001we all set good evening and welcome to the September 25th Board of Education meeting for the Chester Union Free School District can we please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I Ali 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 mrsi would you take roll call please callio present Mrs negersmith present Mrs Arnette present Mrs hin Johnson Mrs Pena present thank you a quorum was present and we can continue with the meeting thank you Mr Brennan do you have something to ask for consideration absolutely thank you I would ask to have an item walked on to the agenda this evening and that would be the bond Council and estole notice that is in conjunction with the
0022022 Capital project which the voters approved the addition of the stem laboratory as well as the HVAC upgrades at the elementary school this is a third step in in the bond notice steps the first being the board authorized the bond notice the excuse me the bond resolution second the bond resolution went to the vot and was approved and there is a third piece which is to approve the actual borrowing of the funds for that project this is that third step and unfortunately it's being asked to be walked on today because I I missed the subtlety in the um information we had received from our bond Council this should have been asked to be on the agenda for September 11th so I'm doing a little makeup now and just for the board's information this is a
003a lesson of whether it's your first month or 350th month sometimes these things can happen I apologize for the quick uh turnaround on this not a problem and thank you for the explanation um I'd like to make a motion to add the bond resolution and notice of a stopple to tonight's consent agenda a second all in favor I I motion carries thank you Mr brenon can I have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda I'll make that motion I'll second all in favor I motion carries I'd like to make a motion to approve um the September 11th first of all is there any question about the agenda meeting minutes from the September 11th meeting okay I'd like to make the motion to approve I'll second all in favor I I thank you so that brings us
004to the part of our meeting of presentations Mrs Garcia good evening everyone um okay so um I would like to begin by wishing the Latino Community a happy Hispanic Heritage Month k i begin my board presentation by giving you an update of the summer so summer curriculum writing I want to thank all the teachers who worked collaboratively in working on curriculum writing we had about 15 teachers and priority was given to content areas that were vetted in terms of uh curriculum Pilots so we had for example for IED mathematics we have fourth grade work on um math uh 8ighth grade uh work on the I ready mathematics we had teachers in the English Department use the common lit 360 to modify their curriculum so there was 10th grade and 8th grade and nth grade self-contained
005classes worked on that we had uh teachers in financial literacy we have a new course so that was used uh for that as well and then the New Visions uh which is a piloted curriculum was used to be adapted for Earth science to name a few it was a team-driven approach to the new teacher orientation uh this uh August 20th and I wanted to thank last year's new teachers Joseph morville Alexis Mack and Nicole tanhauser for providing the new teachers with warm welcomes and tips via video recordings it was much appreciated it was something that we I started two years ago so then when the new teachers uh come in they do a little video clip explaining their experiences and sharing tips with the new ones coming in so that means that the two new
006teachers will be doing the same thing next year next next summer so that was uh pretty uh good then we had um I want to give a enl update as well so English language Learners we have approximately 40 L students at the elementary school and at the Academy we have about about 28 students so we have like 68 plus one more who's at B so has 69 L's I want to thank our enl teachers uh Mr faio miss carnrite miss tanhauser and miss fashio for all of their efforts in supporting our L students and their families they did an amazing job during open house um sharing information with um our families uh the l department and I will be attending a professional development Workshop series called diversity Equity inclusion and belonging series which uh will
007be used to provide us with strategies to better support our L students and our first uh Workshop is tomorrow and there will be five of us attending and it's a virtual thing with five different sessions throughout the entire year so we're hoping to um share our best practices with uh the uh teachers as well our was superintendent conference day to place on uh September 3rd and the theme for this year is we're stronger together which I love the collaboration of the theme thanks to M har ideas um we also I want to give you a brief curriculum update of Pilots that are coming and I I failed to add one more so I'll share that one so for grade 6 through 8 we have the ivet mathematics pilot at Chester Academy the teachers will be
008a evaluating it this year in the classroom in grades 6 through 12 the ELA Department selected common 360 so they will be obtaining additional sub uh will be evaluating it this year and um there will be provided additional support uh in using the platform this year grades K to five are enthusiastically excited about piloting Scholastic literacy this year and prek will continue to use and evaluate prek on my way high school science will pilot New Visions curriculum in living environment earth science chemistry and physics in grades 6 through 12 uh science this was pretty cool um I was able to last year get a free access pilot to Inner orbit which is a nextg science standards assessment tool so the teachers have the ability to type in a science standard and provide an assessment for
009students and then they get an item analysis results of each standard that they're targeting and it's a standalone uh tool that doesn't rely on any specific curriculum so regardless of what curriculum the elementary school adopts next year or their high school they can still use it as item analysis it's similar to I ready um so it's pretty cool and then I was able to obtain free pilot for the elementary school teachers this year free of charge for them to try out out after um they get a 1hour workshop and then teachers will have the opportunity to test it out this year and we'll see should they decide to implement that at the elementary school next year based on their feedback um Middle School uh will reevaluate the hmh science Dimensions curriculum uh this year is
010the last year and they're going to be comparing it to the newly aligned NG GSS curriculum called into science uh and and the financial literacy course the new course we're excited that we have a pilot uh with this program called the life course and Mr Magie is actually implementing it um this semester and then he will evaluate it to see if it's something that they will be utilizing for uh next uh school year and this is the one I fail to uh add and the World Language Department uh is reviewing authentico which is aan manage curriculum that replaced their previous uh textbook that they had realidades and this new format is aligned to the new uh and current world Readiness language standards so it's a similar but um it's the same uh program but it's
011just uh realigned to the new standards and and now I want to show you the updates that were made to the academic section of our or so I will share verbally what uh and then I'll show you uh to the families at home the changes that were made so we worked this summer on revamping the academic section of the district website and I'm excited to show you some of the updates and changes if you bear with me get to see some of the so now under the academics as you can see on theen screen we have so when you go to curriculum and instruction so you see the drop down on this side you get to see I was able to add uh an overview of curriculum instruction and then there's a hyperlink there to
012all the hard work that the teachers worked on on the course descriptions um so they can click on here and it goes straight to that site I'll show you in a second and it also has a standalone tab uh down here as well which I will click last so if we go to instructional resources you get to see that I was able to add links to the New York State Standards learning standards in all the subject areas we have uh New York State uh graduation requirements requirement links there I was able to add I ready uh Family Center links for the families as well and then I provided enl supports by lingual glossaries and then at the bottom here I was able to add links to all of the different standards in various languages for
013multilingual families so they're able to click on it and then it'll give you a link to uh the different um a gloss that will better help support uh their students um I can click on one so you see that and then you go to the bottom and then the glossery is there in multiple languages and the other tab we were able to add a family in instructional Academy which I'll be uh presenting uh I can actually talk about that now so our family instructional Academy has its tab it has all the dates there for this year we have five sessions I'm excited to announce that tomorrow we have uh Tech talk is a collaboration with Dan our new uh director of technology and data management and we're collaborating on doing Tech talks on different um
014communication apps that we are using to improve uh family support and I will talk about this I want to give a shout out to Mr duet and the volleyball girls volleyball team that they will be facilitating the open gym and providing child care for the families who uh need it and with the new uh pent Square app we were able to have more uh participants so we had like over 64 responses and about 30 four families coming in so that's a a big jump and I think it has to do more with Dan Rather than the family instruction Academy but uh to thank and um the other um modification was to the enl website so there I was able to add the teachers provide additional support for families as well and that is it do
015you have any questions does anybody have any questions no it looks great I we're um specifically impressed with like the website and the resources that truly are now at you know our community members fingertips um you know when you're home and it's 7:00 at night night and the child's ask the question and you're not even sure where to begin there's a nice starting point um to even know what to ask for and and do so what what a tremendous resource for our families and you know it takes hours of work to make that happen so we sincerely appreciate it thank you it's a work in progress we still have things we have a list we're working collaboratively with teachers to add additional resources that they feel will be important so that's what um I'll be
016work work on this year and I think definitely um sharing it with the students that it's available so that they can go home and share with their families right there's always that gap between the students and the families and how to get it's available and how do we let parents know so just even say hey if you guys have uh any questions and a mom or dad just go on the website and then you ask me so that's also important to kind of like just continue to push out the website because it is there's a lot of resources I was like wow that's really cool like the bilingual glass that that's really really cool um at your fingertips like she said and that's some of the things that we're going to be addressing tomorrow is
017how to use the technology on the website and use a translation features there for parents accessibility so big improvement with the new uh layout of the website I hope you guys have a good turnout and I think it's wonderful that you're offering the child care as well because that was a new source of feedback last year from families who couldn't attend because of those reasons so I think that in itself is such a help so that's wonderful thank you thank you for all your hard work thank you Mr duet good evening everyone so it's been a busy summer busy fall all of our fall sports are well underway we are well into all of our Seasons uh with the help of the Florida Union Free School District with Goan uh we have been able to
018continue to expand our full Sports so we have our cross country our swimming um in addition to uh Florida was sending over some of their football players in addition to our normal sports that we're running soccer volleyball football and uh all of our normal fall Sports so it's been high numbers so far this fall uh our registration is up which is definitely uh a positive but before I get into anything about the summer and the fall actually some of the things I want to start with are winter sports Believe It or Not uh just to talk about communication for winter sports I want everyone to be aware that we will be rolling out all of our uh memos and all of our website information for winter sport registration this October um I'll get more there
019will be more information put up via parent Square which has been a huge success I'll get more into that in a couple minutes but the registration will start in mid October and we will have links to family ID as well as all of our Sports descriptions and all the same information that we gave out over the summer on the website on social media and also pushed out via parent Square so that being said that brings me directly to the website so a couple of things we're looking at to improve uh I'm going to be back on what da said about the website is for athletics we've been making some huge changes as well uh all of our coach's contact information has been added to the website that's one of the items that had uh come
020up during our parent advisory panel and I'll mention a few more things that came out of that uh in a couple minutes couple things I want to make people aware of that we are going to offer uh we're going to put our Google Classroom codes on the website so that because one one information a lot of information we get from the feedback I should say from the community is winter workouts uh you know other information that some of our athletes who have played Sports before who are already in the Google Classroom pages are already getting that information how can we get that information to the rest of the community specifically seventh graders who haven't played a sport before um one of the things we did this summer was to send out a letter specifically to
021seventh grade families just to let them know if you've never played a sport before this is what you need to do this is where you can look for information what we want to do is we want to expand our offseason workout information that's something that typically the students who are already playing sports get that information from the coaches but what about someone who's never played sport before or a family who's looking for information uh by having the Google Classroom codes on the website in addition to some information on that tab we indicate where they can get that information from and also will indicate that those offseason workouts are open to anyone who is interested in trying out for those teams you do not have to be an active participant of that program so if you've
022if you tried out for soccer last year and didn't make it you want to improve your skills go to the offseason workouts here's where you can go it's open to everyone we cannot turn anyone away nor would we want to we're also going to include a tab about booster clubs because there's a lot of information that comes to us about those uh some people aren't sure what the role of the booster club is and how they provide for our student athletes above and beyond our normal everyday budget so we're going to add information about that as well also who to contact for each individual sports booster club and how you can participate if you'd like to help out also what we are doing to expand some of our programs and this is sort of related
023to the website because we're going to include links on the section 9 schedule at some point uh I've been talking about this since last year huddle and we have our huddle cameras so some of you may have gotten I didn't send it to everyone cuz we did a little bit of a trial run with our soccer team about sending out a live link to broadcast the soccer game we've tried it with volleyball already now we're trying it with soccer because uh we put in a new camera on the soccer field which I'd like to thank Matt D Roa and Dan uh SWOT for helping us put in those cameras and we it was an interesting location and it took a a little bit of creative thinking to get the camera into the middle of the
024field cuz we needed power and internet out there and we made it work and we ran a trial run and it was successful so the goal is starting October 1st we are going to start live streaming all of our Varsity contests inside and outside the only exception is boys varsity soccer because we do not have power in Internet on the field at Maple however we plan on bringing some of those games up to the academy so that we can broadcast those games so we have some long-term goals here uh we eventually hope to install uh we also have some cameras that we uh purchased for the baseball install Fields as well at Maple and the academy so we have a lot going on with huddle in my board report I had included some pictures of
025what those camera angles look like the sound and picture quality is amazing it's 4K uh we can link it directly to the section I website when you look at the schedule to see where the game is you can click on the live link and it'll take you right to the game Chester Academy has its own huddle TV channel and that was also included as part of the board report uh board report and that nice thing about that is it doesn't change you go to that same link every time and you can search through games as well as archived games that you may have missed okay so we are on to the gym that brings me to we had some upgrades to facilities as well that some have already been done some that are coming if
026you've walked into the gym recently you'll see it's a little bit brighter in the gym these days uh we uh mattos and his crew installed new lights in the gym which makes it significantly brighter um we had other teams even coming in Jim saying it's a beautiful gym but it just doesn't quite have that you know the lights that we expect when we walked in that's all changed now um the technology that you know Mr doosa can explain at some other time the reason why it was brighter and the lumens and all this other stuff it works it's like daylight in there it's fantastic we also have new scoreboards coming for the gym uh doctronics scoreboards have a useful life around 15 years this building is well past that so we do have a brand
027new scoreboard system we plan to install it's Curr Curr ly under in production at De Tronics and we hope to have it installed Sometime Late fall early winter the social media class is up and running once again third straight year with this class and uh this year what we ended up doing was we budgeted for brand new laptops for that class so that class will work exclusively with Windows machines and the reason why we did that was we had some it wasn't impossible to use Chromebooks with something like this but it was not as easy as should have been it couldn't the kids couldn't be as creative as they needed to be so by using laptops we were able to expand our use of canva which we discussed last year and I can already see
028a difference in the work that the kids are producing they are months ahead of where they were last year we typically had very um uh you know there wasn't a lot of Animation wasn't a lot of creativity because they were so it was so difficult to work on the slide the way it was because they were again using either older desktops or Chromebooks now we have brand new state of-the-art machines they they have animations pictures they're uploading videos they're screen capturing music again this is something that some of my classes weren't turning out until December and January we're doing it in September and now almost October some of upcoming dates for you we had do have a couple changes from what was in the board report because as always with you know mother nature and
029other things going on we had to change some dates but the homcoming week games are coming up girls of RC soccer is Wednesday October 2nd at Chester Academy 415 boys varsity soccer Thursday October 3rd at Maple Avenue at 4:30 the varsity football game will now be played Saturday October 5th at 3 pm. so it's the next day at 3 pm. and then varsity volleyball will be moved back to Friday October 4th at 6 o'clock so we have homecoming games Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday come on out support the teams as I mentioned previously the winter sports letter through parents Square will be issued Tuesday October 1st and then registration opens for winter sports October 18th JV Varsity Sports tryouts begin November 18th and Modi sports tryouts begin November 25th the only other date I want to
030emphasize is senior nights this is something nice about parent Square it's so much easier for me to communicate with the community on just little details like this that we couldn't do before because it was so difficult to send out information and so difficult to access the website sometimes senior night letter will be sent out that will list all of the sports with all of their senior nights times dates locations and I'm going to send send this out to everyone it shouldn't just go out to the seniors and their families and those teams it should go out to the JB teams and the modified teams and all the underclassmen should go out to everybody in case they want to come out and support the seniors on those nights couple last minute things here uh the game
031chaperon this one I just wanted to point out if you're going to a game at Chester Academy you're going to notice bright orange one of the things we changed this year we tried the arm bands last year and they weren't quite as visible as I wanted them to be so we went all out this year we have long sleeve shirts short sleeve shirts these bright safety jackets that you can see from across the field we've had uh people coming from other school districts taking pictures to bring back to their districts because they they couldn't believe how bright and how and kudos to our chaperon because one of the things we have them do is they walk up they greet the teams they greet the coaches they greet the officials make their presence known and these
032jackets are certainly helping with that and people always comment about how friendly our chaperon are it sets a nice tone a lot of people come into the into the games which leads me to one of the funny things that happened this fall so for a better part of a year we've been working on security at our games we've been working on making restricted areas for players and coaches only for officials only um one of the things we want our athletes and coaches to do they want them to feel safe and feel like they have their area where they can be and and not be disturbed so we have tried to separate Spectators from our Fields by using we use rope cones I mean physical barriers you name it we've done it and I stole this
033from Florida unit Free School District I was talking to Joe de matina who's their athletic director and I said you know what do you do and he goes we draw a white line so I went and worked with buildings and grounds and we put a white line I mean this is Hightech stuff right white line painted on the side of the field it's like a wall nobody passes it and they just respect it they know what it is they understand why it's there and it creates a natural barrier without having to put up any kind of an eyesore to make it seem like we're restricting people but they know don't cross the line and they wait for their children when the game's over to come over to them our chaperon bring any water or Gatorade
034that it works out amazing all the things we tried all we had to do is paint a line and it worked well so sometimes the simple things are the best okay last thing I want to share with you I've been waiting for this for a year I told you I was going to get it and here it is so this is the highest award that New York state public high school ethic Association will can offer academically to any school's Varsity programs this is the New York State uh schar athlet School of Distinction award we talked about it last year all varsity teams every one of them had to qualify as a scolar athlete team meaning they had a 90 or above average uh average for the team every sport fall winter spring and only a
035handful of schools in the entire section earned it and this is the first time we've ever gotten it so last year we had school of excellence this year we got school of Distinction so I'm extremely proud of this and I want to and I would love to take credit for this the coaches the athletes the teachers the administration the community everybody who listen to me talk about this day in and day out for the last 18 months it was a year and a half I beg them let's make this work and we got it so this will be put in a showcase somewhere in Chester Academy we're going to put a banner on the wall and I'm I'm thrilled to death if we didn't win any other Awards the entire time I was here I
036will hang my hat on this one that's all I have thank you congratulations it's just absolute um talk about a team effort but you certainly spearheaded by motivating people for the last 18 months um but you're right it starts with the athletes the coaches the teachers the people who um Proctor the the study hall sessions um it truly is a collaborative effort and uh to only be you know one of a handful really speaks to the community here so thank you for all your hard work well thank you for your support with this as well because it was like I said it was a community effort congratulations thank you I just had one question just for the families I um because I know like you said offseason workouts have have come up um especially for
037our seventh graders who it's their first time with Athletics um are the offseason workouts usually coach run or student run they are coach run okay well I shouldn't say coach run and the reason why I shouldn't use the word coach is New York state does not allow practices outside of the window of the season so even though we call them you know the coaches are there they're facilitating they're not acting as as official coaches in that capacity at that point it's uh they're still appointed because they're under contract with the board of education but it's we call them more of a clinic and that's why if you start talking about coaches and players and tryouts and things like that now it starts to become a practice and once you call it a practice in the
038off season now you're ineligible it's it's something you're not supposed to be doing so it it'll be coach run like a clinic and what ends up happening always is and you'll always see this if you do this long enough the upper classmen end up a lot of times stepping in and kind of guiding the seventh e8th and ninth graders um sometimes we'll do two separate workouts one for the middle school one for the high school sometimes we'll combine them where the high school kids work with the middle school kids so while it's coach L it's also assisted by a lot of the Juniors and seniors thank you so much than okay any questions congratulations again thank you much thank you Mr Schwarz welcome to your first Board of Education presentation here at Chester we are
039so unbelievably thrilled to have you as part of our family that's um I want to thank you guys for having me and um just tell you the first two months here have been spectacular um so I kind of broke the board report down into things that fit in the The five district goals um so to start off we have a ton of State mandated uh trainings that all teachers staff need to go through uh we use a program called gcn to do that the board report said as of last Thursday there was 33% of teachers and staff that were done we currently have 43% done um and most of the other people have at least started have like six out of eight of those trainings done um they have until October 30th to finish them
040so we're well on track to get that done in time um one of my goals this year is to make sure that all of our uh learning platforms and communication tools that we have here in the district are at least bilingual um if not more than one more than two languages um that really started before I got here with parent Square uh I got to kind of push that over the finish line but you but the team before me had did a great job getting us on track to do that um we have finished the implementation for parent Square as a district communication tool so we are officially doing all of our district communication through parent Square um there is capabilities moving forward we are I'm looking at actually sending out some of our end
041of year test reporting on that app as well we've all of our attendance um daily attendance so those phone calls are now run through parent Square not through school messenger um we're going to continue to conduct a review of applications throughout the year to make sure that all of our communication tools are um multilingual um speaking of we recognize that not all communication is digital so we are starting to buy a couple of devices called pocket talks they little $299 um hippoc compliant translation devices so we can have um any conver ation it doesn't go out to the internet it doesn't get stored anywhere the translation happens right there and then ends right there so actually me and D are going to Showcase that product for you if D wants to come up da is
042our resident um translator she does all of them so all the phone calls and parents that come in she's the one person that's fluent so this this will help us we've already had a couple of parents the first sorry a couple of people in the front office uh this first couple days be able to use this device and communicate with parents parents that just walked in or came in so go ahead sorry I don't understand much English can you explain to me how this works so this is super simple all you have to do is talk into the device and it can translate into over 140 different languages when you're done talking you just let go of the button we can go in 140 different languages Haitian Creole we have we have French um so
043these we're going to try to get one for each entrance to each building guidance Department um and at caramel we actually had one at each lunch line as well just so that um kids who did not speak the language or were coming in we can communicate make sure that they're Fed so they can learn during the day um so these are really cool little devices that instead of having a phone out and using Google translate that we don't know where that data ends up this is a decently inexpensive way to to make sure that happens today uh security user and a family jail was able to use it as well and then yesterday we uh own the device to the office to model weing guidance so anyone is texting it out to see whether it's
044we did get this this is a trial device and as we as we make sure that these are exactly what we need and do what we need we'll end up purchasing a couple um for the district um so moving on to District goal number two um which is really tracking our app usage to make sure that the money we spend on applications is spent wisely we each application that we purchase is anywhere from five to $20,000 for for our educational apps and in the past what we've done is we utilize a program called class link that rosters all of our kids into those applications and then tracks the usage but it only tracked usage based on if the student went to class link first and then clicked to go to the application and the problem
045with that is a lot of kids will bookmark the I ready and it doesn't register so I ready looks like it's not being used um there is a portion of class link that we can put onto each Chromebook that will track anytime a student goes to I already and how much time they spend there so that will allow us to give you a more detailed report on each application that's being used so at the end of the year we can look at an application and say hey only eight kids use this and if we only expected eight kids to use that because that's what we purchase the app for fine but if not if we were expecting a whole District to to use that and a kids used it probably can spend our money wisely
046somewhere else so you'll see those reports attached to each monthly board report um and we'll track throughout the year as well for app usage um one of my goals also is that each decision that we make is data driven so we met with the superintendent me and um Dennis the PR who's amazing uh met with superintendent the other day to go over all of our state level reporting and um that is almost all set ready to go up to the state and be um finalized we met with members of the stem team to check on um technology needs for them and try to get kind of a vertical alignment for our computer science program here at Chester um we also created a it's later in my report but we created a little teacher training center
047I come from a school district that has um teacher trainers so there are teachers who are on special assignment that are there to help teachers with the applications that we buy for them and we don't have that here so that was my role in that school district for a while and um kind of miss it sometimes kind of miss being with teachers and I miss being with students so we set up a little four or five person um huddle table up in the tech office so that if a teacher has an issue with an app or we had a teacher the other day who just needed to know how screencastify worked and how to make sure that she can read a test once and then put a kid in front of it so that counts
048as their test red um section for kind of everyday test not State exams and um so we're able to sit down in that area and just kind of train her through that which is which is really cool um our already diagnostic are completed we're just doing uh makeups now and over the next couple days and months we're going to be going over and AI is becoming a topic that we really need to discuss as a district and so discussing that in our administrative team or board level um me and the superintendent thought that we really should bring the teachers in on that conversation so starting tomorrow we're having about 2 hour hours of conversations with the teachers um just to discuss what AI is put some definitions to things um discuss hopes fears and start
049to have that conversation so that we can come together as a group and decide how we're going to um handle that parent Square we talked about it slightly earlier we have 100% of our parents are contactable at this point so when we we send a message out 100% of our parents at least get an email so um 68% of them have registered with the application what that means is they verify their data that we have they verify that that's their email address that's their phone number and then have an opportunity to log into that application and so when we send out an alert it will go directly to their phone um it's my job also to take a look at that new it monthly make sure it's up to date and audit that and make
050sure that that's an ongoing process throughout the year all right tomorrow evening is our first family instructional Academy of course the first one was Tech talk thanks Dia and uh so we'll we'll actually be discussing a lot of these applications she already talked about it no need to go over it further um infrastructure is another one so I have been conducting with my team kind of an over just figuring out where we are with our infrastructure in the school district and as we get through things we have realized that Wi-Fi is going to be an upgrade that we need to make this year if not early next year um so we were able to make look at the budget and buy we only have eight outdoor access points that cover all the fields so we
051were able to buy eight of those the other day so all of our fields are going to get a Wi-Fi upgrade up grade we had 30 of the New Gen access points so as we get an access point that's reported to us that's not working properly we're going to slowly work those 30 in this year and then try to figure out on the budget how to um make that Improvement for next year or later this year if we can um day one my team when I sat down with them said we need to look at our incident response plan so I did reach out to one of our vendors CSI and hopefully by December we have a updated incident response plan um if we have a cyber security attack Andor anything goes wrong with our
052data um we need to have a plan in place to know what exactly to do in those situations if you walked into through the front entrance of Chester Academy you will see an iPad on a stand it is part of a trial if we are looking at updating our visitor um how we track visit visitors coming into our building so that is an app called visitor aware it will do that for us it tracks when you log in it will let the person at the front it'll print out a badge it'll let that person know whether they whether you have a student in this building or not where they are Etc so it's it's a good way for us to track that I've used it at other school districts and it worked great um we're
053on a trial run right now so it is not a something we've bought yet but we are implementing it just to see see how it runs here and if it runs well we're going to look at buying that as well last couple things um day one I got to sit down with Aaron Brenan which I'm sad to see you go um he walked me through my budget and as an incoming person even last year as my first year as a tech director at another District it was hard until the very end of the year to know exactly where all of my money is earmarked for and Aaron was is great at just sitting down and saying here's what's spent here's what's not here here's where your money is um we're able to identify a good
054amount of money coming from our Tech budget that was either redundant and or um didn't need to be spent or we were buying a little bit extra and we didn't need to um those numbers are there in front of you so um I think that's it for my first one you guys have any questions I actually do have a question when you mentioned about the parent square and how many parents you said 100% of parents are contactable meaning that they are receiving the emails correct and 68% basically have downloaded that app so when we register when we registered with parent Square we provide the data that's coming out of our student information system okay um each parent that's registered has an email address attached to them so when we say contactable we at least can
055email them okay they're getting the email addresses they're getting emails that's saying please register as well and when they click on that that will actually let them log in and verify their phone number as well and create a login for the app so when I say the the two numbers contactable is everyone will receive at least an email if their email is correct and then the other one is how many people have actually logged on and verified that information so and again apologize I'm not a tech person so I just want to be clear so when so unless I verify my information I won't be getting the messages I I have to verify you won't be getting the messages via text or via the app but you will get an email that says there is
056a new uh message from I guess my my concern is and again I'm probably not clear right now um our family is missing out on messages if they have not verified um like their information so like as long as their email address is correct in our student information system and that is so we have a email address that is a valid email address for those parents um and they are not bouncing back okay so because we can't see how many bounce back to us and they are not bouncing back so based on what information we have from the parents they are getting sent an email from parents Square whenever a message goes out from perfect that's what thank you that's what I want to confir clear no that's a good question thank you I do
057like that parents have the control with regard to how many notifications they're getting because once you have the email then you can also do a text message alert y right and then you can also do the additional notifications so so far the feedback that at least I've heard from some of the families is that it has just been wonderful because sometimes working as like a working parent you can miss an email but when you have it sitting in your inbox or in a text message you kind of have to purposely go out of your way to delete it yeah so um I think that's wonderful that it allows to control how many they're getting as well and just in case people don't know if you go into your settings in your settings um your account
058settings you can choose that you don't want text messages or don't want emails and you only want them via the app and then how and when you're going to get them so digest for those um if you select digest you're going to get all of the messages that are sent from the district at 6 PM that night so if there's 43 messages sent you're going to get one message at the end of the day with all 43 messages if you select instant you're going to get get all 43 throughout the day um but you get to choose that as a parent instead of um the other way around us choosing it for you tomorrow's Tech talk will some of that be discussed for parents absolutely that we'll actually go in depth on parents Square during
059that Tech talk that parent square is going to be kind of my main focus uh especially because it translates um the message when I send it in English you get it in your home language and not and then when you if you later when we open up messaging back when you type it in your home language we will get it in English so it does that for us which is really nice that's great I am assuming like if let's say you're the parent who sets for 6 o' to get the 43 I would assume if there is an emergency that all gets trumped we can override it when we send the message we can choose whether we're going to override the digest or not and send all instantaneously so um if we have a 2-hour
060delay and you're set to digest it's kind of useless right you're going get that at 6 p.m. so we'll uh yes we can override that and those messages will go out instantaneously to everyone great question good I just wanted to point out um before school opens um the Board of Education always does a tour of the buildings and we get to see firsthand um all the hard work um and we noticed that you moved your office to be amongst your staff um and that speaks volumes of your commitment to working as a team um we're very team driven here to the students um you know many of us are Educators um are in the human services here and that really resonated with us um thank you my team is great that's it's a small team
061but they are spectacular at their jobs so it's it's been a it's been a great experience so far so thank you for all your hard work so far thanks awesome have a good night Mr D Roa and we know you did nothing over the summer it's been pretty boring uh it's been pretty boring uh Mr oara Mr CIO Board of Education thank you guys for the opportunity to update you on uh buildings and grounds um I wasn't going to start with this um but I thought it was kind of important last week we had um an internet threat which required us to implement our emergency response protocols um and there were you know some some good things and some opportunities for improvement um specifically we noticed that and while Dan was uh Mr Schwarz goof
062was talking about parents Square it kind of dawned on me um during during the response we had Parents coming to the school um and we were sending out notices um at the school here we have a problem with cell cell service uh so parents that were arriving weren't receiving our emergency protocols or I'm sorry our emergency me messages um so we identified that as an opportunity um which kind of dovetails into the first topic of our safety Capital project um so last year the voters approved a safety Capital project which is underway it's currently in the design phase we anticipate uh the majority of that work to take place over the summer um but we are forced to go through the process of engineering architectural design uh in order to receive state aid from uh
063from this this project so part of the project will include um a communication to our exterior sign so we are looking at possibly replacing that sign as part of the project um but what it would say is in the event of an emergency right please check parent square and then folks can uh realize oh I don't have self service maybe I'm not getting messages but I think that was an opportunity um that was highlighted last week I also want to thank the village of Chester um Chief Maguire and his staff the Town of Chester uh Chief Dolan and his staff all of the officers that responded they all did a great job everybody was um was on board with uh with our response so appreciate their efforts appreciate our SRO of course Rick and and
064officer Duca um and um uh that's about that so with the security project just to bring everybody back up to speed um inclusive of this project is going to be a secure entryway right that's currently being designed we're going to enclose the uh classrooms at the elementary school um including um we're going to include blue light strobes throughout all of our buildings this is in the event of a lockdown it would notify folks that you know this is a lockdown specifically folks who are hard of hearing um additional aeds and other uh really great upgrades that'll improve the safety of our district so that's coming we anticipate um the project to be filed in the next two weeks um so over the summer we we did a few things uh around around the campus that
065I wanted to talk about and highlight and then most importantly thank the folks that allowed this to happen so we're very small team we're made up of five uh maintenance mechanics so to speak really two of them are dedicated to the grounds um and the work that we did over the summer is not um is not typical of a maintenance staff in a school district this size um specifically work like in this Auditorium right and I know uh you guys have been kind of apprised of this but I think we' like to present uh the efforts to the community but in in this room here in the auditorium uh we replaced all the lighting in house right and these are skill sets that our team has learned through you know numerous classes um being paired
066with Professionals in the field um and they have the expertise to do this um and I was on hand doing this with them it was quite a lot of fun but it required us to remove every seat in the auditorium we had massive lifts in here the demolition of all the lighting the replacement of all the lighting significant savings to the district uh to the tune of almost $100,000 the quotes that we received from our electrical contractors the required scaffolding um we were able to kind of circumvent and do it inh house so um tremendous effort on their part um and uh we look forward forward to doing more projects like that in the future maybe not to that scale um but more more projects inhouse we've also replace the cafeteria flooring so to kind
067of bring everybody up to speed on this unique situation uh which exists in the academy um the the Chester Academy is built on uh a swamp basically and what happens is the water table Rises very quickly in in the summer usually around July August water table Rises Satur the foundation and causes glue to liquefy because of salts and pH levels and a whole conversation that we don't need to get into now but it causes the tiles to pull away um and this is a very unique situation that the four flooring contractors that I brought in have never seen before but we've done extensive testing to find out what the problem was um this summer we were able to mitigate it we found a contractor who gave us a 15-year warranty on the water M mitigation
068system the only contractor around that does that um and we installed a new flooring which is basically maintenance-free so in the summer um we are required to strip and wax all of our vinyl composite tile or VCT Tile floors of which we did just about 64,000 Square ft um of classrooms and hallways but this floor does not require any maintenance going forward so there's a bit of a savings uh on the district end uh and also this is the time of year when the glue would be coming through and making a very unsightly nasty environment and that hasn't happened so I'm confident that the mitigation system has worked um and we look forward to kind of in improving on the floor or I'm sorry increasing the mitigation system through floors throughout uh the academy um
069we've also had contractors come in and replace the carpet I think that was probably the two projects that we outsourced was the flooring in the cafeteria and the flooring in the auditorium um and the rest of these we've all done pretty much in the house um we were able to install a motorized projector screen with the help of Mr schwarzkoff and his his team up at the elementary school uh it's very similar to this setup but up at the elementary school there was no real area for them to do presentations um now we have the cafetorium where you could fit several hundred people and you have a large uh motorized screen with a sound system um so it's a much more professional environment for Miss bch and her staff to present to parents and communicate
070uh to parents um the other important thing that we did over the summer amongst many projects is we completed a capital project that was approved two years a two years ago um our elementary school HVAC project upgrade so if you remember back in the days of covid um it became very evident that HVAC systems presented a problem with the transmission of covid-19 air handler systems from the 70s 80s 90s did not have the filtration technology to filter out particulates to the micro level of a virus right so in order to get that you need a minimum of what's called a Merv 13 filtration our systems we retrofitted to provide MV 133 but it took took a tremendous toll on our air handlers so our Motors were burning out and we're drawing a tremendous amount of
071energy really inefficient um also it didn't provide the appropriate Heating and Cooling because we're you know kind of restricting that air flow so um very late in August uh as we were getting close to open we had um Air Handlers removed from the roof using giant cranes and new ones cran back on um we're still going through the process of tweaking the controls but the Air Handlers are extremely inefficient not inefficient they're extremely efficient um they use a technology called heat pumps which you might have in your house um it's recently approved for commercial uh installations like this heat pumps are an air conditioning system that work backwards so if you ever turn your air conditioner on in the summer you go outside and you feel the unit right there's hot air coming off of
072that what this unit does is takes that hot air and puts it inside the building um tremendous Energy savings to the tune of 60 to 80% depending on uh depending on the conditions but we've moved away from Mostly natural gas to uh a heat pump system and uh that's a tremendous upgrade for for um the district um I think that's all I had I wanted to point out that um a lot of all of this work from the the light in here the pollination Garden the screens the lights that we did in uh in the parking lots the auditorium the restriping of the parking lot all the work that we've done over the summer is not possible without our staff right so tremendous thank you shout out appreciation to Brett Sutton Tyler kryer Brian Rogers
073Mark Reed and Mike Perry and our Bose custodial staff who are always here helping us um whenever we need but these folks uh without any hesitation take on projects like this which is extremely rare and I can't I can't stress enough how important it is to have a team that cares about the environment they work in they take pride in the district they take pride in what they do um and they're always looking for opportunities to Showcase their skill sets and to improve on their skill sets uh it makes my job easy uh working with a with a staff like this and I'm extremely grateful to uh uh to be able to work with them and alongside them um that's the end of my presentation but I also wanted to welcome Mr schwarzkoff and just
074make a quick comment on um on how great it's been working with him over the last couple weeks um he's a very personable person he's Hands-On he's helped us out through some technology challenges and uh it's I'm I'm really looking forward to um the the years and decades to come working alongside out of him even though he speaks a language I do not understand but that's fine we I don't know if this translate into Tech speak but maybe we can work so um so with that um I'd like to turn over to you guys if you have any questions any questions no questions just thank you we did the walk through at the end of August just to see what you and the team did just in such a short amount of time um I
075feel that you guys are always very modest about amount of work that goes into what you do especially with what you do in house um so thank you because even the pollinator Garden it was so great to see the students coming in on the first day and being able to see that and how beautiful that space is even without the artwork yet on there yeah um there was a lot of excitement about a lot of the work that was put in so yeah and the pollinator Garden uh you know big thanks to Mary Kate obviously this is her project she secured the grant um but there were a lot of design changes that had to happen on the Fly and together we were able to work the that and I I'm I'm really happy with
076the way it's it's turned out and we're not fully done yet we still have an irrigation system to put in but I think that's going to be you know something that the kids will use for for many many years to come so not only are we so unbelievably appreciative of the amount of work but you know we continuously hear from you of you know align with our district goals of financial financial responsibility I mean to save the district $100,000 to do something inhouse and like you said this is not typical stuff that a a you know facility management does in a school district but under your leadership and you know with there it happens um and from makes our job easier in terms of now there's more of the pie to go where needed um
077and we immensely appreciate that thank you uh this is a point where I'm not going to be modest and it makes me very uncomfortable but the savings over the C course of these projects was almost double that and I'll break that down for you guys um as as we go but um a lot of the items we we've received quotes for and we we thought we could do this in-house let's let's give it a shot if it doesn't work right we'll be out a couple $100 and uh we we we got a lot of work done so super proud of the staff super proud of what we're able to account accomplish and um thanks to miss O'Hara for giving us the latitude to do it well thank you so much thanks guys miss soara do
078you have some stuff to share with us this evening I do good evening everyone so uh previously uh I had presented the district goals and this evening I will be presenting the objectives in support of District goals and um which will be included on our website and then in January um at the end of January I provide an update on where we are uh in our uh objectives um I think it's important to take a step back and just refer to our mission student centered future focused team driven that's our core purpose right that's what we stand for and you heard a lot of that this evening from our team the vision is where we hope to be for our students developing global leaders learning opportunities that Foster critical thinking creativity collaboration and communication we
079hope and plan for our students to engage in authentic applications and I'll speak to those this evening supporting inquiry and Innovation through Partnerships with their Community local businesses and higher education our mission our vision and then we have our district goals and those three areas Remain the focus and the foundation and you do not see a significant change in those three areas the district goals support the mission mission and the vision and the key priority of the district goals are goal number one welcoming inclusive learning environment for our students District goal number two Innovative data- driven instruction three key priority already outlined in the district goal previously presented collaborative communication and engagement District goal number four key priority proactive safety and Facilities Management and you heard some of that this evening already and then goal
080number five key priority of the district and the Board of Education effective budgetary planning and continuous Improvement each of the administrators that you heard uh present here this evening reference District goals so just as an understanding we always look again through through the lens of Mission Vision District goals what are the key priorities and then our administrative team each administrator each of our team has key objectives in support of those District goals so collectively the objectives are what I'm going to share with you this evening and as you heard in presentations we have already um I'm looking forward already to the midyear presentation because we have already acted on many of these objectives and that is through the efforts of our team our administrative team through the support of the Board of Education and our
081teachers and staff uh again this presentation will be available on our website and then there will be updates as to where are we in our efforts uh to meet these objectives um and again these are all guiding principles that shapes our Direction in support of success for all students and I do stress all uh so with our first district goal promote environment that prioritizes diversity equity and inclusion where every individual feel safe valued respected and empowered to achieve their Highest Potential right key priority welcome welcoming and inclusive learning environment so objectives that we will be working on this year in support of that expanding opportunities for professional development to support inclusivity and culturally responsive practices practices uh we will continue the PBIS initiative at Chester Elementary School reinforcing positive behaviors and social emotional well-being we
082will be continuing the safe School ambassadors program at Chester Academy empowering students to take an active role in supporting a safe and inclusive School Community uh this year we're refining The Advisory model using the seven mindsets program and that is based on the feedback from the first year uh that we received from students and teachers and staff so some changes to the advisory model uh will were implemented and will continue to be as we uh continue to have feedback uh from students and staff in addition or in align with that we will be conducting surveys of our students and staff to gather feedback on the effectiveness of these programs as well as to uh collect data on culture and climate in our buildings we will continue to identify and improve supports for students and families
083reflective of changing demographics iics and you saw uh Dan swof present on that this evening along with Mrs Garcia goal number two really centers around the key priority of innovative data driven instruction right career connected learning experiences through highly qualified staff dedicated to supporting the success of all students um this is very comprehensive this goal um it centers around the instruction that we provide our students so with the said there's quite a few objectives that we have this year in support of that District goal the first to continue to review programs and assessments aligned with the New York next Generation learning standards through ongoing data analysis Mrs Garcia mentioned several piloted programs uh that are being implemented this year and uh not only are we looking at teacher feedback but we're looking at student data
084um as we determine whether or not we're moving forward with that piloted program or we need to uh seek an alternate program for review providing professional development that integrates data analysis to support differentiated instruction and optimize student learning so we can have the the greatest tools that measure data or data whichever you'd like to to call it um that is a different conversation but in support of that specifically um it's really important that we provide teachers with that time we have great assessment tools we have uh great programs that provide us uh data on our students um and their performance but we as a district are providing that professional development time so that we have the time to have those conversations and to make determinations as we review the data collectively on how we can
085improve for our students uh whether it be our programs or at instruction um we will continue to utilize technology and multimedia resources to create interactive and Innovative learning experiences that's in our uh Chester Elementary School maker spaces Chester Academy maker space and quite honestly throughout our classroom instruction as well and with that said in terms of our our vision of a authentic learning experiences um that refers to our prek through 12 Career Connections learning initiative linking standards and skills to Career applications so from prek through 12th grade uh as students are learning a particular skill what career might that apply to and perhaps at the Early Elementary grades might that spark an interest in a particular uh future career which aligns with our workplace learning internship program as well as our today's students tomorrow's Teachers
086program at Chester Academy which offers our students direct experience in various professions and industries so that they're able to support informed informed decisions on whether or not this is a career that I definitely want to pursue after having this internship experience or this is not what I expected it to be and I need to look at alternate opportunities um so we will continue to expand upon that we had over 40 internships available to students and we will continue to expand that program uh another objective is continue to evaluate enhance High School course offerings and programs uh including music and the Arts preparing our students for future success in careers college and Beyond um Mrs Garcia referenced the financial uh literacy course that we're offering this year the list goes on um also uh public speaking
087is being included this year uh very much important in terms of what students need to have the skill set for when they graduate in leave Chester we will be expanding last year was the first year we had graduates earning the Seal of biliteracy which will continue this year this year is going to be uh we're finalizing the implementation of the Seal of Civic Readiness and that's to ensure that our students are graduating with valuable credentials in language proficiency and Civic engagement we will continue to provide collaborative opportunities between our students at the Chester Elementary School and Chester Academy and that is one of the many benefits that we have as a small school with very many uh unique opportunities for our students uh celebrating that teamwork not only amongst our teachers but also uh our
088younger Generations students and uh Middle School and High School Mr Jette referenced that even with the clinics uh he talked about earlier this evening again um you're seeing data right so Advanced Data analysis of student performance in all subjects including foundational reading we use f us and panel um math skills automaticity with math facts do you know your math facts um both those are that's as important as the foundational reading skills so that students are able to solve and understand higher level uh problems and be able to employ critical thinking skills continue to support the progression of the mtss multi-tiered system of supports model and that's through participation in scheduled committee meetings and uh it that basically what that does is it supports individualized uh education for each of our students continuing on in this
089goal number two we will continue to uh provide new teacher Mentor Partnerships professional development objectives and collaborative opportunities aimed at supporting the professional growth of all teachers in this district and all staff uh recently mentioned from Mrs Garcia we have published our prek to2 course descriptions that is online under academics so we encourage you to um look at that develop an understanding of what a child is experiencing in a math class in first grade a general course description with resources where you can refer to the standards and this year uh we enter into phase two of our vertical alignment which where our teach are going to be working on unit stories so we have our course description and then our teachers are going to be working on in the next two years unit stories which
090are um key areas uh of skills that they're working on in support of that course description throughout the year more information for our families um and more of a progression in support of the Board of Education goals for that vertical alignment and then we'll also as uh Mr swarov mentioned we are launching a collaborative effort in terms of our future focused education it's important that we explore the use of AI in education um and not to rush into a board of education policy but have the discussions with teachers staff and parents make sure that everybody understands all of the different implications of AI and its use in education and what are all of the concerns um to then develop a board of education policy for responsible and effective integration ation which brings us to goal
091number three and I just referenced uh that important component of collaborative communication and engagement goal number three is strengthening communication and engagement opportunities across multiple platforms to Foster meaningful connections among our students staff families and the community so we have just launched the new website uh Mrs Garcia just shared a component of that and that goal is to improve access uh for information to our families including translation um and provide really a more user friendly experience for staff and families and it's something that we're going to continue to add to and approve upon as the year progresses as we also recently mentioned we have um just launched the parent Square communication platform and um that is in phase one as well so there's opportunities where yes right now we're just communicating with families but there's
092uh the next tier of that where it opens up communication with teachers and families and that requires professional development to ensure that that's Implement implemented effectively we have restructured the cfsd district newsletter that was brought in um new to the district this year it's going to be highlighting student achievement but uh done so in designated sections um District Chester Elementary School Chester Academy and also new this year uh parents will receive this on a monthly basis so we're very excited excited and we are at the closing out September so then the very first uh cfd newsletter should be coming out next week and again we ensure that all digital and Technology platforms offer support in multiple language to enhance accessibilities for all users also shown an example here this evening in terms of our parent
093advisory panels so there's communication and then there's that engagement which is the back and forth with our families um having that impers opportunity to have discussions with the goal of continuous Improvement so we're expanding the parent advisory panel um I thank the parents that have already uh signed up and I'll talk about that uh later on this evening and that's really um an addition to that this year is parents on the panel will have the opportunity to meet with Mrs bch and Mr Flanigan uh because we recognize that there's District level conversations and then parents parent representative of those eight groups want to have curriculum and instruction conversation specific to the building so I'm very appreciative of our of Mrs B and Mr Flanigan to support those conversations for our parent advisory panel Representatives this
094year as also mentioned we're going to continue our family instructional Academy with our Tech talk heading off tomorrow so that will continue this year and we will continue to um ask for input from our parents and families as to what best meets their current needs and interest in terms of um what we provide in our instructional cies and I I thank for tomorrow the collaborative efforts of Mrs Garcia and Mr Schwarz club uh to provide that for our families and very excited to see that our numbers increasing um from last year so that's great and then new this year thank you Mr ducet for initiating our first cfsd parent Athletics panel so we introduced it towards the end of last year and then this year is really our conservative effort um to really have that
095collaborative discussion specific to Athletics and again through that team-driven approach to continuous Improvement so we're really excited about that we will be implementing passport for good uh it's all set up through uh Mr Schwartz has led all of the kind of background um transition that was needed to upload all of the data for that so we're getting ready to roll that out that tracks student participation engagement in community service extracurricular activities and Civic involvement and it also uh tracks specifically their efforts towards uh earning the Seal of Civic Readiness and it also creates a digital digital portfolio uh where when our students graduate from Chester they're able to leave with that portfolio that is a um digital picture of all of their Collective efforts um through out their Journey from sixth grade on through senior
096year uh we'll be establishing a student expert panel at Chester Academy n CES to elevate student voice as a part of that uh engagement and encourage active participation and then of course we'll continue to strengthen Partnerships with the PTA PTSA and the uh newly established sepsa to support opportunities that's Foster a positive School community in addition um for all of our efforts and improvements throughout the district the idea is that engagement opportunities will be provided outside of Board of Education meetings much like we did uh with Maple AV right where we have open platforms um to have discussions on any considerable topics at hand facilities and districts initiatives uh District goal number four ensure the continual Improvement and expansion of District facilities promoting safety security and student opportunity in the most efficient and economical manner
097possible I could have Mr doosa come up and speak again he just hit that District go very clearly in his presentation here this afternoon this evening we are not in the afternoon we have extended beyond that time period um and so we'll you know continuing to evaluate our district safety plans Mr doosa mentioned the important partnership that we have with law enforcement and risk management expertise and they are involved in all facets of our Safety and Security protocols uh we'll continue to advance our emergency drills last year we trained with expect the unexpected and um um we saw evidence of that in our our recent event that we addressed um so we'll continue that specialized training uh for staff and students we will continue to utilize our building emergency response teams to uh through the
098lens of continuous Improvement we will be evaluating and pursuing options for a potential inter Scholastic Athletics facility we're still in the phase of what's called a feasibility study uh so we're not once we collect all of that information uh we will have more inform to share with families but it's important that we do our due diligence uh to gather all the information such as environmental impact geot technical survey and so forth um so that we're able to have a clear picture to present for consideration uh we will continue to conduct a comprehensive review of the network camera and Wi-Fi systems which you heard about this evening and expand our data privacy and cyber security efforts in addition Mr doosa mentioned uh we will be designing and submitting the safety Capital project for State authorization as
099uh prior approved prior approved from uh our voters previously approved and then we'll um work to complete facilities upgrades uh many of which significant number of which have taken place over the summer and that's at Chester Academy and Chester Elementary School focusing on infrastructure classroom updates and safety enhancement and lastly but very important because it drives every everything that we do is the effective budgetary planning and continuous Improvement uh so leveraging state and federal funds to support District initiatives evaluating the effectiveness of current programs Mr swarov just talked about that um looking at uh for example if if we're not using current apps then then why are we paying for them right so tracking that data is very important and also looking through the lens of future focused education um having conversations about Ai and
100what that what are the um implications for Education um evaluating financial implications of identified safety and Facilities improvements which we've discussed this evening as well including the potential construction of an inner Scholastic Athletic Complex so when again we're able to convey the specific information and have enough information to share those conversations um will be happening with the community and then develop a fouryear uh repl plan for our Chromebooks continue to expand shared services with neighboring districts uh that's in all capacities including Athletics um and as always communicate the implications of the property tax uh tax levy cap and with regard to uh budgetary planning making sure that we are transparent in our communication we will continue use the the website our district newsletter social media to disseminate budget information in addition to the Board of
101Education presentations that are provided so again these objectives are in support of District goals that are aligned to our district mission and vision all of this information this presentation will be included on our website and then you'll hear an update on our progress at the end of January are there any questions with regard to the objectives extremely comprehensive and thorough so we thank you okay that moves us along to our first public comment related to um issues on the agenda does anyone have public comments okay that now moves to consent agenda I would like to make a motion to adopt consent agenda items 5.1 5.13 I'll second all in favor I motion passes and accidentally I forgot Round Table C up old reports do do we have anything for Round Table this evening no I
102just wanted to share that the next orange count school board meeting will be on October 2nd in person um Miss and I plan to attend and bring back updates thank you so much yes absolutely had a few things um just in regard to the uh last week on Thursday just an important reminder for students parents and families we encourage open conversations with your children about their responsibilities when using social media particularly when it comes to commenting on potentially threatening or sensitive content if they come acoss anything concerning it's so important that it's repeated uh reported immediately to school administration not shared and not responded to so this allows us to promptly share this information with law enforcement who will assess The credibility of the content and we again appreciate as Mr doosa stated our partnership
103with the Town of Chester police department the village of Chester police department at the security OU health and safety and the New York State Police and we also extremely grateful for the quick actions of our building emergency response teams teacher staff students and the cooperation of our parents at both Chester Academy in Chester Elementary School I want to remind specific to emergency notifications please ensure so we heard 67% um have signed up for the parents Square app it's really important um you'll get the email but on that parents Square app it's so important that you do sign up for those emergency notifications so that you're receiving uh the emergency notifications uh for example uh during the event on Thursday eight messages were sent out so that was at uh 8:00 at 88:18 the elementary sent
104out at 8:30 and 9:23 with regard to Transportation another message was sent out at 9:25 then again at 9:45 at 1050 and then a final message at 4:30 so um if you're just getting them on email you're not getting that immediate notification so I will say that if you need assistance for those of you not s yet signed up for the App please come on uh join us for the tech talk tomorrow um and we can certainly help uh you in signing up mentioned on the consent agenda this evening 5.4 was the revised use of electronic devices policy number 7316 and I think it's important to note parents and families were sent communication earlier in the year reminding of the current policy in place in relation to personal electronic devices including cell phones to maintain
105a safe and productive learning environment that supports both student well-being and academic Excellence we made important updates to the district's use of electronics devices policy so in currently and included in our code of conduct I'll quote all cell phones and SmartWatches must be stored in bags or lockers during the instructional periods at Chester Elementary School devices should remain out of sight in backpacks for the entire school day pending Board of V approval which was uh just had taken place on consent agenda item 5.4 instructional periods at Chester Academy now includes study halls so therefore cell phone use during study halls will no longer be allowed so it's really important to note that it is part of the instructional day and just wanted to to uh make that Clarity by implementing these changes obviously our goal
106is to create an environment where students are able to focus in the classroom they are engaged and we're also promoting their social well-being and safety throughout the school day quick uh mention on the parent advisory panel I want to thank our previous parents uh who are signed up again as well as those newly interested in joining please check your messages on parents Square as we currently have openings for prek kindergarten and first grade at the elementary level and at the Academy we have openings for 10th grade and 12th grade all the other grades um are filled and we thank you so much there is a last question on there if a grade level is filled and you still have an interest to please send a message and we will make every effort to support your
107interest in joining I already mentioned our district newsletter lastly I just wanted to thank the board of education for their support of my participation in the New York Council of school superintendent fall Leadership Summit the summit provides truly a valuable opportunity to hear keynote addresses from National experts in leadership education and related fields including an interactive discussion with the commissioner of Education about New York state issues and initiatives so I thank you for your support and uh my participation in that that's all I have for a round table thank you and my apologies for flipping them but I wanted to give you a break from talking it's really planned I actually appreciate um anything else for a round table that moves us into our second public comment as we see we have no one for
108public comment I'd like to make a motion to adjourn second that all in favor of adjourning I motion passed thank you for those of you who tuned in tonight and have a good night