection I'd like to ask um about the the opposite side of that coin you talked about the weeding process um
066I mean I conceptually I can certainly understand that the need to curate The Collection um putting aside I suppose restrictions in the physical plant and just how much space you have I mean what what impulse would there to be that to to to get rid of books um that you know even if they're not used that much I mean you know just just to leave them there yeah so I meant to actually say that in the weeding slide and then I forgot um but we look at different things with our statistics we look at circulation statistics has this been checked out um we look at the relevance of the information in the book is there something that is not current anymore um and we look at and the language in the book they said yeah
067is the is the language current and then also um look at the condition of the book a kid's not going want to take out a book that's kind of not looking so great um is there anything else you want to add to that the elementary level yeah it's a living collection so it it's it's alive it needs to be the purpose is for it to go out um and circulate um as often as possible um at the elementary level sorry um that um we often weed books for wear um a Kindergarten kid can really sorry um can really do something uh to books once it's our circulation stat stats are so high that the frequency with which a book goes out wears it over time so many of our books that are weed are because
068of damage and wear because it was loved so well right so that would be another impulse to to read a book and one other thing that we haven't talked about is uh a print reference collection which we don't maintain anymore so you know we we did an awful lot of our print reference because students get that access to those sort of materials digitally now whether they're updated more frequently so I mean we had quite a collection of Atlas um at the middle school that just collected dust for years because kids go on Google maps I mean they're not using an atlas anymore so there's that sort of thing as well and and now that you brought up the digital I do have one more question um you talked about the circulation and how sometimes the
069the um the high school students kept books out longer because they're reading outside um for the ebooks and this is just a basic ignorance on my part C can more than one person have ebooks at a time or is that just out to one person as well it's um one person so it's the same thing so it's one book one usage we can purchase multi licenses um the the books that we do purchase are one copy one student and the same thing it's a three-week checkout um and then it's automatically returned so y but digital reference books that's different are different okay so so multiple users instead of you buying you know a print copy of something and spending $60 for this print reference material you pay a $100 and you have a you have
070a digital version of it that can be used simultaneously by unlimited users and they can have access to it remotely they don't have to be in your library to use it and those print referen books that you're referencing you're talking about um there that's reflected in the the physical books in the library and other on that was part of the sort of the call the weeding that so that the information is is still available so maybe those those numbers aren't quite so Stark as as they might appear on the on the graph yeah okay one other thing I want to talk about is the cost of ebooks um the cost of e ebooks is actually very very high where if we go on to Amazon cost of a hard cover book is between $15 to
071$18 for that same book to be purchased um an ebook it is between $50 to $60 especially for a brand new title if you'd like that on audio it's around $90 um so we are very selective in what we do purchase with ebooks because they are it's a very high cost for those unfortunately well I prefer the physical so go and one of the other ways that they Market these digital books is that you don't actually purchase it and own it they they sell them with metered access so you get to have 26 checkouts and then it disappears for your from your collection or the worst one is you get to have it in your collection for a designated period of time like it's yours for a year or for two years and regardless of
072how many times it gets checked out or not it disappears at that at the end of that period of time I guess last one for me um then is it the the the preference of the students that would would steer the the the library towards ebooks as opposed to physical books given the fact that they you don't own them outright and and they're they're more expensive is it the the kids like to look at the ebooks better is that something that drives that go ahead y absolutely so I think there's also something to be said for um different types of accessibility you know so you can increase the text you can use different some of them that we buy or read along so that might you know support students with different needs um but yeah
073speak to that no absolutely I it it is a if the students I'd like to have them available for the students so that is something that I want to make sure that they do have access to um but it is a hard line of deciding where the budget money is going to go do I want to put that much money into purchasing an ebook so I do look to see does bosis have a copy because if we are getting access to the Bose's catalog through our Consortium maybe I can get Bose to buy it and then if our kids are checking it out a lot then maybe then I'll use the money to buy an extra copy for us that's only for Bethlehem kids so I'm constantly looking at our our circulation statistics to see
074how to best use our money thank you Willow did you have a question yeah my only question wasn't so much about the curriculum but about the middle school project itself and where we are in terms of completion of that I don't remember the projected time M January supposed that's the slated date January 15 17 something okay 17th and you and you had another question yeah I was just curious I guess thinking about this stuff how much if any of the collection is not in English so I could I can look into actual numbers for you but I do know at the high school we do have um Spanish collection we also have a Spanish picture book collection and then we have books in Russian so this is Gina Gina works for bosis and she has
075to help me catalog these books and finding cataloging for books in Russian is a little bit of a challenge so I think it was Russian I don't know if I got one in Ukrainian but the um finding to to purchase those books is where I'm actually um having trouble so Spanish books are easy to find copies of in purchase um but for I I worked with the elll teacher to see what they needed to reflect the languages that are in our elll classroom um so we do have a wish list going uh now just trying to find a place to purchase those books but but it is something that we are working on um at the high school at least so great and some of the digital resources that we get actually translate into multiple
076Lang languages so that makes them advantageous for our collections as well re have an EB okay any other questions thank you again to everybody for coming and presenting to us tonight next on our agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item if we have any visitors who'd like to address the board on an agenda item now is the time to come to the microphone 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 three so moved second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any AB 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 1 through n
077so move second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries C support Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following support staff action items 1 through 20 so move second any discussion 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 so move second uh any discussion yes I mentioned earlier one of the policies um this is the sweat shop free policy and you know if you happen to have read this you'll see it's in fact being diminished and the issue for that is kind of interesting when I so it turns out we may not have been following this
078policy and May in fact find it impossible to follow as written so for something's like Athletic Apparel it is apparently impossible to get any supplier to certify that their stuff is sweat shop free so I'm sad that the policy is being made less strong but this appears to be a thing where we can't actually follow the previously instantiated policy which you know I don't want anyone to think out there hey we the board decided we really like spat shops and we'd like to support them more that's definitely not the case um so it sucks frankly correct we don't want to get rid of the aspirational goal yeah quite um all in favor I I any opposed any abstentions that carries um item seven recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item if we have any
079visitors who would like to address the board on a non-agenda item now is the time to come to the microphone and if you could please state your name hi um I'm flint and I'm with the high school but I believe this is an agenda item it's under other policies D sure policy number name yeah yeah it's okay it's if you would like to it's okay if you want to if you have a comment to make I don't know how the process works are you going to speak on it first uh no we've we've voted on it but the when you have public comment um we can hear what you say we're not going to we won't have a conversation back and forth but we would love to hear what you have to say so the
080um policy was voted on and then today's the first reading does that mean that during the executive hours you voted on it so the way the policy votes work we have a a first read and a second read of the policy so it will be on the agenda again at our next meeting for the second read um and then we'll vote on it again that time so does that mean that you voted on it at least one time already or there's a final vote after both reads we voted on it tonight for the first read we'll vote on this a second reading of it at the next meeting so just one moment ago we voted to pass it through to the next vote but we can accept any comments on it before that time oh
081okay um if you have thoughts we would love to hear what you have to say so you're here at the perfect time hi I'm Flint's Mom I'm Julie Lawrence and uh I I think we you know we weren't quite sure what the process was but I think we just wanted to be here in great support of um of you opening up this process and um say that it's meant a lot to our family to be able to um acknowledge uh the diversity in our family and that it has made a big difference we came to the school district this is our first um fall here and we came from uh a school environment where some of these processes were already there and I want to say this in a constructive way not in a we're
082here to complain way but um not having some of this in place actually made the transition in a little bit more bumpy and so we um and you know we can give specific examples but I think mainly we just wanted to be here physically present saying thank you for looking at this and I think our family is very supportive if you want even like nuances of things that make a difference and why it actually does make a difference to comfort in school with peers with teachers just kind of feeling feeling like you you can show up as yourself we're really happy to support so that's what I wanted to say as a mom and anything else you want to say is great and I'm proud of my kid for being here yeah um and from
083the standpoint of kind of where I notice maybe shortcomings in the policy it's interesting to me as someone who's really interested in technology that how some of the aspects of this policy have revealed like little um flaws with the integration of technology of like Aspen and student records and rosters uh for example like the Aspen system is very old-fashioned and in the printing of student IDs um the fact is like it generates a new PDF for every single person student ID and then that PDF is then printed onto an ID card and so in just navigating this system I've both gotten to know like the in infrastructure digitally that exists for our school and also perhaps some of the problems like there was supposed to be a bus paperless transition um that was put on
084hold for at least a year or more because of someone going on maternity leave and perhaps not perhaps they're not being someone else to take control of that and as a result there's actually a lack of um integration between the school roster and the information there and the bus roster um and there was supposed to be a student ID functionality with the scanning I also think that since a lot of this school's systems are heavily reliant on the time clock aspect um even Mr doml was unaware that it was not integrated with Aspen that you know if there were to be a um sort of tech system that summons the information from the Aspen port portal there's actually a kind of breakdown there because of with respect to like like non-legal name it's it's like
085a new column added in the Aspen system but that's not um but the code really isn't there to do that anyways I don't want to get into the nuances but just like the you know I I think it's really important that um this change be made because uh even though there's there exists the column on been for your teachers a lot of student life doesn't really that doesn't really cross over to that because of you know students who will just manually input your name for like dance tickets and they'll just search the entire database and they'll just have access to everything that teachers do or substitutes or um signing into the library checking out a book I know that I've been hesitant for example to enter the library just as a result of um the
086maybe an Antiquated or well just just the very simple time clock um interface that doesn't really mirror the changes that have been made on the back end for the website so which just can I just to be clear results in being misgendered is that oh well um not in terms of the way that students interact with me but the fact that um for like for any substitutes calling attendance or for like signing into the counseling center and the the um Library it's has basically a log and like it's very like public and stuff like that and so there could be information that for the like Tech system it's very on loock only accessible to teachers or whatever but there are some places where it is actually very very adjacent to the entire student public um
087and so it's like this information that is supposed to be very like or that's supposed to be more hidden is is necessary to be like you have to yeah should I stop talking no not at all um is this I mean are we talking about dead names that kind of thing being available to everyone oh yeah yeah and and just like like um just a you know a Google spreadsheet of every single person's like their entire um all their information on Aspen being given to like a few members of the student council to uh handle all of the dance purchase or dance ticket purchases of every single member in the student body like yeah so my mom my mom's statement as a summary is um you know going through something as significant as changing name
088and gender is a major task and it's a represents a really major commitment to a new identity and that's hard enough to make the transition once but to have to revisit it daily on every not knowing which signin place you go to who you're going to be recognized as it it allow it it really is in the way of progress Progressive moving forward and just being able to be who you are when you come into the building or come into the community so I think that's really I think all of the nuances and Flint has an extraordinary amount of detail that you know may be helpful offline but I think the basic takeaway is as you move forward with the policy please think about it being you know all the ways in which this has
089to permeate throughout the community for it to really work thank you for sharing that feedback with us thank you thank you and you probably know this but there is a board email address so details you know feel free to send a 30 page email with all that stuff in it uh future meetings and events um on December 11th at 5:30 there's a facilities committee meeting um on December 12th at 5:30 there's an audit committee meeting um you do you know yet whether you're able to attend because if you're % sure okay if for some reason you can can't let me know because then I can try to sub in um and then our next regular board meeting is on December 20th um anticipating that they'll be executive session at 6 and then reconvening to public
090session at 7 and that is our would be our last meeting of 2023 um we do need to go back into executive session to discuss a personnel and contractual matter um could I have a motion to do so so move all in favor I all right um so we're going to go back into executive session but all the pig students come on up and make sure you sign out are you with a pig you don't have to sign it e