001please good evening everyone and Welcome to our September 13th Board of Ed meeting if everyone would please rise for the pledge 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 if we can have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda and make that motion a second all in favor aye motion carries I will also need a motion to approve the board meeting minutes from our August 17th meeting I mean I'll make that motion is there a second oh second all in favor aye any um I'm sorry were there any corrections or um additions to the minutes all right that motion carries um we will move to presentations I think first up tonight we have
002Miss just Mr Patel you think that this is in here you think that it's anything you're gonna have to come on up okay hi everybody thank you for having me Miss O'Hara Board of Education Miss Loftus I'm happy to be here for another school year very exciting stuff um I'm gonna say a bit about the start of the school year and then I'm going to introduce somebody that is also going to talk for a bit okay um so I'd like to cover some of our start of the Year events that we had on Wednesday August 30th the cespta hosted an ice pop social uh by grade level throughout the afternoon um and this year we decided to couple that event with an optional student materials drop off as items coming in at the beginning of
003the school year especially for some of our tiniest members of CES becomes very cumbersome so students and families brought in materials and they got to drop them off at their child's classrooms which also then gave them a little sneak peek at their child's classroom before the school year started and helped to pacify some of those nerves as well some other events that the PTA plans this year is a back to school carnival That was supposed to be last Sunday but it had been raining and it is scheduled for this weekend on Sunday they're coordinating after school clubs for the fall a fall book fair and a trunk or treat at the end of October the next PTA meeting is Thursday September 21st at 7 pm I'd also like to mention the newly chartered sepsa who
004had their first meeting last night at CES and that we look forward to working with them as well as the PTA this year okay some other beginning of the Year events included our Pre-K orientation and kindergarten orientation on August 31st this event gave our youngest students and families an opportunity to ease some of their anxiety and Jitters about coming to school for the first time we reviewed the daily schedule and had tours of the classrooms met the teachers and of course the highlight of the day was a bus ride around the neighborhood for some of our students and some of our parents surprisingly this is the first time they've been on a bus um so we would like to thank Mr Hannan for coordinating the bus rides and for speaking to our families about bus
005safety we are looking forward to two Open House events next week on Tuesday September 9th we will have our Pre-K kindergarten first and second grade open house and on Wednesday September 20th we will have our third fourth and fifth grade open house the first day of school was beautiful we finally broke that rainy trend of having torrential downpours on opening day um and we were so happy to see all the students much much of the first weeks of school at CES is focused on getting back into routines and learning all the systems of a new class or grade this includes practicing drills we had our first fire drill of the year and it was very smooth all students and staff evacuated in record time for a September fire drill we were very happy with this
006and we will continue to schedule and practice drills at CES to ensure routines remain in place and everyone knows their part in the CES safety protocols another event we had in that first week of school was our first PBIS kickoff assembly on Friday September 8th just to refresh everybody PBIS stands for positive behavior interventions and supports during these assemblies pre-k through second and three through five we've reviewed what PBIS is at CES as a reminder for our returning students and information for our newly enrolled students I want to highlight some changes to the program that we are making this year based on a review this summer The PBIS committee so graciously agreed to continue to meet with me over the summer months to reflect on our program from last year and discuss ways that we
007can move our program forward in the 23-24 school year based on our reflection on the data that we determined that we needed to identify additional ways of recognizing and rewarding students for earning chips for being respectful responsible ready and safe at CES we will be adding weekly incentives tied to PBIS chips in everybody's classrooms we will be adding weekly fun Friday pulling of names out of the buckets for being respectful responsible ready and safe for a chance to spin the wheel on a Friday afternoon in the main office um we will reward students on a monthly basis we will choose themes so let's say we choose safety as our theme for a month so every student that earns their name into the safety bucket and they will know that they are going to get rewarded
008for getting into the safety bucket we'll have an end of month reward such as extra recess outside or a dance party in the gym or potentially a special treat in the cafeteria I want to say that Mrs nagler asked the question last year that has driven the thought process around expanding our program in these ways she asked does every student get to spin the wheel and we determine through the data that we've collected that they do not but every student earned a chance to spend earned a chance to spin the wheel and only about a quarter quarter of them actually got called up during an assembly now as much as that is a hundred students that is almost 300 students that did not get up there and could have so we communicated these shifts to
009students and anticipate that these additions to our program will motivate students to continue to their positive behavior efforts so thank you Mrs nagler for just asking a simple question it really resonated with us next I'd like to also touch on our new protocol that we are rolling out at CES for mtss which stands for multi-tiered support systems of supports which replaces what is formerly known as RTI or response to intervention mtss not only helps to support students and teachers to develop plans and strategies to address academic concerns but also behavior and social emotional concerns the MTS committee mtss committee also continued our work over the summer and we've finalized the referral forms that we developed throughout last year we finalized meeting protocols to to discuss students and finalize the intervention tracking forms that will be
010utilized by teachers to track intervention Effectiveness after meetings the collection and documentation of data will support all decisions made and drive the development and use of effective interventions with students after talking about PBIS and mtss it is an appropriate time for me to introduce our new school culture and student Behavior support specialist Mrs Doreen Baptiste to talk a bit about her new role at CES Nick do we have the visual it is not one of the sleds I bet you this is it isn't it that is it foreign hello so again my name is Dorian Carter Baptiste and I will be presenting from the slide um discussing some of the areas of where I think my role will align with the philosophy of Chester Academy Chester Elementary School as well as what Mrs Bosch would
011like to see me Implement inside the school so we look at the behavior support specialist is to support a school culture I'm not going to read from there I'm going to actually just kind of like summarize it from over here and the goal is to achieve this as it aligns with the principle that guides PBIS I noticed during the K to two and three to five PBIS assemblies this past Friday that Chester Elementary School has the systems and it provides a Common Language to the school community so I'll continue to build on what is already being implemented inside of the school the next one the yellow one is a behavior data I want to streamline restorative practices across all grades we're mediating with students after a conflict tracking the data will allow me to see
012where these incidents are occurring the most and Implement solutions to minimize them as we move on to school culture and learning facilitator and behavior Improvement this is where I would like to say that diversity is an important reality in our society and is valuable to all students in the Chester School District as we continue to grow and understand what diversity equity and inclusion mean we can move forward and work skillfully to families of all cultures and I believe that working along with the teachers we are definitely working in a positive direction in providing um any supports to the to the families at Chester Elementary School the Behavior Support partner understanding the duties of the classroom teachers having been in the classroom I'm able to teach from the curriculum and I can support the teachers with
013strategies for these students that are experiencing behavioral and emotional needs the goal is to improve the students overall behavioral functioning and provide an alternative to in-school and out of school suspension according to Marzano his theory is if the only two we use is a hammer we see every problem as a nail so we tend to see every problem uh that a student may present in front of us what we want to do is shift away from suspension and not use that as our only response to student Behavior so I'll continue to work with the teachers and as I pull the students out in the system I will be teaching from the curriculum and the lesson plans that the teachers are using inside of the classroom to get the student to again get acclimated back inside
014the classroom environment without any sort of suspensions and as Miss bolshin spoke on mtss I looked at The District's goals from 22-23 and implementing multi-tiered support system is a high priority in my role I see it as the school culture and behavior specialist I will assist with the forms and created that were already created by the SES team and streamlined a data-driven approach that will make analysis easy and actionable for the teachers to reach mcss can also be used in conjunction with PBIS that's it well thank you so much for sharing that with us and welcome welcome to the district um you know everything that you have spoken about and everything that we've heard of your intentions is very much in alignment of how we like to interact with our students here um so we
015have very high expectations and it sounds like you are well prepared yes thank you for them so we're very excited to have you on the team and I'm glad I'm very excited to be here as well yes thank you I'll take any questions does anyone have any questions for misspoke well welcome back yes thank you um it sounds like it was a a relatively smooth opening and to see all of the smiling faces on the children and the staff on that opening week it was very rewarding yes everybody's in a great mood we're going to keep that going excellent thank you so much do you want me to go back to the other slideshow you're just leave it okay thanks all right well welcome up Mr Flanagan thank you very much everybody and I I
016really appreciate the opportunity to present here tonight to the Board of Education thank you all I have just in a second here I have a I have a group who is here who is looking to and we've done this before start a trial Club here at Chester Academy now it's interesting because in the past we have had a cheer team we have not had one in several years and so they're looking to start the process of bringing that back and we're going to we're looking to start it out as a trial Club so uh Mrs basigo who has gracefully uh volunteered her time to to help the club out for for the year if approved but I'd like to bring up the Winnie Jim East who who has been fabulous in trying to get the
017club started and she's got lots of supporters here so everybody's welcome to come on up if you guys would like to come on up I've got it Isabella Chloe and Madison and Aaliyah and Bianca Bianca shook her head no she's I don't think she's going now come on down okay good evening and thank you for having us um as Mr Flanagan said I'm miss busy go I'm the school social worker and I'm here with you lovely ladies who are looking to get a new club approved so I'll start with our slide deck it's pretty quick but it just goes over the basics of what we hope to accomplish kind of some ideas that we have and uh the logistics of the club so what are some of the benefits of cheer Club obviously discipline hard
018work but really just we want to create a team we want to have fun um spend time together create some positive memories and so I'm hoping that cheer Club will be able to do that but of course there is a time commitment and so with that comes some leadership skills and dedication which I'm sure these ladies are up for the challenge so uniforms uniforms are obviously really important to cheer club we don't have them at the moment although we are looking into some fundraising opportunities I've already gotten some ideas from Miss Gonzalez and some of the other Chester staff who have had great success with different fundraising opportunities so we're hoping to be able to raise enough funds to get uniforms but in the meantime we're thinking probably just coordinating outfits so the time commitment
019practicing new cheers is a really important component to our performances we're looking to start off with one hour one day per week after school we'd also encourage our members to rehearse at home we know that space here after school can be limited with sports and to different clubs so we're thinking the cafeteria might be the best place and Mr Flanagan said we can probably bring in some mats from the gym so that way we have a soft space to rehearse as well fundraising as I mentioned I spoke with Miss Gonzalez and she had some great ideas on some popcorn sales and Raffles I also spoke with Miss Besson our home and food nutrition instructor and she told me that we're welcome to use her kitchen if we wanted to do like pretzel sales after school
020or anything like that or pizza slices so she said we can use her kitchen and try to raise funds that way as well games and events so we're thinking we'd start with Varsity um we're also thinking we might be able to do JV football and basketball only home games um and then we would be looking to perform at Pep rallies and any other school events such as talent shows I know Miss fallett also does uh the Black History Month performances and step club performed last year so maybe that might be a great opportunity for us to perform as well and we've already generated lots of Interest Miss Joel Mist here has a list of 30 interested young ladies who would like to join the team so um that's really encouraging and promising and to join
021the team we're really not looking for any special skill set um you don't have to be athletic I think that's kind of the the vibe of the group that we want to bring we want it to be inclusive we want anyone to feel like they can join you don't have to be able to do back handsprings across the gymnasium floor to join but just have like an interest in wanting to be a part of the team and bring some positive cheer to some of the Chester uh athletic games and then we would just like to thank you for your time and consideration we know you are busy so we thank you for allowing us to come tonight and to speak to you all well thank you very much for that presentation um so ladies this
022is something that you feel would be of benefit to the district and to your your peers and yourself most definitely I feel like um during last year during a pep rally I was just looking around and I was just like this could like it would be amazing if a cheer team could like perform and how fun it would be and everything so I just had the idea and I went to Mr Aguilar about it and it was a process a very long process but you know finally we're here so yeah does anyone have any questions no I want to commend you on taking the initiative I feel like this is something that's so overdue and will be very welcomed by the student body for games and just to bring the energy and the vibe up
023I think that's wonderful so I wish you guys the best of luck I think it's great that you already have 30 people identified as well that's wonderful yeah yeah I think it's really an exciting opportunity um you know everyone has different skill sets and some folks are you know want to be on a sports team some folks want to be on a more academic in a more academic Club there needs to be something where everyone feels they're bringing out their best so I I absolutely am in favor of having you you know come up with a new opportunity that makes something available for someone to express themselves so that being said if we can get emotion from the board to approve a conditional Club cheer Club maybe we'll make that motion a second are there
024any other questions or concerns all in favor very good well good luck hopefully we'll see you back here at the end of the year and you'll tell us what a great time you had and what a great experience it was so lots of luck and if you need anything I'm quite confident that Mr Flanagan will will assist in in helping you get what you need we're looking through here congratulations mm-hmm yes thank you very much congratulations the wedding has been working really hard on this and uh it's it's awesome to see that this is actually going to be able to come to fruition anticipating the possibility of getting approval tonight she's already trying to book the pep rally I'll let everyone know I told her Mr Aguilar and the Varsity Club will need to negotiate
025so I think they'll have a lot of success doing that well many years ago my daughter cheered for this school um and it was they had their own camaraderie in within their team of cheerleaders so I'm hoping that you too will find that sister ship in your group absolutely it's it's about it's a different Bond and the numbers are so impressive to find 30 students right off the bat willing to start a club is something we don't normally see you guys did a great job so thank you so we're excited to be back here at Chester Academy it's been an exciting a little over a week now that we've been back um so I just want to go over just a couple quick things and I want to get into advisory because that's our big
026uh our big our big kickoff day today uh just so everybody knows we are starting the i-Ready exams tomorrow the pre-assessments the initial assessment of i-Ready we're starting in math and Ela will commence on Monday so we're excited to get the data that iready brings to us that we could really dig into and see growth over the course of the school year we were very impressed with that we are excited to announce that the Chester Academy fall drama is going to be our town which is a classic um our town is is really it's something that hasn't been done here in a long time it is family friendly it is it is middle school and high school appropriate and so Mr delayo is going to be working with the students um they're going to have
027their first practice I believe on Tuesday the 19th their tryouts are going to start so we're excited to welcome our town it's a great little story I've seen it before so I'm excited to see it again here our PTSA will be meeting on Tuesday at 7 p.m in room 115 here at Chester Academy so we're we welcome everybody who'd like to be a part of the PTSA to come on out and our open house here at Chester Academy will be at 6 p.m on Thursday the 21st so we're excited to get as many people here into their classes as possible a school messenger went out today with the schedule and this is the big part I want us to get with their kids and draw out the schedule where he's supposed to be on a
028one day so we're here to help anyone if they have any questions today was a really great day we started we had our first advisory and so I have a few kind of I I took I had sent out an FAQ to the community and I'm going to go over a little bit of that in terms of advisory and then I'll talk a little bit about the day and excuse me and some of the things that I saw today as I walked around so the advisory period is basically where we wanted to get small groups of students together with an advisor regularly to work on things that we are one knowing for social emotional learning are so important and working with the seven mindsets but we also wanted to do things that were very specific
029to Chester I think every District say over the last four years since the pandemic has really identified where we found learning loss and where our students have struggled so we've specifically identified that once a month during advisory we're going to do social emotional learning and once a month we're going to take those chester-specific skills to build that the teachers have been able to identify across curriculum and we're going to work on improving those particular things The Advisory will start off in groups of about 10 as we have people you know if people are joining the school through the year the groups could go up to 11 or so but we we anticipate that each group should really be no bigger than 10 and and if you're in sixth grade and I have some of that
030sixth graders here you'll be with that group that will be a tight group that will be your group till you graduate um so we are uh we wanted to form a real Community among those groups with uh with our students you know we still are working out some of the Kinks from day one you know there's a couple of locations we want to move because we realize some things didn't work as well as others like the cafeteria it's a little too echoey especially after the first lunch period when they're rolling garbage cans and cleaning up so we're finding other locations but we were excited today so we're going to meet twice a month it's an hour long we have an alternate schedule where we ran for the first time today about seven minutes comes off
031of each period and then in the middle of the day uh between fifth and sixth periods when we run advisory and people were curious about that but we really thought we can't have advisory unless we have every student in the building and one of the few times during the day we have every student in the building is between fifth and sixth period because as you get everybody back from ctec and before everybody starts preparing for the seniors that have early release and so on so it really has to be in that realm there of uh fifth between fifth and sixth or sixth and seventh right around there so this uh the the schedule worked very well I want to thank Mr Patel who helped us organize the bell schedule for today so it was just
032smooth because students work really well when Bells go off we found out although I was told today thanks Mr Flanagan you only made that announcement about eight times today to get it remind your I mean my students reminder if you don't know where your advisory is please ask your teacher now but to my defense we didn't have anybody that came down to the office after the eighth announcement so they didn't know where to go so we we drilled it in early today on everybody um so we want everybody in these small groups to be able to find a comfort zone to have a trusted group uh to to work to have that social emotional education to work on organizational skills to really find a way to be successful as students our students enjoy great success
033but this is another added layer to finding some specifics and finding out too within those small groups from students they're almost like little focus groups when you get them together too because what's as important as doing this and I put out today is getting the feedback from it you know so the first bit of feedback today is what went well what went wrong so we can build on that and we anticipated going in we said to the staff and we said you know what we really need to do today is figure out what we need to adjust for the second you know for the second session and so our teachers were great I will say there was there was not a lot of feedback of things that needed to change we got a lot of
034feedback on Wow today was really great I haven't seen seen these students in a while or I didn't know the students that I had students telling me that hey this was really fun I really kind of enjoyed this it was a little bit of a you'll be able to take a breath and let your guard down a little bit so we were we were excited to to hear that so in terms of the groups and how they were formed we didn't have a specific way we didn't try and look for specific groups and put people together based on who gets along well or who doesn't we didn't try and divide it up we wanted to form something that was you know maybe for even a short period of time put students in a situation where
035maybe they weren't around their friends you know so it kind of can create new groups within the school so you'll still have your friend group but maybe there's somebody that's going to be in your tight-knit group that you never really had a connection with you could be a senior it might be someone you haven't spoken to since the middle school but now there's that bridge to bring people together and what our hope is that Within These small they're almost like safe School ambassadors as family groups it's almost like we've got all these small family groups now around the school and our goal is to see these groups grow together and so that's pretty much asking and answering the same question so we balance them um they were based off of first we looked at alphabetical
036uh because we wanted to get everything balanced and then we looked at groups to see okay um you know do we have too many friends in this group where that might dominate the group and somebody might you know be a little uncomfortable coming into a large friend group and we tried to balance it out it was great today that we didn't have one student come down and say and I was anticipating this I really was can I change my group um so I thought that that was was a nice sign and a great way to start today we worked on studying organizational skills it was really a start of what is advisory and what is it all about some icebreakers we had a survey that the students took that actually was more of a uh
037a problem-solving challenge because the survey didn't open at first and all the teachers and the students worked together to find ways around we used a URL that was blocked by our by our safety software which is okay that's good our safety software works but when you take I guess a URL from Google from a survey and you shorten it you're using now a different link and so that caused it to block and it was amazing the teachers and the students working together to find ways around and we can drop it into Google and you could no you can send email to the students and so the survey was able to be completed with everybody just kind of working together so that was nice to see I got to see a lot of one of the
038one of the coolest things I saw based on the timing I walked was walking around was if you're going to an island and you can only bring three things with you what are they going to be and the answers that I heard because I happened to hit a few different classrooms from sixth graders talking about wanting to bring a motorcycle or one kid had a great idea he's like why don't we just bring a boat so we could get off the island and so so the way of thinking and you know it was it was really nice to see it was nice to see teachers like Mr Strack who teach Juniors and seniors with sixth graders it was nice to see it it was different and um and it really seemed to work today and
039so a few teachers had reached out at the end of the day after I had sent out a little email and said hey that was really good you know we're looking forward to doing this again and so next time when we go and we're really going to hit the seven mindsets but I told the teachers what's really important to me that in addition to making sure we're doing seven mindsets and we have a curriculum that we're going in with is that it's okay to make it your own it's okay if you find something and you have that teachable moment where you need to run in another Direction that's always what I did as a teacher who sometimes you could find that teachable moment and just go off in another direction and you can gain more
040out of doing that by you know by just being authentic and allowing the students to think and take things and I told them that's what I really want to see an advisory that it's we have a great structure and we have a minute we're going to get through our material but I want this to be an opportunity that people are looking forward to it every two weeks so we have it scheduled again in two weeks from today on Wednesday I believe it's the 25th I don't have that exactly in front of me same time same channel and I was really impressed with our ctec students because they had the toughest job today because based on the shortened periods they came right back as fifth change to advisory so we gave we told them to grab
041and go for lunch you can bring your food to advisory sit down everybody figured out where to go really quick and and but the ctec group we put the announcements out for them in the morning at the at the front desk and Jill yanella is fantastic our attendance person for just letting people know what's going on but it's a lot of students coming in and you know they don't get to hear the morning announcements but they were right on it today they knew what they were doing they were really quick and attentive and so I was really impressed with that so and I will be at our open house I will do I'm going to do a 15-minute session I'm going to invite some of the organizers that have worked with for advisory um I
042will say Mrs Garcia has been fantastic Mrs Thompson has done a lot of work uh behind the scenes on advisory working with uh with Mrs Jemison they've done a lot of the curriculum planning for it and uh and are trying to push lessons out for our teachers that our teachers are busy they're stressed they're doing a lot of things that are able to be so we're all on the same page we're all working together and everybody's getting the same material so they're doing a lot of the curriculum planning and Miss basigo who's right here as well is working with Mrs Barreto and they're they've really dug into the the seven mindsets as well so don't worry I won't call you up here but I'll take any questions on advisory or the day or I'll answer
043anything I that I can well it sounds very exciting and it sounds like a great addition Al District so thank you for spearheading that and bringing it in but thank you to everyone else who has gotten behind it and has really made the initiative accessible to to everyone does anyone have any questions for Mr Flanagan comment I mean the logistics of trying to pull something like this off and that you did not have a pre-teen or a teenager say I want to change my group speaks volumes of the time and care that you and your team put into so I'm not going to take credit for that because I you know I can I can stand up here and a lot of people say great job but the reality is the the groups the breakdown
044was a lot of hard work and I put a lot of trust in in this group of Danielle Jemison and Michelle Thompson that asked they said we can help with the logistics and break down the groups and I sat with them and I said would you like I'll sit with you we could break it down and they just they ran with it they were they came back with the groups and they they looked really really good so they that was a huge undertaking that they were excited and asked to be a part of doing so I really thank them for doing that well please you know you know pass on are it's very impressive that oh thank you I will especially in that age group to not complain not yet right I I do have
045a couple of questions for you though um regarding the new program are there metrics in place that you'll be using to measure how successful we are with reaching all of the students and the capacity that we're trying to so there are and if I'll have to get you more specific details because I don't want to give you misinformation on the exact metrics so if I can get that information for you and instead of speaking around you know the actual facts something besides you know anecdotally at the end of the year you know did it work um so that'll be helpful um also is there um what plans are in place for additional student supports if you know we identify a student in um advisory that they're struggling with a particular topic is there a mechanism
046in place of how they'll be referred to something outside of advisory if needed absolutely so at the middle school level we have our IST teams specifically that that work team by team grade by grade at the high school level we work specifically with with Tyra with Jen Barreto with Jenny and with Yvonne if students are having a specific issue it usually starts there but then the team usually gets involved and we've gone from if it's an academic issue we've had uh Team meetings where we'll invite parents in before school starts a lot of times is been a successful Time For Us in the past and the teams have been great about coming in to address those particular issues we've done a lot of you know one of the models in terms of like a multi-tiered
047system of support you know where the elementary school has a very detailed system in place we we've done a lot of multi-tiered systems where you know when when identifying where we're having specific issues last year I'll give you an example seventh grade and Ninth Grade specifically were two grades where we thought there was a lot of growth that needed to happen based on study skills based on you know learning laws and so we had different assemblies where first we started off with the group as a whole hey we're going to work with you we want to see success here we want to see here's the things that we're struggling with you know we're going to identify after school time we're going to with the middle school we identified time during lunch periods when you know
048hey a lot of it was say homework and so on here's some of the things we're going to do if you don't get your homework done if you're struggling with it here's what you can do to get help with our ninth grade we identified our four core ninth grade teachers started an after-school program every Wednesday where kids when they had about 25 or 30 consistent regular students you know that's a that's basically a quarter of the class that were coming that extra help session and were able to find success where we were able to use data and see where students were halfway through the year and where they were at the end of the school year because you don't have the same system of like I ready in the high school it's a little bit
049different where we could track our data and see our growth over those particular exams so in the high school in particular we're able to put those systems in place and you know we'll work with the counselors we'll bring the parents in the parents is the most important component of really helping out a struggling student you know getting everybody on the same page and letting the parents know what that plan is to bring them to success it's great to hear and the other side of that is supports in place where teachers and staff who this is new to them also so are there a few key members of The Faculty that will be able to help guide if someone is struggling with catching on to how they should be presenting absolutely one of our goals this
050week especially with this being the first session so normally we have a Monday faculty meeting the first Monday of the month we had we were lucky enough that we had just started out the year we had one last week we wanted to use this faculty meeting in particular to allow the teachers to yep get tears get by yourself let's take a look at advisory the lesson for advisory was the same lesson today pushed out to everybody so we wanted everybody to be able to look at it to be comfortable with it to ask questions about it once again Mrs Thompson was fantastic you know in terms of people reaching out hey you know what are we looking to do here people coming down you know what are the logistics of this are we gonna do
051I have to do this over the course of a full hour because we have our people that want to be down to the minute there are people that like that freedom of you know can we can take the time and there are people that are very much this is what we're supposed to do so we gave people that time to really digest it and I think that with a program like this if you want it to work time is important as well that they're not getting this at the last minute and saying okay tomorrow's advisory here's here's the lesson here's what we're doing that we're allowing people to look at it to provide feedback we did make some some adjustments and changes over the course of the last two weeks since this has been developed
052and put out so that it was understandable it was easy to use and it was something that was going to work for kids so the feedback of the teachers is is really what what's going to make it work yeah that's that's great to hear so thank you so much and you know thanks to everyone who's putting in the extra the extra mile to improve the quality of what our students are receiving here in the academy thank you for supporting us um does anyone have any other questions about back to school any any other Academy issue issue thank you thank you Mr Flanagan thank you finished with presentations we would now go to public comment if anyone has any comments on anything on the agenda seeing no one will move to Round Table I'll turn it
053over to miss O'Hare thank you good evening everyone boy I uh perfect evening to present a cheer Club because I couldn't be more proud when you talk about Chester Pride this evening with with what we're kicking off the school year with a new position at Chester Elementary School with the student culture and behavioral support Specialists meeting this is Baptiste and also just the phenomenal efforts with the advisory program so I thank Mrs Bosch and Mr Flanagan for all of their their efforts Mrs pacigo and the team who's worked to put that together and it's it's really exciting to kick off the school year so again um on behalf of the administrative team teachers and staff our Board of Education I welcome everyone to the 23-24 school year it is on and we are excited for
054some positive improvements this year and it is absolutely a team effort if you have been on Facebook Instagram Twitter or our district website you've seen our students and staff in action from our two-day professional development on August 31st and September 1st followed by our first day of school last week on September 5th thank you to all of our teachers and staff Mrs Bosch and Mr Flanagan had mentioned who supported our summer instructional program so we actually had things in place before even our staff came back on the 31st our summer instructional programs as mentioned as well as our teachers who put in additional summer hours working on curriculum and the vertical alignment of all programs in the district it is a tremendous effort that we began last year and we appreciate all of the work
055that has gone on in the summer for those that were able to work on eduplanet all of the summer work leading up to our opening day is a team effort as mentioned teacher staff to our facilities our tech crew Transportation all of our secretaries and guidance support staff and certainly Athletics our extracurricular staff Health teams and safety supported by Our Town of Chester police as well as Atlas security the list goes on of all the people behind the scenes that make this effort to make Chester the very special place that is for our students to all of our parents and families and community members we again commit to a mindset of continuous Improvement and you heard that repeatedly this evening advisory was in the first day we're gonna we're gonna get that input and we're
056going to look to put improvements in place that's across the board in everything that we do and that is evidence of our mission to be student-centered future focused and team driven please mark your calendars for our next Board of Education meeting on September 27th where I'll be presenting the 2324 District goals supporting the district goal to expand opportunities for Meaningful Community engagement and communication the first family instructional Academy of the year is scheduled on Tuesday September 26th at 6 30. that will be at Chester Academy and this event is open to all families in Chester Elementary School and Chester Academy and will focus first on communication and I thank Mrs Garcia for her efforts in leading this initiative Communications going to involved School tools making sure that your information is updated you'll have the opportunity
057to ask questions and provide input on any barriers that your perspective from your perspective we can improve upon with regard to our communication inclusive of the website how do you contact who do you contact for a specific question so those will all be components of that first meeting uh more information will certainly go out as the date gets closer and we continue also to improve um our efforts in collaboration with families through our cufsd parent advisory panel which will be in the second year of implementation this year uh the first meeting will be on October 5th so we continue with the panel Representatives that we're willing to uh join in the next school year and then also if there are openings in certain grade levels specifically I can tell you Pre-K because those are our
058new parents we will get that information out to families we're excited to share as a result of our partnership with MJB Communications we'll be creating a district-wide newsletter this year and that will be shared with students and families highlighting student learning and success and Chester Pride across the district this first letter excuse me newsletter will go out at the end of September and we do have plans in place to share that every other month with families to all of our students staff and families I asked please take extra precautions to prioritize your health and well-being including washing hands staying home when sick I know that you've heard this before covet has not completely gone away but not just with covid um the spread of any virus or flu it's really important to be diligent so
059please take care of yourselves if you have any questions or concerns throughout the year we're here to answer them so please pick up the phone send an email make an appointment to come visit with us we truly want to work in partnership with our families and parents in support of our Student Success and with that just as a reminder which Mrs boast Boch and Mr Flanagan mentioned we have our open house next week which is very exciting pre-k through second grade is Tuesday on the 19th grades three through five Wednesday on the 20th and Chester Academy on Tuesday excuse me Thursday the 21st so please contact your child's school if you have any questions specific to open house or any question and with that I wish everyone a safe happy healthy and successful 23-24 uh
060I do I think Mrs lock this has some information to share yep super just just a quick note um along with all of the other exciting things we've heard tonight Mrs Bosch did briefly mentioned this as well but I've been so proud um to watch the Chester Community rally around our newly formed uh special education parent teacher student Association or sepsa yesterday evening uh we gathered in the elementary school library if my count was right we were a little over 20 folks that had gathered great job to President Aaron stamp and her board who presented they've been working hard on some really unique ideas to improve student experiences for all it's for students classified as special education for students who are accelerated and everybody that is participating in the district so it's really great to
061see their next meeting is on our district calendar it is it will be again at the Chester Elementary library and it is scheduled for seven o'clock on Tuesday October 3rd so if you'd like to join in the fun come on over on October 3rd well thank you and I wish them much success um again as I said to the students who wanted to start the cheer Club something for everyone so it's nice to have an opportunity that you know parents who have maybe different or special considerations questions circumstances can find other parents absolutely that they can have that that dialogue with as well and that support so it's fantastic and and I applaud Miss stamp for starting another PTA yes and it was great to see also um I knew that Miss raguar and Mrs
062Bosch would be there but also we had some teachers join us um Darlene Santa Cruz was there and Audra Cutler were there I didn't even know they were planning to be there but it was just great to see everybody coming together for the first meeting so very nice happy to hear that um I I would like to uh just read a short statement at our last board meeting on August 21st I did mention that we're in the beginning stages of starting a public discussion of the Maple Avenue building um there was mentioned that there needs to be a decision regarding the building and as a board we with the district are committed to doing our best to involve all of the families in Chester in that decision-making process to find the best solution the district
063is fully committed to a process that explores all available options provides transparency and involves the community so tonight I'd like to share with you our process and calendar that we're looking at on Thursday October 5th our parent advisory panel will meet and part of that meeting will include a presentation of the Maple Avenue building issue along with discussion of potential Solutions we'll also review a draft of the survey that we intend to distribute to the community and we'll be asking for members of the panel to select four representatives to join the new Maple Avenue task force they'll choose uh one person from each of various grade levels those in pre-k through two grades three through five grades six through eight and grades 9 through 12. then on Monday October 16th we'll be holding our first
064meeting of the Maple Avenue task force and members of the task force will include members of the Alumni Association the Chester Historical Society the Town of Chester the village of Chester Chester Kiwanis local residents adjacent to the property and possibly other nearby entities they'll be approximately 20 people on this task force and the discussion will revolve around the building issue begin weighing possible solutions with input such as potential costs involved from the school district and its Consultants on Friday uh October 20th through Friday November 3rd the school district will make a community survey available to the public to allow everyone the opportunity to provide their thoughts and feedback and I would encourage you to share that information with families that you know so every voice is heard everyone has different concerns and it's always good
065to get that feedback from all parties after November 3rd the information from the community survey will then be reviewed by the school district and the Maple Avenue task force at that time the next steps will be determined by the task force and the school district and those next steps will include in-person Community forums to keep everyone informed and again allow for additional Community input I'd like to reiterate what I said in August we're aware that we'll not be able to gain a consensus on a decision regarding the Maple Avenue building but our hope is to gain a full understanding through Community input of the challenges costs and opportunities and make the best decision for our students our school district and our community that decision will be put before the community for a vote at a
066future date which will need to be determined we invite you to please visit the website at www.chesterufsd.org backslash Maple Avenue often as we continue through this process we'll be updating everyone through our regular updates like this one at our school board meetings but everything will also be posted to the website and lastly if you have any questions please email us at Maple Avenue at Chester Union Free School District Chester ufsd.org we'll not be able to answer every question individually but we'll do our best to add and expand the FAQs that are available on the website and that we address at Community meetings so I thank you and I look forward to we look forward to having the open dialogue and hearing the feedback that comes to us from all of the interested parties of the
067community and coming to a decision that best benefits the children that we treat here that we teach here in this District um so that was all I had um Caroline do you have anything from Oxbow yes so the last Orange County school board meeting took place in person last Wednesday September 6th at bow season Goshen Mrs nagler and I were in attendance the guest speaker was Robbie Green from Mid-Hudson School study Council which is a non-profit organization that creates Partnerships in the Hudson Valley area in order to develop and expand the teaching community Robbie shared information on how they support local districts and counties by assessing staff needs working to identify and fill gaps in Staffing and to build leadership teams and help with succession planning she also shared information on upcoming events and workshops
068that have been forwarded to our board another update moving forward is that the Orange County meetings are going to continue in person through the month of November and then once December hits at that point they will switch to Virtual to accommodate for inclement weather so December through February will be done virtually and then they will shift back to in-person meetings during the month of March uh looking ahead the next meeting will be on October 4th at 7 pm in person in Goshen the guest speaker for that meeting will be Monroe Woodbury superintendent Elsie Rodriguez who will present on Civic Readiness and during the month of November Congressman Pat Ryan will be the presenter in addition to that our board is also preparing for our upcoming School Board convention slotted for October 26th to the 28th
069and preparing for our business meeting that is scheduled for next month thank you and thank you for attending that meeting um it's always a wealth of knowledge to sit around the table with other districts that share often a lot of the same concerns that we Face sometimes um districts face their own unique issues and concerns but more often than not we we find we're we're in the same boat so to speak um so it is very nice to have the resources of the Orange County School boards Association to to get ideas from and they have some great speakers so thank you so much for for attending and Robbie was fabulous she she always has a great deal of information and she crams a lot of information into a short amount of time so thank you
070so much does anyone else have anything for Round Table okay then in that case um we can move on to our consent agenda and make a motion to approve 5.1 through 5.15 second are there any questions or concerns with any of the items on the consent agenda hearing none all in favor aye any opposed that motion carries and that would lead us to our second and final public comment section if there is anyone in the audience that has any comments that they would like to make seeing no one if there is anyone at home that has any comments that they would like to share please reach out to the board Clerk or the appropriate administrator to to get those addressed um that would be it for tonight if no one has anything else we can
071move to adjourn make a motion to adjourn second all in favor aye I don't think anyone's opposed thank you everyone and have a good evening