Commack Schools BOE Regular Meeting and Budget Workshop #1 (March 12, 2026)

001Just do a shut. >> It looks all right. Good evening everyone and welcome to the March 12th uh COMC board of education meeting. 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. >> All right. Before we begin, I'm going to ask uh that we do a little bit of a roll call. If you can start here on my left, who you are and what you do in the district. >> Good evening. Scott Ashan, assistant superintendent for human resources. >> Kelly Nevin, superintendent, >> Dana Schultz, board trustee. >> Bill Hender, board trustee. >> Dr. Cox, superintendent of COMAC schools. board of ed president. >> Sue Hmer, board of

002ed vice president. >> Nicole Goldstein, board trustee. >> Tim Russo, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. >> Debbie Verga, district clerk. >> Kyla Gubber, student exeicio. >> All right, so welcome everybody. Uh, at this point I'm going to turn over to Dr. Cox for his administrative report. >> Thank you, Mr. Huber. So, good evening folks. Welcome to our March board meeting and our first budget workshop. Just a couple of agenda items. We will start with some community updates and then we will have Kyla share her student board member report. Um we have Dr. Informer going to be giving us an update on some of our policies and then at that point we're going to pause. We'll finish our board meeting and then the budget workshop will pick up um directly after we complete our board

003meeting. But just quick uh just a quick reminder we have our summer programs. The dates are out there. So, make sure if you want to sign your children up, you take a look at these dates and uh get ready for registration because it will be coming out shortly. Something else that we wanted to share, uh this past weekend we had our multicultural festival and it was a record turnout. It was the largest number of students that we've seen in all the years that we've uh run this festival. So, we just wanted to take a moment to thank our community, to thank our board for coming out and supporting this event. Um, it's a great opportunity for the community to come together and celebrate the diversity and the different cultures that exist within our COMAC community.

004A special thank you to Miss Lasano um, who worked with some of our students uh, to run all of these tables. If you went to the event, you would have recognized that it was completely run by students and of course Mrs. Drienzo who played a huge role in making sure that this come to fruition. So, I just want to thank you all because we've seen this continue to grow over the years and even at this multicultural, they already have ideas for next year to enhance it even more. So, looking forward to that. So, at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Kyla for the student board report. So this past month I was able to visit Burr as my school that I was touring. And the visit was incredible. The students had the

005whole thing planned out and they took me through a tour of their entire school. And what was really special about the day I got to visit was it was their staff for a day. So the students were actually the principal, vice principal, secretary, teacher, custodian. And they were so excited about it. And just that staff for a day was one of the many like leadership opportunities that they have for the kids at Burr. The amount of leadership that they have in the intermediate school is incredible. And you could really see it through everything they were taking me through, the way they were talking, their presentations, and through everything that they told me about that I'll tell you about. They just have a lot of leadership at such a young age, and it's great to see

006starting so early. So when I first got there, I started talking to their principal and vice principal students and I asked them about things they really love about their school. And the first thing and the most important thing that they were talking about was their Burb Bugle live, not live, which is their monthly TV show that the students get to put together. And they highlight things going on in their school. And the students get to sign up to be a part of it. And they also highlight their student of the month and their class of the month in this um TV show. And the way those student and class are picked is through demonstrating the comarmac champion traits. Another thing that they talked about with these COMAC champion traits was as we were walking through

007the school on the tour, they had a wall that they stopped to mention and it had pictures of all the students that were nominated as um a com champion like winner. So all the teachers get to nominate students who have the trait of the month and all of them are displayed on the wall as well as obviously the winner and um the classes that are part of this competition. Um another thing about the students at Burr in addition to their leadership opportunities and showing the comac champion traits they really work on creating things. They are working on creating a park. They created the students designated their um they designed their student union that they have. They designed a wellness space that they have. So the park that they're designing, I think it's really cool and

008it's special for the whole community. So they partnered with the town of Huntington and next to Burr for the past 3 years they've started the students coming up with ideas to turn this space into a park that's accessible for the community. So they tie in with a lesson that's going on. So, their first year started with the third graders who were learning about um bees and pollination. So, they tied it in with that unit and they came up with pollinators for this park. And now um they're working on their map skills. So, they have 200 like creations and ideas of where benches and tables and garbage cans are going to go. And they're meeting with the town and fully creating this park that should be set up by September. and they're partnered with the town

009of Huntington to do it. So, it should be exciting once it's complete and they'll keep working on it throughout the years. Um, their student union, which was another space um designed by students that were on a committee together that came up with what they wanted in their room, is a space where clubs are held. Their student um council meets there and their student council as well very involved and all leaders at such a young age already. We got there, me, Miss Living Holtz, the principal of the high school, and Dr. Cox, and they gave us a whole presentation about the things that they have at their school and events that they love and things like traditions they have. And all the students created the presentation, picked what they wanted to talk about, and they were

010all, it was a big group of kids, but leaders, and they weren't, they didn't seem afraid. They all presented very nicely in front of superintendent. So, pretty big deal and like good to see. Um, the other room that they created was their pause room and that's their mental health space that the students did design themselves and they can go there to take breaks when they need certain classes will go in there. And another part of that room that was really cool is they're designing a mural that's going to be hung up on the wall. And rather than paying a lot of money for this mural, the students are taking time out of their recess to go decorate the mural. They color it every day and it looks really, really cool. And it's highlighting also those

011come champion traits which they keep coming back to. Um, lastly, everyone in the school, in addition to the leadership and their creations, they really were enthusiastic about Burr. They loved it. They were super excited to have all the opportunities that they do have. And they were excited to show me. They were singing songs for their play, the fifth graders, and it was really cool to see. They really loved Bur and I didn't get to go there, but I felt like I did for the day. So, yeah. Thank you so much, Kyla. At this point, I'm going to ask Dr. Ander to take us through some of our policy updates. >> All righty. Thank you, Dr. Cox. Um, very quick tonight, uh, you may recall we are now engaging in quarterly audits. So, what that does

012for us is it takes our audits and, you know, makes them less numerous, but more frequently. So, you're going to see me a little bit more frequently, but it's less amount policy. So, this time there's only two. Um I'll just speak to them very briefly because this is easy. There were changes to the law. So therefore we have to update our policies. So briefly the the regarding our annual or reorganization meeting, there was a change to the timeline. The board has to have its reorg meeting before the Monday after July 20th of each year, which we do anyway. So no big deal, but it's codified in the law now. So therefore codified in our policy. And the second is related to the absentee military and early ballots. Um that change there again rooted in law.

013They made some changes for example um verbiage they changed to the voter rather than you know he or she and then it does point to some other changes for absentee ballots for elections in districts that do not provide personal registration but just so you know that doesn't apply to us. We do only do personal registration when we have two dates later in the spring or later in the year where people can come you know register to high school or middle school to vote. So that's in the law also in the policy but does not apply. So that's it, short and sweet. Um, all related to the law and they'll be in the agenda later. >> Thank you, Dr. Informer. So, at this point, we're going to press pause and we're going to, um, go through

014our regular board of education meeting and then once we finish that, we will resume with our budget workshop number one. Students, >> okay. >> All right. At this point, I'm going to ask Mrs. determined to read our board of education statement for our first public session. Good evening and welcome. We're so glad you're here with us tonight. Your voice matters and we truly appreciate your involvement and interest in our schools. There are two opportunities for public comment during this meeting. The first is for comments related to items listed on tonight's agenda. The second, which takes place at the end of the meeting, is for comments on any general school district matters. If you'd like to speak on an agenda item, please take a white card. If you'd like to speak during general public participation, please

015take a green card. The district clerk will call speakers by number. When it's your turn, please come to the microphone, say your name, and let us know if you're a resident of the district. Each speaker has to come up to three minutes to speak, and we'll kindly notify you when your time is up. Please direct your comments to the board only. These public comment times are for listening and gathering feedback. We won't be responding in real time, but if a question is raised that requires followup, we'll be sure to get back to you afterwards. To maintain a respectful and welcoming environment, please avoid discussing individual students or making personal remarks, positive or negative, about specific staff members. Lastly, we want to make sure everyone feels heard. So, we ask that comments remain respectful, focused, and

016not repetitive or disruptive. Thank you again for being here tonight and for your ongoing support of our students and schools. >> Good. >> Okay. This is for uh public participation on agenda items only. So that would be a white card. White card number one. Okay. >> No. Good. >> Okay. So, moving right along. Uh we're going to accept some donations tonight. We have one donation from the Diamond uh booster club, and this is going to the the varsity and JV baseball teams at the high school. It's a A Techch Casey Pro 3G pitching machine valued at $3,000. Uh pocket radar valued at $300 and two LC screens and one fielding screen valued at $2,400. So, can I get a motion to accept this donation? >> Second. All in favor? >> I Okay. I need a

017motion to approve the minutes from the February 12th, 2026 board of education meeting. >> Motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I need a motion to accept the personnel agenda. >> Second. >> All inclus. All in favor? >> I. >> All right. Uh motion to approve the consent agenda. Uh items as presented and or amended 2 through9. Can I get a motion? >> Second. and a second. All in favor? >> I You guys are going fast on me today. >> You got it, Debbie. >> I'm trying to keep up. I'm sorry. We'll make a motion. >> Mrs. Hmer. >> Yeah. Uh and be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board of education approved the first reading of policy 1620, which is absentee military and early mail violence. And

018policy policy 1620 annual organizational meeting. Be it further resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board of education will wave the second reading and move to adopt the policy tonight. Motion. >> Motion. Can I get a motion? >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> Okay. uh acknowledge receipt of the uh professional services from Bon Shik and King for the month ending January 31st, 2026 in the amount of 20,863. Acknowledge receipt of the January 2026 financial reports as listed. Acknowledge receipt of the internal claims auditors monthly update. acknowledge receipt of the um recommendations from the committee on special education and the committee on preschool special education uh dates listed and the board of education of the comarmac free school district shall hold its internal audit planning meeting 6 p.m.

019March 26th and the budget workshop number two will be at 7 p.m. at Hubs Administration Center 480 Clay Pitz Road East Northport, New York. And at this point, Miss Vargo, we can start our public participation number two. Okay, this is for green card. Green card number one. Green card number two. How about anyone with a green card? Okay. So, at this point, we're going to make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Um, and we're going to enter into our budget conversation. Uh, can I get a motion? >> Motion. >> Second. All those in favor? >> I. >> All right. So, uh, those of you who are willing to or eager to stay for the budget presentation number one, please, uh, remain in the room. Uh we'll give you some time for those of you who

020want to go home uh cuz the official board meeting is over. So this is our first discussion of the budget for the 26 27th school year. I did. You stay. I'm gonna hang this up to you. This is going to be >> Yeah. Well, good evening everyone and welcome to our first budget workshop for the 2627 school year. I'm just going to take you a little bit through uh the timeline. So, tonight we're going to be proposing the superintendent's 2627 budget. We will be sharing what the tax cap levy increase will be or Miss Nevin will be sharing that information. Miss Nevin will be sharing the numbers with you tonight. After you hear about the numbers, we have we're very excited to share with you. We have a number of speakers tonight from administrators to

021students to videos with students in them um talking a little bit about their programs which I'll talk to uh the board and the community in a little bit and what that presentation is going to look look like. I'll I'll be able to kick that off. Um on March 26th we have our budget workshop number two facilities. On the topic of facilities, I just wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to the facilities group because I remember the last board meeting we had and in between this board meeting we received as my daughter went outside and took the tape measure, she goes, "Dad, there's only 30 in." I said, "Taylor, say that again. There's only 30 in." But, um, your crew, your facilities crew did an amazing job um staying ahead of that

022storm, chipping away at it, and making sure that our schools were ready to open. Um, so make sure um if they're watching, I'm sure your facilities crew is all tuned in to tonight's presentation. So when you're if you're watching um thank you to the team for doing such a wonderful job because we have a number of uh buildings in this district and it's no easy task. >> Just a point, the kids the kids could have got more snow days if you guys weren't so good. >> And the teachers, I'm just saying. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. So uh so thank you to the facilities. Uh, as you can see, there's a number of things that we'll be updating the community on in our budget workshop number two, from capital projects to update on our 2019 bond

023because, believe it or not, there are some things that are funded from the 2019 bond, but it takes time to implement those projects, some of which will be uh will be taking place this summer. Um, they'll be highlighting some of the in-house projects. We have master craftsmen and we have some extremely talented in-house um facilities team that is able to do a tremendous amount of work inhouse saving the district a tremendous amount of money by having to contract outside. Um we'll be giving uh some updates on security and I know Miss Piam's excited to share some of the innovation and technology that's taking place across the district. That brings us to our April 16th board of ed meeting budget adoption. Um just a quick overview of the budget. We have a budget hearing on May

0247th at 8:00 PM and then our budget vote on May 19th. So, let's all get a head start um when you get a chance and you're talking to your neighbors. I can't tell you how to vote. Just tell them to get out and vote. Um so, please please uh urge everybody in this community to get out and vote. So, at this time, I'm going to pass the baton to Mrs. Nevin who's going to start us off with the numbers and then we'll follow up with a presentation on our instructional plan. >> All right. Can everybody hear me? Yep, you're good. >> Great. Before I start, I just want to take a quick moment to say thank you to the board for allowing me to come and present tonight the proposed 2627 budget. And before I

025dive into the numbers, I do just want to talk about our guiding principles that we um allowed to direct us as we were making our budgetary decisions. And those include prioritizing student outcomes, protecting our elementary class sizes, and preserving the opportunities we have for our secondary students um with our enrichment courses and our various elective courses that we have available. So, here we are for the budget. Um our proposed budget for 2627 is just over $234 million. Um, as you can see, our proposed tax levy, which is the biggest contributor to our revenue budget, is just over 162 million. But what I'd like to point out is that represents a 2.3% um increase over the prior year. And historically, CO-AMAC has uh kept within the allowable tax levy limit. And we are upholding that tradition

026again this year. So to jump into our proposed revenues, one thing I'd like to point out here is um you will see a overall decrease in state aid. Uh as we had talked about at the past um board meeting, this is the result of some changes at the state level uh related to the formulas um that are utilized to calculate our state aid. Um, and in addition to some changes that they had for districts that are on something called hold harmless, uh, historically, COMAC has realized, um, aid increases of up to a million dollars annually. Um, you can see here that that is not the case for 2627. Um, you will also notice that we are going down in some of our other revenue categories and that's really the result of a deep dive into

027these uh revenue sources and the capacity that they have to support our budget. Um, lastly, we are realizing a decrease in our applied fund balance and usage of reserves. Um this is something that the district has been working on over the past uh handful of years to get down that reliance on those saving account type um categories. So I'm going to just dive a little bit further into the use of our reserves and fund balance. You will see here that we have a 1.5 estimated usage of our employee benefit and acred liabilities reserve account. And this uh reserve account is utilized for employee separation pay. Um that might be just for employees who are leaving the district and have um you know vacation or other uh acrruels that we need to pay out to them.

028But the majority of that goes to our retirees that we're expecting in the coming year. We also have uh some funds in there for unemployment and we as you can see here we are dropping down our reliance on our applied fund balance and we're bringing that down uh just over under a million dollars for 2627. New York State requires school districts to present their expense um budgets in a three-part fashion. So here you're going to see our the three categories that our budget is broken down into. And um as you can see our largest category is our program at 73.7%. Uh this category is for any expenses related to student um instruction and the student experience. So that includes teaching salaries um any supplies that they might have uh for instruction and anything relating to

029the benefit of the students directly. We then have our capital cost at 16.1%. Uh this really is for the upkeep of our buildings, our facilities, anything related to the operational cost of our district. And then lastly, we have 10.2% 2% which is our administrative and this is our general overhead to um for all of our support systems in the district. So that might be our district-wide insuranceances um our admin level salaries um any sort of legal and and support systems that we have in place for our district. I do want to mention that um it is common for districts to have breakdowns like we have here. Uh the baseline should be 70. uh we will we are above that here at COMAC and and that's a great thing to see. Obviously we want most of

030our resources going to our students. This is that same budget breakdown but just shown in a different way. And what this really highlights here and I'm going to wrap it up back to um our guiding principles is you can see the largest increase happening in program and again that really goes back to our decision-making process and where we were guided in our principles. So that just to remind everybody was prioritizing our students outcomes. It was protecting our elementary class sizes and maintaining those course offerings that we have at the secondary level and our enrichment programs that we have at the middle school. Um this just really highlights that you see our capital and our administrative costs going down. Um we really want to prioritize our students. That's what we're here for at COMAC. So, just

031to wrap it all up for you, um we are proposing a levy increase of 2.3% uh over the prior year, which is slightly uh lower than what we had went out for in 2526. Again, this is within compliance of the New York State levy limit, and we are proposing a budgettobudget increase of 69%. Um, I'm going to wrap this up and pass it back to Dr. Cox and our amazing administrative team who are going to just really highlight uh what we're doing instructionally and how we're util utilizing our resources to uh do some fantastic things for our students. >> Thank you, Mrs. D. >> Thank you. >> Do you want any questions after the same questions at the end, unless you want to ask them now? So the board will have a chance to ask

032questions as soon as we uh finish the presentation. So here we are. We're going to talk a little bit about our 2627 instructional plan highlight. One of the things that resonates with me and I say over and over again is that our children are here with us for 13 years. That's the typical amount of time that a student will be with us from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. And that's really important because um in a district where you have K2 buildings 3 through five, 6 through 8, 9 through 12, we really want to see that continuation through those grade levels for the for the 13 years that are here. And I'm really excited for the board and the community to hear from uh our administrators and our students on how they're tying that

033experience from elementary all the way through high school. and students they look at their education from building to building as a continuation not as something where they stop and then they start over in a new building. Um we have a shared vision here which is to uh aspire to transform what the traditional educational program looks like and we've been doing that. Um if you follow us on social media you'll see the sheer number of school districts across the island across the state or even across the nation that have been coming to visit our schools to figure out ways to replicate what we're doing in our school district. Our students are being our staff do an amazing job in taking what the students are learning and applying it to real world experience and and what does

034that lead to? That leads to students who are better prepared to make a decision for what they want to do after Comarmac High School. And this slide slide kind of plays to that not only academic piece the K to2 continuum but also addresses the SEAL component which are the skills necessary for our students to be successful in the 21st century. So, we start with the end in mind, prepared to make the best decision for college and or career. And then we kind of work our way backwards. It starts with the elementary school foundation where students are learning how to read. You're going to hear a little bit about um some of those innovative experiences that those students are having at the elementary level. This evening, you're also going to hear how the middle school enrichment

035program, which is really, really valuable to us and how they have completely reimagined their electives to better prepare students for what they're going to experience at Comarmac High School. When you hear students talk about what are courses like this that I can take next year, they don't look at middle school as a place that stops and a place where the high school starts over. They're really starting to tie their education all the way through K through 12. And that speaks volumes. In grades 9 and 10, they start to try on pre-ol and career level learning. So, they start to explore their interests. In grades 11 and 12, they're really, and you'll hear tonight, what those 11th and 12th grade experiences look like and how we're really preparing students to be able to sort of test

036drive future careers so they're better prepared to make a decision on possibly what career they want to enter when they graduate from Comarmac High School or what college they want to go to. they have a better idea because when they're picking a college, they're also picking a program of what they think they want to do for the rest of their life. Again, we think that's an extremely difficult decision for a 17 or 18-year-old, but to be able to give them those experiences that you're going to hear tonight and that you're going to hear from some of our students how we prepare them ultimately to make that best decision for college and a career. So, we're going to start with our elementary. I'm going to invite uh Miss Pulliam, Mr. Russo, and I'm going to also

037invite uh Dr. Santella to the podium to talk a little bit about our elementary program and how it's inspired with discovery. Mr. Russo, good evening everybody. Thank you. Um, I'm just really going to get to kick us off here, uh, before turning it over to the people that that, uh, have really kind of been key to transforming what we do here in Comarmac. Um, our staff that's here with me, our our building administrators and of course our teachers. Um, what we have up here really just kind of we talked about just to kind of uh, emphasize what Dr. Cox mentioned about um, one of the things we're really proud of here is the experience we give our students. We do take a lot of time uh throughout the year talking about our exit criteria and

038some of the statistics that go along with uh that represent success um the metrics we use right whether it's graduation rates four-year colleges the amount of college uh coursework that we have for our students general education students and special education students those numbers certainly show that we're doing a great job but what matters more to us here is the experience we're giving our students and that's really what we've focused on over the last several years um we start with with our teachers the most important people in in the room and and most important people, most influential people in kind of creating that experience for our students and their families. Um we've talked in the past about the work we've done on professional growth, whether it's learning and developmentmies, um just professional development overall. Uh some

039of the some of the various committees we have now that are working really to make sure that uh our teachers um are are able to provide that experience for our students and families. So kind of investing in that is something that we're really proud of. Um then you just kind as you move around um on that slide you know a course like movement in the arts giving students an opportunity to learn in unique ways and and over the years now we've infused our second stepcl curriculum into movement of the arts and to see what goes on in those classrooms has been really really uh really a special thing to see. Um I'm not going to steal uh uh Mr. Palpoli's thunder for next week as we talk about intermediate playgrounds but again looking at what

040makes uh our students and families enjoy being part of the comarmac community something we're really proud of. Um, this polling will get into some of our discovery dens. Um, one of the other things on there obviously want to emphasize is our commitment to our our class sizes in our elementary classes. Uh, we're well below the do not exceed um numbers that we have traditionally held on to and we're proud of that and we look forward to kind of continuing that because we know that at the end of the day that's really essential to kind of providing our students with the great experience that they have here. Um, you know, we one of the other things I think is really unique that you'll see tonight and one of the reasons we wanted to kind of set

041our budget workshop up this way is that what you'll see tonight that I think really stands out in COMAC is that true K12 continuum. Um, we're going to start with our elementary programs and we're going to take it right through the high school level. But one of the things that I think we're really proud of here is the way we've emphasized different matters for students to learn, different manners for students to learn. So really emphasizing that discovery based learning, that project based learning, uh, which gets our students to the spot that they get to those older grade levels, whether it's middle school or high school, they know who they are. They know what they like and they're ready to kind of dive in and make some of those uh, choices about what what they what's

042best for their future. So um, really excited what we have to present tonight and uh, we're going to start off with Dr. Cinderella. >> And just before you get started, Mr. Russo, I would like to share with the community and the board that you're going to see a theme tonight, especially for our budget for 2627 that the the programs that we've created over the years that we value so much. You're going to see some of the innovative ways that our staff have implemented things at little to no cost to the district. You're going to see that even during challenging times when the state is looking to decrease the amount of state aid that COMAC is receiving that we still have a have made a a commitment to the programs. And one of the ways, you

043know, when we have school districts come and visit us, they say like, "How do you how do you how did you do this?" And and me much of it, what you'll see is a shift in thinking or reimagining the electives that were already in place. and so or taking advantage of a farm that already existed here in Comarmac. Um or re-imagining what our computer labs look like which ended up turning into and I hate to steal Miss Williams thunder but um a cost savings to the district. So you what one of the things that I'm really really proud of is that even during challenging times we are not only able to maintain our programs but in some cases you'll see that we're able to enhance them at little to no cost to the district. And

044I think that's really important as we go through each year and the commitment we make and the value in our programs here in COMAC that stand out. Back to you, Mr. Russo. >> Thank you. Uh so I would like to uh briefly talk to you tonight about our agriculture program that is really focused at our intermediate buildings. Um but like we've heard so many times tonight is really now turned into a K through 12 continuum. So I will start by saying that about three years ago we had uh three teachers come see us uh Mr. McGrath, Mr. Joerger and Mr. Fitzy who are all um high school and middle school teachers to say that they were interested in doing something with the Marian Coral farm. And so from there we had uh tremendous conversations about

045what that could look like. Um we wanted the student involvement to uh make sure that our students were learning about agriculture at a younger age. And as you know we piloted a program last year for grades 3, four and five. Um, and we took some time to really speak to those groups of uh, students and staff to see what they felt was the most meaningful placement for uh, this program. And what we found was that everybody wanted the program in every one of their grades. Um, and so we we took some time to really look at uh, who was going to be working with these students and Mr. McGrath, who is a high school chemistry teacher, uh felt that the best population of students to bring to the farm and experience um this opportunity was

046our fifth grade students, but we didn't want to leave out our third and fourth grade students. So, this year we rolled out um the entirety of that intermediate program. So, our third grade students um have been working with Mr. McGrath over the last few months. Uh this all ties into curriculum that has been rewritten uh to be up to the new New York State standards. Uh Dr. Longo, our our director of science, has taken the lead with Mr. McGrath and the elementary teachers to really rewrite uh what this curriculum looks like. So our third grade students have been working on harvesting seeds from vegetables um that Mr. McGrath is bringing into the classrooms and learning about where food comes from and um working on life cycles and uh the New York State uh investigation, the

047circle of life, all ties into um that third grade uh lesson uh that he's working on with them. Our fourth graders actually before the winter break um were working on plant adaptations um and they were learning about how parts of the trees uh how parts of trees work and how vegetables uh and agricultural products um create systems. And so our fourth grade students actually pre-planted um into pods for uh the students who are fifth graders um who will now take those products to the farm this spring session. So our fifth graders um were working on ecosystems. Uh the beginning of the year all of our fifth grade students had the opportunity to go to the farm twice, once to plant, once to harvest. And they will have the same opportunity in spring. However, this spring

048they will be planting all of the seeds that the third graders have harvested and all of the um pre-plants that the fourth graders have pre-planted in the buildings. So, uh we have seen this now we are almost done with our first full year of implementation and the feedback has been really positive. Um so the staff of course uh we hear great feedback all the time from them about how much the kids are enjoying the program, how much they like to be outside and just do something a little bit different. Um, but I did want to go down to the intermediate schools and talk to um two students, one from Burr, one from Sawl, just to tell us a little bit about what they actually learned. Um, and so I will show you that clip real

049fast now. Um, I could have talked to these two all day about agriculture, but you know, I I didn't want to be here all night. though. >> I've done it two years now in fourth and fifth and we've learned how to plant the importance of planting and what plants need to grow. So like you need to get you get the seeds and you dig like a hole like this deep and then you put the seeds in it and you cover it up and then you flag it and it's really cool like how you get to take it home. I think the cool thing we learned about is how different things are different and how some of them have bigger than the other. I learned when I'm about to pick carrots and my kids one and

050there was this huge grass that wasn't this big. I thought it was really cool. I need to school that we have it because like some people don't get to get to go to the farm and we only like some of the schools get to not all of them. So I like how far school I hands on activity and how you guys are close to me and see them and it's really cool. So, um, one of those students is actually here tonight. Mattiey's here with her mom. I just wanted her to give us a little wave because I don't think this is the last time, um, that we will see Maddie at a board meeting talking about something cuz I could have talked to her all day about this. Same thing, uh, with McKenzie. Um, you

051know, the students are really excited about this. Um, and talking about that K12 um, continuum. We rolled out tower gardens at the primary buildings. Um, now the agriculture program. Uh we also started a gardening club at the middle school. So students that are interested can continue with that as well as our bee club at the middle school and then through high school we have now started a bee club at the high school as well as well as a gardening club there. So uh students do have the opportunity to experience this agricultural programming um in the K through 12 capacity. Um and like Maddie had mentioned in her video, the students do get to bring home uh food with them, although many of them said like what do I do with this radish? and we were

052like we don't know uh but like enjoy it with your family. Uh the remainder of the food that we had collected was all donated to a local food shelter. So uh to a food pantry um I did just want to mention two really uh important things I think to us is that um as many of you know in the 2829 school year New York State will mandate um climate education and agricultural programs will be part of that. So we're really far ahead of that just with this program alone in addition to so many of the other uh science um you know things that we're doing throughout the district. Uh as well as um Stony Brook University has taken an interest into this program so much so that they are requiring all of their masters in

053teaching students to do observation hours with us in this program so that they could see uh what this program looks like uh for for those people that are considering becoming teachers and moving forward. So, um, I did just want to I know that we're talking a lot about facilities tonight and Mr. Palipolei, but we could not run this program without the facilities team. Um, the farm is a lot of work. Uh, they're tilling soil, they're fixing hose lines, they're they're making things out of nothing. So, uh, we're really appreciative of them. Uh, and and you know, we're we're excited to continue this program into the future. >> Thank you, Dr. Santaell. Okay. So, I am here tonight to talk a little bit about our digit curriculum. Um, and the reason that you know, even though

054I will be back in two weeks talking a little bit with Mr. Palpoli about some other things in innovation and technology. The reason that I feel that digit fits into this um conversation about a K12 kind of continuum is because the skills that we are having our kids exposed to and what they are learning at our youngest ages is really transferring into so many different subject areas across the board. Um, just this morning I was interviewed by a second grade student uh at Wood Park and the growth that I'm seeing come from our students in in having these discovery dens and having these place at this pl these places to express themselves through the use of technology has really come full circle in a lot of ways. So as many of you already know uh

055the new digit curriculum stands for digital innovation group instruction time. While I would love to take credit for it because I am so proud of what we're doing here, this was born from a meeting with our amazing primary principles where we said we we want to do something new. We want to do something different. Anybody can buy a curriculum in a box, but we want to make something that fits for COMAC. And working with the four of them has been nothing short of a pleasure. They have made this program come to life. I can't be everywhere at one time. and they are the ones in the buildings that are making this come to come to fruition along with the library and media specialists and the technology TAs. So while I love spearheading this program and

056I feel very grateful and proud to be able to come and and talk to you about it, they are the ones that make it happen. So Digit um takes place in the discovery dens in the primary buildings. So Digit is the curriculum. The discovery dens are the places. I'm very proud of the work that we've done in the discovery den. And I I believe that Mr. Palpoli must really his you know must be we're going to have to you know talk him down after all these compliments tonight but they have really done the work um we have saved on really renovating those labs because we do it in house we are not replacing or replenishing those PCs as we are a onetoone district in those labs there are um maybe f five to six computers

057depending and uh touchscreen monitors so that way they are learning skills on the mouse skills on the keyboard, learning how to use a PC and the parts, but we do not need to replace those labs. And that was one of my goals when I got here was to say we don't need as many of these labs because we are onetoone and ways that we can kind of make that happen. The rooms are beautiful. They are flexible learning spaces. Um, part of my real goal here is to promote digital wellness and really teaching kids how to use technology for good. And these rooms and this curriculum does exactly just that. Much of what you see the students doing in the discovery den is not necessarily on a screenbased technology. They may be using an iPad or

058using a Chromebook to do something or create something but they are not just on an individualized Chromebook doing work. And that was a goal of mine and I think we've seen a lot of growth in content creation coming out of these buildings and coming out of these spaces. They are all standardsbased and really the one of the main goals is to move them from consumers to creators. And while I don't have any props or video here with me tonight, I know that you know I'll have it with me next time. I just we have a lot a lot to go into K12 tonight. But you will see um as one of the things that we are working toward uh for next year, we're going to be doing some curriculum writing to continue to bring digit

059into the 3 through 5. So the badges that you see in K through two will be moving up to three through five because I'm going to review those badges in just a second. One of the things I'm very excited about is to start also bringing AI literacy into the three through five area. Um Digit is an AI creation. So all the talking, all of the pictorials that you see with Digit, that's their first experience to knowing, you know, what's real? How did we create it? And that's happening at the youngest of ages. The video that you see here in AI literacy, I pushed into a class um at Burr where the students were actually doing a research project on uh Australian animals and they got to chat with an Australian animal expert through the use

060of Brisk. So part of what I do with our softwares is I make sure that it's not about how many softwares you have, it's about how well you are using the subscriptions that you pay for, right? So that is something that I look to, you know, really give professional development with the teachers to really spend time pushing into classrooms and making sure that whatever we are buying, we are utilizing as best we can. So I'm looking forward to expanding um the digit curriculum into three through five to be able to move our students from an area of discovery to this is where innovation grows, right? So now we've started them on that trajectory of discovering what they love to give them the voice and the choice to use that technology and to grow into the

061intermediate school where they are actually creating and doing and instead of being part of a green screen project. I want to see a place where and they're already doing it in the intermediates at this time like where they are creating those videos themselves and videoing themselves. And it really is a wonderful thing to see how they can learn something in science and then actually demonstrate that and be able to show it in in a green screen project. Um, something I love to talk about is really our trimester based accountability because when you make your own program, a lot of what happens when you make your own program is how are you measuring it, right? So, you know, it's easy sometimes when you buy into a curriculum to be able to say, "Oh, it comes along

062with benchmarks or it comes along with measurements." So part of what we did when we wrote this curriculum was that we made badges for every single grade level and every single trimester. Um that will be coming up through three through five as well for next year. Um and we look at each of the skills in each trimester and what skills they are working on whether it's becoming a digital leader, building digital foundations and all of this. I cannot wait. I truly cannot wait to show you an end product of one of these books um as the students are growing because you'll see that each trimester they don't just get issued the badge. They have to tell us about it, right? So to see how that grows from a K through five, you know, what did

063I do? What did I do this trimester that shows that I am a digital leader? What am I doing that shows that I understand how to explore the digital world? Because while I am a technology director, I am an educator at heart and I'm an educator first and I don't believe that kids should be on devices all the time and I don't think any of us here do. I think we want to promote healthy use of technology and understanding of the technological world and that is what the digit program is doing through immersive use of technology. >> Thank you Mrs. Pullingham. >> That's it. >> And thank you to the team. We are going to invite Mrs. Lipen Holtz and Dr. Larson. Uh, would you like to bring your students up at this time or

064>> I would love to. >> Okay. So, you want to introduce them to the board? >> You want me to All right. Thank you everybody. Uh, thank you to the board of ed and Dr. Cox, to the leadership team, the district leadership team for inviting us to speak tonight. Um, I'm uh, thrilled to speak a bit about the enrichment program at CMS. But before I do that, uh, I'm going to go to this slide right here. But before I get into it, I also want to give a thank you to our teachers and staff at Comarmac Middle School. The enrichment program is really unique and we've it has evolved significantly over the course of the past three years or so. But much of that work is built on some focus group work we've done with

065children and then the passion and interests of our staff. So the the course offerings that I'm going to discuss with you tonight or I'm going to share with you tonight really reflects a um student interest and the passion of our staff. So in, you know, in totality, the enrichment program perfectly aligns with the IB uh MYP instructional philosophy. As an MYP school, we try to create opportunities for our learners that are student- centered and inquirybased as well as authentic, which I think folds nicely into the board of education's curriculum and instruction goal about authentic project-based hands-on learning experiences for our children. And that's what our enrichment program is designed to do. So in short, what does it look like at Comarmac Middle School? Um we have 16 enrichment courses for grades seven and eight students

066almost entirely driven by student interest. So we have added um over the course of the past three years eight new enrichment courses, but the total number of courses that we're running has not necessarily ballooned and and led to increases from a budget perspective. We look at what are what are our learners enrolling in? What are the popular courses? If there is lower enrollment in certain courses, we pull them out of the catalog temporarily. We can always put them back in. But the courses that are most appealing to middle school learners are the ones that we run. So we've been pretty flat in terms of the number of offerings, but the catalog has rotated in eight new offerings over the course of the past three years. So, as I said before, the courses are designed to

067provide authentic student centered learning experiences to align with the comarmac champion traits and they require of our eighth graders to begin a service and action project, a community project, which is about a 10 to 12 hour project for all students. What we've been very intentional about is is making connections for CMS students as it relates to the emerging school the emerging schools of study at Comarmac High School. So if you look and Mrs. Lipen Holtz will be sharing more about this in her presentation or the students will be sharing a bit about this but if you look across these these the titles of each of these tables there are eight schools of study at com high school engineering liberal studies fine arts etc. We were very intentional or we've been very intentional over the course

068of the past couple years to make sure that we have something in each of those schools of because from our perspective, we want our CMS students to leave Comarmac Middle School with some foundational awareness that's developmentally appropriate for a middle school student that piqus their curiosity and interest as they transition to the high school. And what has been really incredible about this intentionality over the past uh couple years and a a compliment to Miss Creler and the counseling department who's been meeting with students and starting their scheduling discussions for 8th into 9th grade. When I'm in the hallways talking to to the learners about how did your scheduling meeting go, how did your scheduling meeting go? It's not I'm not joking when I say that the kids are sharing. I'm so excited to further explore

069something in the school of medicine. This is not just words that we're talking about in in our in these board meetings and in these presentations. Our your children, the community's children, our learners are are responding. They recognize that these are um really meaningful touch points for them to start getting some, you know, a cursory overview of each of these areas. So the the next four or five slides are going to be about um four of the newest enrichment courses rather than me talk about them. I had the opportunity or we had the opportunity to meet with some of the students that are enrolled and they shared what they're enjoying. So each of these are about a minute minute and a half clip. So I didn't bring students with me but I kind of did. They're

070they're here but not like physically here. Um so why don't we start with our first one here and he'll our my friend Sam Salmon here is going to talk a little bit about the school law >> a great um eighth grade and I take mo the most interesting thing that we've done in mo we did a case and basically what what we do is we rehearse rehears and then like sometime in February we go to an actual courtroom in the high school and we do a case there it really it was so realistic it was like probably the most realistic courtroom I've ever been I think I'm interested in the school of law because it really helps because this um course is all about law. It helps me learn about the justice system. Helps me

071learn about law. It helps me know what like what what to say, what not to say, what how can I fight for what's right? How can I fight for justice? And if and and I took when I took this course, it it's I think it's going to teach me how the justice system more the more advanced cases will work around my school. and they in college the IP trait that's the most involved of course is a communicator because you have to communicate with your partner and they have to communicate successfully with the judge you have to communicate with almost every >> so I'm not sure how many courtrooms he's been in I didn't follow that one up but he also I love the fact that he brought up the courtroom and I while I don't

072want to plug Mr. Palpoli any further. It's another great example of the work that is being done within the district by a lot of our staff members to make these opportunities happen. So, a shout out to Mr. Bounty and the um mock trial teachers who take that extra step, that extra initiative to bring our children over to the the high school to do mock prep for their mock trial competition. So, when we're talking about authentic learning, we're talking about like real world application. They're when they're training at the high school for their mock trial debate, they have a judge they have who is a practicing attorney moderating and and supporting the children as they prepare for part of their class project which is competition in the well competing in the mock trial um sponsored event.

073Second new addition that we have is a PLTW class, medical detectives and app creators. really interesting uh PLTW class here where students on it's a split course half the year 10 weeks because it's every other day because it's every other day half the year is spent working on the medical detective side of things studying things like um you know the nervous system what would an infectious disease outbreak look like measuring vital signs doing case studies becoming detectives about the bi first learning the the the bi the you know the human bio system and then trying to identify how do diseases manifest test themselves. How would you treat a disease? How could a disease spread? The second half of the year is the app creator side of the course which uh is what I believe we'll

074come to in a second. So first half of the year the students are exploring uh the medical the human body and then the second half is app creation which I'll talk about after we hear from Molly. Look how happy she is. I mean that face school and I did medical detectives on my most interesting part is like learning how nerve like neurotransmitters get sent around the body like when you're blinking those are your neurotransmitters doing your job like when you're talking like moving and stuff those are your neurotransmitters a project that I worked on was doing this lab actually where we would cut into a sheep brain and we would label all the parts of the brain it It was cool. It felt like I was like literally off reading on. If you like want

075to go into medicine or if you're like interested in doing it, I would really recommend that cuz it gives you a gist of all the stuff that you're probably going to learn in medicine like in the school of medicine or medical school. I want to do the school of medicine because of the fact how I've been wanting to be a doctor since I was very young. And this class that helped me like understand like all the parts of the body, what they do, like what your brain does and all that stuff. The experience is like very fun. And it's also really cool. I remember like walking into class on the first day and I was like, I'm like this is going to be a fun class. That's helped me cuz of that how like right

076now we're already having a class that gives you an introduction about it. And since we have those classes up in the high school, I think it would help me. I think the MSP profile trait that I would do best for this class would be inquired because you do have to have like you have to answer a lot of questions and you do ask a lot of questions in class too. >> Going to roll right into uh a discussion from Luke who is now enrolled in the second half of that course which is the app creators part portion of the course. In this half of the year the students are working on block coding. They're looking at the design of applications. They're looking at learning through trial and error. I mean, when you hear what Luke

077has to say, none of which was scripted. I think that there's lessons in here for all of us. So, why don't we just let Luke tell us about app creator? >> I go to school at K Middle School. I'm in 8th grade and I take PW app creators in my course. The best part so far is that we got to make our own kind of little apps in a way. We got to design functions on the app and run it on tablets that were provided by uh for the school. And it was really cool because we got to customize like parts of it. I put the Mets logo onto a onto the app and then I was able to draw over Mets logo and add little twist to it which was a lot of fun.

078A lot of your game from it is learning to failure. A lot of times your code won't work because you made a mistake. But then you have to go back, figure it out, and make changes to try and make it work, which is what you're going to have to do eventually in life. You're going to have to reflect on what you did wrong, what you did right, and make changes to it. Since I took this course, I have a lot more interest in the study of engineering. Uh there's computer engineering at the high school, like Python, introduction to coding. they teach you more about it and go more in depth on harder levels of coding which I feel like will be really interesting to do and a lot of fun because then you have more

079opportunities to do different things with the code. I would say that the acquirer trait is most likely the one that is most align with me because I always ask questions and try and realize what I did, what I could do, what I could do better. And that's kind of what this course has taught me that I need to realize about myself is that I need to ask more questions and get help rather than just try and be better because you really need help when you go to something you don't understand. I mean, we have a 13-year-old there talking about learning through failure and how to um debug code. And the one of the things that was really salient in the discussion with Luke was um the role that the educator in the classroom plays as

080a facilitator of the students learning rather than the sage on the stage. And Luke was adamant in in conveying with such clarity that the greatest benefit he's experiencing or enjoying in that app creators class is the fact that he has to learn through trial and error. There's guidance, there's coaching, there's there's obviously adjustments that the teacher is helping the student make, but he has to create that code and he has to figure out why did it fail or what will make it successful. Um, and it was very light and um it was amazing what he had to say. So, I'll move on. Oh, there's that uh sheep brain that they were dissecting. That's right there. All right. All right. We have two to go here. The another newly added course in the school of business

081is our sports management class. Quickly becoming one of our most popular courses. So, I definitely want to thank the work of Mr. Fluger, Missa, and Mr. Kulak as well as the PE department. Sports management was added to the curriculum um two years ago and has vastly become one of the single most popular enrichment courses. One of the things that comes up every time we talk to the learners about what is it that they enjoy about their enrichment courses, the answer was consistent every single time. The educator in the front of the room, the passion and the commitment of the teacher in the front of the room is what truly inspires and hooks and holds the attention. So we all know that but sports management is a great um testament to that. So the main goal

082for the sports management class is providing students with exposure to things beyond just athletics and I don't I shouldn't say just athletics is a huge thing but Mr. Fluger and Missa have been very intentional in designing a course full of authentic experiences guest speakers to last year they had um Stanley Cup champion Adam Graves at the middle school meeting with the kids Dr. Cox Mr. Fel has spoken to the children. We had the head baseball coach from Hasser University there. They're constantly bringing in industry professionals to meet with um the the children to talk about all things, all facets of of the sports landscape, not just not just being the athlete, but what does it go into running a stadium? What does it go into marketing? What do salaries look like? What are contracts? So

083things beyond just what happens between the lines on a sports field. So with that, I'll turn it to Jacob and then we >> Hi, my name is Jacob. I'm an eighth grader at Com Middle School and I'm taking the sports management enrichment course. I think within the sports management course, the coolest things are that it's a project based course, but we also get to go on field trips. Earlier in the year, we went ice skating and we took a tour of Dixel ice ring. I think that since it is a sports management course, we got to learn how an ice rink is managed. It doesn't just take one person like cleaning the ice. It takes at least 50 people to run the rank. Concessions, people who clean the ice, the janitors, people who run the

084skate shops. There there are just multiple different roles that come into play with the success of a string. I do think that the main aspect and focus of this course is business and management. I feel like for kids taking this course, it gives them a grasp on the fact that they might want to manage well maybe not a sports team, a business of their own, whether it be a restaurant or anything else. So I believe within the time that I've spent in the sports management course, I've learned to become more balanced because I have to juggle my core classes and that academic work, but I also have to juggle between working on the projects and doing them to the best of my ability. And also like I said before with the field trips um I

085have to recognize that I am going to miss a little bit of work by going on these field trip. So I need to learn how to balance my time to make up that work that I miss. >> And so this is just a slide showing you know some of the trips to the ice rink. I'm not sure if it's 50. He he seemed to come up with that number 50 people run the ice rink. I'm not sure if that's I didn't I didn't fact check that back, but it's probably close. Um anyway, uh you also see some of the guest speakers that we've had in uh headlined by Mr. Adam Graves there in the middle. Um so I'll move on to our last newly added course which is global connections exploring cultures and community. As

086I said in the beginning, the the instructional philosophy that guides our practices at the middle school is the IBMP program. At the heart of the IB program or the my program is that we want to create internationally minded students to become increasingly more toler to tolerant and accepting of diversity throughout the globe. So this course was newly added. Um it gives our learners the opportunity to explore cultures in South and Central America, Western Europe, Asia. Children have a lot of autonomy to select the the area, the region that they'd like to learn more about. And then they're required to research, learn about the cultural practices, the traditions, and share out consistently about what's go what what is life like throughout other um cultures and regions of the globe. So, Genesis will tell us a little

087bit about that class, and then I'll jump into what we're adding next year. >> I'm in eighth grade. I go to Karmac Middle School and I take the enrichment class, global science. >> It's a really fun class. to be able to learn about like different places and like their culture, tradition, and to do them on projects and assignments and help to work with. We're learning about the world like all around the world. So, I feel like what we learn really like helps us cuz if we travel or if we like have friends from different countries and stuff, we can like really like connect in a way and global connections. I think like the learn about change that relates to is balance because we're learning about so many different countries and it's not just like our

088own and we get to expand more and we get to learn way more because if we just learn about our own like country and like where we're from or like something like I don't think it like it really like expands our like I feel like it's more interesting to learn about more than just where we're from and what we like are right now. We are all different obviously. We all connect and I feel like we connect more if we have condoms for each other through our culture. >> Couldn't be more impressed and grateful for the five students that helped us with the presentation and and were willing to share. Um I'll jump right ahead to the last slide that I have which is new new offerings for 2627. I said in the beginning and there

089was a table initially that spoke to our our interest in making sure that we had an offering in each of the schools of study that Karmac High School will be discussing in a little while. We're adding four new courses next year to the catalog. A comic arts and visual storytelling course which will allow students to further refine their ELA skills, but also tap into their artistic talents and interests. We're adding an education class that we're calling connected classrooms. um students that will really focus on the art of communication and how effective communication leads to meaningful education. We're adding in a designing your future personal finance for teens course um with the expectation that one of the outcomes is our students will become increasingly more familiar with finances as they make the transition to the wonderful

090opportunities that exist in the Bloomberg lab and opportunities at Comarmac High School. That will talk about interest rates, stocks, uh savings accounts, investment accounts, things of that nature. And the last one to add to our school of medicine will be wellness and action um from everyday um everyday health to and first aid. Basically half the year will be dedicated to healthy living, you know, diet, nutrition, exercise, uh mindfulness, how do you take care of your physical body to maintain a a healthy lifestyle? And then the second half of that class will be dedicated to first response, CPR, AED, um, how do you respond in a crisis moment and in an emergency? And again, these are these courses that are being proposed are being proposed by phenomenal teachers that have a passion. So, for example, that

091wellness and action class that second half of the year will be taught by a well, he's a he's one of our science teachers. Um, but it'll likely he's als he proposed this course. He's also a fire chief. So, if we're talking about somebody that knows how to provide authentic experiences to our middle school learners, we've got a great candidate in mind. He proposed this course. So, um, with that, I turn it over to Miss Lipen Holtz. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Larson. Thank you to the board of education for having us here this evening. I am so excited to be here and to be joined by Ryan and Tosha who are here with me to talk about our Karmac High School schools of study. If you walk into the high school, the moment you

092walk in, you can see exactly what we're all about. Our culture, everything we are about really aligns with our vision of preparing our students to help make the best decision for their future. We want to engage our students in real life, authentic experiences so that we can help them decide what their future path is. We know that we've already have a very robust course catalog. We have courses for every single student in our building. You name it, we probably have it. However, we felt like we were missing a mark. We've all been through career fairs where we were in the gym and we used to go from table to table and talk to people about their careers or we used to sit in a classroom and listen to someone talk about their career. And what

093would happen? kids would turn out, tune out or kids would congregate in the middle of the gym and not go tableto table. So, how are we, that's how COMAC decided, Miss Poleium said it before, how are we going to do what's best for CMAC and that's where the schools of study came in. We knew we were doing an amazing job providing coursework for our kids, but how were we going to create programming to help our students find a career path? Some of our students knew from the time they were little. I knew I wanted to be a teacher from the time I was little. I used to force my sister in my basement to play teacher with me, all right, on my chalkboard because I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Some of us

094know because our parents were in a certain career and we knew that was our career path. Some of us had a passion. But we have 450 to 500 kids in a graduating class. Most of them do not know what they want to do. Those amazing kids on the video from the middle school. A lot of them know. Kids who attend Wilson Tech, they know. Kids are who are in our IB career related program. They know. But we are missing a chunk. So how do we do that? We also know that a lot of our kids have such busy schedules in their day. So they couldn't take some of the courses that may align with future careers. So again, how do we get to those kids? And that's where the schools of study came in. So

095we have these eight schools of study. If you've ever been in the high school, like I said, the second you walk in, you see it. This is actually the wall that is right there in our main hallway. The eight schools of study are not the eight that Dr. Cox and I like the best and came up with on our own. They are actually researchbased from our own kids. Every year we do surveys during scheduling to see what are the career interests of our kids. Where are the popular courses? We do senior surveys at the end of each graduating class to see what their majors are. We use Naviance, if you're familiar with it, it's an online program for career exploration and college planning. So, all of that information is where we came up with our

096seven schools of study. Where' the eighth come from? Well, we knew that there were going to be kids that were undecided. They were still exploring and discovering where they wanted to be and that's where the school of liberal studies came in. School of liberal studies is way bigger than just also undecided students as well. Right? Humanities lives in there and a lot of other career paths also live in the school of liberal studies. So that's where our eight schools of study came in. Our eight schools of studies have adviserss. Our adviserss are our own full-time teachers. They are teachers that either came from that career in the past or have an actual interest and a passion for that particular school of study. There's no coursework for students who are entering in our schools of study.

097They are a program and experiences that we have set up and that are actually in action and we're so proud of it this year that students are engaging in programming and experiencing for them to see if this is a career path that they want to enter in for their future. So how do they actually choose what school of study they're going to be entering? So students don't enter into the school of study until 11th grade but they actually don't know this but it starts in seventh grade. So in seventh grade is when we begin our work in Navviance. So by the time students graduate they never want to hear the word NViance again. So in seventh grade, students are engaging in Naviance and they work in something called a career cluster finder in which they

098discover careers that match their interest. In eighth grade, they do a strength explorer. Now they take it a step further. They take their own strengths and now that matches up with what are possible careers and you have your own personal account Naviance. So everything builds on each other and you continually build on the different inventories and the different surveys and questionnaires that you take. We actually, and I'll talk about this more in a moment, but we actually take the work that they do in seventh and eighth grade on Navian and we use it in 10th grade. So, we continue to build on their strengths, their interests, the things they want to explore because believe it or not, they usually are the same from the time they're in seventh grade to 10th grade. Dr. Larson obviously

099talked about the enrichment classes. There's been so much work over the past couple of years that are explicitly aligning to our schools of study, but it always has in some way. So students said,"Oh, I loved this course." So we were able to make a connection, but now there's an explicit alignment. I think some of those kids are going to be very upset next year when they're not in a school of study until 11th grade. We have to break the news to them. Um, but at least they're thinking that way. And that is the biggest change that we've seen at the high school, too, is kids are thinking. They're thinking in ninth and tth grade about what school study they're going to do. They're thinking differently. And that is what COMAC is all about. And that's

100what we've heard all night long. Okay? We're thinking differently. Our kids are thinking and learning differently. In nth grade, about 90% of our kids take a course called career and financial management. They do units on career exploration. In Naviance, they do a career interest profiler that matches everything that they've already done in seventh and eighth grade to um the US Department of Labor data again to see where possible career paths align. In 10th grade, we do explicit lessons. So, our counselors push into 10th grade classes about thinking about their future where they align and talk about IB learner profile traits, which is our COMAC champion traits, which now they're going to have such a foundation on. Kyla talked about it from Burr. We talk about it from our primary buildings. Now, I'm so excited for

101them to come to the high school because they're actually going to really know them and it's going to be part of their everyday language. So, we explore that. We also do a beyond the classroom sophomore experience in small groups in 10th grade where they actually take their own strengths in the comarmac champion learner profile trait and they match it to their career clusters from Navian from seventh and eighth grade. They narrow it down to three and then they attend open house for our school of study. And finally at the end of 10th grade they choose one school of study and that brings us to 11th grade. So marking period one, what does it look like for our kids? What does it look like? How did our school of study that I feel like I've been

102talking about my entire life, how does it come to life? Well, the first theme was building your resume. Each school of study advisor, who are the most amazing people I think I've ever met, they're so creative. They tapped in, theyworked with people and they brought in a career panel of people that are in their career path and talk to the kids about their life experiences in that school of study. So, for example, the school of business brought in the owner of the pizzeria who worked on Wall Street and decided that wasn't for him and decided to open up the pizzeras all over the island. Brought in someone who owned a PR firm. Brought in one of our alumni who's a senior at Clemson who did internships through her whole college career and now she has

103a job lined up when she graduates. Ryan, who is a student in our school of engineering and applied sciences, is going to talk about his experience in the career panel during marking period 1. And Tosha, student in our school of fine arts is going to talk about her experience in the career panel during the first marking period. >> Um, hello. As she already said, my name is Ryan and I'm in the school of engineering and applied sciences. Um and the first workshop that we did in the first quarter, they brought in two engineers for our workshop. Um one of them was from GE Aerospace and the other one was from Brook Haven National Laboratory. But the thing that they both had in common was that they didn't know what career path they even wanted to

104do in high school, let alone what type of engineer they wanted to be. They had to go through a process that took them years to figure this out, which could have been completely mitigated and circumvented with the schools of study, which we do now. One of them went through years of different jobs and different majors until he found out that he wanted to be uh an engineer. And I know that I want to be an engineer now because of the things that I'm doing in high school that I've been led up to do until now. >> Hi everyone. Um, so the School of Fine Arts had a career panel of three industry professionals for us to talk to. We spoke to Eric Huckkins, a CHS alumni who was a professional French horn player, Paige Cooblins,

105a Netflix producer and and animator who also graduated from CHS, and Edward Smalden, Queens College professor of theory and composition and former music department director. This panel served as a Q&A for us to learn about careers in the arts. They talked about their own experiences and some of their career highlights. For example, Paige Copeland's actually worked um she produced and animated a really popular TV show on Netflix called Bojack Horseman. And it was a really interesting experience to learn and hear about her accomplishments and how she kind of came to success in this industry. So overall, this experience kind of taught me a lot of crucial skills I need to develop in order to have a successful career in the fine arts. For example, I practice networking, which is a really crucial skill. As I

106said, um these connections and relationships that I built with these three industry professionals will be some relationships that I will carry out throughout my whole entire career. And it's kind of building a nice foundation for me to build off of once I graduate college and start my own profession. Um moreover, I learned about the importance of social media in fine arts and careers in fine arts from Eric Huckkins. He actually had a YouTube channel where he recorded song covers on the French horn and he gained a massive following and that allowed him to obtain wonderful opportunities and jobs and honestly just create some beautiful music if I'm if I'm not going to lie. Um, but other than that, overall it gave me a sense of reassurance that there is always a place for you in

107the industry and I've learned that success can come to you in many various ways and this career pathway is filled with opportunities through the School of Fine Arts. So really when we're doing this programming we wanted to like deconstruct the career. So we looked at the career itself. That was what first marking period was really about. How can we motivate? How can we engage the kids by taking a look at these career professionals to be able to talk about what is the end goal right? Like start with the end in mind. What is the end goal? So that's what we started with. So we brought in each school brought in a panel of people in the career. Second marking period, the theme was skills. What are the skills that you need in this career path

108in order to be successful? This was a hands-on. We said to the adviserss, all right, they sat through a career panel. They asked questions. Second marking period. Now, this was in December. We want them to be active. We want hands-on authentic experiences where they're problem solving. They're communicating. They're being critical thinkers. Think about the most important skill you need in that career path. So for example, our school of law did a mock trial. Our school of medicine partnered with the com volunteer ambulance corps and they did vital signs, stop the bleed training, CPR and AED training. Ryan's going to talk about school of engineering did awesome something awesome as well as the school of fine arts. So they're going to share what their experiences were like. So for the school of engineering and applied sciences,

109we were given these packs of supplies um sort of like a kit for a motor and it had this instruction manual except this instruction manual was from the 70s and it was extremely over complicated and unhelpful. So we had to spend a lot of time ourselves figuring out how to do it. And it helped us build a lot of key skills which you need in the field of engineering and applied sciences. you needed to try and fail and learn from your mistakes and see what didn't work and then I know that I helped the people around me with things that I learned how to lead a team. All of these are very important skills that you need when you're going into the field of engineering. Um for our hands-on experience, we created online portfolios that

110we would use in our um professional careers. So, we used templates and examples from Google sites with the help of our adviser, Mrs. Neville. Um, we really learned about the importance of online portfolios because they're a great way to market yourself and display what you can do and your training and what you want to do. And they are really heavily utilized and heavily relied on in this uh career because you can put them on your resume, on your social media platforms um during your jobs. You can hand them out to other people that will lead to your next jobs. So, I'm really thankful that I got to create one so ahead of the game because it truly set me up for success in this career pathway. Our school of business, it was actually very funny

111to see they brought in someone from a PR firm and they learned about networking and how to shake someone's hand and actually have a carry a conversation with someone. And to watch 92 um 11th graders try to have a conversation and end a conversation and not just walk away from it, shake someone's hand, look at them in the eyes, that was actually a lot of fun to watch. Um our school of education um she our adviser, Mrs. Bellisari, set up stations in order for them to do problem solving. You get an email from your principal. How would you answer it? um you have your schedule set up for the day and then all of a sudden all these things happen. How would you prioritize your day? So just really incredible experiences again our adviserss did

112all on their own and set it up for our students. So a sneak peek you get sneak peek into marking period three which is happening this month and again now we're working backwards in how are we preparing them for the next step after they leave us because now they're juniors I never want them to leave us but they are going to leave us and they really are thinking of what's happening after they leave us in June of 2027 right I know um and some of them are going right into the workforce. Some of them are going to college. So, this is a great opportunity and a great time for us to tap into our partnerships that we have with local universities and local colleges that are the ones that are our dual accredited schools. So

113most of the colleges and universities that you see here on the screen are ones that we already have partnerships with because they accredit our college courses. So we are bringing them onto our campus during the month of March and each school is setting up a presentation from them in order to talk about what are some unique career paths. We went to Stonyie Brook University a few months ago and we went to the school of health sciences and medicine and there were careers I was embarrassed to say, excuse me, what is that? I've never heard of it before. Um, and if we didn't and our kids haven't either. So, it it just really opens our mind to our students. They're going to talk about how to apply for some of these particular careers, apply to some

114of these particular programs. Um, we learned about an actual program called Lincoln Tech that our vocational um, and technical skills advisor has been in constant communication with. So, we're bringing that school to our campus. Um, so we've really done incredible networking um, with local schools and local career opportunities. So, Tosha and Ryan actually spoke to their adviserss. They haven't had their program yet, but they learned what their program is going to be about. So, they're going to share that with you. So, for the school of engineering and applied sciences, an admissions representative and dean of and dean of engineering are going to come in from RIT to discuss like requirements for programs and programs that they offer at RIT. And I personally think this is invaluable, especially for juniors. I can speak for most of

115us when I say that we are all looking at colleges right now and it's a very like stressful time and so to have this opportunity to speak with this dean of engineering for specifically what I want to do and what we want to do in college is extremely helpful. It just teaches us like what we need to start doing now, which facilitates the entire process. And I can I have friends at other schools and I can say safely that they definitely don't do this, which is why I'm extremely grateful to have these schools of study at Karmac High School. >> So for the School of Fine Arts, um on March 24th, we are going to have three people from Malloy University come in and discuss majoring in three majors: visual arts, theater, and music. Personally,

116I'm very excited to have them because I know I'm majoring in musical theater next year. However, I'm a little nervous for my college audition process. For many of you who don't know, the musical theater college audition process is extremely different than what you'd expect. So, on top of filling out a a common application, giving my transcript, keeping up good grades, I also have to provide two songs, two monologues, and a dance, and go through multiple rounds of auditions in order to even be considered for their artistic programs. Um, and on top of that, I have to be academically accepted. So, I'm very excited to have these three people come in and talk about these majors because I believe it will be very beneficial and will offer lots of valuable knowledge I can use when auditioning

117for colleges and pursuing my Bachelor of Fine Arts. Awesome. >> So, I'm so glad I brought them because I would never be able to say that. And and they're just two examples of what this program has brought to over 450 juniors. Um, so Tosha and Ryan, it sounds like they're going to continue in their school of study as as seniors. Um, but let's say they decided they weren't going to and that they decided, you know what, school of engineering wasn't for me or I want to try something else. So as a senior, they can decide to enter into another school of study if they choose to. So that gives another student the opportunity to explore something else if they wanted to. Through our programming, we've been able to partner with some incredible industry experts and

118you just see some of them on the screen right now. Um, as Dr. Cox shared before one of the major questions we have done this presentation in different forms in many different areas and one of the major questions is how do you actually do this right? How do you run this without changing program and we have amazing and this has been the theme through the whole night too. We have amazing staff who have just gone out and made incredible relationships and networking with community members with people in the industry, tapped into our partnerships with local colleges and universities. It's just a change in mindset of going from the courses that we offer our kids to realizing that we need to do more in order to help our kids make the best decisions for our future.

119We know that this is just the beginning. Our adviserss come to us all the time and say, "I have an idea." I'm like, "All right, let's go." And again, it's the advisors, the people that are working directly with the kids and the kids telling us, "We want to learn about this or I have an idea about something else." And that's what's motivating us. It's what's motivating us to do more and motivating us to bring this programming and these experience to our kids every day. And we couldn't be prouder. Thank you so much, Mrs. Lipenholtz, Dr. Larson, Ryan, and Tosha. That was outstanding. Um, it just makes me so proud to hear the connection that our students are making to their careers from elementary to middle school all the way through high school. To hear eighth

120graders already talking about schools of study when it this is the first year that we implemented it and we're talking about anywhere between 400 and 500 juniors this year. But, you know, our current r uh rising juniors are going to be enrolling in their schools of study and now we're going to have anywhere between 800 to a,000 students enrolled in our schools of study and the programming just keeps getting better and better. I'm so proud of you. I wish you the absolute best in your future endeavors and it sounds like you have a great head on your shoulders in terms of what you know you want to do and that is our ultimate goal is to try and give you every chance and opportunity we can to test drive different careers or pathways before you

121leave Comarmac High School. Um, at this time I'm going to open it up to the board for any questions. Um, I know it was a pretty lengthy uh presentation. Um, but I think that it the team, you know, has provided an absolute wealth of information and um, we are so grateful for your presentations tonight. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Maybe you two could write the board in your senior year, your spring, and let us know your decisions. You know, dear board, this is where I am. kind of nice to hear. Um I I have a question if it's okay. Absolutely. Um >> so the cynic would say okay uh we want to do more right but more of course cost costs money right so if we're here tonight talking about a responsible

122budget how do we justify doing more in a in a fiscally responsible manner? That's the question. >> Sure. So, I think what's really special about the programs and the way that we frame this tonight is that as Mrs. Lipenhold said, it it's a shift in thinking. We created schools of study. We have courses that um that do apply to each of those schools of study, but they've always been our courses. If another course is added, you typically another a course comes out. So, there hasn't been an increase in the number of courses. Dr. Larson demonstrated that the electives at the middle school are still the same number of electives, but they just been reimagining what those electives look like. When you think about the primary and uh intermediate schools, and we're creating discovery dens, yet

123we're taking the PCs that were very costly out of those rooms because the students have onetoone as Miss Poleium had shared and we're putting in new technology that's actually cost less than the technology that we had to replace in those rooms. th this whole process. I think what I wanted to share is that these programs that we've been creating, which in some cases it sounds like we're adding programs, but I think the message that I'd like to get out there is that this is and we've been taking this message not only across different districts in on Long Island, but we've been traveling across the country. And that was one of the first questions is like how do you pay for this? And and at the end we say, you know, you have science classes, you

124have you you you have all these different courses already that exist in your curriculum guide. It's just a shift of thinking. It's taking those courses and clustering them and saying to students, these courses will better prepare you for a career in A, B, and C. Building partnerships with these outside agencies. We, you know, an alumni who is a Netflix producer came in at no cost. You know, all of these representatives, the owner of the pizzeria came in at no cost. I think that these provide, as Ryan had said, just invaluable experiences to hear from the professionals, the engineers out there in the field. Um, and that just that just uh occurs through networking. So, it's amazing what we've been able to accomplish. As I had mentioned in the earlier in the presentation, during challenging times,

125what we've been able to do to enhance the student experience um through our amazing staff and administration um has come and I'll say it again at to at little to no cost to the district. It's a it's a shift and a complete transformation in public education that others are trying to at this time replicate. So, we're really proud of the work that we've done. I hope that answers question. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Any other questions from the board? >> Sure. So, my question uh is for Miss Nevin. Miss Nevin, I know um you discussed that our tax levy increase for next year would be um approximately 2.03 is the allowable. Um, in terms of what you're hearing in your clusters, um, from your assistant superintendent of business friends, uh, what, um, what rates

126are are out there right now? Because this, you know, quite frankly, is one of the the lowest I've heard. I'm not sure if you've heard that also. >> So, uh, it actually is the lowest in this area and, uh, collectively across the island. Uh there are four districts going out to pierce the cap um or possibly to pierce the cap uh for this budget season, but we are well below most of the surrounding districts on Long Island. Um and you know, I think that it's important to >> Here I am. It's important >> it's important to note that um that districts are trying to stay within the cap. Districts are trying to manage budgets um within the cap and with the changes in state aid um you know that's a great struggle. So to have

127our our leadership team here be able to still do what we're doing and have these great um benefits to our students is truly a testament to what we do here at COMAC. Yeah, I agree. Thank you. Just one or two uh other comments I have. Uh Dr. Larson, um really like to go back to the middle school. I think I missed about uh 80 days over my three years there when I was a student and uh these enrichment classes that you have here, I mean, they are, you know, quite impressive. So, I thank you for all the work that I know was a vision of yours a few years ago for the enrichment program and really seeing that through to uh where it is today. >> Thank you. >> Um it's certainly something that I

128know my own kids come home and talk about quite frequently. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Tender. >> Sure. >> And uh do have a question for Mrs. Pium. Hi, Miss P. um in regards to uh AI and um you know how next year we're looking at that 3 through five level and really talking about um AI. Are there any particular programs or applications that we're looking to utilize for the creation of knowledge for our students and the responsib digital citizenship? >> Absolutely. So what I can speak to is that the district does use Brisk. Um thankfully Brisk changed their model a little bit this year. So they have what's now called the Brisk Next platform. So it grew from just an extension to a web-based platform which really gave a lot of wings

129to me unintentionally. Right? So it's same price much more offering. So that was something that I have been, like I said, I push into a classroom that I've been experimenting with where the teacher gets to set up that that kind of conversation, gets to see everything that the student is doing, gets to see all the conversations, set up that, you know, chat bot, if you will, and they really truly loved it. There was one student that had a little bit to say about how she felt about it, where she didn't like it, but primarily the whole class did like it. And it's a lot of talking um when we're going to be writing this curriculum and looking at that AI literacy. It's a lot of incorporation into even just looking at apps that they or

130platforms that they use like book creator and how it creates how it can help them create the pictures or how it can help them how can they tell the difference what did how can I fact check right like how do I know that this is real or not real it's not just about using it it's about knowing inherently as part of your practice how to tell the difference between what is real and what's fake right and it's so it's twofold right it's It's starting at some of the younger ages and getting them comfortable and saying, you know, this is what's out there and it's part of our responsibility now to have ethical use of it and appropriate use of it. And I was really happy to see a lot of offerings through Google and through

131one of our platforms, Brisk, that's making it more accessible, safe, and actually I mean I what I learned about Australian animals was really deep from this chatbot. And it was very cool to watch them. It was very interesting because the class I worked with, they did their research first in the library with the books and then they were able to tell what was real or what was not real and they actually got to go back and forth and tell Brisk like is this true because this is what I found and to see them go back and forth. It's not just teaching AI literacy. It's not just teaching them you know it's teaching them critical thinking right and how to examine facts and it was a really great experience. I'm really looking forward to continue to

132work in that way and it it it's something that we're going to be able to do with no additional cost because it's part of what's already embedded in our curriculum. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> No problem. >> One last uh shout out. I think uh Mr. Patterson turned my mic down because I was getting a little too close to it, but tell the battery ran out. Not quite sure which one today, but uh you know I think uh Miss Lipen Holtz, you you touched upon this uh really well and um just the fact that what our staff is able to create and um you know that piece of it from our administration and our leadership to our teaching staff all the way um you know throughout our facilities department and everything that we

133have that allows our students to be so successful. and to hear some of our students tonight really talk about that and uh you know I know that you are going to ace all of those uh you know interviews that you have next year. Uh it will be great and uh you know the engineering world will be better also. So I thank you Ryan Tosh for your um you know participation tonight as well. Thank you. Hello. Um, it's clear how much effort goes into all of the planning and the intentionality behind everything and how it's connected. Um, not only starting in K, but all the way through the high school is really amazing to see. Um, just thank you to the teachers and everyone involved who make these experiences possible. Um, and help our students feel

134proud of the work that they do every day coming to school. So, thank you. >> Any other questions from the board? >> Questions? Very excited for the middle year. So, buckle up. Two coming to you. >> Yeah, get ready. You'll have actually all three of them this year. So, hold on. Um, and I had the pleasure of going to the job fair, which was amazing for the vocational students. Um, the work that was put behind that was visible and I spoke with the adviser. His passion um was really clear and it's just amazing what they're doing. >> Thank you. So, just one more clarification. So we have three lines right we have in the budget proposal for next year we had the program teaching learning we have capital costs of operations and we have administrative

135and general management so to the average voter and to me myself when you look at the percent change so say administration general management 1.4 4 million decrease capital and cost operation 1.5 decrease program teaching learning a 4.5 increase so could we maybe for next time better understand how these savings or increases were generated right because I I know it's a category but like I couldn't tell you how we save $1.4 $4 million in administration or you know what I'm saying? >> Yeah. >> Or the program teaching learning 4.5 million or the capital cost of operations 1.5. I know it has to do with bonds and interest and stuff but it be for just for clarification. Yeah. >> For next time. >> Yeah, we can do that. We can do that for next time because these

136numbers will be in a future presentation and we can clarify that. question anybody? No. All right. So, thank you all. Uh, thank you guys for staying up late. >> Thank you so much. >> Oh, what do you got the last page here? >> Mrs. Lipen Holtz has the >> control. >> One more. >> No. Back. >> Okay. Yeah. So, I went I went over this at the beginning of the presentation. Uh, our next budget workshop is on March 26th. Um, and we'll have this in a subsequent slide. Um, so next thing to remember, March 26, budget workshop number two. Thank you everybody and have a good evening. >> Have a good night.