001okay um so okay hello testing testing one two one two three hello one two three four can you hear me hello testing testing so [Music] okay [Music] and the flag is back here everybody as far as i know i've heard i haven't heard otherwise [Music] is [Music] make sure to hit me up all right you know and she just stopped she just wanted to get real even though it was a part of her this will be public first thank you oh okay [Music] i just need someone to watch um yep that's fine he's got it all right just gonna let melissa get settled and we'll start murphy so just let me know when you're ready melissa are you good oh i'm going to call the meeting to order at 6 31 pm and we will
002open with a salute to the flag which is in this back corner for anyone who's looking i pledge allegiance to the clay of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for there's some seats over here folks we will do our best i can't read all the names i may not help in some cases okay celeste were there any agenda through the changes yesterday yes everybody received that yeah okay excellent okay we open our meetings with privilege of the floor um in public comment before we go into public comment i'll kind of go down the list that's how we had you sign in so i can make sure anyone who wanted to address the board has an opportunity to do so
003i'm just going to read through the policy that applies to public comment we appreciate your being here but we want to keep it civil and respectful of all all people so all meetings of the board of education shall be conducted in public and the public has the right to attend all such meetings public expression that such meetings is encouraged and a specific portion of the agenda provides for members of the public to address the board the period of the meeting is listed on the agenda as privileged as before the purpose of allowing public to make statements during the meeting excuse me is to allow for additional views on the gender agenda topics to be heard and considered this is not a timely place to register complaints about individuals or about items that have not been
004first addressed through proper channels that is with the closest to the issue such as a teacher building principal the superintendent or other appropriate party individuals making statements during privilege of the four are expected to be courteous and respectful modeling for our students how one can participate and have their voice heard in situations where agreement or disagreement with others views if members of the public have gone through proper channels and still wish to discuss a personal matter with the board they can submit their comments in writing to the board president or they can request an executive session with board at its discretion the board may invite visitors to its meetings to participate in board discussion in the matters of the agenda the board of education reserves the right to enter into executive session specified in policy
0051720 executive sessions the public comment session section is an opportunity for residents and residents only to address the board of education this public expression should take place only in the portion of the agenda designated this is usually at the beginning of each meeting which it is now persons wishing to address the board shall indicate their desire to speak in advance on the sign in sheet in order to give everyone who wishes ample opportunity to speak speakers should confine their comments to three minutes the board will not address specific questions or comments but may ask you for your name and address in the event follow-up is necessary the board will not permit in public session discussion involving individual personnel or students persons wishing to discuss matters and excuse me involving individual personnel or students should present
006their comments or concerns to the superintendent who will share them with the board at the next executive session so we will go ahead and open i think and i'm going to do my best to read the names so i apologize the first person that indicated they wanted to make public comment i believe is craig the reason why i'm here to talk quickly about the hot topic of open 19 and wonderful uh healthy quarantine and trying to understand it as fast as possible i wanted to attend these meetings a couple times that i haven't been here because supporting me hasn't affected me last week so because it affected me i felt like it's my opportunity now to come and talk about it my daughter was quarantined due to an exposure i'm a little upset because it
007took me a little bit of time to get some emails back on how my daughter was exposed what a level of exposure she was at and for how long just like everybody else sits in this room i have a lot of things that i do on the side as well as my career so i don't have a lot of time to email however when it comes to my kids i'm going to make time so i waited three meals back and i did i i got prompt emails eventually stating that my daughter was in contact with somebody for 25 minutes on a rough hell of an elbow that's a prolonged exposure that's above the 15-minute threshold i understand that so if we have procedures in place like i have procedures in place where i work for
008exposures why is my daughter sitting next to someone for a 25-minute exposure that's like saying i'm going to stick her next to somebody whether they're positive or not because we don't know for five to ten minutes upwards of 15 minutes eating with their masks up that would be an exposure for a prolonged period of time which would go towards you that's one of my questions what procedures are we following it's a very fluent situation i understand over the 19th day however it's starting to affect the residents it's starting to affect all of our children i'm not sitting here i can 100 with my work schedule be home with my child more than a lot of people i'm very fortunate with that i do not use school as a resource for data and i'm not saying
009that because everybody has different skills daughter needs to be in school so that she has proper socialization the teacher who is teaching her teaching her directly not through the channels of a laptop which is great compared to what we've had in the past and trying to learn it all last year what i'm going to end in is that one thing that's really starting to bother me and take it for what it's worth is that i don't need to be told how and what the channels are that if my daughter gets quarantined how i can get her to not be quarantined i don't need to be told in parent square which by the way is a great half thank you i don't need to be told that if i decide the way one way that i
010can stop disruptive quarantine with my child is to get them vaccinated i don't need to be educated i've been education this community is educated everybody in the community everybody around the country is educated we all understand what the ages are are available for warranty for uh vaccination steps we get i don't need to be reminded i'm an adult i can take care of my job i will stop that's all i'm going to say i'm not going to move on but that's one thing that's really starting to bother me so thank you i appreciate you sharing your comments thank you um the next is ben hi my name is betty arthur uh i pretty much live in flames with my healthcare lives my family's from here my parents lived here i hope my kids raise their
011advantage here uh last couple weeks a month we've seen some real inconsistencies as far as the quarantine's going uh between the elementary school and the high school uh if you look at the number of kids that are affected perform teams foreign procedures you would think that follow for the same number of kids per incident would be approximately the same this is not happening um the thing that uh makes me really start to wonder is that five to eleven-year-olds are being quarantined more than the high schoolers i start to ask myself why that is and then i see the propaganda in all the emails from the superintendent about to get around this disruptive quarantine get your kid vaccinated that is a political stance and an agenda that this school board should not be uh taking out
012uh it's becoming a political football and we should not be using our kids we are told bullying is bad yet the school district is bullying again and trying to vaccinate my kid we as a school board and community need to start pushing back against connecticut county um there's other counties of the states that are doing things very differently there's other counties that don't quarantine the classroom this mass mandate on the first paper today there's three counties around us that are not even honoring what the governor is saying so we need to stop being and put together a plan for de wanesburg presented to skankity county and say this is the way we're going other counties are doing it we are starting to push kenneth county back the plan needs to fit the winsburg lastly let's
013just bring up uh last week in the near time the attorney general united states of america stated that the amount of suicide and mental health anxiety depression among adolescents and kids is going through the roof the reason why is because we're quarantined i'm not putting them behind it's a laptop to try to learn that's not how we learn that's not humans don't learn that way so i asked the board and we cut down on the propaganda and also start putting our history thank you next on the list is rebecca and rob yes notified us that there was an assembly and um they were speaking um basically one of the we don't know exactly because the kids memories one of the things that stuck out was um they were instructed not to say merry christmas which
014we find kind of shocking really because merry in order to uh be instructed not to say that doesn't merry christmas offend people i mean if you're offended by the terror of merry christmas i need to see you once you get out of school and get into the public because that offends you that's going to be you know not too good um and there was another thing with the um the equity was discussed through the equity program and we're not [Applause] we didn't agree with equity we think equality is better like martin luther king says people on the quality of the character not the color of the skin we believe equity is deficit um and that's never happened in this school we see people we have kids minority kids in the school some like how many
015you just wonder if there's a problem we don't see kids as minorities and majority we see them as our friends so uh we just didn't really agree with the echoing program thank you no no no the next person indicated they would like to speak is cliff bradshaw [Music] i have two issues the first is my son was uh he's enforced the vaccine conferred but he's been forced to quarantine uh since last week he had you know i guess he was somebody who was you know positive the problem we have with that it's not the forcing the vaccine uh forcing the tornado it's forcing the quarantine of unvaccinated children and like like the american spoke earlier i agree with him i think this is a political flag employee just the pressure our kids you know almost
016informed child abuse to test our kids to force them to come home and say mom and dad i want to get back there's no reason for that there's no reason for that and why aren't we why aren't quarantining our vaccinated children do you know that the omnichrome are vaccinated people 78 so what are we doing i mean what kind of game is this my son is suffering at home but yet they are the vaccinated get to go to school just let them go to school let them be children that it doesn't make any sense unless it's a political ploy by the school and it's disgusting the other issue i have is the the assembly my son came home and said they told him not to say christmas come on i mean that's stuff it's sad
017i mean if you're gonna have a gathering you can grab all the kids together right before christmas come on christmas and then you're gonna show a bingo car that has oh put your put your son put your friends names on them on the bingo thing that says you know what they're in their right hand left-handed you know whatever black light whatever and then the two slides later you're going to talk about bias how we're all biased that's c that's critical race here i mean it's even if it's not full-fledged critical race there it's an open door for that which we never had before we this is garbage this stuff does not belong in our school system it does not please take it out let my kid go to school he's not a racist we are
018not racist we love everyone every color whatever we're not racists the families in this area are not don't try to call us something or not take it out let our kids go to school let them learn let them go to school you know i mean the masks got up i can't bring this with the nuts the mess don't work come on but my son does he follows the and he has to stay home you know because he's unfascinated what happens when he gets people get the shot and you know something happens to him but you know what i'm saying just this stuff is it leonard leonard and shannon did why am i reading it correctly sorry hi my name is um i'm here over the crp you're gonna make these kids racist you're telling the
019white kids that they're that they're racist because of the color of your skin what happened in color plant society you care about the color of the skin all of a sudden now you're telling me that because the kids got difficult skin that they're going to be need to be helped and all these other things that is that's racism in itself it shouldn't matter what the collective skin is it shouldn't matter any of this stuff i understand the poor kid needs a little help i get that other than that it shouldn't matter with any of this stuff you guys are creating the problem you guys by bringing this into the school you're creating the problem the problem's not even here you're making it i don't even understand i mean i thought we were here to teach
020the kids reading writing arithmetic any other things the other stuff should be left at home you guys shouldn't be sticking your nose in the other in the other stuff's business you've got no right to be teaching crt because all you can do it's it's conquering divine and that's what they're doing they're separating the races you know and causing all this problem and it doesn't even exist not at least not in this in this area and you're bringing it up and you're starting you're starting and stirring the pot is that what you want i don't even get it this is ridiculous see one more indicated uh jason myers myers a couple things i've already been mentioning the whole the merry christmas issue um you know for anybody to be offended somebody saying merry christmas i'm just
021sure about that suck it up that's fine if anybody else wants to share their holiday i don't see where the big problem is here it's you know it's merry christmas let it go the other thing is about the critical race here i don't exactly know if this is where you're going with the critical reasoning but the whole equity thing i'm not a big equity guy equals socialism i'm not socialism we don't live in a socialist world we live in the capitalist world you have to work a little bit harder if you want things that we're going to have equity maybe the custodians can pay the same amount as the superintendent does i think that's going to work super then he went to school he got a doctor he's a doctor he worked hard he achieved
022and he got what he gets so critical race theory thing if we're going to go that route and our kids are going to be indoctrinated because they're racist because the color of their skin you know that's not what's happening yet but if it goes there then i can see a serious serious problem in the community i've been in this area for 20 years i don't know what racism i am not a racist my family's not racist i'm not assuming that any of you are racist you're all white so you know if you do know the reasons in this community don't tell our kids that they're racist because they're white dr martin luther king one of the greatest americans ever lived in this country you know judge a person by the content of his character not
023by the color of your skin anybody looks at somebody and says you're white so you're a racist they are in fact the racist it's pure garbage you don't need that in this community i don't have anyone else indicated as wishing to speak could you just let us yeah we just need me are you on the list okay go ahead nope the things that we're seeing that are happening in the school things that we're talking about it's not moving to preserve that um you know i just i'd like to touch on the merry christmas thing if anybody's offended by that take you should be able to do that and if you don't then you can just say i'm sorry you know i don't celebrate it and that's fine um the other thing i'd really like to
024talk about the poor team my son is on his third quarantine and this time only half of his class is quarantined i would really like some explanation as to why there's such an inconsistency and they were all over the map i also as a parent do not appreciate the condescending remarks to fascinate my child that is a decision between his family and his doctor should not be forced out by school and to be treating him differently because he's not that's a big problem and lastly the equity and quality thing we've a lot of us to voice our opinions on that and it is a problem if you treat somebody uneasily i agree but when you have equity just because they sound the same and they're close in their spelling and enunciation does not make them
025the same and if we want to have equity in this school it's going to look very different and we all better be ready to live on thirty thousand dollars a year because that's what equity is making an equal for everybody and if we're going to teach our kids that that's what it's going to be who's going to strive for the doctor who's going to strive to become a teacher they're all just going get a job working at the local gas station there's no motivation on top of teaching your kid that oh you're a racist no i don't we don't teach that at all let alone having the school try to slowly increment it with this 3430 policy it's garbage it needs to go thank is you anyone else we've had children in this district 1998
026up until that very often when the kids were in school we would have assembled these different presentations and we would be made aware of the content prior to the deception and we were given the opportunity to have our children opt out of those i've been contacted by a number of people in the community who have made me aware of this critical race theory for lack of a better term and i would like to know is the board uh contemplating sending out notifications to make them aware because others have spoken in here i will speak on my behalf if we still have students in school no way would i want that type of teaching with them that takes place and in my experience 30 plus years in this area i have not known of any cases
027any individuals that have a lot of contacts we're preventing racism why stir a potential notify residents when you're going to address this type of initiative and give the students the opportunity to pass their parents up thank you there anyone else oh you can just let me know are all mandated from the government in order for the school to receive funding i think that's manipulation and i think if we as a community don't agree with that let's find another way because although equity sounds like a good idea throughout history that leads to communism do we want to be the generation that lets our country of freedom and liberty slip into communism does this music stick for hundreds of years to get out of that it's happening thank you anybody else all right thank you this officially
028closes privilege of the floor we will move on to administrative reports uh i believe we have a presentation from social on social studies thank you [Music] department he's going to cover sixth grade through 12th grade of give you an update on everything that they have been doing from our hands-on stuff in 6th grade all the way to our dc trip that we just talked so now thank you um hello i feel like i'm under address a little bit but we didn't practice today so okay uh so social studies department i'm chris herron uh just to kind of go over a few things that are happening right now um there it goes uh for sixth grade uh archaeology and i don't know how he's doing it i'm gonna have to meet with mr annapolis but they
029are actually mummifying chickens uh which is pretty cool uh so they're doing an archaeology unit um and they're going through uh archaeological dates um going through ancient turkey um it's a tallahallic journal kind of writing their own about what they're finding and what they're saying which is pretty cool which is pretty cool uh seventh grade has been doing native american tribes in the u.s they selected one they did research and found specific items artifacts and things native to that group and what makes them ideal uh to their region geographically what ties them to that region how they adapt and things of that nature uh ninth grade and twelfth grade got a couple different things going on with everything we're trying to do trying to stay separated and everything else still trying to share readings and
030journals and communicate and articulate things that they're learning and finding from certain articles and regions around greece leading to the earliest democracies and things of that nature in 12th grade you've got a group a senior seminar a senior seminar is a class that was created a few years ago to help our students prepare for college where they do applications they write their essay they research different colleges they go on college visits and all of that to help them along the way so it's a half year course that they they've been taking in order to get there uh 10th grade is my group that's my ap group and we we did an autopsy on an empire a gunpowder empire land-based empire in the 1450s and what led to their decline so kids got to kind of
031share their artistic ability and some of the disabilities that the empires had leading up to and kind of going through their political and governmental downfall what led to that and draw the comparisons and all those things um and then of course uh thanks to you guys the community and the board allowing us to go to dc this year uh which is great um you know not everybody is getting given those opportunities and for this community and this board to support us and that the kids really appreciated it um we've done it three times now and i would say this is the first time you know kids are always appreciative but this year especially didn't even matter really what we're doing okay i'll learn whatever you want me to do where do you want me to
032go don't care uh because they were just happy to be a part of it and have a little bit of normalcy so the the idea of just being able to celebrate and learn a little bit about their history and the foundations of their history was key so we got to go to arlington we couldn't do everything that we normally get to do of course because of certain restrictions and everything else but uh the kids had a great time iwo jima we got to watch the parade in arlington at night time we did the illuminations tour so we we got in front of the capitol building uh we're in front of the white house this is the white house this one and then vietnam the war memorial uh mlk junior and uh lincoln did all the
033memorials um you know world war ii all throughout we even made it as much educational as we could uh we went to ford's theater as well where lincoln was shot and they learned about that see all that stuff um we posed in front of the supreme court uh you couldn't go in but we at least get close there stay with the capitol building uh so they got to see all those things and the library of congress we actually got to go into uh we figured out a way to get in there so they can see the library in congress which is pretty interesting all right so they had a great trip uh they were very appreciative and thankful uh the community and to the board and we look forward to hopefully being able to do
034it in another two years so thank you very much okay moving on to the superintendent status report and update do you have a microphone over there also okay so um the first thing that i want to do is just address the fact that this community has uh really been rocked over the last few weeks um and uh it's it's especially true for the folks in this school district so our students and staff have really um had a difficult time um i know that it's true for our administrators too that we've also had a difficult time in dealing with a terrible tragedy that occurred in our community but i did want to thank some people because they really did some exceptional things when there's a tragedy it's always one of the the positive aspects i guess
035is uh how willing people are to come forward and help out their school so first person i'd like to thank is melissa um so melissa uh graciously um offered her services to help work with our kindergarten students so the kids who are most closely impacted by the death of one of their classmates i don't know how we could have gotten through that first day without melissa i know that she was there with jacob's teacher and so really i think the staff couldn't thank her enough for the work that she did i'd also like to thank laurel hallberg and kristen mills and dave preston and kelly hotelling and christina global that's our mental health services staff our social workers and psychologists and counselors who've really been working a lot to try to make sure that our
036students and staff are taken care of the other people the kindergarten teachers have been impacted greatly and i've never seen a group of more dedicated people who are going through trauma themselves but unwilling to leave classrooms because they know that the kids need them and so i'd like to thank them for their efforts the florida baptist church was very quick to arrange a vigil which i think was absolutely needed during that first week so i thank them i'd also like to thank bernax westerlo who not only offered up a psychologist and a therapy dog to come in that next day in school but also sent breakfast to the elementary school the following week um gilbert elementary school so guillermo this is this is a very difficult this is very difficult to talk about so guilderland
037elementary school has also experienced trauma in their community and so also sent over food for our elementary school staff the schenectady county sheriff's department and schenectady county community services have also been very helpful i don't know if you attended the vigil you know how many sheriffs and other volunteers were there helping make sure that people could get across the street safely and also community hospice and northern rivers that are continuing to work with our staff um just to make sure that you know because we things like this don't just end they're things that are gonna have gonna linger for a long time to come and so um they're there for our staff and really couldn't thank these folks enough for the work that they've done in addition to the countless school districts that offered supports
038to our district um and and so just thank you i did want to talk about quarantine um just a little bit and folks who are in the hallway if you want to there's seats over here if you want to have a seat but i did want to talk about quarantines because i understand that it's very frustrating to people it's very frustrating to me too it's very frustrating to our school district to have so many students quarantined certainly we want kids in school that's what we've been working for for the last two years is to make sure that all of our kids are here as often as possible so i did want to talk a little bit about our quarantine protocols and then i'll talk a little bit about why it's different in the high school
039than the elementary school and the one thing i'm going to say before because i understand that it's very frustrating to how board meetings are formatted in such a way that the community gets to speak first and then i get to speak and there's no real interaction but i would tell you that if if there's questions that you have i'm happy to try to address your questions i can't say that i'll always agree with your point of view but i will try to address your questions and i'll try to do it as promptly as i can so um the one thing that i wanted to point out is it is true that if you're within three feet and you're wearing a mask you generally should be spared from quarantines however there are certain things that really
040make it so that even though you're wearing a mask in class and your desks are three feet apart you may still find yourself subject to quarantine so if you do have close proximity with masks on close proximity while eating that's one of the things that could result in quarantine and some of our students do our students do eat in classrooms and there's just not enough space to have them six feet apart while eating and so that was a risk going into the school year and it remains a risk now poor mask wearing is also something that does frequently lead to people being quarantined and so does a prolonged close proximity greater than 15 minutes so somebody was talking about a meeting session where kids were next to each other in the morning so i will
041say that it's very difficult to conduct elementary school and not have activities that involve students being near each other for 15 minutes or over so we really have to weigh two things so we're weighing student safety and we're weighing quality educational experience for elementary kids and so we know that elementary school kids can't stay away from each other and so we can either put people in kind of siloed areas and have them surrounded by plexiglass or we can try to do at least some of the activities that elementary schoolers need to be doing unfortunately what sometimes happens is that those activities those morning meetings sitting on the rug with the teacher listening to books sometimes those things are collaborative activities where students have their hands on things and they're working together in groups sometimes those
042things lead to uh over 15 minutes worth of exposure and lead to quarantine now if it were up to me there's no way that i would voluntarily quarantine asymptomatic individuals i understand and sympathize with all of you who have to quarantine asymptomatic children i've been there myself so my son was was quarantined several times at the beginning of the school year it's very difficult your life is upended you have to figure out um you know who's going to stay home and how we're going to adjust the lives of everybody in the family because of the quarantine i totally understand that so um the vaccination status so i know that some people find the reminders in emails condescending and i hear that and i will promise that i will take the reminder out the reminder was
043in there because the five through 11 year old is a fairly new development and so while some of you might be aware of that there may be some people in the community that were not aware of that or were not aware of where to obtain these vaccines and so that's why that link was in there but being vaccinated is not the only thing that prevents children from being quarantined the other thing that prevents children from being quarantined now is if they have recovered from covid19 so also those students for three months after their recovery they are also not subject to quarantine they're exempt from that too so it's not just about vaccination status the other thing that's really really getting us is the bus and i'll show you what that looks like um so so
044the sports and lunchroom are problematic in terms of quarantining really when we went into this school year we knew that based on guidance from the different counties that we're in that no health department really wanted any schools to be playing sports this year and so um because we know that that part of the part of school is essential to kids we knew we had to do things as safely as we could so that we could still offer sports unfortunately though when a student is playing a sport they're going to come into contact with each other an awful lot and so wrestling is another is one of those sports youth wrestling was one that we just kind of put the brakes on for a time and that's because it's just impossible to safely do that um
045and keep kids you know how do you keep wrestlers uh six feet away from each other it's just not possible and so we know though that if somebody's participating in a sport they haven't had covid and they haven't been vaccinated we know they're very likely to get quarantined if anybody on that team comes down with an infection so we know that that's the case and whether we agree with it or not is sort of immaterial it is the guideline that we have to follow we aren't allowed to choose not to do that we have to follow up the other thing that's really problematic is the lunchroom so when kids are taking are eating they're taking their masks off and if they're within close proximity with each other we know that that's going to lead to
046quarantines as well the bus is probably the most drastic thing that's because so when the cdc put out their guidance on quarantines for the departments of health to follow they mentioned specifically that students were allowed to be within three feet of each other in classrooms now they didn't mention that students were allowed to be within three feet of each other on the bus and so the bus is the only thing that's maintained this six foot radius right so if you look at that student in red that's the positive case and if we're looking at a six foot radius all those kids that are colored orange are students who would be subject to quarantine because they're within six feet now there's there's no there's still a logical way to explain this to you i am forced
047to defend this because i follow it we have been pushing the county to reduce these quarantine requirements all year long and so every every week we sit we talk to people in the county and we talk to them about things that they could do to help us save some kids from being quarantined unnecessarily so we're going to continue to do what we need to do to make sure that we minimize quarantines but i will also say that in the elementary school we have had um many more cases than in the high school many more positive cases than in high school and right now things are not good in the county and in our district with regard to cobit and so that is why you're seeing right now we have uh probably more quarantines than we've
048ever had at one time it's it's disruptive and it's unfortunate and i wish that wasn't the case but it is the case now and so um i'm not going to defend it i'm just telling you what the what the case is um i did also want to address the equity concerns that some folks had this is really i want to address a few different things so the first thing that i want to address is that we're doing this equity work not because it's tied to funding likewise it's true for vaccination there's no although schools have been encouraged by public health from the cdc on down to encourage vaccination in our kids as schools always have been encouraged to you know encourage people to get vaccinated so it's not tied to money there is a state
049mandate from the board of regents so the board of regents does have um some things but there's also a local need that that i want to talk about so the board of regents initiative which you can find um you can look up their diversity equity in inclusion initiative and find out what the board has asked schools to do that's public and it's on their website so you can see that stuff whenever you'd like it does not just have to do with race it has to do with all different kinds of equity um especially here in a fairly uh racially homogeneous school district like ours there's still a lot of diversity there's diversity in terms of economic need there's diversity in terms of disability there's diversity in terms of gender there's neuro diversity kids with learning
050disabilities who kids who are just different and so there's all kinds of diversity in our student body the other thing is that even before i started here the staff had identified certain inequities in the district right so even in what i would invite you to do to get a sense of some of the inequities is at some point when you're walking around the school to think about what it would be like to travel around this school if you had a disability so what would it be like to even get into this school this this building if you had a disability certainly there are ways to do it it's it's legally accessible but does that mean that every disabled person get everywhere they want to go in the same straight line as everybody else it doesn't
051also we know that certain kids tend to not do as well as other kids because of socioeconomic status so there should be no reason why a student's family's wealth is tied to their achievement on test scores but if you look at data over time what you'll find is there very much is some sort of connection between wealth and achievement that shouldn't be so you're right in saying that there's not a lot of racial diversity but what i would argue with you some of you who said there's not a problem with racism in the school i would tell you that the the impetus of this particular assembly a series of assemblies because they were done at each grade level so the impetus behind these assemblies was the fact that there weren't just allegations of racist comments
052made toward students and our secondary school there were corroborated allegations of racist comments that were being made so there were students who were saying yeah i said that so what and so we're talking about students calling other students the n-word and hallways we're talking about students making people feel bad because they wear certain things because of their religion that other students do um so to say that there's no local problem or that just by talking about it we're introducing a problem isn't accurate based on what i've seen and i think that if you were to talk to the folks at the building level they would also tell you of examples where these things are actually happening now to to address the assembly i am going to address the assembly first but first i want to
053talk to you about all the things that we've done with this equity initiative so far so i've some of the claims that folks make i find it hard not to take offense to i'm i'm also patriotic i am very much not a socialist i am somebody who very much worked really hard to get to where i am um so i find it difficult to not take offense at some of the some of the things that are lobby toward us however i don't live in a bubble i understand what's on tv i know the conversations that people are having now did i have to look up critical race theory the first time someone accused me of doing it yeah i had to look it up because i have no idea what it was so but but
054i do take offense at some of these things so we started out by doing an administrative study where the administration read a book on different things related to equity most of these things weren't related to race at all there were things that you would not even think of as being related to equity like when i have a fundraiser and i send home you know a box full of stuff and expect all kids to participate in that fundraiser there are certain kids that are not going to be able to participate in that because they don't have parents who can take it to work with them um or they don't have the money to just do what i usually end up doing which is buy the whole box candy myself so i don't have to show them
055on to the relatives of the holidays and so we did an administrative study on all the different ways lots of different case studies related to equity that might be things that you might not normally think of as being related to equity we did do an activity last year it was a pbis activity where we talked about we defined the term equity and this was done by student government at the end of last year so we defined the term equity and we also defined the term identity so that people could start talking about who they are because some people are afraid to talk about who they are some people even hide who they are um from other people they hide the fact that they are a different religion or come from a different background because they
056know that that doesn't comport with the majority of folks we have been doing some staff development with an organization called generation ready so that staff development focuses i don't even think that we've talked about race but we have talked a lot about special education and i know that this group generation ready did some walk throughs through our building and so what they found more than things that you would think like it's it's it's really immaterial to me like the the christmas thing which i will address the um because right now if you walked into any one of our offices you would see christmas trees you would see teachers who are wearing you know chris santa hats we do christmas caroling before the end of break we have holiday concerts in which all of our students
057are wearing hats not to put her on the spot but miss marvin back there is our principal and she's very much uh just for christmas and i would say that that's that's pretty true for our district as a whole so um what we found in those walk-throughs were things like we don't ask everybody tough questions in a class we don't ask everybody questions that provoke thought so we ask certain kids those questions but we don't ask all kids we don't we're not challenging all kids equally so actually the first thing that we're focused on right now is how do we make sure that we're asking higher order questions of every kid in that room to make sure that everybody in the room has a chance to critically think and is challenged okay so that's another
058thing you might not think of as related to this but it's very much the work that we're doing so um i did release this statement we're doing this work in concert with the other 23 school districts in the capital region so we all signed on to a statement and sent that out i think two weeks ago so it is very much a statement of support just to say that all of us are working on this so we're not the only district that's doing it um we're all doing it at different levels depending on our particular place right so there are school districts in urban areas that are doing it far differently than we're doing it um and that's just how it has to be we did do an assembly um so i think that when
059miss marvin started to organize these assemblies it was hot off the heels of some of these comments that were being said to children in the hallways in the secondary school and so we very much wanted to address that and so we did grade by grade level assemblies in these assemblies we talked about what bias means and what stereotype means at no point did was anybody called a racist i actually don't remember um the term racist or racism even used in those assemblies um the other the other point that people were bringing up is uh you know instructing children not to say merry christmas that just didn't happen so the speaker made an a side comment to say well some people choose to say happy holidays instead of merry christmas um but she did it as
060an aside not as uh you must do this there was even an allegation that i heard that a student was disciplined for saying merry christmas that was the the most ridiculous thing that i could ever imagine is to discipline a child for saying merry christmas as i said like it's very difficult to not notice christmas in this district so we did though have an assembly that addressed bias and stereotypes and we are in fact um going to be reading a policy on equity so the policy committee has been working on this it's very much a statement of purpose about making sure that all kids have equal support so that everybody can succeed that's what we're looking to do there is no grand conspiracy around introducing socialism to children or critical race theory so what we're
061trying to do is make sure that all kids have an equal shot to succeed and we know that some kids are going to need a little bit more than other kids so that they can succeed so that is what we're doing with this policy i would encourage anybody if you have any questions i'd encourage you to have a sit down with me and not make assumptions before you know you find out what's actually going on i'd be happy to share anything there was also a comment made about um notifying parents beforehand there was a notice that did go out beforehand did we we didn't explicitly say you can opt out of this presentation but we don't say that for any assemblies um that we have however they're your children and it's your your right to
062do what you please and we certainly wouldn't want to make people sit there if they didn't want to sit there so that's what i have to say about our equity work so far and like i said i would be more than happy to talk to anybody at another time if you're interested to know about any of these things specifically moving on in the agenda to presentation in the approval of fire board of education meeting minutes recommendation of the board of education accepts meeting minutes from the november 16 2021 meeting as submitted of motion thank you francis any comments or questions all those in favor say uh next topic is new business board of education standing committees i believe buildings and grounds now yes and then last week and um primarily what was discussed was the
063uh the elementary bus project from the investment project moving forward on the property um providing us with some recommendations [Music] thank you and i believe the policy committee also met melissa is there an update yes we met last week as well um and so we're talking about creating a policies uh specifications around how how that kind of happens in a reasonable and fair way so um can i add one thing to that sure the policy manual now exists in board docs under draft policies yes it's pretty exciting that that will be the new place that it lives and will eventually take the um the policies off the webpage and it'll be more searchable for people thank you moving on to financials accept financial reports recommendation that the board of education accept the appropriation status budget
064transfer eca revenue status and treasurer's reports ending october 31st 2021 an eca report ending november 30th 2021 is provided by the treasurer and recommended by the assistant superintendent of management services double motion melissa will you second floor shane thank you any comments or questions okay all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions moving on accept claims auditors reports recommendation that the board of education accept the claims auditor's comments on general warrant a17 and the amount of 444 thousand 658 dollars and 40 cents and capital warrant hp one in the amount of fifty thousand four hundred dollars dated november 17 2021 and general warren a 19 in the amount of 407 65 cents dated december 1st 2021 to have a motion teresa thank you seven thank you tony any questions or comments all those
065in favor say uh any opposed any abstention approve agreements with coble scale recommendation that the dwaynesburg board of education approved the agreements between coldwell richmondville central school district and waynesburg central school district for september 9th 2021 through june 24 2022 is recommended by the assistant superintendent of management services these agreements shall not be binding on the parties until authorized and signed by each party's respective representatives to have a motion thank you melissa a second thank you shane any questions or comments all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions approve agreement between the district and dta nurses be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the agreement between the district and the waynesburg teachers association dated december 6th 2021 with respect to wages and other terms and conditions of employment for school
066nurses and authorizes the superintendent to execute the agreement this agreement shall take effect on december 14 2021 and will be reflected in the subsequent pay periods to have a motion thank you francis ii thank you diane any questions or comments i'd just like to make a comment that so the nurses are totally invaluable to the work that we've been doing over the last couple years this is certainly not what they signed on to um like really ice packs and band-aids are what they signed on for and what they have become is really expert public health officials and i really can't thank them enough for the work that they're doing yeah certainly going above and beyond all those in favor say aye any opposed any extensions a proof agreement between the district and shelmont it resolved
067that the board of education of the waynesburg central school district approves the agreement by and between waynesburg and the chelmont central school district for services related to transportation dated december 14 2021 and approves the payment of money provided in the agreement do i have a motion tony thank you have a second good teresa any questions or comments from the board francis um it says that the search locations will be either but is there a preferred location so i mean obviously the preferred location is here um but there might be situations where it might make more sense to do it over at shelmont because maybe they're doing a training with some other drivers or something like that so the two transportation directors talk frequently and so can work out that any other questions all those in
068favor say aye any opposed any abstentions all right moving on to other approved 2023 budget planning calendar recommendation at the board of education approved the 2022-2023 budget planning calendar as recommended by the superintendent and the super assistant superintendent of management services for promotion thank you shane second thank you melissa any questions or comments all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions accept donation recommendation that the board of education accept the following donation as recommended by the superintendent and assistant superintendent of management services and it's a donation the amount of two thousand dollars uh to purchase golf equipment from jamie and i'm not going to say that last name correctly thank you very much i appreciate that uh do i have a motion thank you terry so is that a second thank you tony
069any questions or comments thank you thank you agree all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions i'm just making a note sorry approved csc minutes with the addendum of december 13 2021 recommendation that the board of education accept and approve the recommendation of the csc meetings and their minutes from november 22nd 30th and december 3rd 13th 2021. do you have a motion thank you teresa a second thank you melissa any questions or comments all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions okay moving on to personnel accept resignation are underwood recommendation that the board of education accept the resignation of h russ underwood assistant transportation director effective december 19th 2021 do i have a motion shane a second diane thank you any questions or comments okay all those in favor they are
070any opposed any abstentions accept resignation r hayes recommendation that the board of education accept the resignation of robert hayes junior senior technology teacher effective december 10th 2021 grab a motion thank you tony a second thank you francis any questions or comments all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions approve appointments recommendation that the board of education approved the following appointments is recommended by the superintendent and high school principal eca appointments are for the applicable 2021-2022 school year all appointments are employees at will and the appointment at this time does not guarantee employment for the entire school term or year the salary for eca clubs activities and athletic positions will be prorated based on the length of the season term year the operation of certain clubs and activities are subject to covet 19 related
071restrictions and as listed with leslie and megan do i have a motion thank you melissa thank you teresa any questions or comments all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions okay we will move on to discussion and the topic for discussion today is policy 3430 diversity equity and inclusion in the district first read were there any comments from any board members no questions no everybody was comfortable with the lisbon okay so we can move it celeste to second read next section information everybody excited on january 4th there's a board photo i do appreciate the notice yes yeah we can do that and the other item is the regent schedule update and i think we received clarification on that were there any questions or anything from anyone okay so [Music] at 7 36
072the board will be moving into executive session we do not intend to return to the regular meeting to conduct any further business do i have a motion to move into executive session all right diane were you a second thank you shane all those in favor any opposed any abstentions okay thank you thank you [Music] rotate around the building