001our executive session went a little bit longer our goal we're going to start tonight uh by if everyone could please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i didn't check with nick you guys were good i'm sorry to check with you okay so i'll need a motion 1.4 to adopt tonight's agenda i'll make that motion second is there any discussion all in favor any opposed and i'll need a motion 1.5 to approve the board meeting minutes of september 22nd 2021 i'll make that motion second is there any discussion any issues with the draft i had none you look good all in favor any opposed and
002this will bring us to our new part of the meeting where i just would like to summarize our board of education policy for public expression at board meetings next one could just be patient as i run through the list board meetings are conducted for the purpose of carrying on the official business of chester school district the public is cordially invited to attend and participate in board meetings as we always have as provided by board policy although the board meetings are not public forums the board will provide appropriate opportunities for citizens to express opinions and concerns related to matters under consideration by the board of education the public may speak to any subject matter directly related to the operation of the schools except for personnel matters or complaints concerning particular employees or students citizens or employees
003of the school district are also welcome to participate as provided in this policy others may be recognized to speak at the president's discretion the board may establish time limits depending on size of meetings for any public comment the president of the board may require persons interested in speaking to sign up the board requests that groups or organizations be represented by designated spokespersons where possible all speakers must identify themselves as they begin talking speakers are not permitted to share gossip making deflammatory comments or use abusive or vulgar language which we have not seen here in chester thank you all speakers are to address the president of the board of education members of the board or the superintendent may ask questions of any person who addresses the board but are expected to refrain from arguing or debating
004issues questions must be addressed through the president of the school board the board discourages duplication or repetition of comments to the board the board requests that groups or organizations be represented by designated spokespersons the president of the board has the authority to stop any presentation that violates these guidelines or the privacy rights of others and finally persons who disrupt the meeting may be asked to leave and the president of the board may request law enforcement assistance as necessary to restore the full board policy on public participation number 3220 is always attached to our meeting agendas as provided for members of the public and attendance of board meetings and they're always in the back of the room so thank you for your patience in letting me list that and if that wasn't enough the number one
005presentation of the year as very excited for the board of education is our presentation of our audit report for the year ending june 30th 2021. this is an enlightening experience for everybody so with that i will turn over to our representative new hauser and nugent wonderful well thank you i surely hope not to disappoint you with that introduction because it is exciting stuff and again well it is not exciting we do not like exciting audits so uh it is pretty pretty vanilla um so again thank you for having me my name is jennifer traverse i am a certified public account with new gen housler we are the district's external audit firm and i'm here as frank mentioned to present the results of the audit so again the the audit was very successful we come on
006site for about a week or so and once we're on site we perform actually four separate audits uh the first one we'll discuss is the financial statement audit which is in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards the second is an internal control evaluation in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards um the third which is kind of new back to chester for this year um is a compliance audit over your major federal programs or the single audit it has to do with receiving some additional federal funding with the carissa and the cares act you know what all the other districts and then finally an extra classroom activities funds audit or your club accounts also in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards we are happy to report that all four received clean or unmodified opinions so
007that is great news okay um the the audit report you have in front of you the little blue book is you know 85 pages or so we're just going to go through highlights of a couple different pages but certainly if you guys have any questions please let me know we met with the audit committee and had a very robust conversation you know prior to this meeting so we went through this in much more detail with them so the first page i will uh point you to is on page 17. this is a representation of the district's various governmental balance sheet represent it's a representation by fund it has the asset categories the liability categories as well as the fund balance or fund equity position of each of the various funds as you'll see in the
008far left column the general fund has about seven million dollars in fund balance which is a very healthy fund balance position of that amount there is an amount sitting in your restricted fund balance which represents the amount that you have sitting in legal reserves again which is a very healthy uh stable number and in the assigned fund balance part of that is the amount that you guys give back to the taxpayers so again this fund balance position represents a very healthy financial position for the district moving across the special aid fund which is the fund that operates uh where all the grant operations take place uh you will notice that that has a fund balance of 340 000 the school lunch fund uh does have a deficit fund balance position but that is strictly related
009to the difference in operations this year due to covid there were some different reimbursement structures in place as well as you know the fixed costs were there so this is common we've seen this in essentially every other district this year the capital projects fund has about 328 thousand dollars in fund balance and the debt service fund has about seven hundred twenty eight thousand dollars in fund balance so all in all the financial position of the district is very strong and your fund balance is very healthy uh the next page i'll point you to is page 19 which is a very uh similar representation it just has the revenue and expenditures uh for each of the various funds of the district and again we kind of will focus you know right towards the bottom the uh
010general fund operated at an operating surplus this year which is wonderful um this year was very unknown we kind of came into the year with some anticipated state aid cuts they restored the state aid we got some additional funding so it was it was nice to see that it was able to operate at a surplus the special aid fund which i mentioned is the one with the grants um operated as also at a small uh surplus which is great because that one's essentially kind of in and out the school lunch fund as i mentioned without the deficit fund balance position uh did have an operating deficit but you know exactly uh like i mentioned earlier had everything to do with our reimbursement structure and comparing that to the fixed costs the capital projects fund also
011operated at a surplus which is great and the debt service even though it kind of operated at a zero um we wanted to point out that the district was able to refinance or refund their existing debt this year and was able to receive a very large premium which was able to reduce the amount of the debt so that is great news it was very uh wise decision this year so any questions thus far no okay perfect all right i'm just one more page of financial information to share with you anyway that is page 15. so this is what we call the statement of net position it's essentially the consolidation of all the different information we just looked at it takes all the different funds combines them together and then we add in some additional long-term
012information your capital assets your pension obligations but most notably is your other post-employment benefits as you'll see kind of midway down the page that number uh the liability this year is almost 38 million dollars which drives your net position negative to about negative 14 million dollars so you know there's kind of a juxtaposition to what all that very positive financial information i just told you you know we come to this giant negative number but it has nothing to do with the management of the district and everything to do with essentially an accounting entry so that number is an actuarial number that we get from an actuarial evaluation annually and they use various you know mortality tables and such to come up with the number and it grows every year as a retiree costs continue to
013grow so that was it for as far as you know the information we wanted to share for the financial um we also wanted to mention that there was a gatsby implementation it was number 84. it had to do with the fiduciary activities of the district no material change to the numbers just a little bit of a representation difference within the statements themselves um and that's it we just want to thank mr brennan and his business office staff for accommodating us and addressing all of our issues and concerns and we thank you guys very much so we open to any questions or comments are there any questions for jen or bill no thank you of course no thank you guys we appreciate the opportunity to share the results so that everyone understands the whole board is
014on our audit committees yeah i think we changed that a couple years ago so the board got to sit for the last hour plus we thank the two of you as always um and i said earlier this is one of the best uh audit reports and in a year where we dealt with so many unknowns uh possible state cuts at they were coming every day and then they didn't come and try to balance it yeah uh as well this can probably equate to living at home over the past year and a half that's true it's pretty much the you know multiply it up to 30 million dollars so that's right we really appreciate all the hard work that goes into this and i would also like to thank mr brennan yes because our district has
015an amazing business manager who has kept the district in a always forward thinking i don't think it should go without saying about the refinance that happened this year that really whenever you have an opportunity where you can save two point three million dollars i think it was right um was it 2.1 2.7 2.7 it uh it really shows of how forward thinking he is and always looking for the opportunity to put the district in uh great positions so we appreciate all the hard work that goes words onto my staff please do absolutely great well thank you guys we appreciate the time thank you for having me of course being here thank you we do appreciate it thank you in your house and ask you to balance your checkbook and show you all the things that
016you're doing but as always thank you if you two wanted to escape you know please feel free this is a good time good night guys okay i think my first presentation tonight would be splash right new teachers oh our new teacher from someone slapped me i'm just trying to get my agenda back so let me jump in sure you would like to start the ball rolling mr petroit okay so as we know uh this past summer was a very busy summer in terms of personnel there were a lot of uh new staff and particularly new faculty that joined us and uh the new faculty and staff members that joined us occurred over a number of meetings and in some instances some of those new staff were able to be here for the meeting some instances
017not but we thought that it might be nice to uh have all of our new teachers here for one evening so that we could present uh all of our new teachers uh to the to the board and so that we can get a group shot and uh get that to local media and present it to our community excellent uh so unfortunately there are a couple of teachers that were not able to make it tonight but most of them are here and i would ask for the assistance of miss bosh and mr flanagan if they would both please approach the podium and do the honors of the introductions good evening everybody good evening so being new here um i i'm really enjoying talking about our new staff um because i feel like i have joined alongside
018them and first i'd like to talk about mr justin bourne justin bourne is known throughout the district in the many roles he has fulfilled over the past years from technology intern teachers assistant and special education long-term lead replacement justin has now joined the team as an elementary special education teacher in the 4th and 5th grade classroom located in the 5th grade cluster whenever anyone visits justin's classroom students are observed being thoroughly engaged justin is certainly a wonderful addition to the ces team and can often be seen giving a hand and helping out and talking with his colleagues so justin can you step down front we're going to ask the teachers to step down front as as they're being introduced we're going to embarrass you for a few minutes thank you next i'd like to introduce
019victoria garlock miss garlack is another familiar name at chester elementary school victoria joined the ces team last year as a special education remote instructor for students who chose to remain remote through the end of the school year she has now joined us formally as a special education 12-1-1 first and second grade teacher and has volunteered as the division one coach for odyssey of the mind this year victoria is located in the second grade cluster students in victoria's class are often smiling with their eyes because they're masked and enjoying coming to school each and every day thank you for coming i see your smiling eyes also yeah i see everybody smiling guys next i'd like to introduce miss angela tandy can you come on angela has joined the ces team as the universal pre-k teacher miss
020tandy comes to ces with many years of experience in the new york city department of ed as an elementary teacher and reading specialist since 2007. miss tandy has created an inviting environment for our newest program at ces and our youngest members of the school are well supported comfortable and engaged in their classroom daily with miss tandy she has worked hard tirelessly to create a universal pre-k program that is serving the chester community and some of our youngest family members we are so grateful to have miss tandy as part of our team at ces next i'd like to introduce janicer costa janna is joining us as the new primary ais reading teacher mr costa comes to us with a wealth of experience as an ais reading teacher a literacy teacher a general education classroom teacher since
0212004. ms sarcosta is very knowledgeable in reading interventions and supporting students with tier two services mr costa lives in the chester community and we are happy to have her support our at-risk kindergarteners first and second graders mr mr costa has jumped in and can often be found within the kindergarten and first and second grade clusters with a small group of students providing targeted interventions she has also been a support for our first grade teachers with the new implementation of the fundations phonics program she is located in room 233 in the second grade cluster welcome jana do you have rebecca okay so we we have one uh person that we are both likely introducing and that is um miss rebecca davis rebecca has joined us as a district school psychologist with many years of experience in
022the field rebecca spends most mornings at ces and most afternoons at the academy rebecca works hard with us during this worked hard with us during the summer and with social emotional learning concepts rebecca can be found any morning at ca ces supporting students with transition into the school environment supporting our various learners with behavior analysis and interventions providing teachers with strategies for supporting students in the classroom and participating in contributing in our rti and mtss meetings i think that's it for me okay thank you good evening and everything that we just said about rebecca i repeat welcome rebecca of the high school uh and and it's an exciting night and i'm very happy to welcome our new staff here tonight not able to make it tonight but but did send their regards jennifer daly our
023health teacher kim christie our our new art teacher at the middle school level and julianne dorsey is our chemistry who is also our ap environmental science teacher we're all not able to make it tonight but i know they wish that that they could be here but uh first i'd like to welcome some of some of our new staff that did get here tonight were able to make it miss tyra basiga who joins us uh tyrod worked as a social worker for many years down in new york city and has moved up here is currently working as our part-time social worker and tyra and uh and rebecca actually share in office in the morning in the afternoon based on their times here and it's amazing what they did to the old iss room to turn it
024into a very functional very comfortable place to be it was at one time a place you didn't want to be and now it's a place you do want to be so very nice i'd like to welcome mr chris deleo chris joined us with many years of experience down in new york city he's an ela teacher chris is teaching our eighth grade ela and ais chris has brought a wealth of experience and knowledge and we're very excited to have him and chris will also be on the agenda later this evening as uh as a possible representative to to bring home the drama program so we'll see how that goes later tonight so chris welcome we're excited for that um i'd like to welcome mr benjamin heyer who ben is actually uh joining us this is his
025first year teaching he went to suny oswego and ben is our new i i don't just want to say our new middle school technology teacher ben actually teaches six different preps here at chester academy he teaches the brand new pushing into the sixth grade we and we'll get into more detail in a couple of weeks as we do our presentation but he teaches our our sixth graders um continuing the program with seventh and eighth grade a new eighth grade elective for students that really have a tech interest in focusing into the high school he also took over the computer coding program and uh teaches an energy and power elective to our high school students and that can also work as an elective for science or mathematics for so ben is a very intricate part of
026of being here and we're we're so excited to have him um and um and danielle pelicano who is my uh my certainly last but not least danielle has a tremendous wealth of experience in the archdiocese for i believe it was 18 years danielle yet prior to coming here danielle teaches science uh eight for us this year um and also teaches biology to our eighth graders as well danielle is such a bright light and danielle can usually be found in here during the middle school lunch period as this is one of our expansion lunchrooms keeping everybody in order and and keeping the room calm and clean and she's doing a great job with that too so i'm excited to to welcome both staffs and uh we really appreciate all the hard work that you've been doing
027all right so we'd like to get a group shot wait that's it i could go on i know you can let's do a group shot and then can you turn the house off no no that girl i don't know i look better in the dark what do you guys think all right so wherever goes i just want to say i know that um but you know normally at the beginning of the year we have the uh super fans today and i'm usually there to greet all our new staff i usually say some uh wonderful warm words and as this has been a crazy year for the last two years uh on behalf of the board and somewhere tonight but chester is a family i don't know and if you're not already feeling that that you're
028part of this family and this team it happens pretty quickly right and if there is i'm hoping that you've sorry i'm hoping that all of you have seen already what it means to work here i know a lot of people have come from the city and it's a whole different world but chester really is a family and everything that we do here is about your development and about our kids in chester and i think you'll find out quickly that you're part of that mix if you haven't found out already in the middle of october and we appreciate every single one of you being here you know we just talked about our audit and how the money and everything that's different and all the crazy funds that went on but a lot of things we didn't
029do last year was hiring staff we really had to hold on because we were you know worried about giant cuts but you know you're what came out of that and we don't make hires here haphazard everyone that comes here usually stays here a long time and that's what i mean about chester being a family cell welcome to every single one of you if you need anything the board is always here and again the administration so thank you for making this part of your lives all right thanks thank you mr petrolite thank you and thank you to all of you for being here tonight a lot of times this is where i will say to you this is a good time to escape the room you don't have to feel that you have to sit through
030the rest of the board meeting no one will be insulted thank you for the hard work you put in every day and for being here tonight have a good evening thank just you dark okay i like it with the lights out oh right for the presentation okay yes miss mary kate bush welcome tonight's meeting thank you for that great presentation hello again thanks for having me today yes we've missed you it's been five minutes um okay so for tonight's board report i'm gonna report out on enrollment as of september 30th chester elementary school has 392 students enrolled in school attendance ces is reporting a 94 attendance rate for the month of september we are working with families to ensure that all students attend school regularly covid protocols ces is working with the department of health
031and following their guidance whenever we have a student or staff member test positive for covet our safety measures have vastly reduced the amount of students or staff that have to be quarantined due to coming to school daily most of our students on quarantine were exposed outside of school and are quarantined by the department of health we are providing any students in an official quarantine asynchronous work throughout the day and a live google meet with a teacher at some point during the day if students attend and do work during these days they are marked remotely present for the day and this has been going well thus far i'd like to say congratulations to one of our staff members at ces i'd like to take this moment to recognize one of our fifth grade teachers tony keglevitz
032on receiving the 2021 anton banco award for excellence in elementary science teaching which will be presented to her at the science teachers association of new york state um 126th annual conference held november 5th through 7th ms keiglovitz will be recognized for her achievements at a ceremony on november 6 and she will receive conference expenses up to fifteen hundred dollars as well as a fifteen hundred dollar stipend to be used at her discretion in her classroom so congratulations to mrs keglitz fundations at ces last board meeting i spoke a bit about fundations in bringing the new phonics program into our primary program kindergarten and first grade teachers have received virtual training in foundations on september 17th and september 21st the training was informative teachers are further being supported with classroom demonstrations and lesson feedback from staff
033that have previously been trained including myself and miss janice sarcosta as i mentioned earlier and as well sheila conlon is going to be supporting teachers in foundations as well pta the chester elementary school held its first pta meeting on thursday october 7th at 7 pm this meeting was held virtually um and meetings moving forward will be held in person at ces the pta is uh back in action and very much looking forward to returning to some resemblance of normalcy and all of the doings and activities at the elementary school we are very much looking forward to that club invention ces has been chosen by the nationals inventors hall of fame to receive a donation for two after-school programs these programs will give our students hands-on experience with robotics engineering and their connections to our world
034all while delving into the inventors process miss rendy and miss cinque will be running the club invention program there will be two different versions offered one virtual and one in person on a first come first serve basis to our fourth grade students this is a program that is completely free to our students and we participated in a virtual only program last year and we are happy to offer both versions of the program this year each student gets a kit of supplies even the students that are taking the virtual option and they have robotics equipment and things that they'll be bringing home and using for this program starting in november so we're really looking forward to that last monthly highlights i invite you all to take a look at the elementary school tab under quick links
035on the chester union free school district home page on the website there you will find the monthly newsletter that went out to families highlighting all the great things that our teachers and students have been engaged in during the month of september it's a great way for you to get a peek into the elementary school happenings and it'll be posted at the beginning of every month highlighting what we did the month prior mr petrolak is on top of it i hope it loads easily but i will be utilizing that um and posting regularly anything that we need um that's going home to families um the newsletter includes many pictures from the classrooms and little updates of you know what are what we're really proud of that is happening at the school and what kids are engaged
036in doing i think that's a great idea thanks any questions for me are there any questions i just had one quick one um the club invention i love that um how many students are able to participate either in person or so um where we got funds for two classes at 10 students each that's terrific yes so it's 20 students um i think typically in the years prior it costs 50 per student and families had to pay but we have been awarded two full classes so that is um really nice and there's the newsletter september 21 21 highlights and i basically um highlighted something uh from each grade level from different classes so take a look at that if you want to see what happened in september and octobers will come out at the end of
037the month very nicely though thank you i had no questions done you're good i'm good thank you very much great thank you have a great night mr flanagan good evening sir good evening thank you very much for the opportunity to present here tonight to the board of ed mr petrolek mr brennan ms elise um mr connell over here um thank you very much we're uh at the end of the my my little presentation i'm gonna keep it briefer as i know we do have some other presentations here tonight but i will answer any questions that you have on anything that i've put in my board report um a couple of big thank yous i'd like to thank all the responding fire departments in the in the chester vicinity the village at the town for helping
038us out with fire uh fire awareness day last friday all the responding departments came and helped us with our fire drill here at the high school cleared the building and did it it's an opportunity for the fire department to really walk our building and provide us with some positive feedback based on the drill and we're truly appreciative appreciative because it does keep us safer and it's an opportunity to work with uh with some of our local responders so we thank them for their participation and although this was in my board report i do also want to thank the town of chester police department for proactively coming here to the school and presenting in our physical education classes just to proactively talk about some of the things that are going on in society i'm sure a
039lot of you have read about uh tick tock challenges that are going on and posted for uh for the upcoming school year and so officer perez our sro along with uh with some of the other officers from the department came by just to talk to our kids to talk about making good choices and why people that have made bad choices in other places were held legally accountable and so we really do appreciate that partnership november 4th we're excited to welcome the greenwood lake union free school district 8th graders here it's it's it's something we look forward to every year and the parents of our greenwood lake friends will be here that evening for presentations so and anyone on the board that would love to come we're we're always happy to have you we do have
040financial aid night coming up which is a part of our series of senior presentations on thursday the 21st it's going to be hosted every other year we we switch with ss seward so ss seward is hosting this year it does look like it's going to be a virtual event but all our parents are welcome and we'll be receiving the link this week we're just waiting to get that link um so we we uh really appreciate the partnership and being able to provide that information with with ss seward um and the representatives from i believe it's marist college will be there this year helping us out it's really exciting to you know being back in the building and having everybody here and starting to see a lot of the normalcy come back we've had a lot
041of colleges coming to the building and setting up tables outside the lunch area suny orange was here suny newport was actually here today and that was a popular one a lot of people wanted to talk to new pulse purchase was here this week pace dominican we routinely have the armed services here so it's exciting to get back to to seeing the students really taking an interest and focusing on where am i going what's my next step and can you help me get that information so the fact that we can provide those colleges um you know to to the students and and get back to a little normalcy is is a really nice thing to see and uh and on one last note anyone that's looking to to lace up their uh their jogging shoes for
042saturday morning the alyssa barbari uh 5k fundraiser which is put on through our senior class and uh and the alyssa barbari uh foundation is having their the butterfly run and so anyone that's looking the run starts at nine registration starts at eight and uh we'd be excited for anyone in the community that wants to come out and support this uh really incredible cause so um on that note i i thank you and open up any questions i had no questions for you mr flanagan did anyone else have any questions for mr floyd um i just had i guess too quickly sure um the partnership with the town of chester police and coming in to do um a little address to the students about the ongoing tick tock challenges how is that going how has that
043been received and who who's participating in that so we worked with our physical education department uh mr giusette i worked with our coordinating a schedule with our teachers all of our pe teachers so we were able to reach every class which would be every student in the school everyone takes pe so we did that last wednesday and then today so we were able to get everyone on a 1-3 day and a 2-4 day to provide information the students in our school are great i think they appreciate being spoken to like uh you know like mature young adults and finding out facts and information and being able to comfortably ask uh you know the the police officers questions um to be able to you know they know officer perez is approachable so i think having him
044in those situations the the students like him and are very comfortable in asking those questions and i think overall it helps a lot of people make good decisions great thank you um and then i just had one quick question about the safe school ambassador program um i know it's a school-wide program but what grades are the students in who are selected to be ambassadors and i see we have some training coming up can you tell us a little more about that sure we're going to be training on the 27th and the 28th uh thank you once again to the town for providing us with the sugarloaf performing arts to facilitate our training uh it's it's students that are selected are in grades 9 through 12 they can have an impact on the entire school you
045know we had contemplated as to whether or not we could go lower but there is a level of content and maturity that they get into that we feel like 9th grade is the appropriate grade level to start with there are some other things we're looking at with with the middle school but uh we are you know we're excited to we're gonna have about 45 students uh that we can train at that training with our six advisors and they break up into what are called family groups and those family groups meet together throughout the course of the year so that one advisor would say seven students can form that close family bond and really you know the the job of it of a safe school ambassador is to really not necessarily come back and and let
046us know everything that's going on it's to have the skills in a situation and these are generally students that could find themselves around those situations to you know possibly react redirect reflect remove from a situation and so that that training really does dig deep and it really does uh help students and you know when i say that it's not for everyone we try and identify the students that we you know we that we truly feel would be the most impactful and those are usually the students that we know are the most influential in our building when it comes to social situations uh so it might not be you know for example it might not be the national honor society it might be our students that would be in more like the social honor society that
047are able to really be influential in important situations where an adult might not be fully clued into what's going on well thank you i mean that's such a highly regarded program in so many districts i'm really happy that we have it here in chester and with last year we were not able to to do a full training last year so to be able to come back it is the perfect timing because now we've had two years age out of the program and graduate so this is a great opportunity to refresh the program and we have a lot of really incredible students that we're we're excited to bring on board and i just want to expand a little bit on mr flanagan's comments about the selection of students great efforts are made to ensure that we
048have a cross section of student representation and safe school ambassadors so that it's not just a particular class of students but rather they reflect different groups different interests different backgrounds of our entire student body so that it really provides us with lines of open communication between our students and and our support staff great presentation mr flanagan thank you thank you sir i was i was watching the meeting mr petrak i think you're up uh thank you if you just bear with me a moment while i bring my presentation on okay so it's my pleasure tonight to present our district's goals for this current school year and to give you some background this past summer during the month of july i met with the board of education along with miss o'hara over at the chester performing
049arts center for a day-long retreat and the purpose of that retreat was to assess our progress in the past year and then to identify goals for the upcoming school year so what you will see tonight are the results of that meeting back in july and subsequent meetings that we've had here with our administrators in the district so this is a a presentation of our goals for the year this presentation will be available on our website starting tomorrow so all together there are seven district goals and i'm not going to read them all for you here but i will highlight that each one of them you'll see that there are bold words or phrases in there that summarize what those goals address so the first goal addresses college and career readiness and academics and scholastic preparation
050our second goal addresses diversity equity and inclusion our next goal is focused on personnel and getting the best people in to work with our students and staff our fourth goal is to address our facilities needs and ensure that our facilities are meeting all of our needs our fifth goal addresses fiscal responsibility our sixth goal is about communication communication with our families and communication with the community and the public and finally last but certainly not least our last goal addresses safety and wellness so these are the areas of our district goals and then i will get into some of the specific objectives that we have underneath each one of those goals so our first goal as i said earlier is addressing academic preparedness in college and career readiness and our first objective uh is well underway
051and that is to develop a universal pre-k program for chester elementary school and miss tandy the universal pre-k teacher was here tonight and our program is up and running and is making great strides and we hope to hear more about the program as the year goes on our second objective in this area is to get back on track along with new york state in rolling out the new next generation standards and specifically curriculum changes in the areas of science social studies art and health education many of these changes from the state level were put on pause during covid and uh at this point the state is resuming uh the implementation of these curriculum changes and that is an area of focus for us at the same time we're looking at all of our curriculum k
052to 12 the scope of that curriculum and how it's sequenced so that we can develop a curriculum map and make sure that we have proper articulation of that curriculum vertically from grade to grade and horizontally among different classes at the same grade level next we the next objective addresses next two objectives address the maker spaces the first one at the elementary school and that would be the last portion of the makerspace which is a production studio and robotics lab and then our next objective is the makerspace at chester academy and we are right now in the planning phases and if everything goes as planned and the supply chain cooperates we hope that construction will begin next fall in the makerspace in this building in the academy our next objective in this area is to continue
053our process of evaluating course offerings to make sure that the courses that we're offering here at the academy reflect uh the needs in the workplace the needs at uh college level and and trade school levels uh to make sure that we're keeping things fresh and and responsive to needs of the future ms bosch mentioned the fundations reading program which is the focus of our next objective and this is a program that focuses on phonics and reading skills and writing skills and this year the focus is on grades preschool or universal pre-k to grade one uh and then our next uh objective is implementation of the choose love a social emotion emotional learning program uh at all grade levels p through 12 and this along with other programs such as safe school ambassadors are pro these
054are programs that promote a positive school climate and uh and strong social emotional supports and finally in this area uh our goal for this year which we are four chromebooks away from is to provide all of our students with dedicated chromebooks and i say that we're four chrome books away because except for four chromebooks uh all of our students have been provided with chromebooks and those four that are outstanding uh the parents have not been able to come in and get them yet so we're trying to take care of that this week our next goal addresses uh diversity equity and inclusion and there are two objectives in this area the first objective is to develop a district policy statement on diversity equity and inclusion or dei and then our second objective is to establish a
055representative committee of teachers administrators students parents and community members that would meet to provide recommendations to the board of education for matters pertaining to dei so you'll hear a lot more of this as as the year goes on it's a very important initiative for us our next objective is addressing our personnel needs to make sure that the professionals that we are bringing into the district are moving our district forward and in order to do that we have four objectives the first objective is to provide support and training and especially mentoring for all of our new teachers and administrators including our new principal miss bosh we moving on to our next objectives two of our collective bargaining units our teachers association and our non-instructional staff the csea both have contracts that are expiring at the end
056of this year so our two objectives in this area are to negotiate fair and equitable contracts with both of these organizations and finally our last objective in this section is to develop an early teacher development program for chester academy and i'll just explain this briefly you may have heard people may be aware of a teacher shortage nationally and it's affecting some areas more so than other areas we were very fortunate this year to locate a very talented group of teachers that you all saw here tonight but many districts are struggling in finding teachers at the same time districts around the country are uh very aware of the importance of having a faculty and a staff that reflects the makeup of the community and the student body so they are finding or looking for ways to
057increase the diversity among their staff so some of the ideas that are out there to bring more people into the teacher pipeline are to develop teacher development programs and these are programs that identify students that might be good candidates for the teaching profession while they're in high school informing them about the teaching profession and ex exposing them providing them with opportunities to learn more about it in the hopes that those students will go on to college and go into teacher training programs and then eventually come back and uh meet the needs for new teachers in uh in local districts and especially our own district uh so this is a uh an objective that we had in place and covid put it on the shelf and uh we need to get this back in place and
058i know mr flanagan has some plans are ready to move forward with this our next goal addresses our facilities needs and we will continue to be proactive with our computer network both in terms of security and in terms of efficiency our second objective is to continue to evaluate and pursue options as they pertain to the maple avenue school building and the property there and our third objective is to develop an energy savings plan so mr derosa is working on this last objective and it will probably represent short and long-term goals for energy savings and efficiencies our first our fifth goal addresses our fiscal responsibilities to the community and there are a number of objectives in this area the first one is to effectively access federal stimulus funds that were made available to districts during coven
059and to effectively leverage these funds to support different goals that the district has and this is something that you saw here tonight in terms of some of the new staff that we hired in terms of some of the new programs that we were able to bring on board and in terms of some other capital improvements that we're currently working on and that you'll hear more about very soon our second objective in this area is to continue to evaluate our current programs to make sure that they're meeting our needs and the the needs of our community as demographics change as in the past we maintain an objective to communicate to the public about the implications of the tax levy and what that means for people's property taxes and the funding of schools our next next objective
060in this area is to communicate using social media and our website information about the budget process in advance of the budget vote in may and finally our last objective in this area is to continue to implement and explore opportunities for new shared services with neighboring districts so we do share services in a number of different areas some examples include our food service manager transportation services [Music] a number of other areas boces is a good example of shared services and shared purchasing that we work with our neighboring districts our sixth goal is to improve upon our communications and specific objectives include enhancing and improving our website and ensuring that it continues to be ada compliance our second objective in this area is what we're doing right now which is to continue to stream board of education
061meetings as a way to keep the public informed about what's happening in our school district and with our board of education and at the same time to improve upon our practice in in providing that service by eliminating any technical difficulties our next objective is to encourage for more public viewing of this streaming by being more efficient in our meetings and finally we want to continue to improve on our communication with our enl families families for whom english is not a first language and this is done in a number of different ways usually using translation tools that are more readily available to the general public and finally our last goal is addressing school and personal safety and and wellness and once again keeping a healthy network infrastructure including using tools like gaggle and filters various filters
062that we apply helps to keep our students and staff safe and filtered from harmful influences that that can be out in the cyberspace uh another objective in the area of safety and wellness are the social emotional programs that we're implementing such as choose love and safe school ambassadors our third objective is to use our sro with classroom presentations as mr flanagan detailed tonight and to leverage all of these programs to maintain a positive school climate and and a safe and supportive environment for all of our students and staff so it's a lot of goals a lot of objectives i'm very happy to say that we're well on the way in in a number of these areas and i'm very excited about uh everything that's going on and and moving these goals forward and moving the
063district forward yeah i think they're very comprehensive and i know when we all met in july um goals are you know you can write any goals down but if you didn't come back and work with the staff on coming up with plans for each one it all goes it's for nothing so um it's very encouraging to see all that work that went into it and that there's a clear path on our goals and like we've always done in the past we revisit them throughout the year which i think is important see where we're at and uh so we can attain all those goals so i really appreciate all that hard work that went into it thank you okay brings us to the fun part of the meeting oh that already happened would be our first
064public comment section but i think everyone has left unless there's anyone that likes to come down and dress the board of education keeping in mind our public expression policy this would be the time to do that okay that's good uh we welcome by the way all comments to the board of education if you can't come into the building please you can contact the school district or send an email to deb lise and your questions or comments can make it to the board and that'll bring us to roundtable i'll turn to you first mr petrol thank you mr sambets i'd like to provide a couple quick notes i know that we've had quite a few presentations this evening uh wants to let the board and the public know that this past week our district implemented a
065weekly testing program for our non-vaccinated employees altogether 198 of our approximately 220 employees are vaccinated so that's about 90 percent and the remaining employees are now uh required to submit proof of weekly covid testing every wednesday so i'd like to thank uh the members of our faculty and staff for for their support of this program and for and this mandate and for uh keeping uh our students and each other safe uh secondly uh i would like to just remind the public and and the board uh i mentioned this last uh meeting that uh the walnut street baseball field is is not being used for baseball currently uh mr derosa will be providing monthly updates on what is happening with the baseball field uh over on walnut and uh until that time there will be no
066baseball until board action is is taken on a future direction for that field and lastly i want to mention that next week is school board appreciation week or school board recognition week and we had a choice of observing that starting today or at our next meeting and we have decided to defer that to next meeting uh there are some things that uh we wanted to get together for our board members so uh we will put some notices out on social media next week so that everybody knows that uh that we are recognizing our board members formally next week but in terms of a public recognition we're going to save that for our next meeting excellent i know i'm looking forward to it i meant that seriously always a good time is there anything else for
067roundtable i know ms nagler might have something about new york state school boards probably just very briefly the in-person new york state school board's convention for this year has been canceled due to covid regulations in new york city however it will be held virtually next in two weeks however on monday there is a delegates meeting to go over some amendments and resolutions to help set the legislative agenda for new york state school boards we are not crafting legislation however we are giving some direction to the new york state school boards in terms of important policies that we feel affect our local communities so i look forward to sitting in on that on that meeting next monday i'm sure you'll be on all those meetings i will be yes it's a shame that uh it got
068cancelled for obvious covert reasons of hotels in new york city so we were looking forward to that as a district uh getting semi back into the normal swing of things but virtual is all we have right now so so do so i wanted to take this moment to formally welcome brian connell to the board as our student representative as the board knows and hopefully the public knows the role of our student representative is key to the board as far as we get to hear a lot of information i talked to brian right before the meeting just to make him a little more nervous but um to serve uh as you're as a student representative of the board is really an important role that we take seriously as a board we've gotten we've had great representatives
069the past years who come to the board table and bring us information that we wouldn't get to see which we really appreciate so brian we want to welcome you we're not i'm not going to put you on the spot tonight but if there's anything that um you had for tonight's meeting look he's ready to go um setting on what mr flanagan said earlier about the tick tock stuff being in a gym class i had been in that meeting today actually it does make a difference so seeing that is a big improvement and i appreciate it and it's definitely noted having an officer that we already know definitely helps improve the situation of tick tock stuff and know that it's that's not very common that was just a brief period on an app that definitely influenced
070kids and that's only a small percentage of kids not a lot of kids do that it's only only very small so that's not very something you guys should be worried about and being in engineering class we do see a lot of improvement with technology so which is really nice i'm in the college engineering class mr rodman so it's very cool seeing the new uh gadgets and technology that we were able to use so i appreciate that and yeah thank you thank you brian so at this point of the meeting every time when we have round table that's when we would turn to you also at any time to the meeting if you have any questions it's also when people are up here and we're asking questions you also can feel free it's it's part of
071your role we look at it as you're a board member for us that we are sharing in the opportunity to make the district better okay and we really appreciate you being here thank you and that's it i believe for roundtable so i'm going to need a motion i'd like to make a motion that the board accept consent agenda items 5.1 through 5.15 and is there any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye any opposed and that'll bring us to our final public comment but i don't think anything's changed in the last few minutes okay and we appreciate everyone being here all our new staff being here tonight it really means a lot to the board to that people could get out tonight we understand those who couldn't be here and we appreciate i know
072we got some um personal comments from the people some people couldn't be here tonight we appreciate that that really meant a lot to me today and with that i will need a motion 7.1 to adjourn i'll make that motion second all in favor any opposed and that'll do it thank you very much thank you to our administration and our staff for being here tonight let's