BCSD Board of Education November 3rd 2021 meeting

001[Music] if we can reconvene our meeting to open session the board has been in executive session since six o'clock to discuss a litigation matter we could all please stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] 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 [Music] if we could have introductions dave hurst jonathan fish fine catherine natto jody monroe holly dallinbaugh christine beck willow bear wendy sampson and judy kehoe and meredith moriarty is joining us virtually this evening first up on the agenda is the approval of minutes it is recommended that the board of education approve the minutes from the october 20th 2021 regular board meeting any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions

002that passes next are our meeting reports um and first up is our superintendent's report uh thank you i wanted to provide a quick update uh the district covid reopening committee met last week and we did make a few changes to our protocols we did send this out already about siblings having to stay home if they had a family member who was symptomatic at the beginning of the year albany county department of health had recommended that provided guidance indicating that students who are in a family and there's someone who's symptomatic should remain out of school and the committee decided to moving ahead that we would not require asymptomatic family members or siblings to stay home we looked at the data uh several other districts had made changes and so it's not a requirement so we put

003that information out i think parents are very happy about that change so that was one change the committee made also there were several questions recently probably with the upcoming holidays about travel protocols and we decided that we would follow the cdc guidance for international travel but we would not follow the domestic travel guidance in part because they didn't distinguish between where you were traveling it was just domestic travel so whether you were driving over the state to massachusetts or new jersey versus flying so that was another change we also talked about facility use we talked about this a few times and we decided that we would open our schools to bc student groups only so not adult use not outside groups but for our own students and the plan is to begin use of that

004the facilities around december 1st i know len keys our athletic director had expressed wanting to get the winter sports season up and going and he was working with o m to determine what facilities would be accessible for the organization so we are doing that with um their facilities application they have to also submit what their safety protocols are so we make sure they're in line with uh what we require and then finally vaccinations for student grade students ages 5 to 11 have been approved i had a call with the albany county department of health and jay patel who owns crestwood pharmacy today our school physician joanne menrath and a couple others to talk about hosting a vaccine clinic here for our students so currently the vaccinations are dispersed through albany county department of health so

005we are tentatively planning to hold a clinic but we don't have a date yet we met with them so we're going to collect some data from families about how many would be interested in participating should we offer a clinic here how many of them would prefer to go to their pediatricians and they also are planning the department of health to also offer boosters as well as just the three pfizer moderna for anyone who hasn't been vaccinated yet so we are working on the plans for that ideally if we could get a clinic together prior to thanksgiving that would be ideal because then students would have their second dose prior to the holiday break and it would be just two weeks out from that vacation but that might be wishful thinking but that's our current planning

006i also want to highlight a few students our varsity tennis team if you've not been following them they earned a ticket to flushing meadows for the state high school association girls tennis championship the bc team finished its regular season 15-0 which is great and the championships are going to be held this friday at flushing meadows the home of the us open so how exciting is that for them congratulations and good luck we also had uh six distinguished high school students who were recently selected as some of the best student musicians in the state four have been invited to showcase showcase their talents as part of the new york state musical association conference in rochester in december and two have been selected as alternates i'd like to congratulate lauren carlson lee daniel janston ryan kegg william

007wu and peyton roach and michael z [Music] also if you saw today we have a student at the high school who seems to be not only an entrepreneur but a very uh good science computer science student nicholas radoshevich is a junior and he created a website called earthstripes.org to help people learn more about the impacts of climate change there's a story on our website and i would encourage everyone to check it out he received a perfect score on the ap computer science principles exam he took last spring so i'd like to congratulate him and maybe you can find some holiday gifts on his website and that's my report anybody have questions for jody catherine just a quick question could you just clarify when you said um the facilities for bc student groups we're talking about

008just groups entirely comprised of bc students is that correct correct cool thank you next up is our board report and first i just wanted to thank everybody who was involved with the the homecoming dance which took place after it was postponed week because of weather issues but it sounds like all the kids had a great time and i think it was really important for them to be able to get together and socialize so i appreciate everybody who whose efforts made that happen and then i i just wanted to briefly address the spotlight article that came out last week regarding some outdated terminology that was used during our last meeting i know that jonathan wanted to to speak directly to it but i just wanted to comment that i know that education and work on social

009justice issues is it's a lifelong process and we all make mistakes and the important thing is to keep the conversation going so that we can learn from those mistakes and that we can continue to improve and do better so jonathan i'll turn over to you okay i want to apologize to the community and to anyone that was offended or hurt by my description of an asian-american girl in the book eyes that kiss i honestly had no idea and i was mortified to learn that the o word was offensive to some if i had been aware i never would have used it i chose my current public service in education because education is important for a culturally rich and diverse and inclusive society i've learned from this experience and it will not be repeated thank you

010jonathan that's all i have this evening if anyone else has anything that they'd like to share at this point i do um i just like to say that i was able to attend an ultimate frisbee game this past weekend it was held on halloween in the morning and a lot of bc students who play ultimate from eighth grade through the high school grades had a great time facing off against some niskayuna ultimate frisbee players also in that wide age range and a good time was had by all the fun thing about frisbee is that even if the opposing team scores and makes a point everybody claps no matter you know no matter everybody is just amazed by the talent that some of these young frisbee players show on the field i wanted to just put

011that out there that there's a lot of good club activities that are going on this year after a long time of not being able to play so everybody's very happy about that thanks wendy catherine and on the theme of you know things that haven't happened in a while there were tons of halloween celebrations at the elementary schools throughout the district and i was super excited to go to the trunk or treat over at ellsmere elementary which was awesome and really well supported by the community and put together by the hard-working folks at the pto over there um i know that that there were events at other other the district schools as well and so just congratulations to everybody who thought creatively worked so hard and pulled off some really great events that were just so

012fun for our families and our students thanks catherine i had the opportunity to attend the nisba law conference it this year it's uh they recorded it because it was done virtually and it's available if anyone wants to take a look some of the information especially related to vaccinations um exemptions for medical or um uh or other excuses uh medical or religious expenses um those were those were covered pretty well um as were a number of other items about keeping kids safe so it's something that i would encourage people to listen to if you have the time great thanks jonathan next up on our agenda are our student reports do we have anybody from the high school student senate i think i see somebody hi i'm so hi i'm sophia ahsoka the student's under president we

013have no updates from the past two weeks we've just been working on the same things as well as the uh holiday caring and sharing food drive is coming up that's all i can take any questions the holiday drive is december 18th that's the scheduled date currently okay what um what do you what projects do you have coming up for um sorry we're currently working on a courtyard outside of the guidance center for students to have lunch when the weather gets nicer our supervisor mr irons as well as i believe mr domel has a meeting with the district architects to look further into uh logistical plans and we are the senate is working on uh fundraising for picnic benches and things of that sort right now thank you thanks yeah absolutely have a good night thank

014you and i don't think we have anybody from the middle school student council with us tonight but i do hear that we might be seeing them soon next on the agenda is our presentation this evening on the role of school resource officers in bethlehem like a maze i'm going to move this up so i can see there's nothing too yeah [Music] mine did the same oh britney it's so much pressure i just keep saying hi brittany here we go [Music] we knew you could do it oh good evening everybody tonight we are thrilled to be able to give you a presentation which is an update on the districts and the town's school resource officers program we are joined tonight by dave domell and mike klugman from the high school in the middle school and our

015school resource officers as well so the district has had an sro presence at our schools for 35 years since 1986. the sros are employees of the town of bethlehem they have extensive training and based on that training are prepared to perform the very unique responsibilities of an officer working in tandem with the school district can you advance to the next slide please at this time we have two school resource officers assigned to the district although this program has been in place for many years the district only recently entered into a formal agreement with the town as of july 1st 2018. the agreement as you would expect defines the roles and the responsibilities and then also specifies the fees for the services that are provided to the district within the fees there are two separate components

016one is a fixed fee for the year for the sro services and then there is an hourly fee for any special police details that are requested by the district so the special details are not necessarily performed by the school resource officer but for instance it could be an officer who might help with traffic or crowd control for instance if we're hosting a larger scale event we do not have crossing guards covered within this agreement crossing guards are town employees and are not paid for by the district as part of the agreement each year those fees do increase but would i would note that the fees do not represent the full cost of the officers recognizing essentially that there are mutual benefits to both the town and to the school district the costs are shared by

017both parties [Music] as will be described in greater detail during the presentation itself there are key distinctions between the matters that are handled by the police and matters that are handled by the school essentially if there are any discipline matters those are handled by the district and if there are any criminal matters those are handled by the police [Music] in addition there are certain roles that the sros perform in our schools and for instance they provide age appropriate educational programs throughout our school buildings they provide support to students who might be facing an issue of concern and are looking for an officer to speak with they can do investigations into criminal activity and of course um overall protection of the school community as a whole so that is just a quick recap of the the

018legal framework for those services and at this point i'm going to turn it over to dave domail [Music] good evening everybody i'm dave del mountain the high school principal i'll be doing a majority of the talking this evening on the presentation that will encompass uh grades k through 12 however uh mike klugman is here who's the middle school principal uh miss diana reagan who's one of our elementary principals is here uh where we could answer questions at the end if needed and before i get started through my presentation i would just like to introduce uh detective mike bourbon who's here with us tonight he works with me at the high school as our school resource officer and mike whiteley is that sergeant correct sergeant mike wakley i used to call him detective mike whiteley he

019was for years and years at the middle school as the sro and is still a very invaluable resource to us uh here in bethlehem central school district so mike hello and good evening again my name is mike bourbon i work in the community service unit at the bethlehem police department i am a lifelong resident of the town of bethlehem and i'm here tonight to give you a little bit of my background and my qualifications when a lot of people discuss the school resource officer position they're concerned about the quality of candidate and the quality of person that is inside their educational system as a parent i would be concerned about that as well so what i'm here right now to do is give you a little bit of background about myself i'm right now my

02020th year at the town of bethlehem police department i've been assigned to road patrol for many years and most recently in the detective unit and with that said i work right now in the community service outreach program that does a lot of training within the community we do outreach to not only working in the school as a school resource officer but we deal with investigations of the elderly those who have mental deficits or considered handicaps and we also deal with animal investigations animal cruelty abuse situations but we really specify or we really specifically address juvenile crime in our unit and specifically that's why i'm here at the town of f1 in this role as a school resource officer i began my career back actually graduating from cba after i attended up until eighth grade um

021at the bethlehem central middle school here and furthermore i went on to suny albany where i received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in criminal justice and graduated summa laude after that i went on as a state investigator with the racing wagering board i further um might investigate investigative career with the child protective service unit in rensselaer county as an investigative caseworker and then after doing that job for two years i came over here back to my roots in the town of bethlehem with the bethlehem police department and with that said at the bethlehem police department i have a couple roles one of my roles is to teach defensive tactics at the zone 5 law enforcement training center i not only teach defensive tactics there but i give updates and i assist members of

022our own department in doing proper techniques that are lawful and are consistent with the laws currently that we have in place furthermore i'm also an instructor for the mentally ill and handicapped and specifically i provide mental health training to our department also at the zone 5 law enforcement academy when they need me that training is very important for here at my role in the high school we deal with a lot of situations where we have those who have mental crisis they're considered 941s and i assist the counselors the social workers the teachers the administrative staff and being able to help out and dealing with situations of crisis [Music] and with that said i would like to just basically turn this over and have sergeant mike lightly introduce himself about his role in bethlehem police department

023hi good evening i'm sergeant mike lightly i'm currently running the afternoon shift as a supervisor so you're probably wondering why i'm here but for those of you that have been around a long time like i have i started with the bethlehem school district as an sro in 2006. i taught dare primarily a dare instructor for the district for three years before i got promoted to detective in 2009 where i was stationed at the middle school as the sro until i got promoted in 2019 so i was one of the longest running sros for the police department i was asked today to come up and talk today to write a little overview and it's you know i i what i'm going to talk about specifically is that our training and it's a little bit uh you

024know important for me to do this because um i am an instructor with the state of new york police juvenile officers association um i've been associated with the debt association for probably about the full 13 years that i've been um an sro i was i'm a past president association and i teach yearly to sros juvenile officers statewide i also provide juvenile justice training to the recruits in the zone five academy um so provide you know teach the new incoming police officers have you deal with juveniles not only arresting but also investigations where they are victims and having to deal with that difficult task the one thing that we require the sros to have before you know as soon as possible is to have a school resource officer training it's a 40-hour course it's certified by

025the partner criminal justice services here in new york state it's a curriculum that is newly renewed and updated and i was asked by the state to assist in updating our curriculum we also have a juvenile officer certification which again is certified by the state of new york um and that takes the basics of you know dealing with juveniles and the legal aspects and the specific and crisises that are specific to the juveniles where we have our school resource officers which teaches us how to interact with students how to interact with parents how to present classroom presentations powerpoint presentations uh write lesson plans and such like that we also have advanced for basic and advanced sro for juvenile officers and everything else so we continue our education once those each class there is 40 hours so

026it's a full long week and then once that continues we have continued education classes um again it's about 40 hours we take current trends uh anything from drug use to cell phone issues to social media issues or what have you and we provide the up-to-date so that the sros across the state as well as here in bethlehem have the information necessary to provide support to not only the parents but also the students and faculty um and that's all i've got for that so i'm going to turn it back over to mr dwell [Music] thank you mike mike uh i'm going to be going over like i said k through 12. i'm going to hit on highlight a couple of these these points but also making sure that you all understand everything's always consistently evolving when

027working with our sros and community groups support groups what you're going to see in here has evolved in the last few years and will continue to do so through feedback we get from students teachers uh community members so nothing in here you see is static in fact a lot of these uh these pieces these bullet points have changed and to address the current needs the current trends of our students in our community uh to add to the you know to the k5 as you see up here uh our school detective bourbon and detective cobb were both at the trunk or treat that i i know was mentioned before so they're always willing to get involved and that's something we're really trying to reinforce with our students is the involvement with our sros in in areas

028out even outside of the formal classroom setting and school setting i'd like to you know highlight over in the high school side the nine through 12 side you see the mock crash that's there that is something that we do around the prawn ball time they assist with us with with other emergency personnel to actually do a full-on mock crash you know in our park parking lot area out here and we alternate years so we'll do it one year we'll do a mock crash and the next year we'll try to do a guest speaker i just actually found out this year we're lucky enough uh with dezros and the bethlehem police union will be supporting us and getting chris herron here we plan to have him here before we went out with the pandemic and if

029you don't know who chris herron is he was a professional basketball player who became addicted to opioids and has a remarkable story if you look him up it's great we're very excited about having him here in the spring and so they're also supporting us in those areas as well right if you want to go to the next slide please so as i said in in nine through 12 which i'll speak to and uh you can kind of graze through the other bullet points i i think that it's important for you uh to know that as as they are here for the students they're just as much here for the adults in the building as well you know one of the things that i do periodically in faculty meetings is i will bring the sros into

030our faculty meetings they will address our staff on issues related to social media trends anything related to drugs that are that they're seeing there was a huge issue as as we all know with vapes there continues to be an issue that many of our staff were not really aware of and it was very important to have that information to support the staff and keep the students safe so it's not you know it's not just a student thing it's not just a safety thing it's it's it's as much an educational piece in 2010 the dignity for all students act was signed and with that act came you know it expanded um it expanded what we really felt we had to how we supported students it wasn't really just what it went on the halls of the

031school here but outside so having the ability to have information supports outside of this building to respond to incidents that could create a hostile environment within the building became essential we rely on our school resource officers for a lot of that immediate contact information of things and events that are taking place outside the school things related to cyber bullying situations related cyber bullying harassment we've had most recently there there was a case of our harassment that was going on in high school that we needed support from our sros to students within the building and administration and counselors and that bridge becomes very essential to something as significant as an act such as the dignity for all students act in order for us to really do what that act is telling us we need that support

032outside of the building now for me as a high school principal the amount of events athletic events dances proms etc that take place i don't think people truly understand or can really appreciate the logistics behind that the concerns for safety behind that unless you're actually doing the job and uh you know i think it's important for for you to know the amount of work and support that goes in behind the scenes that that the sro's are involved in really make an impact on keeping everyone safe at all these events several years ago we had our ball up at senior ball up at spec there was a concert that of course happened to be the same night up there which always complicates things and to complicate matters even worse there was violent threat threats of gang

033violence that were supposed to take place that were filtered down from the fbi it came to our the bethlehem police department our sros the logistics behind that and making sure everybody was safe was unbelievable and without them and without their support in that and communicating with the outside agencies uh i pretty sure i probably would have canceled that event so um that's just one instance uh of the uh of you know from the smallest event to the largest scale event to the smallest threat safety concern to the largest um they're consistently you know supporting us the choices program which is at the middle school that mike can talk about talk to speak to has really made it has it been three years now my years four years three or four years our students have started

034participating on has has made a tremendous impact on our middle schoolers and our counselors and i have a counselor here with me tonight mr darnell douglas who will speak at the end but they're always in communication with our counselors supporting with mental health resources as you heard from the two officers and they're a liaison between school and emergency response organizations and what i mean by liaison is it's not just an understanding of of what the other organizations are doing but it's an immediate response we can get uh we can get communication too from in a very timely manner which obviously is essential in any emergency to expand a little bit on the safety piece we have a raptor system at each one of our schools and what a raptor system does is it requires visitors

035to check in scan their license identification and there's alerts that can come up with this system and if someone's flagged for example there's a reason why they're flagged an immediate in the raptor system an immediate response goes out to anyone that's logged into the system such as administrators sros so if i at one of our front desks for example we had somebody that was tagged by the u.s marshals and there was an immediate flag that went to our sro administration and it was able to be dealt with at the front without this person entering the building so that's something that's been putting in the last four or five years that again is supported through our sros with administration uh i'll go through a couple of the bolts at the bottom here but you know i

036want to make it i want to make it understood that in all these events it's me it's the administration seeking out the sros uh and if you've seen in the last slide here i know there's a concern at times about you know an officer in a building and and i think i want to make it clear that they're in the building to help help our staff to help our students they're not here to um or you know have be have oversight they're not here to insert themselves assert themselves uh they're really here to support me the kids in the district um and their their their tremendous individuals in terms of doing what we ask them if there's something that is bothering students and we ask them to fix it or do something different or support

037there's no questions asked they do it um so that being said i'd like to let i believe mr mr douglas would like to share um you know his interactions with our sros from a counselor's perspective and mr douglas was also involved with the town reform for for police as well so good evening get his hammer you should have called mike mike and mike because there's three mics here yeah there's too many days 20 bikes in this town so good evening my name is daniel douglas i'm here to speak on behalf of my role as a school counselor who has worked with the sro i'm also a resident of this community and i've been a member of the veteran police reform and i just so happen to be black to be quite honest i'm not sure

038why we're here i'm not sure why we're spending the time talking about the sros right um we have been talking about this issue for the past year and i feel like we are wasting time not addressing real change in this community right so some of the questions i've asked for the past year is why do you spend so much time keep bringing up the concept of the sro right i've clearly said are we talking about a national issue or issue that's happening in bethlehem and some of the responses that i've gotten is slo is doing more harm than good students of color are feeling uncomfortable and and unsafe being in the schools with an armed sro then i've also heard right now white male administrators and sros need to be a good role model for

039white male students so that we can learn to be anti-racist and the one that i've heard the most is we need to listen to community of color on this topic which i find ironic because every time i try to talk i feel like i'm silenced i will do my best to address my perspective being a person of color who also grew up in this community who also work at the school but before i do that i just want to i want to let you know that i went around to school yesterday and we're just pulling some of the students of color right randomly they don't know why i was asking them but i was asking them do you know if there's so here some said yes some said i have no idea what the srv

040is right so then i said that so school resource officer or just a police officer and they say oh and i said okay well do you know where they where they're located most of them said no right but i asked him i said if could you point them out one said yes right so this goes back to my question why are you having a conversation about students of color feeling unsafe in this community or unsafe in the school when the small number only admitted a small number of students don't even know that they exist in the first place as a counselor so from my perspective like this is only where i can speak from right from my perspective i work closely with the sros and um some of the things that we've had to work

041together is involves suicidal ideation so the student is thinking about committing suicide sometimes they have information before i have this information and i'm able to work with them and their families to get them help right child pornography right and then suicide by the police that's when a student is trying to antagonize the police so that way they're killed by the police right so when i say i'm not anti-police or pro police i'm anti-conversation and i keep trying to say let's have a conversation but it feels like we're not having conversations we're just stuck in we've got to be over this side or that side and that if we as adults can't have conversations then how can we educate our kids to have better conversations right so i'm going to address my concerns about how we

042bring about real change first of all if you look in the room mostly everyone here is white other than myself or one student right that's terrible because this community is 92 right we don't have any people of color or black people or brown people in power positions no principals no assistant principals no supervisors no town board members no school board members so how can we bring about real change if we don't have anyone that looks different than us in these power positions right so i think we as a community need to ask do we really want change or we just want to have to keep having trouble conversations about change why don't we have conversations about wearing school taxes lowering property taxes so we get more diversity so that we can have a real change

043in this community thank you i want to make sure before i go ahead that nobody else is over there has something they wanted to you guys are good okay um before we um have questions and discussion and i'm sure that there are a number of questions that people want to ask i did want to first acknowledge that we had a number of um written comments that came into the board that i i know everybody saw and i believe there are there's at least one maybe more people in the audience tonight who would like to specifically address this issue um so at jonathan's suggestion i would recommend that we hear from them now before we have our have a discussion on this because i think it just makes more sense so if we have anybody in

044the audience who would like to address the board specifically on the school resource officer issue come on up and if you could uh state your name please that would be great [Applause] hi uh i'm matt lauricella i actually graduated from bethlehem in 2011. i read a lot but i'm not gonna read everything that i wrote but um i think what darnell brought up about the fact that 92 percent of this community is white is a part of the issue that i actually brought up in what i wrote here um because he did ask does national issues matter to bethlehem and besides the fact that bethlehem is a part of this nation i would actually say that since de facto segregation is still an issue in this nation and since most the most segregated part of

045our nation is the northeast which bethlehem is a part of and since sros contribute and are a product of segregation i would say that yeah national issues should matter in bethlehem when bethlehem is actually a part of those issues so around the nation there have been studies since 1953 when the first sro program came out that showed that uh you know black students are 2.3 times more likely to receive a referral to law enforcement or be subject to a school-related arrest by sros as white students students with disabilities are almost three times more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement by solos and their non-disabled peers [Applause] srs are a major contributor to the school-to-prison pipeline and students who get arrested uh and put into the system are more likely to be pushed

046out of school permanently failed to graduate and or end up in juvenile or adult prisons and as far as whether sros keeps schools safe there's not been in the almost 70 years since cesaros have been about since israel has been around one study or piece of evidence that definitively shows that sros actually keep schools safer in fact there's actually there's actually studies that prove that they don't one study examined over 160 incidents at schools including 25 school shootings and found that not one of those school shootings school shootings was handed by an sro returning fire in fact the majority of them were ended by a non-armed non-law enforcement staff member restraining the shooter also in 2018 an analysis by the washington post of almost 200 incidents of gun violence in schools found that there were

047only two of 200 two times where an sro successfully intervened and we can't forget that during the parkland shooting that school's sro actually ran outside and stayed outside of the building for 45 minutes actually over 45 minutes knowing that there was an active shooter inside as far as dare goes darren's historically ineffective at teaching um what drug use teaching about drug use what it actually is a public health crisis i remember growing up listening to their programs and being told that i should fear drugs because i could be arrested and branded a criminal not because they are unhealthy or why they are unhealthy or that they could lead to addiction which is a disease all i ever heard growing up was don't do drugs because people who do drugs are the bad guys and you

048don't want to be a bad guy and i think darnell also brought up the point that nobody really knows what the slo is or who the sros are in school which i think is pretty telling if they're supposed to be teaching why don't students know who they are or where they are and i never really noticed them all that much except for walking around the halls with their gun prominently displayed on their hip and i actually know several incidents where my peers were disciplined and sros were involved in those disciplinary non-criminal disciplinary discussions so i would encourage uh that if you move forward with the sro program i think you should clearly define the role of sros in the bethlehem schools which outlines a very specific set of duties that the sro must perform a

049clear set of goals for sros and a dare program because i think one of the things we found in the police reform process is that that's not very clear i think you should also establish a method to annually collect data regarding sros that interactions with students numbers of referrals to sros arrests made by sros and the nature of the arrests such as conducted success or failure in meeting and setting the goals and more and ensure that the collected data is presented to the school board on an annual basis and i think you should survey the staff parents and most importantly the students to see how they feel about sros or i guess if they even know that they exist i think you should require the sro's complete implicit bias and or anti-racism training and de-escalation

050training you should provide students with a proactive instruction in regards to searches questioning confiscation and uh to establish all of the above i would ask that you create an inclusive not all white committee made up of parents staff students a member of law enforcement and experts on education and soros to discuss the framework of sros going forward thank you holly is it possible to get a copy of what he was reading so we can have it in the record uh if you're willing to provide it um if you would like to email the board a copy of your notes um so that we have it in the record if you're comfortable doing that um do we have anybody else who would like to address this issue yes my name is ted smith a 32-year resident

051of the town of bethlehem two children have gone through the school system here and my wife was a elementary school librarian in ellesmere i followed very closely the reform and reinvention uh work that was done over the summer i'm sorry over the course of last winter and spring and uh addressing the mandates of andrew cuomo's governor's call to evaluate their local police force very interesting stuff and i hope every board member here has taken the opportunity to read the published report and most importantly the suggestions recommendations regarding the school resource officer so with that said i'm going to hopefully in two minutes get through my comments in the form of questions is the sro program an anachronism worse is the sro a solution looking for a problem that our secondary schools do not have we

052were told that bethlehem central school district instituted the sro program in 1986 hence the sro predates the safe schools legislation initiated by george pataki's administration as a response to the columbine tragedy of 1999. department of criminal justice services only references the training courses mentioned for sros but provides no curriculum content and standards for instruction so i was pleased to hear there is some more detail but it's not available to the public apparently because i could not find it at any rate trainings are outsourced to other entities and these entities compete through an rfp to offer these trainings so what are the qualifications and quality of the curriculum being offered to the police officers who are being trained for sro and dare programs now nicer through commission regulations does not overtly state the sro or dare

053programs are to be a part of the public schools there is a joint report entitled a framework for state and successful schools and it is referenced there in a 19 page report it elaborates on essentials of the principal school employed mental health professionals school counselors school psychologists and school social workers but devotes only two paragraphs in this 19 page report to the sro and says nothing about dare the above report does state that schools also should carefully weigh the unique needs of their communities when determining the need to hire additional security personnel or school resource officers well apparently this was done over 20 years ago does it need to be done again is the sro an effective school resource what evidence is available for purposes of program evaluation what are the stated and measurable goals

054of the program what actual data exists that could measure the program and the police officer's effectiveness what administrator is in is charged with supervising and then evaluating this officer's activities now these were questions raised last winter we are told that the bethlehem police department officers provide instruction is it appropriate to use the term instructor any connection with the associated officers in the school buildings they are in fact highly qualified police officers as we heard the resume of one of the gentlemen but they are not highly qualified instructors educators school counselors or school social workers does the board of education insist on continuing with the sr program for the sake of a positive relationship with the bethlehem police department that was sort of an issue trying to be figured out by last winter's committee but that

055begs for consideration in my judgment to the bethlehem police department of a highly qualified social worker oops sorry therefore that begs for consideration of the appointment to the bpd of a highly qualified social worker designated and certified as a peace officer that is something that dcjs recognizes a title recognized supervised by the bethlehem police department he or she can be highly qualified professional resource for the schools if needed but more importantly into the addition of the schools they become a resource to the bethlehem community so that was something raised again last winter as such this would mean that the peace officer would not be carrying a gun into our school buildings it would address the objections of many community members and bcsd parents to having and carrying firearms in the school in the presence of

056children and this brings me to the concern of armed police officers in the school whether it's the sro or the deer program now again raised in some comments last winter was the issue of school safety and the police officers saying well we do our work with our guns on but shouldn't the schools be safe in the first place following the combined shootings in 1999 each school was mandated to develop and implement a school security plan to meet its own unique circumstances is the school leadership suggesting that this is not the case are the current school building plans lacking now realistically no school building can ever be perfectly safe but to suggest that the presence of an sro in the high school or middle school will make it safe is a false assurance to staff parents

057and students just as i cannot prove that an sro is not a deterrence neither can be proven that their presence is deterrence for that matter neither can the dare officer's physical presence in the eagle elementary school prevent a tragedy from occurring in the ellsmere school what i'm saying is one person two people can't be everywhere so it's a false assurance that this is providing safety protecting our schools means letting go of the things that we want to work and accepting that such efforts do more harm than good and i'll repeat some of the statistics in 197 instances of gun violence at u.s schools since 1999 sros interviewed successfully in only three instances according to a congressional research service that's a 1.5 success rate 1.5 percent success rate arming the bethlehem police officers when they are

058inside our schools is a decision apparently of the bethlehem police department chief other districts or their building leaders forbid guns in their school buildings why are guns permitted in this school district when there's a better alternative that is to say if you want a police presence here consider hiring a peace officer who does not carry a gun thank you good evening i'm katie yezzie first i want to thank the bethlehem police department and the district staff for the presentation this evening to take a step toward clear communication and transparency about the partnership between the police and the school district formed in the making of the sro and the dare programs i'm speaking tonight as a community member a lifelong educator and a parent of two bcsd students i'm also speaking as someone who served on

059the police reform committee in bethlehem and on the subcommittee dedicated to examining the sro and dare programs while i'm encouraged by the move to transparency i'm calling on the bethlehem police department and district staff involved in this program to respond to and take action on the recommendations of the reform committee what we asked was that those involved in the sro program within the district first lay out need areas within the schools and school communities that the program seeks to address what are the issues identified what are the gaps that schools are facing in terms of being able to meet the needs of our children's safety and well-being having established that we ask the district to seek the services that are best suited to meet those needs this may be with the bethlehem police department and

060or other agencies also for that partnership to exist with bpd and the school district it may require sro but it may also require something different it may not look like that program for whatever the programming is that is put in place to meet the identified needs we ask that the district layout clear goals for the program and program partners against which you can measure success i believe this is not an unusual request programming typically stems from an identified need that is established with clear goals for the program in our work on the committee we found that everyone we spoke to who's involved in the sro program articulated different and sometimes competing goals for having sros in the school this evening we did not hear the goals for what sros are intended to accomplish and why

061we heard what they focus on what their roles are and what they do but these are not goals the district has clearly demonstrated the importance of using data you use data to drive goal setting decision making and evaluation and improvement of programs for example this evening one focus stated was to teach students about safety and crime prevention how can we turn that into a goal what data can we collect that tells us how we are doing currently with no goals in place for the program there's no systematic way to chart the success of the program while many believe dare to be outdated and there's research which clearly outlines this there's no process for the program evaluation and therefore improvement and this evening we even heard references to success of certain programs the impact of certain

062programs the popularity of certain programs to my knowledge and as a part of this committee we were unable to find any systematic collection of data around any of these programs which would lead me to believe that the success and the impact shared this evening was anecdotal rather than based on a concerted effort to collect data we ask that the district engage in a thoughtful process of data collection which allows for parent and student voice in identifying the results of and deciding the future of these programs while on the committee it became clear to me that there are teachers and students who feel less safe being around armed sros in addition to students and teachers who feel more safe there is more work to be done to understand the extent of this sentiment and to see

063what could be done to support feelings of safety for all students in our schools it also became clear to me that there is little accountability for this program broadly my final request is that as you move forward in this work you involve community members and students to make the process transparent and inclusive i encourage you all encourage you and community members to read the police reform report it's located on the town website for additional research and information on dare and sros and their efficacy regrettably none of our committee's recommendations appear to have had an impact on the presentation this evening i believe that moving forward the district has a responsibility to at least respond to if not implement the recommendations from our committee around sros thank you [Music] good evening everyone my name is paul

064tick and i've been a resident of bethlehem for a little over 20 years and my son is a graduate of this district and we're very proud of all that he's received from this district i'd like to say a few words just about the dare program tonight and i'm not here to i'm here to express some concerns but not to disparage the good intentions and the good work of the people involved in the program and people who spoke earlier about the program some of whom are my friends and my neighbors but i do want to give the board information to consider regarding our overall approach to students and their education about substance abuse some of you know i've been directing a substance abuse program for over 30 years with a fair number of clients both adults

065and children and teenagers who come from bethlehem as a director of a program it's my job to take a critical look at my own program and seeing what works and what doesn't work the only way it can grow of course is with honest and ongoing evaluations in the schools we rigorously evaluate our students and many of our programs but i'm not sure that the dare program has also received rigorous evaluations even as far back as 2012 the town of bethlehem police department budgetary advisory team saw the need and called for a proper evaluation of our dare program for decades nationwide the dare programs have been controversial the controversy came after many peer-reviewed studies proved that the program was ineffective and in some cases even counterproductive the federal government then pulled back millions of dollars in

066funding from the dare programs the program was forced then to reinvent itself and it did so around 2002 but even with those reforms there are some studies that continue to show the program as a whole is rather questionable while the dare program has reached about 75 percent of school districts nationwide the program unfortunately has never been backed by quality scientific evidence sometimes the program refers to itself as evidence-based but researchers have pointed out that the evidence cited is not scientifically sound for years the dare program has had an ongoing request on our town website asking for the bethlehem community to make donations to it and i haven't been able to find anything about the accounting of those donations or if any donations were in fact made i hope the school board will find that out

067for us see what happened to those donations where they're going um over the years but referring to the dare program researchers have stated that policy makers such as the board should make it a quote priority to investigate the effect effectiveness of the program and to find out what measures for youth are most relevant in warding off drug abuse and addiction the researchers further called on policymakers to be specific as to the standards that they're going to use when considering any prevention program and of course as educators as community members as parents we want prevention programs in our schools and fortunately there's numerous high quality programs that have been reviewed by organizations such as the center for disease control and prevention the department of health and human services the department of education the national institute of

068drug abuse and the office of juvenile justice so i request that the board begins a rigorous the rigorous evaluation process of our prevention program and of other prevention programs to see what works best for our students and what may be best in the future and if you do this i would be more than happy to share with you a fully researched report that i found that lists numerous programs prevention programs as well as their evaluations by those organizations that i've just mentioned thank you very much for your time and your efforts thank you do anybody oh i see one more good evening my name is patrick i'm a parent in the district of two children um and i i do want to start by thanking detectives and sergeant whiteley for their service and for coming

069to present to us and i want to make it clear that i have no intention of impugning your uh your intentions or your motives your professionalism i thank you for the service that you provided but i am here to urge the board um to uh to use funds um more effectively um on addressing racism and inequity um rather than spending on the sro program and uh might to express my opposition to continuing the sro program as it stands now data show that the current generation of children has some of the lowest crime rates in history and yet they also show that the presence of school resource officers leads to an increased arrest levels of arrest often for minor infractions we also as we've heard from previous speakers the presence of sros leads to an increase

070in the school-to-prison pipeline there are several national associations that represent school-based mental health professionals including the american school counselors association the school's social work association of america and the national association of school psychologists they all they all recommend that funding be used to decrease ratios of students to school-based mental health professionals none of them recommend spending funding on embedding law enforcement officers in schools instead in fact we heard a lot about what the school of resource officers do tonight we heard about them being resources for individuals in crisis and yet we also heard mr douglas uh when he did his informal study of uh a survey of of uh students of color um students didn't know who the school resource officers are or where to find them or what they do so um i don't

071think that if those students were in crisis that the school resource officers would be the resource that they would go to uh detective bergen described mental health crisis interventions but this is specifically the kind of situation that's better served by school-based mental health professionals done by law enforcement officers mr douglas described school resource officers being involved in issues of suicidal ideation again this is a this is a mental health crisis not a law enforcement issue and i would prefer to have more school-based mental health professionals available to students in such crises sergeant mike whiteley described advanced training that was that's that is designed to make law enforcement officers more like school-based mental health professionals or more like teachers but we have professionals who are already highly trained in those fields and i would prefer that

072our funds be used to uh to to to put the right people in in those roles in summary i urge the board of education not to rely on the opinion of the law enforcement officers or even on the heroic efforts of the single black um staff member who uh who is here to speak um uh to understand the many experiences and perspectives of black students and community members i urge the board to listen to the reform committee as uh as kate asked to make a real effort to hear the needs of our bypass students and their families and to use the right resources to address the actual needs thank you thank you [Music] anybody else okay um thank you everybody for your comments um at this time i'd like to open it up to the

073board for questions to our presenters i'm ready to go go ahead christine so thank you to all the community members who came out and spoke and to the bethlehem sros that are in our schools to give the presentation i guess i was under the impression that we were getting an overview of the sro program i was not expecting the community members to come out with these type of observations and i i think there were some really good observations that you got everybody presented in regards to awareness students being aware of the sros and who they are in the building because i didn't you know darnell talking about some students being aware of who they are and some not i think there's an opportunity for us to make you know awareness more present of who they

074are but darnell is a guidance counselor in our school and he's representing the students that he serves and he's indicating that he thinks there's a benefit to the sros and i'm one of the few school board members who have been on the school board for eight years and we've reevaluated the program what do you remember judy what year we re-evaluated the program i think it was back in around the time we did the agreement 2018. so not that long ago we reviewed the program and the effectiveness of it and determined it would be best suited for the srrus to be in the school and so that was a panel of people within the schools reevaluating the program talking to the school board and you know we agreed that we thought we would bring them on

075and being a parent also here i've been to many of the dare program activities and also as a board member i've been involved at many schools where i've gone in and watched the students speak about drugs and the effects of drugs and what it can do to you and maybe we can do surveys of sixth graders to see what they thought of the program did it add any benefit because we also need to see what they think did they think it was a benefit i always thought that they looked really happy and they were engaged and they were proud to speak and read their papers that they were selected i know my kids were in school everybody knew officer whiteley presence was always known everywhere and i don't see i i hear what you're saying

076i just don't see maybe the studies that you're reading are not comparable to the district that we're in or the community needs are different and we also live in an environment now where students had 911 they've seen columbine they've seen parkland they've seen sandy hook and unless we ask the students how they feel about guns in the school i just feel a lot of different issues being addressed gun control budgetary things resources but i feel like the school has done a really good job of implementing all of those services to make this great team social workers guidance counselors psychological services and i'm not seeing or hearing the same issues that the community presented and i'm not saying that they're not there and maybe there are some things that we need to look into and address

077which makes sense and the other thing though that i just wanted to point out is by my career choice i'm an auditor and so i go in and i look at policies and procedures to make sure they're effective and but not everything is quantitative there are benefits to things that are just qualitative so not everything has something that's going to be measurable and some things should be measurable but not everything is going to be measurable and i think that we need to look at those things and look at both the benefits that can be measured and those that can't but there's both can can i just interject on one thing that might help it might answer some questions that i anticipate board members have we last spring i think it was in the spring we

078actually talked a little bit about dare we talked about our k-12 wellness program and looking at how dare fits in we did we have as a district had discussions with the bethlehem police about the fact that some of what's in that curriculum is outdated it's not really current and when dave hearst did that presentation i think he did a nice little visual like he usually does dare was a part of that overall k-12 and where does that fit in in those initiatives so i don't think there's any disagreement that the dare program as it exists currently is not exactly what we want so that is something we've already been addressing i also do think it's important every several people reference the town report and the district was not represented in the town committee there were

079some conversations i know mr klugman went to one meeting mr douglas attended but we did provide supervisor van luven with some of the information that to be honest i don't think was reflected in the report nor did the district receive the report until holly you shared it catherine um so i mean a couple questions just uh just to start off with you reference a program evaluation of the sros in 2017 or 2018 and was there a report or was there some additional outcome from that aside from renewing a contract we didn't um we didn't have a contract with the bethesda i'm sorry that was when you began i'm sorry correct so we defined what the roles of the sros were versus what the district does our attorneys helped draft that with guidance so there were

080clear roles and expectations in addition to the monetary piece okay so that was so that was better defining but when christine was talking about evaluating the program i was just warning they were presenting it and talking about the benefits of having them in in-house versus you know paying them separately to the bethlehem police it was a board presentation similar to this what the roles different roles at one point the district did have three sros we had one at the middle school one at the high school this years ago and there was one i think was that where's mike whiteley you were the dare officer right he started out and he adjusted the dare program um and then since then it's moved to the two officers in the middle school sro does the dare program great

081thank you um and then oh i'm so sorry if that's me help thank you um and then you mentioned that the district is uh addressing how to update dare or dear with deal without uh data content that was discussed how has that proceeded or how is that happening you want to talk about the wellness sure so we have a k-12 wellness committee um that is looking at all wellness on curriculum k-12 and there is just a small piece of that we met last spring with the sergeant rightly to review what the dare program looked like and to be honest he expressed his concerns over on some of the content and the datedness of it in the um how there's you know certain issues that are like so cell phones was not necessarily addressed um as

082as much as it should be um cyber bullying was not necessarily addressed as much as you should be so you know there is a recognition on on their part also that their curriculum needs to be updated so maybe moving forward it's using um the sros as a support in those areas we're not even necessarily running a dare program because that's sort of a branded program but still utilizing them and also within that you know over the last few years we've added you know every building that has a coordinated care team so every elementary school has a social worker has a psychologist has a school counselor our high school has multiple counselors in middle school multiple counselors multiple social workers and multiple psychologists those are our students go to people so it's a little bit of

083a mischaracterization when people say well the students don't even know who the school resource officer is so they wouldn't know to go to them they're not meant to be the first person that a student goes to by any means right students when they have issues they should be going to their council they should be going to the social worker they should be going to the psychologist they should be going to the school principal or assistant principal they should not be going to the school resource resource officer right away so for students not to know who they are isn't necessarily an issue because they're there to support who the student should be going to first right so if if you're not in need of their supports they are sort of flying under the radar if they

084haven't happened to push into your social studies class to talk about constitutional law you might not know who they are but that's not to say that their role is vital within the schools but it's a supporting role so to characterize them as the sort of the first line for students to be going to or that they're the first person that's involved in investigation that's not true if you listen to dave's presentation there's a separate there's a very distinct role that they play they do not get involved until it sort of crosses over that line to where the school administration it's beyond their scope of what they can do right because it does pass into the legal realm so i just want to be really careful that this is part of a much larger picture they're

085not on an island by themselves they're not the first line or they are here to support all of our other programs just like all of our other programs support one another it's part of that big k-12 wellness piece i hope that kind of clarifies i'm sorry christina i didn't mean the awareness of them so they could reach out to them for support i met a woman they're walking down a hall and they're carrying a gun kids are aware that they're in the building no i was recording a couple comments from the community where that students don't know who they are so how would they go to them for help and that that's not the intent right students should not be going directly necessary to them for help that's why we have counselors that's why we

086have social workers that's why we have psychologists thank you um and then what is um what is the outside of the bethlehem police department chain of accountability which i think you know we could go to them for more information what is the chain of accountability for sros within the buildings so um part of when we drafted the agreement was to be specific about what were the roles and responsibilities and what for protection both for the district and for the police officers as well you know you don't want to cross over that line where you're interfering in a matter that might be legal as a district or they're interfering in just a code of conduct issue but you know we talk about sro program we have two officers so clearly if there was an issue where

087one uh were i'll use mike bourbon just because he's retiring soon if he were not following protocol if he were interfering then that could come to me it could go i would obviously work with the town of bethlehem on it because they are bethlehem employees but you know we would deal with that just as we would any other situation if if a staff member wasn't addressing a situation correctly we would have a conversation about what the expectations are but because it's a combined effort with the town of bethlehem in the district it would probably be a joint conversation we've been very fortunate over the years i mean i've been here almost 20 years and the the town has been very good about placing sros here who really want to work with students who have the

088ability to really connect with students have good relationships i know uh you know from having been in the middle school as principal for a while when mike was there and even before that bruce oliver they'd be in the lunchrooms and just talking and chatting with kids i mean that's not always the case when you work with larger police organizations sometimes districts don't have much of a say in who is in the buildings and i think that's very different and the police department here under chief corsi and under gina now have been very good about making sure the police officers who are assigned to the schools i would say for you know lack of a better term are very kid-friendly got it and there were some questions from the public about goals of the program beyond

089the roles itself and were those outlined in the agreement and the no there's no specific goals okay i don't know if the town has anything mike or if you guys have anything like that no okay um and then it's we've been asked to by members of the public here and on email to convene a committee to do some of the deeper dive and deeper analysis in the program and as a new board member i don't know what the protocol is for kicking off something along those lines and if so that's a request i'm sorry can somebody you know one thing i wonder is whether i know there is a dei committee meeting coming up i believe next week or the following week and i wonder if that would be a good place to address that

090issue because it is a committee that involves a lot of you know different stakeholders and maybe it would be a place to form like a subcommittee to look into the issue the committee itself is uh supposed to i think the next steps uh were to identify a few areas to set as a goal over the course of the either year or the next couple of years jody could you speak up please yeah the i'm sorry the committee itself was to in the next meeting decide what are the top priorities for the district um over a range of topics that the committee members identified i don't know if this would be one of them but it could certainly be raised yeah i would suggest maybe bringing it up at the because i know catherine you're on

091the committee um at the meeting and seeing um if that seems like it's the appropriate place um and if not then we can visit it when you say a committee what a what are you looking to to look at the goals is that what i'm not sure what you're asking for so i want to be clear before sure yeah i think that's i think that's great and i think that um a committee of interested stakeholders specifically to identify what are some of the questions because one of the things this is something that we've been hearing a lot about this evening and in advance of the presentation and in the community at large and so i think getting stakeholders together to identify if we're going to look at the program some of those parameters do we

092want to look at what the goals are do we want to look at what the number of actions i mean i could come up with a number of different parameters to explore on the fly um i don't know if this is the appropriate venue for that if and if it is i'd be happy to to brainstorm on that here so i just want to ask a question of where where the line is jody like this seems to be a program that we've enjoyed having in the school over the years based on um the longevity of it feedback from kids and parents over the years and this is this is a subset and stakeholders that usually get involved are ones that maybe are not happy with the program is this a program that you want to

093continue in the program and the goal would be to talk about hey are we achieving what we want the sros to achieve because i don't want it to be like a meeting where we're are determining whether or not we're keeping sros because i think that decision has been made by the administration to have sros is that correct or well the agreement is between the town and the district so we have an agreement through 2022. okay um i think you know the question of if you have a committee it's like what's the purpose of a committee yeah and i think the you know in i mentioned that the district was not part of the town committee although supervisor van luven did come and meet with mr domel myself mr klugman and when this came up i

094asked what's the concern because in the time i've been in the district i've not had any concerns brought to me either principal assistant superintendent or superintendent about the sros from any parents or students or staff members so i wasn't i never got any answers to what exactly is the concern so i think to be fair and and i know i'm the one that that called for this to be an agenda item um not so much because of the national discussion which there is but because there was a lot of local discussion and it was all focused to the town board and there were a number of very heated meetings there was a committee put together there's a report with a lot of very specific suggestions about what the school district should consider but it wasn't

095directed to the school board because that wasn't the committee that was doing the work so i felt that it was incredibly important that we provide the community the opportunity to address the appropriate body about their same concerns and to have an internal discussion here about whether or not the recommendations of that committee are something we want to explore further as the body responsible for having the sro program and the dare program in the school district not because i honestly have any formed opinion one way or the other because i thought it was worth having a discussion and there are a number of very specific recommendations and questions that have already the work a lot of that work has been done and there's a plan for what a committee here could consider um and maybe it's

096not a committee maybe it's us i just think the the point is then reiterated over and over again that a group of middle-aged white school board members might not have the diverse opinion and experience needed to to do that deep dive that might be warranted it doesn't mean the outcome is any different but something worth thinking about i would certainly agree with willow that it is worth exploring and having committee go through the police reform report the committee that was the report that was generated and look at their suggestions and look at what we can do as a district to make the program better and something that's that's a stronger program i can tell you i know the program has probably changed much from the time when my children had it but my kids would

097come home and say tell me you know they thought the program was a joke it was great to get out of the regular class but basically you know they're telling us don't do drugs but dad i can i can tell you where you can buy anything you know this kid has this this kid's over here before school selling this in fifth grade that's what they were telling you that's when the dare program is given yeah they were telling you where kids could buy drugs in fifth grade that's correct and it was bad it was ben leo was somewhere else at that time um but when ben got to the high school it was the same thing and it was you know i understand there are certain limitations as to what the administration can do as

098far as looking lockers and stuff like that but basically when i would have we would have at the house a bunch of kids over and my son would have a fire pit or whatever in the back and they would talk it was amazing to me how much they knew much more than i did about where you could get stuff and i thought it was appalling and at the time when i reached out to people i was basically told it was very limited as to what the school could do i never thought that their program was effective i'm not surprised that that we've been told tonight that there are studies that show how ineffective it is doesn't surprise me at all i haven't seen a study that shows that it is effective i'd like to see

099something like that i would like to see if it's not effective if that's in fact true i'd like to see a program that is effective i'm not supporting drug use by any stretch by saying this i'm supporting the idea of a program that actually gets kids to recognize why they should not be using drugs not because they'll be branded whatever but because it's not healthy so i think the idea of having the committee to look at the recommendations that have been made is is a very good idea and something that we should explore if it means that the dare program stays because that's the better program fine if it means it goes then it goes and we put something else in same thing about the sros i am i have never been comfortable having police

100officers in school there are too many ways in which we have criminalized behavior of students when it's unnecessary and i'll give you a perfect example when my uncle was going to school and this goes back a while he and his friends on the night of the championship game went to the other team's field and painted the bleachers wood bleachers with their team colors paint in the dry kids were found out and the kids spent the weekend repainting the bleachers didn't get criminal records they had to use their own money they had to buy the paint they had to buy the brushes they had a dress appropriately for the job and they came and they did it now that takes parents to participate and make sure it's done but today you paint a school bleach or

101some other schools colors you're painting period chances are you're going to get referred to the police for destruction of school property it's possible that that was a lesson that these kids learned and experienced and learned from i know my uncle did there's never since i've been here in 20 years and eight years on the school board not one complaint has come from a parent regarding any action that an sro has done inappropriately in the district so i love the examples from the national report but they have to be applicable to our school and they're not so i know instances where the resource officers have actually helped a student instead of proceeding with criminal charges so it's the opposite effect because they live and work in this community there is a benefit to having a presence

102here to say that maybe hey one mistake isn't going to make you arrested in a felon so they don't need a gun to do that maybe the idea of a police of a peace officer is something that we should seriously consider is it the parents or is this the students are saying they're uncomfortable because i think i think we need to make sure that the issue is how do the students feel about a presence of an sro in the school yes absolutely absolutely and i think i i want to make sure i want to make sure i'm being perfectly underst like that i'm communicating as clearly as i can excuse me i am not i'm not bringing any complaint of any activity or any action from our sros i'm not there's i have not heard

103that either however in a district where we've got a strategic plan with 61 metrics seventy it started at a seventy two oh so down to fifty we didn't do three fifty three two hours we have goals we have outcomes that we're looking for when we have programs in our in our schools yes and we have had really great questions raised about what are our goals what are we working toward and are the tools we're using the right ones to achieve those goals those questions i think deserve some good absolutely uh investigation and querying and i think that with stakeholders including our counselors including our sros including our administration like again i could brainstorm here but getting stakeholders together and i think i think the dei uh committee is a great place to start i also

104think this goes beyond that because i think it points to what christine is saying which is like how do our students feel what kind of surveys can we get back what kind of input can we get to make sure that this program is living up to high standards and that and that it's got goals and it's working towards something because i think in the absence of that and in the absence of having concrete goals and and performance metrics to put it toward people are able to imagine that this is a police to prison pipeline pathway and i don't hear that in what you're saying and so we need to make sure in order to not fall into that trap or into that perceived trap that we've got ways of defining what the program purpose is

105so and i think it does come back to some of the looking at some of the recommendations in the town report some of which were related to conducting some surveys of the school community sure um i did have i had a couple questions for our presenters um i know there was some you were detailing some of the training that the sros uh go through and uh i just wanted to ask whether the sros get any specific training with respect to implicit bias um anti-racism anything along those lines whether that's part of the training curriculum so the town of bethlehem employees receive that training through human resources so implicit bias um sexual harassment um training courses of that source are provided by human resources in the town of bethlehem which is given to the school resource

106officers and the home base of the police department okay thank you and i just would like to make a one other comment just in my personal arm thought and so everybody understands where my heart is in this i'm not here to advocate for this program or not even though i find it very valuable i'm just here to basically speak from what i'm going to say to you is that the main purpose and goal that i feel is that that me being in this school is not to be a security officer with a gun that walks around and patrols the hallway the reason why i believe that my presence here is important is the exchange of information that i bring from the community to the administrators to the social workers the counselors the teachers that provide

107them with information the things that go on in the community that bridge that gap to be able to have communication that works in the best interest of making the students here feel comfortable and safe in their school and in their home that's pretty much it thank you thank you um and then i had a question i'm not sure if darnell are you still here he's still here you're hiding behind a post from my perspective i just had a quick question for you and i can wait until you okay um you commented on how the sros have been involved in with you and dealing with students that are having a mental health crisis and i was just wondering if you could elaborate on um from your perspective as a counselor on how that's helpful for you

108okay perfect yes that's a great question um so i guess i'll give you an example to to make my point a few months ago we had a student that um without giving too much detail because i don't want to believe this give that students information they were in a crisis and they had wrote on the chat that they were going to kill themselves right i wasn't aware of that because it happened after school hours that next morning i came in um i had come said hello to mike bourbon and he said hey don't know here's what came in last night so i said okay i'll look into it and we spent at least two hours at least two hours trying to track this student down right we were able to find out who that student

109was we contacted their house and the parents didn't believe that that was their student so we did some more digging another hour so three hours in total we found out that the person that i actually called was the correct family and then um they didn't realize that their child was in crisis and because of what mike verb was able to do he was able to get to the house and make sure that student was evaluated so that way they didn't commit suicide so when i say that we have a relationship that's really what it's about because i know mike bourbon he's able to give me information so that way i can do my job more effectively as a school counselor because if i didn't have that information there's a possibility that could have gone days

110without me learning how to connect with the student and that's new that possibly could have died right so this is what i said i'm not saying we need one or we don't need one but we have to talk about how we have better relationships and if we don't have relationships with people that can give us information then how can we do our job more effectively does that make sense okay thank you oh hey i have one more uh thing to say um from my own experience my own son could have been one of those people who had charges pressed against them right but because i had a relationship with detective rightly with detective rice they were able to investigate a situation where my son was not charged because they were being they were being accused

111of something that they did not do right it's all about relationship people right thank you thank you meredith i wasn't sure if you had any questions and i wanted to make sure you had a chance if you did thank you i just wanted to say first of all thank you to everyone presenting today and thank you to the sros for um giving us more information about what you do and um i'm sure that the um when that's began why when i say that so sros want to make sure that they are serving the school in the most effective way possible as well as community members need to make sure that so to that point i do think it's it's important um that we do look at the data um to catherine's point at our last

112meeting we did the strategic plan update and it gave us such a clear um view on how we're doing and our goals where we're going um and it does make sense to apply the same procedure here to make sure that we know um the uh the goals of the sro program and to see how we're achieving the goal those goals and whether or not we should be achieving them in a different manner or whether or not they are successful um to willow's point uh we have the town um the town report which thank you to everyone who participated in that i'm sure there's a tremendous undertaking and they have an entire section um that we can essentially just look at and say okay these are things that people really did to deep dive into this

113feel like we should be um evaluating you know the data points that we should be evaluating the number of um referrals and and how those referrals went um so i think that it's important that we that we um take those those recommendations and um put them into something such as the strategic plan update um measurements um i think that uh i believe it was who was talking about that and i really do think that it's appropriate so that we all make sure that we're serving the school in the best way possible thanks meredith what is that granny did you have any questions well i just want to give a little kind of summary of everything that's kind of taken place in this little bit of a discussion that we've been having this evening um definitely

114we should look at the recommendations we should definitely survey our students and we should also maybe try to quantify some of the value that the program i believe has brought to the schools over the past many many many years it's always changing um you were saying that the their education program has changed over the years and and that will that's the nature of education um it changes things are definitely in motion constantly and um and we also need to look at our at our community's relationship with the police and where that separation is um that was on the slide you know definitely the school handles a lot of things and then there's there's the other part that gets handled by the police and i think there is a a need for a definitely clear separation

115of that i also do worry about the gun situation i know that that's a safety issue that that the community has and we can certainly look at that in those recommendations but i i think there is a lot of value um in having the different curriculum pieces that they that the sros bring to the the other programs the other classes that weren't mentioned the social studies classes and the participation in government classes and things that you know are at the high school level and at the middle school level that didn't get as much focus as the dare program did um and i i think the diversity equity and inclusion committee is a good place to start i'm on that willow's on that um catherine's on that um and i just think that uh we can

116certainly get some things together and start looking at all of these it it often seems like it's a a huge task but i think if we you know set a couple of clear goals you know we we can figure it out and um and inform the process a little bit better as we go along thanks wendy and uh jody just to refresh my memory i think is it in january maybe we have a presentation scheduled on relating to wellness the k-12 wellness committee we have one i don't know what i can't remember the day because i mean that would be a good time to have some information coming back i think to the board on you know how the you know the dare program or whatever right we're going to go forward with um where

117we're at with that yep um to bring that back not to change subjects but it's nine o'clock and pig students are just reminder yeah thank you um just very quickly does anybody have any additional comments um or questions or anything on this on the presentations yeah who's going to set what the agenda is for the diversity inclusion meeting so we have dave and i have a call with harriet tomorrow okay i just want to make sure that we're not covering like eight zillion things when maybe you're looking at the program overview first the the when i said the um or holly when she mentioned that committee the committee is going to decide what the initiatives are that they are one of prioritized i think at the last meeting she suggested two or three um for

118the group so we have a call with her tomorrow and she's going to follow up with her plans for the next meeting and to christine's concerns if this is outside of the scope of that or beyond what that means right then we can take it from there yeah that was just a suggestion that absolutely a good place to start i think yeah i totally agree if nobody has any other comments or questions on the presentation i just wanted to thank everybody for coming tonight and for providing the presentation and the information we really appreciate it and we're going to take just two minutes i don't know how many pig students might be out there i see a couple um if you guys want to come up um if you need a signature and then you

119guys can leave you're waiting okay and that's why i like paper and pencil thanks for coming guys [Music] next on our agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item if we have anybody in the audience who would like to speak on an agenda item now would be the time to come to the microphone 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 through four some move second any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes b uh professional personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following professional personnel action items one through eleven second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions

120that passes 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 10. some move second any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes uh d other action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following action items one through four seconds any discussion a stylistic point um [Music] um sorry i'm just blowing up um i see that we um included uh new definitions x and y um on page five which i appreciate um clarifying that um those are race includes traits historically associated with race including but not limited to hair texture and protective hairstyles we also definitely define protective hairstyles um and i appreciate those inclusions but um when we then

121every time we refer to race throughout the code of conduct we then include the definitions of [Music] perceived race place including trades historically associated with race such as hair texture and protective hairstyles and then include the definition of protective hairstyles stylistically um why do we have to include those definitions every time we talk about it if they're defined in the definition section it just seems like it's adding a lot of language and the policy draft they sent included they they added those on if you remember in all of those but it is a valid point yeah and it is you know i'm wondering if that's really a housekeeping issue we can we can accept it and just deal with it as housekeeping but if we use race you could just do that and we could

122remove that additional language from each of the areas that was added that makes sense yeah absolutely this was this was model um policy that came down through uh nisba or through this yes uh yeah yeah i'm sorry so this this was um we adopted this um based on some model policy that had come down and meredith that included that that drafting throughout but it i don't see anybody here in person saying that we're tied to it okay i mean i'm finding that passing it as is rather than doing a big um edit of it but it just seems like um you know our goals are to kind of streamline and make sure this is more readable and and taking out that extra language i think would be helpful because because it's just housekeeping we can

123pass it and remove that extra language because it does not change uh the it doesn't change the content change the content and this is still the first reading and it's reverse reading so it'll come back yeah okay okay any other discussion thank you meredith all in favor aye aye any opposed any abstentions that passes um at this point if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on a non-agenda item now would be the time to come to the microphone and please state your name hello my name is tracy burton i'm a bc bus driver and um i was hoping that you would consider making it policy not to cross in a 55 mile an hour speed zone um this is the most dangerous maneuver we perform is crossing students and what

124makes what makes it so dangerous is the student is outside of the bus subject to traffic bc has a two signal crossing system that we instruct the students to on the last step look both ways step out 10 steps in front of the bus so we can see from their feet to the top of their head and then i see you you see me they're stopped there we give them the signal to cross they come halfway they stop again we check all around again we give them the second signal they go the rest of the way if they hear the horn blow it means they have to go back to where they started so the second day of school in the afternoon delivery out of middle school 6th grade student did his part of getting

125out of the way when he heard the horn it was very upsetting situation for all concerned i fear crossing students in a 55 mile an hour zone is unnecessary an unnecessary risk i wanted to bring it to the board see what you guys think i didn't find anything in the transportation law that prohibits crossing students in a 55 mile an hour zone specifically but they did have a thing that was um endangering the welfare of a minor so that would be um a person guilty of endangering the welfare of a child when he knowingly acts in a manner likely to be injurious to the physical mental or moral welfare of a child less than 17 years or directs or authorizes such child to engage in an occupation involving a substantial risk of danger to his

126life or his health so in my opinion it was it is a substantial risk because i don't i'm not aware of a lot of places that we do cross in a 55 and that one from the beginning of the year i didn't like doing it and it just was compounded by that second day when um the child is out in the road and then somebody just decided to come around all the stock traffic so um his mom asked us not to uh cross them so we changed him on the on the riding but there's still other ones so i just don't think it's a good idea so i wish you guys would talk about it and maybe we could make a policy that we don't cross them into 55. thank you okay thank you for

127speaking and bringing that to our attention is it possible to get the number of students that we let cross at 55 miles an hour from transportation yeah and i'm just going to speak from my experience growing up i actually saw a child hit by a bus when i was in middle school so this hits home for me so i definitely would like to see you know how many students also judy how many routes if it's not more than one route where that occurs [Music] thank you anybody else [Music] next future meetings and events on monday november 8th at 5 pm there are interviews for the construction management group and christine and jonathan are participating wednesday november 10th at 6 p.m is the meeting of the district equity and inclusivity committee our next regular board meeting

128is scheduled for wednesday november 17th here in the cafeteria i'm anticipating an executive session at six and then the rest of the meeting starting at seven and then the meeting after that is on wednesday december 1st again here in the cafeteria anticipating executive session at 6 and regular board meetings starting at 7. do we have any need to go back into executive session uh seeing nothing can i have a motion to adjourn the meeting some move second all in favor opposed meeting adjourned you