001nice round [Music] because [Music] after being experienced [Music] thank you yeah wait [Music] okay [Music] okay so [Music] what's going on [Music] oh [Music] yes [Music] uh [Music] i emailed it to him [Music] i can't see anything [Music] [Applause] [Music] so can you guys hear me [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] so grandparents coming up too or [Music] that they can't produce [Music] no handshaking [Music] oh that's good [Applause] but i can see here [Applause] for the others [Music] you look nice and um not wearing the same thing i know these are not wearing the same thing all right [Music] you guys good ollie you actually need okay [Music] uh the board has been in executive session since six o'clock to discuss a contractual matter a 10-year candidate and a student matter we
002could all stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all introductions dave hurst catherine natto willow bear wendy sampson jody monroe holly dunbar christine beth jonathan fischbein meredith moriarty and judy kehoe first on the agenda is approval of minutes it is recommended that the board of education approve the minutes from the december 1st 2021 regular board meeting second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions that passes next are meeting reports and first up is our superintendent's report uh thank you so i wanted to just do a couple covid protocol and updates from our reopening committee and also some information regarding quarantine and information from
003the department of health so i think i mentioned at our last meeting that we had received guidance from albany county department of health for individuals who are quarantine our students rather who are quarantined who are able to test out of quarantine after seven days if they're asymptomatic we did put information out about that to parents we reviewed at our reopening committee uh in regards to parents can go get a test if their child is asymptomatic who are quarantined submit it to the school nurse and the school nurse will review it and confirm the individual can come back to school on day eight so that is a change recently also as part of the decisions from the reopening group we talked about facilities use and prior to this meeting we said only bc students in the
004youth groups could be a part of those using our facilities however we did have requests for from families whose students do not attend bc but might attend a private school but our bc residents to allow them to participate with their peers the group did decide to allow that however the other decision that was made was that students participating in those groups as well as coaches and instructors do need to be vaccinated and have at least their first dose by january 10th and we communicated that out and shared that with the groups who are currently using our facilities we also agreed for those individual groups to allow two spectators per student for competitions again following covid protocols so at this time i also want to recognize before we get to our athletes who many of our
005here tonight and it's great to see all of you i'd like to congratulate one of our high school students romeo vashit who was named is to wmht's classical student of the month he's a ninth grader and he's featured in the interview and there's a video on our website and if you haven't seen it it is very impressive for a ninth grade student so congratulations to him and now i'm going to turn it over to mr keys to recognize our student athletes from the fall [Music] good evening everyone and uh thank you miss monroe uh we had an exciting fall and uh as we know uh at the end of each season we like to recognize outstanding teams and outstanding accomplishments uh before i bring out our first teams just wanted to mention that we had
006a great uh scholarly athletic fall each year our goal is to be recognized by nissa as a school of distinction and this fall we had boys and girls cross country field hockey girls golf boys golf girls soccer girls swim and dive girls tennis uh we're all recognized by this scholar athlete team so round of applause for these student athletes that being said i would like to introduce our first team our varsity girls tennis team coached by scott george and assisted by dylan davis a historic season running a record of 15-0 suburban council regular season champions section 2 champions regional champions and got an invitation through the regional championship to the very first ever girls team new york state public high school state championships down at the usta center down in flushing meadows so historic season
007great job ladies so at this time girls i'm going to ask when i call your name please come up and you're going to just kind of line up right here in front of the cables and we'll get some pictures susanna amarvikian isabelle brand [Applause] madeleine brand pope brown paige davenport audrey henson cripa vengogi [Applause] natalie [Applause] koga elizabeth craig ammo provide patel zara patterson anna pellis kirsten fang catherine tebow nina vargas [Applause] and john via vallaro i also wanted to mention that we had a great individual recognition here the doubles team of zara patterson and anna pellis was a section two finalists this year and in the double a's and as a result of that that qualified the girls for the state doubles tournament where they actually did win their first round and put up
008a valiant effort in the second round so congratulations to the girls and to the entire team coaches george and davis great job uh [Music] love myself [Applause] [Music] congratulations next team i'd like to recognize is our girls swim and dive team coached by carrie ann santa cola our dive coach megan plans and we had quite a few outstanding performances the girls did a great job all season very competitive team young team we had section champions so i'd like to bring up maddie ferreira maddie was the 200 i am and the 100 fly section champion she was also part of the 200 free relay she was a state qualifier in the 200 im relays as well as the 200 free relay and maddie was also the section 2 scholar athlete of the meet and also qualified
009in the 100 fly and the 200 im so maddie was very busy congratulations on an outstanding season and we have another player katie for a section champion come on up katie part of that 200 free relay team katie was a state qualifier in that 200 im relay as well as the 200 free relay and katie was a state qualifier in the 500 free the 200 free the 200 i am the 100 backstroke and she placed sixth in the 500 free and the 200 i am so katie is also very tired at the end of that congratulations i'd like to bring up courtney sorbello courtney was a member of the 200 im relay team along with katie and maddie and i'd also like to bring up hannah franhizer hannah is part of that section championship winning
010200 free relay team she's a state qualifier in the 200 im relay as well as the 100 meter breaststroke and part of the 200 free relay so congratulations hannah an awesome season i'd like to call up senior maya early maya has been a tremendous diver for our program she of course qualified for dive and actually came in sixth place in all of state so congratulations maya on an outstanding career as well as an outstanding effort at states and i'd like to bring up katie valerian who was a state qualifier in the 100 meter backstroke congratulations ladies [Applause] well yes i am so sorry sarah i thought i was brilliant with my color coding but apparently uh i missed it sorry sir [Music] okay the next team next athletes i'd like to recognize are our girls
011cross country team coached by tucker schrapski an outstanding team season and we had a couple of outstanding individual accomplishments but i did want to recognize that our girls with a section two class a championship runners-up and just recently came in third place overall in the new york state federation championships these are not small feats and small accomplishments these are huge this is a historically great season and uh and this team is really going to be getting saratoga battles for the years to come so congratulations on a great season i'd like to um call up our state qualifiers our state championship qualifiers riley davis come on up riley and catherine danigan great job girls [Music] and last but never least girl soccer coached by tom rogan we were thrilled and she's such a well-deserving athlete uh
012ruth hotel come on up ruth ruth was named allstate by the new york state sports writers association for class a and ruth caps off an amazing career here for bethlehem so congratulations ruth tom you can come up to the picture now you're shy congratulations to our athletes our coaches and happy holidays everyone [Music] congratulations to all of our athletes and thanks for coming and joining us tonight they're running for the door i know um do you want me to wait a second and let him yeah give him a minute [Music] there might be i'll say something [Music] um and to wrap up my superintendent's report i just wanted to remind everyone that this saturday we are having our holiday caring and sharing drive we currently have collected over twelve thousand dollars to support these efforts
013i'd like to thank kathy johnston and cherry fitzpatrick in special education for helping to spearhead and organize these efforts that will directly benefit our bc families and last but not least i'd like to take a moment to wish everyone a happy holiday season and new year i appreciate everything our students staff and families have done this fall to keep our schools open and slowly bring back some normalty normalcy to our lives which we just experienced just a minute ago well it's unfortunate we're seeing some setbacks i remain hopeful that 2022 will see better days ahead so thank you that's my report thanks joey anybody have any questions for jody next up is our board report and first i just wanted to echo jody's comments about the caring and sharing drive i wanted to say thank
014you to everybody who has been involved with that i came by on a tuesday morning to drop a few things off and based on the palettes of things that were being collected i also want to thank the community for their generosity because it really is outstanding i think we might still have a couple of pig students who've lingered out there in the audience if i'm correct you guys are need to stay until nine o'clock or until the meeting is over and if you need a signature you can see any board member at the end of the meeting i also wanted to congratulate amy ruse and the cast and crew of the high school play that was up this past weekend everybody did a great job and looked like they really were having a great time
015which is i think even more important and then lastly i also wanted to wish everybody a happy winter break and a happy holiday to those who celebrate if anybody has anything else they would like to share does anybody know like i was supposed to see the show this past weekend but i ended up getting home late from my trip do you know if they streamed it at all or if you can view it online at all i i don't think that they did okay i don't think they had the permissions okay yeah all right i'm sorry i missed it i'm glad it turned out well anybody else and i just wanted to thank our staff and students and wish everybody a happy holiday and those that have already celebrated their hot holidays but i hope
016it was good i just wanted to say that i was also able to see puffs this weekend and i thought everyone did a phenomenal job it was really wonderful to see kids on stage again see the audience enjoying it i love the fact that it was a play that younger kids could enjoy as well i know a lot of community members came out to see it so i just wanted to thank everyone involved in that and say congratulations because it was a great job next on our agenda is our student reports do we have anybody from the high school senate can come on up to oh i'm like where'd the microphone go oh awesome hello cool the middle school inspired me to come prepared with me like two weeks ago i felt very unprepared they
017showed me up so um as mentioned before our big exciting stuff is the uh caring and sharing food drive we've been collecting for the past three weeks here at the middle school or here at the high school middle school and our four five elementary schools um we're packing on friday which is going to be a big event in the atrium we're super excited for that senate is putting on as well as other clubs are going to come help pack those bags and then again as stated they're being delivered or handed out on saturday we've gotten too many donations from the community as well as students here were running out of space in the backpack room you can barely walk in um which is a great problem to have uh we've just been overwhelmed with the
018generosity as did before uh during the food drive we also collected coats um which has been super helpful we have a full pallet of donated coats that are in great condition that we're looking to give out before it gets too cold thankfully the weather has been allowing us to do that saying so warm last meeting we approved three clubs the oh no i'm gonna blank um i'm so sorry it was the inclusivity literacy club the uh oh god [Music] huh oh a recreational puzzle club like chess checkers things like that um and the last one was marine biology club um which we're all excited to get those off the ground last meeting we also had a student come to us with an issue he created a presentation he collected stats and petitions around the school
019and presented those statistics to us although the issue that he was advocating to fix we weren't able to do anything about we were able to get a formal statement from mr domel to give back to him and it was just super nice to see an active student body and allowing us to really connect the students to administration in such a productive and healthy way those are all my updates i can answer questions if you have any was the issue or concern something you can share i think so um it was uh the tech department took away i'm gonna have a hard time explaining this the um little icons were for our google accounts used to be pictures that we chose and that uh privilege was unfortunately abused by a lot of kids and putting inappropriate
020messages and pictures and such so the tech department uh just created or generalized them to just a color with our initial on them um most kids didn't have an issue with it but as of like anything change is difficult and some people didn't like that um but unfortunately like the kids who were abusing power obviously weren't able to like took away the privilege for everyone which is understandable but it was great to see students like out in the high school collecting statistics signing petitions trying to get change even though it wasn't necessarily uh didn't pay off in this particular situation well it sounds like it was a really great mechanism for the student body to be heard with the student senate and so whatever the senate is doing to foster those relationships it sounds like
021it's working so keep up the good work so that the students feel comfortable coming and bringing those issues so they can at least be addressed and looked into yeah i think that's great so thank you for sharing that with us yeah absolutely thank you so much for your time and happy holidays thanks you're very well prepared do we have anybody from the middle school here tonight you guys can come up to the microphone and if you need to uh adjust the microphone if you need any help with that maybe somebody can help them with it help you guys or talk loud hi i'm reagan hold on one second thank you there you go hi i'm regan hi i'm ellie dance and we are from middle school student council film updates are the spirit days we're
022having this friday is holiday pajama day next monday is warm and cozy tuesday is holiday head to toe wednesday is color wars sixth grade is red seventh grade is white and eighth grade is green thursday is ugly sweater day another thing is that we have been doing a hero of the month this month season b anthony won over jim thorpe pocahontas and abigail adams our holiday caring and sharing food drive ends this thursday and you're excited to organize all the donations that have come in this far we would like to thank all the families who have participated middle school has begun ordering our free character t-shirts and we just surpassed 375 orders we're hoping to have as many students as possible place orders before the ordering is closed on december 23rd the middle school bands
023choruses and orchestras in sixth seventh and eighth grade are planning to have their first performance since the start of a pandemic they are scheduled for for these in january on the 11th 13th and 18th say happy holidays great thanks guys anybody have any questions i'm curious which character traits each of you chose for your t-shirts i chose bravery and i chose gratitude awesome great choices thanks so much thank you happy holidays me too happy holidays [Music] next on our agenda is our presentation this evening um we're having a presentation on diversity equity and inclusion and i'll turn it over to you jody [Music] so mr hurst and i are going to tag team this and harriet grosvenor is on the zoom you can see her in the corner hi harriet good evening everyone happy holidays
024thanks for joining us this evening so we wanted to update the board about some of our work regarding diversity equity and inclusion over the last couple of years and i think it's important to note uh the purpose of this work one of the reasons if you look at the charts here you'll see the changing demographics of our student population and looking at in night 2000 about a little over 95 of our student population was white and you can see the shift in that in 2020 21. we have about 84 of our students who are white seven percent who are asian american three percent who are black or african american four percent who are hispanic or latino and three percent who are multiracial so you can see the shift in regards to not only addressing our
025own student population and the changing demographics but also thinking about when we developed our strategic plan the purpose of preparing students for a more global world that they will be entering when they leave bethlehem so next slide and this is an interesting slide it's a little video that shows the changing demographics in public schools over the course of time so so again just a visual to reinforce the importance of this work as we prepare our students to leave bethlehem and go out into all different areas for their futures so some of our areas that we've been focusing our work on for diversity equity and inclusion are all of these different populations of students and i'm not going to read through them but we have talked about them at length in various different discussions also to
026know is the new york state education department did come out with standards or recommendations for dei in what districts should be considering actually two days ago i did present to represent bethlehem to the board of regents to talk about some of our efforts and actually this handout at your table is what i provided uh the board of regents at that to just lay out our time frame and you know when i went back and looked at that i hadn't really thought about when we began in 2016 is actually when we began some of this work and we really didn't know where we were going we didn't know where to start but i think that if you look at that time frame we have made some substantial advances uh still with work to do for sure
027uh but we have made some some gains in this area so i think it's it's worth noting those time frames this is just breaking it down a little bit further to for where we started in 2016-17 as i said this really started and for those who were on the board at that time we had a small group of students at the high school who came to meet with us to talk about some of their experiences in high school and wanted they were a group from iran who dr lisa carr had organized and asked suggested that they meet with some of us and they talked about things such as the touching of their hair and comments that were made in hallways or in the cafeteria and sometimes overheard by staff but not addressed and i think
028the real crux of that came down to staff didn't know how to address some of those issues and that's been something we've been talking about ongoing really since that time in 2017-18 we started to develop our action plans we expanded our staff committee in 18 and 19 we began sharing more of this work with the faculty we also created a vision statement and this is where we engaged a consultant we had engaged some prior individuals to help us with this but uh this is where we really started to formalize our plan a little bit more and in 2019 20 we began working with generation ready which harriet was a part of at that time and we grew our committee to represent all areas of the buildings across the district to make sure that we had
029good representation we also started looking more formally at our english and social studies curriculums looking at other curriculum changes particularly in our library program and that's the year uh harriet had done some training with the board regarding some of this work we also last year because we couldn't do in-person groups harriet engaged students parents and staff some work in bridging the divide sessions the board adopted the anti-racism policy last year and we've made more significant changes to our ela and social studies curriculum at both the middle school and high school and finally this year obviously we're still in the midst of the year but the board did establish the district level equity and inclusivity committee which harriet is facilitating we are looking at continuing to build our action plans that were developed as a result
030of our audits prior to covid and we're doing some professional development to continue work with students with disabilities and also we did some training on a larger scale on conference day about implicit bias for the various departments so we have the bethlehem committee for equity diversity and inclusion which was established in 2017 which really is a group of staff members kind of doing the work in the buildings that needs to be done looking at our school climate looking at our hiring practices and professional development our district committee involves 20-plus stakeholders that include students faculty staff parents board members and administrators who serve more in an advisory role to have more broader conversations about what the district can do what the community can do and try to make those connections as we move forward so i'm
031going to turn the next few slides over to dave to talk about academics and character as they relate to some of this work okay so thank you so in the academic area again sort of two overarching themes one is striving for culture proficiency and then the other is updating our curriculum to reflect that but sort of within that as we're updating the curriculum um we keep in mind that you know we're trying to create a curriculum that presents multiple viewpoints but also ensuring that the students that are in front of us that we're speaking to them right so this work really can't happen without developing deep relationships with students and families because it's hard to sort of address their needs or address their cultures if you don't know where they're coming from so building relationships
032is a large part of the academic work so just some highlights that we've been um making changes i know the english and social studies seems to have gotten a lot of the press over the last couple years but you know there's been changes in other departments as well so for instance art um you know we've changed our focus from some of the you know classic historical artists to more contemporary artists from different genres um to really try to capture um you know different types of art for students and also um we've moved towards a much more choice-based art program where student voice and choice becomes a much greater part in terms of what it is that they choose to design regardless of what the medium happens to be and so as we've mentioned before english
033language arts we've expanded our literary collection quite a bit to ensure that we're addressing um texts we're incorporating texts that address a wide variety of um topics and demographics to so that we have more diverse backgrounds again to speak to the students that are in front of us we also adopted last year on the seal of bi-literacy which is a new sort of diploma significance that new york state began about four years ago now so students have they have to accumulate so many points in different world languages and then they're allowed to have this seal on their diploma and we had 21 students um achieve this in the first year which is quite a remarkable accomplishment and we are hoping to grow this program there are 27 students rather and we're hoping to grow this
034program even further in the coming years and before i move off of academics one thing i want to mention too is not only is sort of equity about changing and diversity about what's changing the curriculum itself but also keeping in mind that students have to have access to this curriculum right so it's not enough to just offer a wider variety of curriculum or a diverse curriculum if all students don't have access to it then you're doing a disservice right so as i mentioned during my academic update for instance like our ap courses we have in the area one of the highest percentage rates of students accessing ap courses and that's because we don't have restrictive prerequisites like other districts like as i mentioned at that time we're similar in size to this unit but we
035have twice as many students taking ap exams we're half the size almost a third of the size of shenandoah and we have as many students accessing those exams so it's not just about the course offerings themselves but ensuring that you have policies in place so that students can access these courses without having various barriers put forth in front of them so character so obviously providing opportunities for innovative inclusive and culturally responsive teaching and learning and you know part of what it is that we're trying to do is again reach students where they are get to know students have students get to know one another get to know families and that's where this work happens within our overall social emotional and with our character education programming so as jody mentioned in our timeline you know one
036of the ways that we were able to um reach out to both students and community was through the bridging divide workshops we ran a set of workshops with two parent workshops in this winter and one student workshop and then we had two more parent and one more student in the spring so quite an extensive opportunity for parents and students to engage in this work we had just shy of 120 parents participate and about 40 students participate so this was you know a great way for them to engage in the work and again for students building character through this work so along those lines and also as joy to mention the timeline prior to engaging with generation ready we had several sort of stand-alone professional development opportunities where we had experts in the field come in
037and speak to us on various topics um we started with um just learning more about implicit bias microaggressions diversity tolerance and equity and again that grew directly out of what the students brought to us in that initial meeting those are the areas that they specifically spoke of and then we had a follow-up very similar presentation um from greg owens and then we have we're very fortunate to have women cud let's come in and speak to all of our levels about transgender gender non-conforming and lgbtq plus issues and that was very very well received by the faculty again this goes back to some of the points of students made at our initial meeting about sometimes faculty overhearing things and not knowing how to respond appropriately so this very much spoke to faculty about that how to
038respond to these issues we also had a faculty presentation from students themselves where they created actual videos um to sort of represent their voice to be able to share with faculty and then finally we had um an expert from a center for workplace solutions come in and work with the administration over the summer to help us with our not just internal practices but in terms of our hiring we spent at that time we then developed an entire new hiring handbook with a focus on ensuring that we're doing implicit bias training and outreach efforts to try to diversify our workforce force and i'll turn it back over to jody in onto community uh this is an area that we hope to expand upon obviously some of our goals as dave mentioned is to retain and develop
039a diverse faculty and staff and also a primary responsibility that we have is also commit partnering with our community and not just our parents but our larger community so that they understand the purpose of this work they can hear some of the student voices that it's easier for us to hear not always is visible or apparent to community members who may not be as connected to our school district uh so some of the this uh highlights some of the languages that are represented in our district there has been a shift over the years where we have a more diverse population some of the things we've done to try and engage our parents in our community is we introduced the lexit key parent portal to help provide with translation we also the enl department has implemented
040a family newsletter with translation as well and we are as i've mentioned in the past doing a redesigned website that will have improved accessibility for all users to be able to navigate and anyone with a disability should be able to use our website and we have a little clip so you can get an idea of when dave mentioned what some of our students shared with faculty there's always real power in hearing from the students because that's where you hear how much of a difference some of this work makes so can you play that video for me as an asian american i find aap a wonderful way to recognize my family's past and for everyone in the bc community i hope you take the special time to learn more about asian and pacific island culture thank
041you so as dave mentioned and we've shared one of the things that is part of our committee work we've done a lot of different short recordings or videos of students own experience or their family's own experience and that i think is very powerful we also have many clubs that address equity and inclusivity that students do have a role in this work students have a lot of power in the work that this does with their peers so trying to give them a voice in the high school and the middle school and even the elementary although clubs don't exist there are ways and even in the elementary schools that students can can share their voices and their experience also the bridge to college many of you are familiar with this this is a mentoring program for first
042generation students who are interested in post-secondary opportunities this year the third cohort will graduate from this program there's 19 students currently in the class of 2022. this year all the mentors are bc staff or counselors however in the past we have had a lot of community members offering to assist as well which has been great nicole conway scott carlton and dr lisa carr really lead this program but the feedback we've had not only from students but their families have been very positive and wellness we often don't think about wellness in regards to some of the diversity and equity work but i think we all know especially coming dealing with the pandemic student and staff wellness is a huge component to school and making sure that students are well both emotionally and physically are a big
043part of success in school and beyond so some of the areas that maybe you have not heard of is in the middle school we have a reward shop that was established and this includes intensive skills students who partner with peer models to fill school-wide character and kindness initiatives during the lunch periods middle school students are rewarded with tickets which can be traded in for everyone loves prizes especially middle school students at the elementary level in our intensive skills program at eagle or ellsmere i'm sorry we have teachers helpers where these students learn lifetime skills and interact and collaborate with not only additional adults but their peers as well so really the goal is to unite students of all abilities and shared goals and responsibilities and also we have our unified sports program which we began
044a few years ago and last year the unified sports the bowling team did quite well that's a picture of them and their success but this offers an opportunity not only for students with disabilities but for their peers to work with them and this has been an incredibly successful program i think when we started it we weren't really sure how well it would develop but it really has engaged students of all levels and abilities to become peers and peer helpers here at the high school and it's just a great program overall so that's a summary of many years of work just trying to highlight some of the things that we've been doing certainly we have more work to do as i mentioned but i think that we have made progress in these areas and will continue
045to work to improve in those areas so any questions people have for dave myself or harry on the screen i know we used to have on the website at least there there was like a place where we had put some information about some of the work that we were doing i would just um suggest that with the website revamp that we make that easier to find yeah um and update it so that it is it contains everything that has been taking place like this document does that would be great yep um and then [Applause] dave i had a quick question for you which was just whether would it be possible for us to get a list of um kind of a what some of the other texts are in the english english curriculum in particular
046for sure and that would actually be like you had a couple up there yeah they're mentioning the website too that's probably a good place to have sort of a running list of all of the different texts that we've adopted over the last few years not just because of this initiative but in general these are the texts that students are exposed to at different grade levels yeah i would just be interested at some point that'd be great anyone else have questions just to piggyback on what what you had said about um the website and be having a site um where that information is accessible so for like the workshops there was a lot of like faculty workshops and other events that staff attended is there information from those workshops that would be able to be housed
047on this site that we could share with community members so that we could expand on it like i know it's for faculty and continuous education but some of it is applicable to the community i just don't know if it's copyrighted but if it's something that we could share sure with a larger audience that would be great um yeah we can look at that um some of it we might be able to and some of it we may not be but if we can sure i think if we're going to make that website more robust that would be a way to do it yeah i mean article articles articles and videos we could certainly share yeah activities would be without context wouldn't make a lot of sense right articles and videos we could definitely share yeah
048and then that workshop would look great that four-part workshop where students and parents attended and it sounded like the parents there was a larger turnout with them versus the student is there any way to look at the curriculum and see if there's ways to integrate some of those workshops into other areas in the academic setting just to get some of the like really strong points out that maybe because we want the students attend but maybe they're not getting out for that full presentation maybe there's little tidbits that we could incorporate in other areas so harriet led those facilitated those workshops for the parents and the students so maybe harriet you could speak to how some of those sessions would translate into some of the academics and i know we didn't mention this but harriet also
049has worked with our english and social studies departments to help them with some of the changes in their curriculum so she may be the best one to address that sure there are definitely some activities that could be utilized within the classroom settings i know currently many of your faculty members are utilizing those in their staff developments within the buildings for example i received an email from jennifer lewis the other day in which they wanted to incorporate one of the activities that had been previously done by the members of the um dei committee into a faculty workshop so there are definitely opportunities for that in regards to the work that was previously done with the curriculum it should also be noticed that one of the things that i work with your faculty on is being able
050to utilize the material that is presently being offered in the curriculum and particularly things that have historically been part of the canon through a new lens in order to include voices that are usually ignored or marginalized into being part of the conversations so how do you frame questions how do you include people who may not necessarily be reflected in the text so that they can be part of the conversation and how do you allow all students regardless of their background their social economic status their position in society to be able to make meaning regardless of what's being studied so a lot of the work has been focused around that so that all questions can be part of the conversation and that nothing has to be off limits because it doesn't necessarily speak specifically to one
051group or another their ways of making it inclusive for everybody and that leads to my last question on the i think there was like five or six different um continue ahead for faculty days conference days was it 100 participation in those faculty days was it only some like and is it all faculty or is it just teacher specific or is it trickle down to like other areas so some of them were larger scale sessions like harriet had done a couple for our what was our last conference day the fall it was entire levels at a time yeah and then the one i mentioned that we did this fall was actually run by one of our teachers with ela social studies and special ed the transgender training was done for all levels and we also did
052that for some of the support staff the one area that i do think and i think i've mentioned this before that we need to do more training with because it's been limited in with covet and also with time is with our support staff so certainly additional training with our faculty but our support staff is a group of individuals it's a large group of individuals who often are interacting with kids in more casual environments in the lunchrooms in the hallways so that would be a kind of a focus that we want to do moving forward is to offer some more training in that area with with that group as well yeah i was specifically thinking like food staff transportation who have those casual interactions and might be on like the unconscious biases things like that that
053they normally wouldn't get in their everyday like work life right absolutely which would be great to make sure we do that and that was it that was um all my questions anybody else have questions have we done that oh yeah i'm sorry we done a school climate survey recently we're doing that after the holidays last year we did just a very short i think 10 or 12 questions for middle and high school to just gauge how are they doing overall with their mental health and emotional stability this year we will be doing the full school climate survey which goes to students 5 through 12 parents and staff we're just working on the links we're doing it through ed vistas no tokens this year if you remember the tokens um and that will be done in
054january so we'll have that data and there are questions uh the nice thing with the school climate survey there are questions related to uh classroom instruction and some of the curriculum does this reflect my background does this reflect my culture i feel that that's represented in the curriculum so there is some information that we can gather from that kathy yeah i just said um two questions the first is you uh you pointed out that we're working on updating hiring guidelines and i was wondering if you could go into some detail about um what we're doing on that front so i we updated the hiring guidelines three or four years ago now so before folks even sit on an interviewing community they're required to watch an anti-bias video i'm required to read through the guidebook but
055the guidebook itself also speaks to how communities are set up what qualifies or disqualifies you from being on a committee things of that nature but it's it's a pretty substantial guide some of the board members that have served on hiring communities have seen it i'd say it's about 20 pages long so it's pretty substantial wonderful and then where are we um how are we looking at where we recruit from and what what kind of i know this is a big conversation in the world today what are we thinking about that so we have increased our outreach to um even trying to get student teachers from colleges that are um historically not just white for lack of a way of putting it and that has not proven to be successful i mean this is a challenge
056not just for us but even schools with very different student populations are having a hard time attracting diverse candidates and from the teacher first the teacher pool itself is not diverse at all so it's very limited what you can pull from second i know some schools i don't know if it was one locally or not but i think it was albany actually they went to um a big recruiting fair diamond like washington dc and we were able to get four or five diverse candidates and i think after the first year they lost all that like one of them because the the sitting experience of albany was not what they were hoping for right they were used to washington dc or new york city these big thriving cities with a lot more you know public transportation
057and culture and things like that and we were like yeah you called in the city but it's a small little town so for them to struggle and get candidates you can imagine how hard it is for suburban schools to get candidates so it's trust me it's not for a lack of training um it's the candidate pool is not diverse at all yeah and there are issues that you need an interview to attract them sometimes when you come to the area it's just not what they are looking for either so there are challenges there but this is something that the capital district as a whole is working on it's not no one district is trying to kind of tackle it on their own because it's a it is a problem within the entire area yeah absolutely
058i i could believe that and it's just interesting to think about how do we um how do we work with uh overcome and work around hurdles to to try and set ourselves up for the most success because i know it's it's it's a challenge um and then the the other question i had since we have miss governor here and sorry i'm pointing up at the screen um i don't know if you can see me but i was just wondering just kind of what your thoughts are on where where things are going now or where you think that we as a board could could lean in more to help make your work more successful in the work of the administration and throughout the district um i'm really pleased with the efforts that have been made so
059far and the support that the board has given to jody and dave in terms of doing this work um i think that a lot more conversations need to be had between the boards and the greater communities so that the community really does have an understanding not only of the importance of this but that you as board members support this work in the pockets of conversations that i've had with the parents particularly during the workshops a lot of them did not feel that they were informed in terms of what was going on or even the position of the board in terms of their willingness to have this happen so being able to be as transparent as possible having those pockets of conversations when you bump into neighbors in the grocery stores or even other events would
060really kind of take this along the way and to really let the community know that jd and dave and the school system really have the bridge full support in these initiatives that they're putting together wonderful thank you that's fantastic feedback i appreciate that you're very welcome and just add catherine being involved in some of the hiring stuff over the years i've definitely seen a significant improvement in the hiring recruitment practice where there is a really good focus on the resumes that are coming in and things that would have maybe automatically have not been looked at before they're taking a much closer look to make sure if there's a candidate that could diversify our community that we're looking at that very closely and bringing them in for interviews to see besides just what's written on paper
061what they can bring to the community for through experiences through their culture things that might not just be apparent and i've definitely seen that transition occur and it was really nice in the last round to see that happen and it was there was a really strong focus on it i just wanted to uh thank jodi for putting together this timeline um i was wondering what what do you see uh as coming up next on the timeline 22-23 um well we want to finish up we never finished our last session with the lar the larger faculty committee with harriet so we want to finish that and we did develop we had the audits for each of the buildings in the district some of the work from the action plans has did start and has been implemented
062and some of it has not so we want to circle back to those action plans making sure they're still relevant that would be a first step which also then starts to involve a larger number of our faculty we'd like to then also get another group to go through some of the workshops that harriet offers because they are very powerful they really give you a solid understanding of the work and why it's important and the other piece of this is really getting some training more training to our support staff which has been very limited the district equity committee also still has a couple of more meetings two or three i think that we're scheduled we schedule those for the year so based on what the outcome of those meetings will also give us some direction as
063to maybe what the board should be looking at what the district should be looking at as well i don't think those of you who are on that district committee much of what we've been talking about is similar to some of the work we've been doing so nothing has really been a big difference but i think the community piece is important for us not to forget that so those are some of the i guess thinking about what is this maybe the second part you know of this year or the summer planning for next year look like those are some of the key things i think are important for us to move forward with thank you and i would just add to that that one thing that came up at our policy committee meeting which we had
064this since our last meeting was looking at our the policies as we go through um to do a review of them where we can make changes to support um the work that's being done right so could i ask um terry i want to ask you a question like with any of your other like clients do you have like milestones or time frame goals that you want like a district or a client to achieve so i know this is like a lifelong like implementation where you're going to constantly be revising and and it's we want everything to happen today but it's going to take time and you know we have limited resources so do we have or you have anything that kind of gives like a timeline like this is what we should see like a
065year year and a half from now not in the midst of a pandemic but in normal times like do we have like just milestones that we should be really as a board looking at to achieve um as you can imagine in every district it's going to be different just because the population is going to be different and it really has to start with the basis of what you as a district think is the most important um part of the conversation to attack so for example as we talk about in our workshops when you when you're doing a local cultural deficiency you start with one error or one aspect of your problem or practice if you will and you circle back to that once you seem to get that underfoot i think the fact that your
066faculty is beginning to recognize particularly in the era and social studies department the lack of diversity in the presentations and the material that's being utilized to students is a huge milestone uh one of the things that i was pleased to hear when working with the student groups is that the students were starting to see the difference in terms of the work that was the material that was being presented to them for consideration and starting to um feel more included in the conversations that were happening and that is huge because that usually takes a lot longer than the few years that we've been working together to begin to see those um kind of steps um but in general i think it's really going to be dependent upon what you as a district think you want to
067focus on as being the most important aspect if it is for example taking the part of the framework of creating that welcoming and affirming environment for all the stakeholders then um congratulations there's already signs of that starting to happen um but it's it varies from district to district and sometimes you make steps and you make milestones and unfortunately things happen change of leadership change of different grammar graphics and you end up taking a couple of steps backwards and i know that's a very secular and circular answer to your question though thank you [Music] any other questions thank you very much for the presentation and thank you harriet for joining us this evening thank you very much happy holidays to everyone and be well see you soon thanks harry next on our agenda is our recognition
068of public comment on an agenda item if we have anybody with us this evening who would like to speak on an agenda item now is the time to come to the microphone uh next item six action items a finance action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following finance action items one and two second any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes b professional personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following professional personnel action items 1 [Music] through 13. [Music] any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes [Music] c support personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following support staff action items 1 through
06915. any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes d other action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following action items one through three seconds any discussion [Music] i just um wanted to speak briefly on the policy for um [Music] a temporary home or hospital instruction and it's accompanying regulation i read through it and there didn't seem to be um any reference to virtual instruction and it seems as though that is what we're utilizing right now in terms of children who are quarantined for you know covert positive results um so i was wondering if that's something that needs to be addressed in that policy so this is this policy is specifically for someone who's out on a medical like a longer term so i wouldn't
070recommend adding it to this policy because this is a more longer term oh i mean when i was reading it i thought that that's where our instruction for children who are home you know because it seemed like a tweak yeah we don't require this so this this particular policy if you look at the regulation requires a parent to fill it out a doctor to fill it out we don't require that for kids who are on quarantine we just use the doh order and we provide this instruction generally to the classroom teacher so we're not using this particular process for that reason but to touch on that though meredith like it says over two weeks so most likely most people aren't going to be they'll be back to school hopefully but you bring up a really
071good point but now that we are not covered related inclusive of virtual learning possibly i mean i just think about when delaney was in the hospital that would have been a godsend to be able to do like virtual instruction or tutoring so would there be any harm to adding it to the policy and we'd have to probably look at that we didn't in the past typically do virtual instruction for home instruction if a student was obviously in the hospital generally they're not well enough to get instruction if they're home and they're not able to meet an instructor then we did provide options for the instructor to go home as go to the home as long as the care has there i'm which i think is better if we can provide that but but there was
072also a lack of tutors so i'm thinking if we offer that virtual option you might get more i'm just thinking i mean well also i just feel like people now kind of expect that as as something that we've been able to do and so if someone was home say for three weeks they may feel more comfortable than inviting someone into their home just doing virtual instruction or the the tutors may be more comfortable if there was an issue of you know contagion or something like that um i just didn't know why it wasn't even an option in this scenario just because really we haven't used it for that purpose yeah i mean absolutely it is yeah but if we are renewing the policy at this point um it seems like something that we could add
073in as an option obviously it's not appropriate in every situation and obviously in person would be better if that's appropriate but because it's it's something now that people feel comfortable with i feel like it's something that we should have as an option could we put it back into the policy committee just for re-review for that language or have more discussion on it yeah that's fine we can do that willow did you have something you wanted to say just real quickly on um the gender neutral bathroom policy just um i appreciate taking the implicit and making it explicit um we at our dei committee meeting and i think here at a board meeting as a readout we talked about sharing draft policies with student stakeholders to get feedback and i wondered this seems to me like
074a good one to potentially share a draft with a student group that would have interest in it and i don't know if we did we talked about a mechanism to do that yep we did it was shared with actually we had the policy committee meeting and uh the next day we had a question about language in it and uh mike mitchell was meeting with the um the gsa the esgsa so they actually looked at the policy and provided feedback i love that story that was all i had okay uh all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions that passes item seven uh recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item we have anyone who would like to speak on a non-agenda item and now would be the time to come forward item eight future meetings
075and events our next board meeting is on wednesday january 5th starting at 7 anticipating an executive session at six and the meeting after that on wednesday january 19th also at seven anticipating executive session at six um we do need to go back into executive session to discuss a personnel issue if i could have a motion to go back into executive session all in favor aye any opposed that motion passes um so before we leave do you need a signature no you're all set okay thank you thank you for staying with us [Music] thank you you